My mom and I went to see the Fleet Week air show today, including the Blue Angels. What a show! The weather was perfect, and the view was great from Crissy Field, with plenty of parking at the Main Post in the Presidio. I haven’t seen the Blue Angels for about nine years, so I’d forgotten how much fun they are to watch. Even some of my photos and videos came out.

Also, we took some not-so-popular streets within the city, to try to dodge traffic going to Fleet Week, or the Columbus Day parade, or the golf tournament at Harding Park, or the Colts vs. 49ers game, skirting Laguna Honda Hospital on the way there and Diamond Heights on the way back. Let’s just say I went through parts of San Francisco I’d never seen before.

I mentioned last month that Microsoft is overhauling the user interface of the next version of Office. Now member of the Office user experience team, Jensen Harris, has a blog all about Office’s UI, both its past and its future. It contains some good insight into how Office’s UI has evolved, how they are designing the new UI, and what issues they’ve already run into while testing it.

From the New York Times:

A ubiquitous city is where all major information systems (residential, medical, business, governmental and the like) share data, and computers are built into the houses, streets and office buildings. New Songdo, located on a man-made island of nearly 1,500 acres off the Incheon coast about 40 miles from Seoul, is rising from the ground up as a U-city.

Sounds like a ubicomp researcher’s dream.

What’s Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton doing hanging out with Newt Gingrich, co-sponsoring bills with Rick Santorum and Bill Frist? Pundits say that she’s drifting to the center in preparation for a presidential candidacy. But Matt Bai argues in the New York Times that she is being true to her ideology, shaped by a Methodist upbringing in the suburbs of Chicago.

Here’s one of the more amusing letters I’ve gotten recently:

Dear Mr Jimmy Lin, Our records show that you haven’t yet registered for the benefits of AARP membership, even thought you are fully eligible….

I know I’ve been a grad student for a long time, but still…

On Saturday, Jonathan and I went to the grand opening of the Vasona Light Rail line, which runs from downtown San Jose to Campbell [photos]. It was packed. At 11, they started the speeches. I leaned over and saw the schedule — there were a lot of politicians lining up for their turn. We decide to skip the chitchat and ride the trains themselves. First, from the Downtown Campbell station, we headed north. The train was faster than I expected; it was a smooth ride, and as Jon pointed out, a lot quieter than BART. (Granted, it’s also slower.) We got off at the Convention Center station, then waited about 20 minutes to take a Winchester train back. We took it to the end of the line, and then arrived back at the downtown Campbell stop at 12:30. And they were still talking.

But soon they were done, and then we hit the free food stands (grad student instincts). But it was a little chaotic, so we didn’t get enough for lunch. Instead, we went to nearby Sam’s Barbeque. Jon immediately decided on the beef brisket, which brings back good memories for him, while I went for the pork shoulder. That’s mighty good eatin’!

A follow-up: Looks like the new light rail line is off to a good start.

I finally saw an iPod Nano in person for the first time today. Holy moly, it’s even smaller in real life! The Nano is the first iPod to really wow me — undoubtedly it’s the MP3 player to beat (although the new Sony Walkmans look intriguing). So what if the Nano might be a little fragile? Slip it in a case…