Blue Angels

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.

Microsoft Office user interface blog

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.

Ubicomp city

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.

Hillary’s journey to the center

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.

Vasona Light Rail line

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.

Cupertino’s 50th birthday

[Logo for Cupertino's 50th Anniversary Celebration]Yesterday I went to the festival celebrating Cupertino’s Golden Jubilee at the Civic Center. I spent most of my time at “History Lane,” which had nice exhibits on Cupertino’s past, starting from the Ohlone Indians, through Elisha “Stevens Creek” Stephens, the vineyards, the orchards, the Cali Bros. Mill, and finally the development boom of the 1960s and 70s. A lot of people crowded around the aerial photos capturing that development. [photos] By the way, it’s scary to think that my family has lived in Cupertino for almost one-third of its existence as a city.