Cambridge Graffiti

When I had my day off, I did notice a whole bunch of wacky graffiti around town. Here's an example:

Samso

I read an interesting article over the weekend (which was warm enough that one could read the paper in the garden in a deck-chair!). It's about an island in Denmark that has become completely carbon-neutral. In fact, it sells excess power back to the mainland. There are some beautiful photos too. [link]

Day out

At very short notice, I had to take a day off work today to look after my youngest. We had a very nice time: We had to get out of the house in the morning, so first we had a cappuccino and a "aquaccino" at Starbucks in Borders and some fun playing with some zoobs. We then went along to see the Roger Hilton exhibition at Kettle's Yard. Lina liked it: in particular the "running lady" as she put it [to the right here]. We then walked along the river home in time for lunch. Today was so beautiful, we went to Newnham Park after picking up Hana. A good day - although there's going to be a huge amount to do when I get to work on Monday!

Mike Hicks

I've blogged before about the large number of superstars that pass through MSRC. MSR has a visiting researcher programme where we host academics on sabbatical. Last year, I hosted James Noble - a by-product of which was a paper in ECOOP.

This year I'm thrilled to host the multi-talented Mike Hicks from the University of Maryland. He'll be here for three months, and then over the road at the University for a further nine visiting Peter Sewell. It's great to have Mike here - he's currently teaching me about dependent types and security policy. I expect to learn a lot in these three months!

Mike and his family are blogging about the experiences of living, working and schooling in the UK. I imagine it's all quite a shock for them! But his children seem to be settling in just fine - here they are in the Jesus Green Playground with Hana (Lina is off-camera trying to climb up on the highest slide for older children!):

Jerry

My professional and personal lives have just collided: Jerry Seinfeld stars in the latest Microsoft Ad (with Bill)! You can watch it here.

Surely in the next one they need a Microsoft Research angle...my agent is waiting for the call :-)

UPDATE: Episode two can be found here.

Chrome

We live in interesting times: Google has just released an open-source browser: Chrome.

I particularly like the fact that rather than write a boring white paper, they released a comicbook! That *is* a cool touch. [I confess the rather strong urge to start making my own comic...]