Congratulations Chuck!

MSR's Chuck Thacker has just been awarded the 2009 ACM Turing Award - which is the "Nobel Prize" for Computer Science. This is richly deserved - Chuck essentially built the first machine that we would recognize as a PC (The Xerox Alto) and the first Tablet PC, and many other contributions besides. A worthy winner (and the fourth recipient from MSR!).

Bummer

HD2 Not getting Windows Phone 7 Series OS - Official

Project Natal

I've been surprised to meet up with people recently who haven't heard about Project Natal. Err...guys...this is like the coolest thing ever!! [Even better is that some of the key technology comes from our lab!]

I just found out that we have a nice webpage full of cool videos here. Once this comes out, it's time to buy an XBox!

F# milestone

I've blogged earlier about important F# milestones. Here's another one. I went to make a mug of peppermint tea this afternoon, and it seems that F# has reached the important milestone of Mug Manufacture. Whoo! Congrats Don and co!

Windows Phone 7 Series

Like many people I was anxiously waiting for news from Barcelona concerning the next generation of MS Phone.

I have to say I'm pretty impressed. You can watch a nice video at Channel 9 here.

I blogged before about how nice the Zune HD UI is, so I'm really pleased to see that this look-and-feel has been deeply embedded.

Modern Times

I took the girls yesterday to see the latest exhibition at Kettle's Yard: Modern Times responding to chaos. We all really enjoyed it - the girls sat on the floor with their sketchbooks and copied the pictures they liked. It's a very interesting collection of drawings and film, combining some well-known artists (de Kooning, Mondrian, etc.) with some lesser-known artists (including some very recent work. My favourite was a lovely piece by Katharina Hinsberg.)

Apparently the subtitle refers to the times that the pieces were made. I'm not sure this really works, as many of the pieces don't seem to refer to that chaos at all. However, as an exhibition it's really very good. (I'm already planning to sneak out one lunchtime and see it without the kids!)

Small

I take my hat off to this chap for his interior design of his 19.5m2 apartment!