2011: music

Happy New Year! Wishing you a great 2012!

Over the holiday period, I was looking back over 2011. One of the things I enjoyed doing was seeing some great bands play live. Whilst Cambridge is not the most hip place, we get quite a few good bands playing. In 2011, I saw:

• White Lies [Great! Saw them first supporting Glasvegas at the Junction, so fun to see them now they have hit the big time]
• The Hold Steady [Definitely the loudest gig of the year; Matt and I got right down the front]
• Warpaint [Hot! Love these ladies...]
• Wild Beasts [Breathtaking. Really love their album. Go and treat yourself...]

I also went to Glastonbury, which was fantastic. Highlights there were U2 (natch), Coldplay, Pulp, Metronomy, The vaccines, and many more. I also played in a gig, although not at the Junction, but that is one of my hopes for 2012!

Thanks to Matt for being the Gig Master!

New WinPhone 7 advert

It seems that there will be some new Windows Phone 7 adverts. This one features my favourite new feature: the "I'll be a little late button". When you view a meeting in the calendar a little button with a picture of a running man appears at the bottom. Click that and it emails the other recipients a boilerplate note saying that you're on your way and will be a little late. Anyone who knows me, knows how much I will use such a feature!

Semantic subtyping with an SMT Solver

After what seems like a very long time, I'm happy to report that - just in time for the holiday season - the extended version of our ICFP paper is now available (here). Enjoy!

XML vs the web...

According to James Clark, the web is winning. Or rather, JSON is winning.

[Speaking as someone who's spent a long time dealing with XML in programming and query languages, I'm not surprised. XML comes from good intentions, but what was delivered was broken. As Phil Wadler and Jerome Simeon put it:

So the essence of XML is this: the problem it solves is not hard, and it does not solve the problem well.

]

The joys of SQL

Verity Stob on SQL: here

(I think if you use your favourite search engine you'll find quotes from my database course where I have less than complementary things to say about SQL! These quotes were taken without my knowledge by the students in the audience.)

Shipped!

Yesterday, Microsoft launched Visual Studio 2010 (in particularly nice boxes!). I just finished installing it on all my machines - I recommend you do too:-) Amongst many features, you get a nice improvement to C#: dynamic types (as detailed in our forthcoming ECOOP 2010 paper). You also get a whole new language: Visual F#. Congratulations to Don Syme for probably the biggest tech transfer out of our research lab.

(Unlike other companies, Microsoft clearly loves multiple programming languages!)

Design matters!

Please, somebody, start marketing this!