marypcbuk

The recent appearance of chalked Surface images on a hipster New York wall has resulted in a dense semiotic analysis (no more truck PCs!), but there are some less humorous things to learn from the chalk art, which also showed up at the Surface launch in LA. I think they're really clever.

Red, pink and blue; bright colours for the Touch Covers that snap onto Surface and turn it into a notebook you can balance on your lap.


Dotted outline: the keyboard cover is optional and removable. But it's in every image, because it's going to be a huge part of the product story and you're going to want it.


16:9: when we picked up our badges for the Surface event, even before we saw PRs from the Windows team, we could tell it was going to be a tablet - because what else has the 16:9 ratio? And the dotted lines from the keyboard were used on things like the card with our demo slot on and the card with the Wi-Fi password on.

Even on the chalked keyboards you can see details like the two buttons for the touch pad or the markings for the home keys...

We're always looking for new routes between LA, Las Vegas and San Francisco (and we keep finding new roads to try) but there are some places went go through fairly regularly, like the Fruit farm, fudge & petting zoo (that's what the sign says). On a sunny April day, the peacocks were roosting out of the sun..


Nobody here but us peacocks


River of feathers


Peacock eyes watching


I tried several crops of this one


Not just peacocks

Show me MOAR PEACOCKS!

Small towns in the California high desert are like oases; food, water (pools, that is), shelter for the night... nomads passing through, palm trees and country music in the back of the roadhouse...

We finished our conference asking tricky questions and pinning down a member of the IE team for an interesting discussion about what UX you need for managing privacy and went up to Todd Bishop's Olives at the Bellagio for lunch overlooking the fountains. There was a whole table of Vegas entertainers beside us celebrating someone's birthday - definitely Carrot Top and several others I couldn't identify without harassing them by looking too often, and I think that's just rude - and Vegas had suddenly filled up after being quiet like a small desert town all week, so while the food was as good as ever the service was a bit spotty (and for the first time we had to wait for a table; we wandered off and took photos of the Bellagio conservatory, which is a funfair with floating glass balloons and fields of Icelandic poppies and hyacinths and a stunning version of a David Hockney done from real flowers, as well as the usual butterfly garden). Still the pear elderflower martini, the cauliflower bisque with chunky lardons, the squab and the skirt steak were all excellent, the sun was wonderful and the fountains founted...

We had daylight for the scenic drive back out of Vegas and there were far more landyachts racing by the RV encampment than the couple we saw driving in; dozens of them, doubled by a mirage that made it look like they were sailing on water as they rounded the curves of the course, and one lone kite cart. A lot of the slopes and peaks heading into California look post-volcanic; I don't know if the rocks scattered around are lava or just erosion but it looks as if something blew a few mountains apart. There are veritable forests of joshua trees, the cactus is streaming with orange and the yellow flowers are creeping over the land (flowers like a poppy but plant like mustard). The landscape carried on being dramatic until we pulled in Mojave where we're back in the motel that has the Voyager round-the-world-glider carved into the mirror surround and the bed head and the cupboard (the crew stayed here and the owner is a huge fan); Mike's Roadhouse had boysenberry pie and country music in the back room and I soaked my feet in the hot tub (the water was too cold to soak the rest of me - I am missing the pools at Mandalay Bay that we managed a whole half hour in this week). On, probably, to Paso Robles tomorrow, via our usual stops in Tehachapi for the railway spiral, Keene for tri-tip sandwiches and the back of beyond for scenic photographs. In January it looked like this...

Another year of travelling, working, having fun, seeing friends, meeting new people and learning new things – we hope you had a great year too

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and blessings of the season

Amex is making claiming for my lost watch quite easy and our digital history is making it not too hard to get the details for the claim; Outlook gives me the days we were in the hotel and the eticket for the flight (via a search from the Start bar) and OneNote 2010 lets me print it into the page of details - same with the email from the hotel responding to me reporting the loss, which goes into the same page (this is such a useful feature), as does the mail from the gallery with the picture of the watch and the replacement cost...

But when did I buy the watch? I bought it at a gallery in Ghirardelli Square (that's now moved to Sausalito) but we visit San Francisco several times a year. At first tanais and sbisson thought I bought the watch around the time of our North American Engagement Party @ Bacon 2004 organised by rowanf - Outlook says we went to Baycon and Windows Live Photo Gallery shows I'm not wearing it on the 28th May or the 30th May or the 1st June or at our wedding, so it must be later. I'm not wearing it in July 2005 when I went out to the Valley of Fire but we have pictures of Ghirardelli Square that we took on the 26th August - and on the 27th August there's a photo of me in our friend Rick's Mini Cooper - wearing the watch that looks brand new, so I bought it 26/08/05 ;-) Thank you WLPG!

I've been spending a little time clearing off the memory cards by importing a year's worth of photos I didn't have time to publish while we were on the road the last couple of years. After the Windows 7 PDC and before the Windows 7 WinHEC we went to Watts Towers, on a beautiful sunny day; it was closed for some renovation but we could still walk around the outside and enjoy the mosaic. It was made of concrete, broken cups, 7 Up bottles, impressions of tools and whimsy. It reminds me a little of Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia...
 
Even more pictures of Watts Towers on Flickr

In turn, Thunder Mountain monument in Nevada reminded me of Watts Towers. We passed it on our epic Thanksgiving week road trip (passed it gong 'what is that!?', turned around and drove down the dirt road to take a look. It was built by a Cherokee who stopped there and didn't drive on, from salvage and trash, as a place to live and a commune and a commemoration of the things that have happened to the American Indian tribes in the last couple of centuries. It's an oddly moving place - and a fascinating contrast to the planned Arcosanti we visited on the same trip.

 
Even more picture of Thunder Mountain on Flickr

The bottle windows also remind me of the Hundertwasser toilets in New Zealand

Although some of the bottles there are side on, which gives you more light!

Courtesy of Whittards, there are now two new deadly sins...
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LA was sunny if a little cooler than usual; after a flight that demonstrated quite how much of the west coast is desert and mountains, we're in a bright but very crisp Seattle... and booking travel from Vegas on to Boston and New York.

I've been umming and ahhing for the last week or so about getting one of the Casio EX-FC100 high-speed compact cameras (1000fps video 300fpd still images - so you can choose from 30 frames in a burst mode or merge frames automatically to stabilise night shots and zoom images, which would be a big help taking photos of speakers at conferences with something I can keep in my pocket). This rather lovely video of high-speed slow-motion New York is done with the previous generation bridge camera that Casio had last year.

New York 2008 from Vicente Sahuc on Vimeo.

EDIT: I should have included the attribution - I found it on http://procrastineering.blogspot.com/2009/02/wonderful-slow-motion-stabilized-video.html which I clicked through to from the screamingly funny (but not NSFW) Penny Arcade cartoon on Project Natal (later known as Kinect) http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/6/5/.

Scared by the Orick bear: in fact sbisson was significantly traumatised by the sight of this, so much so that he locked me out of the car for quarter of an hour while he hid in the restroom. Well, you tell me what that paw is reaching for...