Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Three weeks goes by so quickly when you hardly have a minute to stop and catch breath. But they've been a good and busy three weeks...

We started by flying to the US for Intel's Developer Forum event. That took a good (and very busy) few days, with lots to learn and to write. Intel's multi-core strategy is going to be one to watch...

Then I picked up a hire car, and we drove down Silicon Valley to spend some time with mr_kurt and saffronrose. As always the consumate hosts, they happily put up with our random hours and ocassional tendency to shout at recalcitrant bluetooth hardware.

We managed to meet up with ocean_song and vaccuumboy one night, before our calendar filled up suddenly preventing us from seeing them again. A trip to Casa Del RenFaire introduced us to a new friend, rutemple, and the delights of a northern Californian take on the squalor of the middle ages...

When Tuesday's meetings vanished at short notice (as they'd been booked for Redmond, not Silicon Valley), we decided to spend our wedding anniversary on a brief Highway One road trip. Lunch at Phil's Fish Market in Moss Landing led to a meeting with wild dolphins and sea otters, and Monterey Aquarium revealed a captive Great White Shark (making a brief stay before being returned to the wild). Science can be Fun! The night was spent with Studio 60 and Heroes in Pacific Grove. No need for bittorrent at prime time...

Driving down Highway One is one of my favourite things to do, challeging sweeps and climbs revealing new vistas on every twist and turn. We stopped at most of our favourite views, and managed to squeeze in brunch at Nepenthe's Cafe Kevah before the long run down to Piedras Blancas, and the sleeping masses of elephant seals. Turning back we dined at Nepenthe proper, watching the moon rise over the mountains from its terrace.

Wednesday brought the start of an intensive few days of meetings, with a tour around some of HP Labs. We followed that with an afternoon of spam and privacy at Microsoft Research. Thursday was spent between HP facilities in Cupertino and Palo Alto (and a quick stop at WebEx in Sunnyvale). We finally ended the week with a trip down to Azul Systems, and yet more HP meetings...

The weekend saw us finding a wonderful second hand bookshop in Mountain View and geochaching around the Google campus with rowanf, rounded off dinner at Tamarine in Palo Alto, before the a drive back to San Francisco for the second of our two conferences, Salesforce.com's Dreamforce. That came up with a lot more interesting things to learn about, including their new Apex programming environment. We also managed to fit in an early breakfast with Dick Hardt of sxip identity.

Dreamforce over now, and we're packing up for tomorrow's flight down to Los Angeles and the long journey on to New Zealand. Just time to post some books home...

In the meantime, expect more photoblogging