parc

This evening I attended a lecture at parc. The Palo Alto Research Center is the place where most of what we would recognise as personal computing came from. The first computer generated images, the first Graphical User Interface, the Ethernet computer networking system and the first WYSIWYG word processor (What You See Is What You Get) all started life here. So the place is a real legend in the folklore of computing.

I suspect many of you will have no idea what I'm talking about, but I'm used to just quietly spodding away gently to myself in a corner ("spod" is the affectionate term MrsCyclops uses for gratuitously technical talk or activity).

The lecture was on using mobile phones in monitoring traffic - interesting stuff. The chap got a bit deeper into partial differential equations for traffic modelling that I could really understand, but I think I got the basics....

I'm off for a swim now, then I think we'll head out to the cinema later to see "Public Enemy".

If anyone is interested in seeing more pictures from my trip in to San Francisco on Sunday then there are loads on my website here, including lots of cable car shots.

P.S. Curses - I accidentally left my camera on ISO 400 and since I was using a polarizer to darken down the sky it's a bit noisy. This new large view feature doesn't let you get away with that sort of mistake... Tempted to turn it off for this image but I'll be a sport and let you all marvel at my incompetence in hi-res!