Virtual Greg

On Saturday I went to Berkeley to see the famous campus and take a look round the East Bay. Berkeley is across the water from San Francisco, which means an extra train trip, so I got up early for the 830am Caltrain from Palo Alto. At SF I biked from 4th st to Embarcadero and got the BART to Berkeley via Oakland. Oakland is a port town, with giant cranes on four legs for getting stuff out of ships. A train passenger was photographing them, claiming they were the inspiration for the giant robots in The Empires Strikes Back. LucasFilm is headquartered in SF: maybe this story is true.
Read the rest of this entry »

Some of the Silicon Valley research labs jointly run an exchange program so that their interns visit each others’ labs. These “SIRS” events run for an afternoon, every few weeks. The companies use it for PR and to entice high quality recruits. So it’s win-win. Only in Silicon Valley is there enough leading research in the one area for a program like this to be easily doable.
Read the rest of this entry »

Today I went for a bike ride around San Francisco. When I was there two weeks ago I only went on public transport, which is good in this town, but restricts your exploration. A bike is good for touristing round town: not fast enough to miss things, not slow enough to be boring. The Caltrain service from San Jose through Silicon Valley to SF lets you take a bike on board. There is a special carriage where people stack their bikes on the bottom deck and try to find seats above.
Read the rest of this entry »

Friday 11th July

Thanks to jetlag I’m sleepy in the afternoons and evenings – nearly nodded off during a talk at work yesterday – then from midnight to 4am I’m wide awake. I woke at 10am today and had to do some errands before work. First I needed a US phone number, which turned out to be easy, I just went into the first phone shop I could find and bought a three-month prepaid simcard, put it in my Nokia in place of the Telstra simcard, and I have a local phone number, total cost $60.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today I started work at PARC on Coyote Hill Road. It was a good day. PARC is just far enough off the beaten track to feel like you’re riding through the country to get there. They have one,  large, complex building. It has three floors, and large atria divide the floors into sections. Roughly speaking, hardware have the bottom floor, computing the middle, and management the top.

Everyone is in an office but there are a lot of open spaces, and a focus on collaboration. Having been heavily involved with teaching at UniMelb, it’s interesting to see a research-only workplace, and spend a whole day only doing research.

Read the rest of this entry »

I finally arrived in Palo Alto! After a Melbourne winter, this town is in the middle of a Californian heat wave, temperatures over 30 degrees, though it feels like 40, making it hard to move or sleep. I caught the Caltrain from San Francisco before 9am, when it’s the commute for Silicon Valley employees around Potrero Hill. I managed to get off one station too early, looked for the street that should have been there, went on two bus rides through Stanford and eventually got to the Hotel California. I’ve been singing the song all day.
Read the rest of this entry »

After months of planning I’ve finally arrived in San Francisco. The trip over was fine except for a long delay in Sydney: thankfully Qantas phoned me early enough that I could spend it at home instead of at the airport. On the same flight were a Melbourne band (who I won’t name in case they’re not meant to be making money here) with their tour manager, a nice guy who mixed our HGP Tote shows in February. Got a great view of the bay area coming in, including a top down of Stanford Uni.

I went to my hotel by BART and still had a couple of hours daylight for a cable car journey. My hotel was on 4th near Market, right in the city shopping zone, which was not peaceful, but allowed easy access to public transport, with which SF is well-equipped, so I bought a three day pass and did my weekend that way. The cable cars go up and down a number of steep hills and terminate on the north side of SF; slow and creaky but a good way to look around. SF is a great looking, compact town, with colourful terraces and great views from surprising hills. I took a few snaps for Flickr.

Read the rest of this entry »