Today summer seemed to come to an end – the “marine layer” moved in from the coast and brought cool weather and clouds…so much for the last few weeks of nice sunny warm weather.  I’ve been off for the past few months and really tried to stay away from technology, email and blog posting….

There is so much that has gone on while I was away…

• The WWT Penumbra Beta was released – it allows you to bring your image, vector and tabular data and 3ds models into WWT and allow you to place them anywhere in time and space.
• Users can also create Location-Based Data Visualization Using Excel – push location data into WWT from Excel and Visualize the data in 3D – changes how you view and interact with your data. [Video]
• The latest (12th) Microsoft Research Faculty Summit occurred (first one I didn’t attend) – check out the sessions….

and more just starting

• //build this week – just watched the keynote – wow, Windows 8 is something special
• 2011 eScience in Action Workshop first time the MSR eScience Workshop is being held in Europe – beyond the great sessions that I’m looking forward to - Who will receive the Jim Gray eScience Award?
• AGU 2011 is around the corner – what interesting work does the Microsoft Research Connections Earth, Energy and Environment team have to talk about there…

So what did I do – here’s the short list

• studied the movement of grains of sand while laying face down on a lounger – tough keeping your eyelids open, especially with the sun beating down on you.
• put on a mask and snorkel to look at underwater creatures/fish – tough work, but beautiful
• Was in Walla Walla when it was named the Friendliest small town in America – and have to agree that it is very friendly – had a great time there…enjoy the sweet onions and wineries
• caught up on sleep…sleep is so over rated until you have time for it
• went to Whistler and did the longest continuous lift system on the globe – Whistler to Blackcomb via the PEAK 2 PEAK Gondola 
• Spent time with oceanographers and technologists at Oregon State University – wow was I impressed with the state of the art work they are doing – also went to a few West Coast Baseball League games while there
• watched in amazement the 5.8 Virginia, USA Earthquake and Hurricane Irene
• thought a lot about scientific data – have more thoughts to share in later blog posts….

It’s good to be back…..

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)