captsolo weblog

It’s nice to see you here. If you have come for the annual “Happy Birthday” post with some sexy anime pictures, please have a bit of patience.

Turns out it is not that fast to find a nice picture. I’ll post one here within next 24 hours.

Why this post? - It has become a tradition now that I post something like this every year on my birthday, March 19. Today I am short of time as 3 things compete for attention: finishing a journal article, writing this blog post and going out to celebrate with friends.

Hence, visit again soon (and post links to hot anime pictures that I could use).

See also: anime and birthday posts from previous years

Good news everyone! After a five year vanishing act the sci-fi spoof Futurama returned this week with a direct-to-DVD feature. Wired has an article about its return, including the story of the show’s origins, a behind the scenes gallery, interviews with creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, and some interesting trivia.

- via Slashdot: Futurama Returns!

Futurama title image courtesy of The Infosphere: A Futurama Wiki

Futurama is one of those great sci-fi shows which probably got canceled because they were too good to be on TV. Another of those is the “Dark Angel”.

“Semantic Web: How Can We Make Semantic Web Usable?” is the title of today’s SDForum Semantic Web SIG event taking place in Palo Alto, CA.

That’s an interesting topic and it gets even more intriguing if you look at the list of speakers and moderators of the event:

• Nova Spivack - CEO of Radar Networks
• Holger Knublauch - VP of Product Development in TopQuadrant
• AJ Chen (moderator) - Senior Search Engineer, Healthline.com
• Jeffrey Pollock (moderator) - Senior Director, Oracle Fusion Middleware

It would be interesting to find out more about what happened at the event. If you participated or just know more about it please add some comments.

Apple’s special event - new iPod Touch, iPhone price drop, …

Today (September 5, 2007) Steve Jobs announced many news in the iPhone and iPod range of products [engadget.com].

The most exciting product of these is probably iPod Touch which has most of the features of the iPhone apart from the mobile phone functionality. A full size screen, Multi-Touch interface, WiFi, Safari and it’s 8mm thin. Pricing - $299 for 8Gb, $399 for 16 Gb.

Other things announced:

• iPhone 8Gb price cut - down to $399 !
• refreshed iPod classic line - 80 Gb and … “a slightly thicker one as well… and it’s going to have 160GB.”
• new, smaller iPod nano
• partnership b/w iTunes WiFi music store and Starbucks hotspots (now that both iPod touch and iPhone have WiFi)
• … (perhaps more) …

Looking forward to find a video of this event online. These events (eg, iPhone launch) are always a good show. For now take a look at the

Personal view:

Multi-touch interface is sexy and I’d like to get one of these devices to listen to music and enjoy their style. But regardless of Apple’s announcements I would not call it a device for normal web browsing. Their screen resolution is just too small.

Unless even old 800x600 px desktop displays have too high resolution for your browsing and video watching needs.

This video - “Klystron Tube” - is a first of two videos in Stanford’s video campaign called “Hail, Stanford, Hail!". Let’s see how this attempt at viral marketing goes.

While the video holds a very scientific title it is about an object that you can probably find in every home now - a microwave.

Update: second video “FM Synthesizer” is now online.

” The klystron tube and the FM synthesizer are among Stanford’s most notable inventions. … Dailey & Associates, a West Hollywood advertising agency headed by Stanford alum Bruce Miller, collaborated with Stanford to create these commercials reflecting both the university’s capacity for innovation and its spirited irreverence. “

Also of interest - Stanford team puts campus on map; wins Google Earth 3-D modeling contest. Stanford’s campus is very nice and this may be a good opportunity to take a look at it, at least virtually.

It's my name day today and time for some celebration.
Best wishes to all who celebrate something today, including all with names = [ Uldis, Ulriks, Ulvis, Sandis ] !!!

To keep it short:

• Name_day -> Latvia [en.wikipedia.org]
• My Namesday !!! [04-Jul-2005]

Actually, rather too busy to celebrate but will figure something. The US will have some fireworks tonight for sure, and we have some champagne ready.