Like cooking? Like science? Like mixing them up a bit? Well, the inspirational and insightful Danah Boyd (@zephoria) points us to the interesting looking “Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks and Good Food”. It gets some excellent reviews too.

To paraphrase and pulverise an obscure in-joke (so no worries if you don’t understand – only @dsumner will): but does it have hot-pot?

Danah (along with 4 other MSFT Researchers) has just been named in the 2010 TR35 award which recognises innovators under the age of 35 whose inventions and research are found to be the most exciting. Awesome recognition and well done to them and MSFT Research generally for such a representation.

Apparently the best method to get rid of old marks on a whiteboard is to go over them again with another marker, and then rub them off.

Bizarre but it works as Ben has the most gleamingest whiteboard in the office and I have an old ToDo list from 2006.

Although our next generation of Office Communicator may be very cool, there’s sometimes no accounting for the actual meeting. Very funny.

A quiet day in the office today, and an unfinished sculpture by @deepfat. I’m not sure if it’s deliberately unfinished or not. That’s art for you.

A lot of the time, DPErs are out and about working with – well, anyone who’ll work with us – but for folk like me who live in the office (and our own little imaginations) it’s nice to see some colleagues from time to time.

So this the the first in a series of posts called “OSOTD” (go figure). Here we see n00bie @simonster relaxing with his 15th cup of Chai Latte. He’s feeling good thanks to all that new computer kit he’s got and I’m finding it hard to to break the news that when we repeat this photo in five years time – it’ll be the same kit.

Apart from relaxing with tea/coffee (whatever the hell Chai Latte is), he’s been blogging about BPOS (6 Steps to Enterprise Email with BPOS, Scenarios where BPOS is brilliant and so on) and InTune – stuff you should know about.

More evangelists in cages as I spot them…

As the song says “I’m going missing for a while…” as I head off for a week of relaxation with the family in the South of France.

Once back I’ll be up in Newcastle for Thinking Digital. Looking forward to that.

Before I head off I’d like to say thanks to our top quality community of developers and all of you out there backing Microsoft. It’s a great feeling to know that you’re liking what we’re doing at the moment. And thanks to my team for making this holiday especially enjoyable!

And for everyone else, I leave you with 26 reasons why Apple fanboys have got it all wrong.

See you in a week!

One of the fun things about Microsoft life is hanging about on the various discussion channels for technology. Someone asked a great question with regard to taking a giant image of an entire crowd and having good enough resolution to see individual faces.

Bill Crow from the Seadragon team had the following to say: (BTW, check out the Seadragon site for sharing high-resolution imagery and of course Photosynth.net for 3D constructions and ICE for panaromic imaging solutions if you have similar needs – they may well fit the bill.)

While gigapixel images may be technically possible with a single exposure, it’s not very practical.  It would require huge and expensive lenses to deliver that resolving power. 

There is a project that captures gigapixel images on film using large format.  While they produce gigapixel files, it’s questionable as to whether he’s resolving that level of detail.

Seitz makes a scanning camera that can take a 160 megapixel image, but this requires a window of time to scan and capture the image.  Better Light has similar technology packaged as a digital back for large format cameras.

Modern medium format cameras can capture up to 60 megapixels in a single frame.  Again, this requires some very expensive lenses even for that level of resolving power.  Manufacturers included Phase One, Leaf, Hasselblad, Mamiya and others.

Everything listed above is insanely expensive gear.

The far more practical way for shooting gigapixel images is an automated pan/tilt head and a conventional camera.  It can even be done, with some patience, with a manual (preferably geared) head.

The brand new Gigapan Epic Pro is ideal for this.  It provides a very affordable solution for shooting extremely high resolution images.

Here’s a 3.21gigapixel image I shot with the Gigapan Epic Pro, a Canon EOS 1DS Mk III and a 70-200 f2.8 lens:  http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=2dbd60b0-8bc1-442e-8069-fcf122a40e24

Clearly there are complications when shooting a photo that make take 10 minutes or more to complete.  But there still isn’t any accessible technology that makes this practical in a single shot.

There are also lots of straightforward and very effective techniques to create large group shots in segments.  Smaller groups are shot on the same set of seats or bleachers, and then composited together in post.  They’ve been using this approach since the earliest days of school class pictures shot on film.

One other reality check.  Let’s assume you need a minimum of 64x64 pixels to make a recognizable face.  When you have a bunch of people standing or sitting, even at very tight density, I’d be surprised if faces occupied more than 20% of the viewable image.  So, to capture faces of a group of 80,000 people, I suspect you’ll actually need a minimum  of 1.6 gigapixels! (64x64x80000x5)  That would assume ideal positioning and no wasted space around the edges, with people arranged to exactly match the camera frame.  Since that ideal configuration is highly unlikely, your requirements would most likely exceed 2 or even 3 gigapixels.  You’re just not going to do that in a single frame.

I’m also curious how you get 80,000 people to all look at the camera, smile and not blink all at the same time!

Fun fun fun if you’re a photography maven!

Lots of sensible choices on this particular choice I had to make to day for an upcoming flight.

Thought the “bland meal” was a bit odd. I’m happy to have bland, but I’d want some proof that it was more bland than the normal stuff. How can you make it more bland? Is that even possible?

It would be remiss not to at least mention in passing the volcanic ash cloud and the disruption it has caused so far in the UK. As I was ensconced in a cinema in Fulham for most of last week, I didn’t even notice the news for a while, but then it became clear that it was going to be a major problem from a business perspective – most of Microsoft’s leaders are in Redmond at this time of year for a variety of annual business meetings.

But before we get to that then if you’re wondering about the environmental impact of the lack of planes then Information Is Beautiful has (after a few versions) a useful infographic on the subject. I’m not sure if this takes into account the many people driving cars the length and breadth of Europe…

In other news, the BBC (predictably) had a story about the use of Facebook and Twitter to find a way home. Good grief – everyone gets it – social networks help people to connect and help each other. Give it a rest.

Anyway, they also had a more interesting piece by Alain de Botton imagining what life without planes would be like:

“.. if one of our key motives for travelling is to try to put the past behind us, then we often need something very large and time-consuming, like the experience of a month long journey across an ocean or a hike over a mountain range, to establish a sufficient sense of distance.”

But back to business. My own manager is stranded in Seattle (along with many others) and I get the impression that what was initially a bit of fun has become boring quite quickly. Although, life is not too terrible out there, as @peterbale commented:

UK MD Gordon Frazer was referenced on the Microsoft blog suggesting that it was fairly easy (time difference aside) to continue working via the various UC services we have. In fact I was on a scheduled 9am conference call on Monday with @odedran – despite it being 4am for him!

Anyway, wishing my colleagues the best of luck in getting back here, and particularly Steve who has something of a hard deadline. Best of luck if you or your friends and family are stuck too.

I’m surrounded by magazines at the moment with too little time to read them all. Maybe next weekend. But one I always manage to get through is Wired UK.

This month, I’m chuffed to see friend and colleague Bindi Karia made The Wired 100 – people shaping the digital world. In fact she came in at the auspicious number of 42 which is even better!

Here’s the entry:

Bindi Karia, VC/emerging business lead, Microsoft UK. Karia manages business accelerator BizSpark and helps start-ups across Europe – more than 600 in six months.

There’s some testimony here to the value of the BizSpark programme of course, but it’s Bindi that makes it what it is. If you’ve been to an event that matters, then Bindi has been there, tirelessly connecting people to the programme, each other, and the rest of Microsoft. In fact, the photo here is of her desk – just behind mine – which is actually just a dumping ground for various bits of swag and marketing material as she’s never actually in the office…

I finished reading Seth Godin’s Linchpin the other week – my friend, the redoubtable Portia Tung has a write-up and some takeaways from Seth’s associated tour – and I’d say that Bindi is someone who is driving artistry at work – doing the important stuff, doing what matters, and ‘shipping’ at the same time. Someone in the flow. Anyway, I’m very proud for her.

(Of course, I have my own aspirations to be on the front cover of Wired standing behind SteveB’s in a pseudo-Kray twins pose. I’ve no idea why… “After that I can retire” I thought out loud, and I hear that the gang might be thinking of paying Wired to do it just to get rid of me. Meh…)