OpenWetWare!

OpenWetWare is an effort to promote the sharing of information, know-how, and wisdom among researchers and groups who are working in biology & biological engineering.

So now you know.

Met up with Jason and the guys from OpenWetWare at the Stata Center at MIT. This building is best described as odd.

Image CC-BY - Behdad Esfahbod - Stata Center

While I was at MIT, I bumped into the people at Science Commons and even stumbled past Richard Stallman's office, which has 'Defender of Justice (and hot ladies)' on his door sign, before heading downtown to the Free Software Foundation

Image CC-BY - Behdad Esfahbod - 51 Franklin St

The office is way cooler than I suspected (some photos by Bernardo) with a fair bit of space and new furniture. I had quite a long chat with Peter about some of the work the FSF is doing soon and the Google Summit, and then headed off for lunch with Deb and Brett. We had some really great burritos.

After work, and trying to contact Science Commons to schedule a meeting, we headed to Spike's in Davis Square and then over to Joe Sent Me for Trivia.

Trivia is basically a pub quiz.

Running tally of Mountain Dew consumed: 6300ml.

Columbus Day!

For those of you who don't know (ie. Me)

Columbus Day is a holiday celebrating the anniversary of the October 12, 1492 arrival of Christopher Columbus to the Americas.

Or, in other words... nobody really goes to work and everyone has a day off and most things are closed. I caught up with a lot of sleep, as after that stint in SFO I was feeling mostly beat. I spoke to Justin, one of the sysadmins at the FSF and agreed to meet up at 4pm in my hotel lobby.

Making the most of my day of American heritage, I left the hotel and walked over 100 metres the the 7/11 and got a Double Gulp of Mountain Dew, some Cheetos and a microwaved bean and 'cheese' burrito. Man, America rules.

Later, met up with Brett, Ward, Ward's wife and baby, Justin, Josh and Justin from the FSF, and went for drinks across from my hotel. American bars are so much friendlier than most British places and table service is just so easier.

Dinner at Cambridge One in Harvard, which is pronounced Hahvahd. This involved taking the Red Line T from Park Street (Pahk Street) to Hahvahd. It's very quick, reasonably clean and I didn't see any crazy people. Met up with Mako, Daf and Asheesh, plus assorted other people who were hanging out from the GNOME summit. Later attempted with a few random people, plus Brett and Asheesh to locate Elizabeth, who never showed up. But I managed to eat again, which made up for it.

Got back to the hotel in time to grab a Big Gulp and head back to watch King of the Hill, and a lot of stupid commercials.

Running tally of Mountain Dew consumed: 4300ml.

Boston!

Okay, so after suffering the nightmare of having a plane take off on time, get above San Francisco and then have to land again because 'there is a hole in the door', and then waiting around 7 hours to get the next plane, being promised an upgrade and not getting one and thereby arriving in Boston too late to make the dinner you'd been hoping to go to for about 2 years, I checked into my hotel and fell asleep.

From what I've seen so far, Boston is nice.

Running tally of Mountain Dew consumed: 2400ml.

Google!

Okay, so today I got up pretty early, after Robin called to let me know someone was trying to steal the Defective by Design hazmat suits from our porch. Around 8am, Jason drove me down to the Googleplex. Driving in California is kinda fun, though I suppose especially in a sports car.

The Googleplex is a strange place. For a start, there are security people everywhere, which is a little disconcerting, but also, the sheer size of the place is overwhelming. Anyway, eventually got pointed at the right building and made my way to registration, which amounted to being give a bunch of freebies and pointed towards food, with instructions to make myself a name tag. Each table had blank tags and Sharpies and lots of geeks. I didn't recognise many people, but eventually ran into Steve McIntyre from Debian.

Breakfast was good. Lots of cakes and cookies with random Google beverages. Lots of the drinks at Google are not usual brands - this seems to be Google sticking it to the likes of Coke and Pepsi, but also trying to provide healthier alternatives at the same time, which is no bad thing.

After breakfast, we were ushered to a giant room where we met the Google Summer of Code team - Leslie, Tiffany and Todd. Chris DiBona was also there, though he had been largely not involved this year, or something.

All the Google staffers are really nice, very outgoing and far too energetic for early-o-clock. The first session was working out where all the other sessions were going to be. This was the outcome of a 'sticking dots on talks that sound cool' exerciser we'd had over breakfast. A few of the interesting ones for me overlapped, but there was a bioinformatics one which related to and gave me an opportunity to shill tnemirepxEym. Also during one of the sessions, Mr Jon Phillips from Creative Commons showed up, proving that he is indeed a real person and not just a figment of my Facebook page.

Lunch was a make your own sandwich affair. I made two. Kettle Chips were on offer.

In the afternoon, more sessions, plus I managed to find a fridge stocked with (Diet! erk) Mountain Dew and proceeded to various talks. The day ended with a summary from Leslie, a group photo and then a bus ride back to the hotel.

The hotel was actually pretty awesome. It was more of a motel than a hotel, but they had various lax rules, such as allowing a few hundred free software hackers take over their pool area, load up on booze and later, pizza.

Running tally of Mountain Dew consumed: 1200ml.

So, I left Manchester for my first destination, Chicago about an hour and a half later than scheduled, which didn't make for much fun. That, coupled with a middle seat made for some uncomfortable travel. Apparently the airline had no idea I'm vegetarian, so I wound up getting a quarter of the lunch I could have had. So, delayed and hungry, we finally land in Chicago, with about an hour until my connecting flight for San Francisco leaves. Of course, getting through immigration is a big queue, and sure enough, I wound up being flagged and having to go and sit in Homeland Security while they figured it out. This happened before, and I told the guy this. Anyway, they did a really good job of it, and eventually found the glitch in their system that was causing me to be flagged - apparently my Canadian namesake is who they're actually looking for.

So, 6pm in San Francisco comes, and we land, and by the time I locate Jason and MJ, it's almost 7, or 3am in the UK. Dinner was at Q and the Ultimate Vegan Grill, which is well recommended, though caution - it's a BIG plate of food.

I was pretty much beat by this point, but Jason gave me a little tour of the bay, including a little visit to Sausalito, and over the Golden Gate bridge to the edge of Marin County. I like San Francisco - it's cute, homely and has lots of trees and places you can go which are unspoilt. It also has a ton of restaurants, some very cool companies and lots of great people.

It's now almost 7am, and I'm up to head down to Mountain View for the Google Summer of Code summit, which an 8.30am breakfast, and judging by the Official Google blog, I'm in for a treat:-

- Googlers prefer Canadian bacon (45 lbs.) to chicken-apple sausage (30 lbs.)
- Steel-cut oatmeal (10-12 gallons) wins out over organic grits (6-8 gallons)
- We polish off 5 cases of fresh fruit (cantaloupe, honeydew, pineapple)
- Devour 160 breakfast burritos (eggs, veggies, cheese)
- We cook 80-100 lbs. of red bliss potatoes
- We use 2 gallons of egg whites (for the omelets)
- Googlers gulp down 9 gallons of fresh coffee every morning (just in our cafe)

Running tally of Mountain Dew consumed: 100ml.

Tomorrow, I travel up to Boston for a week. I hope to experience Grendels, meet some very cool people from the likes of OLPC, OpenWetWare, Science Commons and the like, and also I'm looking forward to finally meeting my colleagues at the Free Software Foundation.