Quiet day today; got up early in Bishop, drove home (uneventfully), and hung out, getting a little work done in the process...  Days after a long ride always feel a bit anticlimactic...  I guess it was relaxing and I did get some stuff done, so I shouldn't complain.  Still.

The other day I came across GE Research's group blog From Edison's Desk.  This has to be the most boring blog ever, in fact, really it isn't a blog, just a series of carefully polished press releases.  You can feel the personality being sucked out of each post by a relentless marketing department.  So the subject matter of these posts is interesting, why aren't the posts themselves?  I think it is because the essence of blogging is personal context, you want to feel someone is talking to you.  That is entirely missing.  Also as I've noted before, problems are more interesting than success, and on this blog, every team is executing, every product is wonderful, every business is a big success.  Pretty darn boring :) 

This is really cool; MIT Technology Review has detailed 3D images of cells.  "There is a revolution afoot in microscopy, as biophysicists come up with ways to image the nanoscale structures of living cells. Using a new technique called 3-D structured-illumination microscopy, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, have made some of the most detailed optical images yet of the interior workings of cells, and they are gorgeous."  Such as the 3D cell division shown at right... 

So I'm reading trying to read Megan Crane's Names My Sisters Call Me, and it just isn't working.  I really enjoyed English as a Second Language, and sort of enjoyed Everyone Else's Girl, but I think I'm going to give up on this one.  I hate when that happens; you like an author, and you root for them to improve (or at least keep doing what they do), but instead they turn into a parody of themselves. 

A perfect counterpoint is the magnificent Patrick O'Brian; I read and enjoyed every single one of the great Aubrey / Maturin books (e.g. Master and Commander), and just recently encountered The Unknown Shore.  It was every bit as good.  And now I've begun The Golden Ocean, and it is great too.  Yay.

Inhabitat notes the Museum of Nature, by Ilkka Halso.  "Finnish photographer Ilkka Halso’s photographic series ‘The Museum of Nature’ intelligently challenges how we can imagine the natural environment of the future. This collection of images capture a series of man-made structures that enclose nature, protecting it like a relic of the past."  Very cool and just beautiful. 

This was awesome: Leipheimer wins Dauphine prolog.  I watched this today (via Tivo, it was on Versus); first Thor Hushovd posted a time more than 11 seconds faster than anyone else (it was really short, just 6K), and then Levi beat it.  He looks fast; I was thinking Evans and Valverde would be the contenders to win, but now you have to add Levi to the list... 

Techcrunch: Twitter suffers minor period of uptime.  Ouch!  They better be ready for tomorrow (Apple's WWDC, at which Steve Jobs is expected to announce the new 3D iPhone), or they won't suffer any more :) 

Speaking of the 3G iPhone, the hype on this announcement is really extraordinary.  The funny thing is that I believe Apple isn't going to announce a new phone at all, instead, they're going to announce a new release of the software (basically, OS X for the iPhone), and feature new third-party applications for the iPhone platform.  (John Gruber agrees.)  The D in WWDC stands for Developer...