The paper that Fred and I wrote on perpetual power systems for wireless sensors won best paper award at IPSN/SPOTS. Of course I updated my publications page with this information :)

We had a great tutorial in LA; however I still do not like that place. It feels very fake to me. And the concrete jungle creating a maze of lifeless places doesn't help. Nor does the rush hour traffic that seems to exist 24 hours per day. Luckily I booked my flight to get into LA just before the conference started (about 30 minutes to spare or so) and leave just after our tutorial ended (about 90 minutes after it ended).

And this is probably a rant to myself, but I'll post it here anyway. I find it funny that our "competitor" (they think that they're more of a competitor to us than we do to them) who has so vehemently opposed my Telos work at UCB has now decided they are going to sell the same device (after being available for about 12 months now in the public domain--open source). I can't quite figure out their motivation or business model for doing so, but I'm sure their marketing folks have a good reason. If more people use my design, the better, right? They end up just advertising me in the long run, and I certainly can't argue against free advertising.
Besides, the money isn't always going to be in the hardware--we're just lucky that the volumes are low but the demand for small quantities is high. No matter what the situation, they'll never have the experience with Telos nor the Telos peripherals that we have (oh, you'll see soon). It also shows that Moteiv and UCB are much more innovative than "said company".

I have a Cal icon for my webpage now. Woohoo. I was trained in the early 1990s web design. This webpage is still updated with emacs. Other folks have these overly complex weblog systems which I still don't understand. The whole point of these things is to ramble to people that may or may not care about what you have to say.

Perhaps this is coincidence, but I thought I would point it out. At IPSN, there is a SPOTS track for platforms and tools in sensor networks. Instead of having all accepted papers present, only half are allowed to present and the others are relegated to a poster session (even though, at submission time, authors were not notified that they may only be accepted to the "poster track"). This would be fine if there wasn't enough time for all of the papers to be presented; however, it appears that SPOTS has delegated the morning to tutorials. The two tutorials, taught by Andreas Savvides and Jeremy Elson, could have been used to present 7 to 8 extra papers at the conference. Also note that Andreas and Jeremy are UCLA grads, the conference is held at UCLA, and the technical program chair is from UCLA. Coincidence?

Verizon is evil. SFLan is good.

I'm asked a lot about which bands I'm currently listening to. Usually this takes the form of "you played this one song that I liked, what other bands do you recommend?" I figured any easy way to cover this since I stopped my CD recommendations with Elliott Smith is to create a list of current bands that I have on repeat either in my car's CD changer, my ipod, or my real rhapsody. In no particular order:

Say Hi To Your Mom - Numbers and Mumbles
An indie band in every sense of the word; self-released records, all headed up by eric, who pretty much plays all the instruments.

Ben Harper - There Will Be A Light
Ben Harper with the Blind Boys of Alabama wins two grammy's. This is
really good stuff.

Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake Its Morning
Bright Eyes - Digital Ash In A Digital Urn
Its Connor Oberst with two new kickass albums. Need I say more?

Gratitude - Gratitude
I think Jen would kill me if I didn't mention Gratitude. Their album
is extremely catchy; melodic emo, similar to The Get Up Kids.

Bands that are good but don't have albums out:

Dredg - check out the song "Bug Eyes"
The Get Up Kids - final tour this summer :(
An Angle - New album "We can breath under alcohol" out May 17

Good upcoming shows:

April 17 - Straylight Run + Gratitude @ Great American Music Hall, SF
April 21 - Rooney @ Lower Sproul Plaza, 5-7pm, UCB
May 4 - Bright Eyes + The Faint @ The Concourse at SF Design Center, SF
May 8 - Better Than Ezra + Ingram Hill @ Slim's, SF
May 13 - Taking Back Sunday + Jimmy Eat World @ Henry J. Kaiser, Oak
June 18 - Rilo Kiley @ Grand Ballroom at Regency Center, SF
August 12 - Dave Matthews Band + Black Eyed Peas @ Pac Bell Park, SF
August 13 - Dave Matthews Band + Black Eyed Peas @ Pac Bell Park, SF

Interesting music news

Epic is in the process of signing the The Shins. After the Garden State soundtrack, it seems like everyone likes The Shins. They're the new trendy indie band.

The Counting Crows seem content with not touring. This does not make me happy.

Sensys papers are done! Rejoice!