Adventures of an Urban Jungleboy

One of my major tasks this year was running the Almaden Institute (my manager was the chair of the conference).

We had several journalists visit, and EE Times Rick Merritt just posted his online article and slideshow about his visit.

Good pictures of my lab and he mostly got it right.

BTW, if you are at Convolution this weekend, I'll be giving a talk about our work at 4pm on Saturday afternoon!

If we weren't actually inventing new stuff at work all the time, I'd worry my fifteen minutes had run out long ago...


Robert Scoble visited Almaden Research Center yesterday, and while they were setting up to use our lab as a setting for an interview with the lab Director Mark Dean, he ran around with his small camera doing impromptu interviews with those of us there.

So here you go, live on the Internet in atrocious resolution:



I manage to neither look nor sound like a complete idiot, so I'm not complaining.

First day back at work after a lovely 10-day holiday, and I discover I've forgotten my Windows logon password, which I'd changed right before the holidays.

Less than ten minutes of research leads me to a very effective offline password editing utility; about an hour later (returning to the problem after dealing with some lab problems and after a bit of fussing to actually create the bootable CD) I've successfully cleared my forgotten password and can boot up my machine (and set a new password).

Fortunately, I remembered the hard disk password, or I'd have been out of luck, because the utility would not have had permission to read or write the security files.

So, campers, here is why this post is public: if you don't have a hard disk (BIOS) password set on your machine, *anyone* can use this same tool to hack your machine. It works with everything up through Vista, apparently (although it's a bit trickier there).

Here's a simple New Year's resolution: take the time to set the passwords on your hard drives.

I only just found this article; it's based on a visit to the lab by the BBC on October 20.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7085077.stm

I think they actually got the quotes right.

The New York Times has published an article about our work and about my inimitable manager, Dr. Stuart Parkin.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/11/technology/11storage.html?th&emc=th

I've got a mention by name in there, too.

ETA: Mr Markoff does a pretty good job of describing our racetrack project, but is off slightly: what he describes as working to "...use electric current to slide infinitesimally small magnets up and down along each of the wires to be read and written as digital ones and zeros."
is actually about moving a magnetic pattern (technically, a patterned series of magnetic domain walls) along a magnetic nanowire by using spin-polarized electric current.

I'll be speaking at the O'Reilly Media Emergent Technology Conference in San Diego on Wednesday, March 28.

You can see me on the speakers listing here.

Of course, this will entail flying down Wednesday morning, flying back Wednesday night so I can repack and catch a flight to St. Louis for CC25 in the morning.

ABC has posted the MoneySpot segment on their website at http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=business&id=4991173

If you run the video (right hand column) you will see a cameo of my lab, one of my co-workers and me, stripey mohawk and all, about 12 seconds from the same.

Preliminary, of course....


Panel 1: Thu 8/24 2:30 PM, 60-90 minutes.
Title: THE GENIUS BAR, COSTUMING STYLE
Participants: Janet Wilson Anderson
Joy Day
Kent Elofson
Dana MacDermott
Pierre E. Pettinger
Sandy Pettinger
Kevin Roche
Precis: Bring your problems. Let's figure out how to solve them.

----------------------------------------
Panel 2: Fri 8/25 11:30 AM, 60-90 minutes.
Title: COSTUMING WITH LEATHER
Participants: Kent Elofson
Leanne Mallory
Kevin Roche
Precis: How to make costumes with leather.

----------------------------------------
Panel 3: Sat 8/26 1:00 PM, 60-90 minutes.
Title: BEGINNING COSTUMING
Participants: Cat Devereaux
Lisa Deutsch Harrigan
Bridget Landry
Bruce MacDermott
Jess Miller
Kevin Roche
Precis: Now that you've seen the masquerade, here's how to get
started in science fiction costuming: methods, resources,
ideas for beginners, including extra tips for hall costumes
and masquerade presentations.

----------------------------------------
Panel 4: Sun 8/27 1:00 PM, 60-90 minutes.
Title: SPINTRONICS: UNDERSTANDING THIS NEW SPIN ON ELECTRONICS WITHOUT GETTING DIZZY
Participants: Kevin Roche
Precis: Spintronics -- technology that harnesses electron spin as
well as its charge -- has already dramatically changed the
world we live and work in today. IBM Almaden Research
Center scientist Kevin Roche will introduce you to this
emerging technology: what spin is, what it does and how we
are beginning to harness it, as well as a virtual tour of
his laboratory and the giant robots they use to study these
nano-engineered materials. He also promises to do it in
terms that won't make your head spin.

I'm also hoping to be scheduled into kevin_standlee's Match Game SF shows.

PLUS, of course:
Wednesday night: hollister2008 party
Thursday night: loeg party
Friday night: MASQUERADE

I'm mentioned in an article on the Bloomberg news service...
Nanotech Lures Bankers, VCs With Promise of $1 Trillion Market

For those of you who haven't heard me talk about our research, let me be clear: I did not talk about silk screening atoms onto tee-shirts

I did describe our thin film deposition techniques as rather like "airbrushing with atoms" (that's a stock phrase I use in my talks, because the image it brings to mind in the audience is very clear), and I often describe our shadow-masking technique as rather like doing said painting through a stencil. I believe those two images were conflated together into the "silk screening" reference the reporter makes. Anyways, there's my name in print again. Should boost my Google hits some more ;-)

This morning's (Sunday) San-Jose Mercury News Business section.

Front page.
Above the fold.
Entirely filled with (a very flattering) portrait of me and my vacuum deposition system from Wednesday's 20th Anniversary of the Almaden Research Center Event

Pardon me while I go squee! some more.

The online version of the article is here : Pure Imagination: Almaden Research Center celebrates two decades of whim, wonder