The Los Alamos Dynamic Duo

The interactive interface for the Venice Boat traffic model simulation table (Simtable) is being developed by a dynamic duo (Skyler and August) from Los Alamos, (in)famous because of "the lab".  Eventually, the table will look like the picture at left, but will react to touch and to "fiducials" placed on it.

We just went through the first design discussion and we are looking forward to the early prototypes that should be coming out soon.  There will be a main simulation fiducial for closing canals and for deciding on "one way" or two way traffic in a specific time period and for a specific boat type.  Each boat type will also get its own fiducial, that users will be able to place upon any canal segment to visualize data related to that boat type on that canal.  Look for some demos in the coming weeks!

Vernal Equinox

Day and night are supposedly of equal length on the equinox, but are they really?  Trees are blooming here in Santa Fe and the days will be getting longer.  Any skiing that takes place from now on will be true "spring skiing"!

The ide(a)s of March

As Nick and I are ultimating our epic cross-country drive, while tweeting away as we go, I have managed to get some work done as we traveled from MA, through CT, NY, NJ, PA, WV, OH, IN, IL, MO, KS, into CO where we are right now. On this anniversary of Cesar's assassination, as our finances hit their nadir and Nick and I celebrate our voyage at the zenith of high altitude skiing, here are a few of the accomplishments that happened thanks to technology unimaginable just a few years ago, but more importantly thanks also to the wonderful partnerships that I am so fortunate to be involved with all around the world...

• Kyle and I have submitted our application for uScript to be part of Google Summer of Code. He was in Halifax, Nova Scotia and I was somewhere in Kansas when this happened...
  
• Andrea Mancuso and Alberto Gallo are helping Ginny Mason complete a spread for an upcoming National Geographic magazine article about Venice which will cite the Venice Project Center and Forma Urbis
• Redfish and I have submitted a short proposal to the City of Boston's CIO Bill Oates and his chief technology guru Nigel Jacobs to explore porting our pothole mapper (recently cited by an MIT paper) to Android and the Google Phone
• Under Steve Guerin's supervision, Tyler White in Santa Fe has revamped the energence web site using joomla, making Adrian Hewitt very happy
• Chris Murray has created version 2.0 of the Venice 2.0 site, which includes this blog
• Meanwhile Saul Farber has fixed the error 400 problem that had plagued our Word Press sites (preservenice too) for months, despite valiant efforts by Chris Murray, Tim Navien and Andrea Mancuso to resolve the issue
• Kyle and I have begun the process of collaborating with WPI's Admissions and Marketing departments who have expressed the desire to include the Venice Project Center in the next Viewbook WPI sends out to perspective students
• Official notice was sent out about the awarding of $137,749 for my contribution to the three-year NASA research project entitled Digital Earth Watch (DEW). The first workshop is already planned for April 23 and 24 at the University of New Hampshire. Steve Guerin and I will be flying up from Santa Fe for the occasion
  
• With a three-way (Limon, CO+Boston+Venice) skype conference call, we have resumed the preparation for the Venice Mashup Camp in September. The current plan is to have Google as the main sponsor, in collaboration with UNESCO, highlighting the usefulness of mashups in the context of the preservation of World Heritage Sites, using Venice as the model for a global extension of the concept
• Plans for my participation in a roundtable on April 16 at the Clark Museum at Williams college, with, among others, the curator of the current Venice exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Frederick Ilchman, were finalized.
• My good friend and colleague Prof. Nicholas DeMonchaux of Berkeley invited me to participate in a joint research effort with the Univ. of Architecture in Venice. We are finalizing the grant application this week...

Not bad for a week on the road! These are just some ideas for the ides of March. More on each later!

Alea jacta ass...

Just a couple of weeks after returning from New Mexico, I am "on the road" again, this time driving from Massachusetts to Santa Fe with my old donkey of a Subaru Forester which already has 217,000 miles on it.
As the saying goes: "I am throwing the hat over the wall" and committing to a long term collaboration with my friends at the Santa Fe Complex, whether the WPI Santa Fe Project Center takes off or not... although I am sure it will.
I am taking Nick with me for a bonding father-son experience which will see us in St. Louis some time tomorrow and in Denver hopefully by Thursday/Friday so we can hit the Colorado slopes over the weekend as we descend into Santa Fe from the northern rockies.
We'll get our (ass) kicks on Route 66 as we cross the Rubicon this week...  

What does this have to do with Venice?  You'll find out soon... stay tuned!

Alea jacta est!

Hibernating at the complex

Well... a month has gone by since the last post and one may suspect we've done nothing in the meantime. But one would be wrong, wouldn't one?

Indeed a lot of snowshoeing was accomplished in this month.  Some skiing too.  And a trip to Santa Fe, and a bunch of projects, grants, ideas and proposals on both sides of the Atlantic...  It was a busy month and the blog suffered for it.  But now we're back on track after the winter hiatus...

We stand ready for a whole new anniversary year in this new Obama era of openness, hope, honesty and transparency.  We will be impeccable with our words, will make NO assumptions, won't take anything personally and will ALWAYS do our best. 

Obamanos!

Venipedia 2.0

Kyle has revamped the look of our Venipedia wiki as the WPI students who were at the VPC during the anniversary term made specific wiki entries for each of their projects.

Check out the entries for Moving, Living, and Young projects... 

Moreover, the students also contributed several very interesting and informative WikedVenice suggestions!  Venipedia is really starting to take shape.  

Our alumni will be proud of us!

Word spiders

I just found this new gadget which is very much a Santa Ve contraption from Thinkmap, called the Visual Thesaurus.  People are already combining word clouds with this and getting the complex connections that are woven into our word choices.  Fascinating!  Play with it!

Hossein Hakim - - (fvpc2)

A while back I made the first entry of the Friends of the Venice Project Center (FVPC).  Today, I would like to make another one dedicated to Hossein Hakim, the head of the Interdisciplinary and Global Studies Division in the nineties, when it was probably still called Division of Interdisciplinary Affairs.  
I had started the Venice Project Center a few years before Hossein took the reins, and therefore I witnessed first-hand how he transformed our pioneering efforts into an efficient program of truly global perspective.

Personally, I am tremendously indebted  to Hossein who insisted that I be treated as a full-time faculty with full recognition of my contribution to the Institute.

Thank you Hossein! You are a wonderful man.  

After passing the sceptre to Paul Davis, Hossein invented a new life for himself as a passionate dancer, inspiring us all to "loosen up" and enjoy the rhythms of life...

Hossein has been, no, an inspiration to me and I love him dearly.

Happy 18th Nick!

Today, my son Nicolò Zuane Carrera is turning eighteen. 

Tanti Auguri Nick!
Starting today, Nick will be able to vote (but not drink!) and will begin the process of getting a driver's license as all Italians do when they're 18  -- even though he could have done that when he was 16 in this country...  

As a Venetian Nick does not need a license to drive a boat though!

He has seen me work on the Venice Project center his whole life and he may even have felt a bit resentful at times about how much of my energy was devoted to this program instead of on him.

We spent a lot of time together though.  
My job provided me the luxury of bringing Nick with me everywhere (and I did!).

I am grateful to WPI for supporting the center and my family for all these years.  

And I am grateful to my wife Jacqueline for having brought Nick into the world 18 years ago in a snowy and cold January day.  Thank you Jaq!  

On Children

Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

WE LOVE YOU NICK!

Cloud of clouds

So, what happens if you recursively take the previous blog entry and make a cloud of that?



It's a meta cloud!