I spent the last weekend in Chicago visiting my parents and my sister's family and her three adorable kids.  (Hi Harper, Ellie and Tate!)

We combined this trip with my wife Rachel's first marathon!  We took the train downtown early on Sunday morning and got there in plenty of time for the start.  It was a complete mob scene.  There were 40,000 people signed up to run the marathon.  It took Rachel 15 minutes or so to actually get to the start line. 

I cut across the course and was able to see her run by at the halfway mark.  I then took my time walking to the finish line so that I could try to catch a glimpse of her on the home stretch.  I missed her there but was able to meet up with her in the park outside the finish.  Right after she finished she collapsed on me and said that it was the hardest thing she ever did and also the best.  That is something coming from someone who finished a medical internship.

I'm so proud of her running it!  Now all she has to do is let her feet heal. 

Interesting stuff:

• Everyone is timed with what is called a "champion chip."  This is a little device that you tie on to your shoe that marks when you step on checkpoints along the course.  They had 10 of these checkpoints total.  I'm not sure what technology they use, but it seems to work pretty well.  There would be no way to get an accurate time for 40k people without something like this.
• Right after Rachel finished someone in front of her called for a medic.  A woman and her father had apparently just finished together when he collapsed on the ground.  He was still talking but obviously dizzy and confused.  Rachel introduced herself as a doctor and volunteered to help.  She checked his pulse on his wrist and in his neck.  If you have a pulse in your wrist, your blood pressure is at least 90.  If it is in your neck it is at least 60.  Since the man had a pulse in his neck but not in his wrist he had a blood pressure under 90.  She sat with them until the medics arrived and he was wheeled away.  We both hope everything is okay!
• There is a company that tries to take pictures of everyone.  Apparently they just shoot away and try to sort it all out later.  Last night when we checked the site they had finished going through 22% of the photos they had taken and had three pictures of Rachel online.  I can't imagine dealing with that many pictures!  I'm wondering if they have some sort of OCR system to read the bib numbers off the runners.

I took some pictures but I haven't had a chance to sort through them yet.  Hopefully I can put one or two up in the next couple of days.

Adobe announced today a new image format for storing raw camera data.  Dubbed DNG (for Digital Negative) this format is meant to be a common interchange for the fast proliferating collection of proprietary raw image formats.  By some estimates there are over 60 different raw image formats out there.  Because of this, there are really only a couple of software vendors that can afford to get into the raw image processing game.  It appears that Adobe hopes to level this playing field with this new specification.

To understand the significance of this, it is important that you understand how raw image formats work and why they are different.  When most modern cameras (not using the Foveon sensor) advertise take a picture, they have a grid of sensors.  These sensors only measure intensity but not color.  To capture color data, a color filter (called a Bayer filter) is placed over the sensor so that each little sensor only sees one color (typically Red, Green and Blue).  That means that the camera only knows one color value at each pixel.  This raw data is then processed using a set of complex algorithms to produce an image that has all the color information for each pixel.  For each pixel in the raw data, these algorithms reconstruct the missing color data by looking at the surrounding pixels and guessing.  Because of this guessing, there are multiple ways to process this raw data -- and there is the possibility that these algorithms and guessing will get better in the future.  Because of this, all serious cameras offer a raw mode where the raw (or close to it) sensor data is saved in a special format and the complex demosaicing algorithms can be done later on a computer.

So, raw images are fundamentally different from regular images in that they store raw sensor data before it has been processed.

The rub comes with the fact that each camera manufacturer has a proprietary raw format (or two or three) and some generally crappy software for dealing with it.  Companies like Adobe (with the Adobe Camera Raw plugin for photoshop) and Capture One have been waging a guerilla war to create products to read all of these formats.  If Adobe can succeed in getting camera manufacturers to implement this format in their cameras, life for many photographers could become much much easier.  But this isn't a sure thing.  Camera manufacturers are very aware of the business benefits of lock in.  They do it with lens mounts and with their software suites.  Canon or Nikon may see their proprietary formats as an advantage in the marketplace.  Nikon even charges for the software to convert its raw format while Canon and most other manufacturers provide it for free.

I haven't gotten a read from my buddies in Microsoft imaging, but I'm hoping that DNG is a huge success.  Assuming that Adobe doesn't try to assert its own proprietary control over the format (Postscript anyone?) it may just let the camera manufacturers concentrate on making cameras and leave the software development up to a third party marketplace.

[update: RichB points out that there is also an open source utility for dealing with raw camera data called DCRaw and built by Dave Coffin. Apparently Photoshop (and Capture One?) build on some of Dave's work.]

Dave Winer and I hung out tonight and went to dinner together.  We started out from my house in Montlake and walked through the university to Aladdin Gyro's up north of 45th on the Ave.  We were going to go to Thai Tom but the line was too long.

We talked about Google, Microsoft and the industry as a whole.  Tip jars, Bush and how I should never expect to get social security (I already knew this).  He's a good guy who likes to shake things up.

Since everyone wanted to see me wearing my Noogler hat, I had him snap a quick picture with my new Canon 20D.  I also grabbed a picture of him. We are both looking a little worse for wear from the long walk up there and back.

If you really want to chew up some of my bandwidth (I may have to take this down) you can grab the original files (~2MB each) of me and Dave.  These are jpgs right out the camera.  Be warned that they are shot in the AdobeRGB color space so you should really view them in a color space aware application (something more like Photoshop and not IE).

[Update:  Dave Walker suggested I check out Coral -- a distributed network cache by NYU as a way to reduce the bandwidth hit.  The links above have been changed to give that a try.  Post a comment if you have problems.]

Taking a break from inadvertently feeding the rumor mill, I'd like to point to the announcement for the new Canon 1Ds Mark II.  This thing looks awesome!  Features that stand out: 16.7 MP full frame, fast startup time and a wireless transfer option.  There is still a question if they improved the battery technology or not.  Not bad for a mere $8k.  The thing still looks super big and heavy.

I would love to own one of these, but I can't see my self spending that much on what is really a hobby.  Plus, in the spirit of sour grapes, it would probably be too heavy.  I really can't complain because I just received the Canon 20D that I preordered a little while ago.  Now I have to find the time to go out and shoot.

Check it the article about Google hiring at the NY Post.  The mention me and this blog but of course don't link to me.  This media stuff is pretty crazy.  I don't think that someone like me moving around is really that newsworthy.  I'm definitely not as high profile as Adam.

One correction:  I wasn't the lead developer on Avalon, but rather one of many lead developers.  The group is pretty big and my leaving, while I'm sure they will miss having me around, won't put the project in jeopardy or anything.

They call new Google employees Nooglers.  That was what I was last week when I was down in Mountain View.  It was a pretty exciting week.  I went to some training classes and got my computers set up and such.  I spent quite a bit of time working and hanging out with other Googlers.  Everyone was super smart and down to earth.  I learned a lot and had a great time.

At the end of the week I got my Noogler hat (propeller on top, of course) at a company wide friday event.  I've been digging in this week back in Seattle.  I'm hoping that I can get my first checkin in by thursday.  My only job now is to write code and ship product.  That is about all I can say too :)

I'm going to be gone all next week doing orientation and training type stuff at Google.  I probably won't be able to update the blog but I will be on email.

I'll try to collect some impressions and stories to give a taste of the Google experience.

I met with HR yesterday afternoon to turn in my batch and my corporate AmEx card.  It felt like a cheesy cop show:  "Gimme your badge and your gun, Mahoney -- you're suspended!"  Right after that I went back to my building and had a buddy sign me in as a visitor so that we could all hang out and play some xbox.  It was hard to let go and not get involved in the discussions going on in the hallways.  The day before a large group of us went out for my goodbye lunch.  It felt a little bit like a funeral in its finality. 

First off, I'd like to say that everyone has been really good about my leaving -- both inside and outside of the company.  I think that most everyone understands that 7 years is a long time and that I've "done my time."  Thanks for all of the Congrats!

There are a set of reaction posts and comments that are interesting.  Adam Kinney was first off the line. ChrisAn also had some nice stuff to say.  I got contacted by a reporter from CNet looking for a story.  There really is no big story, but she ended up writing a short blurb in "news.blog." 

Looking at macro trends, check out the comments to Dare's post.  My buddy Vince at articulatebabble.com (who I broke the news to a day or two before) had some comments on Microsoft and Google.  Finally, over at "Mini-Microsoft", Who da'Punk fits my leaving into his smaller is better paradigm.  I think that he and Vince both have some really solid points.  Microsoft could do with some focusing.

My plan this weekend was to get a very tall (30 foot) ladder and clean my gutters.  But since my health insurance is in a little bit of a state of limbo before I start at Google on Tuesday, my wife won't let me do that. 

Tomorrow, friday, is my last day at Microsoft.  I've been there for a little over 7 years, plus 2 internships.  I've helped (in large or small part) ship Microsoft Team Manager, IE4, IE5, IE5.5, IE6, Windows NT 4, Windows 98, Windows 98SE, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2k3 and Windows XP SP2.  I've been working with a great group of people on Avalon and Longhorn for the past couple of years.  It is really hard to say goodbye to so many friends and such a great group.  But I feel that it is time to move on to new challenges.

I'm going to be going to go work for Google.  It looks like I'll be staying in the Seattle area for now.  Don't ask me what I'll be doing because I honestly don't know.  I'm going to be working with a good group of guys that I've worked with before.  I trust that they are working on interesting technology.  Hopefully we'll be able to make a splash at some point.  Chances are that I won't be able to talk about it here for quite a while though.

The decision to leave Microsoft has been a very difficult one.  I still believe in the Avalon vision and plan.  I'm more excited than ever about the technology.  Even though I knew that I was going to leave a couple of weeks ago, I meant everything that I've posted and said.  You can be sure that my excitement over the recent changes to the Longhorn and Avalon ship plans aren't the company line.  If I disagreed I would have said so.  What are they going to do, fire me?  In some ways I feel like I've made my impact on the Avalon project.  I've been there since the start and helped shape what it is today.  There is a lot of work to do yet, but the broad strokes are in place.  Now I'm just like most of you reading this: I'm going to be a user of the Avalon technology instead of one of the guys developing it.  I wish those losers would get off their butts and ship already :)

It has been an exciting month and a half or so.  I sat down for coffee with a coworker who is working for Google sometime in late July.  We chatted and he told me about the way that Google works and how much fun he was having there.  The thing that really attracted me was the fact that it was just a smaller company with smaller groups.  After working on such large projects for so long, I was really ready to try something on a smaller scale.  Plus, I've been working for MS for my entire professional life and I'm going to have to diversify at some point.  Anyway, I got a resume to him and flew down to Mountain View for an interview.  Things went well and I accepted the offer last week.  As a point of reference, I didn't find out about the Longhorn schedule shake up until a few weeks after I started the whole process.

What does this mean for my blog?  Nothing really.  I'm still going to talk Avalon -- I just won't have the inside line anymore.  My knowledge will probably go stale in the next month or so.  Eventually I hope to talk about Google stuff, but I'm going to have to feel out where the lines are. 

Wish me luck!

Rachel and I went to a reading from "On Call: A Doctor's Days and Nights in Residency" by Emily Transue last night.  Emily is a friend of ours and was my wife Rachel's chief resident when she started residency.  I haven't had a chance to read the book yet (we picked up a copy last night) but, from the excerpts that Emily read aloud, it sounds great.  If you don't know someone who's been through residency (or even if you do!) this book will give you an understanding of the ups and downs -- both emotionally and physically -- that a doctor goes through during residency.  I saw it up close and personal while Rachel was going through it.

Trivia: That picture on the cover isn't her.  But the coat is hers.  She had to send it to New York for a couple of weeks to be photographed.  She does have a picture on the inside of the sleeve.