For almost a week now I felt as if I didn't exist. Not having a Web presence and not having personal email has been a weird experience. After for some many years counting on my personal domain name (savas.parastatidis.name), it was strange not having it around.

Here's the full story...

I wanted to move my domain's hosting (primarily email) to Windows Live Custom Domains. However, since savas.parastatidis.name was a third-level domain name, this was not possible. When the .name top level domain was first created, only third-level domain names were made available, so I couldn't purchase parastatidis.name. Well, the policy has changed since then. I tried to acquire parastatidis.name but, unfortunately, someone owned a subdomain so it was locked. I checked with the .name registry authority and they confirmed that, as my last name is not that popular around the world :-), I was the only one who had registered a subdomain. So, it should have been easy.

Unfortunately, it turns out that my prior registrar, Register.com, did not support second-level .name domains :-( So, the only way to acquire parastatidis.name was to transfer savas.parastatidis.name to another registrar. To my bad luck, none of the registrars I contacted supported the transfer of third-level .name domain names :-( The only way I could acquire parastatidis.name was to delete the third-level one first. Due to processes set in place by ICANN, I had to wait for 5 days for my existing third-level registration to be deleted so that the second-level was freed for registration. This finally happened earlier today and so I am alive again and with GoDaddy.com as my new registrar.

I am trying to sort out my email now. It should work tomorrow.

My sincere apologies for this "absence" from the World Wide World! The experience and disruption in service I experienced over the last few days reminded me of one of my favorite arguments: "identifier vs address". I'll leave that for a different post though.

Finally, I would like to thank Asbjorn of GNR, the .name registry authority, who was a great help throughout this experience. For more than a month now he has been patiently answering my email messages and providing me with a lot of valuable information. I spent hours and hours talking to technical support folks in registrars who had never dealt with a situation like mine. Thanks Asbjorn! I owe you beers next time I am in London.

 

Update: I forgot to mention that during the process, I also retired my old Windows Live ID (ex-.NET Passport). If you have stored sparastatidis@hotmail.com anywhere, please delete it. My Windows Live ID from now on is going to be savas@parastatidis.name. That's how you can reach my via Windows Live Messenger as well.

I won't be at OGF20 (attending W3C's WWW 2007 instead) but my manager, Tony Hey, will be there. He will be delivering one of the two keynotes. His working title is "The Social Grid" and this is the abstract:

The community has been making rapid progress in defining interoperable protocols for Grid computing. We now have a Web Services-based infrastructure to manage and operate compute-related Grids. However, we should not stand still; we should be looking at our next challenge and make use of the technological advances that are taking place on the Web. In recent years, the Web has evolved to an ecosystem of data and services where users are equally consumers and producers of information. It is no longer just a distributed infrastructure for the delivery of information but, rather, a planet-wide distributed application platform. It is interesting to observe that most of the contemporary needs of Grid computing can be met by the Web and its related technologies. Grid applications could be built using simple, well-supported, mature middleware making use of the Web’s infrastructure and protocols.

This talk will make the case for future Web-based Grids that will enable the effortless composition/integration of applications and services, promote scientific collaboration through social networking, and incorporate knowledge management/representation through semantic technologies. Given that technical computing and scientific research depend on the management of huge amounts of data and cross-organization collaboration, more now than any other time, the Web may provide some of the solutions the community needs.

I hope that a whitepaper, co-authored by community luminaries, would also be ready in time for Tony's talk, emphasizing the need to pay more attention on the Web, its architecture and technologies when it comes to Grid computing.

Woo hoo! After 45 mins of continuously dialing (using my cell phone and Skype), I was able to get through and buy Glastonbury tickets for myself, Carole, David, and Meropi.

I am soooo excited. Glastonbury 2007, here we come again!

My trip in China just finished. I am safely back home and looking forward to my next trip, next week.

It was a fantastic visit. I was fascinated by the work that MSR Asia is doing and the great number of clever people here. The working environment is great and very stimulating. I will seriously consider spending more time there, if I get the chance.

Everyone worked hard to set the foundations for three very interesting projects: one related to China's power grid infrastructure (utilizing distributed/high-performance computing for simulation), one related to social networking knowledge discovery (I need to be careful with the use of 'social' around government people :-), and the other one  to environmental science (simulation of water pollution).

I had the pleasure of meeting with the head of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Libraries and very clever people from Tsinghua University with whom I will be working closely. Of course, the opportunities for collaboration with the MSRA groups are tremendous. I am really looking forward to interacting with everyone there.

Beijing is a HUGE, polluted city. However, after walking in the neighborhoods for many hours, I got to like it. There is something about the city; I can't really point a finger to it. Perhaps it's people's synchronized exercising in the neighborhood plazas; the group dancing in front of the main football stadium for the 2008 Olympic games; Joshua, the 74-year old gentleman who started learning English (and his English is excellent) 5 years ago so he could be one of the Olympic games volunteers and who gave me his phone number so that next time I visit he can teach me how to dance; the many street markets; the hospitality and politeness of the people; the crazy driving (!!!, albeit not as crazy as India or Peru :-); the huge history (unfortunately my Friday meetings overrun and so I arrived at the gates of the Forbidden city just after the ticket counter closed); the booming economy. I don't know. Perhaps everything together. I am looking forward to my next visit and also to getting out of the city and to the rural (real) China.

I also had the great pleasure of going out for dinner with ThoughtWork's director here in China, Xiao. Very clever guy! I really enjoyed the food, which included worms :-)

Next Saturday I am off to Las Vegas for MIX 07. Oh man. I am looking forward to so many great announcements. Silverlight looks awesome but it's only part of a huge story.

The Xbox team continues to do great things. Now, if only they listen to our encouragements and enable networking on the XNA platform so that we can see some cool, distributed computing scientific applications :-)

I am very excited. Although I am tired, I am off to start exploring. Tomorrow, I am spending a full day at the prestigious Tsinghua University talking to engineers about a project with which we are going to be involved on distributed, large-scale simulation of the power grid infrastructure and power consumption/disaster analysis. This is a new domain for me and I am really excited to find out more.

While on the plane I started reading "Theories of Communication Networks" (Monge & Contractor). I didn't go far yet but it looks like a very interesting book.

So, I am on my way to China today but there is more traveling ahead and opportunities to reconnect with the community.

I am going to be at Mix 07 in Las Vegas from 29th April to 2nd May. Then it's the Vancouver half-marathon (I am not really really prepare for it but I'll give it a go anyway) and then off to Banff for W3C's WWW07.

If we happen to be at the same space-time coordinates, please drop me a line and I'd love to chat.

I am so looking forward to this trip. I am going to be engaged on a technical level with a couple of projects in China (related to social networking and the power grid) so I hope I'll be a frequent visitor over there. I was always fascinated by the country and the culture; finally I have the chance to visit it, albeit briefly this first time. I have been to Shanghai in the past but I found it was more like other metropolitan cities.

If there is anyone reading this blog from there, let me know.

I just read this post over at Slashdot. NASA is using SecondLife to "Open Source" some of the activities and encourage public participation. Very interesting use of social networking (isn't SecondLife really a type of a social network? A network of social networks if you will).

Now, when will my laptop be finally able to run SecondLife? The moment I switched laptops (I now have the Thinkpad T60p Wide, which is fantastic) ATI released drivers with OpenGL support, hence good for SecondLife, for my previous laptop :-( My current one has the Mobility FireGL for which I need to wait a new driver from Lenovo).

Non-technology related (soon I hope to have categories on this blog)

Interesting article on our appreciation of art. Of course I believe that art is always subjective but I found that the article does convey a point about our fast pace of life and our inability/unwillingness to stand for a moment and pay attention to our surroundings.

Just a quick update!

The process is taking longer than expected and the domain name troubles may still be ahead of us. There is a good chance of my personal email and this website not working for 5-6 days in the near future. My apologies but I just don't know the exact date.

This space is heating up. I signed up for a beta account. XIOS is an OS that can be launched from a Web browser but then can continue to operate while offline? Hmmm... What's the difference between that a .NET application that can be launched from a browser and interact with cloud services using POX over HTTP or Web Services?

Anyway... I am curious

My domain name adventures continue. savas@parastatidis.name will not work and the web site will not be accessible for about a week. Apologies to all for the inconvenience. This is frustrating but it seems to be the only way :-(

You can use <firstname>.<lastname> (at) microsoft (dot) com if you need to reach me.