Today is the first day of summer, and it has been 39° Celsius. Summer is supposed to be the most productive period of the year, but I don’t guarantee any productivity over 40°.

Last week commencement took place, the cheerful black-robe ceremony, in which all graduates (Bachelor’s, Master’s and Ph.D.) are called on the stage one by one. It’s a neverending liturgy patiently endured by the families waiting hours for their child’s moment to come.

By the way, after a previous gaffe, I can now distinguish between the Texan and Cuban flag (can you?):

Caltech is quiet now. I presume most undergrads have left for the summer, or maybe they just hide deeper in their caves. Some spend their Californian summer surfing. Except that here “SURF” means Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships. Here is the class of 2008 that will work on Alice, the autonomous car veteran of the Darpa Urban Challenge.

The perspicacious reader might have understood that I bought a new camera, a Sony Alpha 300, which currently is probably better than what I can handle. Coincidently, I discovered that one of next year’s incoming grad students in CDS is a professional photographer. Before starting in the Fall, he’s traveling around the country: I wrote him to enjoy this time, because during the next summers the only animals he will take pictures of are the many squirrels in the campus.