Adrian van den Heever tells me he has been wondering what to do with all those bottles of champagne he opens but doesn't finish in one evening; it seems a pity to let the fizz go to waste. The obvious solution - inviting me around to help polish them off - doesn't work quite so well now he's in Palo Alto.

So he sought out local expertise and found that some research on the subject had been done at Stanford - almost within walking distance, which is probably just as well.