Test from the new Live Writer

Please ignore the post

Developer recruitment

One of the benefits, that I have promoted upwards, of my team is the ability to manipulate the skill sets by our use of consultants as opposed to employees. This comes with a price though and hence as budgets start to get scrutiny so I have to look for ways to get a more balanced blend of employees and consultants. I opened up two positions for senior developers and have had very little interest, a couple of possibilities come to mind, one, the recruitment site is dreadfully difficult to navigate and I cant actually find my open jobs on it! And two the job description really does not do justice to the exciting project and opportunity we have to offer. I am working with a recruiter to rewrite the job description and will be interested to see if we get more activity as a result.

Silverlight adoption

Trying to find the right sub-project to let the team try out Silverlight is proving challenging; first the distribution of Silverlight is very thin, apart from a few bleeding edge developers it is not on anyone’s desktop yet, second we have a learning curve to overcome which is never easy on a fast paced agile project with bi weekly deliverables, third there are not yet many third party controls available to accelerate development nor do we have our own pool of previously developed components to use. All this said we are still looking forward to cutting our teeth on the technology and will probably use it for an internally facing tool in the next month or so.

DOG - Distrust of Google.

We're not paranoid but: http://scobleizer.com/2007/05/23/dog-distrustdisdain-of-google-moves-in/

Weekend fun

Prior lake this morning was blustery and empty, wind gusting 20mph, fishermen, sporadic and wrapped up warm. No surfing today, but came very close off Fish Point Park where the waves seem to build the strongest with an Easterly breeze. Skeg cable is bent and really hurt my hand this morning trying to bang it into place, finally it gave in so I was able to lower it, which was good as the trailing breeze would have made the Cappela broach a lot otherwise.

Yesterday K's soccer team won 4:0, and we went to Valley Fair for a play date with one of her friends who was far braver than K, and so I got to ride Corkscrew and Wild Thing, both of which I loved! Although I have to say it is a little disconcerting to plunge 200ft from the top and hit the curve and rocket back up to the sky, by the second time we did it though we were both just hooting and hollering with excitement.

Popfly is cool

http://www.popfly.ms/

IE 7 plugin

I have been having to change proxy settings on a daily basis to deal with corporate proxies and being at home and have found it to be quite a chore and then last week I found IE7Pro and have been delighted with the hot key switching between multiple proxy settings. The only thing that was a minor gotcha is that it applies an ad blocker by default so you may want to dissable that if you like I need to check on your sites ad serving capabilities from time to time!

Renegade

Yesterday, we took K to Valley Fair and we got to ride the new coaster "Renegade Outlaw", it is a wooden coaster with no extreme hills but, boy does it pull some good G throught the bends, it's top speed is 52mph but it feels faster, probably becasue of the wood and the noise.

Emma is 6 today

Miss her like crazy, she went on a field trip last week, horse riding, sack racing, and face painting:

Ice cream and classical music

I want to go. Although 3 grand sounds a bit steep and Ice Cream usually disagrees with my stomach and not my mind.
So may be I will skip it and buy a Dagger CFS, my dad went buy some replacement paddling gloves and came home with one of these this weekend, I am jealous.

Taylors Falls (Interstate Park)

Had a great day climbing in fabulous weather and an a amazing vista, ache like crazy today, was defeated by my own head on the last route of the day, oh well three years off from climbing has taken its toll.

Unusually insightful

I have to say that sense the whole code of conduct debacle my opinion had been waining but O'Reilly's blog entry today was very through provoking. I especially agree with him about Live Software being a better moniker than Web 2.0, user behavior feedback being at the heart of Tim's "Users add value" mantra.

Generating RSS feeds

A few links from some colleagues to help produce and validte RSS feeds:
http://geekswithblogs.net/narent/archive/2006/02/08/68647.aspx
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/20060209.asp
http://www.rssdotnet.com/
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html
http://www.feedvalidator.org/

Expanding BizTalk beyond the firewall?

A recent announcement about BizTalk Services seems to indicate an increasing role for BTS which is interesting considering how much of its capabilities are being consumed by future operating system enhancements.

Intersting... just followed a link and found the BizTalk Labs site, could be useful....

and one more link to read about the BizTalk Service Bus...

Sink deeper into a Jacuzzi of megalomania

the real Secret ?

Albert Einstein, said (in a quote that doesn't make it into The Secret): "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

Mum quote

Not sure of the origin, but I love the sentiment:
"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside,thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming --WOW -- What a Ride!"

How much choice is a good thing

When does too much choice cause dilution of knowledge and skill-sets, are two choices enough, three? Is there a magic number to ensure progress and innovation driven by competition and allow the sustained development on all?

Yet another RIA

Unfortunately Sun announced a new platform JavaFX for the development of rich Internet applications, like we needed a third choice.

Link to JavaFX

Advice

Interesting advice to students in California that realy applies to us all (unfortunatley):

Safety Tips & Guidelines regarding potential
“Active Shooter” incidents occurring on Campus
Active Shooter Defined
• This situation is a barricaded suspect(s) or an outdoor movement situation where
the suspect(s) is actively discharging a firearm at Law Enforcement or
Community members and or randomly firing into an area where it is reasonably
expected that persons could be struck by the suspect(s) fire. These situations leave
little or no time for proper planning and normally require first arriving Law
Enforcement units to take immediate action to end the danger.
In the Classroom or Office
• If you are in a classroom, room or office, STAY THERE, secure the door.
• If the door has no lock and the door opens in, a good heavy door wedge can be
kept on hand and driven in as hard as you can, otherwise look for heavy furniture
to barricade the door.
• If the door has a window, cover it if you can
• Depending on the gunmen’s location, consideration may also be made to exit
through window openings. Have someone watch as you get as many students out
of the windows (ground floor) as calmly and as quietly as possible
• If no Police units are yet on scene move well away from the incident and find safe
cover positions (not the parking lots) and wait for the police to arrive.
• If officers arrive on scene, community members should get out and move toward
any Police vehicle when safe to do so while keeping their hands on top of their
head and do exactly and immediately what the Police tell you to do. L
• Don’t leave the area entirely, you may have information that responding Police
Officers will need. Once in a safe place stay put.
L
• If the windows don’t open, or you cannot break them, or you are not on a ground
floor, get out of sight from the door and stay low and quiet.
In Hallways or Corridors
• If in the hallways, get in a room that is not already secured and secure it.
L
• Unless you are very close to an exit, don’t run through a long hall to get to one,
you may encounter the gunmen or hostage taker. Don’t hide in restrooms!
In large rooms or auditoriums
• If in a gym or theater area and the gunmen or hostage taker/s are not present,
move to and out the external exits and move toward any police unit. Again
keeping your hands on your head. Do what the police tell you!
Trapped with the Gunmen
• If you are trapped with the gunmen, don’t do anything to provoke them. If they
are not shooting, do what they say and don’t move suddenly. Only you can draw
the line on what you will or will not do to preserve your life or the lives of others.
• If they do start shooting people, you need to make a choice, (at this point it is
your choice) stay still and hope they don’t shoot you, run for an exit while zigzaging,
or even attack the shooter. This is very dangerous, but certainly no more
then doing nothing and dying in place. A moving target is much harder to hit than
a stationary one and the last thing that the shooter will expect is to be attacked by
an unarmed person. Any option chosen may still result in a negative consequence.
• Again this is not a recommendation to attack the shooter but rather a choice to
fight when there is only one other option.
Open Spaces
• Stay alert and look for appropriate cover locations. Brick walls, large trees,
retaining walls, parked vehicles and any other object which may stop firearm
ammunition penetration, may be utilized as cover.
IIIIIIImportant Note!
• Program UCPD’s 24-Hour Emergency number (310-825-1491) into your cell
phone. Always notify the police department as soon as it is safe to do so.
These safety tips and guidelines are not all inclusive, but if understood and followed
up with periodic reminders and training when feasible, it can increase your chances
of surviving an active shooter incident.

Crypto Cartoon

How to make her moan ;)

Where the web is going

To explore the next gen browser technology first install Silverlight player:

http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/install.aspx

Then try this sample:

http://files.skyscrapr.net/users/ContentMap/SocialNetWorkWPF.xbap

This is where it is going.

Apollo is the Adobe competitive technology which I am sure will eventually replace flash as their flagship product:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/apollo/

I love the navigation metaphor of interacting with content as a mesh or web, I think there is some work to be done to simplify the experience. There are some Java based examples of similar UI experiences too:

http://www.webbrain.com/html/default_win.html

Death to the search box.....

Perverted Geek Squad?

This one is ugly.

Try these all for size too.

Support for business model

Our new business model is built upon the premise of Display Advertising so I was heartened to read this article showing it is becoming a hot area again.

Sensible patent decsion for a change

I saw this link on an SIIA email, this is the first time for a long while that a sensible restriction has been placed on the scope of patents.

Archie Bronson Outfit - 'Cherry Lips'

When I can get this for free on YouTube why would I pay $1.99 for it on iTunes?

Silverlight

ZD Net has a great write up on the new Rich Internet Application technology from Microsoft now branded Silverlight:

The scoop on Silverlight for developers by ZDNet's Ryan Stewart -- The speculation is over and today is the day Microsoft takes the developer covers off of Silverlight. There are a bunch of announcements today, so I'll break them down one by one, but for those in a hurry, here's the summary. First, Microsoft is announcing that the CLR will be a part of Silverlight (Channel [...]

Addendum:I just found this link to a new Live.com service to host Silverlight applications, should become a destination to keep an eye on.

Synergy

If you like me have too many PC's to make room for all the kyboards and mouse and are too tight to buy a KVM switch here is a very cool open source project Synergy to allow you to share mouse and keyboard across multiple screens.

Amazon S3 changing pricing structure

The Amazon asp storage business is chnaging its pricing structure to suupport cheaper more frequetn downloads:

New bandwidth price (effective June 1, 2007)
$0.10 per GB - all data uploaded
$0.18 per GB - first 10 TB / month data downloaded
$0.16 per GB - next 40 TB / month data downloaded
$0.13 per GB - data downloaded / month over 50 TB

Data transferred between Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2 will remain free of charge

New request-based price (effective June 1, 2007)
$0.01 per 1,000 PUT or LIST requests
$0.01 per 10,000 GET and all other requests*
* No charge for delete requests

Storage will continue to be charged at $0.15 / GB-month used.