Got out to Ireland safe and sound, in preparation to teach a Vista class next week. It's so beautiful out here. I'm in Doolin, which is a lovely little town by the sea. Been awhile since I bored everyone with a travellogue, so I thought I would share a few photos of the scenery: View of the ocean from the hostel where I'm staying Lots of cows out here! Here's the hostel. This is the bus driver who took me from Ennis to Doolin. He really got a kick out of my electric scooter! Here's the only garage...

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 

I heard about the first Maker Faire, which was spring of last year, after it happened. And from all the great stuff I heard it made me determined to go with my oldest son out to the second Maker Faire. He's into gadgets, and I figured it would be great for him to see all that ingenuity on display. That was back in May of this year out in Silicon Valley. It was tremendous. Well worth going. Contraptions of all sorts were out on display. Ended up that I found cheap $70 round trip seats on a Southwest...

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 

It seemed innocent enough to me. And to some of you out there (like Alex Bransky and Trisha Lacey) what I did last week will probably sound like a great idea. To others (like George Bush -- BTW thanks for reading my blog man) it may seem unAmerican. But I'd do it again, in a heartbeat! What is it, you're no doubt wondering? While making travel arrangements for a business trip to Washington D.C. I decided to skip the rental car entirely and bring along an electric scooter, checked as baggage. It's...

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 

No PDC happening this October: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/... Perhaps the new stuff isn't quite ready for a broader beta. But heck, there's so much great new stuff that's just been released or will be released in Orcas that I've definitely got enough to play with for the next year or so! Means I can go and catch the Maker Faire in Austin. I took my son out to the one in San Mateo this past weekend and it was an absolute riot! Highly recommended...

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 

I am very impressed with everything about the MVP summit. Never in my life have I been in attendance at an event with so much diversity. I've met people from Honduras, Peru, Germany, Lithouania, Russia, Japan, and just a half hour ago a group of Koreans had come over to hang out here in my hotel room and see a 30-year old piece of history I brought along. Let me explain more about that. Over the weekend before the event my dad and I dove into the storage shed and dug up a momento we had used some...

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 

This week I'm back on Dell's campus, delivering a class about software development for Vista. In another couple hours I'll be heading out to the Round Rock 1 building to pick up all the freshly-printed courseware. The front of the building is all dressed up in honor of the big Vista launch: It's a great time to be in IT

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 

First the "bad news". Al Qaida is attempting to thwart the financial market with viruses. Yeah, right! Do they even know that much assembly? They're just enjoying pulling our chain, and watching the more gullible part of America shudder at their every cue. Everything I've seen out of them is so very low tech that this claim gets preposterous fast.But on the up-side, the El Niño effect stands to deliver more snow than usual where I live out in the Southwest, and much less up North where people generally...

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the States! This time of year usually means lots of travel, and often it's impossible to be everywhere that you want to. Thankfully, good quality DV camcorders, machines with fast processors, and broadband Internet speeds can allow us to enjoy a much higher quality video experience than what most people equate to a "webcam". It's easy to broadcast in fairly high quality using the free Windows Media Encoder. This walkthrough uses version 9 to deliver good quality...

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 

We’ve got 500 people registered on the site, 449 of which have picked out sessions to attend. So it may end up that we’re pretty busy tomorrow! Last camp was held on May 6th, a day which we had scheduled not realizing at first that it's the day after a big drinking day in the Southwest, Cinco De Mayo. (Mexico's big holiday celebrating a victory in the Battle of Puebla against France.) But even still last time we had 70 unique sessions, and 300 people in attendance. This time I'm delighted that there's...

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
• 

Desert Code Camp Strikes Again! The last Code Camp in Phoenix was held almost five months ago in May, and we had a great response. Out of the couple hundred feedback cards that were turned in, every single person said they would attend again in the future. So we have been busy making plans for the next one, coming up three days before Halloween. Right now we are nearing the end of our "Call for Speakers" window of opportunity, currently having 35 confirmed sessions. There are 29 openings left if...

• Share This Post:
• 
• 
•