Vaughan in Las Vegas
My flight arrives on the dot of the scheduled arrival time, and I’m through customs within 10 minutes. Things have started well. I’m at LAX with a trusty WIRED magazine read cover to cover. The iPod is flat, the laptop is charging, and I just came to the realisation my phone doesn’t have roaming turned on. Everything is going according to plan. I can’t wait to head to Vegas. With 15 hours head space I’ve psyched myself up for an awesome week of fun work.
MIX09 looks to be an awesome conference this year, and I’m really looking forward to the sessions, and spending a week with some great minds. Although my heart lies with the Silverlight 3 render pipeline session, I see the broader opportunities and scope lying with Live and Azure. Where Microsoft plan to head with these platforms will be great to hear. From a digital market perspective.
I look around the lounge and can spot the MIX09ites. They size each other up with that ‘I know what you are’ look, a sixth sense at detecting your own breed. Not that it’s hard to pick us out. All on laptops, with their minor signature traits… a MacBook with the logo turned into a biohazard symbol, a t-shirt with ‘rtfm’ in hex (because in English it’s not geeky enough), the Microsoft blooded individuals (clothing or backpacks branded with TechEd, PDC, Azure, Live et al), and me, with my trusty Dr Cube’s Posse t-shirt (more better fighto!).
But it’s the geek crew that add the real value to the trip to Vegas. It will be the conversations and learning from industry peers (clients and vendors alike) that will be most value. These are the like minded people that bend technology into the shape of something beautiful. They embrace and drive technology, and influence the directions of platforms. The personal and business value of being connected to that giant talent should never be underestimated.
And lastly, I’m trying out BlogJet for my offline WordPress blogging needs. So let’s see how that goes… [edit] In summary, BlogJet created MS Word HTML shit, which meant it didn’t render consistently, if at all, so thumbs down.
Read More2008 in Review
And we’re back. All of me are. I’ve been AFK for too many months. I’ve been busy. Not much has hit the blog, but plenty has been happenning. First up, the blog would like to announce it posted a profit in the 2008 year, with revenue up NaN percent.
My end of year for 2008 was at lightspeed. Work and life balance are still balanced, but somehow each has grown a magnitude on either side of the scale. I’ll be doing some catch up in some following posts but first a recap.
Looking back at 2008:
- Being involved with some amazing projects at work across Media, Telecommunications, and Finance. Yes, I did mention finance. I simply didn’t think there was an exciting finance project left. I’ve been proven wrong.
- Continued to meet a great stream of people including clients, vendors, co-workers, friends of friends, and locals (at each locale).
- Managed to avoid communication saturation. Twitfacespace can shut up.
- Used the fake Facebook acount for me that was given to me about 10 times. Although, I’ve used it quite a bit this year.
- Got to check out so many cool technologies pre-release. Most I can’t publicly discuss until they launch. Some have launched… leading into…
- Got neck deep in Silverlight. Microsoft have really come a long way and impressed me with how they are growing the technology.
- I spoke at Remix08 in Sydney and Melbourne on Building Interactive Media Applications, and got to meet a great crew. Thanks to Michael Kordahi and Shane Morris and the rest of the Microsoft crew for involving me.
- Bought a DSLR camera, and in the first week took 2000 photos. Worth every cent.
- Bought 36 Rubik’s cubes as a joke.
- Made some funky art out of it.
- Bought 360 Rubik’s cubes as a joke.
- Made some funkier art out of it.
- Rubixel was born. Check it out here.
- Watched too many movies and TV Series, and still not enough.
- Rediscovered XBox Live. XBox Live Arcade seeming to consume most of my interest there.
- Rediscovered email.
- Rediscovered C++. How wonderful and painful you are.
- Started the blog but got distracted.
- Got motion sickness from Mirror’s Edge, and nightmares from Fallout3.
Things I should have done more:
- Blog posts.
- Personal coding projects.
- Rubixels. As time consuming as it is, it’s too much fun.
- Delegation.
- Said “yes”.
- Said “no”.
And that’s about it for now. I’ll catch up on the details later.
Read MoreState of Installation
As a developer, over time the gradual corruption of your computer through installing, compiling, crashing, and bending your OS into shapes it was never intended for, leads to only one solution. A fresh install, and while we’re at it, a new PC.
Time to dig up all the software installs, which some how after 2 years, are still where I left them.
Vista install kicked off, and head to dinner. Back from dinner and Vista is installed, ready to rock. I install live mesh and synchronise my tools folder. Less than a minute later I have my swiss army knife of software downloaded, installed, and configured out of the box. Now for software that requires an actual full installation.
Office, check. Takes only a few minutes. Last but not least, I’m lead to reinstalling the Adobe software I need.
10 minutes pass. 15 minutes. 20 minutes pass. At this point I start writing this rant, and now I’m waiting for the installation to complete before continuing. 45 minutes pass, on a new PC, and the installation is completing. I could understand if this was an installation of the full CS3 suite. But Photoshop CS3 only, as a minimal install, I am confounded. This is not the first time I have had this experience, but in the past I thought it was because the PC I was installing on was past its prime.
I don’t have a problem with software taking forever to install if I get a list as long as my arm in features, but when an application evolves to be a polished version of the same software I used over 10 years ago, and it takes longer to install than the operating system, there is something seriously wrong. It is time for the CS3 install team to wake up to themselves.
Update: CS2 required installing on an older machine at work. It was significantly faster. I thought maybe I had not noticed it in a previous release, but once again, it’s just CS3.
Read MoreFuturama: The Beast With a Billion Backs on DVD
Futurama’s second direct to DVD release hits the streets this Tuesday. The first, Bender’s Big Score, was a nice flashback to the Futurama series. As much as I’m looking forward to it, my brain does end up with what I call “Simpson’s Movie Syndrome” where about 20 minutes into the show I’m expecting the credits to run for the next hour. I’m avoiding the press on it to save a surprise, but The Beast With a Billion Backs does follow the first in the DVD release, with a follow up Bender’s Game planned. Cohen is able to push the boundaries further since the show has not been bound by a network since it was cancelled by FOX. For more information check out the article on Wired.
Read MoreSteve Wozniak – Geek Chat on Apple Early Days
BBC has an awesome video with Woz talking about how it began. He talks inspiration, pretending to be a programmer, and lots more. It is a great video for those who haven’t heard the story from back in the early 80′s. Oh, and check out the Wozniak sized watch!
Read MoreRemix08 Photos
I have uploaded a collection of the Hyro Remix08 Photos on Flickr. They mainly contain the keynote in Melbourne and the presentation I was involved with (Building Immersive Media Applications in Silverlight). Melbourne town hall was an impressive venue. Thanks to Richard and Hyro for the awesome camera. Thanks to the guys at Microsoft for inviting us to speak. All the speakers rocked.
For those at Remix let me know if you want any of the originals.
Read MoreFlickr
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