01.Blogs :
AlfredTwo  
A blog about life, Microsoft, random technology and general academic stuff.

October 2004 - Posts

Visual Gaming Language
Sunday, October 31, 2004 6:14 PM
Sample code and tutorials will be provided in both C# and Visual Basic for the Visual Gaming event. Which language will you use? One of those or perhaps will you use J# or C++ or something else and work it out on your own?It should not matter of course.
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Oh it gets worse
Sunday, October 31, 2004 6:11 PM
A friend of mine (a marketing guy!) sent me this screen shot of his top score.I think I'm going to have to go back to my code and work on a new plan.  A marketing guy? Not a dev, not a student but a marketing guy. Oh the shame. :-)Monday you can
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Tease and Challenge
Saturday, October 30, 2004 3:51 PM
This will become more obvious to many of you on Monday when the development kit for the Visual Gaming category becomes available. So when you download the kit on Monday (and trust me- you want to) and work through the tutorial (and trust me- you want
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

California
Friday, October 29, 2004 8:31 PM
I am in San Jose California for the next couple of days. As I talked about yesterday I am visiting Microsoft Research for Academic Days. We've got a lot of university faculty here for it and we've got a great schedule for them.But right now I am fascinated
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

On the road again
Thursday, October 28, 2004 10:17 AM
In about an hour I drive to the airport for a trip out to California. Microsoft is hosting an Academic Days event for university faculty members and I'm going to help out. I'm pretty excited about it for a number of reasons. One reason is that the event
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Recovery
Wednesday, October 27, 2004 9:08 PM
It's been a weird day. I have to travel to California tomorrow and I'd rather not do it sick. So I slept in. I worked a bit and slept some more. Basically that was the pattern today. Work a little followed by sleep a little. Plus some food and pills.
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Getting away from the office
Tuesday, October 26, 2004 10:52 PM
I haven't felt so good for the past couple of days. It may be a cold; perhaps just allergies. I'm not really sure. My nose is running, my head is all stuffed up and I ache a bit. It's been a struggle to work. About noon today I realized that if I had
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Comfort Food
Tuesday, October 26, 2004 6:25 PM
The other day Didith wrote a blog that talked about comfort food. I left a comment with one of my comfort foods but today I *needed* some comfort food. Today something different came to mind. I thought about chili. The down side of chili is that it takes
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

GOTO
Monday, October 25, 2004 1:41 AM
I'm on a mailing list (email discussions) for teachers who are interested in the Advanced Placement Computer Science exam. For those of you who are not familiar with this it allows a high school student who scores well to get credit at some universities.The
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

America's Most Connected Campuses
Sunday, October 24, 2004 4:12 PM
Forbes ranks the most wired campuses in America. RPI is number 1. Personally I have issues with what they are basing things on. I doubt there is a more conencted campus in the world than Dartmouth which does not make their top 25. Having a wireless network
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Spoke Traffic
Saturday, October 23, 2004 4:59 PM
Traffic at the Spoke seems to have some weird patterns of activity. Let me give you an example. It took 16 days for my read count to move from 6000 to 7000. The read count when from 7000 to 8000 in only 9 days. However the last 5 days have shown only
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Visual Gaming Part 2
Friday, October 22, 2004 5:19 PM
I spent a couple of hours working on my entry to the Visual Gaming contest. Oh not the real Imagine Cup - I'm not allowed. But we're running a less formal internal contest. It's getting there. I have a goal of how many points I an shooting for and I am
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Academics look at Video Games
Thursday, October 21, 2004 9:06 PM
Interesting article."The impact of video games on culture and society is a topic of serious study, with a Danish research centre leading the way in the normally stodgy world of academia. "Check out their idea of having the right equipment for study.
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Time for a bigger screen (or two)
Thursday, October 21, 2004 4:06 PM
I made a rookie error the other day while writing some code. I declared and populated some arrays in the wrong place. It’s a simple matter and could have been avoided. In part, though not completely, I blame the tool. In short my computer screen was too
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Visual Gaming Imagine Cup
Wednesday, October 20, 2004 2:38 AM
Some of us at Microsoft got an early look at the Visual Gaming competition last week. That means we got some of the early documentation and some of the software for developing and testing competition entries. I flew out to Redmond today for a series of
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

On speaking to large groups
Tuesday, October 19, 2004 12:42 AM
Many years ago I read something that made talking to large audiences much easier for me. Reader’s Digest magazine has a section of humorous anticdotes from different areas in society. One of these is called “Humor in Uniform” and is about funny things
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Microsoft to train teachers
Monday, October 18, 2004 1:48 PM
No one else has a link to this? How did that happen? This sounds pretty exciting.SOFTWARE giant Microsoft has linked up with the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), the Department of Education (DepEd) and over 140 colleges and universities
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Relaxing week end
Monday, October 18, 2004 12:29 AM
It's actually been a relaxing weekend. For the most part my wife and I dropped our earlier idea of doing a lot of actual work around the house. I've got a bunch of travel coming up (I will be in Redmond on Tuesday until Friday) so it has been good to
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Poker and Business
Sunday, October 17, 2004 3:32 PM
I spent very little time on the computer yesterday. And even less of the day was spent connected to the internet. So I have some blogs to read. But it was a great day. Much of the day was spent at theIsenberg School of Management at the University of
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

C# to get Edit and Continue
Saturday, October 16, 2004 8:48 PM
OK Visual Basic had this for years and then lost it for VB .NET. Everyone knew that was just temporary and that it would be back in Visual Studio .NET 2005. But today I saw the news that C# is going to have it as well. In fact it will be in the Community
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

MSDN Student Flash Blog
Friday, October 15, 2004 3:27 AM
Be sure to add the MSDN Student Flash blog to your RSS aggregator or as a favorite to your web browser. A recent (well, earlier today) blog entry lists some of the more prolific and popular student blogs here at the Spoke. I'll leave it to you to go find
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

You never know
Thursday, October 14, 2004 9:53 PM
The VB blog entry has gotten a lot of attention. I think that is the most comments of any blog entry I've written. Sometimes I write a blog and think "this will get a lot of comments" and it seems to be ignored. Other times I toss in a throw away
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Why not VB?
Thursday, October 14, 2004 10:49 AM
So here is a question for you. Especially for Java fans. Assume for a minute that you are asked to write a program for the Windows platform. What could you do in the Java language that you couldn't do in Visual Basic .NET? I can think of a couple of minor
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

It's ready
Wednesday, October 13, 2004 6:37 AM
The registration for Imagine Cup 2005 is now open. Are you ready to show the world what you're made of? This year is going to be the best year yet by far. There are more ways for more students to be involved then ever before. I really believe that this
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

What I have been up to
Tuesday, October 12, 2004 10:09 PM
Here is a picture of the corner of my bedroom. The wooden panels that come half way up the wall are wainscotting.It's all my wife's design. She gets a lot of ideas from TV shows but also from hotels at Disney World. She was influenced by their designers
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

This and that
Tuesday, October 12, 2004 2:49 AM
A couple of short items. [Robotics] Some of you may have noticed the conversation that Jeffrey Li (CanuckZ) and I have been having in the comments in my previous blog entry. For the last several years I have helped a robotics team at my old school.
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

More redecorating
Sunday, October 10, 2004 9:28 PM
I think we may give up for the time being on removing the pad. It looks like days and days of work. That is kind of sad because there is a nice hardwood floor under the pad. But we've decided to just replace the carpet for right now. That will at least
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Redecorating
Saturday, October 09, 2004 8:44 PM
I think I need to move every few years. I always found that after a couple of years an office of mine became too congested and messy for me to keep up. It used to be worse of course. When I left one job after 2 years about 25 years ago they joked that
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Internet Research
Saturday, October 09, 2004 2:20 AM
What happens when all the information in the world is online and everyone can get to it from their computer at hom eor work? Well one possibility is that missing people can be found. Interesting article here about a police detective who was able to identify
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Disruptive Technology
Thursday, October 07, 2004 11:59 PM
I was visiting a high school today and saw some teachers I used to work with. I said to the physics teacher “Hey, look at this.” And gave him a demo of the Physics Illustrator that is now in the Tablet PC power tools area. He sees the possibilities and
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Must Read Article
Thursday, October 07, 2004 9:08 PM
Information Week has a great article out that I highly recommend. In large part it is about the declining computer-science enrollments but it is also about the differences between a trade school and a university education. It is about how universities
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Yankees Win
Thursday, October 07, 2004 3:38 AM
7 to 6 and it went to 12 innings. Now I can go to  bed and sleep easy. Of course they have to win 2 more to go to the next round but that's ok.
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Funny Contest Blog
Wednesday, October 06, 2004 10:50 PM
I can't enter because I work for Microsoft so I don't lose anything by posting this. But maybe you will want to enter? Who knows!And besides, it's a very funny blog.
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Laptop Speakers
Wednesday, October 06, 2004 10:24 PM
I have a number of laptop computers in the house. Most of them have crummy speakers. OK I can live with that to some extent. After all there are limitations of size and cost. But seriously though the placement of some of them could be better. If I rest
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Bloggers under NDA
Wednesday, October 06, 2004 4:02 PM
Bloggers blog. I mean that is what they do right? They go to events, do things, learn things and then they tell people about it. Well Microsoft invited a bunch of bloggers to an event at Microsoft and made them sign an agreement not to talk about it.they
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

No ordinary guy
Tuesday, October 05, 2004 10:54 AM
Way back when I was about 16 I took a bicycle trip. A nice little trip from California to Delaware. For those of you who don't know that route let me just say that we rode an average of 100 miles a day for 31 days. So it was a good sized trip.I went with
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Wish they would get it right
Tuesday, October 05, 2004 12:25 AM
I just finished reading a book called The Bourne Supremacy. It’s a really good book. Different from the movie of course but really good. The only thing that keeps bothering me is that the author keeps having his characters use revolvers with silencers.
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Read and Excel file from a program
Sunday, October 03, 2004 8:00 PM
Taneem Ibrahim, one of our US Student Ambassadors, has a blog about reading an Excel file from a C# program. Good stuff. He's new to the Spoke BTW so make him feel welcome.
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Homecoming
Sunday, October 03, 2004 6:24 PM
I was back at the university where I did my undergraduate work this week end. It was Homecoming but I was not there for that. I am on the Computer and Systems Science department advisory board and we always meet during Homecoming weekend. The meeting
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Airport Wi-Fi
Sunday, October 03, 2004 5:54 AM
More and more airports are setting up wi-fi for a fee. The problem is that they charge too much. Generally I am going to have no more than an hour or two in an airport terminal. I’d have to have something important to send or receive to pay $7 to $10
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Information Overload
Saturday, October 02, 2004 2:41 AM
I went most of the day with no internet. So now I see that there are many blogs that have been updated. I have a huge number of emails to read, people keep instant messaging me, and a lot of the mail messages require me to read and evaluate documents.
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Comment your code
Friday, October 01, 2004 12:29 AM
A comment on my last blog asked “punch cards anyone?” It reminded me of one of my favorite examples of the value of commenting ones code. Way back when I was in college I wrote an interesting little graphical program in FORTRAN. A few years ago I decided
Read More

| |

posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 


 
03.UPDATE CALENDAR :
<October 2004>
SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
262728293012
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31123456

05.MY LINKS :

07.Subscriptions :

Subscriptions


© Copyright 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Terms of Use | Privacy Statement | Code of Conduct | Hosted by MaximumASP for Microsoft