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

March 2005 - Posts

Think you want to write a computer book?
Thursday, March 31, 2005 10:55 PM
Eric Gunnerson has a great article for people who think they may want to write a computer book. Eric has (and it is a good one) and knows what he's talking about. I've published a couple of textbooks and I wish I hadn't learned all the things in this
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

What language are you learning?
Thursday, March 31, 2005 1:31 AM
Interesting Computerworld article on programming language useage. The top 5 languages were: 72% C#    66% Java    62% Visual Basic     54% C++    50% JavaScript/ECMAScript As
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Trackbacks
Wednesday, March 30, 2005 12:41 PM
Stanley asks about trackbacks. Most of this is my comment to him. I am also doing a trackback to his blog so people can see what it looks like.A trackback is a URL that one pings to let the origional location know that it has been referenced. If you hit
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Think Week
Tuesday, March 29, 2005 4:36 PM
The Wall Street Journal has an article on Bill Gates' Think Week. Twice a year Bill Gates goes off by himself to a secluded cottage to read and think for a week. Most the the papers he reads are from Microsoft employees. ANy employee with an idea can
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New BlogCast
Tuesday, March 29, 2005 7:36 AM
Josh Blake introduces his latest blog cast here. This time Josh shows how to make non-rectangular forms using transparent bitmaps. It's actually fairly simple to do and Josh explains it without adding complexity. That's a gift if you ask me. All to many
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Packages in the mail
Monday, March 28, 2005 8:21 PM
Mostly what I get in regular mail is bills and junk mail. But packages? Packages are a whole different thing. Today when I got back from a school visit there were three packages waiting. Wow! Like Christmas. One package was for my wife. It was some
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Christ has risen
Sunday, March 27, 2005 3:27 PM
He has risen indeed!Easter - the most important day of the Christian year. I hope it is a good one for everyone. Know that God loves you and cares about you. And so to the best of my ability do I.
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Things to think about
Sunday, March 27, 2005 1:55 AM
Is computer science really a science?Is software engineering really engineering?Is programming a profession or a craft?
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

A Conversation
Friday, March 25, 2005 3:15 PM
You know, perhaps I’m too old or been around too long. I don’t “get” Linux.   Student: I want to use Linux because I have the source and can change it if I want. Me: So what qualifies you to make changes? Student:  It’s written in C and
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Blogging Conference in Singapore?
Thursday, March 24, 2005 11:12 PM
Someone in the US (Shel Israel) discovered that there is blogging going on in Singapore. He talks about it here. Those of us who are involved at theSpoke of course know there is a lot of blogging going on in Singapore. Still the idea that bloggers may
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Microsoft Visitor Center
Thursday, March 24, 2005 4:16 PM
Microsoft doesn't really give tours of the HQ campus. After all what is so interesting about a bunch of buildings with offices in them. OK they are more interesting than some buildings I've been in but really no big deal. Microsoft has has something that
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

How is it when things are bad?
Thursday, March 24, 2005 12:10 AM
It is important to know how a company treats its people when things are going well. But I think you realy get a sense of a companies values and culture when you see how people are treated when they have a problem. I've worked for some good companies in
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300 Names
Wednesday, March 23, 2005 9:30 PM
They upped the limit on the number of names you can have on your MSN Messenger buddy list. More information on that here. I can't imagine needing more than 150 names which was the old limit. But apparently there are a lot of people out there who know
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Disappointment
Tuesday, March 22, 2005 2:31 PM
Microsoft Research is running a symposium on social computing next month.  I've watched the tapes from last years event and there were a lot of good presentations. I was hoping to be able to be there in person this year. After all the presentations
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US Student Ambasador Program
Tuesday, March 22, 2005 2:22 AM
Eric has a couple of posts about the US Student Ambassador program here and here. The second post is almost begging to be Slashdotted. :-) These posts are on the MSDN Student Flash blog BTW. It is a group blog and tends to have a lot of interesting things
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

First Day of Spring
Sunday, March 20, 2005 4:31 PM
It's the first day of spring in New England. Palm Sunday as well. I spent some time this morning walking through the woods on snow shoes with my neighbor. It is hard to believe there is still so much snow on the ground. Parts of my yard, mostly where
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Who has more open software projects
Sunday, March 20, 2005 12:00 AM
Josh Ledgard has a great blog entry where he talks about shared source project by Microsoft employees. He provides links to a bunch of them. Take a look. Perhaps you'll find something useful and want to join the community around one of these projects
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Spring is coming!
Friday, March 18, 2005 10:56 PM
The other day I had to shovel a path through the snow so that the fuel oil guy could make a delivery. Under the snow I found daffodils trying to work their way up to the sun. Today I went out and uncovered as many as I could. There are a lot of them.
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Outlook hints and tips
Friday, March 18, 2005 6:40 AM
Allister Frost made a couple of videos on using Outlook 2003. If you use Outlook than you must go here and watch these videos. Allister has done a great job on these videos. If you use Outlook then watching these videos you will learn ways to make yourself
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Talking Police Cars
Thursday, March 17, 2005 4:53 PM
Police cars tend to have a lot of equipment these days. Radio, lights, radar, the list goes on and on. This can be a confusing mess and trying to operate this stuff while driving a car can be a risky situation. So the University of New Hampshire has been
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Call to the creative
Thursday, March 17, 2005 3:03 PM
Now here is a chance to get creative in a different way. As many of you know the Visual Gaming event uses "tissues" which are the maze that the nano robots have to move through. There is a contest for people to create their own tissues that can be usd
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Microsoft and the School of the Future
Wednesday, March 16, 2005 1:23 AM
Interesting article about Microsoft and the work we are doing to help create a school of the future in Philadelphia. I know just about all the Microsoft people the article quotes. Always fun to see people you know in the news.In any case I really
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Blog Aggregator from MSN
Tuesday, March 15, 2005 12:29 AM
Have you seen the experimental web based blog reader from MSN? It is at www.start.com/1/ It has a bunch of links that you can add automatically to connect with some of the top blogs and other RSS feeds on the Internet.There is an interesting looking bookmark
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

A Walk in the Woods
Monday, March 14, 2005 10:32 AM
It snowed again yesterday. We've had a lot of snow this month so far. It's really quite amazing actually. Most of my yard is covered in snow that ranges from a foot and a half to over 2 feet deep. That's a lot for this time of the year. We often see that
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

An HTTP Detective Story
Sunday, March 13, 2005 4:48 AM
I found this story on the Internet Explorer blog. If you have ever or ever do plan to write a secure web application you should read it. In fact if you are just wondering about what sorts of things SP2 broke you should read this story. The short version.
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Windows Embedded Student Challenge
Friday, March 11, 2005 8:29 PM
If you are involved in the Windows Embedded Student Challenge (or just interested in Windows CE and similar projects) there is now a wiki for that contest. The wiki is here:  http://windowschallengewiki.cti.depaul.edu/
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Looking for Microsoft Blogs?
Friday, March 11, 2005 2:55 PM
Microsoft runs a portal site where Microsoft employees register their blogs. When a Microsoft person updates their blog this site shows an update. It lists the last several Microsoft blogs updated. You can do to the next page to browse through more recent
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Internet searches and blogs
Thursday, March 10, 2005 10:45 PM
One of the things that my MSN Spaces site lets me do is look at the referer logs. In other words I can see what links bring people to the blog. So if you hit the link on my blog here I will see that someone visited my Spaces blog from that link. It is
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

VB 6 v. VB .NET
Thursday, March 10, 2005 1:58 AM
Developers Petition Microsoft To Continue Support For VB6I'm of two minds about this. When I first found out what was involved in converting programs from VB 6 to VB .NET I was not a happy camper. I got over it mainly because I did not have a lot of large
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Are bloggers journalists?
Wednesday, March 09, 2005 6:51 AM
Are bloggers journalists? Does it matter? It does in the US where journalists have protections and rights that the normal citizen does not. This is currently at issue as Apple Computer is suing some bloggers to get access to information. (News article
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Snowboarding
Tuesday, March 08, 2005 6:36 PM
If you really want to see me riding my snowboard there is a video here. It's big so have a high speed line. :-)
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

I need a new avatar
Monday, March 07, 2005 4:58 PM
I was never completly happy with using a picture of myself as my avatar here. It's really sort of boring. Some people have cute cartoon images of themselves (I like Andrey's for example) but I lack the talent to draw one myself. Other people have interesting
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Home Sweet Home
Sunday, March 06, 2005 3:30 PM
I was away from home for 11 days between work and vacation. I missed my wife the most of course. But I also missed just being home. So here I sit in my cozy little home office and it feels good. I've got a lot to write about from my trip but that will
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Snowboarding Pictures
Thursday, March 03, 2005 7:15 AM
By popular request (one person) here is a picture of me snowboarding today.I have video but that will have to wait until I have high speed as it is a 4mb file.Here is a picture of my son doing a jump as an extra bonus picture.
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Email vs Vacation
Thursday, March 03, 2005 2:08 AM
On average it appears that I am recieving 100+ email messages a day while I am on vacation. That means that if I leave them all until I return I would be facing 800-900 messages next Monday. Frankly that scares me. So like an idiot (or a dedicated employee
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Having too much fun to blog
Wednesday, March 02, 2005 6:01 AM
DUring the day (usually on chairlifts riding up the hill) I think about things to blog. But to be honest my day is so full and I am so tired at the end of it that a real blog entry will have to wait. But I will have pictures like this one of me at the
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