So I'm rapidly running out of space on my Media Drive....

Think I'm going to buy an old rack from Work and then rack mount my media centre and get some XBox 360s as extenders...

This looks good for a storage device

http://www.excaliberpc.com/Norco_12-bay_Hot-swap_3U_Rackmount/DS-1210/partinfo-id-568570.html

Might try and get one when I'm in the US next week.....

Bored of red.....

Time to try yellow....

A couple of goodies from both camps

http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/getamac/apple-getamac-security_480x376.mov

and

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2006031,00.html

“I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.”

http://www.zune.net/en-us/meetzune/software.htm Great that it's released now rather than further towards launch. My Zune should be at the office waiting for me to collect... I shall blog my experiences later.

So I am running Vista Ultimate at home with Dual Tuners and all that Jazz.

I was recently asked to post a bit about how I feed my PC with TV Shows.

I use Azureus to download shows via BitTorrent.

In order to queue up the shows I use an RSS Feed scanner

I have tried a few but my fave is http://azureus.sourceforge.net/plugin_details.php?plugin=scanerss

Then for the feeds I prefer to use the prefiltered feeds.

I just have a single feed setup.... from here: http://www.tvrss.net/feeds/
I just use the unique feed.

Then I setup filters inside ScaneRSS. This simply watches for shows I like (Boston Lega, Prison Break etc....) and adds them to my queue when they appear in the feed.

There is now a *little* bit of New Zealand data available on http://local.live.com

Still no street names for all the streets... but we're getting there.

There is also now a lugin for Outlook. http://outlook.local.live.com that looks quite snazzy.

DarrylB has blogged about all the new Betas being available.

I kinda knew this announcement was coming and so I've been geting organised for a Massive Dogfooding Weekend.

I'm going to make the switch from XP/Office 2003 to Vista and Office 12.

It's gonna be excitng and a bit scary.

I'll probably also lok at switching my Tablet PC to Vista and my Media Center PC to Vista really soon too.

We use VOIP for all our commnications at home. We run through our Asterisk server @ work.

Not really something you'd expect most peopole to be able to do.

Now we've got something more exciting o the horizon.

From Techpac this morning...

“

Get 6 devices in one: • ADSL2 Modem • Router w/ Firewall • Wireless-G Access Point • VPN Concentrator • 4-Port Switch • PLUS! • 2-Line VoIP adapter

Plus it includes instructions on how to pre-register your router for a local NZ regional phone number and VoIP service – submit your details now and your router will be ready for an exciting new voice service due for launch in July!
”

Guess I'll be looking at getting one. Hopefully it'll just work with any SIP or IAX VOIP service.

”

Media company CanWest MediaWorks (NZ) Ltd. (MWL.NZ) said Friday

it has reached an agreement with two other broadcasting networks to deliver free-to-air

satellite-based digital television services in New Zealand.

The New Zealand-based company, which is 70% owned by Canada's largest media group

CanWest Global Communications Corp. (CWG), said it has agreed with Broadcast

Communications Ltd. and Television New Zealand to negotiate the installation of a full

transponder on the Optus D1 satellite.

“

W00t!.....

Buy Apple stock now!

This is great news!
Get the goodies here:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/apr/05bootcamp.html

Very cool. No more paging... just one long scrollbar....

I love the new image search too.

I'm just about to become a permanent switcher!

http://www.live.com

WPF will be supported on Media Center AND will be remoted out to XBox 360 and other Media Center Extenders.

Lot's of exciting new changes for MCE Vista- but none that have not been announced already.

So to recap- two ways of extending MCE

1. Media Center UI Langauge of sme sort (what MCE team use to buildtheir UI)

2. WPF

Showed MCE RSS Client Platform Sample- will be available as surce in SDK. Lot's of 3D. Think it's using the MCE UI language-but looks just like WPF- i.e. gratuitous Video projected on 3D surfaces.

Showed Electric Red Nascar portal. Uses WPF- very rich. Very cool. One of the best WPF demos so far. Lots of Video.

Have a ListView demo... where the List View Items are full figure driver cut outs! Yee Haaa! [I have a photo of the screen which I will try to post later]

Are you soo over Channel 9, take a lok at what's on 10 instead.... it's even got hot chicks....

I had a great dicussion with my bank manager the other day- wen't something like:

CA: I need to be able to see the statment of account for my on call forex electronically via internet banking.

BM: We can't do that- you should use desk bank, our $30+ a month 'business' product.

CA: Hmmm... that feels like daylight robery... but do tell me more. Does it work over the internet.

BM: Well, sort of, you use a modem to dial into it.

CA: WTF!?! I thought modems went out long ago. I don't even have a phone line.

And so it is. We do not have analog telephone lines at all in Wellington. At the office we have a VOIP PABX (an Asterisk Linux Box) and attached to this we have some SIP phones. At home I am getting TelstraClear cable turned on (they now let you have the internet without a phoneline which is a darn lot better than Telecom) and we'll setup a VPN tunnel to the office and attach a SIP phone off the PABX at home too. We already have a great VPN tunnel; running between our ISA servers in Dunedin and Wellington and we are going to put an Asterisk box at the Dunedin end so that we can VOIP out onto the University or Otago phone network- we have a number of on campus customers. We are alos doing A LOT of Skype calling- several of our customers now use it as their primary communication mechanism with us- we can have multi party phone conferences, for 90 minutes, for FREE!

We're also really taking advantage of MSN Messenger a heap more now. We use the Remote Assistance feature for pairs based programming at a distance.

Other cool things that we are doing include using MS Virtual Server to run a number of our key servers- the real benefit for us is the ability to scale up more easily without doing a full rebuild each time. Just pick up the required server images and drop them on a new box.

So a lot of this stuff really excites me at the moment. I'm talking with a number of customers and friends about how this can help their business too. Finally we're looking at some new business opportunities that take advantage of all this stuff.

Exciting times ahead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV1WGDW37c0&search=project%20origami

Origami Goodness!

So we've beengetting really disruptive with ur technology recently. Lots of VOIP and MSN for collaborative work.

We've now got a US number that VOIP through to us. I'm going to do a big post smetime soon on how we're putting together our collaboration platform, but for now, you can call me on

+1 425 296-6726

My dad got me a Grillslinger for Xmas.

I was SOOOOO excited..... used a fair few times already.

I know one person who REALLY needs one of these to go with his new setup.

OK.... so wiffle has ben living in Wellywood for the past six months. Of course I am lonely... and of course we text each other a lot.

I hope her new phone supports Blouetooth becase I might buy here 'The Toy'...

“The Toy is a hi-tech vibrating bullet. Connected to a mobile phone with Bluetooth it becomes an intimate, silent connection between two lovers, regardless of distance. Custom designed for your pleasure, it is intelligent, sophisticated and invented for bliss.

The Toy is worn internally, linked to a mobile phone and controlled by sms text messages sent to the phone. Once read, the message is transported automatically to The Toy, which turns it into vibrations - with a huge range of movements, depending on what you have written. Just say what you feel, The Toy will do the rest.”

Via DPF

OK.... so I have reached my first milestone!

Today, for the third weigh in in a row, I registered under 105kg- 104.2 to be exact.

As a result I have earnt my new gadget. Fortunatly my credit card billing period ticked over last night...... so I both deserved it and could afford to buy it!

Haven't had a good play with it yet... but look out for some nice charts of my progress on here real soon.

Details from the WWDC Keynote here.

Will be SWEET to dual boot an x86 with Longhorn and MacOS X :-)

"Every release of Mac OS X has been compiled for both PowerPC and Intel . This has been going on for the last five years"

Grab some Silica gel sachets (the ones that come with pretty much every item shipped out of china these days). Dry them in the oven, store them in a ziplock back.

When you pack your housing, chuck one or two inside. Leave the housing for half an hour... Wammo- dry air in housing == no condensation.

I've only ever had one composite lay up helmet and that was a home made glass/carbon jobbie I built away back in about 97. But when I found that Grateful Heads were flicking seconds stock on EBay for 1/2 price I snapped one up. I'm not sure what denotes a cosmetic second but I couldn't for the life of me find anything whatsoever wrong with it. Arguably there may, just may, possibly, if examined with a magnifying glass, be sme dry spots on one side... but they took several minutes of finding. The helmet is Red/Black marbled color- it looks cool. Feels really stabe on my head, the fitting system is good, nothing fancy, but good. The layup seems pretty strng but I still reckong I'd go for the heavier layup in a creeking helmet. I got the bird shape which is a Snyder design with a slight peak at the front. Looks cool even on my fat head. THe helmet has not drainage holes but the liner pretty well seals off when on your head- still wouldn't want to be in a foot pin swimmer situation wearing it though. A nice thing about the lack of drainage holes is you can use the helmet a as adrinking vessel!

Shipping to NZ was reasonable and Julie from Rain and Snow was really helpful in that she transshipped my IR Shorty Cag with the helmet to save $$$. Next time I think I'd buy a few and bring em over for frinds. All in all a great lid- it's got a few scratches already.

I'm not sure about others but those 'As Seen On TV' products scare me. ANything that requires resort to those sorts of markting tactics can't be any good... right? WRONG! My lovely wife and I received a George Foreman Grill as a wedding present. At first we were like what do we want with yet another electric powere kitchen appliance. The funny thing is that we've yet to actually take it off the bench and put it away in the cupboard. It is literally used for almost every single meal.

So why is it so good?  Obviously the fact that all the fat runs off is a great thing for weight and health but for me the biggest thing is the speed I can cook at on it. Because both the top and bottom plate are heated you can cook in under 1/2 the time you would usually. The non stick surface is flawless and cleans easily- I've done about 30 meals on it an no signs of peeling or bubbling.

Not sure how much it cost but I honestly think it's the best investment a busy health concious person could make.

Darryl B (another NZ based mobile MVP) has noted that my fave travelling PC, a Panasonic Toughbook CF18 Tablet, has made it onto the MobilePC Mag top 100 gadgets.

It really is a great device... you can haul it around airports and hotels ino or out of its bag. It is small- a bit heavy but not at all bad. Rugged as hell.

Mistress Dirtbag... of Twisted Radio Fame has her latest vibrator review up......

OK... so I've been spending a bit of time working on infrastructural things over the past few weeks and I've come upon an interesting phenomenon that I shall call the 'Shitty Linux Box Firewall Phenomenon'.

It can be described thus:

For some reason it seems that a broad group of technical people subscribed to the Linux box as a firewall approach to internet security. Now this is probably not an altogether bad thing- we're running a software on OS firewall here too. But, they seem to think that because Linux can run on the smell of an oily rag, their firewall should be run on the smell of an oily rag. e.g. 'Oh we keep a whole heap of old hardware floating around for when we install firewalls at customer premises'.

What's with this. If you value your network connectivity, and judging by the expletives bandied around here at our currently shitty pipe most people do, then you want your firewall to be running on your best hardware, not your worst.

A firewall (particularly a software one) represents an pretty risky single point of failure for your network. It's not like you can just ring up Cisco or Watchguard and ask for a forward replacement when it shits itself. So why run it on shitty gear! I ain't got no problem with the concept of Linux as a firewall but put it on a decent box- ideally something with redundancy such that you can swap out a decent chunk of the machine without turning it off. Things like hot swap power supplies and Raid 1 with a hotspare drive.

Anyway rant over.

http://www.techpaq.co.nz/techbyte/2004_September/TP_IngramMicro_Acquisition.pdf

We are pleased to announce that Ingram Micro Inc. (NYSE: IM), the worlds largest technology distributor, has entered into an agreement to acquire Tech Pacific and combine our companies to better serve you and the Asia Pacific region.

Lot's of peeps (incl Bill and Julia) are having kittens over CC's /tabletWeb article. Doesn't really do it for me to be honest (well not like his other articles do)- been living the smart client dream for too long now. The web is soooo last decade for LOB applications- and I don't see ink as a mass market web thing for a helluva long time yet).

But, Casey also posts on some other gadgets he is looking at playing with and it reads somewhat like my list at the momnt.

Media Center Edition - Tried it (got a nice eval pack from MVP summit) but couldn't get MCE to play nice with NZ TV freqs so moved my box to Beyond TV (www.snapstream.com)/ Love it! Couldn't live without it now. means I can cut the time it takes me to watch the 6pm news down to about 20 minutes... AND... I am no longer bound by the TV to be home @ 6pm. It is the complete shiznit!

Personal Media Center- Much like casey I don't want one till I can write code for it. I was kinda pissy when I found out from the PMC team that they were keeping it closed :-( Had visions of writing a cute little video editor to work with my Mini DV cam- pity they don't have firewire too...

SPOT - No SPOT coverage here in NZ (yet!?!) but that ain't gonna stop me getting one as soon as the SDK ships. What I really want is for the Suunto N6 to allow me to code against the HRM and Altimieter in managed code... man I could have some serious fun working something up with those and some mappoint foo.... *salivates* There is defn. an SDK coming though Casey! You should email me and I'll tell you who to talk to to make sure you get a copy!

Telematics- Computer in car... erm... I've ummed and ahhed about a computer MP3 plyer etc... for some time but haven't got the $$$ to justify it atm. Currently I just take my Tablet PC (Toughbook CF18) in and use that with my GPS.

This one goes out to Mr Jogle..... Hope King Kong provides the goods to let you have one of these- you can send me your 10D body if you get one :-)

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0408/04081909canon_eos20d.asp

Canon has today revealed the EOS 20D, the eight megapixel successor to the EOS 10D. The new sensor is however only half the story the EOS 20D has a slightly smaller and lighter body, a brand new 9-point AF system, near instant power on time, 5 frames per second continuous shooting, support for EF-S digital lenses, true RAW+JPEG, a B&W mode and USB 2.0. In total we've counted approximately 30 noteworthy improvements on the EOS 20D. Naturally we have a detailed eleven page hands-on preview of the EOS 20D and will have sample images available in a few days time. Price on the street around US$1,500.

*Now if they'd only get around to putting a proper 35mm Sensor in their 35mm bodies (at the prosumer level) we could all have proper wide angle photos!

[Update]

Best (cheapest reputable) place to buy this in Aus/NZ is funnily enough my local camera shop. www.jonathans.co.nz

You know, that funky search tool that Microsoft just purchased....

get it here

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=09b835ee-16e5-4961-91b8-2200ba31ea37&displaylang=en

When pretty much everything sounds fantastic... Trance sounds the most fantastic...

We drew the curtains and darkened the room. Justin played for hours. Dreamily I would once in a while say things like, "Could you do the 2nd Area again? That's my favorite."

After many of my langorous gasps and moans, we stopped playing, and tried to analyze the gameplay experience. "I don't know exactly what the game designers intended with that trance vibrator thing - but it had to be this, right?"

http://www.gamegirladvance.com/archives/2002/10/26/sex_in_games_rezvibrator.html

OK so Scoble has been blogging about media center so I thinough I'd post some of my experiences getting my Media box all set up.

He asks what do we think?

Well I think that like him I'll be waiting till the next version which looks REALLY cool. Saw plenty of stuff about it @ The MVP summit... but if I told you I'd have to kill you.

So anyway.. wearing my hat I got the chance to eval Media Center 2004... but living down here in lil old New Zealand we don't have any settings in the MCE program guide for our country which meant I couldn't even get the channels to tune :-( I did spend about 7 hours trying to get it going though!

So... I'm waiting for the next version which should be released here to.

In the mean time I have taken the MCE remote that I was sent and coupled it with a couple of other bits of software to build a TV only solution.

I'm using:

• Snapstream Beyond TV to run the TV side of things and;
• Girder to run the remote control against Snapstream.

I have found a NZ TV listings site that is another 'tell you, kill you' sort of deal... but now I have pretty much everything I want in a Media box for the moment. Namely the ability to reduce the time I have to commit to watching the 6pm News from 1hr to about 20 minutes.

The Snapstream setup is pretty cool. Has a web interface for queuing sngs so all the crew here @ Kognition can queue up programs they want to watch and then pick them up over firewire onto their notebooks on the way home each day. I've got a Hauppauge PVR 250 tuner card which is just great. Snapstream have a MCE version of their application that supports movies and pictures and MP3s coming soon so maybe I'll change to that if MCE is still a wee way off. Snapstream also allows easy downsampling of recorded shows automagically into Pocket PC format! Now if I had to commute to work that would be just WIKKID!

Anyway.... the TV box is great- one of the guys I work with called it 'the coolest tech toy I've seen this year'... I'm inclined to agree.

When I get time I like to do the odd bit of DJing... Lukas has pointed to his sets from his radio show hosted @ Twisted. I also have some sets hosted at twisted... Listen to them here...

This looks pretty cool....

Weedshare is a file sharing system with a paid component that benefits both artists and the people who shared the file.... and REAL money too. 50% for the artists and also money for the sharers up three levels.

Looks VERY cool...uses windows media for the DRM.

I'm gonna start by taking a look at this guy....
http://www.weedtunes.com/index.php/a/av/artist/59

Always one for a bargain, I decided to plunk down some dollars and give cellular callback a go. If you're not familiar with the concept here's roughly how it goes.

You initiate a call by making a request of a service centre... you do this by either using a piece of software if you are on your PC, or by txt messaging the number you want to call to a certain short code or phone number. Here's the slide deck...

The 'system' then rings you back on your mobile and, once you answer, rings the other party to the conversation for you... A few hoops to jump through, but, talk about CHEAP phone calls. US 5c per 30 seconds to all of the major countries.... and that's from your mobile. Voice quality is excellent- if it's using VOIP it's certainly not problematic for quality.

It's sold via some pyramid scheme, but, to be honest it makes for cheap phone calls so it got my $$$. Come join my pyramid- http://www.1cellnet.com/cauld - well it's not a pyramid it some other sort of cell based, unlimied level paying... blah blah blah.... I've never been much of a fan of multilevel marketing (Away and all that garb) but it does make for cheap airtime, something I go through a lot of! Hopefully I might be able to move down a Vodafone Daytime minutes plan or two.... I think @ US10c per minute it works out just under 50% of the normal Vodafone price per minute.

Lukas is blogging about the new Smartphones coming from Motorola.

He seems to have missed/forgotten/misplaced the MPx double clamshell phone- does he know something I don't? Dale Coffing had one of these @ the MVP Summit... Maybe it's becuase it looks to be becoming a a Windows Mobile SE Pocket PC device????

Not my kettle of fish to be honest... I'm think the MPX100 will be my sort of style... I'm a phone functionalty first kinda guy.

P.S. Get comments on ya Blog Lukas!

Ingo Rammer and a few others are getting into the skype thing.

I wonder if they know that there is a Pocket PC version available yet.... now this is the killer app... mobile VOIP!

Nick and some of the Auckland DNUG crew went out for paintball today.... kinda reminded me to post my photos (and some words) about my fun with guns while in the US o' A earlier in the month.

I arrived in Seattle early for the MVP summit so my buddies and I decided to head out for some pistol shooting. We went to Wades Gunshop on Bel-Red Road, just down the road from the Redmond Campus. We hired a lane, paid our $12 for free range over the whole gun cabinet and set about firing every calibre they had bar one (the 500 Magnum which looked more like a handheld cannon).

We shot

• .22LR
• .38
• .357 Magnum
• 9mm
• .40
• .45

I think my favourite part of the day was emptying the whole clip (only 10 rounds these days) of a Glock Model 23 .40 cal pistol at 20 yards. Kinda makes you yearn to be an American and frightened to death of becoming so at the same time.

All in all it was a really fun day- I even wore my special g33k with a big handgun T-Shirt.

This lengthy article runs through, in some detail, the process the Sports Illustrated uses to get their digital photos from the field to production.