OK... so the fundamenta principle of agency is that someone else endeavours on your behalf.

Such it is with travel agents. We are in an increasigly agent hostile world but I still get HUGE value out of using my agent- he thinks the way I think- craftily!

Here is todays clever piece of work.

I'm booking a round the world fare for next month- easiest way to hit LAS,SJC,FAR,SIN in the space of two weeks.

On the way back I'm stoping in Syndey and maybe Brisbane. The agent is like:

“As we have miles left you could use.....we could call Wellington a stop on the way back to Auckland or Christchurch...ie: BNE-WLG-AKL For the cost of the ticketable taxes (about $19) you'd get a flight from Wellington to either Auckland or Christchurch.....this would be date changeable and valid for up to a year from when we issue the ticket.

Which do you want? (AKL OR CHC?)”

I had forgotten that it was bike to work day. As I rode from the Gym (Thorndon) to the Office (Willis St) I stumbled upon the free breakfast (well the end of it) @ Civic Square.

Anyway- IU've got right back into riding to work having shifted to Wellington. Fuel is too expensive, m car drinks it (Turbo Subaru), and I'm really liking my new bike.

I think that Phil is keen for a Makara Peak MTB ride soon. So, if you are keen for a bike ride in WLG post a comment here and we should all heahis weekend sometime.

So I'm just about fully confirmed for my Trip to MIX06. If you have been on another planet recently you may have missed out on learning that MIX is a conference about the next generation of the Web. MSFT are sponsoring/organising it, but it's gonna be really different to most other MS cons from what I can see.

I'm going there with anoter NZ ISV who I'm doing some architecture and strategy consulting with at the moment. We're going to hit the Game Developers Conference in San Jose on the ame trip so it's gonna be a CRAZY week.

There is a good http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=156677 that sets out some of the things that are going to be covered @ MIX.

It's kinda exciting for me because I've kind of eschewed 'the web' for the past few years and I've focused on Smart Clients. Funnily enough I wrot some of the first bits of published work on the sort of tenology that is now know as AJAX/ATLAS etc... (see my chapters in Practical XML For The Web)

I know I'm sure as hell looking orward to being part of the conversation.... be sure to keep a look out for my red shoes in Vegas. Come and say hi!

Oh... I'll be in Singapore the following week (Vista stuff)... so keep an eye out for the Red Shoes there too.....Gonna be some serious bum in a plane seat time put in over those to weeks!

A few days ago I blogged about Zen Presentation skills.

Here is a GREAT example of it in action. About 15 mins long. I really encourage you all to watch it. Good content too

While we're not strictly a XP dev shop, we occasionally do a bit of pairs programming to nut out difficult problems or when we are doing performance optimisation. Because we now have offices in Dunedin and Wellington this may need to be done remotely. Over the last couple of days I have spent quite a bit of time working on some SQL optimisation with our SQL Server guy and frankly, the remote approach is just about better than really being there. We've ben using Skype for voice and MSN Messenger 8 Remote Assistance to allow me to view and control his desktop. It really is rather good.

We could probably use MSN for voice instead, but, we didn't find the quality quite as good as Skype.

I reckon this is about the ultimate approach to pairs proigramming. It affords each dev their own machine and you also get yor own personal space- I remeber at a previous employer ho much I disliked helping one colleague who would just spend the whole time noisily chewing gum in your ear.

I'm not sure if MSN Assistance is firewall capable yet- we have an ISA Server in both WLG and DUD and a VPN tunnel means that it appears we are on the same network (thanks WIC and FX for the fast backbone). But frankly it makes the whole concept of pair programming just about doable from a logistical point of view.

I've just listened to Adam Cogan on Dot Net Rocks.

Adam talks about his cool rule enforcement applications for VS.Net and SQL.

You also get to find out that he takes his whole team (30 odd people) to a beach house once a year and they all get up and go for runs @ 6:30am..... Now there is an idea! It's a great DNR episode and it gives some great insight into why Adam is able to run such a tight development ship.

Listening on some new headphones that I just got. I find my Sennheiser HD25 muffs a bit uncomfortable for use at the office so I got some cheapish ($120 vs $600 for HD25) Sennheiser phones- HD465. They are open ear designs- i.e. they just sit as flat pads on your ears so REALLY comfortable.

Well. For the last few months I've pretty much fallen off the face of the Earth blogging wise. A few reasons:

1. We've been working really hard.
   We've been polishing off some product development which means that we've had to work hard on both the product and ensuring that we remain profitable and able to pay the bills.
2. I've shifted to Wellington
   So we've now opened a Wellington Office. Will post some piccies soon. This has meant some reasonable time spent geting stuff organised. Yesterday we got the ISA boxes at each end talking to each other. It's really cool so I now have a Dunedin IP subnet and a Wellington IP subnet and we can route between them over a L2TP over IPSec tunnel. Means I am getting 15ms pings from WLG to DUD- it really is just like being there.
3. I've been putting in some good gym time
   Been doing a lot of Spinning at the Gym which is really kicking the BF% down. Have paired back the weights for the last wee while but I'm going to kick it back up again soon.
4. MTBing.
   I'm back riding a mountain bike quite a bit again. Riding to work most days too. Got a nice 2nd hand Specialized Epic Pro on eBay that I picked up in Vancouver last month.

I'll blog a bit more detail on some of these things over the next wee while. But anyway- going to make a real effort to blog more 'cos I've been slack.

OH! And if you haven't already noticed I tend to majorly over use hyphens- not sure why- I just do. I've found someone elase who does too! I'm reading Robert Fisk's book on the Middle East at the moment- he apostrophises too... will post a detailed review on the book once I've finished. It is heavy going but very interesting.

A blog tyhat I had not come across before floated through my inbox this morning. A good post comparing the Zen style of Apple with the somewhat noisy style of MSFT. It's a good post- design and hipness has never been a strong point for MS.

http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/11/the_zen_estheti.html

Anyway. A good blog if you are a regular presenter (or are trending toward becoming one...)

Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation now have Go Live licenses.

Beta 2 of WF was released to the public today and it's got some great changes.

Make sure that you head to http://www.windowsworkflow.net/ to pick it up.

Make sure that you also grab the Hands on Labs from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=5DF74E3B-FB51-4A94-A11D-DFF70288A8BB&displaylang=en

These give worked examples of almost all the key functionality in Windows Workflow Foundation. The team @ Kognition have spent the last month or so re-working and re-building these labs for Beta2.

My favourite of the labs is #10. We provide a fully worked example showing how to

1. Host the WF Designer in your own application
2. Set properties on your workflow activites at design time- including showing you how easy it is to do activity binding in your own designer.
3. Save and compile the workflows
4. Run the workflow

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.

Well.... I had high hopes... but unfortunatly ViewTrip is HOPELESS...

When you download to your calendar (using some shitty 3rd party app rather than plain old vCal entries) it does everything in a single timezone.

Thus I am flying SFO-YVR before I even start on my WLG-AKL-SFO leg of the journey. What a HEAP of SHIT.

The useless inert nothing who devised this shitty implementation would be fired on the spot from my software org. I mean that's just hopeless.... how hard would it be to do this properly with plain old vCal entries.

Sheesh!

Looks like Rod is travelling shortly too.

I'm off to TechReady2 in the US (a big MSFT internal conference) to present on Windows Workflow Foundation. Leaving Friday. Spending a few extra days there... may go skiing if the weather is great and I'm not feeling too poor!

Anyway, I was about to fill in my Iteinerary into Outlook- which is a royal PITA and started my usual bleet about how airlines should send me vCal entries for all my flights and shit. Then I remembered that my friendly travel agent (Toby Mann @ Edinburgh Way FLight Center in Dunedin who is FANTASTIC) had sent me some details about this thing called ViewTrip. It turns out that Rod was thinking exactly the same thing at the same time....

ViewTrip talks directly to Galileo which is a big trave agent booking system and contans all your itinerary information along with the ability to d/l to your calendar. Marvelous!

See a sample here it includes rental cars and hotels and all that crap.... VERY cool!

From the FAQ:

11.  What information is transferred from the ViewTrip itinerary to my electronic calendar?

Confirmed air segments will transfer as appointments into your calendar. Car and Hotel segments will transfer as events into your calendar. These appointments and events can be opened for further reservation segment details.