There is this old lady @ my gym who wears entirely nasty gym gears... then I found ths picture in a shop in the Venetian in Vegas... I sooo thought of her. I've attached some of the other cool poster pics too.

So I sent Friday night and Saturday morning in Grand Forks, ND. I was visitig a custer and we went out Friday night t watch some COllege Hockey. It is amazing how much Americans are 'into' their College sport. Grnad Forks (popn. about 50k) has a $120 million Hockey Stadium. My customer has season tickets, front row right behid the goal.

We had a real blast. It was the finals for the Western Region.

1st game was Holy Cross vs University of Minnesota (the Gophers). THe Gophers were higly rated but were beaten in extra time. THis was like North Otago beating Auckland for the Ranfurly Shield. Of curse, North Dakotans are not great fans of the Gophers so the stadium went totally nuts.

2nd game was the home side, the might Sioux playing Michigan. They thrashed them.

Here are some photos and videos of the game.

The stadium

The Cheerleading Skating Chicks With Nice Legs.... and the inside of the stadium

I trotted off to the LVM site to get myself some 'oh I hate travelling' whitewater fix video... I get there and find that one of the key guys behind Penstock Productions, Daniel DeLaVergne, was killed by a train (8 March). I've only known Daniel via email... but this is a real bummer- one of those nasty twists of fate.

The one where the family are shacked up in he plush house txting each other n their mobiles because they're too busy listening to their iPods and too fat and lazy to walk across the room?

Well... the house is a $700k+ plus in Epsom and that lovely stainless fridge in the background is worth over $4000. Yes, we have truely entered the age of 'Welfare for Everyone'.

http://www.rodneyhide.com/index.php/weblog/welfare_comes_to_the_leafy_suburbs/

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

Kiwis have a long history of paying too much for Aussie companies- Ansett and AAPT are the best examples.

I think with the TradeMe/Fairfax deal we might just get one back.

While TradeMe is no lemon (the others arguably were) I really struggle to see how they can justify the price they paid.

If you stack it against even the exorbitant per connection fees pad during the electricity market de-regulation it just seems out of whack. Does anyone know how Fairfax proposes to grow their investment? Into Australia, maybe, but certainly I see ver little opportunity for growth beyond that- even Aus will be hard work.

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]

They're now havinga session for we mortals who were not invited to SPARK to tell us about what they discussed...

Was designed to examine the future of architecture (Past 2 years, next 3 years)

How do we integrate Web 2.0 with SOA? What are the conflicts?
How do we take the rapid dev, rapid change nature into corporate dev?

Talking about differences between consumer space and enterprise space.

So I'm about 1/2 way through he first day @ Mix.

Highlights thus far have been the session on Live.com stuff. Funnily enough I've meen luke warm on this for a while and as having ust that conversation with some other kiwis last week.

But, it's looking like it'll have great potential- great stuff to be done with MSN Messenger especially- I need to port my WF sample to use MSN Bos real soon.

Downsides thus fa have been not a lot more detail on WF- still getting Max and the Northface demos trotted out... which are all like sooo last year.  guess we'll have to do some realy cool stuff soon to show it off!

Currently in the WPF/E project below are some random notes.

WPF/E

Subset of WPF
CTP Q3 200
RTW First Haf 2007
Uses Javascript and Markup
Looks VERY ikely that they'll suport at least Safari and Mozilla (supports Netscape plugin model)
Will support 'object tag' type tag packaginng including compiled .NET IL code
Device support late 2007
Plugin currently 200k no dependency on WinFX
Also suports displaying a special WPF/E file tye

Showed some of the Northwave content
- THe rotatig jacket model

So I'm about 1/2 way through he first day @ Mix.

Highlights thus far have been the session on Live.com stuff. Funnily enough I've meen luke warm on this for a while and as having ust that conversation with some other kiwis last week.

But, it's looking like it'll have great potential- great stuff to be done with MSN Messenger especially- I need to port my WF sample to use MSN Bos real soon.

Downsides thus fa have been not a lot more detail on WF- still getting Max and the Northface demos trotted out... which are all like sooo last year.  guess we'll have to do some realy cool stuff soon to show it off!

Currently in the WPF/E project below are some random notes.

WPF/E

Subset of WPF
CTP Q3 200
RTW First Haf 2007
Uses Javascript and Markup
Looks VERY ikely that they'll suport at least Safari and Mozilla (supports Netscape plugin model)
Will support 'applet' tpe tag packacng including compiled .NET IL code

Gave WPF/E Demo (using NorthFace Content)

-Rotating Jacket  (using a DHTML slider and avascript to talk to XAML ject)
- The breathable jacket animation
-Video player

Firefox not smoke and mirrors- showed a demo of it running in Mozilla and on Safari!

[UPDATE]
- Are prepared t make WPF/E available to ship with Firefox
- Are commited to there being a Linux version of WPF/E 

[Another Update]
- Yes that does mean IL code running on Mac and Linux (obviously not the whole framework though)
- More to be announced @ the keyote tommorow (Tue AM PST)

The Airlineshave done a GREAT job of driving down the cost of flying. Particularly trans tasman, the fares are not really well priced.

Can't say the same for the stinking governemnts and monopolistic airports. $226 of taxes!!!!! Is it any wonder that all the major airports in NZ seem to have been doing themselves up of late- monopoly rents if ever there was an example.

Traveller details booking help Here is your itinerary. Please review, enter details for all travellers then CONTINUE.

Wellington  -  Sydney  Return Flights Departs Date Time Arrives Date Time Stops NZ 0141 Wellington Fri 12May 6:40 AM Sydney Fri 12May 8:20 AM 0 NZ 0144 Sydney Fri 19May 6:15 PM Wellington Fri 19May 11:25 PM 0 Total cost 1  Adult fare(s) @  NZD   $258.00 NZD  $258.00 Total surcharges, airport & government costs - detail NZD  $226.01 Total NZD  $484.01

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

Looks like the dollar is continuing to get NAILED. It was always going to happen- was just a matter of when.

At Kognition we've been holding quite a lot of our working capital in US$ lately in anticipation- it's nice that it's finally started doing something

I think we've had the big fall now and we'll setlle in around 63-64 cents for a good few months. That said we could see a number of the mom and pop uridashi holders bail which could further catalyze things- good time to be holding forex anyway

I've just had a white paper published on MSDN.

It show how to us WF to manage wrkflow among a groupof huan actors- it's really cool ithat the communication with the actors is via common protocols like email and instant messenger.

Take a look at the white paper here.

You can also see nd discuss this at my session on WF @ Code Camp.

I'll also probabl being running through the saple as a lab @ CodeCamp too...

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.

So I'm going to Mix and there aren't many others that I'm aware of from NZ going.

So- I'm keen to see if anyone want to find anything in particular out? Want a particular question asked? Burning to find something out and think it will be covered?

Here is my schedule thus far. If you have a special interest in something post in the comments and I'll keep and eye out for you and blog about it- obviously I can only post about non NDA stuff, but, I'll do my best to find out as much as I can tell you about from the horses mouth.

Schedule For Chris Auld

1:30 PM - 2:45 PM

NGW050 The Windows Live Platform: Build Applications That Have Access to 400 Million Address Books, and 13 Billion Contacts!   Palazzo Ballroom E-L

3:00 PM - 4:15 PM

NGW008 Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF): The Opportunity for WPF Applications in the Browser and Beyond   Ballroom O/P

4:30 PM - 6:00 PM

BTB035 Extending Your Experience to Mobile Devices   Ballroom A/B       NGW046 Running a Megasite on Microsoft Technologies   Ballroom O/P

11:00 AM - 12:15 PM

BTB025 Developing Interactive Applications Using Windows Live Robots, Activities, and Alerts   Ballroom M/N

1:30 PM - 2:45 PM

DIS003 Today's Identity Crisis, and the Identity Metasystem   Ballroom O/P

3:00 PM - 4:15 PM

NGW036 A First Look at Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (WPF/E): a Cross-Platform subset of WPF   Ballroom A/B

4:30 PM - 5:45 PM

BTB029 The Digital Home: Designing for the Ten-Foot User Interface   Palazzo Ballroom E-L       NGW026 IIS7 As a Developer Platform   Ballroom O/P

8:30 AM - 9:45 AM

NGW034 From “Username and Password” to "InfoCard"   Ballroom M/N

10:00 AM - 11:15 AM

11:30 AM - 12:45 PM