A bit of a cat day today

I’m working from home today watching 4 kitties race around the lawn whilst their lazy brother Oscar lies in the shade watching.  I agree with Steven that Pets certainly change your life (I’ve never been out on the road herding chickens back into the garden before I moved here for example) and love the days when I get to work from home and catch up on all the stuff I need to get through for work whilst looking out at the animal chaos outside.

Like reading through the blogosphere and getting my daily fix of LOLcats with their cute animal photos and looking with envy at the Ginger Cat blog, where they go for walks along the west coast of Wales with their humans and pose for arty photos.  I’ve just been out into the garden to try and persuade Oscar to get up and walk down the path but gave up trying  (after all its not dinner time yet) and returned to typing this,

 

and noticed that KC was tweeting about a LOL cat she’d been sent which made her laugh.  And then I noticed that Jeff told me on friendfeed that Max had managed to catch up with Ben (the creator of Icanhazcheezburger) and record an interview with him for channel 8.  2 million pages per day – wow!  (Ihasahotdog is the doggy version by the way if you’re not keen on cats)

When I think of all the microblogs I follow, listening to so many concurrent conversations, it’s not surprising that related things bubble up together.  So many clusters of things to blog about, all happening together – all very serendipitous indeed. 

Not like the chasing and fighting that’s going on outside at the moment.  Time to be referee…

Technorati Tags: LOLcats,Channel 8,Ginger Cats,KC Lemson

Women Build – Partnering Microsoft and Lego

Now this is a brilliant idea.  An external partnership between Lego and Microsoft using Lego Bricks as a mentoring and networking tool for women in Technology.  If you’re going to the PCD 2008 you can register for the Pre-Conference day here.  Here’s the abstract for the workshop.

 

WomenBuild… inspiring career paths in technology

In this workshop, attendees will participate in an environment of rich, interactive experiences by modeling real-life business challenges and solutions with LEGO Bricks as part of the LEGO Serious Play Program (LSP). WomenBuild will open your minds to exciting and inspirational ideas on how to be a thought leader in the technical field. We will work together in small groups to brainstorm and problem solve in a collaborative and productive way. You will work with people in various responsibility areas in teams. This way each role can impart their own unique perspective to the group, while collectively creating shared understandings that direct future activity effectively.

The WomenBuild program incorporates a hands-on process that draws on the power of creative thinking to shift group conversation from talking heads to focused minds. Each team will be run as a facilitated conversation with physical Lego brick constructions that will powerfully shift a group to more productive outcomes by accomplishing a deeper mining of the diverse wisdom within the group and a clearer shared conclusion on inspirational career paths for women in the technical field.

Through this workshop, attendees will share real life experiences, discuss challenges, network & build on-going relationships with other women who are attending the conference. Ultimately, attendees of this workshop will find ways to unleash their creative thinking and transform ideas into concrete concepts.

It’s a shame that I can’t get to PDC this year, but I’m sure that Frank will help out if he can.  It’s certainly an amazing idea- and a great opportunity for you to network with other technical women and share ideas.  It’s certqainly something we should also have at future TechEds – What do you think?

Technorati Tags: Women Build,Women in Technology,PDC 2008,Lego

PDC 2008 – Los Angeles – Be there…

I noticed that the PDC 2008 site has now gone live today.  I think that this year is going to be a really exciting year with Ray Ozzie doing the keynote (and probably talking about cloud services like Mesh, Software plus services (think Office Live, SkyDrive etc).

And with all the buzz around technologies that are out there in beta or further, Developers must be champing at the bit to attend.  All the developers here in the office would  much rather go to PDC than our internal training conference in July.

So why is the PDC so important to you as an IT Pro?  I’ve put together a list of some popular buzzwords and tried to explain them in IT pro terms that you can use to explain to your (non Developer) boss, why these are so important to your business – and why you need to go to PDC

 

Deep Zoom.  Go deeply down into a photo and watch as the blurred image gets clearer and clearer in front of your eyes.  That’s all happening server side too.  Check out the Hardrock cafe site for a great example.  It’s got an Easter Egg too.  To get to the Easter Egg in Hardrock, just click into DeepZoom anywhere, then hit Ctrl-V, and it’ll take you to the correct location. Scroll out from there. Amazing (thanks Marc)

Deep Zoom Composer.  The ability for you to create your own photo montage and with a bit of XML knowledge, link all of your photos up and post them onto the web, to create your own type of Photosynth Experience.  James has uploaded one of his own compositions here – and blogged about it if you want more information

Mesh – Devices connecting and syncing together over the net so you can access your files from anywhere – from any device.  You can get the information from your home PC from anywhere – all securely

Photosynth The ability to stitch photos together for a virtual tour.  have a look around Trafalgar square in London

Popfly Create a mashup of two or more sites by dragging and dropping. 

SkyDrive – storage of files in the cloud.  Log in with your passport address

Virtual Earth – look at where I work Birds eye view is just amazing.  That’s the window behind my desk…

 

So lots of stuff that the developers can get their teeth into.  Join the Facebook group, or read about what’s happening on Twitter, and have a look at the photos on Flickr

…Which is all I’ll be going to be able do unfortunately as I’m not a developer so I won’t be allowed to go.  Grr.

Roll on TechEd Orlando next week though…

Technorati Tags: PDC 2008,Developers,Deep Zoom,Popfly,Photosynth,Live Mesh,Ray Ozzie

Sharepoint Webcasts july 2008

MSDN Webcast: Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Page Branding (Level 200)
Tuesday, June 03, 2008 – 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM Pacific Time
Andrew Connell, Microsoft MVP for SharePoint Server, Independent Consultant
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032378835&Culture=en-US

MSDN Webcast: Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Workflows (Level 200)
Wednesday, June 04, 2008 – 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Pacific Time       
Robert L. Bogue, Microsoft MVP for SharePoint Server, Thor Projects, LLC  
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032378839&Culture=en-US

MSDN Webcast: Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Web Services (Level 200)
Tuesday, June 10, 2008 – 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Pacific Time
Andrew Connell, Microsoft MVP for SharePoint Server, Independent Consultant
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032378841&Culture=en-US

MSDN Webcast: Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Page Navigation (Level 200)
Wednesday, June 11, 2008 – 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Pacific Time
Andrew Connell, Microsoft MVP for SharePoint Server, Independent Consultant
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032378843&Culture=en-US

MSDN Webcast: Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: User Management (Level 200)
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 – 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM Pacific Time
Robert L. Bogue, Microsoft MVP for SharePoint Server, Thor Projects LLC
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032378845&Culture=en-US

MSDN Webcast: Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers: Custom Content Types (Level 200)
Wednesday, June 18, 2008 – 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Pacific Time
Robert L. Bogue, Microsoft MVP for SharePoint Server, Thor Projects LLC
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032378824&Culture=en-US

Exchange Webcasts July 2008

TechNet Webcast: Forefront Security for Exchange Deployment Best Practices (Level 300)
Tuesday, June 03, 2008 – 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM Pacific Time
Mike Chan, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032377121&Culture=en-US

MSDN Webcast: Building Asynchronous Contextual Collaboration with Exchange Web Services (Level 300)
Thursday, June 26, 2008 – 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM Pacific Time
Chris Mayo, Technical Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032378675&Culture=en-US

Momentum Webcast: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Mailbox Role Memory Characterization Using HP BladeSystem (Level 200)
Thursday, June 19, 2008 – 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM Pacific Time
Stuart Ladd, System Engineer, HP
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032378658&Culture=en-US

Unified Communications Webcasts July 2008

TechNet Webcast: Disaster Recovery in Communications Server 2007 (Level 200)
Monday, June 02, 2008 – 9:30 AM – 10:30 AM Pacific Time
Byron Spurlock, Consultant – Microsoft Consulting Services, Microsoft Corporation
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032372196&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: All About Communications Server 2007 Security (Level 300)
Thursday, June 05, 2008 – 9:30 AM – 10:30 AM Pacific Time
Byron Spurlock, Consultant – Microsoft Consulting Services, Microsoft Corporation
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032372427&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Configuring DNS, Certificates, Ports, and Load Balancers for Communications Server 2007 (Level 300)
Monday, June 09, 2008 – 8:00 AM – 9:00 AM Pacific Time
Byron Spurlock, Consultant – Microsoft Consulting Services, Microsoft Corporation
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032374265&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: A Technical Introduction to Forefront Security for Communications Server (Level 300)
Thursday, June 19, 2008 – 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM Pacific Time
Kelli Cook, Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032377127&Culture=en-US

MSDN Webcast: Building Software on the Microsoft Unified Communications Platform (Level 200)
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 – 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM Pacific Time
Chris Mayo, Technical Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032378381&Culture=en-US

MSDN Webcast: Behind the Scenes with Communications Server 2007, Communicator 2007, and Exchange Server 2007 (Level 300)
Thursday, June 19, 2008 – 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM Pacific Time
Chris Mayo, Technical Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032378646&Culture=en-US

MSDN Webcast: Driving Contextual Collaboration with Office Communicator 2007 (Level 300)
Tuesday, June 24, 2008 – 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM Pacific Time
Chris Mayo, Technical Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032378673&Culture=en-US

Momentum Webcast: Bringing Everyday Applications Together with the Power of Presence (Level 100)
Wednesday, June 11, 2008 – 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM Pacific Time
Stephanie Doakes, Mid-Market Solutions Advisor, Microsoft Corporation
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032378650&Culture=en-US

Simple and effective PowerShell scripts for Exchange

Jonathan, who had really horrible problems with Exchange earlier this year told me about some powershell cmdlets that he used to help him troubleshoot his problems.  He’s kindly shared some of his cmdlets with me

The first one is the one-liner he wrote to help him out of the “Incredible Growing Logs” problem, which lists out the users connected to a particular mailbox store and which client they’re using (Outlook versions or HTTP for OWA)

A one line script which checks the free disk space on every logical local drive on every computer in a specific OU:

The PowerShell that they use the most at the university is this script, which returns some mailbox details, including SMTP addresses, quota and usage for a user on Exchange 2003 or 2007:

The last Exchange-related PowerShell stuff is entitled “How much space are orphaned mailboxes taking up on my Exchange servers?” and does what it says on the tin.

He says:

I don’t claim to write the best or most robust PowerShell, but from the little feedback that I’ve had, those posts have been useful enough to some people that they were worth writing!

Jonathan – these scripts seem pretty useful to me and should be part of every Exchange Administrators toolkit – that’s why I’m telling you about it…

Technorati Tags: PowerShell,Exchange 2007,cmdlets,scripts

New ebook on managing Exchange with Powershell

Arlindo just pointed me to a new ebook written by my friend Ilse Van Criekinge.  Ilse won speaker idol at IT forum last year and will be presenting at IT forum this year.

 

James has been deep into Powershell for a while now, and has written part of the OCS resource kit with is PowerShell scripts – and this book complements Exchange really well with lots of practical examples.

So well done Ilse for getting this done in such a short timescale and I look forward to your session at IT forum this year.  Powershell perhaps…

Technorati Tags: powershell,IT Forum,Exchange 2007,speaker idol

Throwing Eggs at Steve Ballmer

I’m in agreement with Joe Wilcox here and I watched this video he links to in his latest post with anger and dismay.  I think that Steve handled things really well with not a shred of the anger that you or I may have expressed.  How would you feel if that happened to you, can you imagine how you would have reacted?  Vaulted over the lectern to punch the guys lights out perhaps? (I’d have cheered if someone had done that actually).

 

How would you feel if you had to watch your step every time you appeared in front of an audience?  What if the missile had been much much worse?  What if someone had been badly hurt? Most of us enjoy relative anonymity going about our daily work.  Would you like to be in the public eye in the sort of world that exposed us to this much hatred and animosity?  I certainly wouldn’t and I still remember the awfulness that Kathy Sierra was exposed to, just for doing the thing she loved and being the target of death threats and a terrible hate campaign   

But the thing that horrified me the most was that the 2 guys either side of the egg thrower didn’t try to stop him throwing the 2nd or 3rd egg after watching him throw the first missile.  No one tried to prevent him at all.  They just let him walk straight out almost apologetically and without comment.

So, to the egg thrower -  whoever you are – whatever your motives for disrupting this event for all of the other attendees -  shame on you for this…

 

Technorati Tags: Steve Ballmer,Egg Throwing,Hungary

The amazing Worldwide Telescope

Wow!

I downloaded the Worldwide Telescope today and I’m totally transfixed.  no wonder the press has been raving about it so much.

The mission of the WWT is twofold:

• To aggregate scientific data from major telescopes, observatories and institutions and make temporal and multi-spectral studies available through a single cohesive Internet–based portal.
• To re-awaken the interest for science in the younger generations through astronomy and new technologies through the virtual observatory of the WWT. This also provides a wonderful base for teaching astronomy, scientific discovery, and computational science.

When you install it, your computer turns into a virtual telescope so you can roam around the constellations.  You can pan and zoom around the night sky – just like you were in space – try visiting the Orion constellation and having a browse around.  Right click on something and find out the name of the star, its Right Ascension, RA – distance in degrees from the first point of Aries, Declination – DEC (Angle in degrees from the celestial equator),  Altitude (apparent height) and Azimuth (bearing)

My favourite constellation (and the easiest to find in the UK) is the Plough (Ursa Major).  When I first learned to identify each star in the constellation (I needed to learn them for my celestial navigation class when I was at sea).  I learned that Mixar, or Mizar as it’s sometimes known, is actually a binary star, 2 stars that slowly rotate around each other like a set of dumbbells whirling around in space, bound together by the gravity that joins them (a bit like the pairing that keeps the Moon in orbit around the Earth).    I used to be able to see these 2 stars, but with my failing aged eyes, it’s hard to see them – even with binoculars. But now, with the zoom ability in this amazing tool, Mizar and Alcor are there. whirling around each other – have a look at this.

 

It’s the 2nd star in from the handle of the plough if you want to go and have a look for yourself.

Microsoft Research is dedicating WorldWide Telescope to the memory of Jim Gray and is releasing WWT as a free resource to the astronomy and education communities with the hope that it will inspire and empower people to explore and understand the universe like never before.

What a great sentiment….

Technorati Tags: Worldwide Telescope,Jim Gray,Microsoft Research