Just Jeff: Blog

Anyone switch from Windows Mobile to iPhone this weekend?

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 05:51:41 GMT

Well, it's out...and I keep thinking I want to go down to the Redmond Town Center AT&T and get me one of those shiny new iPhones. I'm curious though, how does it compare with a decent Windows Mobile 6 device? I like my phone; it works, the exchange functionality is great, IRM is nice to have, and it's got a great keyboard; but it's just dull.

So, did you buy one? What do you think? Is the form factor, browser and sheer beauty worth the loss of a custom home screen, IRM and such?

Windows Mobile 6.1 on my Q9h – First Impressions

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 04:57:25 GMT

Just got Windows Mobile 6.1 on my at&t Motorola Q9h this afternoon. Overall, an nice step up from WM 6.0 that was on before, but so far, I’m not blown away by all the features.

Home Screen

Pretty, but not as configurable as the old home screen model was. I found that things like the time take up far too much space, and its harder to see at a glance how many messages you have. The calendar plugin is pretty slick though. You can page through your next set of appointments and the icons indicate if you Accepted or are Tentative for the meeting. I also find that the new home page stuff (called CHome) is actually pretty slow on this device.

Another thing they got rid of was the MRU list. Instead of recently used apps appearing on the home screen, they made the first click of the Start menu go to this recent programs screen. Not a huge fan of this. Also, you can’t put this into list view.

You also can’t add extra custom plugins to the home screen if it’s using the new look and feel. I miss my Oxios Tasks plugin. Another nitpicky detail; when you click up on the d-pad, the focus goes to the top, and then wraps around to the bottom. Don’t like this; I like being able to click up-up-up, and know I’m ending up at the top, which is my MRU list.

Ultimately, I went back to my old home screen. I have it configured so that all the data I want fits onto one screen. Perfect.

The new CHome system shows promise, but there needs to be some more customization options. All I could find was here: http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2008/06/03/customizing-the-sliding-panel-homescreen.aspx.

Threaded SMS

OMG, I just luv threaded SMS! (ahem…back to being 30). Pretty slick UX actually. Makes it feel like you’re in an IM chat. Only thing that’s a bit odd is things like Twitter where you get many SMS from the same number, but they’re not really part of a conversation.

Copy / Paste

Back in 1997, I got my first Palm Pilot; it had 256kb of RAM or something, a black and white screen, and copy/paste! Only took us 11 years to catch up. UX isn’t wonderful; hard to do on a non-touch device, but not bad:

IE Zoom

Haven’t played much with this yet, but IE seems to have a Zoom Out feature. Frankly, kind of ridiculous seeing as it doesn’t render the content properly anyway.

In addition to the stuff above, there are some small niceties, such as the icon for having a new SMS message is different than for having a new EMail message. They also merged SMS and MMS into the same account, so you have less accounts in the system. It also seems that Internet Connection Sharing is now present in the start menu without you having to make a shortcut yourself.

I’m also noticing that Opera is loading faster than before…perhaps I may actually use it now.

Office Labs Goes Public

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 03:27:24 GMT

Microsoft Office Labs has gone public at http://www.officelabs.com. What is Office Labs? From their web page:

This site is a proving ground for ideas that come from regular employees and interns who work anywhere in Microsoft. Most of the code prototypes are developed by the Office Labs team in partnership with the teams that make the products. After all, they produce most of the ideas. Some of the things you find here will be web-based, others are downloads. Some will be a combination, something we call "software + services."

Nicole just started on this team and is responsible for one of the two projects they've shipped with the intial launch of the site; Search Commands. In true Nicole fashion, she made a video to promote her product...check it out below.

Video: How to use Search Commands From Office Labs

Back from Barbados

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 03:15:03 GMT

As always, Barbados was a great vacation. It's not often that we have a Steinbok family reunion...I think this is the 3rd time in 20 years or so that all 6 of my dad's brothers and sisters were on the island at the same time. At any rate, there's not much to say about the trip, other than it was excellent. Best to simply describe in photos...

Aaron was a natural water baby. He preferred the swimming pool at uncle Joe's because it was really warm, but he liked the sea too.

Aaron's great grandmother got him some blocks. Look how smart he is already! He can almost spell (and eat) his name!

Four generations of Steinboks....pretty neat, or pretty scary...you decide.

A hilight for me was the Ocean Racing challenge. Though not much of a race, or a challenge, I got to take the helm of an 80ft America's Cup racing yacht. Not surprisingly, in the 15kts of wind we had, it handled very very nicely.

Well, that's it for now. There are more pictures in the Barbados 2008 photo album. I'm also hoping to get a copy of some of the formal family photos uncle Jerry had taken at his party.

Talking about Introducing the new FolderShare!

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 05:09:45 GMT

For those of you who use FolderShare, they've quietly released an update to the client as well as the website. You can read more about it on their blog.

Quote

Introducing the new FolderShare!

Hello, and welcome to the blog for Windows Live FolderShare. It's a big day for us here at Windows Live HQ, and not just because we’re launching this new blog. We also have updated FolderShare, and published an all-new FolderShare website…at last!

Today we're unveiling:

• A new website designed to makes managing your FolderShare libraries and computers even easier.
• A new FolderShare with a better setup, a better system tray menu, and better performance on Windows Vista.
• Improvements on the backend to keep FolderShare running more smoothly and reliably.

(And of course, it's still free.)
To all the users who already have fallen in love with FolderShare, we thank you! We hope all the new users equally enjoy the features FolderShare has to offer: syncing files across your computers; sharing files with friends and family; and accessing your files from anywhere on the Internet.
We’re proud of this release, and we really hope you like it. So without further ado, check out the new website, install the new FolderShare, and let us know what you think!
- The FolderShare Team

DreamSpark - I wish I had this back when I was in college

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 07:57:07 GMT

I remember back when I was in college if I wanted to use Visual Studio (er, Visual C++ at the time I suppose) you had to, um, acquire a copy of the software as it was just way too expensive to buy as a student. Well, this all changes today as Microsoft is making the same toolset we use in house available for free to students. The product list is pretty sweet and include Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2003, Expression Studio, and XNA Game Studio.

You can signup at download from https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/

There's more info as well as an interview with Bill at http://channel8.msdn.com/Posts/2047/:

How would you like a free copy of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008? How about the entire Microsoft Expression Studio? Not enough...... how about Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and more?
For once, something that sounds too good to be true really is this good and really is true. Starting today (or soon in some areas), students worldwide will be able to download our professional development and design tools for free! It's called DreamSpark and it is upon us.

WTF?

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 07:13:21 GMT

I think we would all agree that game shows these days have gone downhill, but I saw this ad tonight on TV and I'm just shocked. The quote from the ad was something like:

"Can this blonde outsmart a chimp?"

Seriously, wtf?

Talking about 'Lost' - The entire series in 8:15

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 23:12:01 GMT

Found this on MSN Videos recently. Worth a watch.

Quote

'Lost' - The entire series in 8:15

Find out everything you need to know about the first three seasons of "Lost" in just over 8 minutes. The new season premieres Jan. 31st at 9 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.

Windows Live Spaces featured in Bill's 2008 CES Keynote

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 05:31:53 GMT

You can watch the 2008 CES Keynote on demand at http://www.microsoft.com/CES.

Bill Gates delivered his 12th and final keynote at the 2008 CES in Las Vegas; one of the portions of the talk had to do with staying connected with people using Microsoft technologies including Windows Vista, Windows Live and Windows Mobile. So, I thought the segment would be all about Windows, but I was way off! The entire segment focused on Windows Live and specifically:

Windows Live Calendar (27:50)

This part wasn't so exciting; they talked mostly about how you can overlay calendars....nifty.

Windows Live Events (28:15)

They talked about what the product is, roughly, and how, like Calendar, you can use your single Windows Live ID to access it and all of the other Windows Live services. Specifically, they showed off how easy it is to invite people, and the super-cool contact picker we wrote.

Windows Live Photo Gallery; how easy it is to find photos, and upload them to Spaces (29:30)

They showed off the photo stitching feature as well as how easy it is to fix images. They also made a point of talking about how easy it is to upload to Windows Live Spaces

Windows Live for Mobile; and more specifically, the 1-click "upload to Spaces" option.

I've recently discovered this feature too; makes uploading to Facebook using MMS look complicated! In fact, I didn't even know this feature existed until I was playing with the camera app on my new phone. One criticism of the app I have though is that it doesn't make it clear that these new features exist; not terribly discoverable.

Nice to see your hard work featured like this. So much of what we're doing in the future in software is focused on helping people communicate; which is exactly what we're focused on in Windows Live. Watching this, and looking at the problems we're solving now, and how we're solving them, makes me extremely excited about what we're doing in Windows Live 3.0.

My new toy: Motorola Q9h

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 06:02:02 GMT

So I've been looking for a Windows Mobile 6 device to replace my not-so-old-but-failing Cingular 2125. (It was a great device, but the build quality was only so-so. My joystick stopped working reliably after a few months, so I got it replaced, and it's failing again.) Anyway, I tried out the AT&T Tilt (see comment on Mike Torre's blog) but ultimately returned it as it was a great PDA, but a somewhat lousy phone, and was kinda bulky in my pocket. I was also always worried about breaking the screen. This leads me to looking for a Windows Mobile 6 Standard (no touch screen) device only...

AT&T recently released three such devices; Pantech Duo, BlackJack II, and the Moto Q9h. The BlackJack and Moto are very similar devices, but I quickly passed on the BlackJack II because of the keyboard, and some early negative reviews. The Pantech Duo was dropped because, well, I just didn't like the look of it so much, and with the dual-sliders, it feels a bit fragile. So, after much consideration, the device of choice is the Motorola Q9h (aka Q Global).

Highpoints:

3G - Fast network speed was a must-have.
Great sound quality - 'nuff said
Keyboard - The keyboard is surprisingly easy to type on, even though the buttons are very small. I find it easier in fact than the larger Pantech and even to some extent the Tilt I had tried.
Standard(?) Micro-USB - Doesn't have a proprietary port. There is a small catch to this, in the lowlights section.
GPS - Ok, so this is more of a gimmick than anything, but it's pretty cool to have one built-in. Works great with Windows Live Search too.
Decent Battery Life - Nothing stellar
Spare Battery - Comes with a spare extended-life battery. Nice to have when on vacation.
Opera - Ships with Opera. I turned it off as the default, but it's nice to have.
Brightness Sensor - Screen brightness auto-adjusts based on the ambient light. Great battery saver.

Lowlights:

Occasionally drops signal - Not sure if this is AT&T or the phone. Need more time to try that out.
No Office Mobile - Ships with Documents-to-Go. Ugh. I would prefer if it were more standard and ship with Office Mobile.
Motorola "Enhanced" USB - Motorola has bastardized the USB interface somewhat on their devices. You can use any ordinary USB cable to tether/charge the device when attached to a PC with drivers installed, but if you want to use a standard USB charger, or use the car charger from a different manufacturer, you're out of luck. Now, if you go buy a Moto charger, well then, it will work with your other devices, but not the other way around. They call their interface EMU; a decent article on it is here.
Crapware/Crap-Settings - Again, this isn't specific to this device, but there were a number of things I needed to do/install/uninstall to get the device into a state that I feel comfortable with. This includes: new home screen where I can actually see most of what I need without scrolling, start menu list-view (vs grid), removal of a bunch of AT&T crap. Seriously, why do they make the device cater more to their advertisers and partners than to their customers!?! Ok, so I know the answer, but it's still frustrating. To have space taken up for things like "Get XPress Mail" and "Get TeleNav" is just frustrating. Isn't it more important to have the number of emails unread?

All-in-all, awesome device. The more I use it, the more I like it, and for the low (Microsoft) price of $100, you can't really go wrong.

Why doesn't Spaces update my age automatically?

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 06:21:46 GMT

<rant>

So I just turned 30, and I logged into my Space to find my profile still saying I was 29. Was is it that I need to change it by hand? Does it store the age in a field seperately from where it stores the birthdate?

</rant>

Windows Live Linked IDs Shipped

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:56:41 GMT

Got multiple Windows Live accounts? Sick and tired of having to log out and back in again to switch between them? Well, no more! You can now link your Windows Live IDs together so you can switch identities in one click from the menu on the top right of most Windows Live pages.

To set this up, go to https://account.live.com and look for the section called Linked Windows Live IDs. There's a link there to manage your linked IDs and if you click that, you'll get a screen where you can add IDs.

Once you have this done, Sign Out, and then Sign In Again. When you go to sites like Windows Live Spaces and Windows Live Events, you can click on the top-right of the Windows Live header bar (click on the down arrow next to your name) and you'll be able to instantly switch to any of your linked IDs.

A few quick security notes:

Your linked LiveIDs are only as secure as your weakest password. So, if you have one account with a strong password and one with a weak one, someone can log into the weak one and then switch accounts to the strong one.
If one of your accounts is set to have you change your password regularly, or if one of the sites you visit requires a strong password, it will require that you change your password on each linked account.

This is a really cool feature that took coordination from a lot of teams to get done. I'm thrilled to see the last piece ship so that users can now take advantage of this.

We Shipped!

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:03:12 GMT

Tonnes of cool new features in this release! The biggest one being the brand new Events product http://events.live.com. Think of Windows Live Events as a combination of EVite and Spaces; you can set up a party, invite people, then host pictures online later, as well as a discussion board and other stuff. You can heavily customize them just like you would your personal Space.

We also finally added the ability to add pictures to a blog entry inline in the entry! About time, I know...

Ever go to someone's space and wonder what they've changed recently? Well, now, if you look at their profile, you'll see a list of their recent activity in Windows Live! Makes it very easy to see what photos or blog posts they added recently.

The other huge feature is the "What's New" feature, which is similar to the FaceBook news feed (but way prettier, and doesn't have ads mixed in). To get to this, log into Spaces and click on "Spaces Home".

Lastly, this release more than most, we spent time going through our backlog of bugs and quirks and cleaned a bunch of stuff up. You should find this release more stable, has less quirks, and is faster than previous releases. We really hope you like it.

Excellent Sunday Sail

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 23:45:33 GMT

Many thanks to my excellent crew of Brian, Rob, Hillary, Mike and Mary-Margaret for the great day of sailing on Sunday. We got an impressive 28 miles or so in and a nice tour of the sound. Think next time we should try to head North up to Kingston and go have lunch there or something.

I'm Famous!

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 22:23:37 GMT

Well, not really, but Royal Roads wedding website has pictures from our wedding on it!

http://www.hatleypark.ca/weddings

http://www.hatleypark.ca/weddings/packages/

http://www.hatleypark.ca/weddings/packages/garden-wedding-package.htm

http://www.hatleypark.ca/weddings/packages/vow-reaffirmation-wedding-package.htm

I'm addicted to XBox Live

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 06:59:16 GMT

First Catan, now Carcassonne. What else will the XBox Live peeps do to continue taking all my free time? Seriously, between these two, and Worms, I'm pretty much spending all my free time on my XBox.

I'm extremely impressed with the implementation of Carcassone on Arcade. About the only complaints I have are the inability to rotate the whole game board, and the fact that it defaults to what it calls International rules; what we're used to playing are US rules. In international rules, football cities count as 4 points, and farming gets you 3 points per city, but I think the way you score them also differs in that I think everyone gets the 3 points if farming, not just the farmer with the most meeps on the farm. Other than that, the game is great. I also noticed that in the end-of-game screen it details how many points you got from cities, farms, roads, as well as a place for Extras; could this be for expansions?!? Carcassone has some pretty cool expansions out there that, if designed properly, may not be too hard to add to the game, and it's something else they could sell.

Oh, one quick complaint about Worms....(and tell me if there's a way to do this that I just didn't see)...I want to play a multiplayer game with Nicole but I want her worms to have 100 points, and mine to only have 75...why can't I do this? The computers do it for the challenges!?!

Ok, back to Catan...need to get back up to #200 on the leaderboard; I've dropped recently to 346 - but I blame Aaron for that.

Talking about Hello World!

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 04:17:46 GMT

Wow, my son is quite the writer for being only 9 days old! Check out his very own blog and hear about life in his words at http://aaronsteinbok.spaces.live.com.

Introducing Aaron Campbell Steinbok

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 19:01:33 GMT

Well, he's here! Lets give a warm welcome to Aaron Campbell Steinbok. Aaron entered the world at 8:57am weighing in at 6lbs 8oz. The whole family is doing excellently and spending some time bonding.

Just over one month left!

Sun, 13 May 2007 06:40:35 GMT

Wow, time really flies; in just over a month (45 days to be exact...if we hit the due date exactly) and we'll be a family of 3! Things have started to feel more and more real over the past month. We bought a new car, have been going to birthing classes, carseat classes, breast-feeding classes, and now today we went and picked up our "glider" (fancy word for rocking chair) and bought the carseat and stroller.

We went into Babies "R" Us planning to buy a Graco carset and ended up with a more pricy Peg Perrigo one instead (Primo Viaggio SIP), and of course, we needed to have the matching stroller.

I think the thing I'm most excited about is the stroller; comes it at 9lbs and is so much more simple than the overdone US-made strollers. It also felt a lot more well-made than the Graco strollers we were looking at. And of course, when we got home, we needed to try everything out with our trusty teddy-bear. We considered going for a walk around the neighborhood with the bear, but we thought that that would be odd.

Lastly, we did a bit more nursery decorating. We setup the glider and put up some glow-in-the-dark stars on the wall. Aside from a "Finding Nemo" lamp Nicole wants to get, I think we're pretty much done!

My neighbor was a finalist on the Apprentice...

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 17:22:17 GMT

The runner-up on the Apprentice (James) is our neighbor! Check out the screen capture from NBCs video player....look familiar?

You can watch the episode at http://www.nbc.com/Video/rewind/full_episodes/apprentice.shtml. If you want to see the Woodbridge clip, select Part 4; the shot is at 1:45 left.

Quote

My neighbor was a finalist on the Apprentice...

Jeff and I were fast forwarding through "The Apprentice" last night and something caught our eye. Our Neighborhood!

Our Car Buying Experience

Sat, 21 Apr 2007 09:09:10 GMT

Nicole and I took the afternoon off work today and went and bought our new car. Our first ever shiny new car. We ended up buying the Mazda 6 Sport Wagon; the first car we actually test drove. We'd been debating between the 5-door and the wagon, and what sealed the deal on the wagon was that Brian wouldn't fit very well in the back seat of the 5-door when we go for teriyaki. We settled on the Mazda wagon because it was sportier than the Subaru wagons, and more like a car than say the Honda CR-V.

Before you read anymore, how much do you think I got for a trade-in on my 1995 Ford Taurus? Keep reading to find out.

We got to the Mazda dealership (Lee Johnson) at about 1:00pm or so. We checked out the 5-door and the wagon again, took a look at some color choices, then made our decision. I think we had picked a car by 1:30.

Car salesmen have quite the reputation, so you go into these things armed with information and your guard up. We did have more than a couple road-bumps buying the car, due nearly entirely to being told incorrect information by salesmen. I wonder if they were intentionally misleading/lying, or they just made honest mistakes. Perhaps you can be the judge; here is a short list of the issues we had:

To get $1000 cash back, you need to finance a portion with Mazda credit, at a stupid high interest rate. We were told once that we could pay it off immediately with no penalty, then we were told 2 months, then six months. Eventually, the finance lady showed us (in writing) that there is no period we have to hold it for. Just long enough to get the first bill (30 days or so).
How can we put a down payment down? "We take anything; cash, cheque, credit card". Turns out, only $2000 on the credit card.
Dealer: "$350 to get an AUX port added". Jeff: "Are you sure this is a generic AUX port, not an iPod thing?". Dealer: "Yes". Fast forward 30 minutes: Turns out it's an iPod thing. We ended up getting it for free after all the mess.
Accessories cost $575, they'll give us $275 off, we pay only $300. Funny thing was that the cost of the accessories added up to ($60 + $30 + $10 + $350) $450. Funny that. Well, they told us, still only pay $300. This is my biggest "I wonder if this was intentional or not" thing. Either way, we got it worked out.
Minor "key" issues at the end. This was an honest mistake. Gave us keys for two different cars. Had to spend some time sorting that out.

All the issues were about little details. It was tempting to simply stop and walk away, but ultimately, we wanted the car and we got things sorted out. I still can't tell how many of the issues were honest errors, but the feedback I have for the dealers is to know their products a bit better, or, try using "I don't know....let me check" once and a while. I guess they need to appear confident and knowledgeable in order to make sales and they don't get the really detailed questions like I was asking all that often. I would still rather the "I don't know" answer as an indication that they are being honest and doing best effort to get the information right.

By the time we left the dealership with our new car, it was about 4:45pm. We then realized we left our garage door opener in the Taurus. We ended up leaving the dealership a second time at around 5pm.

All in all, it wasn't a terrible experience. I don't handle situations like this very well, and spending 4+ hours there dealing with this was more than I was really comfortable with. I'm very impressed with Nicole's wheeling and dealing abilities when it came to getting them to apologize for all the mix-ups with cold hard cash.

Oh, and for how much my Taurus was worth....after haggling a bit...$200. Oh well.

Published with Microsoft Windows Live Writer

Spaces 12.0 Shipped!

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 06:33:07 GMT

Spaces 12.0 has Shipped! Congrats to all the Spaces team on their hard work getting this release out the door. I've got to say, I'm super excited aobut some of the changes that made it in this release. Hilights, for me anyway (and perhaps I'm a bit biased about the great stuff our feature team did):

Customization - Now you can make your Space as ugly or as sleek as you want. As Nicole put it: now you can look like MySpace! Dipinder, Karen, and Roger did some great work here. Check out the new Advanced tab in the customization menu. You can change all the colors, fonts, and upload your own background image. You can also now add modules to the top and bottom of your space, change the titles of modules, change their width, and take off the borders. (That last bit was my doing, as well as Archana's).

Music / Lists - We had music lists before, but now you can have thumbnails of your favorite albums on your Spaces home page! To get this to work, first sign in, then go to your lists page. When you go back to your homepage and try to add a module, you'll see that you can add each individual list. We also added a new item picker for music and book lists so you can pick the best result when you search from Amazon. Great job here Abdul, Eric, Wendy, and Dipinder!

Guest Book - We finally got our GuestBook feature done! Thanks to a lot of hard work by Eileen, you can now add a guest book to your space. Come on, comment on mine!

Photos - The DMX team did a great job with the new photos experience. It's just so much sleeker than before. Thanks go to Brian and Joe for all the coordination.

Wow, the Expression team did a LOT! Great job. As for the other stuff...

- Send Messages to friends with the new messaging feature!

- Visit your dashboard - click "Home"

- Notice the friends module loads much faster? Jason did a great job on the new identity control.

- RSS feeds on individual modules.

Wow...LiveSide's quick! I think they jumped on this faster than the SpaceCraft did.

http://liveside.net/blogs/interview/archive/2007/04/20/lots-of-new-stuff-just-added-to-spaces.aspx

Windows Vista & Office 2007 Packaging

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 03:51:45 GMT

It's pretty isn't it? A nice shiny plastic case. Modern looking for modern OS. Not so useable though...

I bought a couple copies of Vista for some friends up in Victoria. To make things lighter in the luggage, Nicole attempted to take the DVD out of the packaging and put them in something smaller and lighter. Apparently though, the packaging needs to come with it's own manual. See how in the picture to the right the package opens nicely? Well, you only get that if you remove the tape with the red tabs, and then remove another unmarked, clear piece of plastic tape. Then, and only then can you pull on another red tab to access the disk.

Nicole missed that second step...about 25 minutes of prying later she had many pieces of plastic with sharp edges on the ground, and two DVDs. To make matters worse, the product key is stuck to the large piece of plastic the disc is mounted on, so she had to take that with her too.

I also wonder, why, when all other products are coming in smaller and smaller boxes, with less and cell plastic packaging, would Microsoft release an entirely new line of packages that takes more space in landfills and is made of non-renewable components? Is it an anti-theft device? That would make some amount of sense, but I tend to think its to add to the "WOW" factor.

Back from Hawaii

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 21:10:38 GMT

Nicole and I just got back from our last vacation as a 2-person family. We took a quick week-long trip to Oahu to relax in the sun and get away from the cold and wet (and snow apparently) in Seattle.

We had a great time, and amazing weather. Some hilites (pictured here) include the Polynesian Cultural Center; essentially a theme park that discusses culture from the various polynesian countries such as Fiji and Samoa. The Center is actually run by the Mormons in association with BYU-Hawaii. Most of the employees are students that are on scholarship from the various polynesian countries. The day at the Center ended with a traditional Luau which was great, except for that since the Center is run by Mormons, there was no alcohol to be found anywhere.

Second hilite was the scenery...just beautiful! Check out the photo on the left of the North Shore of Oahu just before sunset.

Third hilite...check out the photo on the right. Paradise Air does powered hang gliding over Oahu's North Shore. It was an amazing experience. Not only the views, and the feeling of total freedom, but its also a flying lesson. Apparently due to some FAA technicality, these ultralights can only be used for instruction. Therefore, they have to let the passgengers have a chance to fly them. What an experience!

Last, but certainly not least...check out the wreckage to the right! Yup, that's right, the wreckage from "Lost". They film on the North Shore, where I took the glider flight. In fact, we first saw the wreckage from the air, then drove to it to take a picture. ABC apparently rents some space in the airfield. Accross the street from there is where they film many of the beach scenes. The day we were up there, they were setting up for filming...so we saw all the trailers and crew, but not star-sightings.

All in all, this was an excellent vacation. One of the best we've had.

Baby Name Poll

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 21:15:46 GMT

Check out the baby name poll on Nicole's space!

http://nicole.spaces.live.com/

My vote is for "Tank Steinbok"

It's a Boy!

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 18:05:56 GMT

Check it out! We got our first baby pictures.

You can see them in my Space photo gallery here.

And check this video out!

Video: Steinbok 20 Week Ultrasound

You may need flash to view the video. If you get an error with a play button with a red slash through it, try to click on it to download the latest flash player. Or go to http://www.adobe.com to download it.

How is it that these people are in charge?

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 06:58:54 GMT

How is it that people like Ted Stevens get the responsibility of driving regulation of such important technology, yet, really have no clue how it works. Or, well, perhaps he does, but can't string the words together.

Also came accross the following video from CBC news. Not exactly sure from when, but Peter Mansbridge has hair, so it's gotta be a good while back. What I find most interesting is the part of the interview (about half way) where the interviewee talks about how amazingly polite and restrained people are online. He refers to a community that has a noticable lack of swearing and personal attacks. Wow, look how far we've come!

Say it with Video

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 21:42:16 GMT

With the launch of Spaces 11.1, you can now embed video into your blog posts! Go nuts with vide from http://soapbox.msn.com or http://www.youtube.com, or heck, anywhere else!

Check out the trailer for the new Transformers movie, coming this July!

Video: Transformers The Movie Official Trailer

My Top 5 Windows Vista Features

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 07:10:30 GMT

Over the Christmas holidays, I happened to get myself a couple new computers. A Toshiba Tecra M5 laptop, and a new Dell XPS 410. I took the plunge and installed Windows Vista on both of them. The "Wow" effect of Vista really comes in two phases: the obvious "wow" and the more subtle "wow". The obvious things are flashy, but not so useful IMHO. Things like Aero (glass), DreamScene, and the general sleek feel of the OS graphics. None of these make my top 5.

The more subtle changes are things that let you really make more from your time at your PC, and take some time to really get used to, but once you do, you'll find yourself missing them on older PCs you use that don't have Windows Vista installed.

My top 5...

1. Start Menu Word Wheel

Type anything you want into the box at the bottom of the start menu. It will show you programs and files that match your query. In fact, on Vista, I've never had to use the long "Programs" menu to find an app on my box.

2. SideBar

Seems like a gimick at first, but very very handy. I've got a calendar, Outlook gadget, as wel as a feeds list on mine. Saves having to open up Outlook to read mail, or check Engadget to see if there's a new feed available.

3. Alt-TAB

Ever notice when you have a tonne of windows open that Alt-TAB is all-but-useless? Not anymore! Now you get a thumbnail of each item. You get the same effect when you hover over the program in the taskbar.

4. Photo Gallery / Media Player / MCE Integration

The work the Digital Memories folks did for Vista is impressive. Media Player 11 is so much nicer on Vista than it is on XP, and the new photo gallery application is great. It allows you to easily search and browse your photos by ratings, EXIF data, custom tags, etc...

5. Redone Solitaire

Check it out...they redid Solitaire! Even changed the end sequence.

Windows Vista is officially released on Jan 30th; check it out! And don't worry if you don't have the snazziest video card to run Aero Glass....it's pretty, but it's not why you should want to get Vista.

My take on the iPhone & AppleTV

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 07:51:25 GMT

So, Steve Jobs did his thing today and hyped some new Apple products at MacWorld. (You can see the keynote at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/keynote). For the first time in a while, I'm not psyched about the stuff they're announcing. Summary; go buy a Zune and an XBox.

iPhone

I'm sorry, but this just seems impractical to me. Pretty, but impractical. Here's what I'm thinking:

Who give a crap if iPhone runs OSX?
How do you dial this thing? All I image is greasy fingerprints all over the screen and a bunch of scratches. Additionally, if you put up a QWERTY keyboard on the UI, how on earth are our fingers supposed to type on that. I used to love the click-wheel on my iPod, but recently, I've been looking forward to getting a device without one. It's just so much nicer to be able to feel what you're pressing.
No exchange connectivity? So, this won't be for business users.
No standard mini-USB connector
Can you do custom sync conduits like you can with ActiveSync on a MS SmartPhone?
$499 w/ a 2 year contract!?! geez
Wow...it detects that you turn it horizontally! Wow! That's so cool! Oh wait, my $200 digital camera from a couple years back does that too...hrm...never mind.

Apple TV

Yawn...do I really need to talk about this? $300 for a box that can play music, photos & video from your PC upstairs. Hrm...how bout $450 for an XBox360 that can do the same thing, AND play games, download content, and so on, and so on. On top of that, the UI doesn't even seem that exciting. It reminds me of what the TiVo had, and what XBox has with Media Connect; the MCE Extender functionality is just so much nicer.

Check out some of the pics of the UI here: http://www.engadget.com/photos/first-apple-tv-pics, I think you'll agree that this is somewhat prehistoric.

Holy Crap! BC Place Collapsed!

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 23:29:58 GMT

Apparently BC Place had a tear in the roof, and since it's an all-air suppored roof, even a small tear can cause the roof to collapse. I guess they deflated it so they could fix it...either way, some amazing pictures.

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/story/2007/01/05/bc-dome.html

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=448f933e-b377-43ba-9c63-2b5edd334690&k=79296

(Ignore the fact that the year is wrong on the caption on the photo on the right)

Go Hawks!

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 22:58:28 GMT

I am Iron Man (If I were a Superhero)

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 04:03:05 GMT

Myresults:
I am Iron Man

Iron Man		60%
Spider-Man		55%
Superman		45%
Supergirl		40%
Robin		40%
The Flash		40%
Green Lantern		40%
Hulk		35%
Wonder Woman		30%
Catwoman		30%
Batman		20%

Inventor. Businessman. Genius.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

We Helped you Become Time's Person of the Year

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 00:24:56 GMT

Time Magazine declared you, yes you, the person of the year! Yup, that's right, now you have something in common with Bill & Melinda Gates, and Bono. This really goes to show how important bloggers and video-bloggers have become in our culture and in the way we get information. Think about it, when's the last time you read a review for a product written by a professional?

For me, I get my information from Engadget, Mini Microsoft, WikiPedia and of course, Trevin's blog. Heck, even Microsoft rolled out an internal blog as a means of discussion between employees and executives.

Things like this make me remember why I'm excited to work on Windows Live Spaces; enabling anyone, anywhere, to have a voice.

I feel kinda bad for Becky -- Survivor

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 06:58:12 GMT

So, a twist to Survivor this year...they took three people into the final tribal council and had the jury pick between three people. On the ballot this time were 2 strong competitors and 1 tag-along. I gotta say, I feel kinda bad for Becky; she didn't even get one vote! I don't think that's happened before.

Despite the fact that it took her 90 minutes to make fire (with matches) in the tie-breaker, I still feel sorry for her. In most cases, there is a tough decision for the jury, but this time, it really seems that the decision was between two people and Becky was just discounted from the beginning.

Ah well...one month until 24 starts!

Settlers of Catan

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 08:01:27 GMT

(aka: another thing to sink money into)

Nicole and I have been looking for a good board game that we could play with just the two of us, or a group. We had been playing Carcassonne for a while, but we've kinda maxed out all the expansions, and it's starting to get to a point where there are just too many rules. As you add all the expansions, the game just starts geting longer and longer, and if you're playing with people new to it, just too overwhelming. Great game though...just time for a change.

Its been hard finding something else to play that's anywhere near as good for two players though. We've gone to many games stores, and noone has been able to recommend anything else worth trying. We'd been wanting to try Settlers of Catan for a while now, but the box says it's only for 3-4 players. Anyway, the power went out this weekend and some friends came over with the game, and we got an introduction to it by candlelight. Probably a good sign of how simple the game is to pickup is that with light only from a few candles, we managed to get through the explanation really well, and didn't lose any pieces in the process.

We enjoyed it so much, we went out and bought it today. We decided to go online and see if we could find any two player variations, and yup, tonnes. What I don't understand though is why the author or publisher of the game wouldn't create a two player version and advertise it. Seems like they're just losing money. We read about 6 two-player variations and picked the one I'm enclosing below from here and so far, we really like it. The one thing you don't get is the trading aspects and the ganging up on people. In some ways, this game really reminds me of Monopoly, but with more strategy.

2 Player Settlers of Catan

The variant involves using a neutral player (white pieces). The neutral player starts with 2 settlements and 2 roads. The neutral player can only build roads through the coarse of the game. The neutral player cannot build on ports or buy cards. All they can do is build roads and act as a trader of resources. In order to play this 2 player variant, you need the base game and a special trading chart. Use the standard Settlers set up and rules for the most part. Seems to work well with the Cities and Knights expansion, as well.

Idea/purpose behind the neutral player

Make Settler basic game playable and interesting with only 2 players. I was satisfied with the results. The neutral player, due to his road building abilities, made the board seem smaller. Also, the neutral player could produce resources that were initially difficult for you to produce and (hopefully trade them away to you cheaply).

Placement order at the start of the game

Let's say Red goes first and places a road and settlement. Then Blue places a road and a settlement. Blue then goes again. Then Red places it's second road and settlement.
Trading and the neutral player

Players, after rolling production and before passing, can declare that they would like to trade with the neutral player. The player in question declares that they want to trade and 2 dice are rolled (standard d-6 dice). The player then consults the special trading chart in order to see what the results are. The results are a proposed trade which the player who rolled the dice may accept or decline. If a 7 is rolled then no deal is declared and the players turn is automatically over!

Road Building and Resource cards involving the neutral player

The neutral player tries to build as many roads as it can through out the game. Besides trading resources, that's all it does. The neutral player cannot own a port and thus all bank trades are 4:1 ratio. If a neutral player gets 4 resources of one type that are NOT brick or lumber, then it must trade those 4 resources to the bank for either brick or lumber. This is forced and is done immediately! Examples: neutral player has 4 sheep and trades them to the Bank for 1 brick. Brick or lumber? The neutral player must try to balance his Brick and lumber resources as equally as possible. This rule influences bank trades naturally.

When the neutral player has the resources to build a road who places it? A roll off occurs between the two players. High roll places it on the board using standard Settlers rules. If a tie, re-roll.

Initial placement of neutral settlements and roads

As stated before, the neutral player starts with 2 roads and two settlements. How are they placed? Each player, say Red and Blue, at the start of the game receive one white settlement and road each for placement. These are place after their own settlements and roads have been placed (following the turn order already established).

Additional Rules

If the neutral player starts with brick and lumber resource cards from its beginning allotment, it builds the road immediately.

If a 7 is rolled during the game, the neutral player can lose cards if it has more than a total of seven cards. (If a 7 is rolled during trading with the neutral player the player's turn ends immediately. No cards are lost to the robber and no other effect occurs).

You can only propose a trade with the neutral player once per turn. Of course, it's possible that the neutral player doesn't always have the resources proposed. You're out of luck when that occurs, but your turn doesn't end.

Optional Rule: Red player cannot trade with the Blue player at all during the game. All trades are port deals, bank trades and neutral trades.

Trading Chart

Dice	You	Neutral
2 & 12	1 resource	1 choice
3 & 11	1 resource	1 Ore
4	1 resource	1 Lumber
5	1 resource	1 Brick
6	1 resource	1 Sheep
7	Turn ends immediately
8	1 resource	1 Wheat
9	1 resource	1 Sheep or Wheat
10	2 resources	1 choice