June 2003 Blog Posts
Wow, Microsoft cut 161 jobs. It's rare that Microsoft shrinks headcount but it's been a difficult year for consulting. Not enough work and too many consultants on the bench. There's been major organisational changes going on in the services group. I'm told it now has the same structure as IBM's Global Services. Not surprising given that the person running Microsoft's Enterprise Services came from there! There are jokes going around that it should now be called Microsoft Global Services.
In case you haven't noticed, I've added a page of links to people I know who have websites. If you I know you and you have a website, let me know and I'll add it. I've also provided links to monthly archives in the Software Adventures and The Good Life weblogs. I'll add one soon to the Brain Noodles weblog but there's a technical issue involved that you don't want to know about.
Just had my first video conference with my Dad. Got it working through NetMeeting. There's no icon to run NetMeeting but you just have to go to Start.Run and type "conf" and hit return and you'll get it. One thing I like about NetMeeting is that all the options aren't hidden like Windows Messenger. Can't get video conferencing working from inside Windows Messenger yet. From checking out forums on the Internet, it looks like my Netgear DG824M isn't fully plug and play compatible. Trying to use the whiteboard reports an issue with the SIP protocol. Arrgghh. Hope Netgear is working...
Interesting to see that the Apple iTunes Music Store is doing so well at 99 cents per song. Maybe the music industry isn't dead but certainly the way it does business is going to have to change. Piracy and file swapping has it bleeding heavily. Looking forward to seeing the Windows version from Apple. I'm sure there are few people in Microsoft kicking themselves for not being first out with a similiar offering. It would be great to integrate it with Windows Media Player. I suspect they wanted to wait a bit and get it integrated into the new digital rights...
Cool. Got my new webcam today and it installed very easily. NetMeeting had no problem using it. So I'm set for video conferencing I hope. Want to try installing it on Jenny's laptop 'cause then we can rove around the house while in a video conference. Want to see our garden? At some point, I should try setting up a web page with a live webcam image. Hmmm. Gerbilcam anyone?
I've given up trying to use my camcorder for video conferencing. The NetMeeting/IM software is lame and doesn't understand it if you have more than one option for video capture nor does it like a camera that comes and goes via Plug 'n' Play firewire. I also can't get an svideo connector to connect to my Ti4400 graphics card. Arrgghhh. I've ordered a Logitech QuickCam Pro 4000 instead. Sounds pretty good as it has a 1.3 megapixel CCD rather than just a CMOS chip. Should be here soon...
Oh how nice. I got a gift for my tech support gig the other day. Champagne and chocolate! Isn't it great how bamboozling technology is that it makes people so very grateful even if the fix was quite simple? This technology just ain't user friendly enough yet.
So starting July Europeans have to pay Value Added Tax on digital services bought from outside Europe. Guess that means my hosting fees go up although they haven't mentioned anything yet. Bummer.
Spent the better part of today helping somone at R*'s school recover their computer. It had frozen halfway through a service pack install and would no longer boot-up - fatal error blue screen after agp440.sys loaded. Safe Mode and Last Known Good were useless. Discovered the joys of recovery mode but eventually realised that it only allows you to muck with the Windows directory and nothing else; useless for data recovery. Tried making an MS-DOS boot disk with an NTFS driver from sysinternals but didn't work for me. Eventually just reinstalled XP using the repair option and it worked fine....
My web/email hosting company had a little accident and lost all our email accounts and mailing lists. I was one of the unlucky 10% that weren't recovered. Still some hope of a restore but it's not really a big deal. If you just happened to have sent email to me on Friday/Saturday, I might not have seen it. Unfortunately, Jenny hasn't checked her email for much longer so if you sent her anything in the last week, you should probably resend it.
If you're thinking of a new PC, you'll probably want one with a motherboard based on the i875P chipset. It supports Dual DDR 400 (6.4 GB/s) which is the fastest memory support you can have at the moment - synchronous with a 3 Ghz P4! Here's an architecture picture. Other goodies: AGP 8x, 2 Serial ATA controllers + RAID, 8 USB 2.0 ports, 200Mhz FSB. Bit concerning that some motherboards need to use active cooling on the south bridge - more noise. I'd like to see this chipset done on a Shuttle PC.
Interesting article on Microsofts strategy with the Office Real Time Communications Server 2003. Looks like a clever move to me but will take time to gain trust and reliability. It'll make for great demo's and over time will be a winner as Voice Over IP gains ground. In a way, it's inevitable since Office needs to grow it's value proposition by taking on more and more otherwise no one will upgrade.
So I've got the camera hooked up and was toying around with animation using Premier but getting nowhere - the ui is horrible. Then I found this site. Always thought clay animation was very cool and might be a really fun thing to do with the kids one day. So this led me to downloading and installing the free trial version of Stop Motion Pro. Way, way, easier and quickly animated one second of my tea mug running around. No problem. Hmmm. Might be time to dig out some plasticine! The software even does rotoscoping but haven't figured it out...
I got my old digital camcorder hooked up to my computer today and configured my firewall. Anyone with broadband want to try out NetMeeting? To have NetMeeting work through a firewall, the following outbound ports have to be open: 389, 522, 1503, 1720, 1731. Might be able to get away with fewer but haven't worked it out yet.
Now listed in Globe of Blogs too!
Added myself to the Diarist .Net directory. Interesting place to jump off and read other weblogs.
Added myself to this huge portal of weblogs. Need to find other big directories I should list myself in.
Not good but not as bad as it sounds. Growth is still estimated at 6.3% rather than 6.9% for 2003. Meanwhile, growth in 2004 is projected at 10.3% which will help the Microsoft stock price. It's a long wait though.
Interesting article. Haven't had time to study the numbers just yet but worth looking through.
Finally finished reading my first technical book since I left Microsoft. It's "Cascading Style Sheets, The Designer's Edge" by Molly E. Holzschlag. I know, I know. It's not the most exciting topic but necessary if I'm ever gonna get this website looking half decent. Not a bad book but not great. Reasonable if you want to learn CSS but you can pick up most the information you need on the web rather than buy this book. The before and after pictures are useful. Chapter seven is very good where she goes through in detail how to reconstruct a table-based site...
Sent out a business proposal for a software startup to four venture capital companies today. I'm hopeful but not too optimistic. I'm certainly keen to hear feedback on the concept. Still searching the Internet for other companies to approach. I'm sure that someone out there will be interested but finding them is the hard part.