Polar Bears win the Sportsmanship Award!

November 10, 2004
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The Polar Bears won the sportsmanship award for U-11 Girls Division 1 Soccer!!!! We came out on top, BY A LARGE MARGIN. But the summary is the Polar Bears got 206 points and the next team got 174 (the Illusion). As a reward, LWYSA pays for a party at Illusionz. Even if we don’t win the Tournament, I view this as complete victory. When the season started I told the parents and the girls we …Continue reading →

Polar Bears are one game away

November 9, 2004
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I coach my daughter’s soccer team (11 year olds) in the Lake Washington Youth Soccer Association (LWYSA). The team name is the Polar Bears and these girls are amazing! I am blessed to have such a great bunch of girls on the team. They all have great attitudes, work hard, and more importantly play hard. This weekend we won all three of their games in the LWYSA Year End Tournament. They beat the Wind 4-1, …Continue reading →

Visual Studio 2005 + PUM == danger

November 6, 2004
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We’re busy doing a bunch of prototyping on my double-super-secret project at work and I decide I need to chip in and help. I haven’t used Visual Studio 2005 (Whidbey) yet, so I figure I’d build a little app we need using it. I sat down Wednesday night and started hammering away… Not a complex app, basically a single winform app with about 30 controls used to create configuration files that another component the team …Continue reading →

New Windows PC Form Factors

November 3, 2004
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It’s going to be very interesting over the next few years as OEMs begin to finally produce truly innovative new PC form factors focused on specific user scenarios. Neowin.net points out that a British OEM, Scan Computers, has launched the “Project PC”, a PC specifically targeted at project managers who make heavy use of Microsoft Project. We’ve already seen great innovation in small form factor (SFF) desktop machines such as those from Shuttle. And great …Continue reading →

Lunar Eclipse – Wow!

October 28, 2004
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I was driving the kids home tonight and we saw the Lunar Ecilpse. When we first saw it the Earth had cast a shadow across about 75% of the moon. We raced home so we could get out the binoculars and take a closer look before it was completely “red”. We got home in plenty of time and while we watched the Red Sox win the World Series saw it get really dark and then …Continue reading →

How to Build a PC for the future

October 20, 2004
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ExtremeTech has a great article full of advice on bulding a PC today that can be upgraded in the future. Their general advice is “don’t build yesterday’s PC but instead bet on the new standards like PCI Express”. Matches my opinion exactly. Of course, when I built the PC I’m typing this on about a month ago I ignored my own advice…with good reason: I really needed a new PC and the “next generation stuff” really wasn’t …Continue reading →

In depth MCE 2005 article on AnandTech

October 13, 2004
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AnandTech has a very deep article on Windows Media Center Edition 2005. They didn’t think much of the earlier versions of MCE. Some quotes: “Media Center Edition continues to be the coolest looking highest performance PVR/DVR (with a fast enough system) out there on the market today. The interface continues to be clearly ahead of the competition…”“In the end, MCE continues to be a niche product, but if you have the means, then its definitely one …Continue reading →

Media Center SDK on MSDN

October 13, 2004
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Via Ethan Zoller, the Media Center 2005 SDK is now on MSDN. http://msdn.microsoft.com/mce. Via this I also discoved Michael Creasy’s blog which focuses on MCE. Cool.

Mount St. Helens Photos

October 12, 2004
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Via Furrygoat, I found a great USGS website with tons of really good pictures of Mount St. Helens. Definitely worth checking out. When I see these photos I’m reminded of two things: How gawd-awful the pictures of the 1980 eruption were and this amazing Earth that God created.

When programs just work

October 12, 2004
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I don’t get to write much code anymore. When I do I get an amazing amount of joy out of it. Tonight I realized that my MCE Controller, which I hacked up to enable me to control my Windows Media Center machine via Ethernet from my Crestron system has simply “just worked” since I released version 1.0.1 in February. I’m struck with how easy it was to write using C# and the .NET Frameworks in …Continue reading →

Doing the Multimon

October 12, 2004
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ExtremeTech discusses “Doing the Multimon“. Great article. Too bad they don’t talk about the very cool Ultramon, which gives you great fine grained control over your multi-monitor setup including different desktop images, screen savers, and more.Even more agregious is the fact they don’t talk about MaxiVista which allows you to turn any other PC (particularly that ancient laptop you have lying around) into a second or third monitor.I wrote about both these great tools in …Continue reading →

Walt on backup

October 8, 2004
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Walt Mossberg has an article on backing up your precious data.

Sony Vaio type X

October 7, 2004
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Engadget moans thatthe price of the ultra-cool Sony Vaio type X is too expensive. Sure it is expensive today but soon this level of sophistication in PC hardware will be broadly available at much move competitive prices.

Iain Blogs about Version 1.0 products

October 7, 2004
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Iain (who as moved to http://blogs.msdn.com/iainmcdonald) has a great post based on an old doc written in ’95. The topic of the post is how to avoid the pitfalls of a Version 1.0 product. Good stuff.

Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 – gamepc.com review

October 7, 2004
Smart Home
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GamePC – Symphony Arrives : Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 GamePC.com reviews MCE 2005 and loves it. “…MCE is still (in our opinion) the best home theater product currently on the market by a very large margin.” Another “version 3 success” by Microsoft? I certainly think so, but then I’m highly biased.

Windows Media Center Extenders

October 5, 2004
Smart Home
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Buy.com is now taking pre-orders for the Linksys WMCE54AG “Wireless A/G Media Center Extender”…aka Bobsled. I am so incredibly proud of this device. Way back in 2000 I sat down with Don Gray and Bob Atkinson to brainstorm the concept of using RDP to remote UI and AV from a media server. This concept has finally been released as a full product. Of course you can’t actually use one of these until Windows Media Center …Continue reading →

Dilbert’s Home Server

October 5, 2004
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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According to the press release, “…Dilbert’s Ultimate House”(DUH). DUH is a virtual web-based home that the famous icon of the workplace Dilbert, his fans, tech geeks, the environmentally conscious, and those who just plain love the comfort of a good sofa, will covet.”He’s got a pretty clean looking wiring closet, but what kind of home server is that? And why does he still have all those magnetic tapes (or are they CD’s…not that it matters)? If he …Continue reading →

Time to RAID PVRs, says Silicon Image

October 5, 2004
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In Time to RAID PVRs, says Silicon Image The Register reports that Silicon Image has a new RAID chip that they think they can sell to PVR vendors. Not sure how this differs from their existing SATA/IDE RAID chips. But they seem to agree with me that those hard drives are fragile and redundancy schemes are a Good thing.

Helmet Home Server

October 5, 2004
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news.com reports on a new PC form factor: Helmet PC aims to score with football fans. This thing would make a fantastic home server (see my mini-ITX post)…as long as you used a Seattle Seahawks helmet and not a nasty Raiders helmet.

Ichiro’s 262 Hits

October 4, 2004
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When I was in Japan in June I had a free day and decided to do some sightseeing. I decided to take a train somewhere that would have tourist attractions outside of Tokyo. The concierge at my hotel suggested Hase and Kamakura. So off I went. I love trains, and I love train stations, but I don’t speak or read a stitch of Japanese. While stainding in front of the ticket machine a the train …Continue reading →