Wow, where to start?  Tech.Ed is the Microsoft IT geek yearly pilgrimage, held this year on the Gold Coast, as it was 2 years ago for my first attendance.

A quick summary of my Gold Coast experience:

• Really, there are a lot of retirees here.
• Those who are not retirees are young women wearing very little, and repeatedly trying to pull it down/up to cover the exposed areas.
• The rest are visiting families trying to take their 4yo kids into restaurants, bars, etc. The men are usually being chided for looking at the young women mentioned above.
• The weather is the same every day. What’s the point in that? Bah, give me Melbourne with its highly diverse weather experience.

Tech.Ed this year was always going to be a strange one with the offering of a free mini laptop (netbook) to all attendees – a world first for Microsoft Australia (I think). The laptop offering did mean compromises has to be made in other areas, but on the whole I think was an extremely positive result.

With 2500+ netbooks, other laptops, iPhones, Blackberrys, and Windows Mobile phones all wanting to have wireless internet access throughout the conference centre, wifi was a big challenge. I think Microsoft, Cisco, and the GCCEC did a superb job in meeting that challenge and were only prevented from receiving top marks due to the actions of a few selfish, idiotic attendees who seemed to feel entitled to BitTorrent and deny excellent service to the other geeks out to learn and enjoy the experience.

Actually, that would have to be the common sour theme for my Tech.Ed experience this year: the selfish gits who can’t seem to show common courtesy to their fellow geeks. So, a grab-bag of gripes I’ve had:

• Bandwidth hogging is not cool on the conference network.
• Getting drunk and being silly is up to you, but don’t puke anywhere in/near the conference centre.
• Set your phones to silent when in a session. Seriously, how fscking hard is it to do this? Are you all retards? Everyone is permitted one mistake, but the repeat offenders deserve stabbing in the eye.
• Similar to the above, don’t talk in sessions, especially about crap that is not related to the session topic. If you are bored, quietly pack up and leave.
• When wait staff are guarding a table of food so that it may be shared equitably amongst attendees, don’t make their job harder by trying to get the food. Pay attention and be patient. Queue jumpers make it worse for everybody. Again, one warning should have been enough, not every single meal time. Idiots.
• Last, and least, when Question and Answer time happens at the end of a session, don’t bug the presenters about your specific technical fault. Ask a generalised tech fault question, ask about how it works, what the future of the product is, ask for contact details and preferred subject matter (ie. Do they want to hear you specific tech fault?), but don’t monopolise the presenter’s time for something that isnt relevant to the other 20+ people waiting to speak with them.

That’s enough whinging, now for something more positive: the sessions, content, and presenters.

Tech.Ed (and just about any other technical IT event) are plagued by demonstration failures. Examples that work perfectly 100 times will fail once on the screen in a session. Hardware will fail, power will fail, fingers and brains will refuse to co-operate once on stage. This is normal. Most presenters can, and did, cope with the situation appropriately and still have very successful sessions. Congratulations to them all, its a hard gig presenting to highly technical and critical geeks. Geeks who often feel they know more about any topic than the presenter (or anyone else at the conference).

[todo: insert sessions attended here]

[todo: favourite presenters]
@SuperLilia

[todo: dreamworld event]

[todo: social events]

[todo: conclusion]

So, time to play with Yahoo! Pipes … which I’ve been waiting for an excuse to try. A few minutes hacking around (no, really, it’s very quick-and-dirty), and voila! a pipe that takes your CFA region as input and returns incidents in that region, less the false alarms.

You can find your CFA region (hint, not for people in the main metro area) at: http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/incidents/definitions/region.htm

To use the pipe, head over to CFA by Region and enter your region number in the field and hit run pipe. Easy. You can then grab the RSS feed from the pipe to use in your favourite reader, or use the Yahoo! alerts to e-mail new entries to you. Sadly the SMS alert feature does not appear to be available in Australia, otherwise we’d have the suggested warning system all set.

If anyone can think of improvements, let me know, or you can just clone it and create your own pipe. Enjoy.

It comes with earbuds nearly identical to stock iPod buds, with the small but significant inclusion of the inline microphone/switch bulge. The buds have the usual drawbacks: painful to wear, sound terrible, and are white. Like most people, I immediately switched to anything else and have been happy – for the most part.

It turns out that the switch and microphone are fabulously useful. A few immediate features are the ability to pause (single click), skip to next track (double click), skip back a track (triple click), and fast forward a track (hold). When using the provided buds, the phone rings through the headphones, you can answer the phone (single click), hang up the call (single click when on call), and speak into the bulge microphone while listening through the headphones. No need to touch the phone or, with custom ringtones for callers, no need to even look at it.

Not so with regular headphones… You can still listen to music, but can’t control it. You can still listen to the call, but can’t hear it ring through the headphone, control the call, or speak into the microphone. Instead, you only notice a call because the music fades out, you have to pull the phone out of your pocket/bag to answer it, and then you must hold the phone somewhere near your mouth – looks very silly.

The obvious solution (to me) is to have an adaptor that plugs in-line with your regular headphones to provide the microphone/switch function. The logical construction is easy, but by no means stylish – custom plastics molding is gaffer-tape-ish or expensive. It has already been commercially developed of course, but by only one readily found supplier: Phillips

Naturally, I was straight onto the web to buy one. Again, it seems only one Australian-based store had then for sale: MrGadget.com.au. The order was placed and the waiting began… After over 2 months I gave up trying to deal with the sales staff and went to the source: @MrGadget

This was first real effort to get any direct result from the Twitter network, so my expectations were low. I was very pleasantly surprised and satisfied by my dealings with @MrGadget – his communications were direct, honest and timely. Sadly he was not able to supply the headphone adaptor cable, but as compensation for my troubles I was given some ex-review headphones, some iPhone screen protectors to trial/review, and an iPhone silicon skin. Part of that deal was for me to review the headphones and screen protectors, thus the following is not a paid review, but I have gained from the transaction.

• Up first, the screen protector:

The market for iPhone screen protectors appears to be somewhat saturated; everywhere you look there is a new brand or style. My original protector was some unknown brand hastily grabbed off a shelf when the phone was new. It did the job well enough until I foolishly stored my keys and phone in the same pocket. Welcome to scratch-ville, but at least the protector was sacrificed that the phone may live.

The new protector is MrGadget’s own branded product. My first impression was how bright and glossy the screen was compared to with the matte protector I used to have; the MrGadget protector interferes much less with the display. An initial concern was that the new protector was too ‘sticky’ – when touching/sliding/pinching/etc there is more resistance to movement. I think this is getting better with practice and a lighter touch. The unexpected benefit is that I find it much easier to type accurately – again with the reduced interference.

• Next, the iPhone silicone case:

The case was not my favourite item. It fit the iPhone well and had a nice texture that made it easy to grip, but it had a headphone management dealy on the back designed to fit stock earbuds (and similar). This made the case almost double the thickness of the phone, and somewhat awkward to hold. Since I don’t use the earbuds, and like my phone to fit in my pocket, the case was quickly passed to a friend who could make appropriate use of it and is reportedly still very happy with it.

• Last, but by no means least … the headphones:

These are the black Sumajin ones with a built-in SD card MP3 player. These are the best headphones I’ve ever owned – they sound fantastic, with  a very consistent response across the range. As a closed design, they also have excellent sound exclusion … with one small flaw: the buttons for the built-in MP3 player have some spacing around them that allows a relatively large amount of sound in on one side. This is something I probably wouldn’t normally notice if it were symmetrical, but it’s quite obvious in noisy environments. I’ve never actually used the MP3 player function, but I may have to give it a whirl sometime as it would allow some cable-free music or podcast listening.

So, while I didn’t get the switch/microphone cable I was looking for, I am very happy with the screen protector and headphones I received instead.

Final note: a few other cable/adaptor options appear to have surfaced since this all started (4 months or so…) – I’ll update if I ever obtain one.

I’ve just taken the time to discover the query_posts() template function for WordPress and used it to exclude my tweets from the main page (and soon, the RSS feed):

Insert the following into your index.php before the “have_posts()” section:

<?php
if (is_home()) {
query_posts($query_string . “&cat=-42″);
}
?>

In this case, I’m excluding my tweets category (42) from the main home page.

Now, sitting back and enjoying the best of both worlds – cake, and eating it too

Update: Now using the Simply Exclude plugin to exclude the tweets from the front page and RSS feeds.

They are fun though, just don’t run your life by them!

Find my most recent one here: http://froosh.net/stuff/whats-sexy-about-your-name/

Mrs Froosh and the Kiddo have been playing the Diamond and Pearl versions for some time, but Mrs Froosh recently abandoned her Pearl copy and released it to me (yes, I’m the last in the family pecking order ).

And I’m in deep now.

I’ve always avoided the Pokemon games on the presumption that they are too childish.  While that may be true for some of the older versions (Can’t know, never played them), and the marketing is heavily geared towards the pre-teens, the Diamond/Pearl versions are incredibly complex with many engaging mini-games.  I’m a big fan of the FInal Fantasy games series, but I think I have a new favourite game…  Pokemon is likely to keep me going for hundreds and hundreds of hours.

One of the features I’m looking forward to using more effectively and widely are the ‘collaborative play’ experiences.  At present, 8 y.o. Kiddo is the only challenger I have, and he’s mopping the floor with me.  His Pokemon are bigger, faster, stronger, and vastly more experienced than mine, and yet we can still have an exciting and engaging play experience.  The mini-games offer local wireless interaction options at every turn and I’d love to see how well it works in a much larger group.  Internet-based ‘Wi-Fi Connect’ options are a much more limited offering: only trades, voice-chat, or battles with integrated voice-chat.  The latter works surprisingly well, far exceeding my expectations.  I’m really looking forward to finding more Pokemon geeks to interact with this way!

With that in mind, I offer up my Pokemon Pearl Friend Code.  Add me to your Pal Pad and e-mail me your Friend Code and we’ll see what comes of it.  I’d love to see how I fare against new opponents – the gloating my my son is getting a bit much!

Pokemon Pearl Friend Code: “Froosh” 0559-8316-8401

Update [18-08-2008]: I bought a new DS Lite, and so my friend code has changed. It is now: 0817-5963-3131

Taxi drivers, I believe, are professional drivers.  Professionals in that they get paid to drive you from one location to another location of your choosing.  Lets break that down shall we?

Driving: there is a large body of laws and regulations regarding the operation of a motor vehicle on the roads and highways.  It includes many simple things like speed limits, indicating when a change of lane or direction is desired, and how to follow the lines on a road when turning a corner through an intersection.  It also covers more arcane things like when the use of high-beams is permitted and what to do when another motorist is in distress.  Of the many taxi drivers of many many nationalities that I have encountered, there have been less than 5 that I think would pass a driving exam.  Take some pride in your work people!  Make an effort, know the rules – even the sillier ones, and use them!  I’m sure it doesn’t help that their employers just don’t care; there is no incentive to improve.  Have you ever called a taxi company to make a comment on a drivers performance, or the DoI?  I have never heard people more uninterested in my life.

Location: Police, Fire, and Ambulance services don’t generally have GPS navigation devices – the reason stated is usually that the money could be better spent on life saving equipment, etc.  Their professional drivers are instead expected to know how to get just about anywhere in Melbourne, and to be able to read a map in a moments notice when necessary.  Is it so much to expect this from Taxi drivers?  So they are new to the city perhaps?  A modest up-front (credit-paid, tax-claimable, interest-free for 12-months) fee for the purchase of a GPS navigation device would pay for itself within days or weeks in efficiencies gained through better navigation.

Of course, I write all this in the presumption of innocence, that they do this from incompetence or lack of effort.  I believe this is largely the case, but have definitely had some very shonky drivers.  One for example doubled the fare at the last moment and then tried to deny it.  Sure, it always costs $90 to get to Mill Park from the city at 11pm.  Nice try buddy, but I’m sure it works often enough to make it worthwhile for him to try.

Feeling ranty?  Have a go!

The target organisation is a popular Australian company, established by 3 friends around 10 years ago, and does at least 90% of it’s business Internet facing.  It’s grown quite large since then, but they claim to have kept the DotCom feel to the organisation and placed a large emphasis on their “Values” during the interview.  The values are: Honesty, Ownership, Teamwork, and Passion.  I was specifically instructed to address all of these values in my answers during the interview, and I thought I did rather well.  Keep in mind here, that to even be considered for interviewing I was required to have had 8+ years of serious Systems Engineering experience on Internet facing and corporate systems and had to pass the qualifying interview from the recruiter.

The point of contention arose from one of those “Do you have any questions for us?” moments.  I asked what the policy or position was regarding discussing my prospective new employer and broad details of day-to-day activities on “new media” such as blogs, FaceBook, Twitter, etc.  As this is evidently where it all went wrong…

Their 1st response was to presume that I wanted to spend my day blogging or tweeting, followed very quickly by repeated concerns regarding client confidentiality, trade secrets, product launch schedules and similar.  I was staggered and tried in vain to steer the conversation back to the Honesty, Ownership and Passion values they had just been espousing.

• Honesty: blogging, etc giving a genuine and human face to the organisation
• Ownership: admitting mistakes, taking credit, and being proud of my work
• Passion: exhibiting pride in my employer, our work, enticing more clients to the sites, etc

After some further discussion This is where I left it and felt the gaff had been resolved, but no.  The recruiter’s feedback to me was that they thought I was a security risk, wouldn’t fit well with the team (of 3), and would be “troublesome to manage”.  I don’t know of anyone who could have worked in the corporate, government, or financial spaces without learning a few things about non-disclosure agreements and keeping secrets.  I have to seriously wonder what has happened in the past to have them respond this way…

And this is where I don’t get it: for a dotcom-survivor they just don’t understand Web2.0.  There are a multitude of examples where staff can provide the human element without revealing too much information, and generating real interest in the organisation and it’s people.  Hey, even Robert Scoble abrasive as he can be, did wonders for Microsoft’s public image in the years he was there.  And *many* finer examples are still coming out of the Microsoft wood-work!  Surely the potential positives that come from the efforts of honest, hard-working, passionate staff connecting with clients in a meaningful way are obvious…?

Perhaps I’m missing something obvious?  Please, can someone clue me up as it’s driving me insane.  This is precisely the response I would expect from my current employer which is still largely stuck in the 70s and doesn’t understand much beyond web-sites as extended newspaper ads.  But they are actually trying I guess…

Anyway, the process of writing this has been therapeutic for me.  I would dearly love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to comment here or check How to contact me if you would like to make more private comments.

Thanks for listening, and Have Fun!

[Update: Oh, and none of the interviewers I dealt with seem to exist on LinkedIn, they have completely locked off their FaceBook profiles, no blogs, and Google is not their friend. Then again, that goes for all the staff we have interviewed for positions at my current employer... Am I wrong for expecting guru-level IT staff to have an Internet presence?]

CSS Naked Day is a token of our appreciation to all the fantastic CSS coders out there who make the internets a prettier place for everyone.  Thank you.

(And I’m abandoning many of my in-progress posts since I’ve long forgotten the point I was trying to make.  I may continue the time-shifting series, or I may not.  But it’s likely I’ll blog more often, just little things here and there.  I miss the outlet.)

[My CSS Naked effort powered by Aja Lapus' CSS Naked Day Plugin]

Read on for more, but I’ll warn you I ramble and get a bit verbose.

Coping tactic #1: DVDs

DVDs are an obvious answer to going to the cinema. It’s 80% of the experience, for 20% of the price/effort. And yet, to purchase the all the DVDs can be hideously expensive. Hiring the DVDs from the video store is more cost effective, but then you’re stuck with meeting the return schedules.

The alternative I’ve chosen is Quickflix: rent the DVDs for a fixed price per month and with no fixed return schedule. Receiving and returning them by the post saves time in the video store, and entering a selection queue online means you don’t have to choose movies on the spot but can plan out your viewing.

There are several US-based services that provide this experience (NetFlix being the prime talking point), and two Australian ones that I’m aware of. BigPond Movies may have been the first (I’m not sure), but I’ve avoided them ever since they started. Why? Let me tell you: competency, or lack thereof. I’m of the opinion that companies should have a core product competency and not stray too far from it. In this case, BigPond is an ISP. Providing DVD rentals doesn’t fit anywhere in that ISP product range – we’re not talking Internet movie downloads here. Plus, my confidence in BigPond as an ISP is not very high, so I can bring myself to trust them as a DVD-by-mail provider either. Now, I may be doing BigPond Movies a huge dis-service here – this is all conjecture and opinion based on previous experience with BigPond. Let me know if you have had better experiences.

Quickflix has worked extremely well for me in the last few months with the follow minor exceptions:

Out-of-order delivery:

When several DVDs from a series are in my queue and in the order I expect to see them (e.g. Ninja Scroll the series discs 1, 2, & 3), then I expect to receive them in that order. It is not a good experience trying to watch disc 3 before disc 1 – I don’t know the characters and it’ll contain spoilers.

It would be awesome if either a) the system recognised their linked nature and forced them to be delivered in that order, waiting until disc 1 has been delivered before sending disc 2, etc or b) the system could allow me to set dependencies such as deliver Ninja Scroll (the movie) before Ninja Scroll series disc 1, etc.

This obviously becomes much more important with larger box sets such as Babylon 5, Firefly, and such.

Recommendations Optimisation:

Similar and related to the first, when offering me new recommendations don’t suggest Excel Saga Volume 6 if there is no record of me seeing the 1st 5 volumes. Just show me Vol. 1 and then if I add that to my queue, show Vol. 2 in the recommendations next time.

Already Seen:

To assist with the recommendations fix there has to be some way of marking the DVD as already seen. When a DVD has been delivered by Quickflix, it automatically gets marked as “Already Seen” but there is no way to manually set this. The current method of selecting “Do not suggest this title to me” does not really fit the concept. The easiest way I can think of doing it without extra clutter is to leverage the rating system. If I have rated a DVD, then it should be safe to assume I have seen it and this can be used in the recommendations tweaking.

HD-DVD, Blu-ray, DVD:

One last item is the format differences; this is more of a preferences setting. I need some way of letting Quickflix know that I don’t/do have a HD-DVD or Blu-ray player. This way I wouldn’t have to see these format types in my recommendations or browsing if I didn’t have a particular player and the system could offer me the HD-DVD version instead of the regular DVD of a particular movie if I had that player. Also, it should be fairly safe to assume that if I’ve rated the DVD version of a movie, then that rating would apply to the HD-DVD and Blu-ray versions as well – they’re the same movie essentially (yes, apart from extras & enhancements & quality )

Wrap-Up:

In short Quickflix works very well and I can only see it getting better in future. It lets me see DVDs of content that I choose to watch, on a schedule I choose, and without any inconvenience. Love it.