MikeFitz with overflow bit set…

Do you want to win an Xbox 360?  Do you love developing and have 2 hours to spare?  All you have to do is develop a Vista Sidebar Gadget and enter the Innovation Centre Competition (closing next Friday 29th June).

So you might be thinking it must be hard?  Right?  WRONG!  It is just html and JavaScript like a Webpage without the browser.  To help you, we have a webcast on how to create a Vista Gadget from one of the competition entrants John O’Brien who happens to be a Microsoft MVP.

On the competition website you can find ideas and resources, terms and conditions, competition steps and a registration page.

Microsoft mate, Chuck Sterling is also going to Code Camp Oz.  He is driving down from the Gold Coast.  As I write this, he will be in Newcastle, and after Code Camp, he is driving down to Hobart.  All up, he’s going to be on the road for a couple of weeks.

Now Chuck has his mobile phone with him.  Every now and then, if it is turned on, Chuck’s phone will check in with the nearest mobile phone tower.  Theoretically, one could enquire on Telstra’s mobile phone network and find out which tower was servicing Chuck’s phone right now.  Theoretically, if one knew the exact latitude and longitude of each mobile phone tower, one could plot Chuck’s position on a Virtual Earth map of Australia.  Theoretically…

Well theorize no more!  It’s been done.  Click this link to see where Chuck is right now.  Way cool.  (In many parts of Australia, you may have to zoom out 4 levels to see aerial photos.)

More information about the guys at Power Business Systems who have built this, over at Chuck’s Blog.  (Hmmm… thinks… I wonder how much Chuck’s boss, Frank would pay for this info?)

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Update: Mon 2 Apr 07
Chuck skived off early from Code Camp yesterday so he could get to Melbourne in time for the overnight ferry to Tasmania.  Here he is this morning just south of Devonport, approaching Launceston, on his way to his next .NET user group meeting in Hobart.

And speaking of skiving off, where’s Chuck’s boss, Frank, this fine Monday morning?

Last September I wrote this other post which included this Google Satellite Image of the Ziggurat of Ur.

Google Satellite Image of the Ziggurat of Ur

The Ziggurat is just north of the massive US-operated Tallil air base in the southern Iraqi province of Dhi Qar.  This is where the Australian Task Group (the majority of Australia’s forces in Iraq) are currently stationed.  See Operation Catalyst.

My instructions in September were…

Click on the image above and look at the area around the Ziggurat  …  zoom out a couple of levels and then pan south until you will see the air base.  Note the odd crater in the ground, made around the time the previous users were persuaded to leave.

If you had followed these instructions in September, you would have seen the air base swarming with aircraft, helicopters and vehicles. You would also have seen rows and rows of barracks, workshops, stores and mess huts.  I’m guessing you may even have seen the shadow of a Golden Arches sign.

Follow these instructions today and you will see imagery that looks decidedly pre-2003.  No sign at all of the US or Australian encampment.

Now, I’m not normally a fan of censorship on the net, but in this case, I’ll make an exception.  It appears, the bad guys have been using Google Maps to acquire targets inside coalition bases.

In January, British troops in Basra arrested an insurgent who was found with a Google Earth map of the Shatt Al Arab base, home for 1,000 British soldiers.  Following representations from the British government, Google seems to have reverted to pre-2003 imagery for all militarily-sensitive areas in Iraq.

This afternoon’s Ping contained an article with the headline RAAF gets ‘look and shoot’ tech.  Australia’s F/A-18 Hornets are being equipped with new high-tech targeting systems.

Boeing’s Joint Helmet-Mounted Cueing Systems (JHMCS) technology …

allows pilots to pick a target just by looking at it.

By aiming a crosshair, projected on the helmet visor, over the desired target and pressing a button, pilots can quickly and easily aim weapons and their radar.

JHMCS technology also displays aircraft altitude, airspeed, gravitational pull, angle of attack and tactical information on the visor …

This is new, is it?

I distinctly remember being told about a very similar technology in 1973!  It was being tested by a group of US pilots in helicopter gunships in Vietnam.

Now, I was in an infantry unit at the time and my information is admittedly second-hand, but

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The term Microsoft Office no longer has the same meaning after I watched these Microsoft UK training videos featuring Ricky Gervais in his David Brent persona.  They’re LOL-funny.  Thanks, Dion.

We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!
— Wayne and Garth bowing down before Alice Cooper, Wayne’s World (1992)

Last month, I was honoured to be included in Frank Arrigo’s list of top 10 referrers. This list contained some august company indeed and I was certainly pleased to be on it.

But ever since then, I have tossed and turned at night, wondering how I managed to refer so much traffic to Frank’s blog. I mean, we’re talking Frank here! The Robert Scoble of Australia! Suggested by many as the Scobleizer’s replacement or Microsoft’s new #1 blogger. He with the stellar LinkedIn stats.

This cannot be right. Am I really worthy of making Frank’s top 10? Has Frank made a blue when compiling his stats? Hmmm…

(more…)

It’s the Queen’s Birthday weekend in eastern Australia. Where were you when Robert Scoble confirmed he was leaving Microsoft?

Good Luck, Robert, with your new position at PodTech.  Keep in touch with your loyal followers.

Also, keep us in touch with your part of the real world.  (I love Yellowstone, the world’s first National Park.  I was there in 1990, on my No 3 son’s first birthday.  It was April, and those boardwalks were half covered in snow.  That evening, we celebrated in a family restaurant in Bozeman, Montana, a lovely university town.)

And finally, best wishes to your family.  It is what life is about.

My mate Dugie had a minor whinge the other day about the cost of printer consumables. His story reminded me of a very clever lady I met a few years ago. She was one of the first Australians to exploit the high profit margin in printer cartridges. Her business was thriving because she had really worked out exactly what her clients needed.

Dugie’s first complaint was that he was forced to buy a new printer for no reason other than the manufacturer no longer made replacement cartridges. There was nothing wrong with his printer; it was even still within its “extended warranty”. Whinge-worthy.

His next shock came when he purchased a new printer and, planning ahead, priced a spare set of cartridges. A complete set of cartridges came to just $20 less than the price of his new printer. Dugie’s question was “Why would anybody ever buy a set of cartridges when you could buy a whole new printer and have complete hardware redundancy?” Even more whinge-worthy.

But it gets worse. 

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Crazy idea doing the rounds at the moment.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 161.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of this sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

What happens when I do this?  Without leaving my chair, I reach out and grab Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit by Bill English & Microsoft SharePoint Teams.  P 161, 5th sentence:

For example, documents that will remain on a file server will need to be crawled if those documents are to appear in the search result set.

It all makes perfect sense when you look at one sentence at a time!

Then I realise Hey, I just typed that sentence long-hand.  This book comes with a CD.  I have the complete book installed as a PDF on my notebook.  I could have just cut and pasted it!  This is a crazy idea.

Where did I catch this crazy idea from?  David Drucker, a mate in Vancouver.  David’s book was About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design by Alan Cooper, “the father of Visual Basic”. (more…)

I thought this was a little bit interesting - a site that allows you to tick off a list of countries you have visited and then generate a map showing those countries.

create your own visited country map 
(Apparently I have visited 22, or 10% of the world’s countries.)

But the geek in me became really interested when I saw the HTML they give you to include this map in your own blog.

img src="http://www.world66.com/myworld66
/visitedCountries/worldmap?
visited=CAUSEGMAATBEFRDEIEITLINLESCHUKVABHJOMYSGTHAUNZ” /

Note that the visited= parameter contains a list of 2-letter country codes.  It starts with CAUSEGMA (Canada, USA, Egypt, Morocco) and ends with AUNZ (Australia, New Zealand)

Where might this be useful?  Let’s say I had a travel blog, eg Here’s a picture of me at Petra in Jordan last year.  And now, the question on everyone’s lips, “Where the bloody hell is Jordan?”  Ta-Da:

img src="http://www.world66.com/myworld66
/visitedCountries/worldmap?visited=JO” /

Of course, being true geeks and in the interests of valid XHTML, we would always remember to add the alt= to the img tags. Wouldn’t we?