The Unauthorised Autobiography of Marc Holmes

 
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December 4, 2009

Time Flies

It feels like only a few days since I mentioned the birth of my daughter Evan, but in fact it's approaching 2 years, and I'm approaching another bout of paternity leave for Baby v2.0.

Therefore it'll be a bit hit and miss on the blogging for a month or so. Not sure why I'm mentioning that as it's always a bit hit and miss - perhaps it's because there's a valid reason this time.

In the meantime, you're in the capable hands of:
How could you go wrong?

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December 1, 2009

Ruby On Rails running on Windows Azure

My buddy Simon Davies has a quick example of RoR running on Windows Azure. You can see it here and get more details from his blog post.

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November 30, 2009

Sky Player and iPlayer on my Media Center

Managed to squeeze in a little bit more tinkering with the Windows Home Server and Media Center set-up this weekend.

First of all, the WHS had updated itself to include Power Pack 3. The main benefits of this are the integration into the Windows 7 Libraries so it's a lot easier to find my stuff now. Also, the WHS integrates into the MCE shell so I can get a quick overview of the WHS via the remote, or archive recorded TV from the MCE to WHS (and compress to portable device profiles like Zune if I want to).

I heard about a plugin for MCE to get iPlayer working too (via Twitter) but didn't check it out having had unsatisfactory experiences before. Then I saw it pop-up again on the Digital Lifestyle blog so I thought I'd give it a go. The installer is here. This crowd built it.

Once installed, I had the same problem that others seemed to be reporting: no icon in the shell to access the iPlayer. There were a couple of short-cut suggestions, but the best solution was a piece of software I hadn't seen before: use the Advent Media Studio to customise menus in MCE. This is a click-once application and allowed me to drag and drop the iPlayer addin next to the Guide in the TV menu. Perfect!

The iPlayer addin itself performs well - the streaming quality from the BBC is great of course - and is usable via the remote. It'd be great to improve the navigation methods and sorting, but for the time being it means that I've always got Waybuloo on-demand, which will make someone happy.

Combined with the release of Sky Player for MCE (and XBox) then the value of the Media Center is really improving now that I can see Sky and BBC directly from the shell.

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Filed under  //   media center  

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November 29, 2009

Silverlight helps to produce lump-free gravy

At this time of year, my mind begins to wander towards "what to cook for Christmas lunch". (There is the small business of the birth of Holmes Baby 2.0 to contend with in the next couple of weeks too).

Last year, the village lost it's electrical power around lunch time owing to overload from all the ovens, so this year I was thinking of playing it safe by having something I can chuck on the barbecue if needed. Sausages probably.

Anyway, if you need to produce some lump-free gravy at any time of year, it's great to see Silverlight helping Tesco show us how to do that.

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November 23, 2009

PDC Sessions on Windows Azure (et al)

Here's a handy list for you to get your fill of Azure related content from PDC.

Getting Started
Windows Azure
Codename "Dallas"
SQL Azure
Identity
Plenty of content. If that's not enough then there are also Channel 9 Learning Centers for Azure and for Identity, and you can download training kits for Azure and Identity here.

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November 20, 2009

GalaxyZoo

Before they headed off to PDC, Mike and Paul headed to Oxford (almost the same weather - takes about the same time to get there too given the ring road) to talk to Chris Lintott and Arfon Smith about the GalaxyZoo.org project which is a "Citizen Science" project inviting users to classify galaxies using specialist skills not available to computers (eyes and intuition mainly).

The video is now up on Channel 9.

Chris talks about the Galaxy Zoo and Citizen Science, followed by Arfon talking about the platform behind the project, and it's migration from Rails/MySQL on Amazon to Windows Azure/SQL Azure.

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November 20, 2009

EyeOnEarth - Environmental Azure App

Just when you think you've escaped the Unified Communications net (THEY CAN ALWAYS FIND YOU!) for five minutes to have a look at Facebook, up pops another buddy - Stu McCarthy - to tell me he's just finished work on EyeOnEarth.eu. Seems like a bunch of MCS chums are involved so well done all.

The official press announcement is here, but in a nutshell you can scan around Europe courtesy of Bing Maps, Silverlight and Azure (hey - the coherent development strategy) and take a look at air and water quality monitors. Cool.

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November 20, 2009

Office 2010 Beta

Also in the PDC excitement, we announced the availability of Office 2010 Beta which you can find here.

Aside from the main client itself (I've been using a version of that for a couple of months - Sparklines FTW!), there are some other things that are wrapped up in this.
Keep on eye on Viral's blog for discussion on Office and SharePoint.

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November 20, 2009

Coherent Development Strategy (from PDC)

I loved the keynotes at PDC this year - although as I was trying to edit the Day 1 keynote from 2.25 hours to 30 mins for the #MWord event I wasn't loving it so much. That said, the thing about editing is that you really have to listen and get behind the words being spoken.

I recommend the whole of the keynotes for you - particularly Day 1 with Ray Ozzie and Bob Muglia.

For me, most interestingly from Ray Ozzie's keynote was the discussion of "3 screens and a cloud". You've seen this before probably (maybe from @Stevecla), but here Ray said we were delivering on a "single coherent development strategy" in order to develop for that paradigm(watch from about 15 minutes in - oh, and enjoy the "instant seek" of the smooth streaming experience).

In this he defines the components of that strategy as being:
Of course there's a lot of detail in this - particularly as Bob began to drill down into the detail of the announcements. I'm still getting my head around the whole thing. (I know there's a lot, because I was given a 72-page FAQ doc - and that was just for Day 1).

If you're thinking about how to get across the PDC topic areas at a reasonable level then these are maybe the things to think about to begin with:
Sooo much stuff to do. Hope this helps.

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November 17, 2009

Quick Links from #PDC09 Keynote Day 1

If you didn't catch the keynote from PDC 09 today then you can see the on-demand stream here shortly. This year the keynote was streamed with Silverlight Smooth Streaming: my experience was very good - didn't miss a beat in two hours - and there seemed to be positive tweets from others on the subject too.

Essentially the keynote today was Ray Ozzie and Bob Muglia - aided by a few others - talking about the delivery of some aspects of the Azure platform, and pointing the way to the future. You can see the official press releases here. A few links:
A starter for 10. There'll be a load more tomorrow, so get reading!

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