stuart test blog

Old news I know, but I’m still catching up for the last few weeks. I’ve been looking forward to this since the initial announcement and although I think that the cost of individual songs are still prohibitive ($2.39), a full, DRM-free album for $17.99 doesn’t seem to be too bad.

I’ve made a few purchases so far which have all been local artists. Opshop’s latest album is brilliant and sounds a little like a U2 album. And I also picked up Hollie Smith’s beautiful, jazzy, bluesy album.

I wouldn’t have purchased these from iTunes if they were infected with DRM.

In my opinion, the only good thing to come out of the whole “Windows Live” fad is Windows Live Writer – and this rocks! If you haven’t tried this desktop blogging tool yet, then you’re really missing out.

The latest version was released a couple of weeks ago and it is a dramatic improvement over the previous beta. Some of my favourite features are:

• Improved spell checking (although no NZ dictionary available yet!)
• Inline adding of flash objects like YouTube videos or Picasa Web Album slideshows (you just paste the embedded code directly into the rich text editor.)
• Better built-in tagging support.
• Better blog provider detection with the ability to enable certain features depending on where your blog is hosted.

I would still like to see a tabbed interface so that I can have several posts open at once in the same window. And we definitely need to be able to country-specific dictionaries.

UPDATE: I meant to post this link to a great resource with lots more Windows Live Writer tips and tricks: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/06/get-productive-with-windows-live-writer.html

Regular readers of this blog would have noticed the lack of posting over the last couple of weeks, in fact it took Paul Potts’s amazing opera singing to get me to fire up Live Writer again.

The blogging break was, of course, brought on by the birth of our first daughter, Elliot Ruby Maxwell. We’ve started a Picasa Web Album for her here: http://picasaweb.google.com/studebelliot

So now that things are settling down again, I’ve got a bit of catching up to do.

I found these videos via Miramar Mike. Paul Potts was an entrant on the British talent show called Britain’s Got Talent. He’s a shy, humble mobile phone salesman who nervously gets on stage and then blows everyone’s socks off with an amazing opera performance. If this doesn’t give you goose bumps, then nothing will.

Here is his first audition

And his performance in the finals. (needless to say, he won the competition!)

Despite the cold (around 11 degrees) it was a beautiful day for a walk along Oriental Parade. The slideshow below was embedded from Picasa Web Albums and the photos were taken with my K800i camera phone.

I bought a new mountain bike on Friday from Crankworks in Wellington. It’s the GT Zaskar Expert which is a model up from the Avalanche Expert that I was originally looking at. It was on special at $1999 (down from RRP of $2700) and Mike at Crankworks gave me a good deal on some Lake SPD shoes too. Oh and I bought a Cateye TripleShot headlight too! So it was a very exciting purchase for me, here are some pictures of what I bought:

First the beautiful bike:

Next the shoes:

And the headlight:

So Andrew and I went for a ride yesterday on our new bikes around the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary fenceline on a section which is known as the “Rollercoaster”. Andrew had also recently got a new bike – an Avanti Hammer with some Shimano SPD shoes – so both of us were getting used to riding offroad with SPDs. Very funny indeed, watching us cycle for a few metres, then topple over, then get up again, ride for a bit more, then fall over again!

Then on the way back to the car, with our confidence a little higher, we were screaming down the Rollercoaster and loving it. But then I came up to a turn at the bottom of a steep section and realised I couldn’t turn in time. And because my feet were clipped in, I couldn’t get them out in time to help brake/turn. So I went screaming up the grass verge and flew over the handlebars head first into the bushes.

Fortunately I had a relatively soft landing in the bushes – apart from my hand which got punctured through the glove by a sharp tree stump or branch that was sticking up. So I ended up needing a couple of stitches and a tetnis shot at the after hours medical centre. Here’s the wound just prior to the stitches:

This is about to be huge…!

Microsoft Launches New Product Category: Surface Computing Comes to Life in Restaurants, Hotels, Retail Locations and Casino Resorts
First commercially available surface computer from Microsoft breaks down barriers and provides effortless interaction with information using touch, natural gestures and physical objects.

Surface Computing Website: www.surface.com
First look at surface computing: http://on10.net/Blogs/larry/first-look-microsoft-surfacing-computing/

On the topic of books… The Windows Server Division Weblog has details on the newly released about to be released book called Introducing Windows Server 2008

Here’s the list of chapters:

1. Introduction
2. Usage Scenarios
3. Windows Server Virtualization
4. Managing Windows Server 2008
5. Managing Server Roles
6. Windows Server Core
7. Active Directory Enhancements
8. Terminal Services Enhancements
9. Clustering Enhancements
10. Implementing Network Access Protection
11. Internet Information Services 7.0
12. Other Features and Enhancements
13. Deploying Windows Server 2008
14. Additional Resources

The layout of this site goes against all of the basic principles of web design, but it’s just wonderful! I read through the whole site! (Seth Godin would love it!)

No one belongs here more than you. Stories by Miranda July

• Step-by-Step Guide: Demonstrate DHCP NAP Enforcement in a Test Lab
• Step-by-Step Guide: Demonstrate IPsec NAP Enforcement in a Test Lab