More cluely people join the Australian DPE team. It’s way cool having smart friends on the team to balance my ignorance on all Microsoft matters important.
A Special shout out to the ever helpful Jeffa and Captain Coates.
Frank seems to be relieving his end-of-year frustrations by changing my title in the HR system. It will be cool to see my first Microsoft Performance Evaluation with “Professional Geek” A story to tell the grand kids.
Readify have a 3 day training course to learn Silverlight.
On my TBD list for 2007. Since mossyblog refuses to show me his l33t sk1llz.
Notice the keyboard and t-shirt. In the above photo he’s in Orcas doing some piece of Silverlight. On the screen in the background are a whole bunch of figures that is enthralling everyone else in the internal meeting.
After a series of presentations I gave to Principals of Victorian schools, I had described my role at Microsoft as a digital diplomat. This perfectly describes a part of my job as a bridge between the digital immigrants and digital natives. (Prensky, Marc: 2001)
Now Frank Arrigo, my manager, has entered that into the internal Microsoft address/HR system as my title. What a laugh!
I wonder if I can claim diplomatic immunity when I go feral?
additional: … maybe not as feral as David Lemphers!
First flight to Brisbane, Sydney Airport 17th June 2007. Up at 4.30am, at the airport at 5.45am. Up so early, even the cats were surprised. Actually one of the cats didn’t even bother to come out and visit as it was so early. Motor into Windor to present to 25-30 members of the Brisbug User Group.
There were some unanswered questions, which I will tackle here:
Office Publisher 2007, breaking links. Break Forward Link: this is the process of removing the linkage from the current Text Box to the next, and retaining the text. From my quick research, Publisher 2007 does not change the functionality compared to previous versions.
Changing the selection/highlight colour in Word/Excel. This is relatively easy: Microsoft Word, as other well written Windows programs, respect the setting “Selected Item” colour in the Display Control Panel. This allows you to change the background colour that shows highlighted items, including text. Also note that Word 2007 has a zoom to make it easier to see text on screen.
OEM Windows XP Service Pack 2, Media Center. Install issue related to CDs with poor wording for insert CD (near bottom of chat transcript from May 2006). Seems like its an issue that is related to the wording of the install screen, not an error with the installer.
Links: Office 2007 file opening with previous versions of Office: If you have a mixture of Office 2007 and older versions on your home network, this http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&DisplayLang=en is the link to the plugin.
Update: 28th June 2007: Office 2003 vs. 2007 menus: http://blogs.technet.com/seanearp/archive/2007/06/27/office-2007-what-ever-happened-to-that-menu-option.aspx
Excel Finance function changes. The financial functions in Excel, apart from Nett Present Value and Compounding Interest, have sort of baffled me. From the help file:
Easy formula writing
The following improvements make formula writing much easier in Office Excel 2007.
Resizable formula bar The formula bar automatically resizes to accommodate long, complex formulas, which prevents the formulas from covering other data in your worksheet. You can also write longer formulas with more levels of nesting than you could in earlier versions of Excel.
Function AutoComplete With Function AutoComplete, you can quickly write the proper formula syntax. From easily detecting the functions that you want to use to getting help completing the formula arguments, you will be able to get formulas right the first time and every time.
Autocomplete assists with the writing of a formula. The most linked reference on the web for Financial function (now the how, more the why) is from here.
As the LOLCATS meme goes TechEd; here one of my submissions:
Now, in the interest of learning new programming languages: I purchased a LOLCODE.com T-shirt. What was interesting was the non-geeks looking at me strangely. People already think I am “out there”, and the LOLCODE t-shirt just proves it.
Before you start dis’in my new language of choice, there is a Visual Studio 2005 with syntax highlighting and Intellisense and a .Net version on the way.
So, my question to the developer community: do we need a special BOF LOLCODE session at TechEd 2007?
SQLExpress hmm, need to research more. Need to get off MySQL.
ReMIX 07 is SOLD OUT.
Arrrgh. I hope I got a room, otherwise I’m sleeping outside in cooooold, coooold Melbourne.
The above blog post obviously shows Neil Finn at a recent LA gig from Crowded House.
“Ads by Google” on the right show a Crowded House advertisement. From liveearth.msn.com. Why didn’t MSN come to me directly and rid themselves of the middleman? I would, and have, posted about this concert for free! Now google are getting a cut!
Sadly, I will miss this concert as I’ll be in Japan on holiday. I am sure I’ll be able to watch replays across the broadband.
Twitter.com being down forced Sydney’s web geeks to get together. My first WebJam, and it r0x0red. Needed more cash to purchase the t-shirt. Sorry, ’bout that.
Andrew Muller from Builder.com.au on the night.
GO WEBJAM Melbourne!
So, my rough notes from the night:
(heads down, pplz voting)
leslienassar and I had a great chat in SCRLTT on the way home
The view down King Street at night:
