The PM meets my family!#

After the basketball last Friday night (where Australia beat New Zealand in the Gold Medal game) we were on our walk home when my mum and sister latched on to this old fella for a quick happy snap:

Marianne Kopp, Anneliese Kopp and the PMMarianne Kopp, Anneliese Kopp and the PMMarianne Kopp, Anneliese Kopp & our PM

My mum Marianne Kopp, the PM John Howard and my sister Anneliese Kopp.

3/28/2006 11:26:35 AM (AUS Eastern Standard Time, UTC+10:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

Teddy-bear code reviews#

As WDG continues to grow, I love getting feedback from the guys and girls in the dev team about how we can improve things around here. A few of us finished up a VSTS Kick-start 2 day course last week that helped us think through how we may better use all the new VSTS / TFS bits (thanks Anthony ;). That said, this link was floating around in a conversation this arvo, and I loved the idea.

http://sjbdeveloper.blogspot.com/2006/03/teddy-bear-code-reviews.html

I know if have done the exact same thing many times (walking thru code pretending to explain it to a child) and 9 times out of 10 the problem just pops up and can be fixed. Now we just need a Channel 9 Guy Code Review Bear ;)

3/27/2006 2:15:00 PM (AUS Eastern Standard Time, UTC+10:00) #    Comments [1]  |  Trackback

 

Comm Games - Images from the swimming#

Went to the swimming last nite with AJ, and got some fantastic seats (and LOTS of pics :). Here are some of the better ones:

Michael Klim starting his race...

klim_start.jpg

Klim getting his medal

klim_medal.jpg

The Aussie girls going 1-2-3 in the 50 Free

girls_1_finish.jpg

Great view of 3 Aussie flags after the 1-2-3 in the Womens 50m

girls_1_123.jpg

Girls doing a lap of the stadium

girls_1_celebrate.jpg

Some dude sitting about 8 rows in front of us

pm.jpg

Tonnes of more pics, but most of the night went along the same vein, especially for our girls. WELL DONE AUSSIES :)

3/21/2006 10:06:29 AM (AUS Eastern Standard Time, UTC+10:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

Google using .NET?#
Google and Nike have released a new Social Networking portal (Joga), where Nike provides the content, and Google provides the technology:

http://www.joga.com/

But I did notice the site seems to be built in ASP.NET?

http://www.joga.com/About.aspx

Change of plans for Google perhaps? ;)

Anyone from Microsoft got Google as a client? You DPEs must be doing a grand old job, hey Dave / Franky ;)

3/21/2006 8:13:06 AM (AUS Eastern Standard Time, UTC+10:00) #    Comments [1]  |  Trackback

 

More Comm Games pics#
Was on my way to work this morning and realised I'd been locked in by the Comm Games (see map here). So what else could I do except take a couple of quick snaps on my Motorola SLVR L7 - which rocks btw. Also a quick thanks to Jazzy who sorted me out a great deal on the phone :)

20-03-06_0952.jpg

20-03-06_0951.jpg

I also took a few snaps from the Rugby 7s on Friday night which was great fun!

17-03-06_1911.jpg

17-03-06_2105.jpg

3/20/2006 12:58:55 PM (AUS Eastern Standard Time, UTC+10:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

Funny - Will Farrell as some Texan jerk :)#
3/16/2006 12:13:19 PM (AUS Eastern Standard Time, UTC+10:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

Nice SQL table usage view#
Currently working on the database for our core SMS application, and the size has grown out to 22GB! WOW. Makes doing anything / most things very time consuming. Wheres the space being used? Well, after truncating the transaction logs, I wanted an easy way to see what tables were using up the data. Google helped me find this nice little view:

http://searchvb.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid8_gci876306,00.html?bucket=ETA

3/16/2006 11:14:55 AM (AUS Eastern Standard Time, UTC+10:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

Baton comes to the Docklands#
Was lucky enough to race home this afternoon to see the Commonwealth Games Baton arrive at my home, the Docklands in Melbourne. I'm about to head to the Opening Ceremony, but here are some pics from the afternoon, hot off the press :) Will post more tonite / tomorrow...

Firstly, here is a pic from my balcony of the Endeavor replica that is berthed just below - its actually a big boat, but coming from the UK would NOT have been fun :)

endeavor.jpg

Next, here is a pic of Grant Hackett carrying the baton (and some guys phone - wonder if he has Paris Hiltons number :p

grant_running.jpg

Here is one of me and Grant and the baton:

me_and_baton.jpg

Grants close up (I was running along side, beating off the 6 year old kids - j/k)

grant_face.jpg

and lastly, it arrives on stage with Bracksy (our Premier)

grant_arrive.jpg

3/15/2006 3:56:32 PM (AUS Eastern Standard Time, UTC+10:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

Project Estimation#
The lovely Rita and myself were having an interesting conversation earlier this afternoon regarding costing new work. As a coder at heart, I love a solid spec, even if its organic giving the client the ability to change priorities as we move forward. Rita, being is Sales, is always after a (competitive) fixed cost with little or no spec phase.

Nic then sent this link thru, and I just had to share :)

http://f2.org/humour/programming/archprog.html

3/14/2006 1:57:09 PM (AUS Eastern Standard Time, UTC+10:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

If you're in Melbourne, come play the XBox 360#

The Irrepressible Frank Arrigo shot me a quick email pointing me to this great opportunity to play the new XBox 360 in Melbourne as part of the Commonwealth Games feastivities. We are ordering one for WDG HQ in Melbourne, so Franky, if one goes missing, you know where to look first :)

"Visitors to the Xbox360 Experience at Interact will be among the first to play the Xbox 360 launching in Australia on 23 March, 2006.

Visitors will experience the hottest new Xbox 360 titles, including Kameo and Project Gotham Racing 3, and realism never seen before as a result of the amazing graphics on display.

In the spirit of the Commonwealth Games there will be celebrity and athlete Xbox playoffs featuring past and present Commonwealth Games athletes, AFL and Rugby Union players and Australian TV personalities

There will also be the chance to win great prizes including Xbox 360 consoles, Xbox 360 merchandise and Xbox 360 game packs.

For more information, visit http://www.xbox.com.au"

More details can be found here - http://melbourne2006.com.au/Getting+Involved/Interact/The+Xbox+Experience.htm

 

3/14/2006 11:47:13 AM (AUS Eastern Standard Time, UTC+10:00) #    Comments [2]  |  Trackback

 

Motorola SLVR L7 - Nice Phone#

I'm still staying away from the large(ish) PDA type phones to stick with the 'small is better' philosophy of mobile phones. My V3 was starting to die (a few months with a missing back had nothing to do with it, I'm sure! :) so I spent $435 AUD on a new Motorola SLVR L7. And I have to say wow. First thing that is kewl is the new microSD card. These TINY cards come in sizes up to a 1GB today, we'll see what happens tomorrow :) So as I ride to work, I can pop on a few of my fav tracks and not have to worry about bringing my iPod mini along as well as my phone. It has a STANDARD (yes, standard as in dont need a special cable!) mini USB port, so it will plug into just about anything, and pops up as a USB drive (to store docs / pics / anything you need). It can even run iTunes (although I hear mTunes is better - no 100 song limit). Found some nice little mods, but for a $435 purchase, I'm VERY happy :)

3/13/2006 2:52:12 PM (AUS Eastern Standard Time, UTC+10:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

Microsoft Origami released#

A lot of ppl have been speculating what Origami may actually be, and I was reading on /. just now that MS has unvieled this PDA / PC hybrid (otherwise known as a Ultra Mobile):

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/umpc/default.mspx

Looks like fun - Dave / Frank, got any you can let us play with :)

3/10/2006 2:07:28 PM (AUS Eastern Standard Time, UTC+10:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

Harvard - one of the worlds largest networks#
At WDG we run an extensive Data Centre to host a variety of online applications. I have a background in computing hardware as I have always been heavily (and in the early days, solely) involved as WDG grew from a single Sun Netra Sparc box on an ISDN connection back in 1997, to the current dual fibre core routing infrastructure hosting 100s of machines and applications running on Windows and *BSD boxes (and even a few Linux ones too :).

I always find it interesting reading about how other organisations cope with this growth, and came across a very interesting article about the Harvard network, one of the largest in the world, often considered like a small telco:

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/030606-harvard-net.html?ts

3/8/2006 2:06:25 PM (AUS Eastern Standard Time, UTC+10:00) #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback

 

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