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Monday, January 05, 2009 11:27 AM

“Oslo” Shines

eWeek has released their top 10 application development products for 2008. The product I work on hit the list at number 9… one step ahead of the iPhone SDK. It’s pretty impressive considering that we have only released a pre-alpha build to a select few...
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Monday, January 05, 2009 1:30 AM

Compressing Primes

A recent program contest at work challenged us to find as many Pythagorean triples as we could that contained at minimum of one prime. We had about a month to work on it. The first question was whether to write up a quick brute force attempt or to take...
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Wednesday, December 31, 2008 11:23 AM

30GB Zune Issues

Are you having problems with your 30GB Zune today? You’re not alone. I woke up this morning to find that my Zune had attempted to reboot and got stuck on the startup logo screen. After a quick search on teh Interwebz, it looks like this is a problem for...
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Friday, December 26, 2008 12:30 AM

Photo Orientation

I’ve been going through a lot of photos recently. I scanned in all of my print photographs, sorted through photos for Tim and Chelsea’s wedding photo montage, and helped get a digital photo frame loaded up. It’s time to speak up: when you take photos...
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Monday, December 15, 2008 12:30 AM

Analog Channels

Everyone knows about the analog broadcast shutoff in February. Other than some handheld/portable TVs, I doubt this will affect many of you, and if it does, you probably already have your converter box. I'm all in favor of the switch. I think it's a good...
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Thursday, November 20, 2008 12:30 AM

RSS Bandit + Google Reader

I use a program called RSS Bandit to track all my RSS feeds. It lets me upload the read/unread status of all my feeds to a central server and then pull that status down to other machines to sync up. It's a manual process, but it's a nice way to get a...
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Thursday, November 06, 2008 12:30 AM

Burble - Episode 2 - Writing Code

Wait! Burble's not quite dead yet! Sure it's been 17 months since the last cheesy episode , but I decided to make another one. In this video, I show you what it means to write a program in about 17 minutes. Hmm after 17 months you get a 17 minute...
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Monday, November 03, 2008 12:30 AM

Charity Auction

Did you know that in the course of the year, the average Microsoft employee donates over $1200? Not too shabby. A lot of that money is given in October for the annual Giving Campaign. Part of that campaign is an internal auction. Last year I won the ski...
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Friday, October 31, 2008 10:30 AM

A Lap Around "Oslo"

I get asked quite often what I work on at Microsoft. Up until now, it has been hush hush, but the covers are finally starting to be pulled back. There is a huge Microsoft conference going on right now called PDC (Professional Developers Conference) and...
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Tuesday, October 28, 2008 1:22 PM

Backgammon T-Shirt

Another backgammon t-shirt idea:
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Friday, October 24, 2008 1:30 AM

Test Team Contest #9

Every couple of months our test team has some type of geek contest. The winner of the contest is then in charge of running the next contest. I won the last contest so that means I'm on the hook for the next one. You're welcome to play along with...
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Thursday, October 23, 2008 1:30 AM

Backgammon T-Shirts

I have accomplished the impossible: I simultaneously have an awesome girlfriend and a backgammon addiction. Pause for a minute and let that sink in. A handful of us have started playing pretty regularly at work and then I play a few games on Yahoo in...
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Wednesday, October 22, 2008 1:30 AM

HD Over the Air

I nominated myself to be Tyla's official A/V geek so when she got her new apartment, I took charge of getting content to her TV. It's hard to justify spending the money for HD cable (or cable at all) when she doesn't watch it much. But on...
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Monday, October 06, 2008 1:30 AM

Beep Beep! I'm Backing Up!

I got another one of those phone calls the other night: "We had a power surge last night and now my computer won't boot." The hard drive is toast and now they lost their data. No backup. This continues to amaze me. Data loss is real. Whether...
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Monday, September 29, 2008 1:30 AM

Revision3 on Tivo

Somehow I missed the fact that Revision3 is now available via TivoCast. Revision3 has some fantastic internet TV shows like Diggnation, Tekzilla, and Scam School. Previously I was downloading them in the Zune software and transferring them to my Tivo...
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