Win an MSDN subscription

My good friend Christian Liensberger is giving away two MSDN Premium with Visual Studio Team System subscriptions, worth nearly $11,000! To be eligable you need to create a short screencast about a Microsoft technology, e.g. "how to get started with Silverlight 2". The competition runs from July 1st until July 31st. I will be helping with the judging.

See Christian's blog for full details.

Categories: General computing, Programming
Posted on 2008-06-28 14:22:25 UTC. Show Comments (0)

Windows Search 4.0 released

Microsoft has just released a new version of Windows Search, which is well worth getting if you have Vista because it's much faster than the built-in Vista search. Searching using the start menu search box feels at least five times faster now!

Get it here.

Category: General computing
Posted on 2008-06-04 04:36:25 UTC. Show Comments (1)

Report your Windows Vista UI annoyances

Long Zheng has started the Windows UX Taskforce. The goal: to create a list of all the little UI inconsistencies and annoyances in Windows, so that Microsoft might fix them for Windows 7.

So if there's anything that bothers you about the Windows Vista UI, now's your chance to let people know.

Category: General computing
Posted on 2008-06-03 09:32:04 UTC. Show Comments (0)

Send your name to the moon

As you may or may not know, NASA aims to return to the moon. In 2010, the Space Shuttle will fly for the last time, to be succeeded in 2013 by the Orion crew vehicle (part of project constellation), a capsule which looks a lot like a modern version of the Apollo command modules that between 1968 and 1972 sent 24 humans to the moon, half of which walked on it (one major difference is that the Orion will be reusable up to ten times; the Apollo capsules could be used only once).

The Orion will not only be used for supply missions to the International Space Station (taking over those duties from the Space Shuttle), it will also take humans to the moon (no later than 2020, according to NASA). Further plans include establishing a permanent settlement on the moon, learning to live and work on another planet, and to use this knowledge and technology for human exploration of Mars in the first half of the 21st century (again according to NASA). As a fan of space exploration I regret not having witnessed any of the original moon landings, so it would be great if they could pull all this off (especially if they go to Mars in my lifetime that would be awesome).

To gather detailed information about the moon (e.g. about possible landing sites) NASA is first sending the unmanned Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter. And you can send your name with it. If you register your name on this site, it will become part of a database that will be put on a chip on the LRO, so your name will be in orbit of the moon.

Yes, it's completely pointless. I don't care, it's just a fun idea. :)

Category: Random stuff
Posted on 2008-05-02 11:21:15 UTC. Show Comments (0)

Awesome flight simulator video

As some of you know, I play Flight Simulator. I tend to go for the serious, realistic simulation.

This video shows you can also have fun with Flight Simulator when you relax realism a bit. :)


Watch the video on YouTube

Categories: Personal, Random stuff
Posted on 2008-04-20 03:23:42 UTC. Show Comments (1)