Welcome to Pete Brown's 10rem.net

First time here? If you are a developer or are interested in Microsoft tools and technology, please consider subscribing to the latest posts.

You may also be interested in my blog archives, the articles section, or some of my lab projects such as the C64 emulator written in Silverlight.

(hide this)

Monthly Archives: March 2006

  • Beware what you say to Reporters

    You have to love reporters. Or perhaps I just need to be more clear with them. On the way out of the WPF/E session at MIX06 in Las Vegas last week, I was approached by a reporter, presumably because I had asked several questions of the presenter. She wrote two stories: Here and here. The two quotes from me, according to those articles, are: Developer Pete Brown said his enthusiasm for WPF/...

    Published Sunday, March 26, 2006 | Tagged: , | Leave comment

  • Origami UMPC Links

    Ok, not really Vista or .NET, but could be. Here are a couple links to the Origami Ultra-Mobile PCs (UMPC) Overview from some folks: http://msmobiles.com/news.php/5019.html Samsung UMPC: http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/09/samsungs-q1-ultramobile-pc/ Teaser Site: http://origamiproject.com/default.aspx Microsoft Site: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/umpc/default.mspx ZDNet Stor...

    Published Friday, March 24, 2006 | Tagged: | Leave comment

  • NorthFace WPF Demo and Whitepaper

    The demo and whitepaper have been updated for the February CTP of WinFX. You can get to it here.

    Published Thursday, March 23, 2006 | Tagged: , | Leave comment

  • MIX06 Thanks

    Just a quick thanks to Robert Ingrebretsen and Filipe Fortes from Microsoft for spending some time during the MIX chat with me. Among other things, they helped alleviate my concerns (somewhat) regarding WPF and WPF/E diverging from each other, causing us all sorts of headaches like we have with different browsers right now. The both recognized that as a real concern they themselves have, and s...

    Published Thursday, March 23, 2006 | Tagged: , | Leave comment

  • The New RSS Platform

    One other session I attended on the last day of MIX06 was the sparsely-attended 8:30 AM RSS Platform Presentation. One of the folks from team RSS was there presenting about the new RSS functionality in IE7 as well as the new RSS API which will ship with IE7. Overall, I think the API and the concepts behind it are useful and well executed. However, IMHO, they did a few dumb things with the API...

    Published Thursday, March 23, 2006 | Tagged: , | Leave comment

  • Office SharePoint Server 2007 - the Sleeper Hit

    Every conference seems to have a sleeper hit - something which was underplayed and ended up drawing huge crowds, or as in this case, something which was added at the last minute and which didn't appear on the schedules, but still filled a whole ballroom. For MIX06, the topic was Office SharePoint Server presented by Jackie Bodine. Traditional SharePoint SharePoint has been enhanced to includ...

    Published Thursday, March 23, 2006 | Tagged: , | Leave comment

  • Why the Browser?

    I've overheard conversations at MIX06, as well as at other gatherings such as the PDC. I've also helped answer questions on several difrerent mailing lists. A common theme I've heard is that IT folks are trying to work around browser limitations in order to deliver rich applications on their internet internet. These days, developer productivity is key to the success of any IT organization. M...

    Published Wednesday, March 22, 2006 | Tagged: , , | Leave comment

  • Vista 5308 on Virtual PC

    At MIX06 we were given a bootable DVD with the latest Vista bits. Since dual-boot is not an option right now, I thought I'd try it out in a VPC. I knew the performance would be poor as the VPC has no accelerated graphics, and does take a CPU hit. I also knew I'd lose the glass, shadows, and some of the other eye candy. However, I have a 3ghz laptop with 2 gig of RAM and a mobility rad...

    Published Wednesday, March 22, 2006 | Tagged: , | 1 comment

  • Growth Spurt

    Amazing! In just the couple days I've been in Las Vegas, my five week old son hit a growth spurt that had him, in two days, outgrow his diapers and many of his 0-3 month clothes. It's incredible how their bodies can work like that. I mean, I have almost outgrown a pair of pants after eating candy and ice cream at the PDC for a week, but I didn't suddenly pull a Bill Bixby->Lou Ferrign...

    Published Wednesday, March 22, 2006 | Tagged: | Leave comment

  • MIX06 Day 2 - Know Your Chicken (and Flavors of WPF)

    (blogged to random Astral Projection tracks with a little Peter Gabriel UP thrown in) In Praise of Smart Clients Microsoft has three primary Smart Client targets: Rich WinFX applications running on PCs (desktops, laptops, media centers) Microsoft Office add-ins Windows Vista sidebar gadgets Microsoft and partners showed off some veyr rich WPF applications, including the digital m...

    Published Tuesday, March 21, 2006 | Tagged: , , | 1 comment

  • MIX06 Day 1 Recap XAML, WPF, WPF/E

    Day 1 started with Bill's Keynote and ended with a short trip to TAO (a little too claustraphobic for me), and some time at the slots. Here are the highlights from today: XAML Flow Documents One of the less-touted but still very interesting bits of WPF is the new XAML document support. XAML Flow Documents (a type of loose XAML) provide a great way for folks to get document content pushed out ...

    Published Monday, March 20, 2006 | Tagged: , , | Leave comment

  • MIX06 Keynote - Day 1

    I'm here at Internet Alley in the hallway of the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas. First, let me say that I have never been a hotel complex this big. Not only are the rooms huge (mine is 1200 square feet and has two televisions and a marble bathroom) but so is everything else. The PDC is full of geeks, and for the most part, we dress the part (see comment about Bill's hairdo below. hehe). This con...

    Published Monday, March 20, 2006 | Tagged: , | Leave comment

  • Ben's Bookcase

    I finished the bookcase for Ben's room this week. Painting and sanding took a while, as it has been pretty cold here, and I had to paint outdoors, so I was at the mercy of whatever 50 degree day I could get for a couple hours. The low temperatures also made the paint goop up a bit (it didn't flow like it would on a warm day), so it was not ideal. Sanding and additional coats fixed that,...

    Published Saturday, March 18, 2006 | Tagged: , , | 2 comments

  • Photo Retouching

    This image shows how I retouched a photo of Ben on my lap before sending it to Kodak for printing. I was experimenting with the soft focus and some other features in Paint Shop Pro. I have used them to clean up images of trains and whanot before, but rarely people. Click on the image for a larger version I selected the background using the edge selection tool. Once I had that, I experimente...

    Published Saturday, March 18, 2006 | Tagged: , | Leave comment

  • So What's Up with the Model Railroad Layout?

    So, what have I been doing with my model railroad layout, and my cnc work? The renovation work at the house here has turned both my railroad/cnc workshop and the layout room into temporary storage. I hope to get back into that work sometime soon, but that is not likely to happen prior to Winter 06/07 at the earliest.Then again, I might surprise myself :)

    Published Friday, March 17, 2006 | Tagged: , | 1 comment

  • MIX 06

    I'll be at MIX 06 next week. I intend to immerse myself as much as possible in WPF at that time, so look here for info on the WPF sessions.

    Published Friday, March 17, 2006 | Tagged: | Leave comment

  • Expression Interactive Designer and Graphics Designer

    The March CTPs of Sparkle (Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer) and Acrylic (Microsoft Expression Graphic Designer) are now available. Both are compatible with the February CTP of WPF.

    Published Monday, March 13, 2006 | Tagged: , | Leave comment

  • Why "Cry it out" is Just Plain Wrong

    Well-meaning grandparents and even same-generation friends and co-workers often give very poor child rearing advice. While we are still very new at this, we generally try to follow solid atachment parenting guidelines, including breastfeeding, co-sleeping, responding immediately to cries, etc. It's not always easy (especially the breastfeeding which took a couple weeks of practice for mom ...

    Published Thursday, March 2, 2006 | Tagged: | Leave comment