Xbox 360 Messenger Kit

We've been hearing about this for a while now, but Microsoft have finally revealed that the Xbox 360 Messenger Kit will be made available this September. This one's for any of you who've not bothered plugging a USB keyboard into your XBox, and have been stuck trawling through the on-screen keyboard with your controller to write a message or, as occurs more often in my case, to name a piñata. Only $30 too, bargain :)

Old School

So that letter to BT I wrote apparently made a few of you giggle - though I meant it as a mostly formal and standard complaint to them, not a rant. However, that led me to think that some of you might find it amusing if I did post up a few rants I've had from time to time. I can't actually find most of them at the moment (and many are lost in the archives of Imperial Conflict) but here's one from my old webspace.

In this, someone has dared to write in the student's newspaper (which I have clearly marked my territory when it comes to technology related articles) about my beloved CompSoc (over which I am supreme ruler and king - seriously, read the constitution, I am).

Here's the letter I sent to the Aston Times having seen the article.
Here's the article itself, with one or two annotations by myself. NSFW.

Also, whilst browsing through my old space, I found The Game - a HTML adventure I knocked up for anyone who ever used to play those old text based Adventure-style games in the old days. It's not easy, it's not finished and it's not fun, but it is funny ;) Don't use your back button.

Who do you want to be today?

To explain; today's probably not been the happiest day in a Facebook engineer's life, with last night's maintenance turning out a bit wrong. I don't know exactly what they did to the site, but the end result appears to be that the 'remember me' cookies out there on people's PC's had their unique ID reassigned internally. Or, to put it another way, 'remember me' has now become 'remember some other guy'.

As such, if you visit the Facebook front page, you may get lucky and find yourself living a whole new life, with new friends to converse with and new parties to go to. Even better, if you login from a large corporate network (like say, Microsoft) the chances are even better due to a page caching problem too.

Update: "Having done a little research, it appears that Facebook uses some advanced caching on the server side and one of the reasons for the maintenance was to improve the caching still further. I suspect that they are rolling back the changes as a matter of some urgency."

--

I once suggested 'Who do you want to be today?' as a subline for the internet, but it was massively outvoted by 'XXX TEEN GIRLS NOW' :(

Factorizer

If you're bored of your forum signature, or just have five minutes to spend with the Penguin of Procrastination (you'd have to see my desk to understand that one...this guy rocks, though he does sometimes scare me when I turn and see him watching me....sidetracked here aren't I?) then you might want to check out Factorizer - which uses a 'z' in its suffix despite being .co.uk, grrr.

Here's mine, though I don't really plan to use it.

Diversity is a roomful of people with varying skin colours

Not having much else to do today (all of my various projects are 'on hold' for one reason or another) I'm getting on with my mandatory online training. In the last set of training I learned that the follow things are wrong:

• Showing hardcore pornography to customers during meetings


• Stealing money


• Recommending a company for a big contract without telling anyone you happen to own that company


• Hiring really, really bad actors for training videos and pitching everything at a level suitable for an audience of mentally retarded 12 year olds

..oops, I'm not sure if this stuff was covered under my NDA - just to be sure, if you're not a Microsoft employee, then please do one of the above soon, so you can use it as an example if someone accuses you of having read this confidential information. I recommend trying out the first.

Today I'm on diversity and inclusion training. They're spending a long, long time trying to emphasise that a multitude of factors can make up diversity, from the more obvious ones such as 'sex' and 'ethnic origin' down to 'military status' and 'gender expression'. Unfortunately, no matter how hard they try to emphasise all the fun little ones like that, they're insisting on having every picture/video feature young, American employees of differing skin colour (though, equally annoying accents throughout).

I'm purposefully getting all the questions wrong, because I don't think (and I really hope) anyone reads all the responses. Proving that the training has currently failed, I was really quite amused when I got to select 'Person x is legally blind...' as an 'invisible' disibility during one of the many quizzes they put in place to stop you starting the training session then just walking off.

I was also really amused that for this video (and this video alone), in the set of language choices, English was right at the bottom, underneath some languages I'd never even heard of. This kind of pettiness doesn't really prove any kind of point when a large amount of Microsoft's resources are only available in English anyway.

Anyhow, off to lunch, back for more of this lol later.

Xx

Simpsonize Me

For those of you who haven't yet checked it out, I suggest you head over to Simpsonize Me and go get yourself a new forum avatar for the next twenty years - don't worry, I'm sure you'll be original and unique ;)

Seriously though, it's great fun and pretty impressive, though you will have to customise it a bit from the default. When you're done, click 'export' and save as 'yourfilename.png' and all should be well. Here's mine:

Games games games

So I've finally had some time to myself this weekend, with no large items of furniture to transport, no major moving in worries and a full set of utilities at last. Being free, finally, to get out of the house and do whatever I wanted, naturally I've spent quite a large portion of the weekend inside, playing games and making the most of my dirt cheap Xbox Live subscription - thank you Employee Purchase ;)

1. Guitar Hero | Greatest Hits (PS2 homebrew)
Lee Harris, the guy who beat me at that Guitar Hero competition in Birmingham has put a hell of a lot of work into two homebrew disks of Guitar Hero, each stuffed with custom-made tracks and mappings, both of which are labelled 'expert only'. This is pretty strictly enforced, with all other difficulty settings locked off, and the game defaulting to 'hyperspeed' mode (the hyperspeed cheat now unlocks 'megaspeed' - 4x normal rate, ouch!).

Along with all of the new tracks (some great, some less so, some well synched, some...not) he's also edited a lot of the loading menus et cetera, which is simply hilarious at times. I especially like what he's replaced the default 'gig expenses' such as 'Microphones, broken' and 'Dressing room, trashed' with ;) Oh, and 'In soviet Russia, hero guitars you" was pretty win too.

Getting the front panel off my PS2 and then getting the hang of the SwapMagic tool took so I could play this homebrew game took me some time, but was definitely worth it - and I can now play Katarmari Damacy, when I get my hands on it! Whoop.

On the downside, I did, rather retardedly, manage to overwrite all of my saved data for the original Guitar Hero II, but as I'm getting that for XBox tomorrow anyway, and all my scores are up on Scorehero, so I'm not too upset.

2. Dead Rising
On the front of the box we're clearly told that this game is not endorsed, licensed or influenced by Dawn Of The Dead. It feels odd that they somehow feel the need to state that, because a photographer being airlifted to the top of a zombie infested mall feels in no way like a ripoff of the film.

Note however, that I'm not complaining that this is (and it is) a game version of that utterly awesome film, because that's the very reason I love it. There's little more satisfying than walking up to a door and seeing it blocked by a host of zombies, and then noticing the lawnmower the game designers have placed thoughtfully just to the side of the door. Oh yeah.

The photography element of the game does give it something a bit more than just pure gore, and I'll admit I'm intrigued as to when I get Prestige Points for taking photos of the genre 'Erotica', but it feels a bit stilted and pointless to be honest. People don't play zombie games to show off their digital photography skills.

The game's pretty hard too, I've currently been dying before reaching the save point, possibly because I decide to take on a few of the missions first. Think State of Emergency with a bit more of a plotline, slightly better dialogue and a lot more zombies. Also it's not shit like State of Emergency was.

One note of annoyance though - when you're grappled by a zombie, you must quickly wiggle the left analogue stick from side to side to escape. This isn't mentioned in the manual however, so the first time you find out about this control is when you first get grappled. Unfortunately, the tutorial tip that tells you this scrolls so slowly from the right of the screen that by the time you've read it, you're dead. Grrr.

3. Viva Piñata
I was up at 9am today to play what is, to the casual observer, a children's game, and I got so addicted that I didn't manage to drag myself away until I noticed it was long past lunchtime. This game is absolutely brilliant, and you find yourself getting extremely disturbingly immersed in a word of paper animals stuffed with sweets.

When I say this is only apparently a game designed for kids, I'm not implying that it has intensely difficult strategies (though you do have to be on your toes to keep up with the million and one things happening) - I'm pointing out that it should be rated 18 at least for all of the adult themes contained in the game.

For example, mating. This is given a very fairytale spin in the game, with two animals, once certain conditions have been met, running together, having a hug, playing a minigame and then getting an egg delivered by Storkos. You watch this the first time and think 'how cute'. Then, accidentally, you click on the child they've created, and then on the mother, and watch an act of incest take place. Later on, you click on the same animal and the father, and watch some homosexual incest result in...yet another baby. What are kids supposed to deduce from this?

Then you've got violence and cannibalism - these guys don't just start fights for no reason, but when they've won, one of two things happens. Either, the winner rips open the loser's body and gorges on their intestines, or the devil comes along and bears the soul of the loser off to a dark hell for all eternity. Either way, I can see a hell of a lot of kids getting nightmares here.

I hate BT

So I was going to blog about all the trouble I've had from these guys, but I spent this afternoon's free time writing a letter to them, as I simply couldn't get through to their complaints department on the phone. As such, I need to get back to work now, so here's the letter verbatim instead :(

--

[My address, reference numbers etc]

Dear Sir/Madam,

May I first apologise if the tone of this letter seems unfriendly to the reader. The writing of it recalls many annoyances I have experienced, and I do understand that the person reading it is likely not to have had any part in the many troubles I have experienced. That being said...

I wish to complain about the standard of customer service I have recently received from BT, in my first weeks of service from yourselves. I hold an account (number above) with you merely for the purposes of line rental, yet this has taken more trouble and time than any other part of moving into my new home.

I received a bill from you on July 24th stating that an amount of £12.50 was overdue. This was the first I’d heard of any such amount, as I had been awaiting a direct debit mandate I had been told was being posted out – which I have yet to see. Furthermore, I had also been told that line rental was £11.00 per month, and not £12.50, so am still unsure as to where this figure came from.

Regardless, the figure seemed about right, and I was busy at the time, so decided to write the £1.50 off and pay my bill – using the handy online service. I kept on receiving unspecified errors whilst trying to sign up, so concluded that the website must be under service and tried phoning instead a day or two later, when I had some free time to do so. (I later managed to sign up to the website, but was unable to tie my bill account into my online account, receiving the following error “There was a problem processing your request. Please try again later”)

The automated phone service proceeded, albeit a bit lengthily, nicely enough, until I had finished entering in my debit card details. Once I had done this, I was repeatedly asked to type in my card’s issue number, and repeatedly told this was not recognized. Assuming I had made a mistake, and as there was no way to navigate backwards, I spent another 5 minutes going through the process, and encountered exactly the same error. I then assumed that there must be a problem with my card, and spent another 5 minutes until I could enter the details for another card...and received the same error.

At this point I rang up the enquiries line, which unfortunately seemed to direct me to the automated service regardless of which series of options I selected, until I clued into the fact that if I simply pretended I didn’t have a touchtone phone, I would eventually (the time, for the record, is three minutes of automation before the system works out I can’t press any buttons) be transferred to an operator - or, more precisely, to a long queue for an operator.

The first three operators (separate calls each time) all seemed shocked when I read out my account number to them, telling me that I’d have to be transferred as my account number started with ‘GB’, apparently I was through to the call centre for another country. They then told me they were transferring me and promptly hung up the phone, leaving my line dead. The fourth time I rang through and asked to be transferred to the complaints department, and was instead put through to ‘reconnections’, where a helpful young man apologised (the first time from any BT employee) and said he’d put me straight through to the complaints department. Unfortunately, he didn’t realise that he was actually transferring me to a queue, which I had to leave after 47 minutes as I was running late for a meeting at work.

As such I have simply (and grudgingly, given how much time I have lost for such a small bill that has mysteriously appeared) sent the money online through my internet banking facility, where I believe it will take a short delay to reach you.

I would appreciate the following outcomes from this letter:
• That your online service be investigated and fixed
• That your online service implements industry ‘best practise’ and only provides users with helpful, informative error messages
• That your automated phone service for payments be fixed
• That your call centre staff receive sufficient training to transfer people without hanging up
• That I am sent a direct debit mandate for future payments
• That I receive an explanation for the increased cost of my bill
• And finally, preferably, that I receive some compensation as a goodwill gesture and ‘corporate apology’ (because, no matter how heartfelt, the apology of one individual who has to date had no interaction with me, would obviously not be appropriate).

Thanks very much in advance.
Yours,




Ian MacGillivray.

Son, you were a mistake

So I was watching browsing around the various music television channels we subscribe to (most for the purpose of looking at the girls in the dance music videos) when I stumbled across Kiss playing NWA's version of Express Yourself - a great hit. Next up was Public Enemy, then Gangstarr, and a plethora of other great hip-hop artists from 1989.

Once 1989 had been dealt with by DJ Swerve who was running the show, we moved onto 1990, which featured such great hip-hop (?) classics as MC Hammer - U Can't Touch This and Vanilla Ice - Under Pressure Ice Ice Baby. I was very dissapointed to see the latter come on straight after one of the best songs (and videos) of all time (as voted by various deities), until the little trivia box in the bottom left told me something I never knew about Ice Ice Baby.

Originally played on the radio by accident, Ice Ice Baby went on to become...

Seriously, I cried with laughter. Can you imagine how many listeners turned off that radio station when the DJ said "And here's Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five with Scorpio" and then put that on? :D

I also interestingly learned that The Dust Brothers, producers of the Beastie Boys forced a UK group who were calling themselves Dust Brothers to change their name. I personally think that Chemical sounds cooler than Dust, so they can't really complain ;)

--

Stop.


<sub>Collaborate and listen.


HammerTime</sub>

--

I also love how Image Searching 'Hammertime' brings up oh so many graffitied 'Stop' signs :)

Home Brew

Microsoft home brew:


Apple home brew:


Open source home brew:


The mighty social alias of Microsoft has, as always, been entertaining me today, with various pictures of flooding, seemingly ridiculous requests ('Can anyone recommend a company for Grand Canyon helicopter trips?' 'Does anyone have a modelling balloon inflater in the office?') and many, many things I'm tempted to buy.

The above picture comes from a conversation whereby someone suggests a 'home brew' alias, and then later clarifies he means beer, not PC building. I suggested mixing the two, and received that picture in response, which is possibly the best thing I've seen this month, if not this year. And I've seen lots of really cool flooding, along with a fair portion of Microsoft Reading.

I really do love this alias, you can get absolutely everything - a helicopter company was recommended, and a pump found, alongside many other mad requests. Truly awesome.

Cheap XBox 360 games

I've been looking at converting to a 360 recently, with all the brainwashing around here and the little chip I got implanted in my neck, but the one thing which put me off was the exorbitant price of the games compared to my lovely PS2. However, some kind folk here at Microsoft have put me onto Find-Games which is simply amazing, so I'm getting a ton of bargains here. I got Crackdown, GH2 + guitar, Viva Pinata and Dead Rising all for £100 today!

Haven't got myself a console yet, I'm still waiting for a couple more announcements on the Elite before I make a decision there, but I can play this lot on Ben's 360 for now :)

--

Seriously, if a post title like that doesn't get me some random search traffic from Google Live Search then I don't know what will.

My ear hurts

So, as things are a bit wet, I couldn't go out to Surrey to meet those customers today. Fortunately, in this wonderous world of technology, there was an alternative, and so we've done the whole thing via conference call and Live Meeting instead, which is great.

However, my specialty in this particular scenario turns out to be rather unwanted, and so I've been on the phone for over 4 hours so far today, and I'm fairly sure my sentences per minute are somewhere around the 0.1 mark. I'm sure this can't be healthy for me, mentally if not physically.

More flooding fun

It appears that most of Reading is now out of sandbags, so if you've got a spare boat and fancy making a quick profit, I'd suggest sailing on down and opening up a stall.

In other fun news, in about 12 hours time the Thames is set to really flood, now that we've filled up most of the designated flood plains - if this is summer I can't wait to see what winter's like down here.

Microsoft's new super language

Mirosoft develops new 'Super language'

I'm already hooked on all of the acronyms, but I'm really praying that 'super' won't start preceding every noun or verb I use - and I'm utterly certain that I won't degenerate into the filth of 'en-us', promise.

The Doves - There Goes The Fear

I don't believe I've heard this song before, and although it is quite a nice piece, what really struck me was the poignancy of the video. I don't know if you'll see what I'm talking about here, but just have a quick watch, I found it really beautiful for reasons I can't really explain...

Just One Take

So, today was naturally a very fun one in work, with a fair portion of the Reading workforce off in Orlando for MGX, another set stuck in floods, a futher lot not in the office because they work from home, and the remainder that could be bothered to come in just having fun.

After a short morning's work, I wasn't in the mood to get much done either, so I decided to go and record a video presentation for the Campus Recruitment 101 role I'm applying for, as I won't be able to give a live presentation because I'm off seeing customers on the set date. The role is one that an intern takes on each year, of going off around Universities presenting at recruitment fairs about how great Microsoft is, and then later on organising all of the various interview and assessment days applicants take part in.

The video itself took up most of the afternoon to make (in the largest auditorium at Microsoft UK), and a fair chunk of the evening to edit together - I hope you enjoy it. For those of you who, for whatever reason, don't care why I should get the 101 role, skip to about 4 minutes in and start watching from there :)

Flooding

I'm sure most of you have noticed (especially by the time this gets uploaded...damn lack of internet at home) that Britain was a bit wet today. The social 'alias' (email distribution list) at work was therefore naturally buzzing as people from various underwater places had a chat and a giggle with one another. In the spirit of empathy, understanding and caring, here's a bunch of photos that got thrown around for you to laugh at :)


<sub>James knew he would one day regret not buying an aqua-car


'I think I left the front-door key in the glovebox...'


Some would call the umbrella a little superfluous


It's quite hard thinking of sublines for multiple very similar pictures


Brings a whole new meaning to 'dipped headlights'


Sarah optimistically pops out for a multipack of Bounty


Riverside dining turns into river dining.


Outside the Oracle again


And again


And again. Ouch eh?</sub>

Get your @Live.co.uk/.com address early

If you want a new live.com / live.co.uk address it seems some clever people have worked out how to get them before the official launch. So, if you want to nab a 'good' address quick, before everyone gets their hands on them, then visit the following link:

Early Live registration

You’ll be restricted to live.co.uk by default. The easiest way to get a live .com address is to install Firefox and then go to Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Languages > then add US as your first language.

Cakes, lakes and snakes

_{Kat bravely leads team DPE through the undergrowth to explore the depths of the jungle.}

Instead of (or, to be more fair, aswell as) working today, we've been taking teambuilding trips down to the gorgeous lake and 'forest' just outside of the main buildings on campus. The free ice-cream in the summer house there is a must after a long hard lunch break - but partaking of dessert requires a healthy walk around the lake in order to balance out the calorie count (and, incidentally, enjoy the sunshine).

Today's walk was a little more challenging, as a large tree has fallen down and blocked the path, neccessitating a scramble through the jungle to reach the other end. We got through fine, though I've not heard from the guy going the other way who we encouraged to take the same route - I fear the worst.

After such endeavours, we weren't in any state to play croquet, as I'm sure you can imagine. In fact, it was so tiring that we had to take another break from work later on for some cake out on the grass, where the weather's still splendid. Can you believe I'm getting paid for this?

--

I actually considered naming this "I'm an Evangelist, get me out of here" - if I ever do something that bad in the future, please shoot me. Please.

Busy busy busy

So life's still pretty much a blur at the moment, and I've still got no broadband at home - thus the rather short and sporadic updates at the moment. So, what's new with me? Everything really...

Got a desk of my own in the office at last, so I have my own phone and draws, amongst other things. First step upon getting the desk was clearly to make a sign with my name on it, which ended up a bit more homosexual than planned, but is at least amongst the more interesting ones in the office. I don't yet have my DPE carictature, but that should also be on its way soon enough too.

Will soon have Sky at home for our TV, broadband and phone needs, though I'm still missing a few essentials, like a real bed. So, still looking on eBay for that at the moment. I've been doing well recently to avoid online shopping, but since joining the 'social' distribution list at work, I just get 'Do you want to buy...' delivered to my mailbox 20 times a day, and it's very hard to resist. So far I've restrained myself and only bought a nice canvas picture and a soundcard, both dirt cheap and very good quality.

Better get back to work anyhow, I'm writing up some demos on LINQ at the moment, which is immensely cool if you're into data querying through .NET. Which I now am, obviously. ^^

Dig a hole through the earth

Obviously I should be plugging Virtual Earth etc, but this latest feature on Google Maps is just too cool to pass up. This tool is really simple and clever, but great fun to play with - simply drag the green marker somewhere to find out what's on the other side of the earth! 3D visualising is brought to a 2D map with no increase in graphics at all!

Simplified Spelling Society

..who, oddly enough, haven't simplified the spelling of their name. Anyone for a nice cup of irony?

Anyhow, these retards are campaigning for simpler spelling because they're sick of being laughed at in internet chatrooms. There's an interesting 'debate' at the bottom of the page on this, but it's all fairly hypothetical as English will never officially degenerate to the levels I unfortunately see all around me.

Urinal etiquette

Microsoft is a place that really lends itself to the creative process, always giving you something to think about. However, I think that in this instance, the stimulus is probably unintentional. Regardless, the toilets in work have reminded me a couple of amusing (yet, and I must stress this, absolutely critically useful for men) bits on the interweb, due to their silly design.

You see, the toilets (and they're all identical) contain four urinals, already a stupid number, as only two can ever be used at a time. Furthermore, the closest urinal doesn't lie next to a wall, but next to an open space near the toilet. As such, only urinals 2 and 4 will ever be used, and when (as is nearly always the case) there is only one user in the toilets, then urinal 4 will bear the impact of their stream, which is surely not optimal, unless they somehow rotate the urinals, to ensure they all get their fair share...

Anyhow, to the interweb content. Here's a video:



And here's a quiz, if you don't get at least 50/60 in this, then you don't get to pee in public.

I love this job

Sitting back in my 'designed for comfort and support' chair, with my tablet showing awful, awful American training videos on mute, reading and laughing at the transcript and listening to Jackson 5 via the dubiously legal, but wonderful service provided by BlogMusik. To my side, my shiny new development machine is installing Orcas now I've finally got it on the network. So win ^^

18 Today!

I've had a bit of a scattered birthday this year, with the present-giving beginning in late June and continuing beyond the present. Although I do love, and did slightly miss, the feeling of having that one special day where everything was perfect and I was drowned in fun new things, I must say I'm rather enjoying this way of doing things too. In fact, I might see about converting to a Birthweek next year instead - it's always good to try out new ideas, and who knows, it might catch on, I could make a fortune if I'm the first in the market...

World domination aside, I got 18 of the 21 presents Lucie's bought, found or made for me this year (which, by the way guys, is 20 presents more than most of you got me, but fortunatley I'll accept late, postal gifts to make up the numbers, so get on eBay), and I'll be getting the other 3 on Friday when she comes to visit. I'm also assured that 'coming to visit' doesn't count as one of the presents, so I can expect even more goodies.
So, here's what I've got so far. Note that I'm writing this on the fly, will almost certainly forget which number ties to which present, and thereby incur Lu's wrath. Oh well:

1. A birthday card.

Which, obviously, no birthday would be complete without. I wonder if anyone's captioned this kitty in the spirit of the internet's current favourite meme

2. To be delivered on Friday.


3. 21 today badge.

Clearly inaccurate, which is great, because if there was one day in my life I would be guaranteed not to wear that badge, it would obviously be a couple of days ago. You know, that whole being different and anti-status quo things I've got going on. Note I'm obviously not anti-Status Quo, because those guys rock.

4. Glow in the dark stars.

Unlike normal stars, which actually only appear to glow in the dark, but actually probably burned out a hell of a long time ago. Also unlike normal stars in that you can touch them without being incinerated in a nuclear firestorm - which improves their bedroom decoration value, but makes them utterly useless for defending ourselves against the Germans. Not that I'm implying the Germans like invading people or anything...we just have to be on our guard, y'know.

5. Bubbles.

For some reason people have stopped buying me those little pots of bubbles with a wand that one can use to blow small, dissappointing bubbles that dissapear after a few seconds. Nope, no humorous analogies coming to mind, was rather hoping there would be there. Sorry. Hm, now I've gotten sidetracked and can't smoothly link into the fact that they don't buy them for me because I never actually get around to using them, and then link into telling you that these bubbles are of the bathwater variety. Damn that lack of analogy.

6. A useful turtle.

Easily differentiated from a useless turtle, in that this turtle is full of blue cleansing goodness. I've seen a lot of people get similar presents and think 'Aww, isn't that pretty', and never use them, leaving their bathrooms looking ridiculous with what are essentially soap containers lying around in decorative places. If I gave someone some shower gel for their birthday and they never used it, I'd be very insulted, so I'll be crushing this turtle to gain access to his gooey intestines at the first opportunity.

7. Butterfly clip.

Fool your friends! Amaze your neighbours! This one of a kind collectable butterfly stays exactly where you put it, lending a cheery air to your room, and allowing you to profess your superiority as butterfly tamer extraordinaire! Very cool.

8. Cat.

This guy is awesome, though, he hasn't actually told me his name yet, so is just known as 'cat' for now. He probably invalidates our tenancy agreement, due to the 'no pets' rule, but he's so cute that that's a price I'm willing to pay. Excels at guarding small presents from invisible ninja foes (need proof? Well, none of my presents have been stolen by invisible ninja foes, and he's been guarding them. QED) and lying around looking cute. Any naming suggestions are very welcome.

9. Munchies.

Munchies > white Malteasers > chocolate raisins > Minstrels > Malteasers > MilkyBar buttons > Dairy Milk buttons > Revels > Busted. Need I say more?

10. Purple dragon.

This guy came with a confusing tag which has led me to believe that he's actually some kind of transformer, but I'm a bit too scared of breaking him to manipulate various limbs to unlock the other 5 kinds of assorted dragon he clearly is. Again, really cool, gotta love Lu's taste in gifts :)

11. Balloon

Lu confusingly added a (u) after '11' on the wrapping of this one, in a cute little gesture that unfortunately got completely misinterpreted. In my slightly overexcited state, halfway through my big pile of presents, I read this as '11(a)' and was extremely vexed at not being able to find the present labelled '11(b)'. Once I'd rung Lucie to be told how bad I was at reading, I was able to actually open the present and discover the balloon inside, which is destined to be knocked around this house for a month or so, until it completely deflates and lies lifeless in a corner, like...nope, no good analogies there either, it's late, screw you.

12. Kitten money bank.

Some say that art imitates life, and others that life imitates art. This chicken/egg discussion could go on infinitely, if left unchecked, though I wonder what would happen to it if someone brought in this particular object. Is the artist perhaps claiming that there are those among us who regularly force small change through the head of newborn cats? Are there such people? Will this present perhaps lead people to believe that doing so is an acceptable action, and thereby bring about such a trend? If a Frenchman falls in a forest, does anyone care? Philosophy students take note, this gift will change the reasoning process as you know it.

13. Coming on Friday.

Yes, the 13th present is coming on Friday the 13th. I really hope it's not a large serrated knife in my face for having assuredly screwed up the order of the gifts in this list, despite having most of the wrapping paper in front of me. Did I mention how cool the paper is? Some of it's even handmade and hand-painted by Lu, and it's all varied.


14. Picture.

Wow. Possibly my new favourite possession - and yes, I'm including Guitar Hero 2 in that.

15. Glow in the dark duck.

The disturbing noose around this duck's neck lends it a slightly gothic air, which I find oddly attractive, in a 'the designer of this should probably be watched closely by local police' kind of way.

16. MilkyBar.

Anyone else hate how they ruined the MilkyBar kid adverts with that stupid new guy? Yep? Good. Pretty win present, as I was barely even aware these still existed.

17. Mobile.

Again, so much effort must have gone into this, certainly a keeper. I must say I am tempted to remove one of the CDs and run it to find the hidden message that's almost certainly not there.

18. Toothbrush.

So I turned up at Lucie's this Saturday, forlorn and homeless, and was greeted with neither pity nor sympathy, but instead outright mocking. In the course of one evening Lucie, her mother and her father all separately laughed at the state of my (admittedly, rather well used) toothbrush, which I'd left lying about their bathroom. I thought it was perfectly fine, but hopefully present #18 is going to save me from such future derision.

19. Kite.

Intriguing choice, as Lucie knows I am a complete failure at all kite related activities. And, when I say 'kite related activities', I mean flying the things, because that's the only one I've tried to date. Apparently this one is 'super-easy to fly', which just means that I'll feel even more of an idiot when it drifts limp and lifeless to the floor in front of a gaggle of 8 year old boys, time after time.

20. Card...things.



Awesomely put together though these things are, filled with all my favourite pictures, quotes and characters, I really have no idea what to call them, or what to do with them. I'm loath to put them away in a folder somewhere to rarely be looked at again, so my current alternatives of choice are either to use them as tablemats (probably not such a wise choice) or pin them up to a wall or summat. Any other ideas welcome, they're A4 laminated card.

21. Coming on Friday.

Apparently it's 'the best present of the lot', but I find that rather hard to believe. I'll let you know.


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Well, it's 2am, I have work tomorrow and I have to go take all the pictures you'll hopefully see above this footer when I get into work and upload this post in the morning. Woo for time management :(

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Man I'm bad at photgraphy.

Rescue Package

My mother kindly came up with the first installment of all my stuff today (well, yesterday, by the time I'm posting this), which amongst other things included the majority of my clothes. Finally the people at work can stop wondering why my outfit every day gives them a sense of deja-vu. Another plus side is that I no longer have to unwrap and wear all the MS branded t-shirts and tops from induction week because I've run out of clean clothes.

My ps2, along with all Guitar Hero peripherals and games also arrived today, just to taunt me - because my TV isn't coming till Sunday. The guitar controllers are just in a corner, mocking me, and glaring at the sweet, sweet XBox 360 that currently has pride of place in our lounge. In all fairness, it's a much better system from so many standpoints, and will by the envy of all mankind once our LAN is set up to stream Media Centre through it from every machine.

Also squashed into the tardis known as the Ka was some much, much needed kitchen equipment. This morning was a horrible experience as we woke up and wandered down to the kitchen, where Weetabix and Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes shone gloriously at us from our mostly empty cupboards. Through bleary eyes I could make out a golden halo hovering above a fresh, full bottle of milk, and nothing could have been more satisfying for either myself or Ben than a gorgeous bowl of cereal to wake us up. Unfortunately, our creative brains couldn't kick into a high enough gear that early on to work out how some plates and very sharp knives could be substituted for the traditional bowl and spoon, and so had to go hungry.

Most of the rest of my many possessions will be travelling up with my mother on Sunday, she apparently loves driving on the M4 for some bizarre reason. Either that or she just really, really likes my new house - can't say I blame her.

Happy Birthday Me

For those of you who missed it, it was yesterday, and I'm never speaking to you again.

I had to end up going home over the weekend, as Endsleigh don't like getting out of bed on a weekend, and the job of getting references from our employer/previous landlords had been farmed out to them by our estate agents. Can't really complain as it was nice to see Lucie and my mother, and I ended up getting birthday cake ^^

I got a few more cool presents on the weekend too, and a bunch of cards, before getting the train at 9.30pm from Cardiff to Reading, to stroll into work at the excessively early hour of 11.30am. Man I love working here. We left early to drive to the estate agents - all three of us sharing two seats in one very packed car. Fortunately no police drove past us, so it went quite well, except for mild discomfort, which turned into severe discomfort any time 2nd gear was required.

Finally got moved in about 7pm, I'll try and get a 3D model of the house generated in Photosynth - I'll just need to check if I'm allowed to publish anything I make in that first though. I even had a birthday card from Hebs waiting for me when I got in, along with some new furniture, result.

Went out for pizza with Ben and his step-dad as my birthday celebration, with a couple of drinks, which was better than the cold and boring night in I was expecting.

Better get back to work now, expect some sporadic blogging for the next week or so till I get a connection at home, as they're working me hard here :) Sorry :P

Best. Driver. Ever.

This lovely tablet laptop unfortunately requires a lot of funky drivers in order to unlock all of its potential, and Vista is a bit silly at finding them, which means I have to go via Toshiba's website to get them all manually. Alongside all of the usual ones, such as enabling the function key, and getting it to recognize when I've flipped the screen, I found this one:

Utility/Driver that actively senses movement via onboard 3D accelerometer. When a freefall condition is detected, the utility parks the head on the HDD to prevent loss of data or failure.

Yes, my laptop actually knows when it's been thrown off a skyscraper, and protects the hard drive accordingly. Presumably 'head' in this case refers to 5 inches of steel surrounded by a metre of rubber, otherwise I can't imagine it'll do much good.

Now then, how and where shall I test the driver installed ok?

Microsoft Surface

I'm not entirely sure this ad for Microsoft Surface came from Redmond...

Opponent's core is now vulnerable

The Wii has been selling massively for many months now, and apparently Microsoft are getting a bit worried. I'm not basing that on all the presentations I've been to this week, or even on the annual conference I attended yesterday. No, this is information in the public domain, as reported by Seattle PI.

So Nintendo, you better curb that growth, or soon you'll find hordes of MS soldiers storming your base. You didn't think Halo was just a game, did you?

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Childish drawings on my new tablet, such fun ;) I should probably be working..

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Edit: So I emailed this to the guy who wrote the original article:

From: Bishop, Todd [mailto:____@seattlepi.com]
Sent: 06 July 2007 17:06
To: Ian MacGillivray
Subject: RE: Nintendo to sell land to Microsoft

Oh, man, that's hilarious. Do you mind if I post it?

I think he liked it. He even blogged it.

Micosoft UK annual conference

Yesterday was Microsoft's UK get-together, with about 1600 people coming together from the London, Cambridge and Reading offices to discuss the previous financial year, this financial year, and drink lots of free wine. There is a MS office up in Scotland too, but as there weren't any fights, I don't think that lot were invited. Just kidding guys, don't blame me, blame Ed Byrne's bad influence ;)

The talks themselves, whilst interesting enough at the time, aren't really worth recounting here, with two notable exceptions. The first, and probably my favourite of the day, came oddly enough from Steve Dunn, the Financial Director of MSUK. He added a nice bit of drama in, and also showed a flair for 'creative accounting', which is obviously a must when reporting back to head-office - very fun indeed ;)

Secondly, the research guys from Cambridge wandered up and blew us all away with Photosynth, a magical (literally, that's the only word for it) technology which takes a bunch of 2D images taken from around an area, and builds up a 3D model of that area. The example in point was images of Notre Dame trawled from Flickr, which were then used to make a perfectly accurate model of the cathedral, through which one could move, seeing it in clear detail from every concievable angle. They also had some very fun image editing algorithms, which allowed one to remove or add objects from/to a picture, without the end result being discernably changed to a viewer who hadn't seen the original. Amazing.

After all of this, some damn fine food was served, along with free drinks, whilst the Comedy Store Players, and then Ed Byrne entertained the audience. The Players did a lot of improvisational comedy, performing a 'set' scene, but with content from the audience. So, for example, they'd have a scene set up, and then edit it based on emotions shouted out from the audience. Naturally, fun ones such as 'lust' and 'disgust' came up, though I was very intrigued to discover that both 'orgasm' and 'homosexuality' are apparently both emotions nowadays. Their final scene was a large musical number, and they really picked the wrong audience for this, as the content of the musical revolved around jobs.

Some of you may not be aware of this, but job titles at Microsoft are very...descriptive - for example, I'm a developer & platform evangelist, and Will's a technical solutions professional. Try fitting either of those into a song. Even worse, try what they actually had to fit in, which was 'search multimedia strategist', ouch. This went on, and was side-achingly funny, I highly recommend these guys if they're ever near you. Ed Byrne was also brilliant, doing some more traditional stand up.

The event, held in the VIP section of Wembley (which is, by the way, staggeringly impressive - did you know the roof covers 11 acres and weighs the same as the Eiffel Tower?), cost a mere $900k, so I feel a bit cheated, classy though it was. Apparently last year's summer party cost Microsoft $6million, and featured Jools Holland and Groove Armada, amongst many other things.

Got a house!

It's gorgeous, it's £950 a month, I'm sharing with Ben and Apurva and I'll spam you with photos when we move in. Thank God eh? ;)

Inducted

I'm done with all of the presentations now, thank God, and long though the days were, I do have a slightly better picture of how all of Microsoft fits together, and the business paradigms they're using.

The whole company fits together mostly around a partner network, keeping headcount low, which means that each person in the UK has a lot of revenue they're responsible for. 2,000 full time employees in the UK, $2 billion profits this year, you do the maths.

The presentations from the Entertainment and Devices division were naturally really fun, along with all the cool gadgets they had. I was interested to hear the opinion that MS don't think the HD-DVD/Blu-ray war is massively important, as they expect on-demand download services to take the place of discs in not much time anyway. I also hadn't realised that it was Sony behind every failed format in the past, from Betamax and minidisk to the laughing stock that was (is?) UMD.

The stuff from MSTV, providing IPTV services (BT Vision in the UK) is just breathtaking, and when the UK infrastructure is capable of delivering high-speed broadband across the country, I can't see anyone who wouldn't take this up. A two-way, rich connection to TV services, linked into the entire home network, is certainly the way to the future.

I've got to say I don't envy those who stood up and gave the presentations to us, because at least half of most of the slots were taken up with Q&A, and there were some pretty tricky ones thrown in along with the more usual bits. I heard some very good ideas coming from the interns, especially some of the business lot. I was a bit cruel to the really nice, funky presenter from Online Services Group (aka, MSN and Live), asking her "What is Live search's selling point over Google - why should we switch?". She came up with a fairly good answer based around data trust after quite a few awkward seconds though, fair play to her.

Passed CS2

No idea what my results are yet, but at least I know I passed - along with 48 other people, out of 90 or so. Wow, though I expect some more will get through after referred exams.

Microsoft iPod

This one's pretty dated, but I feel I've been neglecting the less literate among you recently. As such, here's what I just found on Google Windows Live, after one of today's presenters said "I'm sure you've seen...", and everyone but me nodded.

The slide

So...death by Powerpoint today. There was one really interesting talk, but, like all the best stuff, it started off with "Now, I'll tell you x, but only if you promise me you won't go outside this room and blog about it". But, rest assured that you're really missing out and I had fun.

Got a bit of an overview of the company today too, so I now know a lot more about the Business departments and specific arrangements for interns working in London. On the other side, the Business interns at London now know more about the Techie departments, and specific arrangements for interns at Reading. Does anyone see some way they could possibly have split us into differing groups for presentations? Nope, me neither..

I was fairly appalled at the standard of some of the presenters today, be it people who stuffed their slides with 60 words, and then read each one verbatim, or, my personal peeve, people who filled Every Single gap with the word 'Ummm'. I won't name names, because people like to Google themselves, and it's a little early to make enemies I guess.

There was a good talk from the head of my department, DPE, which managed to be really, really informative for completely unexpected reasons. I'd hoped to find out my specific role, and where I fitted into the company, but was perfectly happy with the hour and a half presentation despite not hearing a word about this. Should be very interesting stuff indeed working there, and having met/heard a fair portion of the higher echelons of the department, I'm looking forward to the company and challenges.

On the downside, there's no real work tomorrow either, so I think I'll bring my DS along for the main part of the day. We've even got 'homework', which appears to be the same half-arsed teambuilding exercise used last year, and used at the intern open day I went to a couple of weeks back. Gotta love the Microsoft originality. I was also amused by the fact that pretty much every 'team' in this exercise is composed of people living together, and that the teams don't interact at all.

Well, that's enough ranting, I'm rather tired. Apologies to Beautiful South fans, by the way. Xx

About in Reading

So, I've quit Birmingham for the year now, but it hasn't really sunk in yet. Got down to Reading yesterday to look for some houses, but none of the estate agents that were open had anything good for us.

As such, we spent the entire day on Emma's sofa, watching TV and chatting, before she left us to go and sleep, and when we inquired about bedding, simply said 'improvise' - having gotten rid of all her stuff earlier the day. As such, I ended up sleeping on a bare mattress with a sofa cushion for a pillow, and a curtain for a blanket. I don't recommend.

In halls now, after a fun night out. Met all of the interns from London and Reading today, and spent most of the day playing pool and drinking. Can't complain really, except that we're in work at 8.20am tomorrow, and right now is apparently party time in my room ^^

Xx