I am back from a lovely long weekend with Jenny in Vancouver. It was great to get away from the day to day and recharge for a little longer than 48 hours. Of course, being gone when everyone else is working means there's a fair bit of catch-up reading to do. One of the more interesting things I found...

Via Miguel de Icaza , I came across this summary of Google's Summer of Code Mozilla projects . Miguel posted a similar summary for the Mono projects . I encourage you to take a couple minutes and read through the summaries. Notice a difference between the summaries? No, I'm not referring to the fact...

About a month ago, I wandered over to MS Studios to have a chat with Mike Ward who hosts Microsoft TechNet Radio . Well, actually I was invited over by Mike Ward because he was looking for someone to talk to about the Open Source end of Microsoft's Shared Source Program and Bill Hilf gave him my name...

A few months ago, Bill Hilf asked if I would attend a meeting to discuss the Windows Installer and Windows Installer XML toolset with an external vendor, SugarCRM . Robert Flaming , a Windows Installer PM, came along and we had a great discussion with John Roberts, Client Oram, and Jacob Taylor ( all...

Thomas Tomiczek has a blog entry about a number of Open Source tools . In it he has some complaints about the WiX toolset. I could add Wix to the list of things I am not really satisfied with, but then this would be unjustified - my complaints with Wix are more along the line that their nice Wiki...

A number of people asked for pictures of me at the Linuxworld 2005 Golden Penguin Bowl . Well, a couple people posted albums with plenty of pictures. Marc Merlin who was on the Google team (and whose name I think I misspelled in my last post) has a bunch of pictures that start backstage and work to the...

[conclusion of previous blog entry ] From 1:00 PM until 3:30 PM, I wandered the halls of Linuxworld. I tripped across the huge expo on the first floor (until now I had ignored the first floor). Tons of vendors were there showing off their wares. I walked around all the colorful and noisy booths trying...

[continued from previous blog entry ] The midday keynote was presented by Martin Fink, Vice President of Linux at HP. He started by showing a professional video that compared the growth of the aerospace industry to the growth of Open Source. The analogies were kinda' interesting but the whole thing...

[continued from previous blog entry ] Okay, I found a free wireless base station. It is down at the end of one corridor on floor two but doesn't reach most of the conference rooms. The connection also seems slightly flaky (but that could just be my internal wireless, it's been acting up on me lately...

I started this morning at 4:45 AM to catch my plane by 6:10 from SEA to SFO. Why the heck did I get up that early and why was I flying to San Francisco on a "school day"? Well, I meant to blog this earlier (Saturday slipped into Sunday and that suddenly turned into Monday) but I'm one of the...

I thought the one year anniversary of the WiX toolset's release was going to go by quietly. Well, turns out late last week an analyst from JDN in wanted to do an interview about the WiX toolset. Anyway, he informed me this morning that the interview was posted on the front page (at least it is right...

It doesn't surprise me that Stephen 's article " Perspectives on the Shared Source Initiative " was picked up by Slashdot . Stephen writes really well and Open Source at Microsoft is a fun topic. People always seem to like to peer into what they believe are paradoxes to try and puzzle out a solution...

When Stephen Walli left Microsoft a few months ago I wasn't sure what I was going to do. Stephen was the best mentor, guide and support system that I could have ever asked for when the WiX toolset was released publicly . Without Stephen the WiX toolset would not be where it is today. I always look forward...

A while ago Robert Scoble " called out " Martin Taylor and Jason Matusow . Now, I've only spoke with Martin Taylor once and certainly wouldn't say that I know him well but Jason. well, Jason and I are on a first name basis. You see, Jason is the Director of the Shared Source Initiative (SSI) for Microsoft...

I was just sent this link to an article about the new features in MySQL 4.1 . To quote the part of the article I personally found most interesting: Microsoft has included an improved version of their Microsoft Windows Installer (MSI) in the recent versions of Windows. Using the MSI has become the de...

It was about five months ago that David Ornstein scheduled a meeting with Stephen Walli and I to discuss the release of the WiX toolset as Open Source . He had this project called FlexWiki that he'd been working on in his free time and was seeing a lot of interest from the community building up around...

I know this is old news now but Josh Ledgard made waves in the Open Source community a while ago with this blog post . There were a few things that I see a bit differently from my work in the Open Source community via the WiX toolset and wanted to take a second to cover them here. First, I saw a number...

I find it amusing that even though Peter and I have been on very different schedules as of late (and thus haven't run into each other around the house much) his latest blog entry captured very much what I've been focused on as of late. I have been neglecting regular updates to my blog for the last month...

Ever have one of those days where you find yourself staring down all the little tasks that you really should get done but have absolutely no desire to start? Instead, you spend most of the day lying around resting and maybe reading some inconsequential fiction. Today was one of those days for me. Fortunately...

I've spent the last couple days recuperating from the sleep deprivation during OSCON . While I had an absolute blast in Portland, it has been really nice sleeping in my own bed (as late as I want) the last couple nights. In any case, before I go back to work tomorrow I figured I'd better do the write...

If someone had told me a year ago that I would have dinner with people that have shaped the face of computing and Open Source tonight, I would have laughed. However, that is exactly what happened tonight (I mean, Thursday night). Each day at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention grows curiouser and curiouser...

Today's (note, today is still Wednesday for me) events massively made up for the lack of excitement in yesterday's blog entry . Unfortunately, today started at 7:30 AM and ended about 2:30 AM. Tomorrow starts at 7:30 AM again because I'm definitely not going to miss the three Dysons' keynote . So, I...

The Open Source Convention actually started Monday but Stephen Walli and I drove down today (er, Tuesday). We discussed all sorts of topics (mostly Open Source related) during the three hour trip from Seattle to Portland. Once in Portland, he and I checked into our sleeping arrangements at the Residence...

So it seems official, Microsoft is sending me to OSCON 2004 . In fact, it looks like I'm probably going to have to get up and talk about the Windows Installer XML toolset . Fortunately, I know a little bit about the WiX toolset so that should be pretty easy to do. However, apparently O'Reilly wants a...

The Windows Template Library (WTL) appears to have finished propagating around the SourceForge.net CVS servers, so I can finally post this blog entry. Many people have pointed at my interview with O’Reilly’s OSDir.com where I noted that other employees in Microsoft have come to me looking...