Jeremy Collins's WebLog : Technology

Once again back is the incredible...

jeremycollins — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 02:33:00 GMT

I don't think that people really care what the story is when a blogger goes away for a while and suddenly comes back. So I won't bore you with one here. Suffice it to say, I've neglected my blog for far too long, and if anyone is left that might still check it then I thank you. I do hope to post at a frequency that is more worthy of your attention.

This week in the EEC is a bit nuts. I am lucky somewhat in that I'm not 'in the trenches' this week, but most of the rest of the team is. We're preparing to host an all-facility event for the MOM (Microsoft Operations Manager) team next week, with a total of 22 customers (companies) confirmed to attend. We're breaking it into two groups of 11, each group attending for two days (with a day of rest between). We occasionally do these kinds of events (we call them 'airlifts', an oft-used term at MS I'm sure), where instead of hosting a single company that tests several MS products (a "depth/1:1" engagement), we host one product team and 15-30 of their biggest customers (or TAP/early-adopter customers, anyway). Airlifts are easier for us in some ways - like the test environment specs are the same for each company, as they'll all be going through similar tests exercises going by a list of scenarios & tasks generated by the MOM team. What makes this harder than building a big ol' customized environment for a single customer, is that even though the airlift environments are smaller (11 servers plus 5 clients in this case), the EEC is building it out 11 times (and rebuilding them all in a day, before the second group arrives!). In the EEC's nearly-4 years in existence, we actually have gotten pretty good at standing up a lot of configured equipment at a fast pace. But I've learned this week (rather, was reminded of my long-possessed knowledge) that there are always devils in the details that prevent it from being as straightforward as the planning docs make it seem. (Like how to put 11 identical-but-separate test environments on the same network as a common fileserver, without having IP conflicts/replication errors/other similar nastiness. Or something like that. Something bad, like crossing the streams.) I'm nowhere near being an network engineer, but from what I've heard, the buildout team has had to dance around some stream-crossing trickiness like that in this final stretch before the event begins. At any rate, my hat is as always off to my teammates, the ones who actually install hardware in the boxes, stand them up with OSs and apps, network them together, and generlaly make it all hum and blink prettily in the data center. In particular I salute Stan who is driving this whole event as point-man, and is rocking the house (tho he may not realize it in his sleep-deprived state). Please go visit his blog and give him a hug in the comments.

My role in the whole deal next week is actually as a videographer. That's not my 'regular' job or at least not my primary role; though I've always run video cameras for our engagement kickoff meetings. That's where the customer visiting us presents their visit goals, current MS pain points at home, future plans, company profile, and any feedback at all about MS that they want us to hear. MS product team folks typically attend, but I videotape the presentations for later viewing by those who couldn't make it. Frequently a customer will have a choice quote in their presentation that warrants 'clipping' it out and sending around MS for folks to see. A quote to the effect of "I won't deploy product X unless it does Y," or, "if product X still has these problems at RTM we're going with competitor Z," tend to get a lot of MS-internal attention and can result in product changes that ultimately do benefit the customer(s). So I end up feeling pretty good about getting to play with video gear all day. (muahahaha...)

Lately, I've been doing more & more video work, now starting to include short 'films' that take more editing skill than I've employed before. These 'films' are generally humorous in nature and are almost always intended to be a morale-lightening nugget to show in a group meeting, or a funny internal-marketing tool. In addition to recording multiple presenations and customer feedback sessions for the upcoming MOM event, I'm also now doing their 'morale video'. On top of this I'm doing another, similar project for a former boss (still at MSFT, different group), and as the scheduling is working out all the principal photography for both projects has to happen next week. Add on the video capturing, editing, and rendering, and I'm in for some long nights myself in the coming weeks. Given that I don't charge for my video services, and that there's a whole MS department that specializes in making multimedia content that does charge, I might expect a surge of project requests; however, given my decidedly amateurish output, I don't expect any such surge to be sustained for long. MS Studios might break my kneecaps before too long, anyway.

I imagine that as time goes on and I need stuff to post about, I'll turn to A/V topics as there's always something to rant/rave or ask about there. I wish I could post some of my 'work' here, alas it's all MSFT-internal/confidential & such. (You're not missing much; my best piece is about a coupla geeks arguing over MSN/Google. You can guess how that ended.)

If you've read this far, thanks again. I'll be back soon. (Soon = ~weeks, not ~months...)

At least someone is putting it to good use

jeremycollins — Fri, 06 May 2005 00:28:00 GMT

The Space Needle here in Seattle will soon be utilized as a giant Wi-Fi antenna. Three different ISPs are teaming up to provide the connectivity, which is expected to be able to beam wireless internet signals over a 5 square mile area.

http://www.komotv.com/stories/36658.htm

Finally brings some 21st-century relevance to the old World's Fair construction and most-notable Seattle landmark. Not that the Space Needle isn't cool in its own right, of course. But soon, it will be very cool to cruise through downtown (or fly overhead), see the Needle and know exactly where your wireless internet hot spot is. Saves all that wardriving effort, I guess.

DJ'ing with iPods

jeremycollins — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 00:26:00 GMT

Numark, a major DJ equipment manufacturer, unveiled a prototype of a new mixer at the Musikmesse show in Frankfurt recently. This is only a prototype, but a very cool concept: a DJ mixer that mixes across two iPods. The prototype isn't functional yet, but the idea is clear.

My own rig has an older Numark dual-CD player; no sampling capability, limited looping capability, pitch control but no tempo-only control, etc. It works fine for my amateur needs, but it's not like their CD players with a 'turntable-like interface' that allows you to cut & scratch CDs as if they were vinyl, and do other nifty things on the fly. If the iPod mixer ever came to fruition, I'd think it'd be pretty comical the first time I see DJ's 'scratching' using the iPod control wheel...

(thanks to BoingBoing, from whom I picked this up!)

Easy Font Resizing trick

jeremycollins — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:17:00 GMT

I recently stumbled across a trick (er, I mean, Feature!) in many MS products that lets you resize the font size - and in some cases, zoom level. This works in IE, Word, Excel, Visio, and probably many other apps I haven't tried yet. I'm not sure what the minimum version is of the apps or OS that this works on, but give it a try:

Simply hold the Ctrl key and use the scroll wheel on your mouse (assuming you have such a mouse). In IE, the font size changes (where the page allows you to; some text won't resize if the size is hard-coded); in Excel and Word, the zoom level changes.

Many/most of you may already have found this. But after showing this to a few people who'd never heard of it, I wondered how many others haven't found this handy feature.

Let me know if this doesn't work for you, and if not, what version(s) of the OS and apps you're trying it on. It may only be XP and Office 2003 products, but I'd hope it works for some previous versions too.

Sweet sound of music - a PEZ MP3 player

jeremycollins — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 22:14:00 GMT

I have an iPod and a Creative Labs MP3 player, and have been reasonably happy with each. However, once this thing comes out, it will trump all my music players if for no other reason than the retro-cool factor. ("Cool" being a relative term, I am of course a geek...)

http://www.pezmp3.com/archives/2005/03/24/no-longer-invisible/

Fractals

jeremycollins — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 21:46:00 GMT

I found this while surfing around one night, a rather nifty Java app that generates fractals. You can vary the color scheme as you like, and for each regeneration you can select an area to "zoom in" on, which then does another round of iterations on the zoomed area. Theoretically I guess you could "zoom in" indefinitely, but the app only lets you go in ~10 levels. Still, it's very pretty and is fun to play with.

http://www.softwarefederation.com/fractal.html

You will need Java enabled on your browser to make this work. If you don't, you can still browse their images gallery.

Cruisin' with Princess

jeremycollins — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 02:18:00 GMT

A couple of weeks ago I took my first cruise on Princess cruise lines. My wife and I did an Eastern Caribbean cruise, from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to San Juan, St. Thomas, Tortola, and an island in the Bahamas. I must say, it was an amazingly good time and we're looking forward to doing it again. There were some downsides to deal with, such as the crowds (2500 or so passengers on the big liners), and the motion while underway was a little more than we expected (but we were told it was more than you'd usually feel - most likely due to a problem with one of the ship's stabilizers). So after the first two nights we were used to the rocking of the ship, and we were so entranced by all the food and drink available that we didn't mind anymore.

One of the things that impressed me was the technology that was onboard. First, every passenger gets a cruise card, which is a magnetic-stripe type of card, that you use for everything from accessing your stateroom to racking up drink charges at any of the 14 bars on board. You use the card to 'punch out' when you go ashore at a port and 'punch in' when you come back aboard; the crew uses this data to identify any passengers still ashore at the time when the ship plans to leave the port, and will announce loudly for any remaining passengers still not checked in to do so promptly. (Whether they wait for you or simply sail on and expect you to fly to the next port is unknown). Also, the ship has an area for internet access (for several cents per minute) so you can check your email and such while underway; I didn't avail myself of this as I was on vacation and didn't want to check my work email at all, but if you're so inclined to do so the option is there. You can also use your own laptop/wireless card on their WAPs, and I think you're still charged some amount for the access. The stateroom television is also pretty cool; it's all satellite-based of course, but beyond the broadcast channels you get to see you can also watch channels that show a video feed from a camera on the mast of the ship, one that shows the ship's location and sea conditions, one that plays a loop of the cruise director's daily briefings, etc. It's pretty cool.

Princess's motto is "Escape Completely", and though I certainly felt far enough away from my regular life to enjoy a vacation, I still felt connected enough to the world through technology. I suppose if I really wanted to escape completely I'd have to go camping, on a deserted island or something. (Doesn't sound too bad, actually, the crowds would be smaller for sure.) But if you've never taken a cruise before, I do recommend it as I had a great time as did my wife. If for no other reason than the 24-hour buffet and the 14 bars on board!! (food's included in your base price, of course the drinks are not!)

Vinyl Platter Hard Drives

jeremycollins — Sat, 08 Jan 2005 04:36:00 GMT

This (from BBSpot) made me laugh out loud, being an amateur DJ and self-described "person who can't let go." If this was an actual product, I swear I would buy it (or more likely, two) for my PC.

Recently I was joking with a colleague, discussing music and how we rip CDs to hard drives for use in our digital music players, media center PCs, etc. I explained that, having a turntable connected through a DJ mixer and to my PC through an analog RCA cable, I am able to copy music from vinyl to my PC. He then joked that it must be real easy to do with the use of all those PC turntable drives out there. Little did he know how BBSpot was listening to him at that moment...

Granted, the ripping process from vinyl is at 1X speed, but I don't mind it because I enjoy listening to an album all the way through like that. The end-result digital file is sometimes subject to sonic cleanup to reduce hiss/pop/etc, but I rarely bother with that process unless the source vinyl is really old or degenerated. In fact, if you purchase a new album on vinyl and copy it to PC on its first play, you'll hardly notice any difference in sound quality at all versus CD. I don't claim to have a 'golden ear' and thus be able to actually discern the difference between analog and digital audio, but on some level I think the vinyl is better. That must be coming from the part of me that can't let go. Just wait until I hook my dad's old 8-track and 1/4" reel-to-reel decks up to my PC!

Blinding yourself with science

jeremycollins — Tue, 28 Dec 2004 22:53:00 GMT

There’s a new laser pointer in town that’s nearly 20 times more powerful than your typical laser used for presentations and amusing your pets (thanks Slashdot for the link). You can buy it online, no special forms or permissions needed (yet). While it’s not as powerful as other lasers you may encounter, such as vision-correcting or tattoo-removing lasers, it’s still not something I’d want pointing at my skin.

Laser technology itself isn’t anything new, it’s been around since the early 1960’s. The concept of energy beams such as ‘ray guns’ has been around a bit longer, coming from early science-fiction cinema. Today, lasers are found all over the place: in CD/DVD players, medical applications (such as vision correction), vehicle guidance systems, military weaponry, range finding equipment, and of course those ubiquitous laser pointers.

As a kid I was captivated by the concept of lasers ever since I saw the movie Star Wars. After playing with toy laser pistols in the yard for a few years, I was compelled to learn more about the actual technology in school. In high school I participated in a team project where we built a computer-controlled laser drawing device. We used an old Atari computer to control stepping motors that moved a mirror, reflecting a helium-neon laser beam (same type used in laser pointers today), to draw basic shapes on the ceiling (or on paper, depending on the orientation of the mirror). It was crude, but a fun project nonetheless. In hindsight, I am very glad that we didn’t have access to a stronger laser, like the one we drooled over from the movie Real Genius. (Which could “vaporize a human target from space.” Yipe!) But it was inevitable, I suppose, that publicly-available laser products would one day get more powerful than the ‘weak’ He-Ne lasers you see everywhere.

I rank lasers up there with robotics as a fun and compelling area of technology that can inspire kids to learn more about science and, hopefully, develop practical and benevolent applications for them. But just to be safe, let’s make sure we keep the lasers away from the robots. Johnny-5 may have been a “nice” sentient-robot-with-a-laser, but I have a feeling that in the future he’d be a minority.

UPDATE [30-Dec-04]:

That didn't take long at all - Lasershoppe has stopped it's online sales of their new lasers due to recent stories involving lasers pointed at aircraft cockpits in flight. (thanks again to Slashdot for the link.) There is apparently no connection between this particular kind of laser sold by Lasershoppe and the aircraft incidents (apart from the all the laser beams involved being green), but as a precaution the seller is restricting sales to those people who supply a copy of their drivers license, write an essay on laser safety, and sign a waiver.

For now, you can still get a weaker green laser pointer (~5mW) from Thinkgeek.com, and for a much more reasonable price. This one would make a safer cat toy anyway.

De Facto Tech Support

jeremycollins — Thu, 23 Dec 2004 00:24:00 GMT

I’m sure that nearly all of you will relate to the fact that, if you’re employed anywhere near the computer industry, you are a de facto tech support technician for your non-techie family and friends. You may even find yourself occasionally giving pro-bono technical support to friends of friends, or other strangers to whom you have at best a tenuous social connection. Many people in this position either take on the role of “free tech support provider” begrudgingly, or find ways to duck out of doing it at all. There’s a half-gajillion stories on the web you could read on the topic; here’s a couple I found from PC World and Network Computing, and a couple of comment forums on the topic from Slashdot.

Personally, I don’t mind being in such a position. Granted, my PC tech skills are pretty low compared to most anyone in the professional computer industry (I work more on the business side of things than the tech side), but I know a bit more than the average user and seem to have plenty enough knowledge to impress my parents when I get near their PC. (Tip: even if you hate providing free tech support, I strongly recommend helping Mom out when she needs it. Try to “teach her to fish” when you can, instead of “giving the fish away”; but in any case, it’s a good idea to keep Mom happy with her expensive email and picture toy.) Whenever I can help fix a problem, I receive gratitude and some elevation in my pride; and when I am confronted with a tech problem that I don’t know the answer to, I end up learning more about it and thus adding to my knowledge base. Fortunately I have been able to keep the pace of “support calls” pretty slow so I’m not overwhelmed or burned out by it. Many others however cannot claim the same thing, and end up charging their friends (and even their own mothers!) for the help they provide or simply not helping at all.

The holiday season being upon us now has reminded me again of this modern social phenomenon. Recently I enjoyed a very pleasant dinner at an excellent restaurant, courtesy of the company for whom my wife works, which was attended by a select group of high-level employees and their guests. It was partly a holiday gathering, and partly a year-end ‘thank you’ to those attending. The whole evening was very pleasant – great food, great wine, great company and great conversation were enjoyed by all. After about 2-1/2 hours I thought that I might actually get through the evening without any conversation about where I worked; I was surprised it didn’t come up earlier, but once other conversation had taken off I didn’t think we’d come back such standard ice-breaker topics. Alas, sometime between the main course and dessert, I was asked by one of the pleasant people at our table, “so where do you work, Jeremy?” To which I replied, with as much modesty as I could convey, “Microsoft.”

During the nearly 5 years that I’ve worked for Microsoft, I’ve always been proud of where I worked. However as time has gone on I’ve learned that – especially in the local area – not everyone I talk to is a fan of Microsoft. Some are even kind of hostile toward us. I’ve thankfully been able to avoid any fisticuffs over the issue, and at the worst I’ve always been able to escape any pointed questions with “I’m sorry, I’ve not heard of that person/product/bug. Have you tried calling tech support?...”. So whenever I tell someone where I work I try to play it down as much as I can – not that I’m not proud of my company, but I don’t want to appear smug about it. But no matter who asks or how I respond, what’s consistent in the reactions of all people who learn where I work, is the assumption that I, through my affiliation with such a legendary software development company, must be a Super Computer Genius. A flattering assumption, and one I’d milk for all it’s worth, if I wouldn’t be so easily found out as a fraud were I to try to perpetrate such a front.

The people with whom I was dining showed no hostility at all of course, and were very pleasant even when giving me some good-natured teasing about MS and our products. And inevitably, I was asked for some computer-related advice, as if I were the most knowledgeable person in the room on the topic. (I may well could have been; there were some super biotech geniuses in the room, not sure about their computer skills.) So I ended up: giving a personal recommendation on some laptop models to someone in the market for a new one; talking a little about the next OS release (nothing that’s not already in the press, Bill/Steve/Brian, I swear…); pointing some folks to the Microsoft.com site for some free downloads; preaching the Updates and Patches mantra; and giving a plug for the new Photo Story 3 download for XP/WMP10, which my wife had used to make some work presentations that dazzled them earlier in the week.

I suffered no tech-heavy “support calls” as many of you have undoubtedly dealt with, for which I was grateful. But, as is common with us Microsoft employees in social situations outside of work, I was serving as a Microsoft representative, and I did my best to represent us as the good and helpful people that we really are. We’re OK with answering questions about computers, our products, and technology in general. And when we don’t know the answer, we’re OK with admitting it, as long as we’re willing to help get the answer. Of course, that usually means pointing them to Tech Support.

Happy Holidays!

WARNING: Persons denying the existence of Robots may be Robots themselves

jeremycollins — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 00:01:00 GMT

You have probably already heard of this, a robot under development by Honda called Asimo. It’s appeared in a Honda TV commercial or two and there’s been many news stories written about it. It’s a bipedal robot, stands upright, walks, can pick up a newspaper (at least in the TV commercial), etc. Most recently, Asimo has learned to ‘run’, albeit a slow run, more like a jog. Technically its feet never leave the ground together, as human feet do in a jog or run, but it still looks pretty realistic and I’m sure it won’t be long until it and other robots like it are able to sustain faster and longer runs than humans. One day robots like these will deliver our mail and pizzas. It’ll be quite the day when we see the first robotic track meet on ABC’s Wide World of (Robot) Sports. In the meantime, I can’t help but marvel at this thing and how ‘humanoid’ it already is.

Robotics isn’t a brand-new field, but it’s fairly recently that real robots have been acknowledged in the mainstream (outside of sci-fi films, at least). Even Lego has the Mindstorm product line which has been very successful, and is helping to get kids involved with robotics and computer programming at an early age. (Lots of darn cool Lego projects are out there, the coolest one I’ve seen recently being about logic gates built with Lego Technic parts; while it wouldn’t really conform to Moore’s Law, a functional computer built from Lego parts would be way cool.) Stores like the Sharper Image sell toy robots like the RoboSapien, and Sony’s robotic dog AIBO has been out for a while now too. While these are really just fancy toys and have limited practical use, I admit it would be cool to play with these for a while. Maybe program the RoboSapien to take AIBO for periodic walks. They wouldn’t even need to bring a scooper along, but in the event that AIBO does drop any parts, they could always have a RoomBa following close behind.

Working in the EEC and watching our engineers build large test environments with racks of servers and piles of KVM and network gear, I’ve marveled at how an entire enterprise computing environment can get up and running within just a few days (granted, our engineers are awesome at building these environments). I’ve wondered how long it might be until the day when, using robotics, a computer system would be able to build onto itself, adding new machines when they’re needed. Imagine a forest of servers, one domain of which would be connected to robotic assemblers in a warehouse of various parts. When the forest or a domain within it begins to reach a preset amount of member servers and needs to expand, or an application begins to reach the limits of users or storage and needs to scale out, the robotic domain would kick in and build new servers from bar-coded parts in the warehouse, rack them up and connect them to the network. Several scripts would then run to push an image of the OS and other apps via RIS or ADS to the new servers, join them to a domain or create a new domain with them. Humans would only need to be involved for occasional maintenance and for keeping the parts supplies stocked; eventually those roles would be automated with robots as well. This sparks scary visions of SkyNet or the Matrix, or at the very least the lesson from the movie WarGames that advises not to “take the men out of the loop”; I imagine that for those and other political/religious reasons this vision will not be realized anytime soon. But from just a technological perspective, I bet it could probably be accomplished within the next 5-10 years. In the words of Neo, “Whoa.”

One might be inspired from all these robots in the news to look into taking out some Robot Insurance from Old Glory Insurance. “For when the metal ones decide to come for you - and they will.”