Alex beat me to it, so you can read his quick summary for something about software and services. What you’ll be getting here is the Richard™ version of it. Without further ado…

So just under a month ago, I let all you faithful readers (Alex, Alice, Charing, Scott… you know who you are) know that Windows Live, the team Alex and I work on, released the beta for the upcoming update. Little did you know that there was an entire web suite being tested internally to go along with the client suite that was being tested publicly. And now that the curtain has been lifted, I can talk about what my team has been chugging away at for the past year.

Windows Live Home

Your launchpad into your realm of the Windows Live Social Networking (SN) experience. It has a What’s New feed that will show you all the activity your friends have been up to. It plugs into your Hotmail and pulls in content from some RSS feeds just to keep you up-to-date. Now it isn’t a fully featured RSS aggregator like Netvibes, but then again, Netvibes isn’t a social networking experience (well it somewhat tries to be…). You can also add photos to your Home page and it’ll cycle through them just like a digital photo album. It’s a nice, subtle addition that really makes it feel like home. Kool-Aid, anyone?

Windows Live Profile

What’s cooler though is your Profile where people will come and see what you’ve been up to. If the Home page What’s New feed shows you what everyone is up to, your What’s New feed will let others know what you’ve been up to. One of the coolest syncing aspects is the level of synchronization that’s built into Windows Live. When you change your Windows Live Messenger status message, it will automatically sync to the status message of your Windows Live Profile, and vice versa! I guess that’s the software and services that Alex was mentioning. So just to let you know that when the Windows Live web suite launches, if you don’t have anything interesting to say, then your What’s New feed will read something like - “@work”, “dinner”, “sleeping”. I’m looking at you, Tony.

Windows Live Photo and Windows Live SkyDrive
SkyDrive has been bumped to 25GB, which is an incredible amount of free Internet space, considering that we used to be running our websites off of paid accounts offering you a whole 10MB! With this increase in size, I think I may just have to start backing up all my RAW files on there.

What’s even cooler is that Microsoft and Windows Live gives you the control of your content. When you upload photos using the photo upload tool, you’re just uploading them to your SkyDrive account. You can upload full-resolution pictures and then just use the Photo module to view your pictures. Think of it as a nice UI skin stretched over your online storage. Much nicer than Facebook’s totalitarian strategy.

As for Windows Live, there’s much, much more. For more information you can skim through the Windows Live Wire post, or The Space Craft post, or the multitude of other links in Alex’s post.

What I’d like to discuss now is what many of you may be thinking. No, what many of you are thinking. Why is Microsoft just copying Facebook? Well they aren’t. Believe it or not, Windows Live is now going on its third major release and they’ve been going strong since 2005, only a year after Facebook was first founded (and when they weren’t necessarily super popular yet). They’re no strangers to social networking. And really, how many ways can you accomplish the basics? A page that shows you all your details with maybe a display picture. And what about a wall guestbook where people can leave you messages? And that What’s New feed? It’s been around since at least the second version (which is what’s online right now). And think really far back, people were bitching and moaning about how stalkerish the Facebook newsfeed was. Now it seems you can’t live without it.

I’ve talked at length about the difference between Facebook and Flickr before, so I’m not just advocating on Microsoft’s behalf because I work for them. But let’s take a look at this argument again, but this time throwing in Windows Live.

Facebook has this totalitarian view of the web, similar to Apple - it’s my way or the highway. I still don’t understand why people go back to put their photos on Facebook when it resizes them, shifts the colours, and locks them in there forever. You never really share photos because they’re only 604px across, so they’re too small to print or even view at full screen. You never want to keep a copy too because it’s too difficult to download each and everyone of those photos!

Flickr takes a slightly better approach. They’ll let you upload as many full-resolution pictures as you want (for $24.95 a year) and you can let other people download those too, but again, it’s difficult because you have to go through each and every photo to download.

Windows Live gives you the flexibility and storage options all for free! You can share full-resolution pictures from your latest 14MP camera if you want and download them easily because the backend is exposed to you and it’s just an online file store. Even at 7MB a picture, you can fit over 3,600 photos on there! More information pending my reviewing of what I can disclose. Windows Live gives you the control of what you want to do with your pictures. When you upload them to SkyDrive, you still have complete access to it, with all its permissions and everything. Can Facebook or Flickr really boast those?

I will continue to use Flickr because of the community aspect, but Facebook? I’ve already loathed Facebook for that, and expect links from social events to start showing up on Windows Live Photo.

Um… it’s late, so don’t be surprised if what I rambled on gets edited tomorrow morning… Note to self: start blogging earlier.

I want to say that I’m happy with my Dell XPS m1330 and for about 8 months I was (minus the fact that I overspent last December and the whole 45nm Penryn upgrades…), but now it is giving me more problems than I am willing to deal with. If it weren’t for the 3 years remaining on the warranty (though it might be 2 since the Dell customer service repeatedly fails to know that everyone is eligible for an extra year from the NVIDIA debacle), I would probably be fed up enough with it to sell it off and get a Lenovo or other brand. But I spent $1,700 and even though there’s 3 years of on-site warranty, the parts are junk now so the resell value isn’t very high. It does its job, but boy, dealing with customer service is hell.

After my graphics card meltdown, literally, a few weeks ago and after running in circles staying on the phone for hours at a time, I finally got my motherboard replaced. The technician replacing my motherboard accidentally snapped off my infrared receiver though. He apologized profusely, put in an order for a new motherboard, and that was the last I heard from Dell. I could’ve followed up with them, but it was such a hassle in the first place for Dell Canada to ship a part to Dell USA to do on-site service that I decided to wait till I returned to Canada to get a new motherboard. But recently, probably within the last week or so, my computer has started to get ridiculously hot.

At first I didn’t notice it. The m1330 has always been hotter than most computers. It’s never quite as cold as the Lenovo ones, but it was bearable. This time, however, the RAM module bay was getting to the point where it would be too hot to touch. Surprisingly the hard drive bay was cool, the CPU intake wasn’t blocked, and the exhaust wasn’t scalding. I didn’t know what was wrong and I still don’t.

So I started installing a multitude of monitoring tools. I started off with Speedfan and RivaTuner since I had used those when I tried to benchmark and overclock my desktop, but Speedfan couldn’t control my system fans and RivaTuner wasn’t what I needed. I wasn’t looking to overclock my already hot and prone-to-fail GPU. I settled on the CPUID Hardware Monitor, makers of CPU-Z, which I guess Americans would call “see-pee-you-zee”. Weird.

Instantly I thought the temperatures were odd. When the computer was idling (like what it is now when I’m blogging), the CPU hovers between 50ºC and 55ºC; the GPU is at 70ºC; and the fan essentially runs at full blast. I thought that was hot, but after doing a bit of searching, it seems to be the norm. The CPU could get as hot as 60ºC on idle at times, which I found to be strange but oh well.

But just today, when I was watching the latest episode of The Sarah Connor Chronicles on hulu.com, my CPU jumped to 88ºC and the GPU maxed out at 98ºC. The CPU was only running between 20-30%, but the system was struggling.

I suspect it has to do with the heatsink not being properly seated on my CPU. When the technician was putting everything back together again, I specifically pointed out that the thermal paste looked a little old and dry and didn’t look like it was going to be flush with the new CPU and motherboard. He told me it didn’t matter, and what did I know? I had only built a desktop once and my one experience trying to mount the heatsink to my CPU made me feel like a retard. So I trusted his judgment. This is the same guy that snapped my infrared sensor off and stuffed the DVD cloth lining into the USB hole, so my computer no longer feels like a new one, but more like a small Frankenstein.

So I’m tempted to give Dell a call and get them to send another on-site technician to replace my motherboard and reseat my heatsink properly… using the excuse of my missing infrared sensor. I just don’t want to deal with them again telling me I have to go through Dell Canada and that I can’t go through Dell USA. I just hope that the work order was in their system and they forgot about me, instead of nothing being in their system and them telling me to get lost.

Why can’t my computer just work? When I threatened the CSR telling them I would stop recommending Dells to family and friends (because we all know how much weight our tech-savvy opinions carry with the less tech-savvy), I was only saying that so I would get some service. Now I seriously am thinking of telling people to steer away from Dell’s outsourced customer service and shoddy laptop construction. And I thought buying an XPS system would mean quality and service.

It was just a matter of time until the spam bots discovered my poorly coded (I know, there’s still no message sent confirmation… I’m lazy) comment form on my front page. Well, they’ve found it and started sending me quite a bit of traffic.

So far it’s nothing too annoying because Gmail nicely clumps it all up into a single conversation, so technically I can just mute it, but I will eventually have to change it so I won’t be spammed. I don’t want to enforce a captcha because they are too annoying, but what other choices do I have?

What’s intriguing about the spam is that there are some that are complete garbage, some that don’t link to anything purchasable, while others that seem somewhat relevant to what I’ve been posting around the Internet, especially on Twitter.

The complete garbage:

<a href=> порно фото </a>
<a href=> супер порно </a>
<a href=> ftp порно </a>
<a href=> порно фото </a>
<a href=> Апититная мега сука </a>
<a href=> секс девушки </a>
<a href=> секс </a>
<a href=> домашнее порно </a>
<a href=> порно видео </a>
<a href=> online порно видео </a>
<a href=> скачать порно видео </a>
<a href=> ftp список порно </a>
<a href=> ftp порно архив </a>
<a href=> беслпатные порно мультики </a>
<a href=> видео порно бесплатно </a>
<a href=> порно сиськи </a>

The links that don’t go to anything purchasable (the Washington Times is an actual newspaper):

<a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/users/redmaster">ïîðíî âèäåî ãàëåðåè</a>

And the semi-applicable:

Name:
home culinary institute of america

That last one was only in the From: field, and the associated links are garbage, but the link text has stuff like, “california college of culinary arts”, “baking classes in ny city”, and “culinary schools in central florida”. Odd, because I tweeted this not more than a couple days ago: “Looking up entry and tuition costs for culinary schools… again. Four years on-campus would cost me $100,000 USD.”

Supposedly spam has a click-through rate of 1 for every 12,500,000 spam, but when they don’t even make sense, I have a feeling it’s more similar to a foreign entity just trying to clog the tubes.

Boston.com’s The Big Picture yet again does not disappoint. Today’s series is Scenes from Antarctica. Definitely one of the places that I have to visit before I die. Problem is it’s a 2-3 week journey that will cost over $10,000 USD.

Last Wednesday Microsoft held another intern event. This time it was go karting, something that Miron had originally proposed and I had been subsequently championing for a month or so. The location was K1 Speed in Redmond. Unfortunately the Redmond location is the smallest of all the K1 Speed tracks, but you did and did not feel that when you were on the tracks.

When you’re on the track and you have the medal at full throttle, the little buggers can fly. They have a slight delay when you’re accelerating from a slow speed, but other than that they’re responsive. The track is relatively short and you can do a single lap through in about 21 seconds, but each race we did was about 10 or 12 laps, so you’re driving around for a fair amount of time.

Since there were so many interns, we didn’t get the chance to do any actual racing. Instead, we were all doing time trials which is really, really boring. Time trials are the one mode I try to avoid at all costs when I play videogames, and videogames are even more interesting than real life! And especially after hearing that the Amazons got to do the relay go kart race, it was even more disappointing. Hey, but free go karting, plus free intern 8GB Zune minis; can’t complain.

My first heat was ridiculously slow. I don’t know whether it was my ineptitude at taking corners, the fact that I wasn’t pushing down fully on the gas or rested my foot too heavily on the brake, or whether it was just my kart, but I ended up getting seventh position of eight riders. Ridiculously poor at a best lap time of 23.80 seconds, when everyone else was pushing 20 seconds or under.

The second heat I was determined to not get shamed. I was the rider in first position, so that helped immensely. After the warm up lap, I pushed the gas all the way down and didn’t look back. I ended up staying in first place the entire race and ended up with a best lap time of 20.76 seconds. I was happy thinking I would be in the top eight riders for the championship round. Unfortunately, the eighth spot was 20.66 seconds. Blast.

In the end, Savio placed second and Bellon placed near the end. I didn’t really recognize anyone else in the line-up. There really isn’t a lot of socializing and mingling at these “social” events due to the large contingent of Waterloo interns, as well as the surprising lack of alcohol (after this particular event, or throughout other events in general). Alcohol makes for loose lips.

The night concluded with a loud and hotly debated conversation ranging a multitude of topics over dinner at Inchin’s Bamboo Garden, a Chinese restaurant with decent food, but at exorbitant prices and measly portions. A standard noodle dish was almost $13 or $14. And their $12 lamb dish was essentially a small bowl size. Unacceptable for someone coming from a city full of Congee Wongs. Oh I could go for some Congee Wong right about now.

The next night, Savio and I tried out this place called Truly Mediterranean after both pulling in late shifts. When I think of Mediterranean food, I think Greek, so it was eye-opening and enlightening to be eating lots of Middle Eastern food. The dish I had was called lamb and spinach sabanekh, which apparently is Lebanese and lacking a picture on the Internet… Their dolma (grape leaves) and hummus were also very tasty, though a little liberal with the lemon juice. Their prices are very reasonable and with a Prime discount of the second entree free, I wouldn’t mind going back there.

Yesterday (today still), I headed to the Experience Music Project (EMP), otherwise known as the giant metallic tumour at the base of the Space Needle. It was designed by Frank Gehry, so it looks like a piece of paper all crumpled up.

The interior of EMP is just as colourful and architecturally impressive as the outside. Currently there is a Hendrix exhibition, here till 2010, or so it seems. There’s also a hallway outlining all the musical influences coming out of the Pacific northwest, including Nirvana, the Kingsmen, Presidents of the United States, etc. There was a guitar gallery of old and new designs and a Sound Lab where they had stations for guitars, basses, drums, and vocals and they taught you the basics of how to play a certain part of famous rock songs. Very interactive and very, very engaging.

In the lobby there was this massive sculpture, entitled, “Roots and Branches”. It’s a massive tree of all types of guitars, with guitars at the top having electronically driven fingers actually playing the guitars. You walk into EMP and you’re greeted by this sight and you just had to take a step back and marvel at the ingenuity and the construction of all the guitars and the sculpture itself.

Unbeknownst to me, my entry into EMP also allowed me entry into the Science Fiction Museum (SFM), or basically Paul Allen’s personal stash. I think the trip to SFM itself was worth it. Walking through all those exhibits, I could point out probably a good 75% or more of the material. It reminded me of a tangible version of all those sci-fi wrap-ups that I used to watch on TLC.

Seeing the actual costumes and props of a Terminator hunter killer, or a Space: Above and Beyond Chig and its arm rifle, or Locutus of Borgs‘ actual facial make-up, or an old-school Cylon, or the Robot from Lost in Space, or much more brought me back to my childhood. Not many people know of the Six Million Dollar Man, and I didn’t see the show, but I at least recognize it. Heck, how many people actually get the reference in that one Simpsons episode where Homer’s trapped on the island where they play real-life chess and he gets chased down by a giant white ball? The Prisoner, anyone? And all the Star Trek memorabilia! If you didn’t notice, I geeked out pretty hard.

The combination of the two places is great bang for the buck, and it’s one of the few museums I would actually consider full price to be worth it, but I’m happy to pay my Prime discount. Glad I can check that off my list. The building itself is worth photographing for a day, and in the short time span we spent loitering outside, I took quite a few more shots. Enjoy.

When the Canon 5D Mark II (5DII) was originally announced, I was finally set to upgrade my aging Canon 300D / Digital Rebel (the original rebel). My current camera had gone through an incredible amount of punishment and kudos to Canon on building a solid consumer-level camera that can last me over 4.5 years, probably over 30,000 shutter actuations (though unfortunately there is no way for me to really tell), three continents, and a dozen countries. I was looking forward to moving onto a whole new realm with full-frame and a semi-professional level of build quality.

That was then and this is now. The 5DII is now scheduled to begin shipping to buyers at the end of the month, but in extremely limited supplies. I had originally made a pre-order with Calumet Photography, a store here in the States, but ended up canceling it. With the then surging and now stagnant Canadian dollar below par, I was going to take my hard-earned US dollars and contribute to the Canadian economy, since the camera prices were essentially at par. Well Canon’s raised the Canadian prices to just over $3,000 CAD for the body, which still benefits me if I buy it there, but to a lesser extent.

Now with the most recent post from Canon Rumors, it will take at least till Spring 2009 to fulfill all the pre-orders. There goes my chance at snagging one of these bad boys for the Reading Week trip. So what to do in the meantime between now and then? Probably at least 6 months; maybe even more.

I seriously debated getting a D700, which is more inline with what I was looking for in a full-frame camera. I don’t need the 21.1MP that the 5DII has, though it could be useful for cropping if I were to shoot a wedding or two next summer (people supposedly liked my photos from my sister’s wedding enough to at least mention the idea in passing to her); I like the complete weather-sealing of the D700; the D700 has a flash commander built-in if I ever were to purchase flash units; but the D700 doesn’t have a movie mode, which isn’t a killer because I’ve never been really interested in video.

The major selling point of the D700 is that with rebates it’s retailing for about $200 USD less than the 5DII’s pre-order price. But I purchased the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lens, so I’m locked in. I could resell it and get the Nikon equivalent, but that’s even more expensive.

So I now see three options from a Canon perspective.

The first is to just keep using my beat up, old camera till it dies or the 5DII is available, whichever comes first. It’s still missing the eye cup (I lost it while walking around Bank station in London), which isn’t a big deal though. What is a big deal is that the shutter button is starting to go. Last week when we went to Olympic National Park, half-pressing my shutter button would not auto-focus! I had to press all the way down for the camera to register, so instead of pre-focus, recompose, then shoot, it was pre-focus and shoot all in one, switch to manual focus, recompose, and shoot. It was frustrating to say the least. Now the camera still works and the auto-focus is flaky at best, but this is the cheapest solution.

The next cheapest solution would be to get a Canon 450D / XSi as a tide-me-over. With Live Cashback, I saw an XSi that would cost me $441 USD. Not too bad, but I’ll see if it can go even lower for Black Friday. If it drops to around $350 (which is pushing it, I know), then I might just get it. It would be a little more expensive than getting a tune-up on my 300D.

The last option is to go up one level and get a 40D or 50D. The 50D does sound intriguing, but I would really have to read up on it more and see what the benefits of it over the 40D are. I quickly read over the DPReview.com review of the 50D and they didn’t have glowing remarks over it. The high ISO wasn’t so hot, and that’s what I wanted in a new camera, hence the 5DII. Then again, anything on the market, even the 4/3rds cameras would be better than my current sensor.

It’s really unfortunate that Canon couldn’t ramp up its production of the 5DII’s sensor to a point where they didn’t have to do a market release like the Nikon D70 was all those years ago. I remember people trying to scrounge to find one and if there was one, it would be sold out in a heartbeat. Let’s hope I get the 5DII before I leave for my grad trip (location TBD) at least.