I’m not a gamer by any stretch of the imagination, even though I do like to play on my Xbox and I have an online gaming account. I even have a gamer tag – SpaceDaisy (please don’t laugh!). But I’m not a gamer. However, I love this little web series I recently discovered called The Guild.

It's about a group of gamers who are part of the same online guild. Online they band together to fulfill missions, killing enemies and collecting gold and loot. However, when circumstances create an opportunity to meet in real life, their socially awkward personalities make for some very hilarious scenarios. Except for the Bladezz character, the acting is really top notch and believable despite the characters being over the top.

Each webisode is just 5 minutes or so long. So far there are 2 seasons of 10 webisodes each of the Guild and I can’t wait for season 3! I’m totally hooked.

Have a baby or toddler who likes to play on your computer? Check out BabySmash – a fee download that runs on Windows which displays letters, numbers and shapes in bright colours while keeping your little one locked out of your other applications. I love it!

I’ve kept meaning to update my blog, but life got in my way. I’m now the proud mamma of twin boys and life as I know it has changed forever. So much has happened over the past while in my life. It’s been a long, tough, rewarding, devastating, joyous journey through infertility, pregnancy, birth and now raising the boys who are 5 months old, but I figure that’s the subject for different, mamma-focused blog. I’ll let you know if I ever start writing about my experiences and learnings.

Last March, I wrote about a cool technology that Microsoft Labs is developing, called Photosynth. Yesterday was the inauguration for US President Obama and featured on CNN’s web site is a Photosynth of the venue. It’s basically a large 3D collage of photos that people took at the site of the inauguration. It’s quite something and gives you the full effect of all the people that were there – much more than any single or even a flat collection of photos could. You can also go to the Photosynth site to see the other photosynths of the inauguration, including ones from along the parade route.

What’s so neat about this is not only the technology, but the way the technology allows people to share their experiences in a full rich way to others that weren’t there. I keep meaning to put together a photosynth myself but so far I haven’t been inspired about what to photograph. Plus I’ve been a little busy lately with the twins and all…

I've been scratching my head the past few days.

My main computer is a notebook running Windows Vista Enterprise SP1 with a 110 GB C: drive and an external 150 GB F: drive. The only thing that's installed on the C: drive is the OS and applications - all my data is on the F: drive. Despite this, my C: drive was becoming full and was giving me warnings that it had less than 2 GB of free space. Very puzzling.

I ran the Disk Cleanup utility but it didn't show anything very large to delete. I manually checked the temp directories, took a look at the page and hibernate files, and listed the disk usage information for all the directories. According to my calculations, I was only using 30 GB or so. Where was the rest of my disk space being used?

After a little searching, I found an article on the My Digital Life site on how to use the vssadmin.exe utility to see how much space is being allocated for the Volume Shadow Copy service. So I opened a command prompt (with admin privileges) and ran the following command:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

Sure enough, that's where my drive space had gone! Since the maximum limit on my machine was unbounded, Vista was swallowing up all my free space. The author details how to use the vssadmin.exe utility to limit the maximum storage space, but there is also another article on how to use the Explorer GUI to do the same thing.

My computer is now reporting 77 GB of free space and both of us are happy campers once again.

So how did you spend Earth Hour? I actually didn't shut down John's server as I had threatened, as we host several websites on it and he wasn't confident it would come up properly, but we did shut off all the lights and I powered down my laptop and monitor. I thought about unplugging the fridge which would have been okay as long as the door stayed closed for the hour, but didn't in the end. I feel there was much more that we could have done, however, it was still a fun activity and got us both thinking about energy conservation.

I lit a whole bunch of candles and set up the latest game that we play together (we're big into MayFair's Train Games) - the Settlers of Catan card game version. It's specifically for 2 players and although it has the same elements as the original Settlers of Catan, there is definitely a different strategy to playing.

I don't have any pictures of the city of Guelph during Earth Hour, but found plenty of pictures of the Toronto skyline. The one below is a panoramic taken by luxography and he notes:

"Although most of the city continues to be lit (the sky glow to the northeast stands out in particular), there are some noteworthy participants visible here: the CN Tower, the Rogers Centre, the Fairmont Royal York, Yonge-Dundas Square, and the ClearChannel billboards along the Gardiner Expressway (sorry, Rick Mercer!). The Bank of Montreal and TD Canada Trust also turned off their rooftop beacons."

Click on the photo to go to the original page, where you can view a larger version.

Now although this is all nice and warm and fuzzy, there have been some critics that say it's all for naught - that an event like Earth Hour, despite the efforts of millions of people, doesn't make a significant impact. My colleague, Rodney, forwarded an interesting paper written by David Solomon from the University of Chicago where he analyzes the impact of last year's Earth Hour in Sydney, Australia. That may be, however, I choose to believe that an event like Earth Hour brings the issues to the forefront and at least gets people thinking and talking. That in itself is a pretty significant impact.

So regardless, I'll leave you all with nice, warm, fuzzy thoughts.

Happy Earth Hour 2008!

I hope you were able to participate and that, if nothing else, Earth Hour got you thinking about conserving energy.

One day, 10 hours and change until Earth Hour. Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably hear about it. It's been all over the news and media lately - at 8pm tomorrow (local time) people all over the world will turn off their lights. It started in Australia in 2007 and the event has caught the imagination of millions. It's a small thing, but tremendously powerful when done by a large group. John doesn't know this yet, but all our computers are going down tomorrow night (I hope your fantasy baseball draft is over by then, Johnny, as all the data resides on our server!). I plan to light candles, which I love, and keep the lights off until I go to bed. I hope you'll join the movement.

It's a little thing, but the implications are huge.

Get more information and sign up at http://www.earthhour.org/.

This is what our back yard typically looks like in the winter:

This is what it looks like after this weekend's snowfall:

Where did our backyard go? Everything is covered - the bench, the planter, the A/C unit, chairs! Makes me want to put on my snow clothes and jump in it all before it melts away. Makes me very glad we live in a condo and someone else gets to do all that shovelling!

As my babies grow in my belly (yup, I'm 4 months preggo with twins for anyone reading this that doesn't know!), I find I'm thinking more about family things and how John and I will be as parents. I recently found this video on YouTube and it had me in tears, I was laughing so hard. So this is what it's going to be like, eh? Times 2!! Guess it's too late to back out. :)

I love this! I grew up in the country up in the Ottawa valley, had a wood stove and wore plaid shirts. My dad used to shoot groundhogs in our backyard with a gun until the neighbours 2 fields over called to let him know the bullets were ricocheting over their heads while they were trying to have a BBQ! And on Saturday mornings when I used to get up to watch cartoons, I also had to watch out for the mice that used to scamper around the basement. Yup, this reminds me of my roots! Thanks, mom, for forwarding it to me.

It was not quite a year ago when I signed up for a Facebook account and became addicted. Then, for a while, it got a bit boring. Everyone was sending me these silly little applications to install, like a garden to put flowers in and a wall to post pictures and videos to. Then came Scrabulous. After that came Bogglific. I play both regularly and enjoy them immensely.  I especially like Bogglific which I can play whenever I like against anyone else in the world who happens to be on-line, as well as challenging my Facebook friends.

Apparently, Hasbro doesn't like these online take-offs of their popular board games and is trying to shut them down. Scrabulous is putting up a fight but it looks like Bogglific is going under. This is the notice that was put up on the Bogglific home page in Facebook this evening:

Bogglific to Close Down :-(

Hasbro, Inc. has sent a DMCA notification notice to Facebook regarding Bogglific. They claim it violates their trademark, and violates copyright over the Boggle rules.

I'm no lawyer, and can't see how it violates copyright. But I have neither the time nor the money to fight this, and Facebook has given me a grace period of 48 hours to shut the application down voluntarily.

You might be interested to know Scrabulous is in the same boat, but they have the resources to fight their battle. Hopefully they will be successful.

Sorry, guys. It was great fun while it lasted. You're a fantastic bunch, and it's a pity that Hasbro doesn't realise that Bogglific helped its Boggle sales by introducing all your Facebook friends to the game, not hindered it. That is sadly how the litigious US works.

Note that the Bogglific forum will be deleted by Facebook, so you may wish to post further discussions to the Bogglific Addicts group (which is not run by me.)

Your developer and friend,
Roger Nesbitt

I am so sad! I don't know what I'm going to do with myself!! All this spare time I'll have on my hands now to do the laundry and clean the dishes. It's just not fair.

Of course, on the other hand, I did wonder how the developers that wrote these programs got away with it for so long. It was really only a matter of time before the big companies decided that it was time to protect their intellectual property (IP). *Sigh*. Guess I'll have to go find some other little applications to waste time on. This time I might check first to make sure the IP isn't owned by someone else before getting so emotionally attached!

I posted this video over on my work blog yesterday, but also thought it would be an appropriate post for here. After all, it's not only IT people that need or what to have access to email/notes/photos/etc. on the go. Although there are some minor annoyances, I totally love my new HTC 6800. I couldn't say that about my last mobile device, the Q from Motorola, which I found counter-intuitive and difficult to use. And although I did love my Blackberry, I would have to say that the HTC 6800 tops it.

Don Spencer and I did the review together at the Toronto Metro Convention Centre while we were attending SecTor. To hear the full review, just view the short 4 minute video that we put together. You can also read more about Don's thoughts on the device on his review post.

This post from the Back in Skinny Jeans blog caught my attention. I've often wondered how much of the beauty products we put on our bodies are actually putting things we didn't anticipate into our bodies at the same time. I think about this every time I slather on my daily allotment of moisturizer. And yet I don't stop because doing so would mean living with rough skin on my elbows.

Anyway, taking my cue from Stephanie, I too got out my makeup case, went up to the Cosmetic Safety web site and did a couple of searches. This is the score key:

This is what I found in my makeup bag:

4 Maybelline Purestay Powder Foundation SPF 15

5 L'Oreal Wear Infinite Eye Shadow Quad

5 Almay Intense i-Color Eyeshadow

6 Cover Girl Cheekers Blush

I also had a mascara and 2 lipsticks that weren't in the database.

Ok, so none of my makeup is in the high hazard area, but the blush is getting dumped (I don't use it very much anyway) and I'm going to start seeking out low hazard alternatives and replacing my eye-shadows. Although I don't want to get paranoid, it's hard not to as we start seeing the long term effects of the things we are using that are seemingly "safe".

I'm supposed to be an adult now and too old to do crazy things like stand outside in the cold until midnight to buy the latest video game. But I'm not and I did. And now I'm a rock star with my very own copy of Guitar Hero III with wireless guitar controller! This is a picture I took with my phone outside the Best Buy store somewhere around Redmond, Washington.

Before this we didn't even have an Xbox 360, just one of the old Xboxes. It was embarrassing. I just wanted to be one of the cool kids.

So since Canadian prices hadn't come down to reflect the strength of the Canadian dollar against it's American counterpart and we were in the US, it was an opportune moment to make our Xbox360 purchase and save about $50. However, once we got in the store and realized that GHIII was coming out that night (well, technically the next morning), I convinced John and his brother Dave to go back to the store with me for midnight.

Unfortunately, when I got back home to Guelph, our water heater broke and spewed water everywhere, so I haven't had much time to hone my wicked guitar skills. But I feel like a rock star just for having the game, even if I do have to act like a grown up sometimes and deal with things like flooded basements once in a while.

In case you haven't noticed, I've added my gamer tag to my blog and I'll be taking advantage of the free 2 months of online gaming that came with the new console, so any of you gamers out there - come and find me online. What I couldn't believe is that no one had taken such a cool name like SpaceDaisy! 

The city of Guelph is exploring a new logo and slogan, possibly to go with the new City Hall once they finish building it. If you're a Guelphite and want to have your say about the designs that they've narrowed it down to, you can go here and give them your comments.

I'm starting to get a bit of a complex. This is the second technology user group that I've been politely asked not to attend because I work for Microsoft. The first time it happened was a few months ago when I registered for an Oracle user group meeting in Toronto. I thought it would be a great place to meet IT people that I don't usually meet in my Microsoft-centric world and would give me some insight into how other people run user groups. I never hide the fact that I work for Microsoft. But I find that since joining the company, people I meet tend to see me as a Microsoft employee, rather than Ruth Morton, an IT professional that loves to meet people and talk about technology. It's a little weird. The email I got tonight was from the VMWare user group in Kitchener. The subject line actually said "you are being uninvited". Although I felt a little unloved, I send back what I hope was a friendly reply inviting the guy to attend the next Waterloo Wellington IT Pro (WWITPRO) user group meeting at the end of this month. WWITPRO is a group that I co-founded before joining Microsoft and everyone is welcome to our events. As long as you're into technology and you're not just there to cause trouble. And hey, if you want to sponsor the group, all the better!!

CORRECTION: It actually wasn't the Toronto Oracle group, but the Toronto Lotus Notes group that was the first group to ask me not to attend their event.

A while ago I wrote about Photosynth and some of the cool things that Microsoft is doing with photos. But the applications for this technology is quite far reaching, and I don't think I fully understood that until I saw this video from TED which showcases Photosynth and another project called Seadragon combined. Just imagine being able to share a photo, say of the CN Tower. You tag it with "CN Tower" and then your photo can be used as a jumping off point to connect with all the other shared photos tagged with "CN Tower" for a richer, fuller visual experience. I don't know if I'm explaining it very well, but if you take the 7 minutes or so to watch the video, you'll understand why I think this is so cool.

I've been back for almost a week now. This past week has been busy as I've done my best to catch up and prepare for our next tour which starts in September. Seems like a long way away still, but there's lots to do!

I took the weekend between the TechReady conference and my new hire training in Redmond to see some of the Seattle sites. Here are some of the pictures.

Pike Market

Space Needle

"Help I'm Falling..." - as seen from the Smith Tower observation deck

Seattle Underground Tour 

The Seattle Underground tour was very very interesting - if you like history (or even it you don't) - I would highly recommend it.

This photo showed up on Gimodo UK last week and there has been intense debate in the comments about whether the photo is faked or not faked and why the display is rebooting (Mac-ifites say XP crashed it, of course). Why would the iPhone display be running Windows XP and not OS X? Who's going to get fired for this? Yadda, yadda, yadda.

I don't know if the picture is faked. It might be. Or it might be that Windows XP was the best technical choice for the particular function of running this kiosk. There could have been a sane, thought out reason to use XP here. Just as there are sane, thought out reasons to use Macs and OS X sometimes. Yes, there it is. I said it. Sometimes there are good reasons to use Macs. Or Linux. Or Unix.

No, I'm not going to get fired from Microsoft for saying these things. I still think that Microsoft makes kick-ass software and that Windows rocks. But it bothers me when the choice of technology becomes a fanatical obsession and the debate becomes child-like.

Of course, fanaticism makes this a much better story than it would otherwise be.

Love this video! Shows a cool, futuristic look at the possibilities in computer science.