Categories
Uncategorized

Slice of Life from PDC, Part 3: The Simpsons Ride

Sign for Universal Studios' "The Simpsons Ride"

On Tuesday night, attendees of the PDC were treated to a night at the Universal Studios Hollywood amusement park, which was closed off to everyone but us. Everything was free: rides, food and drinks, and the park was dressed up for Hallowe’en, complete with horror movie characters including Freddy Krueger, skeletons and chainsaw-wielding zombies.

I’ll post more photos on the Accordion Guy blog later, but in the meantime, enjoy these photos featuring the new “Simpsons Ride”, which was very amusing. It’s one of those “ridefilms” or “simulator rides”, in which you’re placed in a ride car that seats 8 that gets jolted around in sync to an IMAX film. The basic plot:you’re trying out the new ride in “Krustyland” when suddenly, Sideshow Bob takes over the controls as an act of revenge, and hilarity ensues.

Entrance to "Krustyland"

One of the best things about the ride is that they try to keep you entertained in line with…you guess it, Simpsons cartoons. These new cartoons were made specifically for the ride, feature a number of Simpsons characters and best of all, feature writing that’s a lot funnier and sharper than the show has been lately.

Categories
Uncategorized

Interview with IronRuby’s John Lam at PDC2008

I’m meeting up with a lot of interesting new people and catching up with old friends and collegaues here at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2008 in the Los Angeles Convention Center. Among the people I ran into was John Lam of the IronRuby project. This was the prefect opportunity for me to conduct my first podcast interview as a Microsoft Developer Evangelist. I asked John to explain IronRuby to people who’d never heard of it and to give us a quick summary of the current state of the project.

My thanks to John Bristowe for suggesting that I conduct the interview and for doing the camera and post-production work!

Categories
Uncategorized

Web Versions of Office: About Effing Time!

This morning at the PDC keynote, one of the announcements made was about the online, web-based versions of the Office Apps we know and love: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. They look better than their Google Apps equivalents — so good that it’s quite hard to tell the web version from the desktop version. Take a look…

Word

Take a look at these two photos that I took at the keynote. Which one is the desktop Word and which one is the web Word?

word_for_office_14_web
Click the picture to see it on its Flickr page, where you can see it in larger sizes.

word_for_office_14_desktop
Click the picture to see it on its Flickr page, where you can see it in larger sizes.

The answer: The top one is the web version; the bottom one is the desktop version.

OneNote

Try the same thing again, this time as OneNote:

onenote_for_office_14_desktop
Click the picture to see it on its Flickr page, where you can see it in larger sizes.

onenote_for_office_14_web
Click the picture to see it on its Flickr page, where you can see it in larger sizes.

The answer: The top one is the desktop version; the bottom one is the web version.

Excel

One more time, with Excel:

excel_for_office_14_desktop
Click the picture to see it on its Flickr page, where you can see it in larger sizes.

excel_for_office_14_web
Click the picture to see it on its Flickr page, where you can see it in larger sizes.

The answer: The top one is the desktop version; the bottom one is the web version.

Live Collaboration

One more thing: in the demo, they were running the web, desktop and phone versions simultaneously on the same document, with each user’s edits updating the other two’s versions. There are some great collaborative possibilities here.

Categories
Uncategorized

Slice of Life from PDC, Part 2: Channel 9 Guy Meets Accordion Guy

Channel 9 Guy meets Accordion Guy
Click the photo to see it on its Flickr page.

Categories
Uncategorized

Slice of Life from PDC, Part 1: Choose Wisely (or: The Snack Tables)

One nice thing about PDC: there are plenty of free snacks, some of which are healthy, some of which, well, not so much…

"Choose wisely": a snack table at PDC, with both junk food and fruits

Choose wisely, my geeky friends.

Categories
Uncategorized

I Missed this Morning’s PDC Keynote…

…but I have a very good excuse. I was still in mid-flight from Toronto to L.A. because I attended Cory Doctorow’s wedding last night. It was a little bit magic show, a little bit Alice in Wonderland, a little bit steampunk and a lot of fun. Here’s a photo from last night:

Danny O'Brien, Cory Doctorow and Joey deVilla, in costume at Cory's Wedding

I’ll post more on the wedding sometime this week at my personal blog, The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

Categories
Uncategorized

Off to PDC!

Old comic panel: Now the fun begins!
Image courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

I’m on my way to PDC2008. I expect to land at LAX at 11:00 Pacific and should be there for the afternoon sessions and evening hijinks. See you there!