Not because it has to be (Excel can be a great tool when used correctly and in the right places). But go ahead, look me straight in the eye, tell me you've never run into some rendition of this:

http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/434.aspx

Rory is hillarious. I've been reading his comics (and site) off an on for a while. He hits this one right on the head.

First of all, people should know that I am *not* a programmer - not even close (in fact, the people that work with me are reading this and laughing at the fact that my name now appears in the same paragraph as the word “programmer”). But, being the IT-Geek-Person-That-People-Think-Knows-A-Lot (guess I got ya all fooled, I do ), I am often asked to try to explain things I know only a little about. When I explain I don't really know much about some subject, for some reason most of the people I associate with tend to look at me like I am simply avoiding the conversation. They must assume I just don't want to talk about work-related stuff outside of work (and they are right, but still - the real problem is that I often don't know jack beyond the simple basics of what they want me to explain).

For example, take XML. Sure, I have a basic rudimentary understanding of XML, how to write it, how to work with it, etc. It's not exactly rocket science, after all, and I have to know the entry-level basics in order to hold a “meaningful” conversation with many of my colleagues. Plus the new Office System 2003 applications I am spending a lot of time with make use of XML in ways past versions could not, which is cool. But, that just means I need to learn more about it.

SideNote: Back in - get this - 1996 or so, I was a sweat-equity partner in a company that was building an online service for small businesses to respond to requests for quotes put out by the federal government. That was my first exposure to XML, back in the day, when it was pretty much brand new. I remember one of my friends, John Turner, back then telling me this XML thing was the way of the future, and I should just wait and see if I didn't believe him. JT was always right.

I have two main resources I can leverage to learn about geeky things like XML. One resource is the people I work with, and Travis and Scott from work are awfully good about humoring me and teaching me the salient details of what I need to know in order to be able to understand what the heck they're talking about on a daily basis. And for this I am grateful.

The other place I find the information is by scouring the web, RSS feeds, and other resources for *good* links to useful information. In this case, it was on the MSDN web site, in the Office Developer Center: The article, which ends up discussing XML in the context of the Office tools, actually spends most of its time introducing the reader to XML data, schemas and trasforms in general.

For those of us who yearn for someone to explain things on our level, this is an XML gem, and Bill Coan (the author) gets my vote. Anyone can understand this stuff (even me), and Coan does a pretty darn good job of showing the reader how XML is structured. So, if you're one of those people who are always asking me about this-technology-or-that, and if you have always wondered what the heck this XML stuff is, take a few minutes to read up, and you'll know almost as much as I do.

My friend and colleague, Scott Hanselman, showed me long ago the value of making sure people can see what's on the screen when you are presenting. I spent this week giving talks about some new web-based apps we are rolling out, in a large room, and toward the end of the week I actually remembered something Scott had told me, and something he recently posted on his blog.

Fact of the matter is, between my marathon presentations every day this week and the rest of the things I have to worry about/deal with/etc., some of the people who had to sit through a few of the presentations were short-changed somewhat by the fact that the amount of information required to be on the screen at any point in time was large, the fonts were small, and therefore it was hard to see what I was referring to.

Toward the end of the week, I tried the tool Scott mentioned recently - UltraMagnifier. And it's pretty cool. Using this, I was able to highlight the things on the screen in the magnifier window that were otherwise difficult to read. I can set the magnification level and a myriad of other settings too numerous to mention, and it worked like a charm. It will take some getting used to on my part to really be able to use this tool effectively in my presentations, just because it's a change that requires me to re-wire my brain, but it's a good change so I will put the energy into it.

And - for anyone who gives presentations (even just now and then) - This is for you. Read it, learn, use it. Scott is the best damn technical presenter I know (and I am not ).

In an earlier post, I manually attached a linked OneNote audio recording to the OneNote HTML email, which was then sent to my mail server in order to auto-generate a blog entry. I had to manually attach the audio file, because (I assumed) OneNote would not do it. (I've been playing more and more with OneNote's sharing capabilities both on the SharePoint platform and by leveraging the emails it can create, for Blogging or otherwise...)

I was wrong in my assumption: While it's true that the out-of-the-box settings don't attach a linked audio file, you can turn that ability on in one of two places - either in OneNote's Options/E-mail section, or you can use Windows Group Policy to set it for an entire organization (along with literally hundreds of other common settings).

To do this via group policy, you just enable the policy, and then activate the setting. Once you do this, the policy is propagated to all clients on the domain to which that policy applies:

If you don't have group policy (or if you have it but just don't use it - in which case see below), you can go to the OneNote Options dialog, choose the E-mail section and just check the appropriate box.

SideNote (pun intended): Practically ALL of OneNote's options can be controlled though group policy, along with a huge number of settings for the rest of the Office 2003 System family of applications - not to mention Windows domain policies. If you are running Group Policy and Office 2003, you need to take advantage of this - it makes things consistent and fast, two things IT groups love and need. Remember - group policies are not just for operating system settings - they are also available for a number of other applications.

I added a link to Chris Pratley in my blogroll, because his is one blog I find myself re-reading recently. Chris is Group Program Manager for Office Authoring Services, and is one of the main forces (among several I am sure) behind OneNote. Microsoft employees have started public blogging like mad recently, and Chris is one of the new additions - thank goodness! It's great to see program managers and other non-programmers blogging now (not to discount the developers - that's great too!).

Side note: It was a discussion on Chris' blog and similar discussions elsewhere concerning OneNote and blogging that made me realize you can blog from OneNote, if you want to. So, I figured I would just try it and see - and it worked for the most part. And now it seems to be catching on a little bit - which is kinda cool. While it's far from a complete list due to Google lag, it will be interesting to see if the results of this search change much over time (assumes people will leave the OneNote footer in there of course). Already several bloggers have started using OneNote to post blog messages, and hopefully some of them will make the Google index eventually.

Now, for what it's worth, this is far from perfect, and may not even fit the semi-purists definition of “good.“ And I know DonXML and Phillip Rieck would call it a “kludge” (and would be absolutely correct in saying so), but still, it's a valid “coolio” option for some. My vote is to open up OneNote's publishing features to include true XML output capability, as well as a cleaner email format - and do it in a way that would enable the code purists as well as the multimedia people to do their respective things. Maybe even a plug-in sort of capability? And when I say publish, I mean publish text and images to the blog, put the .wma audio files on the Windows Media server with the matching .asx file on the web server, ship it to the Wiki, and on the SharePoint server, and on and on... I have a specific list of what I mean, feature-functionality-wise, and sometime soon I might just need to put that onto paper.

Er, I mean into Ink.

Audio recording started: 11:21 PM Monday, February 02, 2004

 

 

Download: Blogging One note and Audio.one
Download: Blogging One note and audio.WMA

Note: Seems to work - added the windows media file as a second email attachment, and dasBlog seems to handle posting that just fine - so now I know from actual experience that more than one attachment definitely works for the MailToWeblog functionality in dasBlog. :)

Oh - and I think I have just reached a new plane of geek existence - recording the same lame thing I type, and them posting it as an audio recording to the web - heheheh... /me is sooo lame.

Ummmm, there are times, despite my underlying conservative sensibilities, when I have to wonder if we shouldn't just pass a couple more new laws. Case in point:

HOLLAND, Michigan (AP) -- Tacking Jr. or II onto a boy's name is too common, a new father decided, so the self-described engineering geek took a software approach to naming his newborn son.

Jon Blake Cusack talked his wife, Jamie, into naming their son Jon Blake Cusack 2.0.

You've gotta be kidding me. I cringe to think how many jokes this kid will be the butt of. Middle school is going to be rough kid - you have been warned... But that's okay: While everyone else in your grade is trying to convincingly blame all their problems on their parents, you'll be able to do so with complete legitimacy. So hey - hang in there.

Well, as mentioned earlier, was having some problems getting blogged .one files to work, and guessed it might be a MIME type issue. Turns out that was the case, so it was a simple fix, and now any blog entry made with OneNote will include the attached original .one file on the blog entry, so people can load the original file in OneNote if they like. COOL!

It just took Allen, my friendly neighborhood web hosting provider (I recommend them highly and the price, my friends, is right), to patiently point me in the right direction as far as setting up the new MIME type (turns out I was able to do it myself, and for the record it's “.one” mapped to “OneNote” in IIS).

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/winfeb04.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms04-004.asp

Don't skip this one - get updated. Please. Now. Don't wait.

AAAAAAGH!! Something about Kid Rock in a cut-up American flag, preceded by the lamest set of artists they could possibly think up, that just further affirms my prior belief that CBS sucks. Only in Houston. Really. Think about it...

And wow, what perfect timing: Janet Jackson. Gee, wonder why? Justin Timberlake certainly seemed to enjoy being on stage with her, though.

Oh, and here I am, watching the Superbowl with our entire youth group at church. And there's Justin and Janet, gettin' it on. And hey, quite the ending there - wow.

Great. Just great. The game means nothing, but suddenly halftime is the most important thing on the face of the planet. These kids are all over it. We've got twelve year old boys hollering for others to get out of the way just in case there's more Janet Jackson on the screen. No such luck, kids. Maybe next year.

Download: Very Interesting - more one OneN.one

Blog entry directly from OneNote

Saturday, January 31, 2004

5:16 PM

So, I have seen a number of people wishing in various blog comments here and there that they could create blog entries directly from OneNote. So, I am trying that here, not knowing whether it will actually work or not. :)

In theory, it should: I am typing this in OneNote (will have to try handwriting next if this works), and I'll do just as I have in the past as far as posting directly from the TabletPC using inked content: I’ll use OneNote's Outlook 2003 integration to convert automatically to HTML and send a properly-formatted to the dasBlog software on my server.

Will be interesting to see what happens!

Download: Blog entry directly from OneNote.one

Mary Jo Foley of Microsoft Watch asks us the most important question of the week:

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and presidential-hopeful Howard Dean: Separated at birth? "Monkeyboy" Ballmer and "Ranter" Dean have more in common than meets the eye.

True. True.

Looks like Mikerowesoft has resolved its complaint against...

No, wait...

Looks like Microsoft has resolved its complaint against 17-year old Mike Rowe. Well, that's good. I mean, it was such a confusing name and all. Sheez. Gimmee break. Plz.

Overheard: “TriMet's a great system if you live next to it.”

Uh, yeah.