The one where I try to sound smart, but really just make a fool of myself in the process. But if I learn something new, it's all good.

I'm just a glutton for punishment, so it's not too unusual that I would attend a developers' evening conference event put on by Microsoft about development for mobile devices, regardless of (or perhaps in spite of) the fact that I am most definitely not a developer.

That said, don't use anything I write here for anything real. Don't quote me or anything. Please. This information is all wrong, I can pretty much guarantee it. This is just an attempt on my part to see how much I can learn in three hours, in an area where I easily get lost.

But I mean hey, I keep seeing these techie developer-like guys writing two lines of code at most in these sessions and how they just magically make things work, shazam!, so I figure even a guy like me should eventually be able to figure this stuff out, at least sort of. Enough to create something useless but functional, at any rate.

Because secretly I sometimes wish I was a developer. I long to make things. New things. Different things.

I just want to create.

So here I am, seeing if I can learn any of this stuff. And I am finding - as usual - that its kinda cool.

Windows Mobile development random thoughts (or maybe this is just a cheap excuse to use bulleted lists):

• Design applications assuming your app will need to rotate portrait>landscape>back again.
• Screen dimensions - be flexible here and include hi-res resources for VGA quality screens in the future (use higher res to improve quality, not so much for more real estate).
• Emulators are cool - deploy, test on a software phone or Pocket PC.
• VS.net will compile and deploy x86 executables to emulators, and ARM compliant code to the real devices. In the future the emulators will emulate ARM chip-sets.

Ok, so this dude just wrote 2 lines of code and made an app that collects a ticker symbol from the user, calls a web service and returns the current price. Two lines of code. Cool. The term code-behind probably relates to this. But I'm not a developer, so I am guessing here.

Look Mom - TWO LINES! Neat.

Idea: Have special evening sessions just for non-developers, where you teach them to develop cool simple stuff. People like me, whose brains are a little older and slower, but who desperately want to be a cool nerd (like that makes sense) and create things. Seriously. I'd go to every one of those events. No real nerds allowed, unless they are teaching (sorry to all my developer friends - I need someone to work at my pace heheh). Target guys like me, who really want to learn, the ones who spend the money. Focus on making something simple, cool and complete. Let me create something, let me feel like I understanding these guys that work for me and around me. Help me grok your world. Let me create something that works, something that when we're done is all mine and does something - hey, anything - useful.

Okay - back to the session...

Ahhhh here we go - demos. I like it when I can see something created and then working.

Tipper is a little program someone wrote that helps you figure out how much of a tip to leave. Cool, especially for foreigners who may not be accustomed to the tipping stuff.

• Windows forms and controls - I think I know what this all means... Looks like there are some controls not available in the mobile framework, which makes sense, since it's a more limited memory space and less-powerful hardware.
• Networking - looks like you don't have to understand HTTP in order to use it. Something about streaming and stuff that escapes me. Okay, it's actually way over my head, but "escapes" sounds cool.
• Data - XML or SQL Server CE for storage, depending on type, amount and size of data (SQL for bigger/more I guess). Web services for data exchange. SQL Mobile 2005 will be a cool enhancement with all kinds of new stuff like data grids and binding and stuff. Make SQL CE development easier. Not require you to use a SQL CE device to develop a database. Nice.
• XML Parsing - XmlTextReader and XmlTextWriter parse a doc, but with no in-memory caching. XmlDocument lets you parse a complete document at once and traverse it in memory.
• ADO.NET - Uhhh, yeah. Way over my head. Heh.
• Web Services - This I get. Sort of. more so than ADO.net anyhow heh... XML web services, both basic and digest authentication. SSL encryption support here, too. SOAP stuff. Clean is good, right?

More demos... A news reader that goes out and reads RSS feeds - now that's a cool one. Thom Robbins wrote this and some of the other demos. The news reader and others can even be downloaded from his blog, here.

Hmmmm Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition. Cool - that should be interesting...

There was an interesting presentation about the future of the compact framework and Windows Mobile, and there will be positive changes in VS.NET 2005 for the new version, too. Life becomes friendlier and easier for the mobile developer.

Microsoft Location Server - lets your application find itself or other apps. Real time location information integrated with MapPoint technology. Very, very cool. Hosted by your company, not Microsoft, which is even cooler.

Ok, I am prety close to brain dead now, and I need to save a few brain cells for my trip to buy Halo at 12:01am. Cool stuff here. I have no idea what I am talking about, really, but I do feel smarter, so that's good.

Thanks to Bliz for the heads-up and invite.

Fredrik at corporateblogging.info has created a Corporate Blogging Primer, in which he has organized much of his sites content into a single PDF document that can be easily read and used for, well, whatvever you need it for. I think it's kind of funny to consense a blogging primer into a PDF file, but I can see the purpose in the corporate world - it's just not quite a dogfood thing to do is all.

His definition of a corporate blog?

It's pretty well done. The contents include:

It was so cool to see the Northern Lights for the first time. Like fast waves of light rolling and tumbling  from the horizon, up over your head. The light went well past straight overhead from where it started in the north. There were some light clouds near the horizon, but the greenish glow reached far above them. I took these 20-second exposures with my Nikon D70, propped carefully on the hood of my car and rested on my arm, since I didn't have a tripod with me. The location is near my house in Deer Island, Oregon.

I'm seeing something right now that I have never seen before in my life. Coronal Mass Ejections are lighting up the night sky with these incredible rolling waves of Northern Lights. It's amazing. One more reason for my list of why its good to live out in the sticks. Trying to get pictures, too. Wow, so cool...

From spaceweather.com:

More auroras are possible on Nov. 8th and 9th when a pair of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are due to hit Earth's magnetic field. The CMEs were hurled in our direction by weekend explosions near sunspot 696: an M7-class solar flare on Nov. 6th (0030 UT) and an X1-flare on Nov. 7th (1605 UT).

This is so great - I have always wanted to see these!

And this from NOAA:

This plot shows the current extent and position of the auroral oval in the northern hemisphere, extrapolated from measurements taken during the most recent polar pass of the NOAA POES satellite.

Thanks to Doc Searls for the links, and unabashedly to Art Bell on the radio who made me stop and look while I was driving home with a very brief mention on the radio.

I got a couple pictures - going to see how they turned out.

This post is for the brain-dead and hermits among us.

Just in case you missed it, Halo 2 is coming out this week on Tuesday Noveber 9th. Thousands of stores are opening at midnight+1 to sell the game, so find the stores closest to you, choose one, and go get in line.

Meanwhile, here are a few new and nifty items to tide you over until Tuesday at 12:01 am:

• Halo 2 skin for Windows Media Player
• First cut from the Halo 2 soundtrack (“Blow me Away” by Breaking Benjamin)
• The Xbox.com Halo 2 web site&amp;nbsp;(lots of cool stuff)<BR>
• Bungie's Halo 2&amp;nbsp;web site
• Xbox TV - trailers, interviews, other videos (very good documentary, too)

So - is anyone actually taking vacation from work to beat the game? Heh.

Here is what Microsoft says you'll need - go to the xbox.com readiness guide page for more details...

The Essentials

• A copy of the most anticipated game of 2004: Halo® 2. (Obviously!)
• An active subscription to Xbox Live™.
• An Xbox®-compatible router.
• A Friends List full of potential opponents and teammates.
• A linked Gamertag.
• A TV and sound system to take in the whole experience. (HDTV and Surround Sound optional, but recommended.)
• At least one day completely set aside for nothin’ but gaming bliss.
• Supplies (food, refreshments, toilet paper, etc.).

Who's planning on getting in line and buying their copy at midnight? I'm game if someone else is going along, but I won't be skipping work, I'm not that hard-core, heh.

I discovered Microsoft PhotoStory 3 last night via a link from Sean Alexander's blog. By the way - Sean has one of the best weblogs on my subscription list - If you are in any way interested in digital media, do yourself the favor of checking out his blog often, or subscribe to his feed here:

One free download later (5 megs), I was up and running with a very cool app that let me go through a whole slew of digital photos I took while on my vacation recently. I was able to edit, tweak and arrange the images and create packages of images, with narration and music and titles. It works, and in fact it pretty much rocks. I kicked out a few windows media video files with sound and everything to send people who have asked for such a thing. None of the ones I created last night are geared for this web site, but I will likely put together a few to post along with my vacation pics a little later on.

Clean up and edit your photos. Add transitions, motion, music, narration, and other effects, then publish it to a movie-like format that others can view. Put it on a web site, in an email, on a CD or DVD, or even on a mobile device that will play Win Media video.

If you're looking for an easy but classy way to package up photos to tell a story and/or to send to people in a way they can easily view, this is for you - recommended.