Via Your Daily Awesome, comes Time’s Photo Essay on what 15 different families around the world eat in a week.

Very interesting to see.

Cognitive Daily has a great piece about why Museums, Galleries, and Sites of Historical Significance (in particular those in Europe) need to change some of their practices.

It’s a good read, and expresses some of the things that, well, frustrated me about Europe.

Emphasis on the ‘allow photographs’ thing. Really. Please?

Reserved Seating at Greater Union Cinemas, Glendale

Reserved seating is, in my mind, meant for places where there’s either a need for people to sit in specific seats. Or where most, or all of the capacity of the place is being occupied. Think planes, coaches, or sports stadiums.

So, when I went to the local Greater Union Cinemas, I was surprised when I was asked where I wanted to sit when buying my ticket. Given I was already running 15 minutes late to the film (10 of that due to the slow process of actually waiting in line for the 6 people infront to get served), I just said “Wherever”, not knowing that they were actually serious about this seating business.

I got into the theatre, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible, and sat at one of the first seats I could find. They wern’t great seats (off to the side) - but hey, Donkey, Shrek, and Fiona were already on screen. I did note that the cinema was 3/4 empty - and that there were plenty of seats infront, behind ,and beside me.

About another 10-ish minutes afterwards, I saw someone walk past me (given I was sitting in the second-from-the-end seat), and then walk back out.
A few moments later, theres a manager beside me “Sir, you’re sitting in someone elses seat”. I was a bit stunned/confused, given the large number of empty seats around me - and replied something like “Uhh, there’s an empty row infront and behind me”. But the Manager persisted “Sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to move”. Given I was missing the movie, I couldn’t be bothered arguing over it and got up and moved the next row down.

Heck, if the mother and daughter who wanted to sit there had been disabled in any way, or I was sitting in specially assigned seats, or I was just in the way of them getting to the rest of the group they were with, I wouldn’t have had any issue moving. But, no, there wasn’t any reason I could see - it was just a pedantic manager and (presumably) mother.

Windows Vista’s Scheduled Tasks & Windows Update
I really like Windows Vista. There’s a whole bunch of small things that add up to make it a real pleasure to use.

There are two things, however that do drive me up the wall.

The recommended option in Windows Update is for it to download and install items for you automatically. It’s a good idea too, after all - having most users be in charge of which critical updates get installed isn’t usually the best way to keep a PC secured and up-to-date.

The thing that really annoys the crap out of me, is that it will automatically reboot your computer, regardless of what you had open or what it was doing. So, if you were, say, downloading a large file, or processing a report - your computer reboots, and unless the software is designed to resume from it’s last point - you’ll have lost all that effort. This is especially annoying if you’re trying to download/process some data in an after-hours/off-peak timeperiod. Because Windows doesn’t return you to the point at which it rebooted (technically infeasable without security issues) - the software can’t resume from it’s last point.

The only work around I’ve found is to disable Windows Update from installing updates automatically.

Scheduled Tasks
Another thing that’s kinda cool about Windows Vista (and possibly XP too, however I never experienced it) - is that Schedule Tasks can wake the computer from a sleep, hibernate or even shutdown mode - as long as the computer still has power.

The most visible example of this is Windows Media Centre. It will wake the computer automatically to record TV Shows, which is good - however it also wakes the computer to update the TV guide. At 3am. Some people happen to have cases which in certain circumstances can vibrate, seting up a resonance in the desk which amplifies the sound of the vibrating case. So, everyone in the house, at 3am, knows the computer is downloading TV guides. Resulting in the power cord getting yanked out.

A more, err, sociable setting would be to wake it during the day, if the guide hadn’t been updated in the last 4 days or so.

Update: 17/July/2007: Just got another one, despite not having an account anymore.

Some time ago (before YouTube was acquired by Google) - I created a YouTube account so that I could access some video clips that weren’t available to the general public. 

About a month ago I started receiving weekly “newsletters” from YouTube, I didn’t update my account, and I didn’t request this. The first time I received it, I went through the steps to unsubscribe.  It didn’t help.

Have a look at the screen shot of my email account settings.

See? No options are set to ‘Email me this crap every week’. Yet I still get this spam from them.

I even went through their help/FAQ site - however it provides no assistance for unsubscribing.

So, now I’ve closed my account - here’s hoping THAT will stop them from spamming me.  I’m not holding out a whole lot of hope though.

Digital Photography School has this great list of tips for amateur wedding photographers - but I think the same list of tips goes for where there’s any other serious event. (eg: Engagements!)

FWIW: I really lucked out that day - almost all of the people were happy to pose for a few seconds to have their photo taken, so even though I was having issues with the flash (too bright/too dark), it worked out well.

So, I spent a little while today going through the huge number of sessions on at Tech.Ed at the Gold Coast this year (160 or so) and picking out a rough guide for what I’m thinking of going to.

If anyone else is going and wants to meet up for a chat - drop me a line

Tuesday, August 7, 2007
09:10AM - 10:20AM
     DJ903 - Newcastle to Brisbane.

11:30AM (est) - Check In @ Crowne Plaza

6:30PM
    Welcome Party     

Wednesday, August 8, 2007
8:15AM
    Opening Keynote     

(9:00AM to 9:30AM is the tentative timeslot for Nick’s LOLCODE ‘ChalkTalk’. The Keynote runs until 9:45AM though.)

9:45AM
    CON204 - Introduction to Microsoft Windows CardSpace; OR     
    DEV231 A Lap around Microsoft Visual Studio 2008     

11:00AM Morning Tea     

11:30AM
    CON205 Programming Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation: A Developer’s Primer; OR
    DAT302 - Database Schema Versioning: How to Use Microsoft Visual Studio Team System for Database Professionals and Team Foundation Server to Version and Deploy Your Databases

12:45PM
    Lunch          

1:45PM
    ARC303 Principles and Patterns of Security; OR
    DEV301 “IronPython” and Dynamic Languages on .NET; OR
    WEB305 IIS7 for Developers     

3:00PM Afternoon Tea

3:30PM
    DEV305 Building Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation Applications with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008; OR
    WEB314 - Web 2.0 Programming

5:00PM
    ARC305 Architecting for Web Scale; OR
    DAT306 - Things You Need to Know for a Painless Upgrade to Microsoft SQL Server 2005     

6:15PM
    Ask the Experts     

Thursday, August 9, 2007
8:15AM
    DAT307 - Database Maintenance in Microsoft SQL Server 2005; OR     
    DEV308 A Lap around Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation     

9:45AM
    DAT308 Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Security Best Practices; OR
    DEV317 - Microsoft Visual Basic: Tips and Tricks for the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 IDE

11:00 AM Morning Tea

11:30AM
    DEV311 NET Framework 3.0 End-to-End: Putting the Pieces Together     

12:45PM
    Lunch     

1:45PM
    DEV312 Building a Complete Web Application Using ASP.NET Microsoft Visual Studio Codename 2008 (Part 1 of 2)     

3:00PMAfternoon Tea

3:30PM
    ARC311 - Windows Client .NET: Introducing the “Acropolis” Client Application Framework; OR     
    DEV347 Unit Testing and Test Driven Development     

5:00PM
    ARC310 Learning to live with the Static-typing Fascist and the Dynamic-typing Fanboy in your Enterprise… ; OR
    SEC304 - The fortified data center in your future: build it and they will come.     

6:15PM
    Final Party     

Friday, August 10, 2007
8:15AM
    DEV319 LINQ and XML for the Microsoft Visual Basic Developer; OR
    CON312 - Rules Engine Use and Extensibility in Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation     

9:45AM
    DAT309 Implementing Scale-Out Solutions with Microsoft SQL Server 2005; OR:     
    DEV309 Best Practices for Team-Based Software Development     

11:00AM Morning Tea

11:30AM
    DEV315 Building a Complete Web Application Using ASP.NET “Orcas” and Microsoft Visual Studio Codename 2008 (Part 2 of 2); OR
    SEC313 - How Did They Find THAT?: Implementing the New Microsoft Fundamental Computer Investigation Guide for Windows     

12:45PM
    Lunch     

1:45PM
    SEC303 Securing Your Friends and Family; OR
    WEB301 - MS DLR for OSS developers     

3:10PM
    Closing Locknote     

Saturday, August 11, 2007

11:00AM
     Check out of Hotel

4:30PM-5:45PM
     DJ903 Brisbane to Newcastle

If you’re like me, and have registered for Tech.Ed 2007 at the Gold Coast, you will probably have recieved two emails in the past few days with your details to login to CommNet.

I’m not sure about anyone else - but the emails I got didn’t actually include the URL for CommNet. A quick Google search leads me to the TechEd Orlando CommNet site. All well and good, except it doesn’t accept my details.

The correct site for Aussies (and I assume Kiwi’s too) is actually https://aunz.msteched.com. Hopefully me posting this will let some other confused souls figure out how to access all the session planning tools.

Edit, Monday afternoon Just got an email with the appropriate CommNet URL in it.

I’m sitting in Melbourne Airport, but there’s free wireless which is good.

Anyway, I’ve put the photos from Nat & Paul’s engagement up. Click here to view them

Edit: Some of the photos arn’t uploaded correctly - I’m re-uploading them them now.

Edit 2: Should be fixed now.

I’m off towards the airport now (~10am) - Melbourne has been pretty good.

Nat & Paul’s Engagement party was good fun too, despite the “V/Line” staff not helping me actually get to my destination.

More later.