Sunday, July 22, 2007

Identify this guy

Who is this guy and what is he doing at Nurburgring?

I love these videos

(PS: Hez my Boss, be careful what you say about him in front of me)

Late Post - Bill Gates and Steve Jobs @ D5

A few weeks ago Bill Gates and Steve Jobs gave an interview together on D5. While Mossberg is an ass I'm happy that he did bring together the two industry giants on the same stage. I watched it the moment D5 published it on the website and he is the highlights from Youtube. Just search for 'Bill Gates D5' on Youtube for the rest of it.

Windows Live Writer

I'm arguably one of the laziest bloggers (as you can gather from the number of my posts). In order to facilitate a recent decision to correct that habit, I decided to take a look at Windows Live Writer as I've heard rave reviews about it. The last two posts on this blog was made from WLW and its awesome. Here are some points I notice about it.

  • Its simple and straight forward
  • It expectedly has a very much Microsoft Word feel to it
  • It can post to almost any blog / blogging service out there in the wide world. I personally tried my MSDN blog, Live Spaces and Blogspot and it came out of top every time.
  • I has a very active as well as reactive team working on it, ably supported by a community that has developed very useful plugins for it.

In short I'm expecting to post every other post on any of my blogs from this tool going forward. You can find plugins for the same at the Windows Live Gallery for WLW.

If I have any feature request it is to somehow sync with accessible blogs and be able to edit previous logs. Now that certainly requires a partnership between the blog service and the WLW team, and I'm thinking MSN Spaces team might be a good place to start. Of course if I'm in the dark again and there is a way out, do point me toward it. Another feature might be to download all the previous blogs and then be able to post the same on a different blog. Would be great for Syncing blogs when one is moving over to a new provider. Again if there is any tool that can help someone move from  Blogspot to spaces throw the link my way please :)

Windows Vista - Upgrade pathways

I'd be participating in a support Webcast on Windows Vista Upgrade pathways sometime on July 25th at 10:00 AM PST. I will not presenting it, but might come on voice during the Q & A. I'm happy about doing this as this should be a good opportunity to help customers understand the various Vista upgrade options and especially the common mistakes made. If you need something specific added, feel free to ping me and I'll try and address the same on this Webcast.

EDIT: Almost forgot. You can find the Webcast at this link.

Windows Vista Support WebCasts: Supported upgrade pathways to install Windows Vista

Open Source at Microsoft

So how many people really know that Microsoft does do some Open Source. I'd guess not many. So those of you who find this as new, please go to www.codeplex.com and start your way through.

Monday, July 2, 2007

Formula 1 diary - French Grand Prix

On a personal front the French Grand Prix being conducted for the last time in Magny-Cours was a disappointment for me as a McLaren fan. Alonso started from 10th after facing gearbox problems during qualifying. His gearbox got welded to the engine which had to be cut off and replaced with a new gearbox. A change of engine would have been an easier option but he would have had to start from the end of the grid in such a case.

The two Ferrari's had a perfect start with Massa taking off from 1st and Kimi grabbing the 2nd position in the first corner after starting 3rd from the grid beating Lewis who started 2nd. Alonso managed a flying start getting into 7th position after starting from 10th. Robert Kubica followed Lewis all through the race. The race was thrilling in two sections particularly. The first was Alonso's battle with Nick Heidfeld before his first pit stop, the Spainard clearly had the faster car but Nick's clever driving saw Alonso at his wit's end attempting all sorts of heroic stuff. He would go on to overtake Nick after his second pit stop but lost a lot of time meanwhile.

This was a race where strategy took over when all other tricks drivers had in their bags failed. Sample this, Massa leads most of the race till he stops for his final stop and get's out behind Kimi who is yet to pit for tyres and fuel. Kimi pits and get's ahead of Massa and goes on to win the race, what is that? Absolutely determined driving and good strategy. McLaren's strategy was found lacking in many areas. Getting Lewis to pit the third time for softer tyres and fuel added about 20 secs to his lap time. At one point a charging Lewis had closed the gap between him and Massa to about 8 secs with 20 laps to go.

Pos No Driver Team Laps Time/Retired Grid Pts

1 6 Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari 70 1:30:54.200 3 10
2 5 Felipe Massa Ferrari 70 +2.4 secs 1 8
3 2 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 70 +32.1 secs 2 6
4 10 Robert Kubica BMW 70 +41.7 secs 4 5
5 9 Nick Heidfeld BMW 70 +48.8 secs 7 4
6 3 Giancarlo Fisichella Renault 70 +52.2 secs 5 3
7 1 Fernando Alonso McLaren-Mercedes 70 +56.5 secs 10 2
8 7 Jenson Button Honda 70 +58.8 secs 12 1
9 16 Nico Rosberg Williams-Toyota 70 +68.5 secs 9
10 11 Ralf Schumacher Toyota 69 +1 Lap 11
11 8 Rubens Barrichello Honda 69 +1 Lap 13
12 15 Mark Webber Red Bull-Renault 69 +1 Lap 14
13 14 David Coulthard Red Bull-Renault 69 +1 Lap 16
14 17 Alexander Wurz Williams-Toyota 69 +1 Lap 18
15 4 Heikki Kovalainen Renault 69 +1 Lap 6
16 22 Takuma Sato Super Aguri-Honda 68 +2 Laps 22
17 20 Adrian Sutil Spyker-Ferrari 68 +2 Laps 21
Ret 19 Scott Speed STR-Ferrari 55 Technical 15
Ret 21 Christijan Albers Spyker-Ferrari 28 Accident 20
Ret 23 Anthony Davidson Super Aguri-Honda 1 Accident 19
Ret 12 Jarno Trulli Toyota 1 Accident 8
Ret 18 Vitantonio Liuzzi STR-Ferrari 0 Accident 17


Over to Silverstone next weekend, the circuit where Mika won the GP in 2001 with a 3 pit stop strategy while all/most other cars were on 2 stops.