Mumbling to myself

Windows Speech Recognition Macros Technical Preview

Wed, 07 May 2008 20:03:36 GMT

Yay! Here is an neat program that was developed internally at Microsoft - which I have (at times) come to rely upon - and now it is finally available to the public, so I can actually talk about it.

Windows Speech Recognition Macros (available here: https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=fad62198-220c-4717-b044-829ae4f7c125&displaylang=en) is a nice little tool that allows you to create a variety of "macros" for Vista's built in speech recognition. What this specifically means is that you can set it up to simulate a series of key strokes, or run a program, in response to a specific phrase.

I have used this at times for nice little time-savers like "Insert my hotmail address" and "Insert my street address" - which is much faster than trying to dictate those items manually.

But my bigger use has been combining it with my SmartNav (http://www.naturalpoint.com/smartnav/). SmartNav comes with a built-in "keyboard to click the mouse" function - and by augmenting this with voice macros for commands like "click mouse", "double click mouse", "right click mouse", etc... I have been able to use all aspects of a computer without needing to use my hands at all.

Cheers,
Ben

A bad word...

Wed, 07 May 2008 05:43:22 GMT

Lately I have been reading "Ramona" books to Isaac and Elizabeth at night. Personally, I do not particularly like these books - but the children seem to enjoy them. More interestingly - as the follow the life of Ramona, who reminds of Elizabeth a lot at times, from age 4 to age 10 - they do provide for some interesting conversations with my children.

Last night I read a section where a 5 year old Ramona was upset at her family and declared that she was going to say a "bad word" and then had her family burst out laughing when the word was "guts". After reading this - I started to say good night to the children, but had Isaac pipe up and say "I know a worse word than 'guts'!"

I immediately had a moments hesitation as I thought to myself: I never swear around the kids, so he shouldn't know any *really* bad words - I wonder what he has heard at school?

Eventually I responded "Really? And what word would that be?".

Much to my relief his response, after a moment of hesitation on his behalf, was "Poop!"

To which I was able to smile and say "Yes, that is not a nice word - I hope you do not say that at school."

Cheers,
Ben

Playing with Puzzles

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:30:51 GMT

Normally when I get home and ask Isaac what he has done that day - I am met by complete confusion from him. He knows that he went to kindergarten - but much beyond that he cannot tell me what he did or what he liked. As such I was very surprised when I got home last night, asked Isaac how his day had been, and he responded that he had played with puzzles at kindergarten - and that he had particularly liked doing the United States puzzle.

It appears that my son is finally starting to develop the ability to be able to talk about his day - hopefully this will make it much easier to find out what is going on inside his head!

Cheers,
Ben

Darned allergies...

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:14:32 GMT

I appear to have a new allergy - but I do not know what it is. Over the last couple of weekends I have been having incredible stomach aches and gastro problems. Each time we have been able to trace it down to a new food that I had tried - but in each case there was nothing that I know I am allergic to in any of the foods.

So - it is time for me to head off to the allergist to get tested again - and it looks like I will need to avoid any new foods in the meantime.

Cheers,
Ben

No Music for Me

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:22:04 GMT

A couple of days ago my iPod Nano stopped powering on for me, a bit of poking around showed that I had most likely crunched it under something and broken some internal components, and nothing I could do would bring it back.

Funnily enough I was quite happy about this - as I finally have a reason to go out and buy a Zune. I have a number of friends with Zunes, and I think they are quite nice (plus I work for Microsoft), but I could not bring myself to buy one while I had a working iPod.

Before rushing out to buy a Zune I thought I would use my Creative Zen as my interim music player - but after syncing up my music I found that the Zen wouldn't play them. After a couple of minutes of resetting and replacing batteries the Zen started coming up with a nice "send me back to the manufacturer" display.

Grrr....

So until I get a Zune my music player at the moment is my PSP - which is far from an ideal music solution - but it is better than nothing.

Cheers,
Ben

Easter Hang-over

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:51:32 GMT

Easter was lots of fun this year. We had egg-hunts, we had ham for lunch, we did the good Friday and Easter Sunday services. But most of all - this year the Easter bunny visited Mum and Dad as well as Isaac and Elizabeth.

Unfortunately Dad (me) decided that in order to avoid having chocolate around for weeks to come - I would eat all of my Easter chocolate on Sunday. I did, indeed, complete this task - but this morning I could barely stand the sight of food.

It is now almost 6:00pm and I am only just getting to the point where I could imagine eating something sweet again.

Cheers,
Ben

The First Day of Spring

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 18:50:00 GMT

I will always remember when I was a child, on the first day of Spring, my eldest sister - Sarah - would go swimming in our swimming pool. It did not matter how cold it was, and we would all watch in horror.

This year Werona and I both got it into our heads that the first day of spring meant that it was time to barbeque. So last night I found myself standing by the barbeque in pitch black night, with it so cold that I could see my breath condensating in front of me. Not exactly my idea of spring weather - but the steak sure was nice :-)

Cheers,
Ben

Computers and Communications

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:29:51 GMT

That is the name of one of Isaac's latest books. It is a big book which talks about all different types of technology - and Isaac loves it when I read it to him. There are just two problems with me reading him this book:

It was published in 1998 and there are large sections that are already laughably out of date. I read the sections on tapes and cassette players thinking to myself "Isaac will never use a cassette player in his life".
I have a tendency to get halfway through a page and then to go running off looking for bits and pieces to show Isaac what things look like in the real world.

The upside of the second point here is that Isaac can now successfully differentiate between transistors, resistors, capacitators and ICs on a computer card :-)

Cheers,
Ben

5 Years at Microsoft

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 06:55:07 GMT

Today was my 5 year anniversary as a Microsoft employee. As such my manager took the group out to lunch, and I was presented with the "5 year obelisk":

(Personally I have always questioned the idea of giving a large, heavy object that could easily used for bludgeoning to a potentially embittered employee). This also came with a number of nice cards and letters from Bill and Steve - but the thing that cracked me up was that there was also a "thank-you" card to my wife, for tolerating the fact that as someone who has worked at Microsoft for 5 years has undoubtedly had the time when they spent too much time at work and not enough time with family :-)

I do not have much to say about hitting this milestone - other than to say that I am still loving my job and having a great time.

Cheers,
Ben

So Tired

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:19:10 GMT

Man I hate daylight saving. Sunday was "daylight savings" day, and as someone who grew up with no daylight savings I still can't understand this - really. Because of daylight savings I have only got about 5 hours sleep a night for the last two nights.

Daylight savings and Viva Pinata that is.

On the plus side I am now over 80% of the way through Viva Pinata (only bought it last Wednesday) so within a couple of days I should have adjusted to daylight savings and completed Viva Pinata and can get back to regular sleep again.

Cheers,
Ben

Automatically Starting Elevated Programs under Vista

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:06:03 GMT

One of the biggest changes with Windows Vista is the need to manually 'elevate' an application if it needs to run with administrative privilege (this is called 'UAC'). Personally I love this feature - but there are times when this is annoying.

One particular problem area is if you need a program to run 'elevated' automatically when you login to the computer. This is problematic for two reasons:

It means you will be prompted every time you login.
Vista actually detects and blocks this from working.

Thankfully there is a sneaky / evil work around for this. Now - before I continue - I want to be clear that what I am about to outline does technically lower the security of your system - so only do it if you know what you are doing / have no other option (mind you - it is much more secure than just disabling UAC).

The work around is to create a task that runs elevated whenever you login. This means no prompting and no blocking. What you need to do is login as yourself and:

Open the Start menu go to All Programs, Accessories, System Tools and open Task Scheduler.
Select to Create Task.
On the General tab give the task a Name and Description. Leave it as running with your account and to Run only when user is logged on then check the option to Run with highest privileges.
Go to the Triggers tab and click on New...
Select At log on for the Begin the task: option and select that it only run for a Specific user or group: (yourself). Then hit OK.
Go to the Actions tab and click on New...
Leave the Action: as Start a program and enter your program details, then hit OK.
If you are running on a laptop - go the the Conditions tab and uncheck the Power options so the task will run even if you are on battery power.
Go to the Settings tab and check Run task as soon as possible after a scheduled start is missed and uncheck Stop the task if it runs longer than:
Hit OK.

Now you are all set to go.

Cheers,
Ben

Daddy has the "Pink" version of Pokemon

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 09:31:41 GMT

It has been a source of frustration for male gamers that the latest round of Pokemon games have been dubbed "Diamond" and "Pearl". I mean - come on - not exactly masculine terms here. Most male gamers when confronted with this choice have gone with "Diamond".

As you need to have both Diamond and Pearl to get all the Pokemon in the game - I decided to get Pearl for myself and let Isaac get Diamond - so he wouldn't have to face ridicule should he ever play Pokemon with his friends at some later point in his life.

For the most part I rationalized this with myself by stating the obvious fact that there is practically no difference between the two games - apart from 10% of the Pokemon that you encounter in the wild.

Note that I said "practically". It turns out that the icon used to identify the game when you first start it has a blue background if you are playing Diamond and a pink background if you are playing Pearl. I discovered this the other day when I went to start Pokemon and had my son blithely inform me that my Pokemon game was pink, while his was blue.

Cheers,
Ben

DOOM mods

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 22:48:44 GMT

I lost some time the other day laughing my head off over a couple of sillier DOOM modifications. It all started when I was sent this clip of the "killer boom-box":

Which started me browsing for other mods - then I came across:

Super-Mario DOOM:

And DOOM Super-Mario:

Fun!

Cheers,
Ben

Fixing Annoying Prompts with Intel Drivers on Vista

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:35:48 GMT

For a while now I have been getting multiple prompts each time I login to Windows Vista. The culprit is the latest Intel video drivers. For some reason they manage to install three executables that are 1) stored in System32 2) configured to run automatically 3) not marked as trusted. The result is that every time I login I get three prompts with a title of "Open File - Security Warning" asking if I am sure that I want to run these programs. Unfortunately the handy "Don't Ask Me Again" check box on these prompts seem to do nothing.

The programs that I get asked about are:

igfxtray.exe
hkcmd.exe
igfxpers.exe

After a bit of poking around I found the solution to my problem. These executables have somehow got themselves tagged as "untrusted" - but because they are stored in \Windows\System32 trying to mark them as trusted will just silently fail. What you need to do is to go to \Windows\System32 and select each file and:

Open the properties for the file.
Go to the "Security" tab and "Edit" the permissions.
Explicitly add your user account with full control (having a group you belong to have full control is not sufficient).
Go to the "General" tab and click on "Unblock".
Click OK.

Once you have done this for the 3 executables mentioned you will never see prompts again.

Cheers,
Ben

Microwaving Minties

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 06:33:12 GMT

The other day my darling wife ducked down to the Australian Pie Shop and while she was there - grabbed me a bag of minties. This was very thoughtful of her as she does not particularly like them. When I got home and was presented with the gift - I opened it and started eating with much gusto. Werona was surprised to hear the crunching sound coming from my mouth - as all of her memories of minties were that they were soft, chewy lollies. I had to pause to explain that given how cold it was around here you had to chew on them for a bit before they softened up.

Tonight when I went to grab a handful I thought "I bet I could microwave these to soften them up". 10 seconds later I had 4 nicely softened minties (probably should have only done 8 seconds - but live and learn). As I was finishing the 4th mintie I could not help but acknowledge the nagging thought in the back of my head... "What would happen if you put a mintie in the microwave for too long?"

Now - for any children / fools reading this - it is time to take note:

Once you have decided to do something that could potentially involve a catastrophic outcome - think a little about it (though not too much - otherwise you will just chicken out). Clearly throwing a mintie in a wrapper inside the microwave by itself would be a bad idea - and would be terribly hard to clean up should things go wrong. It is equally obvious that using the good china - or indeed any plate that you intend to use ever again - is probably not a good idea. Personally, I have found microwave safe wax paper to be a good option.

So that is what I used.

If I was super-cautious I would have put a sheet of wax paper on top of the mintie as well as underneath - to protect against splatter from potential mintie explosion. But I wanted to see what was happening - so I just went with one sheet.

With the mintie unwrapped and placed in the middle of a rather large sheet of wax paper I set the microwave for one minute and stood and watched. At 10 seconds there was no visible change, but I knew it would be getting rather soft. At 20 seconds one end of the mintie started bubbling furiously. By 30 seconds the entire mintie was about ten times its original size and was a froth of bubbles. At 40 seconds the bubbles started turning brown. At 50 seconds puffs of smoke could be seen issuing from the mintie and at one minute I had nothing but a large, brown, burnt, caramelized circle on wax paper - with a slightly minty whiff.

So there you go.

Cheers,
Ben

Dammit, Emacs.

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 06:44:31 GMT

I saw this the other day and it made me chuckle:

For the record - VI is my preferred *nix editor. Why? Because that is what my dad taught me - which strikes me as a profoundly odd statement.

This one is for you Joe!

Cheers,
Ben

Wii Absentia

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 09:16:49 GMT

Well - what can I say. I like the Wii - I really do. The problem is that I just don't play on the Wii. More to the point I do not play on the Wii anywhere as much as I do on my other gaming devices (compared to my darling wife I play on the Wii a lot :-).

So why is this the case? Well - the first big issue is location. Most of the time you can find me happily hiding behind my fortress of electronic devices. Here I can access 7 computers, 8 gaming consoles / devices, watch TV, listen to music and use the phone. The nice thing about this setup is that enables me to easily shift in and out of activities. I can work for a while, watch a carton show, play some Halo and then shift back to work. But this is not where my Wii is. The Wii is out in the lounge room. The reason for this is that:

As a "family oriented" device it does not belong in my fortress - where others are only allowed to enter on permission.
There is not enough space in my fortress to stand and swing around a Wiimote.

The next issue is availability. While the children are awake it would be folly for me to attempt to play a private game on the Wii. So all games must be 1) kid friendly 2) played with one of the kids. Once the children are asleep there is a good chance that my wife will want to watch TV on the TV (I have my own private media center PC for such activities).

This means that my Wii experience has been focused on Wii Play, Wii Sports and Cooking Mama - while Zelda has had less than an hour of my attention.

The final issue is the Wiimote itself. In my opinion it is both a blessing and a curse for the Wii. It enables modes of game play that were not imaginable before - unfortunately it is awkward for most of the modes of gameplay that were available before. Indeed many of the Wii games would be better off without the Wiimote (as artfully highlighted in this - not PG - review of Super Mario Galaxy).

Don't get me wrong - I still like the Wii. And I have high hopes of one day spending more time with it. But not now.

Cheers,
Ben

Respect the books!

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 01:44:48 GMT

We have been having a lot of fun in our household lately - as both Isaac and Elizabeth have been learning to read and are quite enthusiastic about it. We now have a night time routine where they each get to read a book to either Werona or I, and then they get to choose a book for us to read to them.

The other night when I finished reading Isaac's book and went to grab the bible to read - I heard a small sob come from my boy. I turned to ask him what was wrong, to which he responded "That book was almost new!".

...

I had casually thrown Isaac's book on the pile of books on the floor - and apparently that was not the correct way to treat such a revered object.

I immediately picked it up, showed him that it was okay, apologized profusely and carefully placed it on top of the book shelf - which seemed to appease him.

I guess I am going to need to be more careful in the future :-)

Cheers,
Ben

Shilling for my place of work

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 06:22:40 GMT

Okay - I acknowledge that this is evil Microsoft marketing - but who cares, it is too much fun:

Go play it now!

Cheers,
Ben

Long Showers

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 20:02:20 GMT

I have always been one to have long showers. Werona remains amazed by this (she has very short showers). The problem is that I (like many others) find the shower to be the best place to think. The bigger problem is that I often get so focused on my chain of thought that I forget about actually showering. A couple of days ago I had a classic case of this.

I got in the shower, started washing my hair, and started thinking about a technical problem at work. I hit upon a potential solution and was soon getting out of the shower thinking about who to email about this. As I turned off the shower I realized that I had forgotten to use any soap, so I stopped and got back into the shower. However as I grabbed the soap I immediately started thinking about the technical problem. By the time I got out of the shower the second time I paused and realized that I had no recollection as to whether I had actually used the soap or not.

By the third time I got in the shower I was mentally saying to myself "Focus! Focus! Think only about showering".

Cheers,
Ben