Dave’s Blog

The real village used as the set for the camp of the ‘Others’ in Lost has been found on street view: here

I must say it slightly spoils the illusion realising that it has a highway running right beside it, but it certainly shows how amazing CGI is these days that when there are 360 degree shots of the camp you don’t notice this.

The video below shows a demo reel from Stargate Studios showing how some shots in TV shows are actually filmed. I recognise some of the scenes in the video and you really wouldn’t realise with most of them that they weren’t filmed on location.

I found this video that we were shown during our induction at Microsoft about what it is like to work there. I think it sums it up pretty well.

A couple of months ago I was introduced to a piece of software called SlickRun. This is a free advanced command line utility for Windows which works exactly like the standard Windows command line, allowing you to use all standard commands, but also allows you to specify ‘MagicWords’ for certain software or scripts.

An example of a MagicWord I use is ‘word’ which links to: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\WINWORD.EXE. Typing this MagicWord will open Microsoft Word for me.

This means that I have no need to have icons on my desktop to access software or directories, I simply assign a MagicWord to everything I need access to. As a result of this, this is what my desktop looks like:

The only icon I have is the Recycle Bin.

Another example of a MagicWord I have assigned is ‘wikipedia’ which will bring up an input box and ask for a search term. When I enter this search term my browser automatically opens and searches for the term in Wikipedia.

Not only does this clean up my desktop, but it also vastly reduces the amount of time (and mouse clicks) required to access something. I like to find as many ways as possible to reduce the time taken to carry out a task and SlickRun really does help.

To input a MagicWord all you have to do is press a hotkey you have assigned, in my case Ctrl + R as this was as close to Win + R (the hotkey to access the Windows command line) that I could get. A box is then displayed which you can type into, and once you start to type it will automatically go to the most recent MagicWord that matches what is input so far. For example, in the screenshot below I have only typed ‘v’ and it realises that I am probably typing in the MagicWord for Visual Studio. In this case the only key presses I needed to open Visual studio were ‘Ctrl + R’, ‘v’ and then the Return key, taking me literally a split-second to access Visual Studio.

If you want to try SlickRun then you can download it here:

http://www.bayden.com/Slickrun/

We are now into 2010, and thinking back on 2009 it really was one of the best years that I can remember. It was full of amazing experiences which I will never forget from my first skydive to the summer of a lifetime travelling around America and Canada.

I decided to make this video as a summary of the year to remember all those experiences. I now challenge 2010 to better 2009!

Back in November I got to go to TechEd Europe 2009 in Berlin. I was one of four Irish Microsoft Student Partners chosen to go.

This was the first time I had ever been to a conference like this so I wasn’t sure what to expect, although I knew it would be a great experience after hearing stories from Student Partners who went in previous years.

The conference was running for a week and we were over for the entire thing. I attended some fantastic sessions with speakers who are well known within their field. Some of the great sessions I attended included one by Scott Cate about Visual Studio tips and tricks. This was a session full of little shortcuts that you can use in Visual Studio and some tips on how you can essentially improve your productivity and I plan on following up with a blog post showing some of those I find most useful.

Another great sessions I attended was one by Kate Gregory about using the Windows API code pack to develop applications that use some of the new features of Windows 7 such as the task bar. Again, I will follow up on this with a blog post.

Another of my favourite sessions was one by Rafal Lukawiecki about cryptography. It was a very interesting session and he was a fantastic speaker, I would’ve liked to have attended more of his sessions.

I learnt a lot at the sessions I attended and it will be very useful to me in the future.

However, the trip wasn’t only about attending these sessions, it was also about getting to meet up with other Microsoft Student Partners from all over Europe. I certainly enjoyed getting to meet and speak with others. Here we are in our ‘family’ photo (click to zoom):

I also enjoyed getting to see some of Berlin, a city I have always wanted to see. We were very lucky to be there the week of the celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and attended the event where they knocked over dominoes in place of the wall.

Thanks Microsoft for sending me, it was a fantastic week full of experiences. I learnt a lot and got to spend time with some really great people.

Here is a video of the week (photo album: click here) :