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) :
For years I have created slideshow videos of family events such as birthdays using Ulead Videostudio which was always great and seemed to make some good videos relatively easily. Recently I found out about Animoto and decided to give it a try with photos from a birthday party in December. The results were great and everybody was quite impressed with the video.
It is very easy to use, all you do is upload all the photos and video clips you want to use along with a background track and Animoto will analyse the track then play your photos and videos with transitions to the tempo of the track.
It is a paid for service, but at $25 (it should be $30, but using my referral code qwvalfjy will get $5 off) I find it well worth the money.
I am using it to create some videos to put on the blog so you will get an idea of what it is capable of.
One of my favourite TV shows has to be Lost, I can’t wait for it to return for the final season in February. So much has happened in the show in 5 seasons and I found this video which somehow summarises all 5 seasons in 8 minutes 15 seconds (8 and 15 of course being very important numbers in Lost).
It’s certainly got me wanting to see the new season even more. Watch the summary and refresh your memory, or find out what has happened for all those who gave up on it.
