Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Inside Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Web Services

Inside Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Web Services is officially available today.

Congratulations to Davster, Michael, Ben, Mark and Huw.

I wonder who designs the cover art for Microsoft Press books? For this book the cover shows a water faucet. Many of the other Inside books have tools on their covers (pliers, wrench, compass, vice grips) while some have odd items like a horseshoe or an alarm bell. All done with the same stylized bluish X-ray on black background. Is there an underlying theme (like many of the O'Reilly animal covers) or is it random?
posted by Bob at 11/28/2007 06:00:00 PM  | | digg | del.icio.us | reddit

Friday, November 23, 2007

Tryptophan and drowsiness

The topic of turkey, tryptophan and post-Thanksgiving dinner drowsiness came up during dinner this evening. It turns out that while turkey does contain high levels of tryptophan, the amount is comparable to that contained in most other meats (and less than cheddar cheese). The drowsiness may have more to do with heavy consumption of carbohydrates as part of the meal, which can indirectly increase the production of sleep-promoting serotonin and melatonin, rather than the turkey itself.

Now excuse me, I have to go take a nap.
posted by Bob at 11/23/2007 07:30:00 PM  | | digg | del.icio.us | reddit

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Swan Song

On a recent flight back from Florida, I flew through Atlanta and was on a connecting flight to Seattle on a former Song Airlines plane. They still have the same in-flight entertainment system but on this flight it was pretty flakey. The system kept freezing up. Eventually the flight attendants got tired of all the complaints and decided to try rebooting it to see if that would fix the problem. I thought it was kinda funny to see dozens of seat-back screens running through the Linux boot sequence.

(I didn't take this picture but it's the same system rebooting).

Reboot didn't fix the problem. When they rebooted again I heard some nerdish mummers from passengers who were trying to see if they could spot something wrong in the boot output.
posted by Bob at 11/21/2007 07:30:00 PM  | | digg | del.icio.us | reddit

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Blue Cloud

IBM just announced an offering called Blue Cloud meant to make it easier to run large-scale applications with massive databases over the Internet. Microsoft, Google and Amazon are building cloud computing services as well.

Also in the news, a Blue Cloud was seen floating around outside a gas station in Parma, Ohio.

Coincidence? The truth is out there.
posted by Bob at 11/15/2007 09:00:00 AM  | | digg | del.icio.us | reddit

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Not the Daily Show

Since that the writers’ strike has forced the Daily Show off the air, the Daily Show’s writing staff has put together Not the Daily Show to tide us over.
posted by Bob at 11/14/2007 11:30:00 PM  | | digg | del.icio.us | reddit

Friday, November 02, 2007

Blade Runner: The Final Cut on the Big Screen

I saw Blade Runner: The Final Cut last night in Seattle. It was initially only going to be shown in Los Angeles and New York but the film is now being rolled out to other cities including Seattle, Washington DC, Portland, Salt Lake City, Chicago, Santa Barbara, Baltimore, Boston, Detroit, Austin, San Francisco, Dallas, San Diego, Minneapolis and Denver.

It's playing in Seattle for another week.

It was great to watch a brand new print of Blade Runner on a big screen. The film holds up, even after twenty five years. I did notice some of the changes, nothing major. But changes aren't the only reason to see this release. Especially if you've never seen Blade Runner in a theater, it's definitely a rewarding experience.
posted by Bob at 11/02/2007 08:30:00 AM  | | digg | del.icio.us | reddit

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