The Journal of an Xbox InfoPath Nut

I knew being an MSN beta tester would pay off

2006-08-18T14:28:00.000+10:00

Well it's been a couple of months now since all the Messenger Beta testers were notified they would be receiving a "gift" for their testing efforts, and today that gift finally arrived.
There was speculation, rumor and excitement about what the said gift would actually be, if history was to repeat itself we would all be receiving web cams, if MS was to keep up the technology hype we would have all received funky IP Phones, but alas neither of those options was to be. I'm now the proud owner of yet another branded laptop bag, Complete will Messenger Men and all.
I'm as yet undecided which of my 3 laptops will reside in this little fella but I'm sure they'll be playing rock, paper, scissors for it all afternoon :o)

King Quest is back!!!!!

2006-06-20T12:57:00.000+10:00

Great news, Kings Quest 3 has been pimped out and re-released, and whats better it's free.
you can check it out here
http://www.infamous-adventures.com/index.php?page=kq3

My Xbox now has it's own blog

2006-06-15T13:54:00.000+10:00

Ok we all know I love my Xbox and even he's new little brother Xbox360 so I figured it's about time it had it's own blog
http://www.360voice.com/blog.asp?tag=Nilcraban

basically this service monitors when I'm on Xbox live and makes blog posts about my gaming habits.
I've only just signed up so understandably there isn't a lot of content yet but keep an eye out I'm sure it will fill up

Which Superhero are you?

2006-06-13T13:09:00.000+10:00

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman		80%
Green Lantern		80%
Spider-Man		75%
The Flash		70%
Robin		67%
Wonder Woman		62%
Batman		55%
Hulk		55%
Supergirl		52%
Catwoman		40%
Iron Man		30%

You are mild-mannered, good,
strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Sony struggling to stay relevant

2006-05-29T13:47:00.000+10:00

So we all know that Xbox 360 is my console of choice but I have to recommend everyone who is thinking of buying a Playstation 3 checkout this clip
http://www.gameklip.com/v/719/
it basically goes through the lowlights of Playstation 3 all taken from the recent E3 it also helps to highlight how Sony seems to be struggling to understand the market that they seemed to dominate so well.
enjoy

Halo Fever beginning

2006-05-10T15:54:00.000+10:00

I was just informed by one of my colleauges that the teaser trailer for Halo3 has been released.
Be sure to check it out ASAP

Australian broadband moving backwards

2006-04-26T09:23:00.000+10:00

I recently received a letter from my ISP stating that the plan I was currently on is no longer offered and that I would need to update my plan details. At the time I was on a 1.5 ADSL connection with a 20gb limit before my connection was shaped (slowed down) all this for $50 a month.
The options I now had before me were as follows

Slow my connection speed to 512 and maintain my 20gb limit for $50 a month
Maintain my connection speed and reduce my limit to 10gb for $60 a month

Obviously I wasn't too happy with this as either option presented meant I was getting less but paying more. Of course I called the customer service line at my ISP and had some very stern words regarding their plan changes. To cut a long story short I opted to look for a new ISP, after much searching and comparing I eventually found Chariot a nice little ISP that offered a 1.5 mb connection and a 40gb limit for around $70, now I understand this is $20 more than what I was paying but as my limit has increased I'm ok with that. Also to Chariot's credit the churn was done within a couple of hours the fastest churn I have ever had done big thumbs up to them.

However this did get me thinking why is it that in a day when the rest of the world is experiencing free wireless and cheap broadband that Australia is going through a price inflation. I know that some ISP's are beginning to roll out ADSL2 and rightly so if you are using this service then you would expect to pay a premium for it. However for people who are still using the standard ADSL network the ISP should have already made back the money for any hardware roll out and should be offering much cheaper plans or at least unlimited downloads. It also seems that the bigger ISPs are the more expensive, with smaller ISP's doing all they can to stay competitive.

With those rhetorical questions out of the way my advice is this,

When looking for broadband look for the best deal you can.
Faster connection and greater download limit is better.
Don't be afraid to check out the smaller ISP's they are usually the ones with better customer service (e.g. not some guy sitting in a call centre in India trying to tell you how to set up your router)
Don't be afraid to change your ISP if your not happy, the more we let our ISP's walk over us by specifying what "We need" the more they are going to to.

Anyway I've had my rant now so it's time to finish up have a great week everyone.

Blip I'm Back on the radar

2006-03-28T15:49:00.000+11:00

Well it's been a very exciting couple of days for me, As you may recall the Xbox 360 was launched last week hence my absense from any posting. Now I'm back I can tell you all about the glory of the next generation games machine.
In sort its awesome, I'll try to put up some more detailed comments about the box and it's software over the next couple of days.
One other event that happened is that I'm back in the office for a little while (now this may not sound like exciting news but it is nice to get back to my desk every now and then and back into some comfortable jeans).
Imagine my surprise when I got back to my desk and it looked like this

So as you can see I have a little work to get on with but I promise with all these screens hanging around I'm bound to find some time to put some more posts up.

Signing off for a little while

2006-03-22T07:09:00.001+11:00

Well everyone the day is here, only 16 hours to go until Xbox 360 is released in Australia.
I have my Controllers and a couple of launch titles all I need now is the white box to play them on.
This is a quick notice to let you all know that I will probably not be posting for the next couple of days as I'll be in a blissful state of gaming heaven. Don't worry after I've had some time to be come well acquainted with the new family member I'll be sure to post how great it is.

All Hail the Commonwealth games lost and found department

2006-03-18T17:19:00.000+11:00

Last Monday I was lucky enough to attend the Final dress rehearsal of the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth games. What I didn't realize however was that my wallet had fallen out of my pocket during the festivities.
Of course I cancelled all my cards straight away and then set off on the task of tracking down my wallet through the lost and found service. At first I played a little phone shuffle between the MCG and the comms games staff but eventually I managed to log a lost report although I had already resigned my self the the sad truth that I was probably not going to get it back.
To my surprise I received a call this morning informing me that my wallet had been found, what's more it was still intact and untouched.
So this is just a quick post to say a big thanks to the ladies at the Commonwealth games lost and found department you chicks rock!

4 Days 6 Hours 29 Min to XBox 360 Launch

It's the final Countdown!

2006-03-12T10:15:00.000+11:00

The Countdown has begun it's now only 10 days until Xbox 360 luanches in Australia, all I can hope for now is that they pass as quicly as possbile and that the launch date doesn't get knocked back again of course

Xbox 360 Retailer Launch Crashing

2006-03-09T08:26:00.000+11:00

Hey everyone I had a very interesting night last night, as you all probably know the Xbox 360 launch is upon us and as one of those special VIP pack owners I was invited to a gaming night at the Athenaeum theatre in Melbourne.

Finally, I thought Microsoft were doing something to reward the people who exhibited their dedication to this new console, alas I was mistaken the night it's self was great I got to play a whole host of awesome new XB360 titles and now I'm even more impatient for the next 13 days to fly by that I was originally. There was however a very major lack of freebies at the event, what happened to the days when MS would give out mound of free stuff to anyone who passed? but this isn't the real issue I had with last night. My problem with last night is that the "VIP" event was simply tacked on to a retailer launch event. How do I know this you ask well as I was quite happily playing perfect dark zero I began to notice that the VIP's were being asked to leave, not wanting to stop in the middle of a level I decided to wait until I was asked to leave. This didn't happen eventually an announcement came over that the main presentation was about to start. I thought I'd take my chances and try and sneak into this as well and with out any thought I was welcomed in with open arms, and the presentation that followed was awesome (but I'll get to that latter).
Now I don't have a problem with MS combining 2 events because obviously this is more cost effective, but if your going to put on an event for your so called VIP's you should probably make them feel somewhat special not just give them a chance to play the games that they could probably make their way down to Target to play. Now enough of my complaining, on to what I got to check out last night, so obviously I got to play most of the launch games for XB360

Quake 4

Perfect Dark Zero

Kameo Elements of Power

Ridge Racer 6

Project Gotham 3

Full Auto

Condemned

NBA 2k6

Tony Hawk

King Kong

Fight Night

Call of Duty 2

Most of these games were obviously very pretty, however not all which is kinda disappointing but understandable, not everyone can take advantage of the power contained within the white box. The upside is that there isn't anything like Fusion Frenzy on the launch list.
As for some of the features I spotted in the presentation the wireless range of their controllers is awesome I watched the presenter walk to around 10-15 meters from the console and still the controller was as responsive as a wired one.

It was also pretty cool to see the integration between USB devices and the Xbox things like plugging in an MP3 player (not just an IPOD) and playing the music directly while in a game, or viewing Photos on a digital camera. Now I know you avid gamers out there probably aren’t really fazed that you can use your Xbox as a slide show machine for showing those vital pictures of your parent’s trip to Guatemala, but this may help you to get them sold on the idea of forking out the big bucks :o)

All in all I’m more excited now about the launch of this console than I was a day ago and with only 13 days to go you be prepared for more Xbox 360 posts. I’ll also do my best to put up some pretty pics when I get my new baby (don’t expect too much as I’ll probably loose track of time playing PDZ)

Until then hopefully you can make out some of the excitement from the pics

Adevnture Weekend

2006-03-06T09:36:00.000+11:00

I got back last night from a great little adventure weekend in Tassie (yes you can have an adventure weekend in Tassie).
I headed down on Friday afternoon for my Sister-in-laws engagment party and I have to say the country folk down there really know how to kill time, between water skiing and shooting I kept myself ammused with a little 4W Driving and of course eating (believe me the best kept cooking secret is mums on farms man they know how to bake)

Take my advice if youre looking for a good weekend away find a friend in Tassie who has a big farm head down for the weekend and let your imagination run wild.

As for the engagement party this was also great a big Congrats to Squirt and Simon.

Well looks like it's time to get back to the drab city life

SnagIt 8 Brag-A-Thon

2006-02-28T09:07:00.000+11:00

Calling all people who are sick and tired of getting screen shots then using Paint to crop the image down.
I recently received a copy of a tool called Snagit 8 from TechSmith in exchange for some free advertising. Now usually I wouldn't do this but I've been using snagit since version 6 and I have to say it's a pretty awesome utility.
This tool allows you to capture different areas of your screen and then save the outputs to different file formats e.g. jpg, gif et...
now I know this is nothing special but the coolness lies in the detail in addition to simply capturing your entire desktop snagit also allows you to capture

Window Regions
Full Windows
Scrolling windows
Web pages (while maintaining all the links on that page)
scrolling web pages
scrolling PDF documents
Menus that have a delay before being shown
Individual objects on a windows
All images from a selected webpage
All text from a selected window
and finally it also lets you highlight a region of your desktop and record a movie of everything that happens within that region (awesome for demo movies)

In addition to all of these capture options it also contains a very full featured image editing tool, and a bulk file format converter utility.

Now I know this sounds like a bad Demtel ad at the moment and I know your probably all wondering when I'm going to whip out the steak knives. Sorry to say that the steak knives that can cut through a shoe haven't been bundled with the product but you can download a free 30 day trial version from here http://www.techsmith.com/download/trials.asp

Enjoy

New MVP Blog

2006-02-28T08:41:00.000+11:00

Just a quick post here to let you all know that I have a new blog, http://msmvps.com/blogs/benwalters/
I'll continue to update this account though so no need to frett.
My new blog will contain posts specific to either my MVP life or to any of my cool findings with Microsoft products. Feel free to swing by and check it out.

I'm an Xbox 360 Owner

2006-02-28T08:37:00.000+11:00

OK So I don't actually have the console yet but last week I made the trip down to my local EB games to make the final payment on my Xbox 360, now all I have to do is wait until the 23rd to pick up my precious.
I also managed to register for a special Xbox 360 VIP event where I get to go and play the new games in a cool 2 hour gaming session. Bring on March this is going to be fun.

XBox360 Demo Consoles are here !

2006-02-20T12:30:00.000+11:00

Very eventful weekend for me, I decided to wander into my local JB-HiFi and imagine my exchitement to see an Xbox 360 Demo stand, all decked out with PGR3 ready to play. Of course I was limited to 5 minutes but that was more than enough time to see how great the graphics are on this new machine.
Looks like I'm going to have to make regular visits to JB at least 2-3 times a week for a fix, only 30 days to go until I have my own pretty white box :o)

It's Official Office 12 is shall be forever known as Office 2007

2006-02-17T08:36:00.000+11:00

Well we can now all stop wondering what the next version of Microsoft Office will be called, I received word this morning that it has been officially dubbed Office 2007, to find out more about Office 2007 check out this link
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/default.mspx

RegForm Update in VSTO

2006-02-10T08:03:00.000+11:00

Howdy loyal readers, I've been having some problems recently with my favourite app InfoPath, until recenlty I have been developing all my forms using Visual Studio 2003 and the InfoPath tool kit. In addition to this with one of my clients I have been using the RegForm utility to package the form into an MSI. So lets jump forward to today, being the Developer I am I feel obliged to install Visual Studio 2005 (as was the standard with the rest of the company) so off I go and run the installer which worked fine (and to my surprise played quite happily alongside Visual Studio 2003). I then proceeded to install the InfoPath Toolkit for Visual Studio 2005, so now I have the ability to develop forms with either .net framework 1.1 or 2.0.

This was all working fine until I attempted to create an MSI for my client using the RegForm included in the InfoPath SDK, I recieved the following error message from the RegForm utility "Error: RegForm does not support Microsot Visual Studio version number 8.0.50727.42"

So off I trundled to google to see what he had to say about it, and for a first time it was rather quiet on resolutions.

Eventually I succumbed to using my MVP influence and contacted a friend on the VSTO team, turns out there is a new version of the RegForm utility installed with the Visual Studio 2005 InfoPath toolkit. This new version of the RegForm util is found in C:\Program Files\Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office\InfoPath\

Re-Ran the package with the new RegForm utility and all is well with the world once more.

As for the out of date version of the SDK up on the Microsoft site I have been assured this will be updated so no more need for confusion.

Debugging InfoPath forms in VS2003 with .net Framework 2.0 instaled

2006-02-08T16:55:00.000+11:00

So today I attempted to open an older InfoPath Solution I had developed in Visual Studio 2003, once I had the app open I found that I could not debug the form. Did some searching and I found that this is due to VS2003 being unable to connect to the InfoPath process as I had installed .net Framework 2.0 I did some trawling through the wonderful ether and here is what I found.
(Note: yes I poached this solution from someone else check here for the original. but I figure the more people who have it posted somewhere the easier it will be for someone else to find)

Create a new file in the same directory as the InfoPath.exe called InfoPath.exe.Config

add the following to this file

This will force InfoPath to start up using the .Net Framework 1.1, once you've added this file save your changes then attempt to debug your project once more.

Validate your Input

2006-02-07T12:50:00.000+11:00

Validate your Input

Well everyone here I am again, ready to share with you what I think is a great pearl of wisdom. Whether you agree with me or not is your problem :o)
So we all know that InfoPath is a great way of entering data, we also know that you can use Regular Expressions to ensure that a user enters the values we want. The only thing we (I) struggle with is writing the damn things. So I found this site http://www.regular-expressions.info
This is a great resource for anyone wanting to use RegEx in their applications. It provides great explanations on the syntax and how it’s constructed.
So next time someone asks you to simply use regex you no longer have to shudder.

Enjoy :o)

Internet Explorer 7 Beta2 Released to the Public

2006-02-01T11:58:00.000+11:00

Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Released

So here I am reading through my blogs this morning and it turns out Microsoft have released Beta 2 of IE7 to the public. Off I trundle to download my new window into the net and I have to say it’s pretty sexy, tabbed browsing, integrated RSS feeds. All in all a pretty nice upgrade, if you want to check it out you can download the beta from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7/tour/default.mspx

Debugging InfoPath forms in VS2005

2006-01-30T11:37:00.000+11:00

So I was putting some knowledge base articles up on the InfoPath portal at work today and I found a very strange little quirk in VSTO when attempting to debug an InfoPath form.
I had my pride and joy all ready to run, hit F5 and received an error informing me that I could not start a dll project directly and that I would need to add an executable project to my solution if I was going to get any debugging done (words to that affect anyway).

So I started to trawl Google but to no avail eventually I discovered that if I select the solution rather than the csharp project then press F5 the form loads up successfully.

Now I know this sounds simple and your all sitting there thinking well duh!
but hey if I ran into it guaranteed someone else will
Well back to knowledge base updates for me

XB360 Launch Delay update

2006-01-27T10:08:00.000+11:00

Well I called EB this morning and asked them what was going on and to be honest they didn't seem to know too much other than that they recieved a memo from MS telling them the bad news. There are assumptions that this could be due to the addition of water cooling to the Australian models could be slowing production down. Either way there are going to be a lot of unhappy gamers out there (me included) who's anger will only be quenched with XBox360 freebies, or at least a formal announcement as to what the hell is going on.

XBOX 360 release date Pushed back

2006-01-26T22:55:00.000+11:00

So as you probably already know I have my XB360 pre ordered and pretty much paid off, I have also gone to the trouble of getting the day off work so I can enjoy the release. So imagine my terror today I received a rather distressing message on my phone from my local EB Games notifying me that the release date had been pushed out from the 2nd of march to the 23rd. I've been trying to track down any confirmation of this from Microsoft but, alas so far all I could find was the following article. Which also states that Microsoft has made no comment, and also puts in the hope that this is only a rumor. My gut feeling is that if the franchises have been told to call their customers then it's high probability that it's legit.

If it is true then I have to say that this is pretty poor dealings on Microsofts part especially considering that Xbox has around 35 to 40% of Australia's gaming market. Don't get me wrong I'm Microsoft branded through and through but if they announce a release date then they need to stick to it and not play with peoples emotions.

If anyone finds out anything confirming or denying this please post comments, if not then I live in hope that this is nothing more than a sick twisted joke of a heartless gossip.