Entries tagged with nickhodge - Channel 10

Talk to me, chat to me. I'm Lonely.

nhodge — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 03:58:09 GMT

You can add this to your blog too: Add Windows Live Messenger to your Blog

It is a simple matter of going to the above live.com (obviously, log in with your Live ID) and using the simple online form to configure your Messenger web widget.

The really, really cool thing is that you can have either a chat window, or your presence live on your blog.

For more indepth how-tos, visit Aussie Angus Logan's blog.

The Geek Stories: Online Communities, Citizen Journalism

nhodge — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 11:28:00 GMT

This week I decided to interview two experts in the local online communities, social networking and citizen journalism space.

First up is Laurel Papworth, a lecturer, online community expert and WoW fan. Laurel has worked for many gaming community sites, as well as incubating many organisation's community strategies. She tells the story better herself, so have a watch.

Second is Steven Noble: digital PR expert and blogger at Life in Chippendale. Steven explains how a citizen journalist and local community blog helps "offline", and is a powerful tool. Steven also recommends you listen to more garage music. :-)

Listen, learn and find out blogging using Microsoft's Windows Live Spaces from Tina Wood.

Blogs do not have to be purely by geeks for geeks: they are new ways of having two-way conversations with people, locally; and all over the world

The Geek Stories: BarCampSydney, Joel Pobar

nhodge — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 00:32:00 GMT

Joel Pobar's Geek Story.

Joel comes over as a mild-mannered geek. Underneath his manner is developer who knows his stuff: especially when it comes to Microsoft's CLR, dynamic languages and some personal research he is doing that was presented at BarCampSydney.

For more up-to-date info, visit Joel's Blog at http://callvirt.net/blog/.

The Geek Stories: BarCampSydney, Tangler and Cylo

nhodge — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 03:07:00 GMT

Whilst at BarCampSydney, I caught up with two Australian startups: one hardware and the other online.

Cylo have produced the 3Dstyle mouse, highlighted at the recent CES Event.

Tangler.com is a group interaction and communication site.

Hear Mick from Tangler and Laurence from Cylo describe; and show; their products for me.

The Geek Stories: Behind the Scenes of BarCampSydney

nhodge — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 22:11:00 GMT

BarCampSydney, held at University Technology Sydney on Saturday 3rd March 2007. Being a Saturday, I hired my 15 year old son Liam to be my cameraman for the day. Thanks, Liam!

The better audio quality is thanks to a new condenser microphone, which is highly directional and sound recorded with excellent quality. The only real mistake this video is not tweaking the background lighting in different lighting circumstances, and having to resort to the Shadow/Highlight video effect from some parts of the video.

Image: fellow Microsoft Geek, Michael Kordahi at BarCampSydney.

There was no formal storyboard for this show, as it was a vox-pop (vox-populi, or voice of the people) style rather than single talent with a formal 'story flow'. The simple idea was to capture interesting people/things, and ask the "what is your geek story" and see where the interview would lead. Voxpop is easy without the tripod; and you have to get around to get the stories.

During the day, Liam and I photographed still shots with my Canon IXY 600. Using Windows Vista Photo Gallery, I could quickly import, tag and upload images to Flickr (conference picture colloboration site). Tagging in Photo Gallery, and the grouping by date captured conveniently sorted into sets so I could see what had been/had not been Flickr'd.

The new "the geek story" branding has now appeared. Thanks to Adobe After Effects 7.0 and the Venetian Blinds, Optics Compensation (to get the edge-of-a-TV-tube feel) and finally a Glow. I just love After Effects; it is Photoshop with time. Since being at Microsoft, I've used more Adobe products in "production" than my 8 years at Adobe. Interesting, that.

Editing Alone.
There will be three on10.net videos from the 90 minutes of footage. Again, my finding of 1 minute of footage is 8 minutes of post-production is holding as a metric. Still pictures are easy, video is relatively tough and time consuming. The editor is working with the theme, the footage, the audio and the final output - and all this takes time. Being the onscreen interviewer, director and editor can take it out of you. Don't know how Scoble does it.

To make life a little easier, there were interviews that were not in the theme on on10.net, so they were quickly cut, encoded and uploaded to YouTube (conference video collaboration site). Yes, you will see a Microsoft person asking about Linux distributions, Ubuntu, PHP and dynamic languages. For next time: add "The Geek Stories" outro video so people know where the video came from.

Image: Joel Pobar at BarCampSydney, Photo by Rex Chung.

Sadly, I absorbed the feeling of the BarCamp without being in any of the sessions. I would have loved to see Joel Pobar's MapReduce work. However, I have a feeling this won't be the last opportunity to see Joel talking on this topic.

On Being a Professional Geek

nhodge — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:40:00 GMT

G'day.

I am Nick Hodge, a Professional Geek for Microsoft - working in Australia. Hence the G'day.

You will find out more about me on my personal blog. For those who want the summarised version: 9 years Apple reseller employee, 3 years at Apple Computer, 8 years at Adobe Systems and 6 months sabbatical.

So, let's get to the FAQs

Why are you working for Microsoft?
I love software, and the software industry. Software exists in an intense competitive feedback cycle, and the best way to make the best software is have the best engineers writing/testing and releasing the code. Not smart enough to code shippable applications myself, I've found that I can listen and communicate with the software users. Thankfully, Microsoft has many other smarter people who can write code. There are many, many smart people at Microsoft.

The breadth of Microsoft's technology is amazing. The numbers of products/technologies, and the history of each product is gob smackingly broad. I still keep finding new things daily.

Logically, Microsoft is the place you arrive when you love software. I still use a Mac (MacOS X 10.4, Parallels, MacBook Pro 15") at home; our home server is presently a reclaimed Dell running as Debian Linux box; and Adobe software is launched on my Toshiba running Vista, daily.
What is a Professional Geek?

A geek, as defined by dictionary.com: an expert in computers (a term of pride as self-reference, but often considered offensive when used by outsiders.)

A professional, as defined by dictionary.com: following an occupation as a means of livelihood or for gain.

So joining the two does clearly define what I do, and more importantly my life ethos. A geek to my genes (and geek genes are inheritable), anything that is technical tickles me. I also love showing off this to other people: geeks or not. Professional, as I am paid by Microsoft to do this job - much to the envy of my friends.

The job code doesn't formally exist on paper or in the Microsoft organisation chart - that's another reason I love the title. Sorry, HR.
Why is this blog called "The Geek Stories"?
Microsoft has plenty of places where Microsoft's employees tell their stories. Channel 9, the formal http://www.microsoft.com/ web site. What about average users like you and I? The idea behind "The Geek Stories" is to capture these stories and publish them to the world.

Everyone has a story, and we all have at least one geek story to tell.

So, hang around and comment and contact me at your will. My ears are open.

Email: