As a member of the Board of Directors of the Atlanta IASA Chapter, I am in charge of the 2009 Atlanta IT Architect Regional Conference (ITARC).  We have been busy securing sponsors, keynote speakers, and a facility to hold the thing.

Now the hunt is on for Atlanta-based speakers.  Architects who like to present to their peers about subjects that interest us all.  If you are an architect or know one, consider this blog entry a call for papers.  Interested parties should email their profile and abstract to atlantaitarc@iasahome.org. 

And there you have it.

Joe.

The Strategic Architect Forum (SAF08) is in San Francisco this year and I’ll be there.

SAF is an annual forum where Microsoft gathers 400 senior architects from around the world to contemplate architecture and architecture trends.  The meeting lasts several days and, like many Microsoft events, has three tracks.

• Enterprise Architecture 2.0
• Next Generation Social and Consumer Productivity
• Embracing the Cloud

 

I am really excited to have been invited and will definitely blog about my experience once I return.  The event is not until late November, so don’t hold your breath on those posts.

Recorded Sessions from SAF07

And there you have it.

Joe.

If you don’t know what those two things stand for, you may be bored by this, but Kirk Evans, an Architect Evangelist from Microsoft, and friend, cornered me at the recent Microsoft Launch event in Atlanta for a quick interview.  It is available on Microsoft’s Channel 9 site.  Click here to view it.

And there you have it.

Joe.

since I learned I have arthritis in my knees and would, therefore, be unable to run to keep in shape, I took up swimming.  Every weekday morning, before working out I swim laps in the gym’s pool.  It is great exercise and I enjoy it thoroughly.  One of the things I miss about running, however, is the ability to listen to audiobooks while I run. 

A coworker, David, and I were having a conversation about this when I suggested that someone should make an underwater case for iPods.  Weeks later, David came across an advertisement for that very thing and forwarded it on to me.

I jumped on the chance to purchase this product from H20 Audio.  I purchased the case and headset to fit the Generation 3 iPod Nano.

  The case fits very well and is the best part of this two piece configuration.  It is easy operate.  The controls fit directly over the Nano’s and work flawlessly.  It water tight seal does not make opening and closing the case overly difficult.

The headset, which is a separate purchase for, I suspect, several reasons.  One is that they have several different cases, but only one model of headset.  The other, and I think the actual reason, is that the though the case needs little improvement, the headset could stand a few.  One the headset isn’t comfortable.  The plastic that holds the ear buds presses too much on the side of the head.  It isn’t so uncomfortable as to deter usage, but could be improved.  That is the easy improvement.  The difficult improvement is the design.  I thought the most challenging aspect of the product is to get the sound to your ear when submerged, until I used it.  That’s when I realized the biggest obstacle the designers face is not submerged audio, but the frequent shifting between submerged and non-submerged audio.  Water tends to fill your ears when underwater (go figure).  The audio quality of these ear buds is great underwater and satisfactory when out, but they do not deal with the transition well.  Maybe they could figure out a way to keep the water from getting in the ear.  Or better yet, since they sound better when submerged, maybe they could figure out how to hold the water in your ear.  Either way would be an improvement.

All in all, I really like the product an don’t regret the purchase, though it is very pricey.  It is completely suitable to listen to music while swimming laps, though the constant shifting in audio quality (under vs. out of water) makes listening to an audiobook too challenging.  With that said, if you are just hanging out in the pool and not trying to swim laps with this thing, run out and get one right now… don’t even finish this blog post!

And there you have it.

Joe.

At the beginning of this year, I made a resolution to blog regularly.  During that time, I have being discovering my public image.

Getting started, I really liked the way that Maigh’s Blog looks, so I decided to use Wordpress for my blog.  I originally started off with a Wordpress.com subdomain, but that was very short lived.  I am too much of a gadgeteer to withstand the inability to customize my blog.

Now I am self-hosting Wordpress and that has suited me for the last month or so, but I am in need of something richer.

Since I am a .Net developer by trade and know very little about PHP, I get frustrated with the things that I am unable to do with my blog…albeit from lack of trying, not from the shortcomings of PHP.

If you have been paying attention, my blog was down for the last 3 days.  I managed to completely botch my environment in way that caused me to have to completely rebuild it.  The entire experience made me realize that I do not want to be hosted with Wordpress or with anything else out there.  What I really want is a custom built site that I can freely update.

Microsoft just released Silverlight 2.0 to beta.  Though my experience with XAML must be measured in grams, it is a technology that greatly interests me. 

Now that I have remedied my Wordpress problems, I will be dedicating some evenings to creating my own blog hosting software using Silverlight 2.0.

During this development process, I will keep you posted on my progress and, hopefully, will be able to switch you to my new site in a few months.

This should be fun and will allow me to publish what I am learning about Silverlight.

And there you have it.

Joe.