Barnaby Jeans - Microsoft Enthusiast Evangelist

Behind the scenes at the Canadian International Air Show

Barnaby_Jeans — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:35:00 GMT

Earlier this month one of the extended Channel 10 team, Rodney Buike, had a chance to sit down with the President of the Canadian International Air Show to talk about the organization and technology required to put on the air show. Rodney has also posted some photos here.

Some of the performers this year included:

Walking for a cure

Barnaby_Jeans — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 01:44:00 GMT

One of the great perks of working at Microsoft Canada is the ability to take paid days off to volunteer in the community. For the past four years I have been actively involved with the Weekend to End Breast Cancer (http://www.endcancer.ca) events all across Canada. This year, due to family circumstances, I was not able to commit to the entire weekend, but instead spend Friday and Saturday photographing various aspects of the event.

This year's event had over 5,500 walkers and raised $17.3 million (CAD) in support of breast cancer research. For those of you not familiar with this fund raising event, they are held across Canada and consist of a two day, 60 kilometer walk including camping overnight.

Microsoft has participated in this event in the past, both with a team walking the event in 2006 as well as donating copies of Streets & Trips to aid in the route planning.

The full photo set is posted on my flickr site at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/barnaby_jeans/sets/72157601927998560

If you are a charity or non-profit organization and are looking for Microsoft Software Donations, take a look at http://www.microsoft.com/canada/ican/howtoapply.mspx

Day 1 at the Toronto Grand Prix

Barnaby_Jeans — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 21:41:00 GMT

Every year I spend a few days down by the lake to enjoy the Champ Car and support series races. Every year they seem to tweak the name in some way - so this year it is the "Steelback Grand Prix of Toronto". For the last couple of years I have had media credentials which means I have access to the media centre and a wifi connection so I can post this stuff real-time. Unfortunately shooting video in the pits isn't an option unless you are one of the broadcast outlets (fair enough) so I'll resort to telling the story with photos, and besides, it's a great first outing for the Nikon gear that I'm trying out - I'll post on that later.

Given that I can't shoot video, one of the things I have been on the lookout for is the interesting use of technology and specifically what the teams are running on their laptops in the pits. The good news is I have yet to see a machine that isn't running Windows. While every machine I saw in the pits was running Windows XP, almost every PC I saw in the photo lounge was running Windows Vista - very cool.

At the end of the first day - here is the provisional top 3

Position	Car #	Driver	Team	Lap Time	Speed (KM/h)
1	1	Sebastien Bourdais	McDonald's Racing Team - Newman Haas Lanigan Racking	58.783	172.972
2	7	Oriol Servia	INDECK - Forsythe Championship Racing	58.801	172.919
3	9	Justin Wilson	CDW - RSPORTS	59.099	172.047

If you are in Toronto and at the race send me an email if you want to connect, or if you have a questions you would like to see if I can get answered, let me know.

All of my photos are online at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/barnaby_jeans/sets/72157600689404182/

Windows Vista: What's in it for Photographers?

Barnaby_Jeans — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 19:48:00 GMT

I just came across the following article on PopPhoto.com that talks about some of the features in Vista that are most relevant for Photographers.

Without reprinting the entire article they outline 4 key areas:

Windows Photo Gallery
RAW support
Media Center
Forward-Looking Approach

If you are a photographer and wondering about Vista, I encourage you to read the article and let me know if you have any questions. Additionally, you may want to take a look at the Microsoft PhotoBlog at http://blogs.msdn.com/pix/ and specifically their FAQ at http://blogs.msdn.com/pix/pages/FAQ.aspx which address some of the common questions.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista, Photography, Windows Photo Gallery

[Excerpt] What's in your closet

Barnaby_Jeans — Thu, 17 May 2007 13:35:00 GMT

I've just finished reading an article talking about the latest round of partners stepping up to develop plug-ins or add-ons to Windows Home Server. For those of you who haven't don't know what I'm talking about - Windows Home Server helps families with more than one PC easily centralize, share and protect their digital pictures, music, documents and videos. To put it more simply - this is the box that is going to sit in the closet/basement/under the stairs/somewhere out of the way and greatly simplify the in home experience.

"Digital devices and digital media are now an essential part of so many aspects of our lives, and their importance continues to grow," Bill Gates, WinHEC 2007

To read the rest of this post visit: http://barnabyjeans.ca/blogs/barnaby/archive/2007/05/16/what-s-in-your-closet.aspx

Geeks on Peaks: Mt. Logan and Live Search Maps

Barnaby_Jeans — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 03:24:07 GMT

As the Canadian guy on the on10 team I'm excited to have on10 as part of this great expedition happening right here in Canada. Larry has a great video interview with James Coleridge talking about the upcoming expedition to Mt. Logan and the technology that they will be using. Larry mentions Live Search Maps in the interview, so with nothing more than your browser you will be able to follow the climb at http://www.summitsofcanada.ca/canatrek/expedition/followtheclimbs.html and http://www.summitsofcanada.ca/canatrek/expedition/FTC/Frameset-VE.htm.

So sit back, relax, watch the introductory video (fly the route) and then take a look at the planned route and track the expedition once they set off.

Lastly, if you want to learn how to build these types of maps into your website, take a look at the Virtual Earth interactive SDK at http://dev.live.com/virtualearth/sdk/ to see exactly what code you need to insert into your webpage. I got this up and running on my website relatively quickly, so think about how you might add this to your website.

Technorati Claim post

Barnaby_Jeans — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 05:17:23 GMT

As I get ready to start posting here, I wanted to get the blog linked to my Technorati Profile, so here is the obligatory post.