James Manning

So, as you may remember, while my motherboard’s integrated graphics passes all the individual technical tests for Aero/WDDM, Intel’s not written the driver for it, so I’m stuck with a 1.0 Windows Experience Index due to my crappy graphics.  That meant I don’t get the nice Aero interface, but that’s fine by me, I don’t really care that much about it.

Well, today I go to run Windows Movie Maker (just to patch 3 avi files together) to find out they have their own requirements.

Clicking on the link, I get a help topic that says the requirement is DirectX 9.  They really could have left out the second “drivers”, though :)  Note that I ran Windows Movie Maker just fine under XP, so I find it funny that it would suggest I check the computer and/or video card docs for whether they support that app, since clearly the version of that app in question is pretty important.

But wait!  You may remember, also from that this video chip and its drivers actually do support DirectX 9 just fine (as it did under WinXP as well).  Look at the entry just above the one I had highlighted back then…

So, I’m currently left with

• Windows Movie Maker not working
• a link to a help topic that describes what the video requirements are to work
• BUT, I meet the specified requirements just fine

Yes, I know it’s apparently going to require Aero-level graphics just for this, but this is clearly a pretty bad experience.  Even if the user is savvy enough to know how to check for the DirectX support level of their card, there’s clearly lots of cards out there that will pass that check but still not run WMM in Vista.  The only other thing to confirm is that full video acceleration is being used, which is indeed the case.

Now imagine if I had gone out and bought a DirectX 9 card based on that help topic, but WMM still didn’t run?  Maybe it’s time to take all these old crappy video cards that do support DirectX 9 and pimp them on eBay as being all you need for Vista to run great! ;)

Yeah, it’s dorky, but still funny!

I am SO looking forward to the day when my hard drives are all solid state (at a reasonable cost).  Thankfully it’s a matter of when and not if, but there are days when even my RAID-0 just isn’t enough.

Maybe I’ll order the hybrid hard drive for my work Vista machine and see if that makes life any better.

Maybe we did, maybe we didn’t - I don’t know yet.  However, reading this blog post about WCF support for devices and taking the route of email as the transport mechanism, it’s sure phrased as if

1. we thought up the idea of making method calls over email and
2. we implemented it outside of the existing docs related to SOAP over SMTP.

http://blogs.msdn.com/romanbat/archive/2006/10/21/windows-communication-foundation-compact-edition-and-the-story-of-the-lunch-launcher.aspx

So, at some point Mike Zintel started promoting an idea of using e-mail as a web service transport and putting a programming model on top of it.  Hmm, e-mail!? I was really skeptical about this at first, as probably many of you are now.

If you like the Google TechTalks (as Ars Technica has now learned about), you’ll also want to check out the talks done at Microsoft Research.

http://researchchannel.org/msr/

http://picasaweb.google.com/james.manning/JtmacBirthVisits

It’s only 250MB quota for the free account, so I doubt I’ll be moving the gallery there any time soon, but it’s not a bad interface.

I used to listen to things on the order of german speed techno, effectively as a caffeine supplement to help wake up and stay that way.  I’m wondering what it’d be like in the reverse, though.

I’ve got a few albums (yes, including Yanni… I’ve had it since NCSSM) that qualify, but I wonder what others listen to (for those that listen to what they’d consider to be “relaxing” music).

I’ve had a couple co-workers swear by various forms of soft jazz or relaxed classical, and I fully agree it would need to be something without actual words (I find those too distracting, as I end up trying to listen and follow them).

Any recommendations?

7 lbs, 14.6 ounces (3590 grams on the medical record), 20″ length, 13.5″ head circumference, 13.75″ chest circumference.

Descriptions via Jill :)

http://tyche.livejournal.com/2139675.html
http://tyche.livejournal.com/2140450.html

Pics (only a few now, but more on the way over the coming days):

http://gallery.sublogic.com/jtmac/birthday/

I finally got a (very cheap, not just inexpensive) mp3 player and now I need that pseudo-cassette-tape thingy that goes into the tape deck (in my car in this case) and then plugs in like headphones into the 1/8″ jack.

I’m really hoping someone happens to have one they’re not using any more :)

My dad noticed another Sarah Manning and emailed me about her.  Since I had done google searches for each of the four finalist names (Sarah, Grace, Emma, Caroline) combined with Manning (always good to know if some serial killer somewhere had the name), I had already run across her, but the top 20 or so links of Sarah Manning’s are interesting.

There used to be a meme going around where some site would take your name and do this list for you, but I can’t remember what it is - hopefully someone out there remembers and can remind me. :)

Anyway, back to Sarah Manning. :)

There’s actually at least 2 musicians by that name. 

The one my dad found lives in San Francisco, is Jazz-based and plays the sax and composes.

 http://www.sarahmanningmusic.com/aboutsarah.aspx

The other plays the harp (mainly Classical) in Boston, Mass.

http://www.sarahmanning.com/

There’s also:

An attorney in Mass.

 http://www.nutter.com/attorneys.php?AttorneyID=87

An architect in London (got her BA over @ Duke, so there’s a NC tie-in)

http://www.spacesyntax.com/profile/sarahmanning.html

A researcher in Essex (can’t find a pic)

http://www.i10.org.uk/pooled/profiles/BF_INDIV/view.asp?Q=BF_INDIV_52620

A jewish writer (can’t find a pic)

http://www.kosherdelight.com/KDMagJan1706ChefToPrincesAndPaupers.shtml

A collegiate swimmer for Syracuse

 http://www.suathletics.com/roster.asp?playerid=1953&sport=196&roster=199&path=swimming

A teacher in Newbury, England (can’t find a pic)

http://www.ratemyteachers.co.uk/schools/england/newbury/the_clere_school/sarah__manning

A character in a fiction novel

http://www.crystalinks.com/sabook.html

And many, many genealogy entries for Sarah Manning’s from the 17th and 18th centuries.

I’m sure there are many others as well, but that’s enough for a blog post :)