January « 2007 « Eric Faller

31Jan/076

Broken Wii

Doh. While fooling around with my homemade Wii component cables I accidentally broke off the Pb and Pr pins of my Wii's YPbPr connector:

Broken Wii

Trying to fix it just made it worse. I only have the Y signal left, so mini-Mii is angry now that he only shows up in black & white:

Angry Mini-Mii

Filed under: Electronics, Games, General 6 Comments

28Jan/071

Signs you might be a Seattle yuppie

#17: Your car has both high-performance racing tires and a ski rack, and you don't see anything wrong with that.

GTI ski rack

Filed under: Car, General, Humor 1 Comment

23Jan/076

Emergency Resource Guide

I just got this Emergency Resource Guide in the mail from the "Washington Military Department Emergency Management Division":

Emergency Resource Guide

It contains lots of useful info, such as what to do when you cough, in case you dropped out of school before kindergarten:

What to do if you cough

It has 41 pages of advice about how to deal with everyday dangers such as:

Terrorism (advice: "Be aware of your surroundings")
Accidental Poisoning
Pandemic Flu
Radiation Exposure
Bomb Threats (questions to ask: "Where is the bomb?" "Where are you?")
Chemical Agents
Anthrax
Botulism
Pneumonic Plague
Smallpox
Tularemia
Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers
Methamphetamine Labs (wtf?)
Earthquakes
Tsunamis
Volcanoes
Government fear-mongering

Oh wait, that last one wasn't on the list

Filed under: General, Random 6 Comments

19Jan/075

Ads on Amazon boxes

Is nothing sacred any more? Even my beloved Amazon boxes now come plastered in ads..

I weep for the future.

Amazon box ads

Filed under: General, Random 5 Comments

15Jan/070

Today on my way to work I saw a guy walking around with an Emmy statue. I wish I took a cell phone pic, but I was driving. It was the last thing I expected to see - quite bizarre. He must have been one of the people that collected Microsoft's Emmy awards (Microsoft winning an Emmy? Weird, I know, see here: http://cesweb.org/attendees/awards/emmys.asp).

Emmy

Filed under: General, Random No Comments

9Jan/074

MSDN Magazine article

Today I got my dead-tree copy of my first 'real' published magazine article. It's in MSDN Magazine and is about the new UI in Microsoft Office. It made the lead article for the February 2007 issue, and they even used a diagram I drew on the cover. Sweet!

The article title ("RibbonX API: Extend the 2007 Office System With Your Own Ribbon Tabs and Controls") was obviously written by editors, but that's OK

MSDN Magazine Cover