Release Dates and Downloading illegal copies

One of my favorite bands Static-X released a new album on the 13th. So yesterday I went to a couple of music stores to try and buy it but couldn't seem to find it. After a bit of research on the internet I found out why, according to HMV it is not being released here until the 4th of July, three weeks after it's US release.
Record companies keep trying to shut down sites that allow you to download music illegally, but they also expect me to wait three extra weeks to get the CD. Seems pretty stupid to me, I will still buy it when it hits stores as I always try and buy any album I list to a lot but I reckon there are a lot of people that won't bother to get a real copy seen as it will be quicker and easy to download a free illegal copy.

TV shows is another great example (any one know when the new season of 24 starts ?), we often get major series here quite a while after the U.S which means if you are not careful of which sites you read on the internet you already know all the major plot lines well before it hits our screens. Pretty much as soon as it airs in the US someone has put a copy up on the internet that can be downloaded and usually in pretty good quality as well. Add in the fact that you can watch it any time you want and it will either have no ad's or you can fast forward them it makes a pretty good case for why people download them.

Same goes for movies I'm looking forward to seeing Charlie and the Chocolate when it comes out, according to IMDB it opens most places in July but we get it in September. At least with a movie you get a better experience thrown in when you see it in a proper cinema, but with a album or TV show the quality and experience are often pretty much the same.

Maybe before they spend more time trying to shut down the illegal sites, they should spend a bit of time trying to make sure that people overseas don't have to wait weeks or even months to get the legal content, hence making it less likely that they would want the illegal copy in the first place.

Xbox Games

I've been promising various people for a while now I would list all the xbox games I have, well I finally got around to it.
You know I think there are even a few in the list which I have never even played !
Here's the list

1. Aggressive Inline*
2. All Star Baseball 2003
3. Blood Omen 2
4. Bloodrayne *
5. Crazy Taxi 3 *
6. Dave Mirra 2 *
7. Dead or Alive 3
8. ESPN Winter X Games *
9. Euro 2004 *
10. Gauntlet Dark Legacy
11. Ghost Recon
12. Halo 2
13. Juiced *
14. Kelly Slater *
15. Loons 4 Fight *
16. LOTR 2 Towers*
17. Matt Hoffman 2 *
18. Matrix *
19. Micro Machines *
20. Music Mixer *
21. Munch's Oddysee
22. Obscure *
23. Project Gotham *
24. RalliSport Challenge
25. RAW
26. Sega GT2000
27. Silent Hill 4
28. Simpsons RoadRage *
29. Splinter Cell
30. Splinter Cell Chaos Theory - loaned
31. Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow
32. Sudeki *
33. Taz Wanted *
34. Tetris Worlds *
35. The Sims *
36. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3
37. Unreal Championship
38. Wolfenstein *
39. Xmen 2

The Past Week Wrap-up

Been pretty busy. Started last weekend off pretty well with dinner and drinks at Cam and Kirka's. It was a good night, with great food and conversation although I woke up a little worse for wear the next day from the wine. I used to work with Cam at OBS and always enjoy having a chat to him, but it was really good to get to know his wife a bit as well.
I haven't caught up with people in that format for a long time, when i get finished with my masters degree in august I'll have to hold a few dinner's myself i think. I spent most of the rest of the long weekend doing two projects for my Masters degree, so nothing exciting there.

On Tuesday and Wednesday work sent me off to Hobart. Didn't get to see a lot of the town as I was only there for one night, but it did remind me of how peaceful and picturesque Tasmania is.
I'm thinking of planning a short holiday towards the end of the year and Tassie is definitely on the short list.

Spent the other 2 days trying to get the design sorted out for the project I am working on. On Friday three of us booked out a meeting room and just stepped through the whole project talking about how we are going to do it, I think it was a pretty useful session and all of us hopefully have a much better idea of what needs to be done. We are doing this again on Tuesday and Wednesday with the client. It will be interesting to see how this changes the design.

Dropped into my old work OBS on Friday to lend someone a DVD, ended up staying there and chatting for a while. I've been a bit apprehensive of going back there since I left as i wasn't sure how it would make me feel. In the end it was really good, enjoyed chatting to the people a lot but didn't make me regret leaving in any way, also I noticed my desk has already been stolen !!

This weekend has been a bit quite, apart from a new haircut yesterday I have just been catching up on a few tasks some work related some just general stuff.

This week I'm hoping to make it to the Melbourne SQL Server group meeting on Tuesday, it's on the SQL Service Broker in SQL 2005 which is something I know nothing about yet. Got a lot on that day at work so hopefully things don't run too long and I can make it.

VS2005, SQL2005 and BizTalk 2006 release date

The second most important release date of the year has been finally announced...well the release week any way.
VS 2005, SQL 2005 and BizTalk 2006 will be released on the week starting 7th November
http://msdn.microsoft.com/launch2005/
It's interesting that two of the products are named with 2005 and one is 2006, by exciting none the less.
Now all I need to know is when I can by an Xbox 360 and my year is complete :)

UPDATE:
So it turns out that while visual studio and sql are being released on 7th November, for BizTalk the launch is just to announce some more details of the product. Check out Chris Vidotto's blog for more info.
Still exciting anyway :)

Busy Times ahead

I'm starting on a huge project on Monday it's a very high profile and hence high pressure project which I will be the technical lead on it. It's also one of those projects that deal with information that falls very much in the "not allowed to talk about it" area.
There will be some other really good developers also on the project and I have no doubt that the job will get done well but I'm sure there will be quite a few challenges along the way. All things considered it should be a really interesting project to be part of.
Chances are it will keep me quite busy for at least the next month or so work wise, plus seen as I'm also in the last semester of my .Net masters things could get a bit hectic again. Chances are I will be offline a bit on the client site as well so if I'm not around on messenger or the blog posts get a bit infrequent you'll know why :)

Webcast: Implementing and Customizing MSF 4.0 Process Guidance within Visual Studio 2005 Team System

Finally got around to watching this webcast http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032271408&EventCategory=3&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US.
It has a really good explanation of the different MSF templates that are part of Team Foundation 2005. It talks through the differences between the MSF Agile and MSF for CMMI both in how they fit in an organization as well as how and why you might want to customize what you get out of the box.
It's a pretty good explanation of where Microsoft expects team foundation to fit inside a company and it covers a lot of the basic ways that VSTF works.
There are also a whole bunch of other VSTF webcasts up at
http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/msdnvsts2005.mspx

Microsoft Time Zone - It's simple but useful

The company I work for SDM has it's head office in South Australia which is in a different time zone to where I work in Melbourne. One of the really great things is that there is a lot of communication between the two offices which really helps us all feel like part of the one company however it means that sometimes we have a few time related problems. For example one of us Melbourne people will ring the Adelaide office before anyone gets in or they'll ring us after we leave. It's not to bad if you call the land line but could be annoying if your calling someone's mobile, fortunately for us the difference is only half an hour so it is not too bad.
Also quite a few of us end up going interstate either to head office or to visit a client on fairly regular occasions which means it can get quite confusing on occasion as to what time zone you are actually in and what time it is at home.
I've found a really simple Microsoft application which makes this a lot easier it's called Microsoft Time Zone. Basically it just sits in your task bar and you give it a list of 5 locations to show times for. From then on you can just click on it and it will show you the times for all of them.
I think it would be really useful if like me you do business or have family that are based in different times zones.

MM Concert

Had a very busy day yesterday, my husband as part of his singing teaching business Monstar Music held a concert for his students to perform at. In the end there were about 100 people watching the performance, so there was a fair bit of organizing involved.
Luckily we had some great people helping which made things a lot easier so thanks to Heidi for stage managing and organizing the lighting guys for us, the ladies from Bennettswood Neighborhood House for the food and drinks and Jim for ticket checking and photography.
Most importantly all the students put on a great performance and the feedback was very positive from all the audience. Even though they were all really nervous before hand, on stage you couldn't tell at all. Also it was great to see some of the students that have been singing for a while now try some really different styles. It really showed how much progress all the students have made.
Also there was one student in particular who has only had a couple of lessons, but she must be an absolute natural because she sang really well. If I didn't know, I would of thought she has been having lessons for years.
The other great thing to see was how the students really banded together as a group all encouraging each other and the group performances really showed just how much fun they have peforming together.
It was the first major performance that MM has held, with the last one just being a small affair at our house. I'm already looking forward to the next concert towards the end of the year, to see the further progress the existing student make and hopefully a few new faces in there as well.
It really showed how far Greg has taken his business in such a short time, considering how many businesses fail miserably when the start up it's great to see this business slowly growing and based on the results Greg certainly must be doing a good job teaching them all.
I have spent most of the day today recovering for all the organizing and nursing all the sore muscles from moving everything around.