My Geek Origin Story
Posted: August 16, 2011 Filed under: Geek, Personal 1 CommentMichael Kordahi, aka Delicate Genius, is asking for Geek Origin Stories.
How can I not contribute to this worthy cause……
The year was 1981, and my high school, CBC StKilda, got a fancy new Cromenco computer system. I was asked to man the computer lab by my math teacher, Mrs Fagin, and to pass the time, I wrote programs in Structured Basic.
I remember putting in programs that would to print out ASCII art – playboy bunny logo and Alfred E. Newman stick in my memory. After spending time playing in that lab, I decided to following a computing path, even though I had been planning to go on and do medicine.
I signed up for the EDP (or Electronic Data Processing) course at CIT in 1982. In my first year we used punch cards to input out programs. I still have some those punch cards someone in the garage – I’ve carried them for almost 30 years! In my second year, the class had access to time sharing terminals connected to a PR1ME computer and we worked on PR1ME Information (which was similar to PICK), as well as COBOL and FORTRAN, and in my third year, we had a dedicated Data General system, we programmed in COBOL and PL/1 and we had access to a new fangled a IBM PC and a software package called KnowledgeMan for our group project.
After graduating, I entered the workforce as a humble programmer and my first job was converting FORTRAN applications for an engineering company on St Kilda Rd, who were migrating systems. That was the start of many projects during my time
So there you have it….
20? meh – Just another day
Posted: May 20, 2011 Filed under: Microsoft, Personal Leave a commentI’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.
1991 was a big year for me.
I got married.
I bought a house.
My first child was born
AND
I joined Microsoft on May 20, 1991
Today marks my 20th year anniversary at Microsoft.
As I have done for the past few years (19, 18, 17, 16. 15, 14, 13), time to reflect a bit on my time at Microsoft. Yes, I still *love* the job.
The resume stays the same, but I’m now back in Australia, based in Melbourne.
| May 1991 | Sep 1993 | Microsoft Canberra, working as a Systems Engineer |
| Sep 1993 | Aug 1994 | Microsoft Corp, @ Executive Briefing Center |
| Aug 1994 | Oct 1995 | Microsoft Corp, in the Advanced Technology Group, working on Interactive TV |
| Nov 1995 | May 1997 | Microsoft Australia, MSN Technical Director |
| Jun 1997 | Jun 1999 | ninemsn CTO |
| Jun 1999 | May 2001 | Microsoft Region, Digital Media dude |
| May 2001 | Aug 2007 | Microsoft Australia, Developer & Platform Evangelism (DPE) |
| Aug 2007 | Current | Microsoft Corp, Director – DPE Field Community & Readiness |
This year, I find myself in a different situation — I don’t have an office, so no 20lbs of M&Ms sitting in a bowl outside my door to share with my work colleagues.
It’s kinda weird that I have no one to share the moment with. It’s just another day.
But, I did get a rather large and heavy parcel sent to me.
which had another box inside
and inside that box was another box addressed to me
it was like a Babushka doll!!
So – what’s in it?
Well – it’s my 20 year “crystal” from Microsoft. (yeah – crappy photo, I know. I’ll take another one in the morning)
So – 20 years down, and the future looks promising – skype is joining the family, kinect is going gang busters with it’s own SDK , windows phone is getting Angry Birds soon.
Seems like there’s a lots to still do, and I’m pretty excited to continue doing it.
Plus, now that I’m back in Australia – I can get along to some local events, such as DDD Melbourne, PREMIX & REMIX
Bring on the next 20! Maybe I’ll get some M&Ms just for me and the kids!…
My second #WP7 App – Saints Footy
Posted: May 5, 2011 Filed under: Windows Phone Leave a comment
Ok, so I’m on a roll! Last week I got my first #WP7 App out.
This week , I grabbed the v2 of the Social Viewer Template for Windows Phone 7 from codeplex and put together another windows phone 7 app, which I called Saints Footy.
It has twitter feeds, feeds from news sites and fan sites, and the facebook feed from saints.com.au – the best way to experience Saints Footy on Windows Phone!!
Now, if only the Saints would win a few more games….
Big shout out to Nick Randolph and Dave Glover for a wonderful job with the Social Viewer Template.
My #WP7 App – FrankArr Tracker
Posted: April 28, 2011 Filed under: Windows Phone 1 CommentI’ve been meaning to write an Windows Phone app for ages. I even told Brandon Watson that I would.
I just never got around to it, until I saw a tweet from Nick Hodge which inspired me to get started
Nick pointed me to the Windows Phone 7 Social Viewer Application Template that Nick Randolph and Dave Glover had put together.
The Social Viewer template is a Visual Studio template that allows you to jump start the development of a Windows Phone 7 application. It provides the foundations of an application that can aggregate multiple RSS/Atom feeds, Facebook and Twitter.
I downloaded the zip file, looked over the documentation the guys had put together, and then I got started.
First, I got the tools installed onto my Samsung Series 9 laptop.
- Installed Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone
- Install January 2011 Windows Phone Tools Update
Next, I fired up Visual Studio, opened up the Social Viewer App Template and got coding.
Then I got my kids involved to design the app icon.
Emma suggested I put “Tech Frank” onto a radar image – so off I went.
I futzed with Paint.Net for a while trying to get the image just right. Dave was right – the icon is the thing that took the longest time!
Bill gave me a few pointers and voila – application icon created!
So what does the app do?
Well, you’re going to have to install it and find out for yourself
Enjoy!! Who knows, you may find FrankArr in your neck of the woods!
MIX11 or as I like to call it MMXI!
Posted: April 9, 2011 Filed under: Microsoft, MIX Leave a commentI made the long trip to the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas, which is where MIX 11 is being held this year.
It should be a good one this year – the sessions look great and the keynotes are not to be missed.
I said it before, and I’ll say it again – the team missed an opportunity to play with the name with some good old fashioned roman numeral hijinks.
Mayorships up for grabs
Posted: March 21, 2011 Filed under: Geek, Personal Leave a commentI love playing foursquare, and I have just started using a wonderful foursquare app on my Windows Phone called 4th and Mayor.
So, I am the “mayor” of a bunch of places. At one point, I got to 30 venues.
Anyways, since I’m leaving town, the mayorship of the spots will be up for grabs.
I would love to see how long it takes for all these go – a week? a month? a year?
Happy Foursquaring.
Wait, What?
Posted: March 21, 2011 Filed under: Personal 1 CommentSo, I’m sitting in a hotel room in downtown Kirkland, wrapping up my affairs, and getting ready to move back to Australia.
Wait, What?
Yup – I’m heading back down under. Now, I say *I* because the rest of my family already went back nearly 2 months ago.
Wait, What?
Here they are at Sea-Tax airport when they were heading out on their journey back to Australia.
So I stayed behind to get the house packed – it was karma really, since I left Moira alone to pack when we moved from Sydney to Seattle. Hopefully we’re even now 
We had a lot of stuff to pack. The final tally was 256 boxes and 251 wrapped items for a grand total of 507 items, which took up a 40’ & 20’ container and which weighed something like 20,000 lbs. Yes – That’s a lot of stuff!
Now the boxes are loaded, the containers are full, the house is empty and clean and I’m waiting for the confirmation that the sale is complete.
Soon my second Seattle adventure comes to an end, just as the local weather starts to improve and Spring begins.
What’s next?
Well – I’m heading back to Melbourne this time around. It’s my hometown. I left Melbourne in 1990 with my then girlfriend, Moira Brice. Now, I’m heading back to join Moira and my 4 kids. They are all loving it, so I cant wait to join them.
I’m also changing jobs, but I’ll save the details about that in another post.
The word of the year is ”App”! ?
Posted: March 21, 2011 Filed under: Windows Phone Leave a commentI saw a news article recently that the word of the year for 2010 was “App”, as voted by the American Dialect Society
So true.
I picked up a Windows Phone 7 when it launched back in November. I’m a loyal (some say foolish) T-Mobile customer, so I went with the T-Mobile HTC HD7
I must admit I have been pretty happy with the phone (anyone surprised to hear that) apart from one thing.
It was reset by one of my kids when they tried to unlock the phone. He put in the wrong pin a few times, which got an policy enforced to do a remote wipe. I must admit, I did loose my cool for a while. I almost ruined christmas for my family a second time, but cooler heads prevailed.
The experience taught me a few things, which brings me back to apps. The one most relevant to this is that I need a way to remember what apps I have installed on the phone. Since I had installed most of my apps “Over The Air”, there is no way to “automagically” restore the installed apps. If I had installed them via the desktop client (aka Zune Client) they would have be reinstalled. Now, the good thing when I do ‘re-install’ the apps, is that the the marketplace tells me that I have already purchased them so I don’t have to buy them again.Phew!
So, how do I remember what apps I have installed? It seems there is no easy way. However, I found a great little site, developed by an italian MVP, called WP7Applist. It a pretty cool site that is full of reviews, updates, news of new apps etc, but the one thing i L-O-V-E about it is the ability to tag an app you have installed and it creates the My WP7A library.
I took a look at the page, did some scrapping and voila – the apps I have installed on my phone!
Yeah, it’s a bunch of apps isn’t it and I haven’t gotten to games yet!!! I’ll save that for another post.
a little bit naughty
Posted: February 17, 2011 Filed under: Geek, Microsoft Leave a commentThe team had a bit of geek fun last night.
We are all together for TechReady, a bi-annual get together of the Microsoft Technical community.
One event we have is called “ASK THE EXPERTS” and to help folks find us, we innovated with signage.
The event organizers were not amused but I was… 🙂
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New toy – Asus eee slate
Posted: February 7, 2011 Filed under: Gadgets, Geek 4 CommentsI picked up a new toy today – an Asus eee slate. I got it from the Microsoft store in Bellevue.
Off to play, more info later
ASUS Eee Slate EP121-1A010M 12.1-Inch Tablet PC
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frankarr 