Scott Hanselman

I have a love/hate relationship with my Iomega Rev Drive. I love the drive, but I hate Iomega.

The drive hasn't worked in Vista since I upgraded due to lack of drivers, and that's cramped my backup strategy. However, I noticed today beta drivers for Vista up on their incrediblycraptastic support site.

Here's the direct links so you don't have to futz around. Good luck.

• Vista Compatibilty with Rev Drive
• Automatic Backup doesn't work anymore.
• Vista Compatibilty Support Forum - complain here
• Vista Rev Drivers Public Beta Page
• Direct Link to the Beta Drivers - subversion 5005.
• Feedback Survey

It's a great little piece of hardware, the Rev Drive, it's just got yucky software because they choose to make it look like a UDF (DVD/CD) device, rather than a removable hard drive (which would have been my preference.)

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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We're getting closer and closer to 2010, and it's tripping me out. This is the last post of 2006. Here's some of the things I felt good about this year in no particular order. Also, here's the complete archive of 2006 posts for this blog in calendar form.

• Africa Rollup
• Zune vs. iPod Video vs. iRiver Clix
• Controlling a Viper Robot with a Serial Port
• 44 Hanselminutes Podcasts in 2006! Thanks Carl!
• CardSpaces Screencast Thanks to Stuart Celarier!
• Baby Sign Language
• Z is one year old
• In search of the perfect monospaced programmers font - Inconsolata
• October 2006 - My Reading List - Home
• Monetizing your Blog
• Onkyo TX-SR674 HDMI Upconverting Receiver
• The First 12 Hours - The Medtronic Minimed Paradigm REAL-time Continuous Glucose Monitor
• Patterns and Practices Webcast - Open Source in the Enterprise
• DNRTV - Sysinternals Tools
• How Geeks become Do-It-Yourselfers and Tile their Kitchen
• The Importance of being UTF-8
• Diary of a Vista RC1 Install - Upgrading My Main Machine to Windows Vista RC1
• Coding4Fun Hardware Webcast - Available Offline
• A New Private Browser - I mean Browzar - does not work as advertised
• Making DasBlog work on Mobile Devices
• Scott Hanselman's 2006 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows
• Hanselminutes available on iTunes
• DasBlog 1.9 Released
• Example: How to contribute a patch to an Open Source Project like DasBlog
• Replacing Start Run - The Quest Continues
• Scott Hanselman: Developer Productivity Tools Videos
• Do I sleep?
• WatirMaker written again in Ruby Thanks Michael Kelly!
• Searching Google Desktop from PowerShell
• Testing PowerShell scripts with NUnit
• PowerShell, AnkhSVN and Subversion
• Diabetes Walk 2006 - The Day of the Walk and Team Hanselman - We raised USD$12,000 for fighting Diabetes! Watch for more interesting stuff and a surprise regarding Diabetes in 2007!
• If you love your family and your kids, do not play Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - It's that good
• ASP.NET MVP Hacks Thanks David Yack!
• Scott Hanselman, 11 Successful Large Projects, 3 Open Source Applications, 1 Collossal Failure
• Tracking down a Trojan
• Interview with a PSP Developer - Doug Beck
• Is Open Source a Crap Idea?
• Grandpa
• INETA ASP.NET Canada Roadshow
• More on Alternate Linksys Firmware
• NUnit/Watir/Ruby Test Integration
• Zero to Three Month Baby Ultimate Tools List

Sure, this is just a list of links, but it's the posts that I thought were the best out of the hundreds I ended up posting this year. Hope next year is fantastic for you and yours.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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We're back from another African trip. Mo and I try to go each year, or at least every other. This trip was unique in that we went to Tanzania, rather than South Africa (iGoli) or Zimbabwe like we usually do. This necessitated learning some kiSwahili and was more of an adventure than going to the places we're used to. It was also special because it was my parents first time out of North America - the first major passport stamp for them (Mexico and Canada don't count, IMHO).

Here's a collection of photos from the trip and a listing of the posts from my informal travel diary that were posted as the trip went along:

• Arusha Tanzania 2006 Day 24 - Travelling with an Infant
• Arusha Tanzania 2006 Day 24 - Black Hair
• Arusha Tanzania 2006 Day 24 - Kilimanjaro
• Arusha Tanzania 2006 Day 23 - Where is the middle of nowhere
• Arusha Tanzania 2006 Day 22 - Finding a Fundi
• Arusha Tanzania 2006 Day 21 - The Arusha Fire Brigade
• Arusha Tanzania 2006 Day 20 - Waiting for death's sweet release
• Arusha Tanzania 2006 Day 17 - Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti National Park
• Arusha Tanzania 2006 Day 15 - The UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
• Arusha Tanzania 2006 Day 14 - Travelling as a Diabetic
• Arusha Tanzania 2006 Day 12 - Maids
• Arusha Tanzania 2006 Day 11 - Transportation
• Arusha Tanzania 2006 Day 10 - Malaria
• Arusha Tanzania 2006 Day 9 - Bandwidth
• Arusha Tanzania 2006 Day 7 - Fever
• Arusha Tanzania 2006 Day 6 - Family
• Arusha Tanzania 2006 Day 3 - Arrival

Feel free to check out the Africa category (paging controls at the top) for our other trips to South Africa, Morocco and Zimbabwe.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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The whole HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray thing is so ridiculous. That we didn't learn from the VHS vs. BetaMax fiasco and are doing it again just kills me. Of course, some folks think the battle is more like the DVD-Audio vs. Super Audio CD (SACD) wars (skirmish?) where neither won.

Personally, I think HD-DVD will eventually win. Not because of technical superiority (it's not) or cheapness (it's cheaper so far to buy and produce) but because of one simple thing. The name. HD-DVD says what it means. Blu-Ray? Huh? People like simple Acronyms. Also, Sony is coming off as a little snooty in this whole thing.

Anyway, enough of that nonsense, here's what's up. My Christmas gift this year was an HD-DVD Player for the Xbox360. It's US$199, but it comes with an HD-DVD copy of King Kong as well as the larger-sized XBox 360 Remote Control, which is nice. The drive also is a USB Hub adding two USB ports to make up for the one in the back it takes away from your Xbox.

Here's the worst part about HD-DVD. Once you've seen a movie you love in HD-DVD, you'll be unable to tolerate a DVD. I did a test on my wife, on 37" LCD from 10 feet away, she immediately noticed the difference between the DVD version and the HD-DVD version, and she's not one who typically noticed these things. It's like getting new glasses - You're ruined without them.

Yes, the picture is amazing, and I'm only watching it in 720p. I'd need to get a Sharp Aquos 1080p TV to get any better. But the picture is just part of it, there are subtle things like being able to access the main DVD menu without stopping the playback. There's 7.1 lossless audio. There's picture in picture multiple-video stream extras. I've got Superman Returns, Batman Begins, Serenity and King Kong and they are truly excellent in every way.

One other cool thing. You can use the HD-DVD Player on both Windows XP and Windows Vista. XP requires drivers, Vista doesn't. WinDVD8 apparently plays HD-DVD movies, a Vista doesn't support HD-DVD out of the box.

Ah, one OTHER cool thing. Apparently more and more HD-DVDs (like Superman Returns) are "combo DVD/HD-DVDs" with DVD on one side and HD-DVD on the other. That is pretty slick and if I understand correctly, unique to HD-DVD. That would make me more likely to use HD-DVD if it's true.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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It's fun to be quoted. Of course, if you're quoted, it might be because your clever, or because you just talk so much that statistically someone was bound to eventually write down something you said.

• Raymond Chen's got a new book out called The Old New Thing: Practical Development Throughout the Evolution of Windows. If you haven't read Raymond's blog, do. Got peruse the archives now, it's gold. The book looks great and as his blog is awesome, I was asked for a quote about Raymond. I don't give quotes lightly (believe it or not) so I wanted to be thoughtful. Somehow it got into the first page of "praise for Raymond Chen."
• "Raymond Chen is the original raconteur of Windows." - Scott Hanselman, ComputerZen.com
• Both MikeG wrote forewords for the new O'Reilly book Windows Developer Power Tools: Turbocharge Windows Development with More Than 140 Free and Open Source Tools by Jim Holmes and James Avery. A lot of these tools are on my tools list and I wanted to make sure the book was good if I was going to include a foreword, so I was on the technical reviewers team. I had a fun back-and-forth with Jim because I was a little "crisp" about early versions of the book, but I got a nice Christmas greeting from Jim about my "crispness" and I'm glad he appreciated the way my early reviews were intended. Long story short, it's a good book, the integrated a lot of the early feedback we gave and the result is excellent. Pick it up!
• I've been blogging, podcasting and screencasting about Cardspace, and Mary Jo Foley called me to talk about it. Kim Cameron mentioned the article on his blog. I'm very positive about the underlying protocols that make CardSpace (the Windows implementation of this suite of WS-*-ness) and if it continues to go cross platform, things are going to get better around secure identity.
• Scott Hanselman, chief architect with Corillian Corp., a Hillsboro, Ore.-based financial-services integrator, is bullish about CardSpace’s prospects. “CardSpace is going to change it all. It’s likely the biggest thing to happen to security since HTTPS. CardSpace changes the game for consumers. It’ll take a few years, but after IE7 and FireFox and MacOSX all have CardSpace implementations – and it won’t take long – we’ll see Identity 2.0 happen,” Hanselman said.

I've been quoted a few times this month, mostly because some folks asked me for my thoughts, and partially because I won't shut up. Regardless, it's kind of cool.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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