Michael Creasy's Blog

I'm a bit of a dictionary snob.  Ever since working in a bookseller and having a chance to browse the Oxford English Dictionary Compact Edition I have been determined to own a copy, but I've been waiting for the third edition to be published.  The second edition was published in 1991 and there's no sign of when the third edition will be complete.  From time to time though I check in on OED.com to see if there has been any update on the progress towards a new edition.  Today I was happily surprised to see there had been a recent update, in March the range of words Prakrit-prim was updated and outside of that scope some new words were added.  The OED will now recognise such words as bathorhodopsin (an isomer of rhodopsin) and jaffle (a toasted sandwich in Australia).  I particularly like jaffle, I'm going to have to start using that one.

The OED's chief editor John Simpson has a couple of observations on the revisions and Graeme Diamond looks at some of the new words as well.

I took this photo a couple of years ago while taking a ride on the London Eye.  I only realised this weekend that I'd never uploaded it, so I thought I'd share.  It wasn't an easy shot to get, I didn't have a tripod and even if I did they wouldn't have let me take it any way, so I had to balance the camera on the floor which accounts for the composition.  The other problem was the movement of the London Eye.  I took plenty of shots and this one came out OK.  Sure the composition could be better, but I'm happy with it.

Although it's Friday the 13th, today might be your lucky day if you were waiting for a Pink Zune!  This is a special limited edition Zune that we've just released.  I got a chance to see and hold one of these last week and it's pretty nice, although the colour isn't really for me! 

What colours would you like to see us add to the range?

Bungie have announced that the Halo 3 Beta starts on May 16th.

It's going to be fun.

I first visited the Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park for the opening weekend and I wasn't that impressed.  It was far too cold, very crowded and the landscaping was not yet complete.  As the weather has been good this weekend I thought I'd give it another chance.  I'm glad to say my second visit was much better.  The plants have had a chance to grow and without the opening weekend crowds it was much easier to get around and see the sculptures.

My favourite piece is Eagle by Alex Caulder

Wake by Richard Sierra is nice enough, but it's surrounded by signs instructing visitors not to touch it.  The slightest touch of a human hand can apparently cause terrible damage to these large pieces of rusted metal. 

Browse the rest of the collection in the gallery.

It occurred to me this morning that I haven't had to do any maintenance work on my Media Center PC since I installed Vista RTM on it, so I checked some stats on it.

• Days without a reboot: 106
• Number of extender sessions established: 202
• Number of HDTV recordings made: 358
• Number of music files in the library: 4970
• Number of photos in the library: 9379

I'm very impressed that it's been this stable.  I know my old Emerald (Windows Media Center 2005 Update Rollup 2) system would never of managed such stability.

I actually like DRM on my music.

 No I haven't lost my mind.  I have more DRM'd music now than I've ever had and I love it.  I download more all the time.  While DRM on individual purhchases can be annoying, for me DRM enables a great scenario - subscription content.  Much like how I pay Netflix $15 a month to get a constant stream of films (almost all on HD-DVD) I pay $15 a month for my music with a Zune Pass subscription. 

I'd rarely used to buy new music.  CDs were too expensive so I'd only buy something if I was confident I was going to like it.  I'd sometimes buy used CDs, but finding anything good was hard and the discs weren't always in that good condition.  Now with a subscription I listen to so much more music and I've discovered bands that I wouldn't have done otherwise.  I've also found more music by artists I already like but wouldn't have found otherwise - for example new singles or special editions.  With a subscription when I hear some music I like on the radio or someone tells me about a group I can go and download the music with no risk and see if I like it.  This scenario just wouldn't be feasible for DRM-free music.

My $15 a month allows me to download almost all the music in the Zune Marketplace (the record labels can decide to not allow some tracks to be available to subscribers, but that's only a small number of tracks) on ot 3 PCs and sync it with 2 Zune devices.  I can also listen to as music as I like on any PC that has the Zune software installed.  I download music on my home PC and sync it to my Zune, but I also listen to music on my Tablet PC at work.  I don't download any music at work I just stream it from the marketplace directly.  It works pretty nicely.  One day I'll get around to installing Zune on my Media Center PC so I can download all my tracks and listen to my music that way as well.

 I'd be interested to hear if you've tried a subscription music service and what you thought.  Most of the colleagues have a Zune Pass subscription and love it and no, we don't get any discount :-(

I saw this video for Viva Pinata over at the Gamerscore Blog a few days ago.  It doesn't really have much to do with the game other than there's a pinata in it.  Funny stuff though.

I had an absolute blast playing Viva Pinata though.  Who'd have thought micro-managing a garden full of living pinatas would be some much fun?  Making sure each pinata had what it needed to visit, become resident and "romance" in my garden kept me busy for hours.  It was 36 hours in fact until I had 980 gamerscore points and then I just had to leave the game playing overnight to get the "play for 50 hours" acheivement to finish the game - here's a hint, if you just leave the game playing you'll get interupted by pop-ups like challenges that stop the clock from advancing, to prevent this if you bring up the menu in the game, the clock continues to advance and you won't get any of the notices appearing.  Oh and remember to disable system shutdown after six hours of no input in the dashboard (and remember to turn it back on afterwards so you don't leave your 360 on all night by mistake).

Well almost.  Senator Kerry was at Microsoft today as part of our visiting speaker program to talk about his new book "This Moment on Earth" that he co-authored with his wife.

I went to see him talk for a number of reasons.  First because of who he is.  Second because I'm finding myself increasingly interested in environmental issues and I was interested to hear what he had to say and lastly because I have a small addiction to collecting signed books - this probably comes from working at booksellers for a number of years. 

I didn't know that Senator Kerry had a long history in environmental issues so it was interesting to hear about his background dating back to the Earth Day celebration in 1970.  He started by talking a little about his record and his current stand on environmental issues.  I think he sees the book as a rally point to get people invovled in the issues and understand what the problems are, while he didn't mention it in his talk, I hope he is providing some suggestions on how to solve the problem.  He didn't talk for very long before handing over to his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry to talk a little about her work with the Heinz Endownments.  They opened the floor for questions, but unfortunately due to the length of the replies and the time available they weren't able to many. 

I was able to get a signed copy of the book and I'm looking forward to reading it.  I try and be environmentally concious at home.  I recycle as much as I can and as a result generate very little household waste.  I am guilty of a few things though, I travel a lot and I'm aware the flying generates a lot of carbon emissions, thankfully Boeing and Airbus are working to produce more efficient planes, because I doubt I'm going to stop flying anytime soon.  I don't drive a particularly fuel efficient car, I get around 21mpg, but I offset that by not doing much mileage - I live just 3 miles from my office and I often use public transport.  I'd take the bus to work if I could, but there isn't a practical service to my home.  I have some energy saving light bulbs at home, but I should use more.  I won't be able to replace all my bulbs though until the technology improves.  To replace the halogen lights in my kitchen would cost around $300 and would only output a third of the light.  I don't really want to cook in the dark.  The rest of my bulbs are replacable I think though and I'm go to investigate that this weekend.

Just noticed John Kerry has a blog!