For fun I'm going to try this. Google has a new service that lets you create your own search engine. As an example. .NET web developers will find http://www.searchdotnet.com/ useful as it only returns authoritative Microsoft sources. MSDN, microsoft.com, MS blogs, etc. I've added that to my custom Google homepage.

So what should I create a search engine for? How about poker - a search engine that will search only the top poker blogs nd ignore the ads and such?

Check http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=007309252445351814162%3Aym0xcd0ajbk in a little bit to see how that goes. :)

 

The next adventure in my journey from Visual Studio 2003 to the wonderful Visual Studio 2005 is to convert our large source control repository from SourceSafe (VSS) to the new Team Foundation source control. This should be fun.

Visual Studio 2005 comes with a tool called VSSConverter which analyzes your existing VSS database, and then when things look good it migrates it for you. Very handy.

VSSConverter will migrate the files, including check-in history, to a new project in Foundation Server. In my practice, the migration happened almost flawlessly. The one big hiccup for me is that there are some developers who have left the company, and since Foundation Server is built off of Active Directory, I had to map those users to Guest. So you lose some user names in the conversion from people who have left.

Is there any way around that? Any tips or hints would be appreciated.

Those that know me know that I am not in the greatest of physical shape. My fitness is actually improving as I get older, and I feel like I am in better shape today than I was even a year ago, but I don't do any sort of regular physical exercise.

So it came as a great shock to me when I decided to sign up for the bi-annual World Wildlife Fund CN Tower climb http://www.wwf.ca/cntower . It also came as a great shock to my wife who I signed up to do the climb with me.

Tomorrow's the big day. I should be able to scale the 1776 steps of the tower in 30-40 minutes. My time really isn't important to me, I just want to make it to the top without dying. But it should be fun, and if I complete this I will feel a huge sense of accomplishment. I will feel like the guy who climbed Everest, even though climbing the CN Tower takes 30 minutes and climbing Everest takes a week.

Wish me luck.

Heroes is an interesting show. I'm still not totally caught up. I think I'm at episode 14 or so. And there have been something like 18 episodes so far.

Heroes takes longer to watch partly because the show is 1 hour in length (versus Entourage's light 30 minutes), and partly because it is more complicated and I can't seem to watch too many episodes in a row without getting tired.

It seems Hiro Nakamura is emerging as the fan favorite. He certainly is one of mine, mostly because he has such a positive outlook on life and provides a lot of the comic relief of the show. And this is a show that sometimes needs relief.

But all of the characters are starting to grow on me a bit. Looking forward to getting completely caught up.

A friend of mine turned me onto the HBO show Entourage. He called it "the best show on television". This is the same guy who turned me on to Lost, so I took his recommendation seriously.

On Saturday I was in the Chinese mall in Toronto, and saw (pirated versions of) the first two seasons of Entourage on sale. For $20, I could pick up both seasons on 5 DVDs. So why not try it?

I ended up spending Saturday night, Sunday, Monday night watching the first two seasons. Its a very interesting show, and I can see why he likes it. On Monday I downloaded the third season from a bittorrent server.

And as of last night, Tuesday, I've watched all three seasons. I'm completely caught up with the show.

Its amazing really, to see in 4 days what most other people took 3 years to watch. It's really a good way to watch television, because with a well-written episodic show, everything from earlier on in the season and earlier on in the series is fresh in your mind. Ari never says "Let's hug it out, bitch" any more.

Good show. Next up, watching the complete first season of Heroes.

 

Google has a cool new maps feature that lets you create your own maps and save them.

Here are all the cities and countries I have ever visited.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&om=1&msid=111478126673139393355.00000111c2daad45666d3&z=2&ll=44.087585,-3.867187&spn=144.363001,326.953125

Very interesting.

 

I'm sitting here at work, listening to the Best of Tears for Fears on my iPod. Oh my god, their songs are so good. They're now one of my favourite groups from the 1980's and 1990's.

Most underrated group of the 80's I say.