MS Silverlight presentation at NWNUG

Josh Holmes is going to be presenting on Microsoft's new multi-platform plug-in Silverlight at the NWNUG Meeting on Tuesday the 15th which is tomorrow at 6:00 PM at the HCR Manorcare building located at:

333 North Summit St.
Toledo, OH 43607

Silverlight is one of Microsoft's latest technologies. It is still in beta but from what I've seen it is pretty cool. They talked a lot about it at the Mix 07 conference. If you want more info about Silverlight go here.

RGP gets $3.2 Million in grants

Northwest Ohio gets another shot of money from the state throgh the State Entrepreneurial Signature Program.

The $3.2 million will be used to establish a business grant called Ignite, which will fund $50,000 grants to assist and support early-stage businesses, according to Steve Weathers, president and CEO of the RGP. The original grant is being used to create Rocket Ventures, a nonprofit organization whose sole focus will be to execute the plan. The remaining $6 million will be used to capitalize a pre-seed investment fund.

It looks like in order to get the money they will have to raise $1.6 million to match the state's money.

I hope that these injections of money really help the area.

Link

Day of .NET in Ann Arbor

I heard about the Day of .Net in Ann Arbor Link from the good folks at the Northwest Ohio .Net User Group

I'm going to try and make it.

Happy Earth Day

It is Earth Day again. There has been a lot of talk lately about climate change and going green.

There is information all over the place when it comes to going green. If you like watching TV then go to the Earth Day Network TV. They have some interesting information about alternative fuels, going green and some other environmental information. Some of their stuff is kind of alarmist but I feel that the issue is very important. Taking what the scientists who study the Earth's Climate are saying things could make a change for the worse here on Earth.

There are so many ways that we are damaging our environment but I think that the most interesting way that we can reduce the impact that we have on our environment is that we can seek different forms of energy production. We have the First Solar manufacturing plant in Perrysburg. There are 4 wind turbines in Bowling Green. There is also a web site about renewable energy in Ohio.

TARTA is participating in a government funded study by driving biodiesel buses.

Also to see what what the government thinks about the environment you can go to the Ohio EPA

I don't know much about them but I thought that I'd mention if you would like to become active the environmental action go to Environment Ohio. I'm sure that there are some local environmental groups but I couldn't find any with a simple Google search.

I hope that everyone has a wonderful Earth Day.

Walk about my neighborhood part 2

The second interesting part of my walk around my neighborhood was when I went into the Ottawa Park. I found out that there is a very interesting amphitheater in the park. It is just screaming for a show to be performed in it. maybe some live musical performances or a play. I just wonder if anyone knows about it.






I noticed that there was a fallen tree in the amphitheater. I hope they clean it up soon.






There was a small group of University of Toledo students going around and cleaning up around the park. I stopped for a while and helped out. Unfortunately due to my terrible memory I have forgotten their names and the name of the organization they are members. (please forgive me) If you ladies happen to stop by and read the post then please let me know and I'll fix it. I think it is wonderful that some of the student in the area are contributing to the area surrounding the university.

Walk about my neighborhood.

Today I took a walk around the neighborhood usually I just stick to walking around my house but today I felt like walking along Central and Monroe.

There are a couple of interesting looking buildings along the way. There were two major surprises along the way. First I looked around a very interesting almost abandoned building on the corner of Monroe and Central. I've been fascinated with this building since I moved into the area. It actually has a lot of architecturally interesting features. What surprised me was when I looked into the window of the once "Doctor's Inn" The inside actually looked very nice and respectable.


The Front side of the "The Doctor's Inn"

The Back Door to "The Doctor's Inn"




A Peek inside "The Doctor's Inn"




The font of the Building


I think that this building has suffered from poor accessibility There is no way of turning into the building going East along Central. Additionally there is no way to park in the front which used to be a feature of the building as you will see later. But due to traffic streamlining the front parking has been eliminated. Though as a driver I think it is great that it is so easy to drive around Toledo I think that it is one of it's downfalls as well. People are too busy going where their going they don't have time to look around themselves. I think with a couple of modifications this intersection could be a more desirable place to stick around.

I found this picture of the same spot from the 1930s in the book "Images of America Toledo A history in architecture 1914 to Century's End. By William D Speck which is an interesting read.


Click image above for a larger image

More in the next post...

Playing Darts with cars.

Totally entertaining! I love that they are shooting cars with a gas powered gun into a giant dart board.

link

Who is sick

I came across a site today called whoissick.com. It is a web site that lets you post your symptoms if you are feeling under the weather. You can see trends of who is sick and with what.

Right now there are 4 guys in the Toledo area who aren't feeling all that that hot. I bet there are some more of you out there. Go ahead and post your symptoms. You may find out you're not the only one.

Link

Happy Darwin Day

I just found out that today was Darwin Day. I want to wish everyone a happy evolution.

I want to thank Jenni Laidman for posting on her blog letting everyone know.

edit: Sorry it was late last night and I didn't find out that it was Darwin Day till past midnight.

Wi-fi Network covers Toledo

Here is an article that I found on the city web site. The city is looking for a company to provide wi-fi to the entire 88 square miles of Toledo. At least that's what it sounded like to me. The article was a little tough to decipher. I had to read through it twice. I think the part that threw me off is their term "Request for Proposals" I'd assume that means they are looking for someone to provide this service. I'm going to have to do some more research on this.

RGP gets Grant for $11.8 Million

Looks like the Regional Growth Partner is doing a pretty good job of getting Grant Money from the State for our region. I'm not sure exactly when this announcement was posted but it must be pretty recent. The money is supposed to go toward high technology Not necessarily Computer technology but that is fine by me I suppose but it would be nice to see some of that go to computer tech.

Part of that $11.8 million award includes $6 million to capitalize a pre-seed fund, investing in 32 to 38 companies, primarily focused in the signature areas of Advanced Materials and Agbiosciences. Advanced materials is focused around the region’s national leadership in thin films materials, but also includes polymers, nanomaterials and other structured materials. Agbioscience supports business in the food production industry, food manufacturing/processing industry and agricultural biofuels

I hope they do some good with that money. I'm still wondering what the results are going to be from the consulting they did with IBM.

Ugg

Normally Dell has given me wonderful service. But this time sucked. I bought a new laptop over the x-mas season. I was and still am excited about it. But when I got it the monitor was flaky and later that day went dead. I called and I had to send the darn thing to get repaired. It finally came back today. I start using it. Then I notice that the screen looks weird. I check the settings. It turns out that the resolution is at 1280x800 and won't go any higher. I paid for a screen that can go up to 1440x900. It is looking like they put the wrong LCD screen on my computer and now I get to send it back to get the right one. I won't get to play with my new laptop till it comes back in a week or more. I'm soooo unhappy right now. I just want to play with my new toy.

-Mark-

CodeMash

I should have posted about this months ago but I have been shirking my blogging duties...

There is a major conference going on for programmers of all types to swap skills and listen to speakers. It is happening right at our back door over in Sandusky Jan 18-19. I believe it is only $99.

CodeMash It looks like the site is down for the moment but hopefully it will be back up soon.

NWNUG - Writing Quality Code

NWNUG is hosting a talk by Dustin Campbell about writing quality code on the 16th of January.

Link

Fun over the holidays.

Over the X-mas season my wife and a couple of my friends made our way to the annual "Tour de Noel" hosted by the Women of the Old West End. On the tour we were able to see several of the historic homes in the old west end of Toledo. My favorites on the tour were the Libbey House, and the Mansion View Inn

Here are some pictures that I took.






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It was a good time. It was the only time this winter that it was actually cold. I highly suggest catching it next year if you can.

Mark

Purfectly pampered pets

It's been a while since my last post. I think that I may try to get back into this again. I may change things up a little bit but I keep kicking myself for dropping off.

I want to plug my brother's business. He started up a pet care business and I thought that I'd link to it. Puurfectly Pampered Pets They take care of your pet while you are away. From what I understand they service our area and are still taking bookings for the holiday.

More later,
-Mark-

ACM Social Dinner

NWOACM is having a meeting coming up on Wednesday the 11th of October 2006. This is a social event. The event is open to anyone who wants to attend. Below are a copy of the e-mail I recieved.

Topic: Whatever anyone wants to talk about.
Date: Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Time: 7:30 – 9:30
Where: Cucino di Betto

For this social meeting we will be on the main floor for Cucino di
Betto’s. This social is open to any ACM member, student or
professional. The full menu will be available for purchase from.

Please RSVP to mbrinkman at nwoacm dot org or nwoacm at crabbynick dot com.

We hope to see you there!

Michael Brinkman
Chair - NWOACM

Microsoft day report

Well I had a good time on Tuesday. I got to see demos of Windows Vista, Office 2007, Sharepoint, Microsoft Dynamics CRM. I also got to try out Virtual Server 2005 and Sharepoint on the Microsoft Bus. I got a break and left again at 5:20 for the NWNUG meeting.

I have to say that the products that really stood out at these sessions were the Sharepoint and Virtual Server for me. I could really see myself using these tools. Don't get me wrong I thought that Windows Vista was very pretty and had some cool new features that will be nice to have but the fact that I can haver virtual computers for free is so sweet.

Also with sharepoint I am very excited about not having to write my own intranet. I'm going to have to do some more reading about it but it looks like you can integrate it with some of their office servers (I know next to nothing about this). The presentation was too fast for Sharepoint but it looked really cool.

At the Northwest Ohio .NET User Group meeting there were lots of tutorials going around. We had a presentation done by Jason Follas. He talked about Delegates in C#. "Basically it is a pointer to a function." It was a very good presentation. I'm awaiting a downloadable version of the .PPT file. I couldn't catch everything on the first swing.

Next was Greg Huber who did a presentation on Microsoft Atlas. Though he explained it isn't called Atlas anymore that's just it's code name. Now they are going with Microsoft AJAX something something. And there are two diffent ways of making your web site look like a desktop application. One is "server centric" with more overhead or there is "client centric" with less overhead but more of that pesky javascript.

The meeting was a good time I was told that the turnout was less than usual but I enjoyed myself. Plus thanks to HCR ManorCare we had a great view to downtown Toledo, a great board room to meet in and some Papa John's Pizza. Additionally I got a free book in their per-meeting raffle thanks to Microsoft.

Next I'll let you know about my trial of the demo software that Microsoft gave me.

Microsoft all day long!

I'm going to the Microsoft Tech Fair that I mentioned on the 15th from 8:30 to 3:30 today. Hopefully I'll be able to play with Windows Vista. I haven't gotten my hands on one of the betas yet. I'm supposed to get to see Office 2007 there as well. Then tonight I'm going to the AJAX presentation at the NWNUG meeting that I mentioned on the 19th.

I was thinking about having a meetup next week on Monday or Tuesday between technolgy professionals in the area at the downtown Frickers. I'll post more about this later.

Downtown Technology Incubator

I was went to my first press conference ever yesterday. It was a good time. I got to meet Ben Konop who is running for the Lucas County Commissioner. He is put forth a proposal to start a high tech incubator downtown. This proposal in it's essence is to help spur tech startups using state funds. The facilty would provide some technical support, utility discounts and other such incentives. The inspiration came from the Youngstown Business Incubator.

The Non-profit organization a (501 (c) 3 charitable , non-profit corporation) out in Youngstown was able, with their incubator, to create about 200 tech jobs, and 16 patents since the year 2000, when they started. Primarily they work with B2B software. Here are a list of the companies that are part of the incubator out there.

This proposal seems like a very good idea to me. It would provide opportunities to technical people who normally wouldn't have the funding to start developing the ideas they have.
I think that in order for Toledo's ecconomic survival it needs an industry other than manufacturing. I think that the talent is definately in the area between all the universities in the area that provide high tech education: University of Toledo's Engineering and business technology and technical degrees, Bowling Green State University's progams and Owens technical degrees.

Mr. Konop suggested that the people who end up being involved in the incubator can determine which high tech industry to pursue. Whether or not Ben wins the election I'd like this idea to continue. It is encouraging that someone is thinking about ways to encourage tech business in the area.

I want to thank Lisa Renee at the glass city jungle for posting the press conference notice.

One thing that I found interesting with being at the press conference was that only a couple of people showed up for the press conference. Don from the Nookular Option was there along with a reporter Erica Blake from The Toledo Blade, a camera man from WTOL was there too. It was fun. I feel like a real reporter.

I think that with this sort of creative ideas I think that Toledo could become a better place.