Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

...is here.

It's a review of the first public CTP of Microsoft's Expression Interactive Designer.

It's been a long time coming. First rumoured at the 2003 PDC (Microsoft Professional Developers Conference), Microsoft's Sparkle has finally made it part way out the door.

More than two years after the original whispers of a Microsoft competitor to Flash, Expression Interactive Designer has arrived. Now you can finally start building all those innovative Windows Vista applications Microsoft has been hoping for.

Read the rest on The Register!

I've finally worked out what happens in the middle of "Hummingbird Futures", and working on the scene where the tramp reappears, outside San Francisco Public Library (before going in and looking at the records of the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory which will be where he finds the pointer to the location of the bad guy). I'd originally decided to have him fade in, sitting on a concrete bench, ready to go in through the library doors.

And then I realised - I couldn't remember if there were concrete benches there. I've driven around the Civic Plaza many times (usually looking fro somewhere to park when going to Citizen Cake), but I just wasn't sure if the benches I'd vaguely remembered were there.

What to do? I could IM a couple of folks I know who live in SF, and who were online. But they're in a different part of town.

The solution was simple. I fired up Google Earth, typed in "san francisco public library" and clicked "fly to". A quick zoom, and a spin around the building, and it was clear there weren't any benches. However, there were steps. A solution. And a new tool for my writing arsenal.

And now, back to the story...