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I didn’t write about it before, not wanting to jinx it, but a couple months ago, I interviewed with Microsoft, and was offered a position as the Academic Developer Evangelist for Northern California. I’m on my third day today, and I’m finally at the point where I can actually start doing work rather than spending my time filling out paperwork and getting set up, though I still have plenty of that to do. My position as an ADE is great in that I’m given a chance to get students and faculty excited in the Microsoft Platform. One of the ways that I can do this is by giving presentations to students about Visual Studio, XNA, PopFly, or just about anything I’m interested in, and feel that they would be interested in. I also have the ability to write code of my own and post it online, or make up videos or screencasts. I’m looking into getting some video equipment to record some of the sessions I attend, and to make some videos of my own. One of these events is the Silicon Valley Code Camp, which I hope to be able to present at this time around.

The second day of Maker Faire was much more laid back than the first. I did a few presentations, learned some more about the projects I was sharing a booth with, and helped fix some code for a couple of them. One of them was a robotic whiteboard, for which I helped get the pen toggling code running. You can now click the stick to toggle an actuator’s position, which will lift the pen off of the whiteboard or put it back on. The guy who made the board told me he needs a stronger motor to make it work, but he knows exactly how to implement it now that the code is going. The other project I got a chance to help out with was a web cam to LED sign application. He wanted to make sure that you could only take one picture at a time and wait for the screens to render to prevent errors, so we added a delay timer. He also wanted to fix the aspect ratio a bit, because the gaps on the LED boards were elongating the picture. We looked at stretching the width to make it look better, but ended up just skipping some lines, so the picture looked like you were behind bars. It looked good, but I think the other fix would have been better.

I also had more of a chance to look at the other booths. I joined the EFF, who wanted a whole lot of personal information, considering. One of the booths was for a magazine called Ambidextrous, which is a project running out of Stanford. I’m going to see if I can work with them once I start working with more schools. And, I got a bag full of ducks from one of the ADEs who was looking to offload some of his swag.

I’m absolutely determined to go back to Maker Faire next year.

I’m in a session geared towards students at Community One. The presenter is talking about gamers raising gamers. I think about this topic all the time. I’m absolutely sure that my kids will be gamers. I’m making sure that they read some of the books that I read as a kid, and are playing games with me. In fact, my daughter can own the game I’m writing now.

I haven’t decided yet which other sessions I’ll be sitting in on, but I do want to see the Project Darkstar talk.

I’m at a friend’s house right now in Mountain View, getting ready for the second day of Maker Faire. The first day was a lot of fun. I got to walk around and take a look at some of the booths, but spent most of my time with the guys over at the Microsoft booth.

There was a pretty cool game they had there where you used a cell phone camera to pick up game pieces to build an Incredible Machine with. I was #1 for a short time, but my reign came to an end after I suggested a way that someone could beat my score, and they used the method to absolutely trounce me. One of the guys there showed me some of the other uses for the tech, including an awesome augmented reality app that displayed 3d objects oriented based on the marker. I’m going to talk to them a bit further to see if this is something that I can use in some of my events.

I also got the chance to spend some time demoing some of the tech they had at the booth, giving the other guys a bit of a break. I got to practice demoing tech that I’d never seen before, similar to when I was at the Imagine Cup event a couple weeks ago showing off Microsoft Sync. This time I showed off Clint’s self balancing skateboard, garnering a lot of sympathy for the fact that it wasn’t functioning because the gyroscope was stolen, along with a couple of laptops, in a smash and grab from Clint’s car. I also showed off Deep Zoom, which I had played with before, and Photosynth, which I was seeing for the first time. I watched the demo for Photosynth twice, then figured I knew as much about it as I needed to, so I jumped right in and started demoing. During the brief breaks I had, I played with the different features a bit and found it to be a cool little system. I can’t wait until they release it in whatever form it’s going to be released in and let me play with it.

I’m heading to the Bay Area this weekend to attend a couple tech conferences. I was invited to meet up with some of the guys from Microsoft to hang out at their booth at Maker Faire, so I’ll be there on Saturday and Sunday. I should be working on the game I’m developing with XNA for my senior project to get it ready before my presentation in two weeks. I also hear that the Popfly team is going to be showing off something new, so I’ll be at their booth for a bit. Then, on Monday, I wasn’t going to be able to make CommunityOne, but the instructor for my class on Monday is going to be attending, so class was canceled, freeing up my day. It’s great how things work out like this sometimes.

I came down today from Chico to meet up with the Code Trip in San Francisco, where they were spending some time at VSLive! San Francisco 2008 and talking with some of the attendees . I went around with Anand, Woody, and Kurt to film some footage for the site, and spent some time on the bus working on a Silverlight 2.0 App. I’m currently on the bus in Mountain View in the parking lot of the Microsoft campus here. Tomorrow, we’ll be attending a Bay.NET event. Well, I’m going to get back to the App.

My brother and I were looking for somewhere that sold lunch at 10:30AM, but nobody seemed to be open. We walked by a Pizza Guys, and noticed a help wanted sign in the window. My brother imagined that the staff had somehow locked themselves inside, the phone was out, and this was their attempt to reach the outside world. We imagined them slowly running out of oxygen inside, putting up the sign as a last ditch effort, but everyone reading it wrong.

The Web Development using .NET class met for the first time yesterday. It seems that about half the registered students forgot when the class was going to meet, but the half that showed up was great. I am technically listed as the Teacher’s Assistant, with Phil Colbert, a Graduate Student with quite a bit of industry experience as the instructor, but we’ve decided that the students will be better off if we co-teach the course. We’re setting up the classes to include hands on components along with the lectures, with both of us lecturing. It worked out great yesterday. There are certain things that you intend to say that, when you’re up in front of the class, you skip over, but having another instructor there with you ensures that you cover it. I’m really looking forward to the rest of the class, though with only 9 meetings left, I’m a little concerned with how much we can cover.

I’m down in Mountain View at Mashup Camp 6 this week. I’ve seen some pretty cool technologies that have come out since the last Mashup Camp I was at, like Ribbit, which has some interesting Voice to Text and VOIP technology. I’m a little surprised that there isn’t a Microsoft presence at Mashup University, though. Last time, we saw some great stuff from the PopFly team. I’ve heard a lot of questions about it this time around, so I’m hoping to lead a session tomorrow during the camp portion to get people looking at PopFly again.

I’ve got a series of interviews tomorrow for my ideal job, and of course, I come down with a cold. Well, actually, I came down with the cold a couple of days ago, but then my voice just went this morning. I’ve taken some Nyquil, and hope to be better by tomorrow.