The Matt Faus Blog

After much deliberation, I have finally installed and configured Gallery 2.1 (which I must say is amazing software). The main reason I wanted to use software was to cut back on the time it takes me to upload images, and boy has it been a mission accomplished!

The coolest feature is the integrated Windows XP publishing tool, which works miracles! To use this feature, you setup Gallery as you would for any normal install, and then download a .reg file to merge some entries onto your computer. Once the registry file is run, a link shows up in all folders that contain images that says ‘Publish to the Web’. I can make selections of images in the Windows folder, click that link, and presto! Everything is integrated into Windows, so there is no bulky upload tool or need to install anything, everything is handled through web services! The process I go through to upload and start sharing pictures is as simple as this:

1. Snap awesome pix with the digital camera
2. Download image files to local directory in Windows XP
3. Make selection of all images I want to upload to Gallery
4. Click ‘Publish the selected items to the Web’ button in the Windows XP folder task pane
5. Click through a wizard to create a new album with a title and summary information
6. Specify the thumbnail size I would like to use
7. Click GO, sit back, and witness the magic!

It now only takes me 5 minutes to upload a set of images as opposed to an hour or more previously. Needless to say, I will be uploading a lot more pictures!

Without, further ado, please check it out: Matt Faus Pictures

Well, I haven’t written a whole lot about the work I’ve been doing up here in Seattle and I figured now would be a great time to start. In just a few hours Patrick Halstead and Shiraz Cupala will be demoing a solution that I have played a big part in to about 10 big players in the Procurement Group at Microsoft. The solution is called Resource Tracker and it is a project management suite built on InfoPath, SharePoint, and a new technology we have invented - Database Accelerator (aka DBXL). For the demo today it is mainly to show how DBXL works and the cool features it has, but we have been using it internally (which is called ‘dogfooding’ your software) for a while and things are finally starting to come together.

I’m incredibly excited and a little nervous at the same time. It’s awesome that something I’ve been working on is going to be demoed to such a key group in the software world. If they like it and want to hire us to make custom solutions with DBXL it will be even better!

Yesterday was a lot of fun and I got to meet several new people. After taking a ferry to Bainbridge Island we cruised around for a little bit before heading back to a friend’s house for some awesome hamburgers. The ferry ride was pretty cool and I got some nice pictures of the Seattle shoreline. The house that we hung out at also had a great view of “The Sound” (apparently, that’s the hip name for Puget Sound). I met some interesting people, including a MIT graduate that’s now a Project Manager for Microsoft, the Autonomy Systems accountant (the guy who makes sure I get paid!), and several others. It was a great day with beautiful weather and delicious food. Maybe I’ll grab some burgers sometime this week and throw them on the Foreman.

The weather lately has been amazing. It is so relaxing to sit at your computer with the sun shining and the breeze blowing while surfing around the Internet. As of right now it’s 64° F, the sun is shining, and the birds are ‘a chirping. Walking to class could not get any easier.

On that note, I thought I would mention my plans for this summer. On May 4, 2006, I’m headed out to the thriving city of Seattle, Washington. After flying for four hours, but getting there two hours later I’ll be setting up in a downtown apartment and kicking out code for some pretty awesome technology for Autonomy Systems LLC. Autonomy has hired me as a summer intern and with Patrick Halstead (author of Developing Solutions with Microsoft InfoPath) as President and my manager, I am incredibly excited.

I went out to my car to grab something today and saw something I thought was quite hilarious. The landscaping crew had their backpack-sized leaf blowers and were trying to get the leaves to go East, but the wind was blowing West at about 20 mph.

“Oh! Landscapers pull a sly trick as they form a triangular position in hopes to wedge the leaves with their MPX3000 blowers. It’s going to be a close one, Bob.”
“I’m not so sure, Larry, I just received word that Wind is pulling in it’s reserves, and Oh! the Moon is even circling back around to contribute a bit of extra gravitational force to obtain increased velocity!”

What a battle.

With the first week of classes coming to an end, I am really glad to be back at it again. Both Advanced Java and Intro to Unix are going to have me writing quite a few programs (in Java and PERL, respectively), and I am really looking forward to it. Last semester I didn’t really have a chance to program much, and it really started getting on my nerves. Coming up with a program from scratch and following it all the way through gives me such a feeling of satisfaction – I love it! One other class that might give me a few programming projects is Data Structures and Algorithms, however these programs will usually be rather small to simply test an implementation of stuff we learn in class.

Other than school, life is treating me pretty well. I’ve been working quite a bit with Autonomy Systems, and that is very exciting. Next week I have a meeting scheduled with a client in Seattle that needs some help with an InfoPath form she is creating. I’m going to use Microsoft Live Meeting and help her figure out her questions.

Well, every two years or so my family makes the trek from down here in the southern regions of the United States all the way up to Wisconsin. From Dallas it takes about 18 hours to drive (5 people on a plane is expensive), but we’ve got the big van with plenty of space and a drop-down LCD that we can watch movies on or even hook the PS2 up to. I’m pretty excited, it’s always fun hanging out at my Grandparent’s house. I won’t get to see quite as many cousins as I usually do, because two of them are overseas serving in the military, one in Korea and one in Germany, and two have started families of there own and won’t be able to come. Regardless, it’s going to be a lot of fun to play in the snow and my grandmother makes some awesome Christmas munchies (puppy chow is the bomb). With any luck, there will be enough snow to sled down the many hills on their 60+ acres of land and we might even get to shoot guns, sweet!