I am having a problem with Outlook.  Actually, the problem is with disorganization in my life and I want to try to use Outlook to help me sort things out.  I've got lots of stuff going on at the moment - at work, at the user groups, and in my personal life.  So I thought having all this stuff in the calendar and tasklist in Outlook would certainly help out a bit.  Then I could use some of the tips Kirk mentioned in his blog and try to keep myself on track better.

Here's the problem:

I have 2 computers - 1 work desktop and 1 laptop.  I'd like to keep the calendar in the laptop up to date with everything, but I have a tendancy to spend so much time in front of my desktop at work that I find most of my life is managed through the calendar there.  The desktop Outlook is hooked to an Exchange server, the laptop is not.  I want a way to synchronize my calendar, tasks, and notes from my desktop to my laptop.  I don't need this to be two way synchronization.  I don't want my e-mail from work "infecting" my laptop.  I don't want to have to manage multiple profiles to get this to work, and I don't want to have multiple calendars in the same view.  I want everything on one calendar.  How do I do this?

I thought that this list of helpful advice from SlipStick might help out, but I was so confused by the array of conflicting advice that I gave up.

Does anyone out there have a solution to this issue?  Thanks!

-- Matt Ranlett

It looks like the new name of Windows will be Vista!  No more of the formerly know client as Windows codename “Longhorn”

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/default.mspx

—Brendon Schwartz

Posted with BlogJet

http://www.theembassyvfx.com/ - a visual effects company.  Check out the really neat (totally fictional) robot car.

Bill Baker is visiting Atlanta this week for the Microsoft Global Business conference, and he graciously volunteered to come speak before the SQL Server User Group for the second year in a row, although this is the first time I’ve seen him speak.  Bill Baker is the program manager for the SQL Server Business Intelligence products, including Analysis Services, Reporting Services, Integration Services (DTS), and more. 

 

Bill is an extremely entertaining person to watch – complete with Steve Ballmer imitations.  We talked about SQL Server 2005 in general and how the new release is going to really help everyone out with some really cool new features.  We talked about the new licensing SKUs – Enterprise, Standard, WorkGroup (a new SKU), and Express (MSDN).  The cost has gone up a bit, from $20,000 to $25,000 for the Enterprise Edition.  Standard now costs $6000, Workgroup costs $3,500, and Express is free.  Special note – the Developer Edition, which is the Enterprise Edition with a single connection license, costs a mere $49!

 

I can’t really tell you what Bill talked about because he was all over the map – the presentation was entirely question and answer.  This was the first technology presentation I’ve been to in years where the speaker didn’t even use a computer.  Not even a projected My Name Is slide!  No props at all.  We did cover lots of cool ground.  For example, did you know that the most requested feature from the community (submitted through the Ladybug system) was a bell at the completion of a query?  Who thinks of that stuff?  Did you know that when Beta 1 of SQL 2005 came out, that the favorite feature of the community was the new SQL Management Console tool that replaces Enterprise Manager?  Can you guess what the least favorite feature was?  That’s right – the new SQL Management Console!  Talk about a schizophrenic user community!  We apparently will not be getting hashed indexes.  We ARE able to run SQL 2000 and SQL 2005 side by side.  Database mirroring is a great cool new technology that requires three computers – a primary, a mirror, and a monitor that votes which system is the primary and which is the mirror.  Did you know that you could potentially have all three systems in the same box?  Sure, why not?  Hardware is way more dependable these days than software.  That’s job security for us!  We covered so many topics – ETS, OLTP, building cubes as a background process, etc, that I can’t even remember everything we talked about.

 

We had some great sponsors – Microsoft, Unisys, ProClarity, and Doug McDowell himself (or whomever reimburses him) – who brought in some incredible barbeque for the meeting.  Thanks guys!

 

Quick note #1 – when you have SQL or technology questions, be sure to post them to the MSN groups.  Doug was telling me that before the meeting he was hit with 10 technical questions and he didn’t have the time to sit and really think about the answers.  By posting to the MSN groups, you have a much wider community than just Doug looking at the questions and suggesting answers.

 

Quick note #2 – There is a SQL Server Road show $99 one day training event occurring at the Cobb Galleria hosted by Windows IT Pro magazine and the SQL Pass organization.  There will be three tracks – DBA, Dev, and BI.  Register through the www.AtlantaMDF.com banner and you’ll get a free $25 AMEX gift card.  If 25 people register through the AtlantaMDF banner, the AtlantaMDF organization will receive a donation that will help us continue to provide pizza and beverages to the members.

 

-- Matt Ranlett

 

Last night was the first time I’ve ever attended one of the Atlanta SPIN meetings.  This group seems to be targeted at project managers and seems to cover topics like Scrum and CMMI.  These are great topics, but outside of my personal area of interest so I probably won’t be going back unless they get another headline speaker like Mr Randy “Granville” Miller.  I will say this about the group – they had the most formal meeting and leadership structure I’ve ever seen in a community user group!  We had about 35 people in attendance, which one of the SPIN leaders said was extremely good turnout for their groups.

 

Randy Miller has an impressive pedigree in the Agile development community – he’s worked for years at Borland and Microsoft to bring eXtreme Programming and Agile techniques to the masses.  He’s written several books, including an upcoming book soon to be released.  Randy came to the SPIN meeting to talk about his work with Microsoft and the Microsoft Solutions Framework (he actually got “yelled” at for starting his talk too early!).

 

For those unfamiliar with MSF, you can learn a lot on the Team Systems MSF homepage.  Essentially, MSF is a set of software tools which help you stick to a software development process.  For example, you have a business analyst talk to a customer and write up a list of requirements.  The list of requirements is broken down into small tasks by project managers.  The developers estimate how long each task will take and hand the task list back to the PMs.  The PMs schedule the development cycles and turn the tasks back over to the development team.  The devs work like mad getting quality stuff (including automated test (we hope) out to the test team and finally everything is built for the customer.  In this development process, there are some tools helping you get through the process.  The business analyst might use Excel spreadsheets.  PMs might use MS Project.  Devs and Tests might use Visual Studio.  Visual Studio Team Systems can actually link all of these tools together with the built in issue tracking and reporting system so the experience of managing the software development process is seamless.  MSF for Agile is one type of software development process.  There are countless other methods which can be used with VSTS – Scrum, CMMI, Iterative, Rational, Waterfall, etc.  That’s actually the coolest part of MSF – it can be completely customized to your particular method of development.  MSF for Agile, out of the box, is simply a set of recommendations and process guidance for Agile development.

 

Randy spent 99% of his time showing us the tools, only resorting to PowerPoint to display a graphic and web links.  We watched as he started a brand new project and talked us through adding requirements, planning out iterative cycles, breaking larger tasks into smaller tasks, reporting on the status of those tasks, etc.  The “business analyst” persona created a spreadsheet of requirements, which was checked into a SharePoint work area.  The spreadsheet was imported to Project, which automatically populated the VSTS work items.  We did some fake scheduling and prioritizing and we were ready to develop.  We looked at several reports showing our status and what things would look like as they went wrong.

Randy was a great presenter and I’m sorry that he only had an hour to talk to us.  I felt that he had more to say if only he had the time.  Oh well.  If you were unable to make it to the presentation, I hope that my blog entry piques your interest and you start to learn more about the extraordinarily flexible toolset that Visual Studio Team Systems offers.

 

-- Matt Ranlett

The next Atlanta MSDN event takes place on August 28th.  Check out the topics Glen is planning on covering:

• Developing Compelling User Interfaces with Ease in ASP.NET 2.0
• Data Access with ADO.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 2.0
• Building High Performance Applications with ASP.NET 2.0

 

 Be sure to register early as we've been hearing about 400+ people registering for these events.

-- Matt Ranlett

This is just an alert for those of you who are not keeping up with the calendar:

Tonight: the SPIN group is hosting Randy Miller from the VSTS team at the Microsoft offices

Tomorrow: the SQL Server UG is hosting Bill Baker from the SQL Server Business Intelligence team at the Microsoft offices

Monday: the main .Net UG looks into application platform migration with Mike Sorrentino from BrightStrategy Inc.

-- Matt Ranlett

In honor of the historic landing on the moon, the folks at Google have combined high resolution maps of the moon with their Google Maps technology to give you an incredible interactive view of the lunar surface.  Zoom all the way in to see the footsteps!  Check it out at http://moon.google.com.

-- Matt Ranlett

Microsoft has just released version 5 of their Automotive operating system.  Check out this summary news story on Tom's Hardware.  For more details, go to Microsoft.com's press release area and read all about how Windows Automotive will allow connected systems in your car.

-- Matt Ranlett

Author(s): Ingo Rammer and Mario Szpuszta
Publisher: APress
Publisher Link: www.apress.com
Published: February 2005
Categories: .NET, Remoting, Distributed computing, C#
ISBN: 1-59059-417-7
Online Order Links: Amazon.com, BN.com, …

  
Review Date: June 2005
Reviewers Name: Trent Whiteley

Summary:

Although the title of this book, Advanced .NET Remoting, obviously indicates that the designated audience for this book is the “advanced” programmer, the initial three chapters deal with the basics of remoting.  Those already familiar with remoting will, more than likely, be bored with this introduction and will be better off starting off in chapters 4 and following.  The authors present the latest distributed application development technologies available as well as weakness in each technology leading up to the presentation of .NET remoting and justifying its existence.  While not presenting .NET remoting as the Holy Grail of distributed computing, they do provide grounds for using it in most situations over the current distributed technologies.  By chapter three the reader has already learned how to write a basic remoting application and is presented with the basic concepts of .NET remoting.  These concepts are clearly explained with great supporting examples.

After the introductory chapters, the authors delve into a number of disjoint topics covering chapters four through ten.  Some of these topics include security, configuration and deployment, object lifetimes, versioning, best practices, and debugging/troubleshooting.  By isolating these topics in their own chapters, the reader can treat this book as a quick reference when questions arise in dealing with one of these areas.  Again the authors provide excellent examples to support their topics, thus aiding in grasping some of the more difficult aspects of remoting.  The authors also present, from their vast experience, a number of different ways of achieving the same results, after which they reveal the advantages of one method over the others or motivations and scenarios where each method can be used to better advantage.  At times, while reading, it appears that there is no one sure way to write remoting apps properly.  This is exactly what the authors are trying to impart.  There are numerous ways to use remoting, but each one has drawbacks or weaknesses and the authors try to give you a broad range of knowledge to deal with them.  There is no silver bullet to writing remoting apps and this sometimes leads to information overload while reading this book.  The reader will likely find himself returning to this book to gain clarity in resolving design issues.

Finally, in the remaining five chapters, the authors get into the nitty gritty of .NET remoting.  Beginning with the underlying structure of remoting, the authors give the reader a baptism by fire in proxies, dispatchers, sinks, channels and messages.  If none of the previous terms are familiar to you, then you may find this chapter a bit of a challenge.  However, it is an extremely well-written section on exactly how remoting works and reading it is time well invested.  Mastering this chapter provides the basis for proceeding through the remainder of the book with your sanity intact as the proceeding chapters deal primarily with extending and customizing .NET remoting.  The chapters on sinks and developing custom sinks provide the reader with some of the best knowledge for creating custom remoting apps as they are the conduits through which all communication passes between client and server.  Understanding channels allows the reader to customize the transport mechanism through which all communication passes.  After successfully navigating through this book, the reader should be well-equipped to handle a vast array of remoting projects.  This book is in no way for the timid and is a challenging read for all but experienced remoting programmers.  Having persevered through its reading, though, the reader will not regret the time invested and the knowledge gained.

This book is most useful to:

This book will be most useful to those developing multi-tier, distributed applications, webservice developers and C# developers in general.

Recommendation:

Reviewer's Overall Cow Rating: 5 out of 5 Cows

I would highly recommend this book to anyone of moderate to advanced experience in .NET and C# with any degree of distributed application development experience.  While the authors present the foundation of remoting early on to provide a basis for understanding to those new to remoting, the remaining sections of the book deal with far more advanced topics (even dealing with the underlying structure of remoting) which will appeal to the more advanced developers.

With the help of people in the user group community we loaded the initial website for SharePoint 1,2,3!  We will get the registration set up this week so check back and make sure you register for the events.

If you do not know about the SharePoint 1,2,3 event it is part of our new user group, the Atlanta Microsoft Professionals. 

Thanks to Jake Dan Attis, Keith Rome, Chris Wallace and Matt Ranlett,  who are the other guys that are helping to put this event together.  Make sure and thank them for giving up their weekends and nights to help out with the event.

We have many more ideas and events that we want to try to plan, so we will keep you posted on what is to come.

—Brendon Schwartz

Posted with BlogJet

I work in a place where we have lots of clients with lots of servers and hundreds of remote terminals.  If you ever have a problem on a terminal while it's in use, it's inconvenient to the users to tell them that you need to take over their teminal for a while just so you can look at the event log.  So you use remote tools to read the eventlogs.  I do this quite frequently, but I thought it might be worth sharing this article someone sent me.

***********************BEGIN ARTICLE************************

Viewing remote Event Logs

By Adrian Grigorof, B.Sc., MCSE

The description of events is not stored in the Event Logs but in Message Files specific to each application. The Event Viewer is able to open remote event log files (binary files with the EVT extension) but not the Message Files. The Message Files (actually DLL or EXE files) are required in order to properly display the description of the event.

For example, assume that computer APPSERVER is running an application called "Smart Application", a service called "smartapp". When the service is started, smartapp generates an application event log entry. Running Event Viewer on APPSERVER on can see the event description as follows:

"The Smart Application service has started successfully."

Running the Event Viewer from the administrators workstation (ADMINWKS) and connecting to the remote registry of APPSERVER, one can see the event description quite differently:

"The description for Event ID (100) in Source (smartapp) could not be found. It contains the following insertion string(s): The Smart Application service has started successfully."

All this means that the Message File specific to Smart Application events is not installed on ADMINWKS or there is no message file defined for that application. In case that there is a message file and if it is desired to display the event properly on the administrator's computer (or on any computer) the Message File dll has to be installed.

Here is the procedure:

1. Locate the dll

All the application event logs messages DLLs are defined under the following registry keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EventLog\Application

All the system event logs messages DLLs are defined under the following registry keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EventLog\System

So, for example, Smart Application would probably have an entry for its Application-type events like the one below:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EventLog\Application\SmartApp

EventMessageFile (of REG_EXPAND_SZ type): C:\Program Files\SmartApplication\smartapp.dll

All the application event log messages are defined in the smartapp.dll

2. Export the registry keys

Using REGEDIT select the applicable registry keys. In this example:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EventLog\Application\SmartApp

On the Registry menu, click Export Registry File and select a file name (for example,SmartApp.reg).

3. Import the registry keys into ADMINWKS

Copy the SmartApp.reg to ADMINWKS and using REGEDIT import the keys in the local registry.

4. Copy the message file on ADMINWKS

From APPSERVER C:\Program Files\SmartApplication copy smartapp.dll to the ADMINWKS C:\Program Files\SmartApplication

5. The events should display the description properly when viewed from ADMINWKS

In some cases, there is no Message File so the description is not displayed properly not even on the computer running the application. This usually indicates a poorly written application (that is the application is creating event log entries but the programmers didn't bother creating Message Files) or the installation of the application was incomplete or corrupted.

In many cases, one can deduct the actual description by reading just the last part of the message. So for example, from "The description for Event ID (100) in Source (smartapp) could not be found. It contains the following insertion string(s): The Smart Application service has started successfully." one can discard everything but "The Smart Application service has started successfully.". This would work for events that do not contain parameters and sometimes may offer clues even for those that do use parameters.

***********************END ARTICLE***************************

-- Matt Ranlett

I am glad to see there is a good response to our new group; the Atlanta Microsoft Professionals.  As you can see we are going to start off with SharePoint for our first topic area for three months.  Thanks to Glen Gordon for the suggestion of covering a topic for a couple months! 

For follow up topics we are going to do BizTalk and Visual Studio Team Systems (VSTS).  Please let me know what topics everyone is interested in so we can also cover those.

Fill out the Weekly Survey if you get a chance.  These are just online check boxes and shouldn’t take more than 3 seconds to do.

Right now we have a lot going on and a lot of work to do.  If anyone is interested in helping out please let us know.  Thanks for your patience in advance and we will get the content up as fast as we can.

—Brendon Schwartz

Posted with BlogJet

I’ve recently blogged about SharePoint123 – the upcoming series of SharePoint training hosted by the Atlanta Community.  The Atlanta Community organizing the SharePoint123 sessions has decided the best way to keep things organized is to form a new user group – the Atlanta Microsoft Professionals.  The mission of the Atlanta Microsoft Professionals is to study in depth some of Microsoft’s tools, including SharePoint. 

We’ve finally gotten a rough web presence online for the Atlanta Microsoft Professionals User Group at www.atlantamspros.com.  We will be putting up a site for the SharePoint123 events very soon, but the user group site at www.atlantamspros.com will be the central point for membership registration.  Register with the site to receive all future newsletters and e-mail communications.

— Matt Ranlett

posted with BlogJet

We are lucky enough to have one of the keynote presenters from the 2005 PASS Community Summit here in Atlanta for the AtlantaMDF meeting.  If you are interested in SQL Server and want to go to an event, check it out.  This takes place September 27 -30, 2005.

http://www.sqlpass.org/events/summit05/

I bet our own Atlanta Solid Quality Learning (SQL) member, Douglas McDowell, will be going. So make sure you talk to him about the event.

—Brendon Schwartz

Posted with BlogJet

We had a mid-sized group at the meeting tonight – 13 people in attendance.

Sandy Roach began our meeting with the second part of his presentation on Delegates and Events.  This time we focused on Events and how Visual Basic syntax looks different for events as opposed to delegates.  Where a delegate is essentially a function pointer, events are the Visual Basic implementation of the Observer pattern.  An event publisher defines an event and maintains a list of objects interested in receiving messages about that event.  When the event is raised, each of the interested objects, or subscribers, is notified and their event handling code is executed.  Multiple subscribers can register interest in an event, and the object actually defining and registering the event is not notified whether or not any subscriber actually receives the event.  Sandy showed us several demos illustrating events – two console events and one familiar GUI app showing button clicks raising events.

 After Sandy, I took the floor and showed off a 100 level view of DotNetNuke.  We looked at what web portals are in general as well as what kinds of functionality you get out of the box with DotNetNuke.  We examined several of the modules, their edit pages and their admin pages.  We looked at how DotNetNuke supported multiple portals from a single install.  After talking about DotNetNuke in general, we discussed the upcoming DotNetNuke project, where we are going to build a working module in the VB.Net group and turn it over to the open source community.  After we talked about DotNetNuke, we took a quick look at Windows SharePoint Services and how that differs from DotNetNuke.

— Matt Ranlett

posted with BlogJet

Introducing a new concept in Atlanta User Groups – SharePoint123! (website coming soon!)

 

I’m pleased to be the first to introduce a new concept in User Groups here in Atlanta – SharePoint123!  Organized like one of those expensive training classes, complete with syllabus and hands on labs, SharePoint123! is designed to rapidly introduce developers to Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services and the intricacies of developing for this relatively new groupware product.

Windows SharePoint Services is a free product that integrates with Microsoft Office XP and 2003 to give users an excellent team-based approach to work.  Have you ever had to work with someone further away than the next cube, and wanted to let that person or group of people know when you make changes to task lists, documents, slide shows, and spreadsheets?  Sometimes storing these documents in a public location like Outlook’s Public Folders or VSS isn’t enough.  Sometimes you need more.  What if you want to ask someone who previously worked on a document a question – wouldn’t it be nice to be able to do that directly from Word?  Windows SharePoint Services addresses these needs and many more!  SharePoint technologies encompass the highly scalable and extensible Windows SharePoint Services and the Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server to offer web-based portals ranging from individual sites and team sites to entire corporate intranets and even extranets.

Come to the sessions to learn more about using and developing for SharePoint!

 

-- Matt Ranlett

 

 

I’m really excited to share this – I’ve been keeping it semi-secret ever since I found out about it.  While I was at Tech Ed, I won a contest sponsored by Microsoft and the Excell Data Corporation.  The grand prize was a portable media center from Creative!  The same model Michael has.  It finally came in the mail last Friday and I’ve been playing with it ever since.

 

 

It’s really a cool device, about a third larger than my cellphone (although it does have a protective case that makes it seem much larger than it really is).  The thing (and case) actually does fit in my pocket, but not entirely comfortably.  Anyway – about the device itself:  think of it as an iPod capable of displaying movies!  It is way more than that, but that seems to get the message across the best.  It runs Microsoft’s Portable Media Center shell on top of Windows CE – which means it turns on and off instantly.  It plays music – both WMA and MP3 (WMA results in a slightly smaller file).  It shows photos (JPG is the only format I’ve tested).  It plays videos (WMV videos, but the process of putting AVI and MPG videos onto the machine encodes them into usable WMV format).  It even allows you to play music while watching a slideshow of your favorite photos!  The 20 Gb drive holds so much stuff that with 465 songs, 173 pictures, and 66 videos (including a full length movie) I’ve only used up 3 Gb.  I took a 2 hour movie (The Missing with Tommy Lee Jones) off a DVD and encoded it down to 318 Mb and put it on the thing.

 

Check out this great review from a Media Center MVP

 

I don’t know if I’ll attempt developing for the device, I’ve got lots of stuff on my plate at the moment and I never have free time.  I’m sure I’ll be randomly posting about what I do with my PMC (like, if I ever write a useful program for it).

 

-- Matt Ranlett

posted with BlogJet

Wednesday, July 20^th, Randy Miller from Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2005 Team Systems group is coming to the Microsoft Offices to talk to the SPIN process User Group about the newest features of Visual Studio Team Systems and MSF Agile.  For more information, visit www.atlantaspin.org.  To prevent us from having three User Group meetings in a single week, we have elected to cancel the Monday meeting of the Atlanta Mobility User Group.

 

-- Matt Ranlett

posted with BlogJet

Bill Baker, program manager of the SQL Server Business Intelligence team, is coming to town on July 21^st to speak to the SQL Server User Group.  To accommodate Mr. Baker’s busy schedule, the SQL Server group will be meeting in the Microsoft Offices off of Mansell Rd instead of their normal meeting location in the Concourse buildings.  Be sure to visit www.atlantamdf.com to register for the meeting.  Registration is used to calculate how much pizza should be purchased.

 

-- Matt Ranlett

posted with BlogJet

At least she is when it comes to famous people on TV.  It has happened twice now – once with that movie Be Cool with John Travolta.  In one of the early scenes there is this guy off in the distance and she sees his face for .02 seconds and says that he’s the Rock.  It looks nothing like the Rock, so me and the two other people I’m watching the movie with all bet her money that it isn’t.  We were all wrong and she should have made $15 if we’d paid her.   The second time was while watching the Family Guy.  There was an episode where Death comes to Peter on a golf course.  I swore the voice was Norm MacDonald and she swore it wasn’t.  Turns out that Norm MacDonald did play the character of Death on the Family Guy once, but not in this episode!  It was Adam Carolla.  Can I help it if these two guys sound the same to me?  Anyway, instead of paying money, I now have paid in 2 hours of massage!  My hands are getting tired!

— Matt Ranlett

Sandy Roach began the group meeting with a presentation of delegates and event handling.  Sandy tried to show us some simple examples of delegates in Visual Basic – including a sample which uses delegates to invoke a class’s instance and shared (static) methods.  Sandy also covered multicast delegates, which invoke multiple methods from a single call.  The power of delegates is that you can write code to call a single method, and then use delegates to have that one method call actually make calls to multiple methods.

Reading that sentence, it seems unclear.  So let’s try it with an example.  Suppose we have a program which deals with books.  We have two significant functions: PrintTitle and Totalizer.  If we create a delegate for each of those two functions, we can pass the pointer to the functions into a method call: ProcessBooks.  ProcessBooks with then either print the title of the book or perform the logic in the totalizer function, depending on which delegate was passed to it.  Notice that these two functions do nothing like each other – one handles strings and the other handles numbers.  The fact that the delegates for both have the same signature (number of parameters) means that you can use either delegate from the same method call.  Check back with the original post I wrote covering D’s presentation on delegates to the Mobility User Group.

— Matt Ranlett

posted with BlogJet

 

I took one of those disposable cameras with me to Hong Kong so I wouldn’t risk losing something valuable.  Here are some of the photos I took while in the Far East.  Let me just say in advance that I’m slightly disappointed with the quality of the photos.  Oh well.

The view from my hotel room:

 Nice pool.  Never went in it.

  The sky is indicative of the weather every day I was there – overcast and rainy.

Random shots of populated areas:

 I know, it’s blurry.  This is a photo of the “Ladies Market”, an open air market named after the ladies who shopped here when it used to sell clothing.  Now it’s a free-for-all of thousands of different kinds of products, notably copy watches and handbags.  You can get some good deals here!

 This is Stanley – an area of Hong Kong Island famous for an open air market and the Murray House (the two story building in the center-left).  The Murray House was built by the British in the early 1900s and later moved block by block to this area of Stanley so it’s original location could be used for a gigantic skyscraper Bank of China building.  Now the Murray House is full of restaurants

 Central Hong Kong.  What you can barely see is that between the tall buildings, in the middle of the photo, is a mountain wreathed in fog.  The entire city is built into and on mountains!  Lots of steep hills here.  I’m taking this photo from the dock where the Star Ferry arrives on Hong Kong Island.

 This shot is really grainy, not sure why.  Anyway, the glittering glass tower on the right is the Bank of China building (I think) – the original site of the Murray House.  The city stretches on past what the eye can see.

Lantau Island is home to Hong Kong’s homage to Buddhism – the world’s largest outdoor, seated, bronze Buddha.  Apparently every country boasts that is has the worlds largest Buddha of some sort (standing, reclining, stone, bronze, etc).  This big guy is about 30 feet tall, on the top of a plateau.  To get there you have to climb 261 extremely slippery marble steps.  Underneath the Buddha is an educational museum and vegetarian dining hall.  The project to build this statue was conceived in the early 1970s and finally completed in 1991.

 Standing on the ground, you can get a real feel for the size of the Buddha.  The 261 stairs are directly in front of me.  I’m currently standing in some sort of spirit circle.

   In these two shots I’m climbing up to the top of the plateau.

 

 These bodhisattvas (there are six statues of them at the top of the platform) are shown giving gifts to Buddha.

 Finally the fog cleared for a moment.  Long enough for me to take this photo.

 Looking down from the top.  On the left you can see the spirit circle I mentioned before.  To the right of that is an enormous free standing gateway.  To the far right you can see the dormitories and study area of the monastery.

— Matt Ranlett

posted with BlogJet