There was about a month or two where I was offline due to a various reasons: First I was in the process of moving, and then I was waiting for Comcast to perform their installation, and lastly I have been putting in a good bit of time to keep up with my work commitments.

All of that being said, I have to admit that another huge reason for my recent silence was that I bought an Xbox 360 and now have a super-sweet HD home theater system to play it on!

I finally have my home system the way I want it. Media Center system is actually in another room - I only have the XBox as a video source in here (using XBMCE). I had all of the surround speakers installed into the walls and ceiling - thats the white panels on the wall. I still need to take the grills down and paint them to match the wall color, which will make them blend in much better.

I also took the opportunity to run a 6 source / 6 zone structural audio system. Thats just a weird way to say that I can play any one of 6 audio sources (including the media center) to any one of 6 rooms in the house. Each room has it's own volume control and source selection keypad, and a pair of stereo speakers flush mounted in the ceiling, as well as a pair of outdoor speakers for the courtyard. I know it sounds excessive, but it wasnt terribly expensive to do while the house was still being framed, and it's a fantastic upgrade for resale value if we decide to move again in a few more years. Not only that, but it's super cool to have.

Testing out the new Windows Live Writer blog posting tool.

 

First thoughts...

• I really like the interface. Very similar to OneNote 2007 (which I have been relying on heavily lately). Perhaps this is where the "blog this" menu action in OneNote will go to in the RTM of Office 12?
• PITA to set up for my dasBlog configuration. But then again, at least it works in the end. Can't say that many of the other blogging tools were even viable (I have tried out a few like Performancing and others).
• It's Pretty quirky, definately not ready for RTM yet. First bug found: If you post an entry from Live Writer, and then delete it from within your blog, and try to repost a new copy from Live Writer,.. there is a really good chance it will fail. Second bug found: Ignore that "Date/Time" property for posts - dasBlog fails to decode it correctly and once set in Live Writer, it doesnt seem to be able to be cleared.
• I really like the way it handles inline images. It just works.
• The connection with MapPoint is pretty cool too... I wish they would support Google Maps as well.
• I thought it was interesting that the "Insert Link" dialog knows about the semi-standard rel=nofollow attribute.
• Before publishing, it really should give me a warning that no categories have been selected, or at least an option to enable such a warning.

And in case you were wondering what it looks like...

Very cool... just Window-S (a screen capture hotkey from OneNote) then Ctrl-V into Live Writer. That productivity alone makes it worth using for me (for a while at least).

If you want to try it out, you can find some details from this link ---> Introducing Windows Live Writer. You can also download the beta install directly from this link --> Writer.msi (direct link from MS Download site). Lastly, if you are using dasBlog then you will definately want to follow the guide from their documentation site: Posting to dasBlog with Windows Live Writer.