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Yesterday I drove Bronwen crazy by trying to perfect a 270degree panarama of a lake about 30min from our lodge.

Its 106 MegaPixels when cropped. Best results where using F18 on a tripod but still had focus and whitebalance inconsistancy. I made some full 360 images also but photoshop can't read the jpeg file - Is 38,500 pixels too wide for CS3?

Looks like I need to do some sort of sampling for the scene and then set it all manually. Thinking about building some sort of automated rig from a tripod, telescope mount and IR led to trigger the camera...

Today we grabbed our hire car...we upgraded to a bigger car to get the Sat Nav and it's definatly worth it!

Spent the morning in more meetings at Microsoft before heading over to Bellvue to grab John some Bose Noice Cancelling headphones.  While we were there we played with an iPhone.  The interface is pretty slick, screen very crisp etc.  I think the Microsoft Surface is like a giant iPhone.

Also checked out the new 450D camera.  The new screen is VERY sweet and i managed to resist the temptation to buy a new camera body.

Then off to Edmonds for the night before we go to Olympic National Park for the w'end. On the way and even now it's snowing! I can't believe it's snowing in spring.

Here's a pic of a car we saw outside as we went to grab some food :

Today was the last day of the summit.  The last session was the locknote with Steve Ballmer. The guy is truly amazing..so much energy! The MVPs got to ask questions/give feedback.  Steve was there writing notes and answering each question. I was honestly impressed with the way he handled the questions and the swag from the crowd.

We popped back out to campus for the afternoon for a couple of extra meetings with people we didn't get to see at the summit.  These were really positive which leaves you feeling enthused.

Then we caught up with a bunch of the Aussies and Chuck in the bar at the Sheraton.

Overall, the summit was really good.  It was really well organised..buses, accommodation, information etc. Here's hoping we get to go back next year.

One of the "big things" about going to Microsoft Campus is the chance to visit the company store.  Here you have access to very cheap software/hardware aswell as an array of microsoft branded swag.

We popped in about 5pm on the final day and the store was packed.  Apparantly that was nothing..earlier there were queues out the door, down the stairs and round the building to get in.  So we made use of the opportunity and grabbed a couple of things to take home with us.

Then it was off to the closing party, held in the  Music Museum and Science Fiction Museum right next to the Space Needle was pretty cool.  They had a terminator, r2d2, teddy from ai etc.

Caught up with a few people and met Jamie Thompson who took pics of our mvp attendee map showed in the keynote.

First day of sessions.  Was really good to put some faces to names after many msn conversations and emails.

After the Product Group party, Angus was nice enough to take us to play with a Surface.  About 6 of us tried to play a ghost boxing game..kinda amusing seeing everyone wanting to play at once.  So i took a few pics of the boys playing with the piano app.

Well we made it onto the flight to Toronto, and 6 hrs later we're in Seattle.  The best news is our bags have beaten us (probably made the plane they kicked us off of) and we can grab them and jump staight into a cab for our hotel (do a big dance).

We checkin, quick shower (oh how good a shower feels after a day of travel), change of clothes (feels even better to wear clean clothes) and we try to decide to catch the end of the MVP welcome reception.  Registration is closed so its a bit hard to get in without a badge. Eventually we get in, let ppl know we arrived etc.  Good to see some familiar faces.

So we've missed day 1, but are so glad to be here. Thanks to our MVP Lead Rose and the summit team for making sure our hotel room didn't get given away! Also thx to all those who sent msgs of sympathy.

So what'd we miss?

MVP Girlz Meetup - I'd organised an open invite to any MVP ladies that wanted a coffee and to meet some other ladies to have a coffee at starbucks.  I missed my own party..but the show went on and sounds like about 12 ladies showed up.

Keynote - Our visualisation of the MVP attendees on a Virtual Earth map was shown and got a mention in the keynote today. Check it out at: http://mvp.soulclients.com

This example comes from Steve Lombardi's blog post last year and has been updated to the latest version of Virtual Earth at the time of writing. The code and collection was presented at the Museums and the Web conference in Montreal, Canada.

In the space of 10 minutes you can present a custom collection presented on the Virtual Earth platform within your own web site by leveraging http://maps.live.com as your content editor and storage and using the Virtual Earth API. Here we present the simple code to do this and some extra features like a map search, custom numbered icons and an outline text listing with clickable titles.



To begin, navigate to http://maps.live.com. This is Microsoft's consumer mapping site built on top of the Virtual Earth API but with many more features. Here you can sign in using live ID and add pushpins, polylines, polygons and even 3D models to a collection. For example add some pushpins of famous landmarks in your area, add textual description, an image and a link to further information. Now save your collection and make it public. Here is an example of some landmarks around Montreal:

http://maps.live.com/?v=2&encType=1&cid=5CB0B41C15FA0196!437

Most of the hard work is now done, you have an interface to create and edit your content and share it with the world via GeoRSS, KML or as a VE collection. We will use the last option for this example. In order to access the VE...

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After the nightmare of yesterday..this is how we're fairing...we got up really early and headed over to Air Canada to try and get out of Chicago. We were prepared to split up if it meant at least one of us made it to Seattle for the summit.  The news was not good.  They couldn't get us out through any city on any airline that would get us there any time soon.  So they've sent us back to toronto and then seattle.  Only problem being is we won't hit seattle till 7:30pm tonight...we miss the first day of the summit.

So we've jumped on the 7am flight from Chicago to Toronto, another completely full flight..we're rows apart on the plane, and 22hrs later we've made it from Montreal to Toronto.  It's so groundhog day here..back on the same sort of plane,  same security checkpoints.  This time we've got 7hrs till our flight (same flight number and everything).  So we're in basically the same clothes with about 1 1/2 hours sleep and may or may not ever see our bags again.

So in the end we left montreal at 12pm on the 13th and will hopefully arrive in seattle at 7:30pm  14th, via Toronto, Chicago, Toronto, Seattle.  Will post again when we get to Seattle and have a hotel and internet.

So after a long day of running around in circles we're completely stranded in Chicago, with no way to get to Seattle for the Summit tomorrow.  So now you've got the headline you can choose whether or not to hear the day's saga.

This morning I work up early..couldn't sleep and packed up our things ready for our flight from Montreal, through Toronto to Seattle.  Wandered downstairs, checked out and had a nice breakfast in the restaurant to notice it snowing outside! So we mosied over to the Montreal airport as we were way early for our 3pm flight.  We checked in to both our Montreal and Toronto flights (boarding passes and all).  Must be a full flight on the Toronto to Seattle leg as we aren't seated together.

We find our gate and chill for a few hours till our flight leaves. We leave on time and arrive on time in Toronto.  Here we have to go through US customs, quantine and pick up our bags and put on the conveyor to our next flight.  As usual, I get picked out for the "not so random screening" and they swab my camera bag.  I swear they regret picking on me everytime when they work out how many compartments the lowepro bag has.

So we finally get downstairs where we can look up which gate to go to as we've got 20 mins till the flight leaves.  We rock up at the gate as the last passengers are going through. 

Us: "We're here to board the flight to Seattle"Air Canada lady: (with a perplexed look) "We're done, everyone's on the plane and accounted for"Us: "sorry? we have boarding passes and our bags have been checked through"

Still not convinced she assures us they have no record of us on the flight..looks us up and says we've be shifted to tomorrow's flight.  Not impressed, we need to get in tonight so we're there for the start of the MVP summit.

Air Canada lady: "The plane is completely full, let me see what i can do.....I can put you on a flight to Seattle through Chicago with United"US: "Yes please".

We get our boarding pass to chicago and a Flight Interuption manifest...

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Today I battled the cold and did a photo walking tour.  Essentially, you wander around with a photographer and take photos. It was interesting, mainly because I took photos that I would never have thought to take before.

It was sooooo cold.  At points i couldn't feel my fingers and i was wearing gloves.  Below are a few of the pics i took..bit different to my usual happy snaps.