In college I wrote a lot of code. A lot a lot a lot of code. Especially Junior Fall semester when I was in these two classes where the students unexpectantly couldn’t finish the coursework and thus most were completing their final projects 2 months after the semester was over.

As a Program Manager, I don’t get to write code. (Except for the code I wrote in Office X for Mac – most of the dialogs have controls that lay themselves out via a mechanism called Dialog Auto Layout. And, in fact, there’s one dialog where I forgot to check in the changes and as a result it looked like ass. Fortunately, it’s a dialog that few ever see!)

I do miss writing code sometimes. In particular:

1. I miss hitting the build and run button. You can’t really do that with specifications or e-mails. There’s often no sense of accomplishment or completion as a Program Manager.

2. I miss listening to music. I found it rather helpful when I was writing code, but I find it distracting when I’m responding to e-mails, drawing up schedules, or writing specifications.

Go figure.

Thanks to the kind folks at MAPGROUP, I am one of the first people to have their first edition of the Popout Map for Hong Kong – and for free no less!

I love these popout maps. Even though I’m from NY originally, I still find the NY popout map quite useful sometimes. I also have the Boston one, and that one is incredibly invaluable considering Boston’s street layout scheme. I also have the London and Paris ones too I think.

Thanks Mapgroup! I got it just in time before going to Hong Kong! I’m sure this will be put to good use! ISBN 1-84139-357-6

Microsoft’s MSN is now offering a free blog service.

Here’s a Channel9 video that interviews some of the people behind it, and demos some of the features.

Here’s my very bare site.

It’s got quite the slick UI! Imagine – a drag and drop web UI.

Give it a try!