WTHWA in June?

.. lamely abbreviates to Where The Heck Was Ash ;) Though, I'd probably use that whenever I'm MIA at times in the future.

Anyhow, this week was a pretty intense week. I tagged along with fellow office mate to assist Cisco demo some products at the National ICT 2009 conference held at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre (NICT 2009, PICC). The equipment we were assigned to, an IP Command Cente, was not overly complex, but the labourous start up and shut down sequences had to be followed to the word. I like going to these company seminars & exhibitions. I get to eat some great food for free ;)

Some pics below. The somewhat low quality is attributed to my camera phone =P

The Cisco IP Command center demo (right most). Consists of a cisco router virtualized into 4 different servers, a voice gateway and a couple of IP phones. On the left (on top of the table itself), called IPICS, is a solution that allows those working with walkie talkies to contact directly to the IP phone network, and vice versa.

I forgot what this demo unit was called, but it uses a video as well as voice over IP, IM system and allows mobile phones to call the office through a VPN system free of charge (or out of office calls using just local rates, eliminating roaming costs).

Our competitors.. *grin*

Actually, Oracle and Cisco have created a partnership at some level, but it is not really advertised much. I only found out after a Datacenter seminar hosted by Cisco. Also, you see that green patch at Oracle's stall floor? Its actually a golf putting mat.. I suppose to entertain delegates and exhibitors a like ;)

On another front, I managed to download free Microsoft software offered by IEEE (via the MSDN Academic Alliance initiative). When I posted on CrazyEngineers when I first heard of it, there wasn't much buzz. Oh well, just to prove the skeptics wrong, here is a shot of the download screen:

One can check the full list of software at this CE thread:
http://www.crazyengineers.com/forum/ce-infocus/3697-special-surprise-ieee-student-members.html

Microsoft Expression is a relatively new line of web development tools, a giant leap beyond the past initial offerings of Frontpage. Pretty much a lower cost alternative to the sublime (or not) Adobe tools like Dreamweaver, Fireworks, etc.

I used MS Expression Design, and it turned out to be pretty intuitive. Here was something I quickly wipped up:


I'm thinking of drawing more of the stickman, and call it the "anon engineer". I doubt I could do something on the likes of the XKCD comic or that cool Xiao Xiao animations, but.. see how it goes ;)