On the bus this morning, I saw about 20 goats wandering around the Plymouth Pillars dog park in Capitol Hill.
Yes, I said goats.
There was a “Rent-a Ruminant” sign hanging - quite simply, this company “brings [their] goats to your location to eat a wide range of vegetation, such as blackberries, ivy, and other invasive species. “
Clever.


mt rainer

dog or tree?
forest creatures
view from mt constitution, orcas island
me

waiting for the ferry
I’m sure many of you have heard by now… Silverlight 2 Beta 2 is powering the NBC Olympics video experience!
At http://nbcolympics.com/video, you can see live event coverage as well as on-demand viewing of already-happened events. Check it out! (Be sure to use the “Enhanced” player by clicking “Enlarge Video.”)

John Gossman, one of the awesome Silverlight and WPF architects, just blogged a prototype of VisualStateManager for WPF.
VisualStateManager will be added in to a future release of the .NET Framework. For those of you who want an early look, you can now play with John’s VSM implementation. (This is for prototyping only - it is not a supported feature yet.) He uses AttachedProperties to hook up VisualStateManager-enabled Templates to WPF controls.
You’ll also see my WeatherControl using VSM on WPF!

From a recent hike to Lake Lillian.
I never actually made it to the lake, which I guess isn’t that uncommon. There was snow at the ridge, and I ended up losing the trail. (Made more exciting by the fact that the mosquitos attacked every time I stopped to look for it.) But the surrounds were beautiful. I think it may be one of my favorite hikes.

My mom just sent me the trailer for the next Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. It looks REALLY good.
It’s directed by David Yates, the same director of the last movie. Also, from his IMDB profile, it looks like they are making the final book in to TWO movies…
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is supposed to release “sometime this year” according to the trailer… and 21 November 2008 according to IMDB.
DevDave (Dave Relyea) is a dev lead on the Silverlight team. He just blogged a really slick new animating wrap panel. Read about it here and try out the sample app below.

There are a bunch of different “interpolations” that you can choose from, including “back”, “elastic”, and “bounce.”
I’ve updated my FlickrViewr to use this animating wrap panel with the “elastic” option. In my totally unbiased opinion, it looks pretty hot. Though, as Dave pointed out, “elastic” is a bit much for a “real world” application - for a more sane UI, try “back” interpolation.
(See the original post for more info & source code.)