Charles Petzold

I've been awake for a couple hours already, but that doesn't mean I don't need more sleep. I just tried to plug my USB Drive into an Ethernet port. (It fit quite snugly but it just didn't work.)

Last night, I did something that nobody's done for many, many years: I compiled and ran a Windows 1.0 app in front of an audience. The miracle was that the entire half-hour "mini-keynote" on Windows 1.0 and the Applications of Tomorrow was entirely seamless, from the tacky 16-color EGA slides at the beginning, to the DOS command line in the middle, to the tour of Windows 1.0 at the end. The only things spoiling the 1985 illusion were the banners behind me proclaiming the release of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005, and the fact that I was obviously running the entire presentation on a Toshiba Tablet PC.

In the near future, I will describe how this presentation was done. Yes, the whole thing was running under Virtual PC, but there were several problems that added to the complexity of the talk.

In about 3 hours, I'm doing my Ink as a Graphical Medium talk, and then my DevConnections obligations are over, and I get to focus on socializing and eating.