Amazing what you can do with sticky notes.

So what are my up and coming vacation plans?  This weekend I’m off to Zurich.  Will be my first time visiting the city.  In a couple of weeks I’ll be spending the weekend in London with my lovely boyfriend visiting a friend o his.  Haven’t been to London in a couple of year, so will be nice to go back again.  After that I’m off to Thailand for 2 weeks on my own.  I’m not sure what I am doing during those 2 weeks yet, but I’m going to reserve a hotel room in Bangkok for the first couple of night and then just wing it.  Maybe I’ll go to Cambodia and see Angkor Wat.  Maybe I’ll head up to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand and take a cooking class.  Or maybe I’ll just head to an island in southern Thailand and find a great beach to relax.  Not sure how the weather will be when I am there.  Probably hot and humid, but I don’t care.  I’m looking forward to the wonderful Thai food and all the Thai massages that I can handle.  Can’t wait!  I was in Thailand back in 2005/2006 and had a wonderful time.  Below are some of my favorite photos from that trip.  You can see the rest of my photos on Flickr.

In the TechTalks, we have been presenting a wide variety of Microsoft technologies and products from the Live Services and APIs to Popfly, Silverlight and lots of Microsoft Research Projects.  One of the things that I typically show in during the Tech Talk is the Windows Live Writer.  To demo it, I write a short blog post and then add a link and a map…which of course explains some the rather strange or half finished blog posts on my blog and my Live Space over the last couple weeks.  So to finish over the series right, I thought I would add one last map to my blog post to show where the beautiful city of Hamburg is located.  (Yes, this the city that I lived for 6 years before moving to Munich.)

Windows Internet Explorer has partnered with a carbon reduction reminder service to help increase awareness around one of Earth’s most precious resources.  You can reduce your carbon footprint and have fun growing your own virtual forest at the same time.  Browse three endangered forests while learning how to become a better steward of the environment.

The Carbon Grove campaign highlights what each of us can do to help improve our Earth’s ecosystem and via IE7/8 browser requirement, fosters a safer internet ecosystem.  The more people upgrading to Internet Explorer 7 and eventually IE8, the safer our overall internet ecosystem.  The campaign launched in the US on April 22 and will extend into Germany, Poland and France on May 22.

Check it out at:  http://www.carbongrove.com/

Yes, that is English but it is upside down. Got it from a cool tool to flip text. You can find it here…

http://www.revfad.com/flip.html

Some of my photos from Flickr.

This weekend I’m in Essen for BarCamp Ruhr.  Not sure where Essen is?  Take a look at the map.  It is in an area of Germany that is called the Ruhrpott.  I’m writing this post there and will hopefully use it my session later today on Windows Live Writer and Popfly. 

Below are some photos from the event including Tom Wendel’s session on AntMe.  AntMe is an ant simulation that makes it fun to learn to program.  It’s mostly in German right now, but they will hopefully be introducing an English version soon.  For more details on AntMe check out the website at: http://antme.net/English/

And who said Microsofties don’t have a sense of humor?!?

Check out the video about how to paint the Mona Lisa using Microsoft Paint.� Original painting time was 2hrs 30mins.� Thank goodness that the video speeds things up a wee bit.