OMG! It is only three weeks into my new role as an Enthusiast Evangelist at Microsoft and, true to form for a new role at MS, its been totally mad but very exciting.

As previously mentioned I'm the host for this years Tech Ed: Developer - The Virtual Side, and this has required me to do a whole load of interviews in front of a camera. Very early on, I took a chance and arranged a TV Presenting course at the London Academy of Media, Film and TV (before I got the new role). This can be a two day or a five day masterclass, I did the two day. My goal was to get plenty of experience and professional feedback before I got deep into my new role producing video content on enthusiast stuff!

The two days were well worth it. Sally Gray and Jonas Hurst were the course tutors ( I had hoped to meet Blue Peter icon Peter Purves ) and they had plenty to say about the business and our performances. TV presenting is a hard job, particularly as it is often time pressured. So there is little time for pleasantries. If you aren't delivering your piece to camera as the director would like, well, you get told - concisely!

This of course assumes you have already landed a job. I was very pleased to be a corporate head on the course. All my fellow course students, except Anna, have the challenging task of landing a role to start with.

So having done some interviews for The Virtual Side before the course and then several since, is there a difference? Well yes, clearly I know now what I should be doing, and what I shouldn't be doing. However, knowing and doing are to separate things;so I shall continue to try and use the many lessons learnt on the course and can only hope that my TV presenting skills improve - rapidly!

So what do you do when you are stuck on a dual carriage way for several hours? Well, thanks to a cellular data card I can still work - well at least write this entry.

The A14 is usually such a nice route, but today it is closed. Unfortunately for me and the hundreds of other motorists stuck with me there are no traffic information signs on it; which means as we merrily drive singing along to our favourite tunes or listening intently to the debate on Radio 4, we are unaware of our fate.

Tough - should have got the SatNav option with Traffic Master real-time information feeds. Or at least had your traffic programme search enabled on the car radio.

I have an old TomTom V3 satnav setup cobbled together from various old gadets long since past there best before date. Maybe it is time to upgrade.

One of my friends, working for BMW, enjoys a new car from the latest BMW range every six months, and has had such marvelous experiences with the in-built modern satnav that he now uses it completely by default, even on well known journeys.

Taking a live traffic information feed the latest satnav direct you around the traffice often before you even know there is a problem. the accuracy of these units is now at an awesome level. My friend travels from Berkshire to BMW offices in Germany, France or Belgium and the satnav accurately predicts the door to door travel time - including the channel tunnel rail link.

Time to take the plunge. Satnav evalutation entry coming soon.

I've never done a whole lot of blogging - I've been writing 'proper' articles for printed magazines. After all, my colleagues have been 'blogging like their life depends on it', so I figured I could do something different.

Well following yesterdays blog entry 'moan of the month' I think I'm converted to the power of blogging. I've had very little feedback from my magazine articles but today this blog beat two years of printed magazines hands down.

My thanks goes to the Netcetera team who - on a Saturday morning - tidied everything up on my paulfoster.eu domain. So it is now running perfectly. To my embarrassment the site content is rather empty at the moment; but thank you Netcetera, it feels great to have your hosting expertise and support behind my little web efforts.

As for EU bureaucracy - I still think it sucks.

Things online aren't going so well for me this week. I purchased a new domain name (paulfoster.eu) via my hosters (netcetera) and usually this all goes well. But this time - a whole wheel or something has come off.

I do all my virtual server setup stuff via the Netcetera control panel and this process normally completes without issue. This time I seemed to get the automated process and a person from Netcetera creating vdirs for me. Needless to say things have got in a mess; but two emails later (one more than should have been required) the vdirs are sorted.

Now I'm still waiting for the DNS servers to get wind of my paulfoster.eu domain. After nearly 72 hours (the most DNS should take) I still can't get to my site via its address. I know it is there because I can get to it via the soon2be.net redirect Netcetera implement so you can work on the new site asap (but it costs you an extra £10).

I also notice that the automated domain 'seller' Netcetera have on their control panel home screen still tells me my EU domain is available, although it lists the domain in my purchased list.

Something has gone bad in this purchase I can feel it - could it be those bastards in EU government have detected I'm a Microsoft employee? Or does the new EU domain name incur the same crazy bureaucracy as the EU central government??

One thing is for sure; making comments in the style of Kenny Everret's crazed american general about them is likely to put one in a whole heap of trouble, but frankly I'd like to 'round them all up in a field, and ........!'

So avoiding the very painful possibility of stuffing my sites up again I've decided to post the Tech Ed: Developer here in an entry rather than more appropriately in the right hand menu. Chicken!! brraa-uck, cluck, cluck, cluck.
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