It's a little late to announce this — particularly since the class is full — but it's worth mentioning for future reference. The Richard Hale Shaw Group is presenting our Visual Studio Team System class at the Microsoft Technology Center in Waltham, MA, with me as lead instructor.

We're also trying to find another chance for me to present Ink in 60 Seconds while I'm there.

So while I was in Montreal, two different restaurant menus that I saw listed an item called "Hamburger Michigan". Now I have to tell you: I've lived in Michigan all my life; and as far as I know, there's nothing unusual about how we serve hamburgers here.

So I was curious; but other things on the menu tempted me. I didn't want to end up with either a plain hamburger or something unrecognizable. So instead, I had a gyro platter from Kostas Souvlakis for Wednesday dinner, and a smoked meat sandwich (another popular menu item) at Orly's Restaurant (can't find a Web site for that one). The gyro was one of the finest I've ever had (so good that I called them back to offer my compliments to the chef, and I've never done that before), and the smoked meat was tasty; so I don't mind my choices. But that still left me curious.

And a Web search left me even more curious, because a search for "Hamburger Michigan" turns up incredibly few hits. A Google search for the exact phrase turns up only 71 hits. (Of course, that will be 72 when Google gets around to indexing this entry.) And most of the ones that it does turn up are restaurant menus. Most of those in French. Most of those from restaurants in Montreal. And none of them define what Hamburger Michigan is. It must be one of those things that if you're from Montreal, you just know, and nobody need bother to explain (I'll bet he would know); and if you're not from Montreal, you would never have heard of it, and so you would never think to ask.

The best possible answer that I found came from all the way down on the third page of the Google search. It led me to an entry on Cooks.com. Now the entry had moved over time; but a search on Cooks.com led to these entries for "Michigan Sauce". They all seem to be recipes for what sound like sloppy-joe-like sauces of tomato paste and crumbled hamburger, to be served on hamburgers or hotdogs. (Meat sauce on meat. Go figure...)

I also found a comment thread somewhere (but now I can't find it again, naturally) where people discussed Michigan Sauce and traded recipes on it. No one there seemed to know why it might be called that.

So I'm at a loss. Is this what they mean by Hamburger Michigan? I guess I'll have to go back to Montreal to find out. Why have I lived 43 years in Michigan and never even heard of it before now? And why is it called that? That may be one of those rare answers that just isn't to be found on the Web.

And while I was in Montreal, I was in fact presenting right on the very edge of McGill University. The Microsoft office there is in fact only a block away from the University on Avenue McGill College. So I was rather amused to be presenting there.

What's that? You mean you've never heard of McGill University? What sort of a geek are you? Don't you recognize the alma mater of one of the icons of the geek world? Doesn't everyone know where he went to school? Well, OK, I didn't until the Biography Channel ran an episode on him, which included a cross-country bus ride to McGill. That was shortly after he won his first Emmy. First, meaning he won another one. Some people say, "I don't mind. They're not laughing at me, they're laughing with me." Other people say, "You're a fool. They're not laughing with you, they're laughing at you." He seems to be saying, "Let them laugh, as long as I get to work. And I'll have the last laugh, all the way to the bank." He has made a third (or is it fourth? or fifth?) career out of mocking himself the way his critics have mocked him in the past; and he's still working, while many of them are still going nowhere. Or as the man himself says:

I've heard of you
The ready-made connecting with the ever-ready
Yeah
The never was talking about still trying
I got it
Forever bitter gossiping about never say die
May I inquire what you've been doing mister?
Jack
Never done Jack
And you partner, what's the News of the World, Dick?
I don't say dick
Don, of all the people you must be the Tattler
Two thumbs up
What are you afraid of?
Failure?
So am I
Has been implies failure
Not so
Has been is history
Has been was
Has been might again

I can only hope that at his age I can still be working in my field and having a ball doing it. And if people laugh at me, I hope I have the grace to laugh along and the wits to turn it into an opportunity.

Unfortunately, my pilgrimage wasn't quite complete. I didn't make it to this place. Oh, well. The name's not official, anyway. McGill just calls it the University Centre. But I have to believe he finds it more amusing this way.

This is a little late, because I've been doing post travel stuff, and then getting ready for the new VSTS class coming up. To the fine folks in Montreal, I say: Pardonnez-moi, svp, mes amis!

So on Wednesday night in Montreal, I gave my presentation to GUMSNET: Ink in 60 Seconds. Despite my rather hideous attempt to apologize in French for not being able to speak French, they were most gracious hosts. (And darn it! I rehearsed that apology over a dozen times on the trip, until I had it down pat; and then I fell apart when I actually had to give it. Here's what I meant to say: Bon soir, monsieurs! Mon nom est Martin L. Shoemaker, et je ne comprends pas le français. Pardon, si vous plais. Je suis un debutante en français. Mais mon Tablet PC comprend le français!)

I got caught in a lot of Montreal traffic, and also had to fight to find parking in Centre-ville, so I was just a bit late. And then my machine had to reboot. But we finally got rolling, and I started writing little Tablet PC demos, with a 60 second clock running. There were occasional laughs at my expense when I missed the 60 second mark; but on the other hand, many of the demos were done in under 30 seconds. The Tablet PC API is just that powerful. By the time we were done, we were drawing pictures, editing them, erasing them, saving them, loading them, and exporting them as images. We were also drawing shapes that the Tablet PC recognized and identified. We were converting handwriting to text, in both English and French. And we even wrote some text by hand and then had the Tablet PC speak it out loud. We finished with ten ideas for great Tablet PC apps just waiting to be written. I hope that I inspired someone in the audience to go write one.

There was one hang-up in the presentation; and I promised the good folks from GUMSNET that I would blog about it, including what I learned afterward. Late in the presentation — right about the time I tried to do handwriting recognition, when I needed really good ink collection — my wonderful Gateway CX200X Tablet PC started exhibiting dead spots that were strangely reminiscent of the bad old days of Toshiba. The dead zones weren't as consistent, but they were irritating. And they always seemed to be right where I was writing text en français to try to show off the multi-lingual power of the Tablet PC. The audience was forgiving for this, but they did insist on knowing the answer when I learned it. Well, here's what I think I have learned. I noticed that the pen seemed to behave better when I held it at different angles; and then I remembered that when we broke for dinner, I dropped the pen. And as far as I can recall, there were no dead zones before the break, only after. I suspected that maybe I had jammed something in the pen tip; and with a little experimentation, I found that rotating the pen around its axis or relative to the screen could sometimes make the dead zone go away. Suspecting a pen problem rather than a screen problem, I pulled out my spare pen. And I have had no dead zone problems since.

All in all, Montreal was a delightful place to visit, and I hope to return some day when I have a little more time to visit. And the folks at GUMSNET were a great audience. I ran about 40 minutes over time (gee, there's a surprise); and they were all alert and attentive right to the end. We would probably have stayed longer, but the Microsoft employee who was keeping the facility open for us wanted to go home!

Of course, Richard would have my hide if I didn't mention that Ink in 60 Seconds is the opening segment of our Tablet PC Programming Workshop, where you can learn all this and much, much more about building your own Tablet PC applications. In the class, you won't just watch: you'll build a full-featured Tablet PC application yourself, and learn the Tablet PC from the inside. I hope we'll be adding a public Tablet PC class to our schedule first, but you can always bring us to your site.

So why aren't you writing Tablet PC applications with .NET yet?

Do you think it's too difficult? Do you think you're too busy to learn the Tablet PC API? Well, I say you're wrong.

Or do you just not see what sort of Tablet PC app you might build? Do you think that there's no great Tablet PC applications out there for you? Well, I say you're wrong again.

And I'm so sure you're wrong, I'm going to prove it to you at the Groupe d'utilisateurs de l'archutecture Microsft .Net de Montreal by building some simple little Tablet PC samples — samples you can easily adapt into your own applications — each written in under 60 seconds. (Note: In order to meet that time limit, I'll be writing these in C#, the language I know best. Every single one of these demos could be written in 60 seconds in VB.NET, but only by a better VB programmer than me!)

Then after each sample is running, I'll explain to you what I did, how I did it, and how you might expand on it. Some of the samples I'll build include:

• 60 Seconds to Ink: Capturing Ink in a window in your application.


• 60 Seconds to Ink Anywhere: Capturing Ink in any window in your application.


• 60 Seconds to Programmatic Ink: Adding Strokes programmatically to an Ink surface.


• 60 Seconds to Saving Ink: Saving your drawings.


• 60 Seconds to Loading Ink: Loading your drawings.


• 60 Seconds to Saving Some Ink: Saving part of a drawing.


• 60 Seconds to Loading Some Ink: Loading a drawing into an existing drawing.


• 60 Seconds to Exporting Ink: Savinging your drawings as images you can share with non-Tablet PC users.


• 60 Seconds to Selecting, Moving, and Resizing: Manipulating the Ink that you draw.


• 60 Seconds to Erasing: Erasing the Ink that you draw.


• 60 Seconds to Drawing Attributes: Drawing with multiple colors, transparent Ink, and different shapes and sizes of pens.


• 60 Seconds to Clipboarding: Really simple Ink clipboard functionality — and why it doesn't work!


• 60 Seconds to Simple Handwriting Recognition: Simple handwriting in a form.


• 60 Secondes au Français: Identification d'écriture en français.


• 60 Seconds to More Handwriting Recognition: Handwriting recognition mixed with typing.


• 60 Seconds to Handwriting Recognition Anywhere: Handwriting recognition from any Ink surface.


• 60 Secondes à Plus Français: Plus d'identification d'écriture en français.


• 60 Seconds to Text-to-Speech: A simple talking application.

And just in case those samples don't inspire you to devise a great new Tablet PC application, I'll finish the presentation by spending 60 seconds (probably more) describing each of ten different killer Tablet PC applications that I'm just too busy to write myself, but which I think somebody should be writing.

So fasten your seat belts. This is gonna be one heck of a fast ride!

And no, I'm not doing this talk just for the free pizza from INETA and the free trip to Montreal. I certainly hope that some of the attendees are so excited that they'll want to take our Tablet PC Programming workshop, where we'll go places you just can't reach in 60 seconds.