Wowzers.

For information how to do it, view this topic at Hack MSN Spaces (a very useful site for those interested in actually doing something interesting with their space).

Ok, so I've started creating a Windows Live skin for Winamp. Only new and needs a lot more work, but here's a preview.

Stargate SG-1 just has it's 200th episode. Very, very funny.

Took elements from everywhere.

Some images

Well I up and joined Mixi, apparently the most popular social network in Japan.

Not really sure what the deal is, nor what I created, but it's times like this when you know google translator is your friend.

Anyway, I believe I've got it pulling feeds from this space via RSS. But in this modern unicode age, who really knows? Oh the simplicity of Western ISO-8859-1, how I miss thee.

In other Live news, Liveside posted a few screenies of possibly the next version of live mail. Pretty neat.

I'm referring to the holiday, rather than the show. I've never actually been, though I hear it is --- wait for it --- Ekka-zactly.... Doh!

I do recall a few years ago seeing a film clip from an American news show that showed a clip of people riding pigs at the Ekka. Of course the presenter didn't mention it was at a show, just that that's what people in Australia were doing that week. Finished with "Those crazy Aussies...".

Well it's less than 3 weeks until I'm off living La vida loca. Think I might fly from Los Angelese to Mexico City now. Long drive and not much to look at apparently.

Well, I'm writing this with Live Writer and I must say, it's pretty cool.

Pros

• It actually pulls down the style sheets from your website, so that as you're typing, it looks exactly as it will on screen. This is very cool.
• Apparently works well with many blogging services, from the suprisingly positive comments on digg, as well as other places around the net.
• I love the idea of plugins.

Cons

• As a program it seems great, however, I think a lot of this stuff should be included in the online blog posting of spaces.

Summary

For a first beta release, this is a great start. I think I can actually see myself using this program. Very nice that it supports many other blogging systems, with very open (SDK) plans to support them all.

More info at http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com

• The calendar integrated on the today page.
• Web Messenger integrated into the design, similar to the fantastic way Google chat is in with Gmail.
• Move and manage my folders as i like.

Here are some mockups of what I mean:

• Design looks a lot better, and is more customisable than before.
• Layout of photo gallery etc. is better.
• Integration with other services is great, and I love being able to click on gadgets etc. around the web and add them to your site with one click.
• The gadgets are going to give spaces a huge amount of potential do do interesting things.
• Everything appears to work perfectly with Firefox, and I hope Opera as well. Good work on that.

• Although it now fills 1024x768, rather than 800x600, it still isn't a variable width page.
• Some of the themes don't seem to have been ported correctly, or look a bit average in the new style.