OK OK OK Maybe I don't hate edmonton all that much! Whoot, just finished unpacking and fired up the laptop and WHOOT! FREE WIFI BABY! Yeah! No dialup for me!

It's a DLink router and it's not even password protected! And the other computer connected is hooked up via lan, which tells me the person does not realize they have a totally unsecured router! You just gotta love those non techies out there.

I will be heading back to edmonton tomorrow, to work for a few more months. ugh! I hate big citys, flat land, concrete and pavement for as far as the eye can see. Not to mention endless urban sprawl.

I have not made too many posts latley, i think only 2 in the last 2 months, but I have been working on a range of projects that I am dubbing the xGSuite. (Created by: X - Game Suite) The xGSuite is a collection of game related libraries some of them you may already know of like DXTools. There are libraries for phisics, scene management (OctTree or implement your own), collision detection, animation, game engine cores (2 of em), game console, user input, graphics (both directx and one thats abstracted), a very easy and simple xml driven gui system, material system for directx HLSL shaders, timers, and a test game engine called Zider. As well as example apps for every library. DXTools alone has 70+ already with the intention of having 101 examples for it by it's next release.

Each library is intended to be useable on it's own so that a developer wanting to use one library does not need to worry about that library referencing other libraries in the xGSuite. Although there are some minor exeptions. I have started 3 other games but those are really just to help me get an idea of how integrating the libraries from the xGSuite looks and feels, they probably will not be finished. I have also started a SourceForge site for xGSuite but seem to be having problems with the CVS service.

On another note I am still going to have access to the net but in a limited fasion. *Cough* Dialup *Cough* Oh god I swore off never using it again! But alas, I have no choice. So given that I will be on dialup the only thing I will be able to do is check my e-mail. lol I have been madly subscribing and downloading any podcast I can off iTunes, so I don't have to suffer thru slow download speeds.

Anyway there is nothing much more to say other then to keep an eye on this feed in the next few months, you might see a secret project I have been working on come to light. ;)

Have not made a post in a while but just got this email responce back from valve and thought it was good for a laugh. The funny text is highlited in bold/italics.

---------------------------
Response (Mercedes) 02/12/2006 04:05 PM
---------------------------
Hello:

I will pass this through the appropriate channels here at Valve.
In the meantime, please do not do that and you shouldn't have that problem.

Please check the news section of www.steampowered.com regularly for updates.
------------------------------
Customer (CBX CBX) 12/07/2005 04:15 PM
------------------------------
I have tried running steam://runsafe/240 then steam://validate/240 then rebooting proceedure, but it did not fix the problem.

-------------------------------
Response (Mercedes) 12/07/2005 03:59 PM
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Hello!

Please click on the link given below in order to run runsafe which will reset your cvars.

steam://runsafe/240

Please validate your game files by clicking on the link given below and
*restart your computer* immediately after game file validation.

steam://validate/240

If you do not see the run safe validation links, please copy and paste the run
safe and validation text above and go to START > RUN > paste the text into th OPEN field > select OK.

------------------------------
Customer (CBX CBX) 12/07/2005 03:51 PM
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To reporodice..
1: Start Counter strike source
2: start a server or join a game
3: press ~ to open up console
4: enter +attack and press enter (player should shoot gun once)
5: press ~ to hide console
6: you can no longer shoot your gun but the gun uncontrollably shoots at random
every so often. Even though it shoots it does not decrease the ammo count
on the onscreen hud
7: Disconnect from the game
8: Move mouse over main menu items, and the tick sound is played twice when
mouse moves over an item. The game also seems to respond a little slower like
it is going to crash but it never does.

If you have been subscribing to the website feeds then you may have already discovered that I have been porting numerous items from my old web site onto the new website. I am almost finished and only have project related items to port over.

I am also going to be adding a few more projects to the projects page when I have time. But before I do that I may take the time to write some more code for the website to make it more visually friendly. As you can see from some of the pages on the site that there are too many items being listed on a single page.

Also I think some of my rss feeds are no longer conforming to the rss 2.0 stantards that state you should not have more then 15 "item" entries in your feed. I just glanced at the site but can't find mention of that 15 item entry limit?!? Must have read that someplace else. The idea behind the 15 entry limit is to keep the size of the rss file to a minimum for quick downloads.

I have just added a new 15 minute tutorial walking you through the creation of a Greyscale shader in ati render monkey and exporting it as a directx *.fx file, and using that fx file in a simple vb.net app.

The code in the video is available here ATIRM2VB.zip

I have just added my cbxTimers library to the projects section of the website. I created this library so I could have a colletion of Timer objects to use in my apps.

There is currently no documentation for the library but I am planning to try and make a few tutorial videos that will walk users through how to use the libraries.

It's not that they are comlicated to use it's just that I'm sure some people would like to have some documantation for it.

I have added a new project to the projects page called xILikeToMoveItMoveIt. It is a new animation library that allows you to add easy use of animations in your apps and games. It also comes with a example app when you download it.

I have also added 2 example apps for the xGameConsole library. The first is a simple scripting example app, demonstrating how you can use the xGameConsole library as a simple scripting engine.

The second example app is a simple windows forms app showing how to load console commands into the xGameConsole and use them.

There is currently no documentation for these libraries and I probably will not be creating any. Instead I am going to try and make a few tutorial videos that will walk users through how to use the libraries.

I have had a video I created for some time now for a launch platform for rockets and such but have not uploaded it to my site because it is rather large in size. But I recently became aware of a new service at http://www.youtube.com/. It allows you to upload your videos, up to 100 megabytes, to the site. The cool thing is that the site allows you to embed object tags in any web page and reference the video from the YouTube web site so you don't have to host the video yourself. It also supports multiple formats, like mov, avi, and wmv! I have not made a blog entry in a little while so I thought I would post this.

When I switched over to Telus DSL they were offering a 3 year Fixed Rate contract an get a free 2 gig iPod Nano, that I just got in the mail today!

This thing is really cool, not that I listen to music all that often but I can see why this device is so popular. Not only does it play music but it also can be used as a removeable disk drive for storing any kind of file, as well as the ability to store photos, and text files that you can view and read on the devices screen.

It even comes with a few games like breakout, solitair, parachute, and music quiz.

I just hope I don't have to cancel my internet service in the next 3 years for whatever reason. THe deal with the 3 year fixed rate plan I subscribed to specifies that if I cancel my internet early they will charge me like 230+(CDN) dollars as a penalty! eep! Not that I see that happening but you never know.

Also I keep forgetting I have some video I have been meaning to post on my site of this years mushroom camp. I will try to post it in the next couple of days.

Thank god I switched to DSL! My ping in Counter Strike Source went from 150 to 250+ ping to a steady 65 ping! At least now I am hitting something when I shoot at it.
Now there is only the matter of my free 2Gb iPod nano....

BTW: I have been a little distracted as of late and am going to try posting more content on this site soon. I hope.