Well I off to go pick pine mushrooms. I will probably not be back until some time in October 2006.

I will be bringing my 1080 HD Camcorder with me this year and will be taking some digitial pictures as well so you can all see what it's like up at the mushroom camp. Until then ... Big Smiles!

... Dude seriously. "Big Smiles"? What the hell are you thinking...

As you may have noticed I have note been making too many blog posts the last few months. I have been working on my xGSuite project as well as trying to setup a CodePlex space for the xGSuite project, but progress has been slow because I did not specify a licence when submitting making a new project request. Still waiting to hear back from them.

Anyway I am going to be heading back up to the mushroom camp again this year, and will be leaving in about another one to two weeks. So as slow as I have been making blog entries, I will not be able to post any more content or news for the next two to three months.

I might make another blog entry before leaving though. Till then ... I'm not dead yet! Just not very live-ly blog wise either.

Heh, heh. Was searching for the MS online crash analisys website so I could upload my memory.dmp file because my xp laptop keeps blue screening every time I try and do a specific windows update. Click here to see what I mean.

EDIT July 28, 2009: The search results have gotten better so it no longer want me to upload cash. :P

Too lazy to come up with a more descriptive title for this post. :p

Anyway I figured it's about time I made a post to show people I'm still alive. I am still working in edmonton and will be heading back home at the end of june. Finnally!

I just submitted my Fart Sniffer tutorial to gamedev.net so I will see if they accept it or not.

I also purchased my first camcorder! The Sony HDR-HC3. It's a pretty cool camera. I researched camcorders for about 3 weeks and had all but decided NOT to spend $2000 CDN on a comcorder, even though all the reviews I read gave it good scores. I was not willing to spend all that much. That was until I walked into best buy and saw the demo that was on display and saw the clarity the camear was capable of. Even sweeter, I waited for about a week before decideding to purchase it, and as it turns out the price droped to $1799 CDN. And on top of that I found a cheaper price at www.thecamerastore.com for $1599 CDN. That was enough incentive for me to spend the few hundred dollars more for the HC3. Bestbuy will match and beat any advertised price so all I had to do was show them that I had found the HC3 selling for $200 cheaper and bing! $200 dollar savings! Whoot! Unfortunatly I spend over $300 in accessories like a 2gig memory stick pro duo, tripod, extra minidv tapes, camera bag , additional battery etc, so in the end I still ended up spending over $2000 CDN.

The only thing that kinda bugs me is that I will not be able to see just how good the camera really is for some time, as I do not have a 1080 high definition tv to view my recordings on. :( So very sad.

But at least I now have a digitial camera for taking pictures and video of the treks I go on up the mountians and such. As well as the possibility of a video blog! In HD! Hmmm maybe not, but we'll see.

I am also hoping to make an extra $2000 CDN or so before heading home so I can renew my msdn pro subscription just in time for windows vista to ship. Although I have to admit I am weary of doing so, because the last time droped $2000 CDN on a msdn subscription I never even used a tenth of the software I recieved. Seems a wee bit of a waste.

I should also mention that I am still hard at work on my xGSuite projects(s) and have got a basic working game engine running with integrated menus, console, etc. It's just a matter of figuring out weather or not the libraries I have created are benifiting the development of the game engine or hindering it. Hopefully not hindering it because that would mean back to the drawing board for me.

VB.NET Express now free, forever! Link to gamedev article

Wuhoo thats such an awesome feeling knowing you did something right the first time.

I have something special for you! Wait for it! ... Wait for it! Warp3DVB!

I have finished converting the C# graphics library Warp3D over to vb.net 2005! By finished I mean %95 done. I kinda cheated a little and got lazy doing the conversion so I am sure some people are going to find some gotchas in the code. My biggest concern is the way I converted the type conversions over to vb.net. Some of the type conversions were not written the same way they were in C#.

But I do plan on writing an extensive tester app that will run both my converted Warp3DVB and the original C# Warp3D library through it paces, and have the ability to directly compare the two. In the mean time hope you have fun using the library.

For those of you who don't know Warp3D is a powerful %100 .NET Graphics library! I would also like to thank Alan Simes http://alansimes.blogdns.net/ for creating/converting the Warp3D library to C#. If I am not mistaken I believe Alan converted the Warp3D graphics library from a java based graphics library. You can download the Warp3D library from alan's web site here. I would also like to thank Kamal Patel (http://www.KamalPatel.net) for his great C# to VB.NET converter utility which I used to assist me in the conversion. Although the C# to VB.NET converter is far from perfect it was still a great help.

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
-------------------------------
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.