I have just finished uploading the new web site but as I figured was going to happen there are a few bugs. I am currently working to fix these.

The first news post for the new site.

I forgot to mention in my last post there is a web page detailing how to uninstall previous beta versions of the express line of products as well as providing a auto uninstaller to automate the process. I used the auto uninstaller to remove the .NET and express beta without any problems

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/support/uninstall/default.aspx

Microsoft has officially released the Visual Studio Express suite of products. And get this, There all free! But only until Nov 7, 2006. After that MS plans on retailing the software for about $50. And anyone who downloads it now does not have to pay for it afterwards. For more details Click Here...

I think this is a great opportunity for legacy VB6 developers to jump on the .NET bandwagon. I have been using VB Express since beta 1, and I have to say even though it does not support IDE Macros as well as some other Pro level IDE features it is still a very functionable IDE.

Here's the thing you really need to know about the new express editions. The Visual Studio IDE is just an application that helps you write your code. It has nothing to do with compiling your code. The .NET framework is responsible for doing the compilation of your apps. (IE the new MSBuild system) So even though you may not get all the bells and whitles in the express versions of the Visual Studio IDE that is not to say you will not be able to take full advantage of the power of the VB.NET, C# or other .NET languages.

Like I said I have been using VB Express since beta 1, and I think if you are as cheap as me, and don't want to have to dish out $2000+ CAD again to get a MSDN Pro subscription then I recommend you do what I am going to do and start using Visual Studio Express!

I have been working on my new website but I have had conflict problems with the DotNetNuke portal that the current site uses. And as such I can only test my new site on my desktop and not online.

So in the comming weeks you may see my site loose some of it's dnn content as I slowly convert the content into their respective rss feeds. I will try and find a way to publish links to the new content feeds for the new site as I make progress.

So far it's looking like a promising idea to use a 100 percent rss driven website. But I guess only time will tell.

I'm Back!
Just got back from mushroom picking a few days ago and have not been doing much, because my Maxtor Sata DiamondMax 9 Hard drives I had setup in Raid0 crashed again and I am waiting for the replacement drives to come in. I also got some video of this years mushroom camp as well as my aunties buying depot. I still need to edit the video before I post it to the web site. One thing I did not get around to doing is capturing some video of the different editible mushrooms in the forest, like I was planning on. But I did manage to capture a few still images.

DXTools Update
DXTools Release 7 is still being worked on, and still needs alot of work. R7 is written in .NET 2.0 and will not be released until after .NET 2.0 has been officially shipped. You can expect over 42 example apps for the library when it is released! Everyting from a basic windowed app to Dot3 bumpmapping and render to rexture exampes.

Poscasting
You can now find a Podcast link on my web site that links to the Created by: X Podcast. I'm not sure if I will be makeing too may podcasts as I barely speak 2 sentences a week otherwise. Not only that but lisening to your recorded voice is really painfull to lisen to. :p (I keep talking with a lisp.)

More projects on the way
I have a few projects I have been working on that I will be releasing on the new web site...
xGameConsole: A game console library based on jason olson's C# code.
ZiderGameEngine: A 2D game engine that uses 3D geometry to simulate 2D. There are a number of projects associated with the Zider Game Engine.
EGEngine: Is a game engine core with some interesting posibilities. It is designed to allow for easy creation of games, rather then having to start from scratch every time.
xCoreEngine: Is similar in design to the EGEngine in that it too is just a engine core, but it is intended to be more simplified than the EGEngine.
xFrippery: Is a simple GUI system that you can use to create GUI's for your DX apps. I will probably not be working on this project any further as there are other DX GUI system out there and the fact that WinFX will be availible for WindowsXP.

New web site should be availible soon
I have been working on my new web site, and should be testing it out on the web pretty soon keep an eye on http://www.createdbyx.com/newsite/index.html for updates. Just last night I could not access the website because I suspect the MS Access DB that the site uses was being overloaded. I had a simple idea for the new web site I was building but then I had an epiphany. Think RSS Everywhere ;)

Microsoft + Valve Software = Cool. Have you seen this yet?
Coding4Fun: Half-Life 2 Mod Spot

Came accross this interesting article on slashdot "Dr. Norman Wildberger, of the South Wales University, has redefined trigonometry without the use of sines, cosines, or tangents. In his book about Rational Trigonometry (sample PDF chapter), he explains that by replacing distance and angles with new concepts: quadrance, and spread, one can express trigonometric problems with simple algebra and fractional numbers. Is this the beginning of a new era for math?" - Link to slashdot article

I was also watching this video over at channel9 Anders Hejlsberg on C# 3.0 about how C# 3.0 will support in code sql statements. The way the video describes it you will be able simply add a reference to a assembly and automatically have this functionality in any .net language including vb.net?!?

XSI mod tool for HL2
f'ing XSI mod tool for HL2 is pissing me off with it's constant registration questions. WTF do you need my Phone number, address, company name for I don't event have a company but it's a required field! f'ing bullshit. You can't save your world or models out to HL2 unleass you register. You can't access the tutorial bank unleass you register. I am seriously hating this company and it's software right now.

Bad habits die hard. I've known since it was first introduced about the Like operator in vb, but never found my self using it, until recently. I was watching a video from the Channel9 web site and they were writing code that used the Like operator. At the time I was also writing a VaribleName validator function for my xGameConsole project. So I dropped the Select Case I was using and re-wrote the method using the like Operator and I actually reduced the ammount of code by half! I will be including a example demo that will use the like operator in the next release of my DX Tools library.

Get the features you want in vb.net or any other ms product! Over the years I have managed to accumulate multiple Microsoft Passport accounts. And it occurred to me a I was making another product suggestion that people could create a bunch of false passport accounts (there free) and then goto the product suggestion site at MS and submit votes for the features and bug fixes they would like to see. It makes you wonder if MS is keeping an eye on this kind of possible vote skewing.

BTW Here is a list of ...

Suggestions I Made

The need for smarter "Unused Varible" notifications.
Other block statements like End Try should behave like End If
Have the number of errors displayed in the "Error List" tab itself
Auto Code Compleation (ending brackets!)
VS2002 to 2005 Undesired/changed commenting behavior!
Give me macros or give me death!
base type conversion alternative suggestions

... as well as ...

Bugs I Reported

TreeNode Editor - Does not account for large image sizes IE: 64x64
Strange Line drawing behavior. (Visual Bug / Does not harm any thing.)
Improper code automaticly generated when implementing an interface ...

F*ing Blog Spam!
Anyone else who has a blog with a commenting feature may have noticed by now that they may be getting blog spam. IE: Spam messages being posted as comments on there blog posts, trying to sell you S**it you did'nt ask for. I am getting 2 to 6 spam messages every day! So I have decided to disable the commenting feature from from my blog.

I have just uploaded a new DirectX example to my DirectX page called "DX9 Key Bindings". It provides a simplified alternative way of binding keys to game actions. Rather then using the DirectInput action mapping objects.

DX9KeyBindings.zip <file is missing>

I was just looking through my site log and discovered that my directx page is ranked 2nd when doing a search for directx9. Cool!

Also doing a search for managed directx9 also shows that my directx page is listed in the top 100 results.

I guess that means people actually visit my site. :p

Wow, all of a sudden everyones got the mushroom bug, and is heading up to camp on August 15 2005. I will be taking my laptop with me this year, so I can continue to work on my projects while i'm away. I have been taking the time these last few days to redesign my camp for this year.

In the mean time if you are wondering what I will be up to while I'm gone you can always checkout the pictures I took of last years (2004) mushroom season.

Bad Ping
*Sigh* It sucks living so far north. I was trying to play Counter-Strike: Source and kept dying because of bad ping. While I was getting 200-300 ping everyone else was getting 40-60. Kinda hard to be competitive when your enimies can shoot you even before you know there in from of you. It got me thinking about how to implement client/server messaging code. Then I got to thinking why not try and conceptualize a online multiplayer game that utilizes P2P to send messages between gamers. Network code is the one aspect of game creation that I have very limited experience with simply because I have not had the computers to test it with. But now that I have 3, and I am going to start playing around with both P2P and Client/Server code.

MediaWiki
As I have mentioned in an earlier post I have installed MediaWiki on this web site, but I am currently debating weather or not to keep it and use it as my primary means of web publishing. Or dump it in favor of my own custom built asp.net web site. I like MediaWiki, it was easy to install and setup but I am the kind of person who has the misfortune to think too far into the future. What I am really searching for is a way to publish my web site containing my blog, programming projects, host files for download, and have video tutorial sections etc. And do it in a way that will stand the test of time. I want the ability to keep adding content to the createdbyx.com web site 30 years from now and still have the files and documents I have hosted on the site today. So that people can visit the site and actually go back in time and check out what I was up to. Essentially I want the this site to be a record of my life, my work, my goings on and my day to day etc.

The problem is that I can't seem to agree on a long term solution that I can be sure will be around 30 years from now. HTML is great and has stood the test of time but I have a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that it's days are numbered. At least in it's current form. Which means that all the stuff I have coded in HTML on this site right now might have to be converted to work on some future technology. The same would hold true with MediaWiki if I decide to use it. If MediaWiki falls out of favor some time in the future or even the PHP technology that runs it, gets replaced by some other newer better/cooler technology then it would also make MediaWiki obsolete 30 years from now. Then of cource there is all the DNN (DotNetNuke) based content I have on this site that will need to be converted. Sigh. Anybody that has moved or upgraded there web site a couple of times over the years can relate to having to dump all the old web sites content and start from scratch or some of that old content is enevitably tossed out in the moving process. I myself still have web site content from 3 ago stored on my hard drive that has not seen the light of day for over 6 years.

And because I am a programmer, gamer/modder, and freeware advocate, I always feel I have a need to share my findings and knoledge with the rest of the world. So what ever system I decide upon will need to allow me to publish it in an easy simple manner.

I have been giving some thought to this for a very long time now and I have to admit for all my efforts I just do not have the time to make this site all that it could be. I am increasingly facing the fact that I will have to pay someone to rewrite this site and port over all my work, blog posts, and HTML files from my old web sites etc.

Zider Game engine
I have finally been doing some more coding on zider as of late. It seems like it's been forever since I have done any coding whatsoever. I also decided to remove the console and command manager systems from my DXTools library and put it into it's own separate library called xGameConsole. I am going to be doing some simple testing/visualization apps for Zider as well to get an idea of what the game will look like. I am thinking I might also separate the animation system from the DXTools library because it can be used for more then just standard track animation.

More videos to come (eventually)
I would like to create more tutorial videos but I am holding off until my code has become more stable, consistant, and not so much in a state of change all the time. I will have all next week to myself so there will not be as many distractions, so I am going to try and publish at least a few videos. At least thats the plan. Not sure what I am going to make the videos about yet though. But I'm sure one of them will be a walk through on how to fill in a 2D triangle manually.

Not enough code!
Whoa! I was just looking back through my blog posts to see when was the last time I posted any code on my site. It's been like 3-4 months since I posted any code. All these blog posts and nothing to show for it. :( I think it is because of alot of reasons and one of them is that some of the projects I am working on are rather large ones and are quite involving. I am going to try to make an effort to provide more frequent code examples in the future.

But any way that's generally what I've been up to this week ...