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.