Where is the DeepZoom Community?

Wednesday, April 29 2009 - , - 0 comments

I am a little frustrated with the lack of advanced information about DeepZoom. For the past few weeks I have been motivated to work on a personal project and since I am still waiting on getting Sketch Flow I have been thinking about DeepZoom. I have found a ton of examples on how to create a panoramic or layout images but not much on how interact with those images or on how to show and hide images a different zoom levels. I think I found the info I need and if I can keep motivated I will write up some more blog posts about what I got done and how I did it. If it works out it should be a use of DeepZoom that nobody else has done yet.

Happy Birthday Lisa

Wednesday, April 08 2009 - - 0 comments

I just wanted to say happy birthday to my wife of almost 10 years Lisa. As with most years I have no idea what I am getting you but I now understand why I never know.  It’s because when I know you want something I can’t make you wait for it. So now instead of trying to stay up and think of something smart or funny to add to this post I will just go and join you in the bed and tell you that I love you.

 

What is an HP Engine Room Bundle?

Tuesday, April 07 2009 - , - 0 comments

A few people have asked me what I got from winning the Microsoft PhizzPop challenges and I did not really know for sure until recently. For the regional in Minneapolis each team was given 3 days of training and copies of Vista, Visual Studio 2008 Pro, Expression Studio and Office 2007. The software and training add up to be worth a good amount that made just being part of PhizzPop worth it.

When we won the Minneapolis challenge we got two things the first was a trip to SXSW09 (South by South West 09) to compete in round 2 the national challenge. What they gave us was full Gold Sponsor Passes to SXSW and hotel stay for 2 nights. Two nights was not much time to experience SXSW concerning that the first night I was still working on code. They could have skipped the passes I only went to 2 events that you needed passes for and one of them we did not even have our passes for yet but we got in because Zeus Jones was up for an award. From what I did get to of SXSW it is a very fun event I hope that I am invited back next year to be a judge and really get time to see more of SXSW.

For winning the National PhizzPop challenge I knew we were getting a trip to the Cre8 conference in Orlando, FL coming up on April 15th. I am not really sure who this conference is aimed at but it seems skewed towards Adobe products. But my goal for the four days is to do some networking and maybe bring back some new partners for Sierra Bravo.

The mysterious prize was an HP Engine Room Bundle it was mysterious because Google failed me and could not find any information to tell me what it was. I did find some stuff about a reality show on MTV that was called The Engine Room and sponsored by HP. There was a page with a number of HP products that they used on the show, my real hope was for one of the items to be a laptop so the wife could have one to her self and I could have one for work. The bundle was 2 items a HP DreamColor LP2480zx monitor and HP XW6600 Workstation. The DreamColor is a $2000 24” LCD and is way too much monitor for my needs it can display a billion colors and I am sure do a lot of other cool things. The workstation is ok but needs some upgrades to make it useful for me. Since they don’t really fit my needs I have them up for sale on Amazon.

In talking about the Minneapolis challenge I said that there were two prizes but only talked about one the second prize is more of a side effect and it’s just the fact that our team won. It’s a nice that my management knows that the time I spent working on the project was worth it. It is something that our sales department can show to our clients as an example of our work and dedication.

Time to dust this place off

Tuesday, February 03 2009 - 0 comments

Been a while since I posted time to get back on it and make some posts.

Most Gamefest Presentations up for download.

Friday, September 05 2008 - 0 comments

If you are into game development Microsoft has released the audio from this years Gamefest there is a special section on XNA. That should be full of information about the next version of XNA 3.0 but the sessions on Certification is what I really want to know more about. What does it take to get a game through cert and just what does Microsoft require of its games.

I just found that the talks on Certification are only for people with XDS accounts, that sucks. I still hope that MajorNelson will do an interview with someone on the Cert team at Xbox sometime soon.

Thanks to The XNA Team Blog for the info about the presentations.

Not too Caffeinated just messy

Thursday, August 28 2008 - 1 comments

A blog post from Blogus Maximus (aka Chris Williams (aka Charity Fragathon guy)) inspired me to take some pictures.

Its good to know I am not the only one who cant be bothered to throw their cans away.

It does not have to be caffeinated, and hey I though we stopped stocking water.

Super caffeinated

Programmers love Red Bull

Fish + Red Bull = Fail

Events I think are cool

Thursday, August 14 2008 - - 0 comments

There are two events coming up in September that I will be attending that you may want to check out.

The Charity Frag-a-thon  is an event being hosted by the Twin Cities XNA User Group. Along with helping Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota the event will have a Halo 3 tournament with prizes. I am not the best Halo 3 player but I am hoping that the people that show up are not to great. For me this is also an chance to bring a non programmer friend of mine to meet some of the people I know from work and the user groups.

Charity Fragathon

Wednesday, September 24, 2008 (6-10PM)
Microsoft
8300 Norman Center Dr, Suite 950
Bloomington, MN 55437

The other event is the Minnesota Developer Conference on September 9th. For me this is the first paid conference that I will be attending I am hope that this event will provide more than the free Twin Cities Code Camp coming up in October. There are still spots open for both MDC and Code Camp, the code camp is free and an event not to miss and right not you can get a big discount on the last of the MDC tickets.

 

Bravo Move

Tuesday, July 29 2008 - - 0 comments

Over the last weekend the company I work for Sierra Bravo moved to a new office. It was a experience that I hope not to repeat any time soon. Moving all the stuff took 3 large moving trucks, a team of 9 movers and 2 trips for each truck and that does not even cover moving the data center. The internet connection is still a little flaky so the blog may be down from time to time over the next few days.

XNA Community Games can ean you money / XNA Community Games will cost you money

Wednesday, July 23 2008 - - 2 comments

Today Microsoft announced how distribution of community games to Xbox live will work. Basically you will be able make money from games created with XNA Game Studio. I have mixed feelings about this on one hand it gives everyone even everyday game creators the chance to make money. This is a great will be a opportunity for a lot of people but is it the right direction for XNA?

Microsoft has been calling Community Games the YouTube of gamming a place where you can put your games and anyone can download it. That means you get a lot of bad games and a few really great ones. So where would YouTube be if you had to pay for downloads?  My guess is that you would have never heard of it. Will Community Games have its equivalent to a video with 10 million views or will the prices keep away the masses. What happens to the everyday gamer gets Rick Rolled they download and pay for a game that is junk, will they take a chance and download any more? I don't think they will. Another factor that has made XBox Live Arcade such a big success is the ability to download a free demo.

Since blog posts with a bunch of questions are boring I will say that I think charging money for all Community Games is not the best move. Only time will tell but I really hope that it turns out to be a big success.

Pokemon

Tuesday, July 22 2008 - , - 1 comments

In the past week and a half my daughter and I have picked up a pretty bad Pokemon habit. It started with one deck and now we can build 3 full decks and have a large stack of extras. We even have our main decks in sleeves. This last weekend we attended the League at The Source in St Paul MN. We also attended a Tournament out in Coon Rapids MN at Outpost 2000. I was surprised on how helpful everyone at the events was we got a lot of great tips on how to build better decks.

Some things that are not so clear are the rules. The rule book that you get with the starter decks does not cover every thing or it is not very clear about some of the rules. Another thing that would be very helpful would be an evolution chart. I found lots of card lists but nothing that shows all the stages.

Here are some simple things that we have learned.

  • Be sure to buy a Diamond and Pearl starter pack. The cards given seem to be stronger than the older packs.
  • If you can find it buy one of the tins that contain 4 booster packs and an Lv.X card that matches one of the cards you have in your deck. The Lv.X cards are very powerful evolutions and most people you battle will have at least one in their deck.
  • Add more support and trainer cards. The starter packs are heavy on basic Pokémon and light on support and trainers. The best cards to add would be ones that would allow you to search your deck for basics or evolution cards. This way you will not miss the basics you take out and with them you get to choose the cards you want.
  • Sleeves have also made things better; my daughter has an easier time shuffling her deck with them.
  • Learn to play with dice. Many people use dice as damage counters and for coin tosses. Dice are easy for kids to use and much more random then the plastic coins that are given in starter packs.