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.

New TwinCities .Net Group

Wednesday, July 02 2008 - , - 2 comments

A new .Net User group will have its first meeting next week on the 8th, it is the TwinCities Developers Guild. The first meeting will have a cookout before hand so you know I will not miss it. I know the free food is a great reason to go but a better reason is for Jason Bock's talk about writing better code a talk I saw at the last Code Camp and I think it was the best talk I saw that day. This new group (guild) is looking to be an very interactive and community focused.

Speaking of Code Camp the next one is comming up in October on the 11th and it is another not to miss free event. A coworker of mine will be giving a talk on old legacy database system called Pick. So be to sing up for the event even if you are not into old software there will be many great talks on many differnt subjects.

Blog update to Graffiti 1.1 mostly painless

Monday, June 30 2008 - - 2 comments

Just got done doing an update to my blogging software Graffiti version 1.1 and it went alright. I had some problems getting the database updated to the newest version and some issue with the permissions on the server.

If you are doing an upgrade here are my tips:

  • Backup first (yes I did do that one, all the other tips I found the hard way)
  • To update the database if you are using the vistaDB or Access file you need to copy the clean database file from "Data\Utility\Migrations" and upgrade that one the one that installs with 1.1 will error out on update. (The instructions on the site were not too clear about this, and I wonder why I have not setup a SQL database for this yet)
  • Check the file permission for all directories after you have added the new files. I had many directories that were not set correctly when I went to rebuild the site.
  • Last thing I suggest is to Zip up your backup and keep it.

 

I really like Graffiti so far with their new $99 pricing I am thinking about purchasing a license, just don't think the wife would go for me dropping the money on that.

FYI: its not really a "Blog" software its more of a CMS that can be used to make a blog.

I Need a few more hours in a day

Thursday, June 26 2008 - , - 0 comments

The daughters Science Fair is tomorrow, got a fair amount of Space Math done but the game is still not done yet. There are some bugs with the way the ships position them self on the screen and I got a short list of features I still want to add. My goal after the fair is to add those last bit of features and get the game up on community games.

Finishing the game will have to go on the back burner until the end of July. Got a large project due in less than a month that still has two months of work left on it. Its not going to be fun what makes things better is some of the specs for a third party web service and design elements are not final.

Yawn

Thursday, June 19 2008 - , - 1 comments

HomeServerBookYesterday the Microsoft Across America truck was in the Twin Cities. You may wonder what they are talking about and what swag they are giving away well if you are like me save your time and don't go. The presentation was mostly about Vista and Office 2007 and for some reason the presenter went on about Vista drivers and software being slow because it is not programmed correctly. The swag is not Office 2007 or a t-shirt as you may have read on some blog posts about when the tour began, however I did get a cool kids book about Windows Home Server (I really grabbed two, one for work one for home) you could also enter a drawing for some software (the drawing was not for  Office or Vista).

  • Not for tech professionals
  • Not for people that want swag
  • Is for people that want to see Vista, like your mom or anyone who takes their computer to the Geek Squad for repairs.
  • Is for people that want that cool kids book, But you don't have to go on the truck to get that just get it at the table outside.

Attending two events tomorrow

Monday, June 16 2008 - , - 0 comments

The first event is the Silverlight User Group at 12:00pm at Microsoft's local office. The time of the meeting seems a bit weird to me and the other working people that I know, I really don't know of any other user groups that meet in the middle of the day. I have seen the speaker Doug Nelson talk a few times before and he is a cool guy a programmer mind set so if you are going to see a flashy Sliverlight demo I don't think you will get it there. I do not think I will be a regular at this group because of the timing. There was a talk scheduled with a member of the Expressions team that I was really looking forward to however I don't see it on the site any more.

The second event is The Microsoft Across America tour bus, it is stopping at Micro Center. I hope to see some cool demos, ok I am really hoping for some cool swag like Office 2008. Let you know what you get if anything but I figure it will be worth it even it they don't give anything cool out.

Dream Build Play 2008

Monday, June 16 2008 - - 0 comments

If you are into XNA two new contests have been announced, The Game On Sweepstakes where you do stuff to get entered in a drawing to win some prizes and the second full Dream Build Play. This time you get a good reason to sign up a 12 month trial subscription to the creators club. The trail does not give you access to premium Creators Club content but you can use it to deploy to the 360.

I would love to do a game for this contest but I doubt I will have the time. So good luck to those that enter and I hope to see some cool live enabled games.

From Math Helper to Space Math

Wednesday, June 11 2008 - , - 0 comments

SpaceMathYesterday I started back working on a game my 8 year old and I started last year. As you can see from the screen shot the game was named Math Helper and we developed it to help her with a activity that she does at school called Rocket Math. It is basically multi choice flash cards with a shiny background. So you might ask how my daughter is helping with development, well she did the original UI design and I have been working with her on ideas for how the new version Space Math will work. She has also been working on Rocket Math work sheets that will provide us with a basis for each level. If any one is curious this game is built using XNA and when I get it done I plan on putting it up on the creators club to get it out on XBox live. Yes I did use the assets from Space Wars for the ship and background and I plan to use much more of their assets the licence on all the starter kits encourages its use in other products. I really wanted to do 100% original art for this project but I need to get it done in two weeks for the Science / Creativity Fair.

I am really thinking of setting up my own SVN server, it took me a while to find the most recent copy of of the code base and I even started working on development before I remembered another place the code might have been. I know there are services that can be used also, maybe I will look into one of those.

More updates to come...

Podcasts not showing up on Podcast section of iPod

Sunday, June 08 2008 - , - 9 comments

A few weeks ago when I got my new computer and moved my all my audio to my new computer I had one problem with my Ipod. None of the Pod Casts were showing in the Pod Cast section on the iPod, they were being synced to the device and I could play them if I found the file among the 7000 other files. I checked the preferences and make sure every thing said sync and update Pod Casts but nothing seemed to work finally did some Google searches and found a little help, I say a little because the instructions I found were not so clear. So here is how you get you Pod Casts back.

  1. Connect iPod and start iTunes.
  2. Click on you iPod in the list on the right side.
  3. Locate the tabs at the top of the main window, select Pod Casts.
  4. Click on the sync check box.
  5. Sync you iPod.

itunes-screen

Apple seems to have funny ideas user interface.

Nice new skin for the blog

Saturday, June 07 2008 - - 1 comments

LetsKillDave.com is what drove me to look at Graffiti CMS and David’s blog is what also led me to find some cool skins. One of the cool things about this CMS system is how easy it is install and change skins. If you like this skin and are running Graffiti CMS head over to http://richmercer.com/.