As promised, I have updated the Silverlights Out game. Really all I did was give it a new paint job, so it looks as cool as it really is. :) Animated scrolling starfield background, transparency, and those cool glass icons everyone likes to use these days.

Silverlights Out 2.0

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Topic: Real-World Windows Communication Foundation
Our next event will be held on Tuesday, May 8th, 2007. Thad Smith, from ACS Technologies will be presenting real-world development with Windows Communication Foundation. This presentation will include pragmatic approaches to utilizing the Windows Communication Foundation in your solutions.  See you there!

Here is the tentative schedule:

6:00 PM - 6:20 PM Socializing / Dinner
6:20 PM - 6:30 PM Introduction, Sponsor Time, and News.
6:30 PM - 7:45 PM Presentation
7:45 PM - 8:00 PM Drawing and Wrap Up

PDANUG serves the Pee Dee Area of South Carolina. Our group focuses on the .NET Framework and related technologies. We cordially invite anyone that is interested to join us at our monthly gatherings. You can find more information on our meeting location and topcis below. You may also contact us by emailing admin@pdanug.net for more information.

If you are interested in our group, please register! This helps us gain an understanding for who is interested in attending our events.

Click Here for detailed driving directions

So you're downloading the eight 743.9 MB files needed to install Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas", and you're thinking to yourself, "Self, there HAS to be a better way."

Well, there is. Two simple registry changes and you can go from 2 maximum downloads to 10!

Oh BTW, we're working with the Registry so you know the drill. Be careful. Enter at your own risk.

Increasing IE's Maximum Concurrent Downloads Setting

1. Click on the Start button and select Run.
   
2. On the Run line type Regedt32.exe and hit Enter.
   This will launch the Registry Editor.
   
3. Locate the following key in the registry:
   

   
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings

4. Click on the Internet Settings Key. Now go to the Edit menu, point to NEW, and click DWORD Value.
   
5. Type MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server for the name of this DWORD Value.
   
6. Double-click on the MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server key you just created and enter the following information:
   
   • Value data: 10
   • Base: Decimal
     
7. When finished press OK.
   
8. Click on the Internet Settings Key. Now go to the Edit menu, point to NEW, and click DWORD Value.
   
9. Type MaxConnectionsPerServer for the name of this DWORD Value.
   
10. Double-click on the MaxConnectionsPerServer key you just created and enter the following information:
    
    • Value data: 10
    • Base: Decimal
      
11. When finished press OK.
    
12. Close the Registry Editor.

It was really hard for me to find the settings needed to configure a server to "serve" Silverlight applications. So I've posted them here. Hopefully it will help someone.

These are really for WPF, but they worked fine for me with deploying Silverlight applications. The key ones are highlighted in a bold green.

Register MIME Types and File Extensions

You must register several MIME types and file extensions so that the browser on the client's system can load the correct handler. You need to add the following types:

I couldn't resist jumping on the Silverlight bandwagon. So I created a Silverlights Out game. Just something quick and dirty to get a feel for the technology.

I had to try and improve on the orginal so I'd made the game toggle lights across borders. So if you click on a light on the left, it will effect the light on the other side and vice versa. Enjoy. :)

I've got some plans for some nice improvements, so stayed tuned.

Silverlights Out

See it!
http://www.cjcraft.com/Blog/content/binary/silverlightsout.gif

Use It!
http://cjcraft.com/silverlight/silverlightsout/silverlightsout.html

Download It! (source code and all) [quick and dirty garage project, that's why it is so CHEAP]
http://cjcraft.com/silverlight/silverlightsout/silverlightsout.zip

Umm, Describe It!

Lights out is a one player puzzle that is played on a 5 by 5 grid of squares in which every square has two states: on and off. The game starts off with all squares off, where the goal is to turn on every square. By selecting a square, all the surrounding squares' (up, down, left, right) state is turned toggled. For example, on a 3 by 3 grid of squares with all squares off, if the center one is selected, it will turn "on" the 4 up, down, left, right squares from it.

We all went to see Spider-Man 3 last night and had a blast, lots of fun.
Very ambitious movie, almost tries to cover too much material.

"Next summer, the greatest battle lies... within."

"A strange black entity from another world bonds with Peter Parker and causes inner turmoil as he contends with new villains, temptations, and revenge."

Pretty cool looking at the statistical ratings for Spider-Man 3 at IMDB.com.

Interesting trivia:

• This film is reportedly the most expensive film ever made in U.S. dollars, with a budget of $250 million. This breaks King Kong (2005)’s record of $207 million, and in terms of adjusted dollars, would be third to Voyna i mir (1968)’s budget of $560 million.
• The over 600 latex "web" balloons in the celebration scene had to be hand-painted with a Sharpie marker.
• Thomas Haden Church worked out for 16 months to build up his physique to portray Sandman.
• Kirsten Dunst dyed her natural blond hair red for the role of Mary Jane Watson. Bryce Dallas Howard dyed her natural red hair blond for the role of Gwen Stacy.
• The film's translation in Russia is "Spider-Man 3: Enemy in the Reflection"

Joel Spolsky has an excellent article on office design, especially manufactured walls. It's really insightful.

Joel takes you through how FogCreek, paid for expensive office renovation, with their first office. All of which wasn't really tax deductible.

But with their new office they are going to use manufactured walls. Since manufactured walls are a real asset, not only can they write off the office expense, they even get to lease the purchase.

This explains why so many tech companies prefer cubicle farms over having real walls. But I think Joel's right, with manufactured walls you get the best of both worlds.

We're starting to outgrow our current office at Taylor Data Systems. I'm glad there are other options for us besides cube farms.

The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint

Presentation Guru Guy Kawasaki discusses a rule called 10/20/30 PowerPoint rule in one of his recent blog posts. What is the 10/20/30 PowerPoint rule? He states, “a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.”

Guy argues this rule is applicable for any presentation to reach agreement: for example, raising capital, making a sale, forming a partnership, etc.

1. Problem
2. Your solution
3. Business model
4. Underlying magic/technology
5. Marketing and sales
6. Competition
7. Team
8. Projections and milestones
9. Status and timeline
10. Summary and call to action

Like they say in the Guinness commercials, "Brilliant!" I'm sold, and the fences this creates really helps keep things simple and easy for everyone presenters and listeners both.

I've started loking for good SilverLight / Windows Presentation Foundation examples.

Here are some I've found so far:

DENOUNCE
Podcast Listener and Blog Reader

NOSTALGIA 
Yahoo! Flickr Browser and Photo Manager

DA.CODE 
Interactive Trivia Game

CINE.VIEW 
Netflix for Your Desktop

Harmony: visualize your music library

One impressive feature of Windows Vista is its support for 3D. This proof-of-concept is a knock-off of Coverflow (recently integrated into iTunes) with a few extra "twists".

de.collage: 13 painters with a view

In French, "décollage", roughly translates to "take off" or "to become unstuck". This application queries the internet to bring famous paintings to your desktop.

Module: the right hand for your desktop

Can't wait for Microsoft Vista's Sidebar? Why not try ours? Simply launch the application, type in your zip code, and away you go.

Echobox: adding voice to design

Design is hard to manage by email. This proof-of-concept facilitates basic design collaboration via FTP.

fp.hue: color conversion for Sparkle

Sometimes you have to make your own tools. This widget converts HEX color values into Sparkle's floating point RGB values.

Windows Vista RTM - Demonstation of Windows ReadyBoost - Google Video

Last week Page Brooks, Chris Reeder, and I were discussing the benifits of Vista's ReadyBoost, especially for laptops. Here's a video that should help demonstrate the power of ReadyBoost.

I've embedded the video below, so if you rss reader supports it you're all set.

The code camp is Saturday, May 12, all day, at the Central Piedmont Community College.

For more information and to register, visit http://www.developersguild.org/codecamp/2007/.

The 2007 Charlotte Code Camp will be held on Saturday, May 12th with CPCC and Microsoft to bring another Code Camp to Charlotte! A full Saturday of "primo" hands-on labs and tech presentations covered up with code, code, and more code.

I'd love to attend the XNA Simulation Labs, but I think I'll attend the Presentations track.

.NET University Labs

This track is designed to give you a good technical introduction to the four new technologies that ship with .NET 3.0: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), and Windows CardSpace.

XNA Simulation Labs

XNA is Microsoft's new game development platform for Windows and the XBOX 360. This track is designed to give you a good technical introduction to how to develop a game on these platforms.

Presentations

This non-lab track will present upcoming technologies including Orcas (VS 2007) and LINQ as well as solutions to everyday developer issues like the Building Blocks of a production ASP.NET application and building custom webparts for WSS V3.

Sign up now!

Tim Sneath's post Our First WPF End-To-End Reference Sample: Family.Show caught my eye today, and boy am I glad it did.

I have to admit from what I've seen Microsoft and Vertifo Software have done an outstanding job on Family.Show. It is definitely more than a demo, I'm not sure reference application does it justice.

You can install and run it using ClickOnce, btw. :) Source code is available. Be sure to check out the lab to see more projects.

"Microsoft and Vertigo Software launched of a brand new end-to-end reference sample for WPF."

"Available for download immediately, Family.Show is a genealogy explorer that allows you to create or import a family tree and explore, annotate or save it to XPS."

"Our designers employed every trick in the WPF book– styles, resources, templates, data binding, animation, transforms– to present an innovative visualization of the classic family tree, freeing our developers to concentrate on behind-the-scenes features like XPS, P/Invoke wrapper for Windows Vista common dialogs, and ClickOnce for WPF."

If you are into data models or databases be sure to check out the following:

Library of Free Data Models from DatabaseAnswers.org

Highlights:

1. Here are about 450 very useful 'Kick-Start' Data Models.
2. Ten of the Data Models are featured in the Express Edition of Microsoft SQL Server 2005.
3. Here are the Top 20 Data Models.
4. The site also has a Data Model Search facility.
5. A new Tutorial on Understanding a Database Schema.
6. Awesome FAQ, you will find something cool here.

This site is kind of like the Super DBA's scratch pad. If you look around and you'll find some gems.

Get accepted into Windows Home Server Beta 2.

Windows Home Server
https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer

Install TVersity on WHS.

TVersity is Release 0.9.9.1 (November 26, 2006)
http://www.tversity.com/download.html

TVersity QuickStart Guide
http://tversity.com/support/quickstart/

DivX - XBox 360 Guide
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1002/2

Install DivX Windows Media CoDec on WHS

DivX Windows Media CoDec
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/ACE_Mega_CoDecS_Pack.htm

Since Windows Home Server runs on a modified version Windows 2003 Small Business Server, you can install the Windows Media related codecs from the Ace codec pack instead (this is because WMP 11 is not currently available on this systems).

Connect to WHS from XBox 360

Enjoy the show!