• Random list data for demos
  Scott Guthrie’s recent MIX keynote demo is a perfect example of this. He uses twitter to populate a simple listbox using his own feed. I do something similar in the sample project for nBayes where I let the user choose two different search terms to populate the two indices from twitter.

  It’s convenient because you don’t have to manage the data set. It’s a bottomless well of perfectly randomized sample data which makes it perfect for this purpose.

• Using it as a data communication channel
  One of the more interesting usage patterns, the use of Twitter to enable large scale communications and/or data transfer. Jeremy Hilton shows how to use it to manage a voting campaign. Other more “ambiguously practical” projects include TwitterDrive, and even a WCF Communication Channel!

The only unfortunate thing is that whenever I see this stuff used in a demo, they almost always use some xml parsing api to parse out results from the xml API. This can tend to be ugly and error prone. Linq2Twitter seems like an interesting solution because it lets you write  nice strongly typed linq queries and get back the results.

Depending on what you’re doing, having organic sample data can be very useful, there have been many projects attempting to address this in the past. And the use of twitter as a communication channel could be nice because it’s infrastructure you wouldn’t have to manage and maintain (just be prepared to handle fail whales).

If you are reading this blog and live in the Orlando area, please take a few moments and map yourself and at least fill out the google survey. Then spread the word, it would be pretty awesome to see this come to Orlando

So far, I’m happy enough with it. When I plugged it into the USB port on my computer, windows 7 already had drivers for it so it was kind of nice that I did not have to install any extra software; Though I haven’t installed the software disc that came with the monitor so I don’t know if there are any extra niceties that come with it.

The first thing that hit me was how large and nice the screen is. Definitely a great picture. Of course the first thing I did was fire up MS Paint, which natively supports multiple touch points. Single finger manipulation (I’ll have to trademark that one) works really well and is quite accurate. Two fingers however seems to be pretty buggy, especially when you move the touchpoints near each other.

I’m looking forward to programming against some of the APIs that are available. In particular, I’m looking forward to experimenting with new interface models rather than the usual textboxes, buttons, tree views, and menus.

Acer t230h

Dell SX2210

HP L2105tm

Because of the technique they’re using to do finger tracking, all the monitors only support two touchpoints at a time. Makes me wish that a homegrown solution like the optical webcam based solution I experimented with a while back was more feasible.

The HP L2105tm is the most inexpensive offering, but also, seems to have other deficiencies such as a slower response time than the other two monitors. The Dell monitor is nice because it has a built-in webcam, which is something that I’ve been interested in having for a while, but is ultimately secondary. The Acer T230H is the one that is currently capturing my interest; it’s the largest monitor of the three at 23 inches, and according to the specs has the best contrast ratio.

So, does anyone have any suggestions on which monitor I should go with? My primary goal is to have hardware that I can program multitouch enabled XNA games with

After a bit of online sleuthing (ie. searching Bing for “xna steam“) I came  across said XNA games on steam and, via one of the developer’s websites sent him an email. He was very nice and responded with:

Too bad they responded in such a way… usually they are very nice at Valve.

But yeah, they wrote a little C# wrapper for their Steamworks-dll.
They also made their installer script look for the dependencies (.NET
& XNA redist)
…
I didn’t really do anything to achieve this, they had
already decided to release the game when we ran into problems because
of the code being in C#, so they just put a guy on solving it.

This of course correlates with some of the other comments on my post saying that it would be trivial to write the wrapper; and in fact, even with my own assumptions before I even posted the blog entry. But the point I was trying to make was that I find Steam’s approach to developers rather strange. One of the FAQs from the steamworks site reads:

10. My game is in early development stages, don’t I need to plan for the SDK integration now?
The Steamworks SDK is easy to integrate, so you can wait until your game is further along in the development cycle before worrying about it.

Their approach is basically one of don’t call us, we’ll call you. Unless your game gets lots of publicity (for example, winning an indie contest) you will have to actively seek them out and pitch your game to them.

Contrast this with the approach that Microsoft is taking with XBox Live Indie Games. They provide an SDK, they provide hosting, they provide distribution, they provide some marketing … all for less than ten bucks a month ($99 a year). This model is so much more appealing to me as a developer because it is low risk (yes, $99 a year is low risk). If I end up not developing anything, or development goes longer than expected … I’m out $99 bucks at most.

If only Microsoft would extend xblig onto Windows …

After all this tablet hype started, I began to get excited about the possibilities of new markets emerging for touch enabled windows games. As Steam is currently one of the most robust and popular game distribution networks on windows, I was curious to know whether a game written with XNA could be published via Steam.

I visited their Steamworks developer site and the offering is very attractive: Anti-Piracy/DRM, Cloud Storage, Matchmaking, DLC. coupled with the fact that many gamers I know (a statistically insignificant metric, I know) trust and use Steam, and it warranted a further look.  So I emailed them and asked simply (edited for further brevity):

From: Joel Martinez
To: steamworks@valvesoftware.com

Hello, I was wondering if the Steamworks API is usable from a game written in C# … [I] would like to know if Steam would support games written using the XNA Framework.

Took them a few weeks to get back to me, but they answered succinctly:

From: Steam
To: Joel Martinez

Hello Joel,
We do not directly support games written using the XNA framework.  Steamworks is written in C++

A shame really.

In the months leading up to Christmas ’09, I was pondering what to buy for my kids. Instead of the normal brainless and easy gifts like transformers, gi-joes, and barbies, I wanted to get them something that matters, something that will benefit them. As I browsed around the internet, I came across microscopes, chemistry kits, telescopes, bird watching kits. Those were all fine enough gifts … but they didn’t really jump out at me for some reason.  Until I found …

Snap-Circuits

“Elenco’s Snap Circuits makes learning electronics easy and fun! Just follow the colorful pictures in your manual and build exciting projects such as AM radios, burglar alarms, doorbells and much more! You can even play electronic games with your friends. All parts are mounted on plastic modules and snap together with ease. Enjoy hours of educational fun while learning about electronics. No tools required. Uses “AA” batteries. Not included.”

Wow, the thought that electronics can be packaged up and easily explained to an eight year old was fascinating. I found one at my local Radio Shack, picked it up, and wrapped it. So far I have to say that I am very impressed with the product and my kids both seem genuinely interested. I thought I was going to have to carefully walk them through it, but they have picked it up quickly and have started doing projects on their own.

The manual is fantastic, very easy to follow instructions, and great descriptions of what’s going on in the circuit.

Of course, the only drawback so far is that the batteries drain pretty quickly … I’ve already had to replace one set. However, the kids like it so much that I’m considering picking up one of the larger sets along with this awesome battery eliminator that lets you draw power from a wall plug.

I will definitely rate this a buy if you’ve got kids … or heck, even if you want to learn more about electronics yourself and don’t already have the background

Thaat being said there seems to be a bug with posting pictures taken from the app. That’s ok though, still pretty cool

Unit tests are a topic that’s often a hot debate.  In my opinion, it’s because a lot of people don’t really know how to “do it right”.  To that end, in case you hadn’t seen this, Microsoft generously provides all of the source code to the ASP.NET MVC project on CodePlex.  And codeplex has this cool feature where you can browse the repositories right from your browser.  So you can dig right into the MVC/test/SystemWebMvcTest folder and see how they do it first hand

http://aspnet.codeplex.com/SourceControl/BrowseLatest