http://www.tagenigma.com/geeklog The Web Blog of TAG en-gb http://www.tagenigma.com/geeklog/article.php?story=20080803200252845 On the way to the parade in Snohomish after work, there was a hilarious radio program called ["The Shoe Horns"]. I especially liked the segment that talked about the life of a writer. Or in my case a home programmer. Tune in to the program at 78:30. http://www.tagenigma.com/geeklog/article.php?story=20080730220553683 I picked up a [500 GB My Book My World] external usb/ethernet harddrive. I can say that I'm not impressed. The transfer speeds are dog slow. And the USB interface just doesn't work. I got the harddrive with the purpose as a redundant backup. But really the thing is too slow to use. http://www.tagenigma.com/geeklog/article.php?story=20080719120147525 My [Preferred Development Environment] has been working great. The speed of the Gateway FX7029E is good enough to test Crysis mods and various other games that I've been working on (Supreme Commander, Warcraft III, Assassin's Creed, and Crysis). The only problem is that I have a dead pixel on the screen. So I have 90 days from June 13th to get a free replacement. It's just a pain, because I'll have to backup my stuff and then reinstall my development environment. http://www.tagenigma.com/geeklog/article.php?story=20080704133151315 I've always been a fan of video tutorials like the ones from [Luxology] that show all the features of Modo (my favorite modeling app). I've recorded some of my own videos using [Dr. Divx]. Brad Peebler, author if the weekly "Modocast" suggests [Camtasia Studio] - a full featured video capture, editing, and annotation piece of commercial publishing software. Best of all, Camtasia provides a plethera of [video training tutorials]. The marketing slogan is, "this is so easy a 6th grader can use it!".Another tool that is capable of capturing single frames for analysis comes with DirectX and is called PIX. [GarageGames] has a blog article about using [PIX] to debug a shader and talks about filtering techniques used to diagnose problems with all aspects of DirectX rendering.It is possible to take screenshots of the desktop and output an image sequence. The image sequence is converted to an MPEG1 in [this example]. The [WMF SDK] provides a WMF writer object to write single images to a WMF movie. [DirectShow] wraps WPF and provides a convenient wrapper. Many DirectShow source examples are already installed with the Windows SDK and found within ('C:/ Program Files/ Microsoft SDKs/ Windows/ v6.1/ Samples/ Multimedia/ DirectShow'). To compile, make sure the Windows SDK includes ('C:/ Program Files/ Microsoft SDKs/ Windows/ v6.1/ Include') and add the DirectShow common includes ('C:/ Program Files/ Microsoft SDKs/ Windows/ v6.1/ Samples/ Multimedia/ DirectShow/ Common') are in the include search path. The Windows SDK libs ('C:/ Program Files/ Microsoft SDKs/ Windows/ v6.1/ Lib') should be in the lib search path.Some of the DirectShow samples failed to find stream.h, which can be remedied by replacing:#include <streams.h>with:#include <Control.h>#include <evcode.h>#include <strsafe.h>Microsoft Movie is capable [importing an image sequence] and publishing a movie.DirectSound can be used to [record PCM data to a wav file].If you don't find the answer to your question on this web site, [Where to Get Help]. http://www.tagenigma.com/geeklog/article.php?story=20080704121007415 June 1st, 2008 was a historic day for me. It was the day I finally transitioned from the ranks of SDET (software developer engineer in test) to a full fledged game developer at [Isotx]. I received the formal offer Tuesday and told my boss Wednesday. July 16 will be my final day at [Infospace] after nearly 8 years. At [Isotx] I'll be working on indie and commercial game delivery using a platform called [CrosuS]. I'll be also be adding video editing, upload, and distribution capabilities for CrosuS video. I've already been working with [Crysis] and [Assassin's Creed] with more hot titles in the very near future. http://www.tagenigma.com/geeklog/article.php?story=20080614151741198 [CryMod] - a website dedicated to providing information about creating mods for Crysis[CryMod] - a database of Crysis mods available for downloadCryMod - Crysis maps [1] and [2] for testingCryMod - a Crysis mods [1] and [2] for testing[CryTools] - a useful tool to package Crysis Mods[Crysis Patch 1.2] - includes a Crysis modloaderForum: [post] http://www.tagenigma.com/geeklog/article.php?story=20080613202558435 June 13th, I picked up the last ([obsolete already]) [Gateway FX7029E] from the Bothell [Costco] while I wait for IBUYPOWER to repair my other quad-proc box. As with any new developer machine, it takes about a day to install all the tools needed for the job. These are the common tools that I use on a regular basis.[TortoiseSvn] - an open source client tool for integrating with subversion source control[WinMerge] - an open source diff tool excellent for quickly identifying revision changes and merging code quickly[Cygwin] - UNIX command-line tools on Windows (grep, tar, tail, head, zip, unzip, ssh, scp)[Textpad] - a text editing utility with built-in regular expression support[Gimp] - a free image manipulation program[Thunderbird] - open source email client[Lightning] - integrated calendar for Mozilla Thunderbird[Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008] - Microsoft development tools for doing anything .NETVisual Studio 2005 Express Service Pack [xp] [vista] - Various bug fixes that fix known problems in Visual Studio[Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite Service Pack] - fixes numerous bugs in the Team System edition of Visual Studio[Windows Platform SDK] - A development kit of tools, libraries, and source for developing on the Windows platform[DirectX SDK] - the software development tools, includes and libraries for building DirectX applications [Setup.exe][Google C++ Style Guide] - coding standards attempt to keep programmers' code easy to read and hopefully easy to understand[Microsoft XNA Game Studio] - all the dependencies that you need to start developing for the XBox http://www.tagenigma.com/geeklog/article.php?story=20080623190135493 There are times when you want to save a [MS Office 2007 file in Adobe PDF format]. http://www.tagenigma.com/geeklog/article.php?story=20080623173100706 We had steaks so good that they didn't need BBQ sauce; other steaks can't even compete with. But now we are out and need to order again. America's Choice Entrees, LLC dba Praire Gold Foods Minneapolis, MN 55344 http://www.tagenigma.com/geeklog/article.php?story=20080617133209537 [Wine 1.0] is an implementation of the Windows API for *unix. Written for X, I've followed the progress of this project for years. I first stumbled across Wine, which made it possible to use MS Office and StarCraft on Mandrake Linux.