tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-194103022024-03-13T16:18:11.748+01:00Random Ramblings and RumblingsMy views on the world, .NET coding, TTD, life and software development in general.Fehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-9126402920460911072009-02-04T11:53:00.001+01:002009-02-04T11:53:00.911+01:00Why ninjas are coolNo. You are wrong. This is not yet another rant about why Dusk of Ninja & Brush is a totally awesome game. This is real ninja stuff! .NET ninja stuff – but you catch my drift. Today I went to a Tech Talk at microsoft about ASP.NET performance. Usually these talks contain just enough to not be a complete waste of time – but they are seldomly totally awesome. Today was different. Today a ninjaFehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-72419297443790789542009-02-01T21:04:00.001+01:002009-02-01T21:04:29.110+01:00Global Game Jam 09 is over…and it has been a blast. 48 hours of game making madness around the globe. I am really looking forward to seeing how much press this event generates and to see the games that have been created. Needless to see very few will have time to play all the games that the 1500 participants worldwide has made. Here we made a massive 29 different games – and we were 150 people. A quick calculation Fehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-84478931584314281252009-01-14T20:43:00.001+01:002009-01-14T20:43:31.826+01:00StringBuilder and the immutability of stringsI had a discussion today with Robin, who claimed that there was several ways to break the immutability of strings in C# – most notably by using a StringBuilder to build the string in bits. I found that very unsettling, and decided to make my own tests to see what was happening. Here is a screenshot of the program and the results. The results are pretty interesting, and not as unsettling as i Fehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-31960936768121186022008-12-12T13:16:00.001+01:002008-12-12T13:16:32.244+01:00Robocopy to the rescueThis is a typical situation. I have been trying to find a tool that can solve a problem I have of syncronizing my web files properly. Without any luck. Until today. And the worst part: The solution was already installed as part of windows and has been that way for ages. Enter Robocopy. This is a command line file copier that as standard copares files in two directories and copies newer files Fehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-19359646750240158612008-11-26T01:22:00.001+01:002008-11-26T01:22:16.215+01:00Adventures in Flash and PythonThe last couple of weeks I have been making a nice little Flash application, a questionnaire, for a government project. One of the features of the questionnaire was the ability to print out results based on the answers given. In order to do pretty printing of the results, I used the awesome AlivePDF library to generate PDFs for the user to print. Neat stuff. It was a bit dodgy to get it up and Fehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-82419753467559420302008-04-30T21:33:00.001+02:002008-04-30T21:33:26.967+02:00It must be a sign, but an undeciferable oneHow come that the day GTA4 should have arrived in my mail, the postal delivery people in my region decides to go on a strike. So I am left out of the party even though I had done my duty and pre-ordered the game. Luckily they are showing Chelsea-Liverpool CL semi on Viasat TV6 which I can watch for free with the digital tuner in my new TV. Nothing as cruels as this happens without a reason. So. Fehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-66409398220945915222008-04-29T08:45:00.001+02:002008-04-29T08:45:45.460+02:00Installing on consolesOne of the reasons that I have ditched PC gaming in favor of console gaming is that it is just much easier. I mean, buy the game, put the disc in the drive, off you go. Can't get better than that. But in the next gen game things have changed somewhat. Sometimes when i put the disc in my 360 I need a title update. So an installer has been downloaded, runs and reboots either the game or the consoleFehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-65337942128636989192008-04-20T23:08:00.001+02:002008-04-20T23:08:54.606+02:00Caught on filmRazu came by the other day and caught me for an interview for Microsoft. I think the result is actually quite good. See for yourselves, and please do comment. The Real Story Fehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-52372540400265334732008-03-28T12:12:00.001+01:002008-03-28T12:12:18.694+01:00Do YOU see ANY connection?Fehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-28892093229079136922008-03-28T01:20:00.001+01:002008-03-28T01:20:22.639+01:00How can something so good be free?!?!I have long been wanting to take a look at the Umbraco open source .NET CMS system, and now I finally have had the opportunity to do so in conjunction with the website I am creating for my new buddies at GamingSchool. I must say that what I see amazes me. I have had some experience with CMSes in the past. I used SiteCore contracting for AlphaSolutions. Currently I am using CompositeCMS for the Fehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-15807940518779809202008-02-22T00:25:00.001+01:002008-02-22T00:25:48.531+01:00The three project solutionAyende just brought up the issue of project structuring, and his experience was so similar to mine that it cannot be a coincidence. In my old job I spent a lot of time trying to "do things properly". Splitting up into a lot of logical assemblies, promoting reuse by having special helper assemblies and so on. The result was a huge amount of lugggage that each application had to carry Fehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-3753357517740091862008-02-04T15:11:00.001+01:002008-02-04T15:11:43.298+01:00Mass SalvationNordic Game Jam is over, and as last year, it was a hoot and a holler! Man, we had fun! I was lucky to get a great team. Four programmers, four game desginers/artists/sound engineers and a great idea. So we managed to get a full a full game up and running on the XBox using XNA in only one and a half day. The game is called "Mass Salvation" and in accordance with the theme for the Jam, Fehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-81998233434466250032008-01-29T13:16:00.001+01:002008-01-29T13:16:08.524+01:00OMG! It Rocks!Not that I had any doubts about it. But I just tried Rock Band today, playing the guitar and drums. Man, it is fun. Why, didn't I sing? Dunno. Next time. Playing the drums was just as muc fun as I had imagined. The guitar takes a bit getting used to. It is much more sturdy and heavier than the GH guitars and has a much different feel. But it actualy feels more like playing a real guitar than GH Fehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-5489467318691274302008-01-06T00:34:00.001+01:002008-01-06T00:50:09.697+01:00XNA Tweener libraryMy second open source project is live now at Codeplex - and it has a release and everything! Check it out here. The project is a Tweener library for XNA making it easy to create animations for your games. I was inspired by the Tween class in ActionScript although it is not a direct port. All the cool easing functions from Robert Penner that you know and love are of course there, ported from the Fehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-3397736764020916842007-12-13T10:37:00.001+01:002007-12-13T10:43:58.831+01:00More Mocking of HttpContext for MVCI was actually preparing this for a comment to my last post in answer to chris7's comment. But it got long. You know! Chris7 asked if it was possible to abstract out the Record/Playback syntax in the example to make the code clearer. And you can of course do that and put the Replay call into the MockContextFactory like this: protected IHttpContext MockContextFactory(string url){ IHttpContextFehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-26196392666304620632007-12-11T23:23:00.001+01:002007-12-11T23:35:12.363+01:00Mocking HttpContext for MVC route testingFirst I have to say thx a bunch to MS for releasing the CTP of the MCV framework. This really is Da Bomb. I think they are doing a great job here. So I am setting up my first MVC.NET based site, while digging through all the relevant posts on how to use the framework. So while setting up my routes, doing the proper TDD, I stumble upon the MockHttpContext for testing routes in ScottGu's part 2. Fehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-29298958173237127412007-10-12T13:10:00.001+02:002007-10-12T13:10:15.371+02:00CodeBehind handlers in ASP.NETI was creating an HTTP handler for an ASP.NET project today for returning a CSV report to a customer. And naturally I wanted this to CodeBehind style as everything else. This turned out to be a small gotcha, since it is not supported out of the bag with VS.NET 2005. So for further reference here is what to do. 1. Create the handler as usual - for instance MyHandler.ashx. 2. Create a new codeFehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-31516147559134968912007-08-17T12:32:00.001+02:002007-08-17T12:32:55.016+02:00Wierd ActiveRecord "bug"As I have written earlier I am using the Castle ActiveRecord framework extensibly. It is an extremely cool framework that has cut down on the amount of database work I am doing - shortening development cycles considerably. But I am still learning, and today I finally squashed a very odd bug that had bugged me for a while. The scenario is this: I am storing some data for the Warlocks game server Fehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-47232322177207352652007-07-26T10:51:00.001+02:002007-07-26T10:54:49.683+02:00The Interface TaxEvan has an OK post here, detailing the intrisics of Object Composition and Inheritance. He is very right in the way he is doing stuff, but while I was reading, something was bothering me as well. The thing that bothered me was that the code I am writing in the projects I am doing right now does not look a lot like what he is doing - and I think that I am following the OOP principles just asFehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-36970697826198020772007-07-20T14:19:00.001+02:002007-07-20T14:19:08.433+02:00The Wii songThis is just SO much fun! SarcasticGamer.com is my new fave RSS feed. Their podcast is a hoot. Honest, no-punches-pulled opinions about the gaming hype sprikled with great radio sketch material. w00t!Fehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-81496701166107998692007-07-20T13:35:00.001+02:002007-07-20T13:35:23.020+02:00Skill mastery in gamesStumbled on this interesting article from Gamasutra on the chemistry of games. Apart from presenting ideas it also tries to give a quick set of tools for evaluating your gameplay too see if it is fun, and maybe find out what is wrong with it. Worth a read, and maybe I should try it out on my Warlocks game - that BTW is getting closer to a playable state, so keep your eyes and ears open for aFehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-87287029655642399252007-07-19T12:04:00.001+02:002007-07-19T12:04:24.603+02:00The Gaming BuzzMetricsJust tuned in to Allans blog. I know Allan from ITU, having shared the experience of their enrollment course and AI course with him. He is currently employed at Infopaq. His blog is a tech blog, and there are some interesting stuff there. While stripmining his blog, I cam across a link to the BlogPulse site, where you can make graphs displaying the trends of terms in the blogosphere, ising a Fehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-86888560303237510782007-06-28T23:55:00.001+02:002007-06-28T23:55:12.751+02:00Old fashioned learningJeff Atwood brought up a subject of lerning today that made me think of the exam I just went to. The notion in his post is about how you learn to learn in college, but also touches on the subject of why todays students are not taught how to use the possibilities of the net. And it is here that my story begins. Just recently I finished up a course in Efficient AI on ITU. It was a really good Fehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-19259969656985875222007-06-27T16:32:00.001+02:002007-06-27T16:32:58.436+02:00How not to keep customersHaving read a lot of posts just like this at the ZMans, I now have my own story to share. Forgive me if this post is badly worded, because right now I am still angry with them for their inexplically bad service. I just got of the phone with the mobile company 3, where I have had a mobile data service for my computer for some time now. The service is being provided via a PCMCIA card with a Fehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19410302.post-34240291287598345342007-06-21T21:38:00.001+02:002007-06-21T21:38:57.627+02:00A trip to the CastleIn the past week I have been fiddling a bit with the Castle frameworks, because I just had to see what they were up to with Monorail, their Rails for .NET framework. While i think the ideas behind Monorails, and what they have made are technically excellent. There are some things that bug me. I am irritated by the lack of a proper view engine. I think that both NVelocity and Brail are downright Fehaarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02347111759828291081noreply@blogger.com0