Nukeation Machine Teaser by =nukeation on deviantART

 

With reuxables done, we are now gearing up to finish and launch our next product for the new world of UX. Keep watching for more info. The only hint I can give right now is "WPF, WPF, and more WPF" and "Visual Studio" and "Blend". Okay, enough. I'll shut up now. :)

Andy just wrote about a very true fact about fundings for software projects.

"I wish I would have learned earlier in my career how important the UX is -- when you are briefing the boss, they need to see a good looking UI, or you won't get your next funding cycle."

Read the entire post.

Microsoft just published it's second official Expression Newsletter. It contains part 1 of my "Designer Role" article.

http://www.microsoft.com/expression/news-press/newsletter/2007-12/Article02.aspx

For more than a year (actually several if you include research) we have been working on Visual Studio tool Codename NukeBall - a Dynamic Rapid UI Development tool. Essentially, it creates parts (or whole) of UI in your Windows Forms projects with a single click.

Over the past year, the core (NxC) of NukeBall evovled from a simple automation tool to an actual code adapter. We added support for creating your own UI chunks - called WADS (Widely Adaptable Dynamic Scraps) - and added complete support for 3rd party controls. The main power of NukeBall lies in seamlessly converting UI code from one .NET language to another - and some other things we are not yet ready to talk about. ;)

Without further ado, I leave you with a live demo of what Codename: NukeBall can do.

Video: Codename NukeBall Tech Preview 1

Download the hi-res version

Please note that this video shows an internal build. The actual product UI and features will be much more enhanced.

Email me at dax [at] nukeation [dot] com if you're interested in beta testing NukeBall.

More information about will be published soon on this blog.

WPF Transition Framework or WTF, is a simple (and FREE) set of controls (well, control for now) that help you add slick animated transitions to your WPF apps without having to resort to creating timelines or messing with code.

It's as simple as this:

This is the beta release and only 4 (of 10+) transitions are supported: BlurIn, BlurOut, FadeIn, and FadeOut. Check out our wishlist to see what we hope to add to it (including bitmap based animated effects!).

WTF let's you easily control the quality/performance ratio by using the QUALITY property. If you want to stop animations for a moment, then you just turn on HoldTransitions (bool) and it will deactivate all transitions.

Download WTF and check out the sample application!

WTF works with Microsoft Expression Blend 1.0 or later, and Visual Studio 2008 Beta 1 or later.

My new article is featured on front page of the newly relaunched angryCoder.com.

But like developers, designers also have healthy egos measured in tons. Stick a single developer in a team of designers and he or she will be chewed to death in a matter of minutes. Black shirts hide bloodstains easily - why do you think designers wear only black?

Read the entire article at angryCoder.com

This thing started catching attention before it was even announced.

It's hot and it's coming soon.

The ultimate WPF resource. The only hint I can give you so far is - it's powered by Pwop.

I'm still finding that many people are still not trying WPF. Many don't know where to start. So to help people adopt WPF, Andy Eick and I are creating some cool "learning material".

Instead of assuming we know what you - "Joe Developer" or "Joe Designer" - want to know more about in WPF, we'll just ask you.

What do you want to learn about in WPF? Does databinding interest you? Or maybe custom controls? Or scalable layouts? Or the declarative XAML?

Post a comment and leave your thoughts. We will make sure we do our best to satisfy your questions in our "learning material". Really. Free training material tailored to your needs - what more could you ask for?!

Keep reading Andy's blog and mine for updates.

I've just been informed that I'm now officially a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for Client Application Development.

Thanks to Abhishek Kant at Microsoft for pushing me for it.

 

 

 

 

 

To recieve an autographed photo of me send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the Ego Dept. @ Nukeation Studios. :)

FUD of the Week: IDC Says Microsoft Will Drive Users to Linux
I'm a big fan of "This Is the Year of Desktop Linux" stories because, a) it has never happened, and b) it obviously will never happen. But that hasn't stopped the prescient analysts at IDC from predicting that Microsoft, ironically, will be responsible for driving users from Windows to, yes, Linux. How will this happen, you ask? Well, Microsoft's heavy-handed approach to software piracy is so onerous, IDC said, that users will go running to the relative safety and friendliness of Linux. Hey, it makes sense. Oh wait, no it doesn't.

It's Official: Google Is Evil
Apparently, Google's corporate mantra--"Do no evil"--includes a typo, because the company's behavior is decidedly evil. I'm not even sure where to start on this one. There's the license agreement for Google's phishing filter, which basically tells you that, yes, the company is going to give away your private information. Then there's the debacle of last week's release of a Google-branded version of Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 7, which conspicuously copied--in a blatant, wholehearted fashion--a similar Yahoo project. But my favorite little bit of fun out of Mordor--er, ah, Google--has got to be what happens if you try to change the default search provider on  version of IE 7 in which you've installed the Google toolbar. It actually prevents you from changing the search provider to anything other than Google, using a feature that presents itself as protection against other applications that are trying to surreptitiously change your search provider. And you know how often that happens.

Courtesy: www.winsupersite.com | Paul Thurrott's WinInfo UPDATE

A good family friend and the editor of Rediff.com (India's biggest portal) wrote an article about me and Nukeation.com is now temporarily out of service due to the Slashdot Effect.

If you're interested in knowing about my boring history, you can read the article at http://shrinkster.com/jmo or http://www.rediff.com/getahead/2006/nov/01outsource.htm. The story is also on the front page at rediff.com.

If you don't already know, MIX'06 is coming to India in the form of IndiMIX'06 (http://www.indimix06.com). The keynote will be given by Steve Ballmer.

I've been given the honor of being on the same stage as Steve B. I'm going to be doing a piece on .NET Framework 3.0 - essentially about Windows Presentation Foundation and the Designer / Developer work process. I'll be co-presenting the demo with some really cool people.

IndiMIX'06 will be held at the National Center for Performing Arts (NCPA), Nariman Point, Mumbai. It's a free public event and you can register for it at the official website. If you're not able to come to Mumbai, or if the event is sold out you can watch the live webcast. Register for either at the official site.

My presentation will be from 2:00pm to 3:15pm (local time, +5:30GMT).

For more info, visit http://www.indimix06.com

An incident today reminded me of an email I wrote (exactly) one year ago. I was reading WinInfo Daily Update SHORT TAKES, and had the sudden inspiration to write a very non-characteristic anti-Microsoft funny story and sent to Paul Thurrott who reportedly "spit coffee all over his monitor". This is my only anti-Microsoft story ever, so I thought I might as well immortalize it in public.

To give you some background in case you don't remember that SHORT TAKES, here's the truncated version:

---

WinInfo Daily Update Short Takes August 5, 2005

==== Short Takes Blog ====
   by Paul Thurrott

It's been quite a week. Thanks to the release of Windows Vista Beta 1 last week, I've been inundated with email messages, many of which I haven't been able to reply to yet. I'll keep trying. But summer is usually a slow time, and as I've mentioned before, my family tries to spend as much time as possible at the beach during July and August. I wonder how ridiculous I'd look sitting on the beach with a laptop.

I expected that my Vista Beta 1 coverage would generate a lot of activity--and it did--but one thing that really took me by surprise was the reaction to my "Boycott IE" comments in an otherwise pretty mundane article about Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 7.0 Web standards support. I told Microsoft's Gary Schare and Chris Wilson that I frequently don't think through the effects my words can have. I know that sounds disingenuous, but it's true. I honestly thought nothing of the article; I've been recommending Firefox over IE for years. My mistake. Apparently, I'm leading a crusade now. Note to self: Think, then write.

On a related note, on Tuesday a minor post on my personal blog, the Internet Nexus, brought Microsoft down on me like a lead hammer. This incident, too, was completely unexpected. I can't discuss the post per se, but I will discuss Microsoft's interaction with me during this event because it was so silly. After demanding that I remove the post, which appears on a free blog read by about 12 people, I was told that I had violated a nondisclosure agreement (NDA--I hadn't) and that the information I had posted--in all its vagueness--was a Microsoft trade secret. I was also told that various people at Microsoft were "very upset" with me, although none of them contacted me directly. And yes, they have my phone number. So... I'm not sure what all this means. But like I said, it was quite a week.

==== Short Takes ====
   An irreverent look at some of the week's other stories, by Paul Thurrott

Windows Vista Hasn't Slipped to Late 2006
   I love the media--and not because I have the dubious distinction of living within its outer fringes. This week, I saw several reports noting that the release of Windows Vista had slipped yet again, this time to late 2006. I'm particularly amazed at the lack of research that went into those reports. At the annual Microsoft Financial Analysts Meeting a week ago, Microsoft Senior Vice President Will Poole noted that Vista won't ship until holiday season 2006, which places the release in the October 2006 to December 2006 time frame--exactly when the company said the OS would ship the last time it publicly discussed the date. However, some people saw this announcement as a slip from the "second half of 2006" time frame the company has also mentioned. News
flash: Vista has been expected in late 2006 for quite a while now. This "news" isn't new.

Download IE 7.0
   Although Microsoft intended to ship Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 7.0 Beta 1 only to private beta testers and Microsoft Developer Network
(MSDN) and TechNet subscribers, the browser began appearing on a variety of download sites this week, and Microsoft doesn't seem to be doing anything to stop the downloads. So if you're really interested in getting IE 7.0 Beta 1, here's your chance. Just don't say I didn't warn you. The browser overwrites IE 6.0, is buggy, and has compatibility problems with certain plug-ins. Still interested? OK; go nuts.
   http://list.windowsitpro.com/t?ctl=10337:25693

First Windows Vista Virus Appears
   Just a week after Microsoft shipped Vista Beta 1 to the world, the fledgling OS has been blessed with its first virus. OK, maybe blessed isn't the right word. (Come on, Paul. Think, then write.) An Austrian hacker has released a virus that uses Vista Beta 1's new command shell (code-named Monad) and actually includes a tutorial about writing other Monad-based viruses. "Monad will be like Linux's BASH [shell]," the hacker noted. "We will be able to make as huge and complex scripts as we do in Linux." The virus is categorized as proof-of-concept only and doesn't do anything harmful. But it raises some interesting concerns.

---

WARNING: The content of this e-mail is purely fictional and intended for entertainment purposes only. Any resemblence to any person, organization, events, or other entities – living or dead – is purely coincidental.

---

Internal email from Microsoft Executive John Conner of the Inhuman Resources Division. Intercepted via temporal vortex created by the Microsoft Borg (formerly “Microsoft AntiSpyware”).

To: T-1000
CC: B. Gates
From: J. Conner
Subject: Termination Order
Importance: Urgent
Sensitivity: Medium
Sent: 2:39pm July 8, 2012

Our research division has shown that 87% users chose to uninstall the pre-installed version of Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista released last week. We did some extensive digging and have found that the root cause of this is a small “supposedly insignificant” article written by Paul Thurrott back in mid-2005 about boycotting IE. Our shares have dropped drastically because of this. Bill has personally asked for your “special touch” in this matter. He particularly praised your handling of that Netscape matter back around the turn of the millennium.

Your primary objective is: Terminate Paul Thurrott.

Direct termination is not an option. It is recommended that you travel back in time to August 2005, and instruct the SWAT Team (referred to as the Microsoft Legal Division back then) to start harassing Thurrott with petty matters at first. Get him all riled up. Facilitate a state of agitation. He will make mistakes. Our recon shows he is prone to writing before thinking. Take full advantage of that weakness. Once everyone starts dismissing him comments, and unsubscribes from his newsletter, you are authorized to enter the Thurrott residence and initiate termination protocols. Do not leave any evidence.

Secondary Objective: You are to self destruct after the primary objective is achieved. If possible, initiate self destruction inside the Mozilla foundation building.

Report to the Microsoft® Time® Machine® (formerly code name “Bull”) in Building 398 at 0700 hours tomorrow. I’ll see you off myself.

Thanks,

John

STANDING INSTRUCTIONS: Delete all e-mails regarding the Microsoft Inhuman Resources Division after reading them. Failure to do so will result in immediate termination.

Paul, don’t sit on your computer with your back to the window. If you see a red dot on your screen – duck! We are trying to salvage and send back an old T-800 model built to silently replace the former Californian Governor in 2004.

Good luck to all of us.

Tux

---

Now that I've blogged this, I'm going to go hide somewhere before Warner Bros, Arnie, Bill, Linus, or all of the above try to kill me. In case you are a lawyer for these parties, I didn't do it - I was in Cleveland that week!!

Fighting the borg with a lightsaber. It works, but it doesn't fit.

The 2006 version of Pwop Productions Inc's website has officially been launched. Take a look at what Pwop (in my, and others, opinion, THE place to go for making podcasts) has to offer at http://www.pwop.com

The new Pwop website was created by us in record time (something under 2 hours - from pixels to code, everything!).

In the thick of things, I have about 4 to 8 different applications running on both my monitors and quickly opening various folders and launching applications or command lines is a pain. Using Start | Run has a peculiar problem - you can't enter too many things - the history is limited. And I hate running Start | Run everytime, its too inefficient.

So, today, while working, I quickly cobbled together a quick solution  QuickNuke. I linked to one of the MM keys on the keyboard. It sits in the systray, and does not load automatically on startup. Hit the launch key and you get this window. It's explorer powered. Drag any shortcut (or an item while holding ALT) into this window and it will make a shortcut!

Double-click the shotcut, and you're done. Hit escape to hide the window.

This is very crude at the moment, but I will whip it up into shape soon.

This application is released under the IDGAC (I-dont-give-a-crap) license, so feel free to download it from http://shrinkster.com/gbk. Suggestions and feedback are welcome.

I recently created a website for IEWatch Software LLC. www.iewatch.com - the creators of IEWatch, a cool little addin for IE. As a beta tester, I was offered a copy of the software. Initially I kept thinking, okay, might be useful in SOME situations, but why would I waste a hundred bucks on this app.

And for the first week or two I used it, I seriosly did not think it would ever be useful for me. While I was working on another project (an ecommerce asp.net 2.0 app), I kept running into a problem where the payment processor kept returning blank values. The usual debug features were not helping, and with the 48 hour deadline approaching, I was starting to panic. This is where I finally got to REALLY use IEWatch. The data being posted by the payment processor was encrypted, but IEWatch was able to quickly help me capture the data, see where my code was wrong (Hey, even *I* make mistakes, y'know!) and thankfully made the deadline.

I highly recommend anyone working with web apps to try this baby out. Hop on over to http://www.iewatch.com and try the demo. And no, I was not paid for this endorsement. It is genuine.

It's a nice evening. The sun is setting, Jeremy Soule's "Glory of Cyrodiil" is playing in the background, and I'm just plain damned excited about the positive turn this year is finally taking.

Too many things have gone not-quite-right this year, but the tide has finally turned! NukeBall is now in Beta and very soon shall be released in all its glory. We have a few more juicy products in the works. I finally got that seed out of my teeth!!! Oh, and of course, a new "Dark Lord" is joining Nukeation in about a month or so!

Parvez Ansari has been a good friend for many years. We always dreamt of working together some day. Well, it's some day now! Parvez moved away a couple of years ago when he became something or the other at CARE (I don't remember the exact title he bore, but he was like 2 inches short of being God at the IT dept in Care). Anyways, he has decided to leave his current divine job and take up the role of being my second-in-command at Nukeation Studios. Imagine that! He either truly loves Nukeation or is totally insane! Either way he's just what we need.

Parvez is a Microsoft Certified Professional, and is an expert when it comes to technology of just about any kind. He has also served as an instructor at a major national technology institute. Now he will be taking up many of my responsibilities as I move on to focus a bit more on WinFX services as well as some of the retail products we are cooking up. You can expect the creative level at Nukeation to go way up as soon as he joins!

At Nukeation, Parvez will be in-charge of planning and executing projects for our clients as well as supervising certain areas of our retail software development. While I will still take part in most of our work, Parvez will be taking over many of my previous responsibilities as I mentioned. This is very cool since I will get to do more graphics, planning, and marketing than coding. I will also be focusing more on our "n" line of products that start with NukeBall (releasing on 27th June).

We will also unveil a special online service in August/September, targetted specifically for Indian literary institutes. Parvez will be spearheading that project (Codenamed "Timberwolf").

I can't wait for him to join. I need a vacation!

The sun has set completely and the mosquitos are now attracted to my Tablet's light, time to head in.

The first big milestone for Nukeation Studios' retail effort.

NukeBall Express Edition Beta 1 is now finally available for the public. While not feature complete, NukeBall's powerful NukeWads feature is fully functional in this release.

Y'know what? I can't talk more. I'm just too damned excited. Just head on over to www.nukeball.com and check it out yourself!

Oh, we would really appreciate any feedback you can provide! Just drop us a line at beta [at] nukeation [dot] com.

A while back, Carl wrote about adopting uTorrent and throwing away Azureus. uTorrent was installed along with the PwopCatcher Alpha. Jay Franklin (Carl's brother) wrote in that post's comments about how to let uTorrent pick-up unfinished Azureus downloads.

I finally tried that today. I made a backup of my unfinished downloads (I'm a data-loss veteran. I've been through enough data-loss-hell to last me twenty lifetimes!) and let uTorrent pick 'em up. It took a while for it check the downloads, but as soon as it started the downloads, I was amazed at the massive speed it gave me. Azureus is a bonafide memory hog. And on top of that, for some files I've been trying to download for over a month now, it gave me only 2 or 3 kbps. uTorrent suddenly starts popping 'em at ~12k to ~40k.

While I'm not BitTorrent genius, I'm quite impressed with uTorrent. And its a 150k download!!! Go get PwopCatcher Alpha and let it install uTorrent for you!

www.pwopcatcher.com, the official site for Pwop Production's PWOPCATCHER podcast downloader is now live. A barebone alpha is also available.

The look of the site was done by yours truly. It was modelled after the "BORG" skin that will be the default look of PwopCatcher.

I just read Andrew Lucking's blog post about my first video on EID, and it kinda inspired me to give my perspective on Flash vs EID.

Let's recount the basic stuff:

	Flash	EID/WPF
Programming Support	Medium (ActionScript 2.0)	Heavy (.NET 2.0 and XAML)
3D support	Medium (Shockwave 3D or Vectorized 3D output)	Heavy (WPF and DirectX)
Declarative Programming Support	No	Yes
Bitmap Effects Support	Limited	Extensive
Animation Model	Timeline-based: timeline is the ultimate controller; timelines are NOT optional	Trigger-based: timelines control the animation, but the timelines are controlled by triggers; timelines are also OPTIONAL
Cross-Platform support	Extensive	Limited / Currently unavailable (WPF/E details are still sketchy)
Drawing Tools	Heavy	Medium

 

What's EID and WPF potential over Flash? Well, can't say much about WPF/E until I actually use it, but taking WPF as a basic example, here are my thoughts:

NOTE: For the purpose of this post, EID and WPF (or at least the features) are the same. If it is in one, its in the other.

• It all comes back to the timeline. In Flash Timeline is God. In EID, Timeline is just another aspect of an object, and there are more than one timelines and each can be ran parallel to other timelines - even of the same object!! In other words, with Flash we're looking at "time" from a normal layman's perspective; with WPF, it's like looking at "time" from Einstein's perspective.
• In Flash, you have to stop the timeline in order to have a static frame, which makes creating a multi-section Flash website quite difficult. It's not difficult per-se, but difficult when you consider the trigger-only-timelines that EID presents. That would make this much easier.
• Creating 3D content in Flash has always been terribly difficult. Shockwave does add 3D support, but its more like VRML on steroids. If you don't know about VRML, it was a 3D web standard pushed in the late 90s. It was terrible!! With inherent and DirectX support for 3D with shaders and crap is actually fantastic! That alone will land a good blow to Flash.
• There's good DOCUMENT support in WPF. This gives you a document-data presentation component that Flash just can't do! This is one of the chief reasons why the Adobe people are gung-ho on integrating PDF and SWF.
• EID comes from a "component and controls, animate it all" point-of-view, while Flash is "all animation, some component... animate components? uhh, ok, you can try...". The WRAP PANEL and other such controls can seriously kick Flash's ass.

You might say: "Whoa! Hold on. WPF/E does not have all this! It's very puny and limited!"

If you're a Flash or non-Microsoft-stuff user, I'll let you go. If you're a Microsoft-user and you said that give yourself a big kick. Without going into the intricacies of numerology, we all know that this is just version 1. All we have to do is wait 2 more versions. Let me explain:

So I've said all the nice things about WPF and put down Flash. Well, that's not the whole story. WPF is severely limited in many ways that Flash isn't. The user base being not the least of it, of course. Right now, WPF is more close to Macromedia FLEX than Flash.

Branden Hall writes in his post titled "The Flash Killer Cometh":

Well, I can't say I disagree with the first part. For the "mythical Interactive Developer" (I might have to adopt that as my title) comment, well, I disagree there.

Mythical Interactive Developers are not, in fact, mythical. I am one myself, and in the last 7 years have trained 4 such people (10 years and 16 people if you want to count VRML in this). We (ahem) are rare, but not nonexistent. And more shall rise. The gates of Oblivion have opened!! Uhh... sorry, wrong topic.

Anyways, let me get back to my point.

If you are not a Microsofter or are very new to the Microsoft world - the REAL Microsoft World that only devs see - you don't know the power of number 3. As I said, again ignoring numerology, that this WPF 1.0. Microsoft ALWAYS strikes gold with Version 3.

Windows 3(.1) was the most popular in the first generation. Windows 98SE was WAY better than 95 or 98. Windows ME was a fluke, so let's forget that. In the third generation we had Windows 2000 and then XP, now we have Vista which will undoubtedly hit the mark.

Visual Studio 6.0 (#3 of II generation) was way better than anything else. Visual Studio 2005 (#3 of the III generation) is already doing great things!

So step back a bit. Look from a larger perspective. Microsoft is only laying the foundation. Bill Buxton said:

There is a new revolution coming. It will come in THREE waves. Here's my prediction for it:

• First Big Wave: We shift from WinForms to a more Web+Vector like platform. We learn the ropes for the upcoming waves. The Mythical Interactive Developer is born and many Flashers flock to the Microsoft banner - mostly because working with WPF will pay a LOT more than Flash does. Microsoft silently keeps working on the final stuff.
• Second Bigger Wave: After a year or more of having WPF out there, Microsoft will have perfect grasp on what's needed, what the public wants, what the designers+developers need. A 2.0 release gives you more power. More people flock under the Microsoft flag. More users keep adopting this technology - even just as runtime. Microsoft silently keeps working on the final stuff.
• Tsunami: The work is done. Microsoft has the perfect blend ready. Flash is either killed or is kept limping behind.

Branden Hall also writes:

I recommend reading the posts in this category in old-to-new order. But let explain in short:

Microsoft is right. WPF is not being primed (solely) as a Flash-killer. It will definetely be a Mac-killer tho. But my point is this: If you think WPF is only for making things pretty you are WAAAAAAAY off.

WPF is about getting the presentation layer of a software done quickly and flexibly. Things that required superior subclassing skills and knowledge can be done by an amateur now. The declarative model makes things much easier. WPF will be a boon for developers. It will solve a LOT of problems.

For record let me make it clear:

Windows Presentation Foundation or Expression Interactive Designer will not make anything extra-graphical or extra-interactive unless designer/developer goes to some lengths to actually make it so! When you DON'T skin a control, it will look just like a normal Windows control does. WPF will solve problems such as creating composite controls, creating resolution-independent applications, allowing better and economical usage of graphics hardware and vector to lower CPU usage that GDI+ does not, and more. This is not an animation package (yet).

No. WinFX/WPF/EID is the next generation of development platform. Of course, it won't take long for it become what ASP.net is for the web. But it will be like ASP.net in many ways. WPF/E will co-exist with Flash, just as ASP.net does with PHP and JSP. Of course, it goes without saying that ASP.net is better than PHP or JSP, and so will be WPF/e (eventually).

With that, and the sun shining in my face at 7:20 in the morning, I bid thee good night.

IMO, in my recent experiences, a large number of people still think of a skinned app as something like Windows Media Player, WinAMP, PowerDVD, the OEM apps that come with digital cameras, Bryce or even PwopCatcher. Skinning CAN be like that, and no doubt MANY people will want that (and need it too). However, skinning can also (and in a more widely needed as well as realistic pov) mean enhancing the existing structures of your WPF application controls.

In certain situations "skinning around the control" rather than "skinning the control" also helps. And if you allow me a moment to be painstakingly irritating, with WPF's super flexible design model, skinning is too narrow a term to really describe what can be done. But back to skinning around the control, let me clarify what I mean by building upon an example I (will) present in The Human UX:

Say we have a button that triggers a purge of a nuclear reactor (if you don't know yet, this is a hypothetical situation). From a typical skinning point of view (STC - Skinnin the control) we might have an urge to paint the control red, put a biohazard or radioactive symbol on it, and add those yellow-black warning stripes around it. Now that's all nice and good, but just PAINTING the control is not really helpful aside from making an idiot go "ooooooh, what does THIS button do?".

Let's build a USABILITY ENHANCEMENT on top of this. For a seriously dangerous function trigger like this button, a good accident deterrent is needed. Let's use a reversed version of the "Your computer will restart in 15 seconds" dialog. We make the button nicely big (say 100px wide and 50px tall). When idle, it says "Purge Reactor" and has an exclamation on either side. When clicked, the text says "Confirm?" and the button starts to pulsate its color. A small 95px wide, center-aligned, progressbar appears ON the button, and instead of the exclamation icon, a countdown is shown - which is also reflected in the "emptying" progressbar. If the action is not confirmed within 15 seconds, then it is automaticaly cancelled. To be safe from accidental double-clicks, the countdown starts 3 seconds AFTER the first click.

On cancellation, the button fades back to the normal "idle" mode.

Now this is something I just dreamt up right now. With proper planning and some usability experts (<cough> Nukeation </cough>) these types of "little things" can seriously enhance the usability of any application.

What we just did here was NOT your typical skinning. We actually edited the base template of an existing button, added various timelines to respond to different events, and added sub-controls hosted on its surface. This kind of work was not possible (at least in terms of practicality and ease) unless you knew some heavy C++. We are messing with new "sub-controls" and timelines rather than just slapping on sweet graphics, so this isn't really skinning. While the official terms for this are (as far as I know) "Editing a control template". I call it Avalonizing or Avalonization, of WPFing (pronounced "wip'fing").

But enough of terminology. My main point here is that we now have an affordable, easy to implement, and flexible model for doing such things. And this power should not be wasted on just skinning an application, but rather to create superior usability enhancements to your apps.

Coming soon

Next Part: Using various contains like Grid, Canvas, and Flow to seamlessly present both controls and textual content in a single form.

Tutorial: Simple Template Editing for the Button and Progressbar.

Check out Ted Neward's blog: http://blogs.tedneward.com/ designed by yours truly.

If you don't know Ted, he's a bigwig (read "speaker, consultant, trainer, author) in the Java world (as well as .NET) and while I don't understand much of the technologies he works with (I prefer Tea to Coffee, if you get my meaning) I do understand he's a super consultant in the interoperability field. His new book (list of books also available on his blog on the sidebar) is very good, or so I'm told by friends who deal with the "other" programming language.

We also did his website which will be up shortly. Will post a link when it comes online.

In related news, coming soon: a new take on blogging. A short marketing-centric paper I'm going to write (as soon as I get the stuff I'm writing for MSDN out of the way) about how to enhance the potetial of your blog. A typical blog uses only 30%-50% of its total markting potential, according to a private survey I am doing. Hopefully that will change.

http://labs.nukeation.net is now active. Do note, this is a pretty bare bones version. I will beef it up over the next couple of weeks. I have about a dozen downloads to add - as soon as I get time to debug them

Many new projects we are making for our retail division (for developers and graphics designers) are now shown on Nukeation Labs.

Yup. I did it. I just ordered me a Force FX vader lightsaber and a scaled replica of the Dooku's saber.

The Vader Lightsaber (on top, for the ignorant types - seriously, how could you not know the Dark Lord's blade?) has a red blade. Now all I need is one of those Vader masks to transmogrify my voice, and then a black cape. I will haunt the streets at night, waving a red lightsaber and scaring the stuffings out of the public!

Okay, so I'll just eagerly show it to friends and display it proudly in my office (along with the 80s authentic Snow Speeder model, the Delta-38 helmet I'm gonna make soon, and my almost half dozen Golden Web Awards ).

So, the statistics are:

~185 novels

~219 comics

~15 games

~2 lightsabers

~0 costumes (can't join the 501st yet, but that's a topic for another blog post)

Does this make me a freak? Hmmm. Be careful of your answer. Say the wrong thing and you just might have a red lightsaber'd phantom menace on your ass!! I may not control the Force, but I can sure kick your behind with an aluminum lightsaber!

The expensive replicas are next, but a bit farther into the future. My psychiatrist has suggested I start spending my money on food and clothes. Oh well.

Do note, my comments are only to inflame my C# opponent. I really don't hate C# nor do I seriously mean the stuff I say. Our friend "MC C#" keeps saying anti-VB/pro-C# stuff every hour on the hour. Suddenly, while I'm working, I get a message:

MC C# says: if there was a soccer match between vb team & C# team who will win?

Dax says: C#

<MC C# is presumably shocked by my reply>

Dax says: coz VB programmers are serious programers, they dont know how to play sports

Talking to a C# fan(atic) on MSN, I just realized something... I have been using BASIC in one form or the other since 1987 - NINETEEN YEARS! I'm kriffin' OLD! OMG!

I started with a British machine called Sinclair ZXSpectrum with 48kb of RAM, then ZXSpectrum+ 128(kb)RAM. I remember coding silly little programs in 128BASIC where you make a small 8x8 pixel "spider" and it drops from the top of the screen to the "floor" and creeps away to the right. Oh man! That brings back memories. I used VB 1 through 3, but not that seriously. I started into the Visual world seriously with VB4, professionally with VB5 and onwards.

So I guess this makes me a (V)B Veteran. Okay, the next person to say "dude, use C#" is gonna get slugged.

I've had plans for a long time to create a special bridge website where me and the boys (and girl) at Nukeation Studios get to show off code, tools, and other cool stuff to our peers (and give it away for free). I started doing that on a miniscule level on this blog, but I'm not your traditional blogger. I can't keep my normal slapstick out of this blog, nor do I have time to manage two blogs (and frankly, I don't think anyone would read my slapstick-only blog anymore).

Eventually, the idea of Nukeation Labs (did you know Nukeation Studios was known as Nukeation Labs before it was legally made into a business entity?) became a bit more. Nukeation will be soon be making a new full fledged dive into Professional Tools development. We will be focusing on two audiences: graphics designers and software developers. With our new tools being planned for WinFX, both these will overlap at some point.

So, my goals (yes, I'll be managing the site singlehandedly at the moment) with Nukeation Labs are:

• Provide technical insight into tools and other projects we are doing
• Provide free source code samples for .NET, Web developement, and Windows Presentation Foundation (and WPF/E whenever that gets here)
• Provide free (and commercial) tools for software and graphics professionals
• Publicly discuss alpha projects that often never see the light of day, but might make for fun discussions.
• And more ... once I find someone to start managing the site. :)

Nukeation Labs will be available in a couple of weeks as soon as I move this blog to a new server. Nukeation Labs will be available at http://labs.nukeation.net/ - that is, once I move this on to a new server.

For the past few days, I have been battling a mega-crisis on my main production PC. I still don't know the cause, but at the end, my beautiful 80GB SATA harddrive will be sent for replacement by Seagate. I bought a new 200GB one, transferred all the data without problem (for a change) and am now reinstalling everything to get back to work-ready status.

While I was off staring at a blank blue chkdsk screen for 12 hours in a row, two companies on which my livelihood depends on - Microsoft and Corel - pulled a fast one on me. Microsoft released Expression Interactive Designer (EID or MEID or "Sparkle"). If you don't know, Sparkle will be the heart of WPF based applications.

First of all, I must congratulate Microsoft for pulling off one hell of a job on this app! It seriously kicks Flash's ass. And its 6.8MB if you can believe it. Yup. Amazing!! The completely non-Microsoft-like UI (Black!!!) looks so sweet! The different work panels are a cross between Flash and Visual Studio - very cool.

I have a lot of work pending due to the hardware problems and all, but I will surely post a bigger review (from a dev and designer pov) over the weekend.

Corel Graphics Suite X3 (v13) is downloading as I write this. I blindly bought the upgrade, of course. PhotoPaint is a million times better than Photoshop. At least for me. I create all my websites in it. I can't wait to see what they've put in this release!! Again, more on that this weekend.

Lastly, this blog seems too confining to share snippets of code and .net (and xaml) stuff I want to give away freely. Some of my cohorts at Nukeation agree. So we're starting up (or rather, RE-starting) NUKEATION LABS. It will be 100% free, 100% managed, and on a seperate domain, of course. I'm almost finished with Nukeation Mapee 1.0, nukeControls 1.0, and more. All will be put up for public download very soon. The site will be up by the end of the week. The url is yet to be decided.

Carl Franklin's www.franklins.net is now up featuring a new look designed by yours truly. Go check out his classes - you won't find a better place to learn VB2005 and ASP.net 2.0!

These are coming out as soon as I find some time to iron out some bugs:

First is NukeControls - which has had some additions and some removals. More on that soon.

Second is a tool I wanted Microsoft to give, but they didn't. A visual editor for .sitemap files. When Beta 2 was going to come out (or had come out, I don't remember exactly) I had asked Scott Guthrie when he was on .NET Rocks! if Microsoft planned to add such a designer in the RTM version. Unfortunately, they couldn't. Scott said they would do it in the next version probably. If you are managing a site with more than 10 pages and 3 levels, you know it can be gruesome going through all that XML code by hand. In comes Nukeation Mapee™ a cool visual editor. I've used this tool for my own work, but I want it to be more easy. Right now it's external. You can configure Visual Studio to open .sitemap via Mapee. Right now it uses a standard TreeView for the visualization. I'm thinking of either writing my own UML style graphically editable UI, or get some 3rd party control. If not too much trouble, I will turn it into an actual Visual Studio designer (a bona fide add-in). I also want to add auto-recognition - it scans the web app directory and makes a full sitemap by itself.

Mapee 1.0, the one using TreeView should be released this coming week along with nukeControls 0.8.

I may have mentioned (more than once) that Devs are NOT giving attention to WPF. Well, turns out I was not talking to a large enough number of devs to get a proper statistic.

I finally got to talk to devs who are seriously focused on WPF and are just as excited as I am.

Of course, that does not negate the fact the majority of devs out there don't really care that much. But that again is not their fault. What the designer (Manuel, was it?) said in the Sparkle preview on Channel9, you have to clear your mind of the preconceptions of 3D and timelines and all.

It is entirely possible to get lost at the Microsoft site. If you know how to find information, you can see how truly immense the site is. It could surely use a better navigation system, because often some great resources are hidden from plain sight and just might miss the mark.

I accidentally stumbled on this page that I had visited long ago. It's the Microsoft Design Resource site. At first glance you can see how the design is atypical of Microsofts normal trends (barring the 30th anniversary, Research, and Innovation presentations in the Corporate site).

This site is an excellent read and has some really nice, chic even, designs. The PEOPLE section is very interesting to people who are interested in design.

Here's an example of a cool thing - the "Office of the Future" design that won Microsoft an IDEA (Industrial Design Excellence Award).

This is a UI targeted at a very wide (and curved) prototype computer Microsoft has made. It's like have three monitors, but without the breaks in between.

How developers will embrace WPF and the new vector design methods is yet to be seen. If the reactions I've seen so far are a sign of the future, I think it might take some time. While developers love the cold logic of code, computers are merging more and more into human life, and as such will need to be approached with a psychological view as well. Right now, only few software companies (most of which are giants) do such research and apply it to their products.

The role of the designer in the software industry will be a very powerful catalyst for the entire industry and how we work. The factors of psychology in relation to human-computer interaction (psychophysics I believe applies here) are very important as I've started to learn in the last few months. I only had shallow knowledge of such, but after reading a few essays and the book Emotional Design by Dr. Don Norman (www.jnd.org) I started developing a much deeper interest. My personal ideas and views conflict a bit with Dr. Norman's, but I have come to greatly appreciate his insight.

Usability might seem like a trivial thing - especially when worrying about the code you still have to write - but it is far more important than it seems. When dealing with a non-technical (or even technical) software product - a good aesthetic+psycholical influence can help you increase sales, make the product more usable, FUN, and increase productivity at the same time.

My thoughts will be continued in "The Human UX" and some other posts. I had hoped to have it published on MSDN sooner, but I will post a preview copy here as the MSDN schedule seems a bit delayed.

Well, not really an easter egg, but it is fun to find.

Carl was taking pictures to use in the first show and the intro. He started messing around with his guitar and took a photo and sent it to me to clean it up. I was waiting for 7GB worth of video to be rendered (which obviously takes a LONG time) so I had time on my hands. Carl came back and asked if I was able to clean it up. Here is what he got:

dnrTV.com is now online with the premiere episode featuring Miguel Castro. This a must-see for anyone interested in web controls or ASP.net in general! (I got a sneak peek yesterday).

The Flash animations (Intro etc.) were done by Nukeation, as well as the site design and some minor stuff in the actual show animations. And if anyone finds the show too large in terms of bytes, count your blessings. Carl and I have slammed literally GIGABYTES of data into this few MBs.

We'd love your feedback! See the contact page on the site, or mail me.

And this is just the beginning. Expect some super cool shows and more.

Okay, not really zero hour, but it's zero day. dnrTV is gonna be launched at midnight EST, from the Pwop HQ in New London. Keep watching dnrTV.com for more info. Everyone has been working their ass off the past few days, and the result will be fantastic!!

I just might end up having dnrTV as a case study on Nukeation. There's some extensive Flash stuff involved here. Fingers crossed.

http://www.hanselminutes.com/

Go check it out! Very cool premiere episode.

This week is gonna be great. We have so many sites being launched in this week and possibly the next as well. Here's a partial list:

.NET Rocks - version 3 (2nd version after Pwop hired Nukeation)

Franklins.net - Carl Franklin's training company and the creator/sponsor of DNR

dnrTV (premiere show is with Miguel Castro about WebControls)

HanselMinutes (too "large" to explain, just wait and see)

Mondays - version 3 (same as DNR)

ThatIndigoGirl - Michele Leroux Bustamante's new blog about Windows Communication Foundation - a sister site to www.DasBlonde.net

MattStawicki.com (may be delayed to next week or so)

DigitalExile.net - I finally get to update my painting and photo galleries.

And last but not least, NUKEATION.com - yes, the big update I've been threatening to upload!

I leave you with some marketing (but still true) text in relation to tomorrow's update:

Our marketing is centered on our big milestone - the 78 billion pixels. Here's some extra info to awe you into giving us a new project or two...

Calculating at 96dpi, the average resolution of a monitor - 78,000,000,000 pixels (rounded off for convenience) equals 67,708,333.33 feet (excluding socks) which equals to 20,637.49 kilometers - which is MORE than THREE TIMES THE RADIUS OF THE EARTH! FYI, that's 19,134.405km at the equator according to Wikipedia. The base calculation is of a "strip" that has 96 pixels in one inch of.

Being responsible for a big (79%) piece of that pixel pie, I am suddenly feeling tired looking at those numbers. Excuse me, I need a nap.

PS. Big shout out to Jessica Pletcher. She may not have her own website for me to link to :P but she is responsible for almost 12% of these pixels!

Check out the newly updated http://www.dasblonde.net/ featuring a blog we customized for MLB.

I'm a VB guy. BASIC runs in my veins. I was programming in BASIC on my Sinclair ZX Spectrum+ when I was 4. But suddenly, I find myself trapped in a world of C#!

The project was a highly customized blog running the dasBlog engine for Michele Leroux Bustamante. The problem is that dasBlog is all in C# (1.1/2003!). I have done very little work in C#. And now I know why.

Just getting a simple data editing webform to work is like battling a Krayt Dragon while being blindfolded! I did manage to finish the work, but it was painful! Now I'm led to believe that one of the following is the case:

• Visual Basic users are spoilt and can't live without autocomplete and automatic code formatting
• C# is terribly unproductive
• I was drunk and I didn't know it (quite possible) or as they say in C# [quite possible]
• C# just plain sucks, while VB just plain rocks
• VB just plain ROCKS, while C# just plain sucks
• I had a terrible dream, like the one where I'm being chased by angry country singers
• {your opinion here}
• {your other opinion here}
• or as a C#'er told me, "try C++, then you will see how easy C# is"

'Nuff said.

My blog has always been reflective of nukeation.com, and nukeation.com has always been reflective of my current "mood". With Vista and Aero and Avalon taking up most of my mental bandwidth, I crafted Digital Exile to look like the upcoming Nukeation.com "skin" which is reflective of Vista and the new "glass" stuff I've been experimenting with.

I also wanted to remove the clutter of the previous design. I finally added a slideshow in this upgrade. It's Flash based, and runs on XML, so I'll be updating it often.

Another addition is the ANNOUNCEMENTS panel where upcoming projects in which I'm involved are listed (and linked, if possible).

As always, please feel free to send comments about how you love or hate the new design.

Since Beta 1, I've been trying out the cool custom control features of Visual Studio 2005. And along the way, I've made some controls for in-house applications and some other projects. Now, you know me - I'm graphical to the core. These are super sweet looking eye-candy controls, and with solid functionality (as far as I know!).

Take a look at some of the controls:

Nukeation Navigator was inspired by VISTA and Microsoft's corporate site design. It has back-next navigation in a single control with 6 different themes ("Aero Glass", "Pure Liquid", "Jungle", "Nuke" [of course], "Lava", and "Rainbow").

Nukeation Progressbar is a chunk from the upcoming software NukeBall. We use this heavily for simple progress display. Very cool looking.

Nukeation Panel is a subclassed version of the standard Panel control. But this one has a gradient background, dropshadow, and a TITLE and DESCRIPTION property - ideal for wizards or dialog headers! Supports custom colors, 6 in-built color schemes, or OS-theme.

nProgress is old (from 1.1), but was ported to 2.0 and had some new functionality added to it. This is a fixed-size progress control with some seriously cool graphics! The "downloader" of PwopCatcher created by Carl Franklin uses this very progress bar.

I'm trying to fix some problems in nRange a range meter that shows 3 different ranges (ex: blue 5-10, green 8-23). If that is done, I'll pack it in.

Uhh... pack it in to what? Well, NukeControls! A freeware pack of cool aforementioned controls for .NET 2.0!

 

These controls will be released under the "I don't give a damn what you do with it, but some credit would be appreciated" license. More on this later.

Yes, I'm a big freakin' corporate monster lover who loves Microsoft and IE, and hates the underdogs like Google and Firefox (which is just plain dog than an underdog). Yes, I'm evil. Get over it.

Paul Thurrott's story AOHELL - Google Sells Soul to Stop Microsoft just made my da... night (its 1:30am).

Google is just as bad as the rest of 'em (and Firefox is not that far away either, people!). This is like politics or law. People may enter to change the world, but when they get a taste of power, or get tangled in the tangled webs they weave, heh, it's all the same. Don't get me wrong, there are good politicians (!= "W") and there are good lawyers (like mine). But there are plenty of bad dudes out there.

In any case, now you know. Google s-u-c-k-s!

"Google is not the trustworthy corporate giant that some people imagine, though the company's track record, including its close work with China's totalitarian government, should have already made that clear." -- Paul Thurrott

It's that time of the year again. Last year I started doing websites for Carl Franklin. Carl and I worked together to create a cool componentized website which sort of became an engine that was reused on many different websites including Mondays, the upcoming 64-bit Question, and many others.

Nukeation is currently working on revamping all the existing sites and upgrading to ASP.net 2.0 as well creating some brand new ones. See Carl's blog for more info.

The new year will be .netalicious! I for one can't wait to see PwopCatcher in action.

See how to achieve minute control over positioning in HTML or ASP.net pages.

As technologies converge and new frontiers are born, so are new roles. WPF (fka Avalon) is creating a new role for the designer in world of software development. Previously, the closest a designer would get to programming was if he or she was a Flash artist (or "Flasher").

The couple of weeks ago, I was helping a buddy of mine learn Flash (remotely via MSN!). Now, this guy is a pure designer. You give him a piece of paper and a pencil, or maybe even tablet and Photoshop, and he's the best. Now he finds himself in a new environment that requires him to script. No GUI tasks in that. And if you have done Flash you know its pure coding that makes it work. Not to make fun of him, but he found having to write stuff like...

stop();

on(rollOver){gotoAndPlay("Over");}

on(rollOut){gotoAndPlay("Out");}

... difficult. He almost gave up Flash because of it! He's now getting better at it of course.

Let's go over to the other side. A client of mine likes to dabble with Flash now and then. We were talking and he told me how dull and unproductive the Flash IDE (imho, it's hardly a DE, let alone IDE) was. He was asking me if it was worth it to upgrade to Flash 8. I doubt any "true" programmer (or !=0 programmer ) would be comfortable in a IDE that has only 600x200 pixels worth of coding area.

If you're familiar with the fantasy genre (no I don't play D&D) there are mages and there are warriors. Warriors fight with their senses and the "physical" world. Mages work with the abstract and create wonderous as well as horrible things. Warriors = logic, and Mages = abstract or intuitive. And thus, software developers are like warriors, while designers are like mages.

And as we know the both don't get along too well.

This is a topic in which I'm quite well-versed. For you see, not to brag, but I'm one of the rare Warrior Mages. I've been programming since the age of 3 or 4. I've been designing/drawing since 3 or 4 - maybe earlier. There are others like Nathan Dunlap (www.designerslove.net) who used to be a designer only and is now getting quite good with .NET thanks to XAML and WPF.

I don't know if WPF (and /E) will be able to kill Flash or not, but it will certainly require all of us to learn how to better work with Designers. I suppose people who work in web development teams have a headstart on this.

As it will soon be announced on the official site, this month Nukeation passed the figure of 78 billion (that's 78,000,000,000+) pixels published. That is the count of pixels in the images we have used in projects. And it gives me great pride to say that more than 12 billion of those have been for software-based graphics. A few million from that figure belongs exclusively to Borg.

Software with great graphics are really more successful (provided they have actual functionality too). If you haven't tried XAML and WPF yet, go do it now. If you're a developer, start learning how to work with a designer. If you're a designer, start learning about logic.

In the game industry (which has the most active designer-developer interactions) there is a liason role - a person who knows about programming logic and design tactics. They help bridge the gap and help both parties work nicely with each other.

Unfortunately, this will not be probable or possible in the normal software development community, I think. Not at the budgets we (the "average" devs) work with - in terms of both time and money. Maybe Microsoft can afford it, but I think more than 90% of the industry would not be able to.

So the best thing for everyone is if they learned the "physics" of the other's work. If nothing else, just learn the limits of the technologies involved and what's possible and what's not. It migth save everyone a lot of time.

If you have any designer/developer stories, I'd love to hear 'em!

Happy cod(esign)ing.

See the world's most sophistacted skin design.

WPF or WPF/E are too weird and have too many hard syllables. Has anyone found a nickname yet? Or a better way to pronounce them? I suggest "Whippfee" for WPF/E. Makes it sound like an R2 astromech. WPF/E will need a better name if Microsoft wants to target it at the standard "everyone" market.

Avalon was a real good name. Everyone took to it quite nicely. If they're worried about trademarks, they wouldn't have a trademark issue if they just make it "Microsoft Avalon(tm)". Like Flash (which is actually "Macromedia Flash"), people will call it just Avalon.

While I don't usually critisize Microsoft, I think they've got this whole naming thing backwards. Me, I would've called it WPF inside the company. Then when released, it should take on the "codename" they usually give. "Codename WPF" sounds better than just WPF, and Microsoft Avalon sounds much better than Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation.

Sigh. That "official" name has more syllables than the entire works of Shakespear (even the ones that the monkeys wrote). If anyone finds a better name for WPF and WCF, please drop me a line. I'd very much appreciate it.

This is a cool tool for Web Developers from Microsoft! Couple this with IE7's tabs and you have yourself an extra arsenal.

Overview (from the link above)

The IE Developer Toolbar provides several features for deeply exploring and understanding Web pages.

-- Explore and modify the document object model (DOM) of a web page.
-- Locate and select specific elements on a web page through a variety of techniques.
-- Selectively disable Internet Explorer settings.
-- View HTML object class names, ID's, and details such as link paths, tab index values, and access keys.
-- Outline tables, table cells, images, or selected tags.
-- Validate HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS web feed links.
-- Display image dimensions, file sizes, path information, and alternate (ALT) text.
-- Immediately resize the browser window to 800x600 or a custom size.
-- Selectively clear the browser cache and saved cookies. Choose from all objects or those associated with a given domain.
-- Choose direct links to W3C specification references, the Internet Explorer team weblog (blog), and other resources.
-- Display a fully featured design ruler to help accurately align objects on your pages.

I know I'm gonna get some hate mail from the Anti-MS people out there, but I already get that, so I'm just gonna say it. I'm tired of hearing Big Bad Microsoft. Yes, you know who you are, mac.

For the past 4 or so years, I've been in touch with many people at Microsoft. And they've been so nice and helpful. I wasn't even a Microsoft Partner Program member back then, but they were still really nice to me. Till date there hasn't been an incident where I've seen any 'attitude' from any Microsoftie. I've always gotten good advice, good tools, and met some good people who are really passionate about their work. They've helped my business grow. They're good to me, so I'm good to them.

My ISV Buddy (a special contact inside Microsoft that participating ISVs are assigned) is a great guy and has been very helpful in many a projects and the general goals of my company. And even when Microsoft says "Beta versions are not supported", they still get you enough help that anyone with more than three braincells can get his problem solved.

So where does this Big Bad Microsoft image come from? Maybe its the lawsuits and all that legal stuff. While I don't know much about US Commerce and Trade Laws, I still think that forcing Microsoft to rip out all the good stuff from their OS (ie, IE or WMP) or trying to force them to reveal their code, is preposterous. I'm not gonna bad mouth Linux or any open-source communities and/or proponents. I say let them be. I have nothing against open-source. I just don't want to use it myself. I'll save my flames for the lawsuits for another post, and get back to the point.

People bitch about IE and Windows and Microsoft in general all the time, but they are still using Windows. I say, yell all you want, but it won't be a valid point until you shift to a Mac OSX or something else and then say what you want to say. I may or may not agree with you, but I will respect you. Boycott Microsoft, THEN TALK. Of course, then again, if you're not using MS products and still bitch about it, then you're insulting me and my choice - and that's personal, bub!

A good friend of mine (who'll probably kill me for blogging about this) said "Microsoft killed my beloved Netscape". Really? Did Bill Gates take a butcher knife and go slit Netscape's throat in a dark back alley? (Who is the head of Netscape, btw? I should find that out sometime). Maybe Microsoft Covert Operations (formerly codenamed "Cloak and Dagger") took a bunch of choppers and landed on Netscape's roof and killed people and set fire to their building?

What pisses me off even more is people who have not had any real connection to Microsoft saying bad things about it. That's just wrong. Judging Microsoft because it's CEO allegedly said "I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to [expletive deleted] kill Google." is wrong. Judge him if you want to. Maybe Steve Ballmer's attitude or business concepts are bad (tho it's not what I personally believe. Then again, I do find Ballmer a bit intimidating even tho I havent seen him in person), but it still doesn't qualify the entire entity to become a bad thing.

The simple truth is, people are making a choice. If the Microsoft opponents want to make a difference, they should spend their time publicizing their open-source OSes and programs instead of slagging Microsoft all the time.

A kind request to the Microsoft opponents, please, PLEASE, make POINTS. Give us some valid points. Not some competing grocery shops and free delivery service advantage anologies. Valid points.

And remember, Microsoft and it's competitors can peacefully coexist. They just have to keep up.

To quote one of the rare movies about .NET, "Special Thanks to Microsoft for empowering slobs like us"

PS. FYI, I've been on the other side. I was there in the Java trenches, and the PHP compound, the whole "LAMP" thing. It wasn't that much fun. So dont bother saying I dont have a wide enough perspective!

I work Sundays. Yes. I have no life. I work from home whenever I can, and manage my team remotely. On Sundays, I also blog once in a while - even when working. Yes, blog addict.

It's damn cold here for my taste, but my massive CPU needs good air conditioning to run all it's processors and 3D apps and all. To save myself from a cold death, I donned my Mondays hoody. That thing has a nice large hood. But I also discovered something else. It's like those blinders on race horses. The hoody takes away your peripheral vision, therefore increasing your view of your monitor(s). With proper space between you and the monitor, you can encompass two 17" monitors, or one large 23", while keeping your focus on your work.

Try it. It's good.

Microsoft's Expression product line seems very impressive. When you take into consideration the cross-platform (WPF/E) power and the extreme flexibility of WPF/XAML, and not to mention the solid power of programmability (something Flash lacks in boatloads) WPF/E will most probably revamp the Internet itself!

If you don't know anything about all this, think power of the world's best programming language, mixed with futuristic Final Fantasy like software interfaces. The future is finally here. Where do I want to go today? I wanna go to the place where they store the bits of Sparkle in Microsoft!

If you've worked in Flash and if you've worked in .NET, you just KNOW that the possibilities are mind-boggling. I have half a mind to create a time machine and go to the release date!!

WPF/E supports portable devices, Mac OS X, and possibly Linux as well! This is one of those few (if not the only one) things Microsoft made that is cross-browser compatible to such extremes. Check out Sparkle's features.

Windows Vista will finally be that massive graphical step in a visually better computing world. Not to mention all the other stuff - but I'm a graphic guy so I don't see nothin' else! :-P

Also, check out the ATLAS page. I'm gonna get my hands dirty with all this this weekend!

I'm still shaking from excitement over Expression. I better stop trying to write my thoughts about it before I go completely nuts!

EXPRESSION ROCKS!!!

Being an "Unfortunate" - one of the small group of people who were gonna be at the PDC, but couldn't due to technical reasons (mine being not able to get a visa on time) - is worse than being someone who just didn't or couldn't go.

I think I handled it fine the past few months since the visa incident (I could get a visa, but not until AFTER the PDC). I thought I would be able to get through it. I had two options, brave it, or stick my head in the sand (Ostrich Evasive Action #918). Being the dumbass that I am, I went for "Brave it". I should've stuck my head in sand. Ostriches have a lot more intelligence than me!

Now, here I am reliving childhood traumas of not being "included" in school trips and being "excluded" from the "special groups" just coz I was intellectual (yup, I was a BASIC programmer since age 4). Everywhere you go on the net or even in your MSN buddy list you see something about the PDC. Apparently I also couldn't see the Gates keynote live coz it was an internet gridlock and no connections were available. Freakin' bad luck!

At this point, I'd like to give a shout to Nickolas "ActiveNick" Landry for giving me some relief. He pops up on MSN with the personal tag - "Not at the PDC ... stop asking :(". He had client obligations. I feel sorry for him. Being so close (in the same country - I had to cross half the world! ... if I could've gone, that is) but being so far. But I feel better for me.

Sigh. If you see me blogging a week from now, it will mean that I survived. If not, learn something from my death and it won't be all that meaningless. Do whatever you have to. Bomb an embassy (Big Brother if you're listening, no it wasn't me - nor would I do something like this - just kidding), hijack a plane, bribe a Microsoftie, take Carl Franklin hostage - do anything! But BE AT THE NEXT PDC. Or else you'll end up like me - enduring pics of Paul Thurrott in a muscle-shirt just to see the cool hardware he has wired up in his hotel room in LA.

Web design tip - alternate to ImageMaps.

No, I'm NOT at the PDC. Thanks for reminding me! Grrrr.

But if YOU are at the PDC, then you might want to check out the LIVE recording of the new DNR Quiz Show tomorrow (12th September) - the audience gets to participate live and win literally thousands of dollars worth of swag. For more info check out Carl's blog.

The show's site (made by yours truly) will be going live tonite or early tomorrow. Keep watching this space for more info.

Podcasting pioneer (and a friend of mine) Carl Franklin and his company PWOP Productions (a client of mine) have been popping up in the news everywhere from slashdot to Reuters, because of the work Pwop did for Nintendo.

Now, all I have to do is find out what a podcast is. I am assuming it is something to do with emergency escape vehicles on spaceships and their release mechanisms. I could be wrong tho.

I got home a bit early yesterday and found myself with about 12 hours of extra time before I rebooted into WORK MODE. I whipped out Ressurection of Evil and finished it! Review coming later.

Am currently listening to The Wonders' THAT THING YOU DO (fantastic tracks!) and typing up the last remaining parts of The Human UI.

I've been posting so much not-so-substantial posts that I think it's time to make this blog somewhat richer again. So here is a preview (draft version) of The Human UI article.

---

The Human User Interface

Dax Pandhi

Nukeation Studios

 

We developers often see monochromatically. Well, that’s a bit harsh. We do have coloring in our code. But that’s about it. And sometimes we’re so pumped up on technology – especially new technology – and the function of the software (I bet even right now you’re saying “SHOW ME THE CODE, stop talking!”) that we forget the end-user just might have different priorities. We work hard to make the app work – they just expect it to work, so they have additional wishes too. This is truer if you’re into retail software, or something that will be used by non-techie people. While the first instinct would be to call them ungrateful, they are our customers, so let’s see how we can make the experience better for them.

The question is: if you are going to be spending a few dozen hours (or more) a week staring at a particular software, you at least want it to be easy on the eyes. You also want it – and need it – to be as easy to navigate and use as possible. With the amount of software being churned out, an estimated 4 out of 10 software have a UI that the end-user really likes and is instantly comfortable using.

A massive amount of software is created for corporations. Whether it is developed in-house, or under the care of a consultant – more often than not a bare minimum time, effort, or money is invested into creating a better UI. The ‘designer’ role is rare in the development cycle – especially in the world of Windows® applications. This is not to say your application’s UI is ugly. There’s just a whole lot more you can do.

There are some basic rules to follow to have a much nicer looking and better functioning UI for your application. It doesn’t require too much investment of time or money on your part, and adds a good return-on-investment.

Today we will discuss twenty points of UI design that you can integrate into your application design phase easily. The result will be richer applications with better functionality –a “human” UI. But before we delve into that, let’s talk a bit about the basics of proper UI design.

---

The whole thing will be published on MSDN soon.

This becomes more of a project now wavering between an animated short or a novella with a frickin' cool cover and a few visuals.

In any case, it's supposed to be set in a world somewhere between Neo-Tokyo and Cyrodiil. Let's see where this goes.

For now I leave you with a three cool wallpapers. 3M+ renders.

1280x1024 1024x819	1280x1024 1024x819	1280x1024 1024x819

This had to happen y'know. Too much GitS, GitS:Innocence, and GitS:SAC results in stuff like this. Especially when you add the already philosophical mode I usually am in.

Here's the first draft of something "complete" I've written in a LONG time.

Sentience.pdf (38.61 KB) Copyright © 2005 Dax Pandhi. All rights reserved.

Want more? Here's some geeky philosophy.

Developer Tools - be it Visual Studio or some lowly plugin - it is a form of perpetual motion. It winds its own spring, and keeps going, and going, and going. Now that's something to think about.

Sickness, Alient Artifacts, and the Past - all three things hurt (often).

Ever since this morning, I've been feeling quite down. Nothing serious. Mostly stress, fatigue, and lack of a social life. After sleeping from 10am to 8pm, I was still not feeling too good. To battle these things, I started working on some alien artifacts. I've been wanting to do some cool, totally profitless, creative work. I have a bad habit of being focused on good, practical, and profitable goals. Unfortunately, that doesn't include too much fun. Don't get me wrong, I love my work. But you do need some fun. As my Uncle says "All work and no play, makes you hippy and gay". Trying desperately to avoid these things (no offence to anyone who is either or both), I say down, did a quick sketch with Alias SketchBook Pro on my Tablet and opened 3D Studio MAX after so long.

I might follow up on this "project" later this weekend if I can squeeze it into my schedule. For now, I leave you with a test shot.

The final result, tentatively titled "From Oblivion" (personal tribute to Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion), will be a 20 to 30 second clip - or even more than one 15 second clips - I will post 'em here over the weekend.

Special Credit to Jessica Pletcher for some 3D design advice. You rock, Jess!

If you are good at math, you are wondering where did the third hurting part go - The Past. Right. Well, in my sleep, someone in my neighborhood started playing "Walk Like An Egyption" - mostly because I hate The Bangles (like anyone with more than 2 brain cells). I think he or she must've been pissed off by yours truly during some point in time and wanted revenge. Well, it worked! The madhre mucking (to use a curse created by Tim Zahn in STAR WARS: VISION OF THE FUTURE) tune is stuck in my head. I am currently listening to Dargaard to get it out of my head (and for that nice gothic/ethnic inspiration for the Alien Artifact).

Here is an excerpt from "BIG NUMBERS: Ep III Animation" story from the StarWars.com official newsletter.

"The shots of Episode III resulted in a total rendering time of 6,598,928 hours, spread across the rendering farms of multiple processors. To do it on a single system running continuously, it would take over 750 years to produce."

I will *NEVER* complain again when it takes 2 hours to render some complex scenes.

I bet they were putting out at least 5 terabytes a day with their files!

We've been meaning to announce this for some time now, but are waiting for when we update www.nukeation.com properly. We've started a new service for Blogs. We make 'em for you. We prefer using dasBlog - which is what this blog uses - but we cater to just about any blog out there. For dasBlog based blogs, we've even created extensions such as the "I am..." tile you see on the top left, a photo blog/gallery, super cool skins/themes, and much more. We hope to make the typical blog into a more comprehensive media hub. Of course, all these extensions are totally free. We just charge (mostly peanuts) for the work we put into your blog. Standard blog design rates start at $100. Contact us today!

Tell you what - mention the following code phrase "Nukeation Rocks!" in your subject line and we'll give you a nice little 15% discount.

I said it first, I said it again, and I confirmed it too. And now it's officiall announced. Acrlyic will be the Visual Designer for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF, formerly codename "Avalon"). Check out the August CTP.

I've said it before and I'll say it again AVALO-- eh, Windows Presentation Foundation ROCKS!

That's right - NukeBall, the Ultimate RUID Tool for Visual Studio 2005 is now nearing it's release. We're putting out a public beta of the Express Edition (analogous to non-alchoholic bear, but a bit better) near the end of the month. We have officially announced the contents and features of the software, the Express Edition, IDE Integration and more. Check out the website at http://www.nukeball.com

We still have a few slots left for beta testers. We give amazing rewards. For info contact beta [ at ] nukeball [ dot ] com.

 

In a desperate attempt to release the build up of excessive creative energy in me, I spent the last few hours creating this Vista/Aero look for my blog. Would love to hear some feedback.

This is all Vista. This is also an experiment for me. I have various assets on the internet - my business website, my upcoming software's website, my personal website with art & photography, and of course, my blog (all links at the top of the page). I'm trying to establish this blog as a hub between all this.

What I would love to know is whether this blog is just the private/public form of therapy for myself, or is it actually informative or at least entertaining. Does anyone even read it regularly? If you do read my blog - or even if this is your first time, please drop me a line and tell me what you think. It'd make very happy.

Oh, and thanks for reading my blog!!

I'm very happy to report that I've found Vista Beta 1 to be so stable and reliable that I'm moving a few projects onto the Vista platform. I'm also thinking of installing it on my Tablet PC over the weekend.

To move work on to Vista, first I had to see if all my work applications worked properly or not. Office 2003 has worked nicely, and so has Corel Graphics Suite 12. Next came VS2005.

Visual Studio 2005 Setup runs in all it's aero-enabled glory.

Somehow, the setup failed when it started to install the only missing prerequisite - MSXML (3 or 6, I can't remember at this moment). I had to go the WCU folder on the DVD and manually run that install. After that, VS2005 installed very quickly - faster than XP - or is that just my imagination? In any case, after the uneventful install, I launched VS2005 and it didn't give a single error or warning. You can see the IDE in the shot below.

The Aero "Express" version Form shown here is the same theme I encountered when installing Longhorn on my VPC. The cool thing (tho maybe it might appear annoying later on) is that the animations run while you're designing the form. The default button's blue tone fades in and out; the progress bar's "filled" are has a shine pass over it (marquee mode makes the bar show up as 100% and the shine keeps passing over it to show somethign is, in fact, happening). The only problem I saw so far in VS2005 on Vista, is that some parts of the UI - mainly the toolstrips - fail to draw, and end up as black blocks. Forcing a redraw (minimize and restore) solves it tho. Dragging / stretching tool windows causes it again. Not much of a problem tho.

I made this quick sample to see how things look. This was a two-fold test. I installed our untested build of NukeBall, the upcoming Rapid User Interface Development tool we are making here at Nukeation Studios, in Visual Studio 2005. I saw that the endless hours of coding paid of. It worked. If you look at the top left corner of the image above, you can see the NukeForms command sitting next to your standard Add Item button. While we don't officially support Vista 1, each and every piece of content in NukeBall does, in fact, work on Vista.

I quickly made this sample below with NukeWads and NukeForms. The lower progressbar is in marquee mode (infinite progress).

I tried over 27 different applications I've made (including some made long ago in VB6) and they all ran nicely on Vista, except for a couple of those VB6 apps that relied on some obsolete code. All in all, I give Vista as many thumbs-ups as can. Very cool. Can't stop saying that. I fear I might scream VISTA in the middle of the nigh- day (I work at night, sleep at day).

Coming up next: Adding Aero to my blog, and more.

Now that I have Vista running on dual-boot on the best machine I have, I'll be doing a long series of posts about my experience with Vista.

Being more of a graphics guy, I delved deep into the UI first off - it's hard not to with Vista - it's so slick. It's so slick, that my cursor often slipped.

Contrary to what has been said, the Windows Vista UI - at least in Beta 1 - is not 100% Avalon/Vector based. Parts of the Window Frame certainly seem to be using VisualBrush from Avalon, but the buttons, progress bars, even icons, are all bitmaps. This is expected, since this UI will be replaced (possibly) by a super secret project called "Project M" that most people in Microsoft refuse to speak of. While bitmap handling may very well be done by Avalon, as it is strongly suggested with the smooth scaling, we still have to wait a while before a full Avalon UI comes along. Avalon - even in Beta 1 - is less than half complete. They don't have merge modes which are desperately needed. Avalon doesn't have a visual designer (yet). And so, there still is time.

I think ClearType doesn't blur nicely. Like I said, Avalon still needs a lot of work.

The "AERO" theme is built right on top of the Lune template. If you go to <root>\Windows\resources\themes\ you will see the Aero theme file. The .msstyles file in the subfolder is actually a disguised DLL. I don't know if this violates the EULA, but in theory, if you make a copy of this file and rename it to something.dll, and drag it into Visual Studio or any Resource explorer/extractor, you can see the bitmaps with which windows is built on. But thee theme system is much different from XP. For one thing, it overlays these bitmaps on Windows with Aero - while I don't have solid proof, I feel it when anything is drawn on the screen. Trust me. This is my domain (www.nukeation.net :P). But bad jokes aside, I love the UI - not the eye candy, but the layouts, new widgets, the whole new design paradigm. But more on that in an upcoming post.

UPDATED - August 6 2005: I was actually slightly askew in saying that the Aero theme is built right on top of Luna. While such a thing does exist, it used in the non-dedicated graphics card (or Aero Express) environment. When you have a solid AGP or PCI-E card, it will use Avalon to theme everything - but it will also use parts from the Luna-based theme template. It could also be that it has seperated resources (similar graphics but in different places, or perhaps drawn/rendered in real-time) for AERO. So, I was not wrong in what I said, but I wasn't totally right either.

I tried out some of my .NET 2.0 and .NET 1.1 apps on Vista. They ran perfectly. Non-.NET applications such as Corel PhotoPaint 12 also ran nicely. ACDSee 7 failed miserably. Thankfully, the Add/Remove Programs applet is now much nicer and easier. I intend to install Office 2003 and Visual Studio 2005 on it next.

The first thing that impressed me with Vista (after the UI, of course) is the so obvious speed. I know it's running on a 2gig machine on a 3GHz HT Processor, but still it works faster than my XP installation. It's true I don't have much installed on it (yet). The shutdown is still impressive. 3 seconds flat. Without fail. The startup is just as fast (relative to XP).

I haven't gotten a chance to actually USE the Virtual Folders outside of a small test. I expect them to be quite helpful. The instant search/filter capabilities are GREAT. But the search box in Start Menu is a pure nuisance. I am a super-Power-User. I need my keyboard more than my mouse. I don't CLICK "Run". I hit "START", "R". Now when I do that, I get a bad assed "r" in the search box. Microsoft, REMOVE IT! At least make it OPTIONAL, dammit. This and the extra space after the close button in the titlebar are the two strong negative points I have found in Vista.

More soon in Part 2. I gotta go boot into Vista. And I just realized as I type this - Vista is much easier to type than Longhorn.

At 23:29 on Wednesday night my long running download of Windows Vista Beta 1 (formerly Windows codename "Longhorn") was finally completed.

With a shudder, I tested the ISO image for the possible corrupt data and as I held my breath, I saw the progress bar reach 100% without a single error. There is a God! And he writes managed code!!

I fire up Virtual PC 2004. I start the installation. Very smooth. A bit dull, and took too long even on a 1064MB RAM VPC. The installation takes over an hour but it WORKS. It's installed. It's rebooting. It starts up... in 16 colors.

No problem. Let's install the drivers and VM Additions. There. 32-bit color. Wow. Looks coo- hey, wait a goddamn minute - I thought Aero was TRANSPARENT. Everything on the screen is shiny, but opaque. What the...? I google up some stuff, and find out (should've known) VPC doesn't support direct host hardware utilization. Damn.

I don't have any machine powerful enough that is also available for taking risks. Damn. No. Risking it on my Tablet - which doesn't have a CD or DVD Drive - would be foolish. So, I scour a stand-by PC, and rip out the 72 gig drive (PATA, yuk) and plug it into my main production PC - a big 3GHz HT PC with 2 gigs of RAM, 2 monitors, and a 128MB nVidia GeForce FX series graphics card. Dual boot will be fine. If anything goes wrong, I can just rip out the extra disk and be done with it. But BIOS doesn't detect the damned disk. I check the cables and mess with the jumper settings. Master, slave, primary, secondary. Crap. Okay, so I finally have it running now. I log into Windows XP, and see the 2 new partitions in My Computer. Phew! I run the setup file, enter the long product key, click next, and BOOM - the setup stub crashes. I try again. It crashes. And again. And again. So, I say "<bleep> it". I write the ISO onto a blank DVD. 7 minutes later, the disc is burnt. I say, hey what the heck, let's try it once more from the disc. Setup runs successfully!! It's a Disc-run only thing, I guess.

Setup runs nice and quite (faster than the VPC install, of course) while I watch Cartoon Network at 4:30am. I spent the time between the download's completion and now to mess with drives, old PCs, new PCs, and Virtual PC! 39 minutes later, it's installed. I gingerly touch the mouse as the setup finishes up. A new window pops up...

... I stop squinting long enough to peek out of the corner of my eye and - OH NO, OH MY GOD...

it's TRANSLUCENT.  Longhorn's Aero UI in all it's glory. Blurring the background and casting a drop shadow. I had a little tear in my eye.

Unable to contain the joy, but wary not to cause any damage to the beta installation, I start popping open folders and being amazed by all the eye candy. To quote Michele Leroux Bustamante, "No, please, make it stop, don't make me go back, I don't want to go back...I'll never go back...ok, fine, I'll go back...for now...but I won't like it..." All I could think of was what will I do now? How will I take these eyes back to that old, dry, and boring Legacy OS? XP themes aren't that nice anymore.

Pushing that damning thought to the lower recesses of my so-called mind, I plow on. It's SO cool. The graphics, of course, are. But I'm talking about the organization features. The MUCH needed improvements.

You're probably asking where are the screenshots? well, you will have to wait. I haven't installed Corel Capture on Longhorn, and Paint+PrntScrn is too tiresome. I'll post more tomorro-- uh later today - I see the sun coming out.

Once I was satisfied to experience the glorious interface and the features, I accessed the other hard disk, opened my Visual Studio projects folder, and started running various WinApps built in VS2005/.NET 2.0 - they ran nicely. So did all the 1.1 apps. I tried to hotwire some of them instead of installing them - .NET ROCKS (and that's a show too) - it all worked.

Two negative points which I will elaborate on in my detailed post later, are:

The CLOSE buton on the top-right corner has to be the ALIGNED to the FAR RIGHT - no extra pixels. I have a habit of slamming the cursor into the corner and blindly clicking to close a window. That doesn't work in Vista, as there is some extra space after the red button.

The second point is that the new Common Dialogs (Open/Save) have a new sidebar with common places and common searches for easy navigation. The feature is quite cool, but the layout is all cramped. In some places in Vista, I do feel claustrophobic.

Alright, that ends my experience in Vista-land for the moment. More this evening - with screenshots.

...things that I know, nobody told me...things that I saw - they still controoool mee...

As I listen to The Strangest Thing by George Michael at the maximum volume possible with these headphones, I see the File Transfer Manager's progress bar hit 86% - 336.8MB and dropping at a rate of 10.4KB/sec. After a horrible power failure due to my power supply unit being burnt to a toasty crispy black piece of junk, I fear completing this download only to find out that the file was corrupted midway at around 660MB.

Internet, power, and human failures notwithstanding, I've spent over 75 hours as of now to download Vista Beta 1. If this download is corrupted... I shudder to think of what might happen.

We'll find out the truth in 8 hours and 57 minutes. May the Force be with me.

So I waited a few years, and then some months, and then many days, until Microsoft released Windows Vista Beta 1. So, it's a 2.42GB ISO. I have to start downloading it now (because it will be sent to MSDN Subscibers in DVD form in SEPTEMBER!). So I have to download something that I will get for free (well, not free free).

So what's the problem? The problem is that I'm downloading on a freakin' 115kbps connection via my cell phone which serves as a modem - the fastest connection available in this town-sized replica of tattooine. I started downloading on the 27th, and it this very moment, I still have 1066.5MB left to download at 10.1kbps (which is around ~30 hours worth of downloading).

The only stuff I know about Vista is the couple of videos I've seen on Channel9 and at Paul Thurrott's site, plus the stuff I read at http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/

I just hope I can see everything first hand and in proper performance on my 2GIG VPC.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Still waiting... sigh.

UPDATED: 4 hours later

Current status - 969.7MB ~29 hours

While waiting for Longho- er, Vista to download, I...

• read 3 Star Wars novels
• found out that your thumb is more sensitive that your index finger as it is used less often and the nerves are more sensitive as a result
• have over 183 'lines' in my thumbprint
• saw something resembling Joe Pesci near the center of my thumbprint
• found out that eating realy spicy food before going to bed gives you horrible dreams about your 2GB download file being corruped
• made over 17 backups of the temporary download file for Vista, including one "fallback milestone" at 660MB when a power failure occured and my UPS died with it
• started preparing for NukeBall's CD production, booklet printing, manual design, and other such stuff
• updated the frontpage of Nukeation
• re-read the "Q Continuum" trilogy
• am closing in on the secret of life and the universe - I think I might completely solve that mystery when I download Beta 2
• photographed and studied a lizard hanging out outside my window (I'm the only one at 3am who has light on, so the entire state's insects visit me at night)
• discovered 78 ways to kill mosquitos
• started working on my article 'The Human UI'
• listened to Burning Man in a loop for 3 hours
• finished (from start to finish) Republic Commando over 4 times
• finished WORK
• the list is building...

NukeBall - The ultimate RUID Tool

So (Oh my God, I'm starting to talk like a Microsoftie!) as you may know, I'm a fan of sci-fi and sci-fantasy. Star Wars rates at #1, and Star Trek somewhere below it.

After reading almost a hundred Star Wars books, I picked up a couple of old Star Trek TNG paperbacks from the local bookstore. And while I do love 'em both, I think Star Wars is certainly more imaginative. Here's an example:

If there was an analogy to be made, in Star Wars the author would write, "The plant resembled an overgrown kowakian monkey-lizard."

In Star Trek (I'm reading ALL GOOD THINGS, at the moment), Worf is thinking, "The eskimos of 20th century North America had 16 words for ice, and Klingon only have 1 word for Honor."

WHY EARTH? WHY ALWAYS EARTH? AND WHY ALWAYS 20th FREAKIN' CENTURY EARTH? At least you can add another similarity to some fictional planet.

Looking back, Star Trek - the original series and the next generation (tho I think ENTERPRISE is better in this regard) seems more like a history trek than a futuristic trek. I love Picard. He's a fantastic, eloquent, elegant character. But his deep, deep nostalgia for 20th century crap is just too much.

Trekkies? Where art thy imagination?

I'm not sure whether it's good or bad. Windows Vista. Microsoft Windows Vista, formerly Windows codename "Longhorn". I expected 2006. I expected XXP. I even humored the notion of Microsofticus Windowsicus VII. But VISTA?

Okay, I'm calm now. Well, calmER.

Okay - VISTA.

Vista.

Vista. Hmmm.

Doesn't sound too bad.

Vista.

Vista.

Okay, now I'm feeling like I'm stoned.

Anyways, so MS told Paul Thurrott it's about "clarity". Longho- I mean VISTA will give you focus on what matters and what YOU want to do.

I don't have anything else to say at the moment. I need to let this sink in a bit first.

...

...

...

...

...

...

VISTA?! THAT'S A $*&#!*% MOUTHFUL!

AFTER 24 HOURS...

Okay, so now it's sinking in. Guess it's not that bad. It's quite good actually. And I also guess it's good they have a non-technical name that non-techs can get attached to.

But the best part is - it's not named after a cat. No, I don't anything against cats, but you know what they say "An Apple® a day, makes you delusional, stupid, technologically inferior, intellectually posterior, and a freakin' MAC LOVER!" You got that, Mac.

Microsoft rocks! VB Rocks. .NET ROCKS! (And that's a show too - in fact, vote for it at www.podcastawards.com) and EVERYTHING MANAGED ROCKS!

ROCK ON, REDMOND!

YEEEXTRA, yeextra. Read all about it. NukeBoy makes breakthrough in his super-secret-world-take-over-software-application!

Finally, this puny little planet will be all mine - ALL ... MINE!!! Mmmmuuuuhahahahahaha.

 

Sorry about this weird post. I'm just very happy that the long standing problem (resolved in 3 lines of VB code, as usual), the upcoming, (hopefully) world changing (no world domination - scout's honor) add-in for Visual Studio 2005 (C#, VB, J#) is now finally on it's way. Of course, we won't be able to ship a full working version (except for the free Express Edition) until the actual RTM of VS2005 in November.

For now, the only thing I can tell you is that it's a RUID (Rapid User Interface Development) tool for Windows Forms application (C#, VB, J#) that is PURE .NET (zero redistributable assemblies, btw), it has some seriously cool features, an express edition (totally free) for personal or commercial usage, a massive visual library (600 or so at last count), and is titled NukeBall. Just wait till you see what the team has packed into this tiny little app that just might change the way you work!!

Hey Dudes! The word is out - they are making a full CGI Ninja Turtles movie!! Althought its supposed to be released in 2007, I don't mind waiting at all.

Turtles (the Ninja and normal kind) have been a fave since I was a kid. Ah, I remember seeing the first movie. Boy was that great! And then the second which was really cool (as far as sequels go). "Go ninja, go ninja, go!" Heh. That brings back memories. Vanilla Ice did bring down the mood a bit.

The official MOVIE site is up but gives very little info. The official TMNT site is the place to go for the time being.

I can't for the new generation to (re)discover words like "shell-shocked". Oh man, I'm so pumped I'm thinking of taking out my dusty old NES and those TMNT catridges.

It has been ages since I wrote my last article. I've written some stuff now and then, but not a whole article - let alone a series. Previously, I had said that I would write a series of 101 articles on Avalon. Well, there are many changes in Avalon in Beta 1 and many more to come in subsequent releases. The biggest will be the addition of a visual designer to the IDE.

So, I have decided to create an open ended series of articles that revolve around UI design. I'll start with Windows Forms based UI, then move on to skinning, and later on to Avalon. So far, I have about 4 articles planned, with more to be added as more Avalon's fate is released. As with AVALONfiltered, I hope to have these articles published by MSDN. But if they don't want it (their loss), I'll be posting them here.

I also intend to cover the general theories of 'attractive design', the effectiveness of a good UI, and other design philosophies through out the series. I will be releasing the first article by the end of this month (unless MSDN really wants it, then it is totally up to them).

It's been a while since I blogged. So here's a roundup of the main events that probably 2 and a half people care about!

DigitalExile.net is live!

My long planned personal site (after the demise of after-images.net) is now finally live. www.digitalexile.net

There are lots of new photographs available (for licensing, too), and my art collection and written works will be added soon. There's also a download section with small apps, wallpapers, and some random stuff available for download. Or will be soon.

My Blog rates #1 in searches

A pleasent surprise - I saw a referer tag in my server log for this blog (hey, that rhymes!) - for someone searching for "Pandhi" (my last name, you dumbass!). I decided to follow that search link on Yahoo and voila - the #1 (and many subsequent links) are for this very blog as well as my corporate site www.nukeation.com! The same is on Google. But there, my corporate site is first, and the blog after that. Needless to say I like Yahoo! better than Google. The blog is at #1 even if you search for Dr. JJ Rawal

Republic Commando still the best!

I play an hour of Republic Commando every night before I go to bed with Gratu'acuun ringing in my ears. This is better than Half-Life (1 or 2) and Doom combined. They're great games, but this just ROCKS MY WORLD!

Radio Acting Debut

A few weeks ago, I made my recording debut as the "Human Resources Executive of IBM" on the comedy online radio show MONDAYS (Episode 25) - download it! No, no. No autographs. You get a free autograph when you sign up for the Dax Pandhi Official Fanclub.

A GIG goes a long way

I finally added a gig of RAM to my 1GB system. Needless to say it works better. Though it generates more heat, I love the tradeoff.

Jungle Coast, Costa Rica

I'm helping out with the branding and e-solutions for a dear, dear friend Cynthia Najim's new real estate business. This is one of those fun projects I rarely get anymore (if you're a client of mine, no I didn't mean it like that - your projects are just important - this is just different coz there's unreal amounts of creative energy tingling it up). If you're looking for nice, affordable, and beautiful villas, cottages, or even farms - these are the people to call. Will post their website URL as soon as I finish it.

Am planning on going to Costa Rica next year, maybe.

Wiping the blood and grime off my helmet, I look towards the bridge. Kachirho's lights shine in the distance. As the smoke clears, and the deafening explosions stop, I can see the blurred forms of my brothers holding off the enemy, giving me cover fire so I can help our fallen brother. I hear Four-Oh's heavy breathing and soft groans under me. I realize I am standing on top of Delta-40, his white and green armor dented and splattered with blood - not his own. I get him up and send him to heal up at the near by bacta dispenser.

Delta-07 - Sev - snipes the onslaught of SBD's - their grey headless bodies seemingly immune to the plasma shots. Scorch - Delta-62, makes a joke, easing the pain as always. Advisor's voice echoes in my helmet - "Delta 38, we need to destroy that bridge now!"

The battle for the Wookies' freedom rests upon us - four lone commandos against an endless supply of Battle Droids, Super Battle Droids, and Trandoshan slavers. I remember a trooper's remarks - "Look! Commandos! If they're as good as I hear they are, they can win the war all by themselves." I hope that's true.

With Four-Oh - Fixer - at 100%, I move to take Six-Two's position. "Scorch, I need some radical restructuring." I can feel his eyes light up even behind his plasteel faceplate. "Roger that, Boss."

I lob a EM grenade hoping to slow down the SBDs. Damn. They're too tough. "Four-Oh, man that turret." Maybe he can take out a few more of them with some heavy fire power. "Turret. Got it, Delta Lead."

Delta-62 fixes a large explosive to the ammo crates lying on the bridge the Seperatists require for their occupation of Kashyyyk. "Boss, we better get off this bridge before we blow it up." But we're surrounded. There is no time to waste. The only way out is to destroy the Droid dispensers.

I relenquish my cover and order some cover fire. Dodging the twig-legged droids, knocking some out with my vibro-blade, I move in. I hear Sev taking some shrapnel. I set up an explosive on the dispenser, and start to set the timer. The large bay door opens. A spider droid. Fifteen tons of pure armor and firepower.

The bridge and dispensers primed for an explosive finish, we prepare for what we've been trained to do: die for the Republic.

"We'll make 'em remember the day they tried to blow up Delta Squad."

---

Never before have I seen such a perfect fusion of action, military tactics, breathtaking graphics, superb AI, and war chants that makes you want to die for your cause. STAR WARS: REPUBLIC COMMANDO is one of the BEST GAMES ever! It certainly knocked DOOM3 from first place on my list. Instead of the "lofty perspective of the Jedi", this games takes you into the trenches as you command 3 elite Clone Commandos - DELTA SQUAD - in 3 dangerous missions - Clone Wars: Zero Hour on Geonosis, repelling an invasion on the Republic Assault Ship PROSECUTOR in space, and a special mission on Kashyyyk that would end the Clone Wars. And while you play, whenever the going gets tough, the music keeps your spirits high. This is THE best game to come out from LucasArts (yes, they made this in-house - no outsourcing) EVER!

Baritone voices sing old Mandalorian war songs: (all songs are available for download at the site. I recommend VODE AN, RAGE OF THE SHADOW WARRIORS, and GRAT'UA CUUN, as well as the ambient tunes THE JUNGLE FLOOR, COMM INTERFERENCE, and KACHIRHO BY NIGHTVISION)

Kandosii sa ka'rta, Vode an.

(One indomitable heart, Brothers all.)

Coruscanta a'den mhi, Vode an.

(We, the wrath of Coruscant, Brothers all.)

Bal kote, darasuum kote, Jorso'ran kando a tome.

(And glory, eternal glory, We shall bear its weight together.)

Sa kyr'am Nau tracyn kad, Vode An.

(Forged like the saber in the fires of death, Brothers all.)

This music can literally set your blood on fire as you play the game and immerses you into the world of the Commando. It's the BEST soundtrack a game ever had. PERIOD!

You fight hand-to-hand as well as with your DC-17 modified blaster. Every close hit is rewarded with a generous splatter of sickly yellow geonosian blood on your face, which your helmet visor wipes with a laser wiper.

 Delta-38 "Boss" - Delta Leader

 Delta-07 "Sev" - Sniper / Weapons

 Delta-62 "Scorch" - Demolitions

 Delta-40 "Fixer" - Slicer (Hacker) / Tech

You issue commands to your 3 brothers - Delta 07, Delta 40, and Delta 62. Each has a distinct personality and voice (just coz you're clones don't mean you can't have a different accent - which are picked up from their respective instructors). You have the voice of Jango Fett - which was marvelously voiced by Temeura Morrison himself.

The missions are fast paced, dangerous, and set in breathtaking environments. And when you set NIGHT VISION on, it feels more real than a movie. The visuals look as if it is REAL. Just plain real. Mind boggling.

The game is based on the Unreal II engine (modified, of course). It shames the graphics of Unreal II. Then again, Unreal II was shameful in many ways. But the engine is, in fact, quite cool. Republic Commando shows its power very nicely.

The whole game often doesn't feel like a Star Wars game. The credits music is high-pitched rock music. The soundtrack is Mandalorian war chants. And the only time you see a lightsaber is when you see a deadbody of a Clone trooper who tried to use it. That's when your character says "An elegant weapon for a more civilized time. Well, guess what ... times have changed!"

I wish they would've added a mission from Episode III, where they escort Obi-Wan to Utapal. 3 missions seem a bit "small" once you've played it 6 times in 4 days. But it still rocks. Especially the one-liners. "Baby wookies? Nah, too cute." or "Boss, we gotta place a charge here, and I'm not saying this 'cause I like to blow stuff up."

The end is cool too. Very military-movie like. And you get a special appearance by General Greivous and Master Yoda. George Lucas took interest in the game too. It was his idea to give colored, personalized armor to each Commando - something he was thinking of doing in Episode III.

I recommend you go see the trailer on www.swcommando.com and then listen to the music and download the demo, and then order the game!!

It runs FANTASTIC on a GeForce FX / 128MB. Though a gig of RAM didn't hurt. :) And don't be afraid of this game if you're not so good with games like Rainbow-Six and all - this is more suitable for the Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 players. Just go download the damn, demo! NOW, soldier!

Delta Squad, move out!

KACHIRHO BY NIGHTVISION

There is also a book based on this game by Karen Traviss, called STAR WARS: Republic Commando - HARD CONTACT. Cool book. Worth reading.

Okay, so I got to try out Acrylic. Not really tempting to switch from Corel for this. But I guess that if my theory of Avalon-Designer is correct, then Microsoft is more after the actual vector-drawing technology core of Acrylic. Maybe it will kill two birds with one stone and put out Acrylic as a medium-level graphics design app to push their "Start something creative" tagline.

The Acrylic interface is a bit annoying. I've always loved the docking windows of Visual Studio and CorelDRAW Suite. And you appreciate these a LOT more when you're working on a Tablet PC. The UI is somewhat creative - I'll give you that - but it STILL is annoying.

I guess there's nothing left to do but uninstall Acrylic (why waste a hundred megs on this?) and wait until my theory is confirmed or denied.

I downloaded Beta 1 (RC1) of Avalon/Indigo/WinFX SDK a few days ago and have been playing with it.

I did not get the time to dive too deep into the March CTP, but with the Beta 1 RC1, things are smoother and more stable. And, of course, the VS2005 Beta 2 support is very helpful.

I started playing around with Nathan Dunlap's code samples and have been trying to create a sample application in XAML/VB. There is no functioality, just a slick UI. I'm trying to merge my game designer and web designer abilities to create this UI. Let's see what I can come up with. Will post it here.

Perhaps this app will be the base for the AVALONfiltered series. Part 1 is almost finished.

Well, this week was emotional. Jessica Pletcher, who I worked SO hard to get back into the Nukeation team has left us - again - to pursue higher goals (and a more stable income, not to mention a more stable [mentally] boss). As we recover from this tragic, tragic, loss (see Jess, we did appreciate you even if we didn't show it) we need new cannon fodder.

Seriously speaking, we are hiring people with the following skills/qualities:

• Sharp, Creative, Graphics Designers - must be able to create unorthodox ideas and visualize them properly in either Corel PhotoPaint or Adobe PhotoShop
• Visual C# and Visual Basic (.NET 1.1 - .NET 2.0 not required, but is a plus) programmers - must have 2 years+ experience with .NET and should be able to solve problems on their own without relying on the lazy architects. Must be proficient in both Windows and/or Web (ASP.net) development. PHP'ers need not apply. This is a Microsoft-tech-centric company.
• Flash animators - must have EXCELLENT animation skills
• Avalon artists and programmers - contact for details

A good sense of humor is required.

We pay industry standard rates, provide a LOT of freedom and space to work in. You can work from your own home or office. All you need is MSN messenger to talk to the rest of the team. Lots of perks available as well.

Please note: We are looking for freelancers only, for the moment. Freelancers will get opportunities for employment in our network in the future.

Paid and unpaid internships available. Contact us for details.

Send us a resume with a sample of your work. Programmers can point to a website with samples of their work. Artists should include a link (no attachments please) of their graphics work or mail us a CD (e-mail us for our mailing address).

Send your resumes to hr [ no spam at ] nukeation [dot] com.

To find out more about our company, please visit http://www.nukeation.com

DO NOT POST REPLIES HERE

Following the release of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (which I haven't seen yet, thank you, and shut up) the Mondays gang whupped ass with a super funny Star Wars themed episode of Mondays. Your's truly had the honor of being part of it behind-the-scenes with a bunch of photoshopped (or rather PhotoPaint'd) images of ... well ... something of what Star Wars is like after the weekend. Go check out the show and find out more. Here's a sample: http://shrinkster.com/5ev

I was so busy with making these images and juggling projects (as well fencing comments about my not seeing Sith yet) that I even forgot to mention it here!!!! Check out the show here: http://mondays.pwop.com/default.aspx?showID=22 - and NO, I didn't make the Chewie & Leia image. Even *I* have some dignity. Although, I did find it on the net. :-P

I've always been fascinated and frightened of death - any form of "end". Personal death - my own death - would be a fascinating thing - hell, it would be an adventure (uhm, that "hell" was an exclamation, because I don't believe in hell [or heaven]- mostly because if I did that is where I'd be going).

For the past couple of years everything started ending. The sitcoms I always watched started ending one by one, the eternal sagas come to an end. I left the house where I spent the majority of my life until 2003. Frodo had to leave the Shire and go into the West. Will Riker went onto his own command, Data died. Anakin became Vader, Padme died. In the EU, Chewbacca, Anakin Solo, Admiral Ackbar, Ganner Rhysode, Wurth Skidder, Elogos A'kla, even Nom Anor died. Tahiri, Danni and other went away into the Unknown Regions with Zonama Sekot. And good TV (whatever was left of it) is dying with the so-called reality shows.

One big fear of mine has been the underdog I've been supporting and fighting for is now nearing it's end. In the last few years, Corel Corporation (www.corel.com) has been taken over more times than the middle eastern governments. Since v1.0, I've been a die hard CorelDRAW fan. Later on when Corel PhotoPaint was brought on, it became the most used software on my computer(s). For over 14 years, this is one software I've been using.

Now, I hear that there WON'T be a version 13. PhotoPaint has (finally) fallen behind Photoshop. In it's youth, Corel PhotoPaint (CPT) was what Photoshop copied features from! Now, PhotoShop CS2 is coming up with amazing features. For the past 3 years, this fear has been hanging over me like a sword. But I kept on pushing, knowing Corel will bring in one more version with some rocking features that will crush PS. And for the past 3 years, Corel has been disappointing me. Sure, they've added some cool features, but not ENOUGH.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a fiercly loyal to my friends and allies. And now like Anakin Skywalker, I'm being seduced by the Palpatine analog called Corel Painter IX. I've started shifting my painting creation from CPT to PIX. And I'm beginning to become loyal to it. It's no biggie - it's a COREL product (tho not originally). And it does have cool functionality. It still doesn't support ALL the cool things PhotoPaint can do, but... oh well. I'm still going to use both mediums.

But the deeper fear is that if there is no new version Corel PhotoPaint, I will need to switch to Photoshop. Photoshop with its undocked windows, and missing tools (hey, CPT STILL has tools PS doesn't!). I still pray to the Force that Corel has enough sense to create a new version with killer features. But what if it doesn't. Despair! I despair. Even though I know that despair leads to fear, and fear leads to hatred, and hatred leads to anger, and anger leads to the Dark Side! Oh Force, are you with me still? Does the Light Side still hold sway?

I fear the day when I cannot get a new version of PhotoPaint, and I'll have to leave it's beautiful customizable VBA architecture and embrace the Yuuzhan Vong software called Photoshop. Padme will die, hundreds of Padawans will die, and I will be using Photoshop!

Jedi Master C'arl Fran'klin has written an AMAZING blog post. You just HAVE to read it.

http://weblogs.asp.net/cfranklin/archive/2005/05/19.aspx 

Amazing. Simply amazing.

I recently got hooked on to using Shrinkster.com a lot thanks to listening to .NET Rocks and Mondays

If you don't know what Shrinkster is, it's a website where you enter a large url (for example, a blog link, or a long search URL) and it shrinks it to something like http://shrinkster.com/4x9 - it's small, it's permanent, and it's free. No strings attached.

The thing is, sometimes I want to give a link to someone about something quickly and it is just a pain in the ass to open the browser, go to the site, and make the URL. So, I shrinksterized the process...

Behold... shrinksterNuke! This handy app creates a shrinkster URL from the shrinkster website automatically! You just enter the URL and boom - it's done. It even keeps history and has easy tracking built in.

You can download it at: http://shrinkster.com/5bl

It is a beta release. It has some bugs and tracking is not fully implemented. You can send feedback via the comments link here, or mail me directly. I'd love to hear what you think, and if you find it useful, share it with your friends.

A thanks to Karl Moore and his wonderful component WebZinc.net which handles the core functions for this app. Go buy his app! Now!

NOTE: ShrinksterNuke is built on Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0.50215. You will need the .NET Runtime (same version) installed. It is available at: http://shrinkster.com/5bn

I desperately needed a vacation. I was on the verge of nervous breakdown. But there was just too much work that needed my attention. So, I decided to fill in the gaps in my Star Wars reading and read the entire New Jedi Order series from Book 1. Now, this is a series of 21 books, and my total count of Star Wars novels read has been about 75+.

So, I read 10 books in the last week. I intend to finish the rest this week or the next. I even read EPISODE III: Revenge of the Sith - the official novelization. Damn, I can't wait to see the movie. Go see it!

Some time back, I was on a similar Star Wars kick (I'm ALWAYS on a Star Wars kick, this one was a spike in the normal pattern) and I watched all 5 movies back-to-back. After watching the movie I got into a fight with a Penguin-lover (Linux user! This isn't beastiality!) about Microsoft being the Dark Side of the Force. Being a Microsoft-lover, I just couldn't help but kick his ass.

Later, I was inspired to do a vector-sketch. I wonder if Bill Gates' midi-chlorian count is higher than Anakin's. Hmmm.

 

This is my tribute to Genndy Tartakovsky's genius.

If you Penguin-lovers are thinking that Linux's fate shall be that of Luke Skywalker, yes, you may lose a hand (or wing) or whatever, but defeat the Dark Side, you shall not. Size does matter.

Some time back, Carl Franklin and I started an animation project for Microsoft TechEd that would be shown during a keynote or something. The project's initial concept was provided by Rory Blyth - we take Microsofties and put them in a Mortal Kombat like environment, but with a geeky theme. So, we ended up creating KODER KOMBAT. Unfortunately, the project didn't take off as we expected, but we did end up with a cool idea that just might have a future still.

The stars of our animation were none other than Chris Sells and Don Box. Here are the original concept sketches:

 

Introducing CHRIS SHARP. This hash-powered fighting machine runs on Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 and was coded fully in C#. His powers included HyperInheritance (projecting multiple clones of self), and the legendary power called BURNING MAN (below).

 

This particular super power had a side-power. A strongly addictive polka-remixed song that stuck Chris Sharp's opponent between wanting to dance like an idiot and run away screaming - either would work in Chris Sharp's favor.

---

 

Introducing SILENT ANGLE BRACKET. This wild man was trained by Hulk Hogan in his early years, and then by Or'oku Saki (aka Shredder). His super powers include a silent, almost transparent changing of schemas in between fighting. He switches between a Ninjitsu warrior to a yelling wrestler within milliseconds.

Silent Angle Bracket's secret weapon was an inflatable bathtub hidden in his utility belt (not shown in picture). When he would need to overcome his opponent, he would pull it out, and get in it and mesmerize his opponent (either with his nudity or his interesting talk on SOAP). This would lull his opponent into a false sense of serenity and then he would strike with his energy angle brackets and XML transforms.

---

Hopefully, this project will one day be restarted. (This is an actual project, NOT a joke!)

Ever get the feeling you don't want Monday to begin? Tired of dragging your sorry ass to work? Well, here's an audio show (aka podcast) that might make things a bit easier.

Mondays: What Sunday threw up - http://mondays.pwop.com

(The site was designed by yours truly, thank you )

This show is the brainchild of Carl Franklin and his gang of geeks. Want a sample? Take a look at Carl's recent blog entry. You can't afford to not listen to these clips.

Pass on this message and Carl will pay over $30,000,000 to the person who passes on this message to over 3000 people. What are you waiting for? Go! Spread the word.

The new slogan Nukeation is going with is INNOVATING FORM™. The spinoff of that slogan will be carried over to our upcoming product - which is STILL untitled! That slogan will be "Innovating Form Creation".

We plan to put out a CTP soon It will require Visual Studio 2003 to work (2005 support is being added tho). It will help you create the visual portion of your app in about 1/18th of the time it usually takes a normal developer - maybe even less!

Here's a teaser wallpaper we're using internally.

wallpaperpregenerate.png (26.35 KB)

I invite you to register for the CTP at http://www.nukeation.com/ruid/ - and get a 30% discount on the software as soon as it's released in mid/late June. The CTP will be released some time in late May.

Skinning Metal

 

See also: PwopCatcher Skinning Video (new)

 

It all started when Carl Franklin, CEO of PWOP Productions Inc suddenly mailed me saying “I got a chance to change the world.” Carl was starting a software project that would change PodCasting forever (among other things). He wanted me to come up with a few concepts of what it should look like – it had to be skinned.

 

Carl had this abstract idea of something “warped”. After racking my brain for over 9 minutes, I sat down with my Tablet PC, and sketched out a quick metal skin with pencils and markers. Ripped out holes, embossed metal letters, and digital LCD screens found home on this metal object.

 

 

 

The idea got a solid ‘thumbs up’, and the work began.

 

Before I start blabbering about the whole process, I must point out that a good deal of ideas in the project were Carl’s or came from our discussions and my memory may elude me, so I may forget to mention, but that does not mean I forgot … umm, you know what I mean.

 

Metal Bashing

Now, there are some amazing tricks you can pull off in Corel PhotoPaint (or Photoshop, though PhotoPaint does have some tools that kick Photoshop’s ass) to achieve realism and create good looking metal and glass objects. But there are mixed methods that create even better effects – and that’s exactly what I opted for.

 

The first thing to do was create the base or body of the skin. It needed a solid, metallic feel – and what better to use than actual metal. I went down to a junk yard and got an old 3x3 aluminum plate. Aluminum is light, easy to manipulate and had the perfect bluish/galvanized tint. I marked out the rough outline of the body on the aluminum. Using an old rusted (purposefully) heavy pair of scissors, I took out the excess area from the sheet, leaving me with a rough shape of the body. The next step was to make careful incisions along key points of the body’s shape. The old, rusty scissors made jagged cuts. With some heavy duty gloves, I tore out the remaining excess metal with the help of the incisions. The remaining metal sheet was shaped like a ‘random’ shard of a space ship or something.

 

 

 

Now, the body needed depth. It’s a 0.5mm sheet. Very thin! So, I manually bent the edges. And made some noise with a hammer (along with some bumps and dents on the sheet). Now, the skin was looking closer to what I had in mind.

 

Point to be noted: There are limits to what you can do with a metal sheet to match the image in your head – these limits consist of mostly time, budget, and mainly your sanity. Scared of ruining this perfect shard of a spacecraft, I took pictures of it with my digital camera at 2848x2136+ - that’s very hi-res for an 800x600- skin. The brownish shine you see is my shirt. I tried to remove the coloring, but later on, it really helped me with some effects.

 

I decided to make the holes and other effects digitally. Taking samples from various regions of the body, and some hand-painted artwork on the Tablet PC, I ended up with a nice rectangular hole.

 

 

 

 

Depth was still lacking. This would need another round of photography. Taking my trusty camera, I headed off to the junkyard again and found the textures I wanted in an old hood of a car crash, a surgical lamp, and a failed metal sculpture project (I’m guessing it was that). The new photos were cleaned up and merged with some of my ‘proprietary blend effects’.

 

 

Pixel Bashing

Now came the digital part. I had to create LCD panels. Instead of going for “embedded” panels, I created solid, object-like, flat, rounded edge, glass displays. Painted them black, and placed them inside the central hole. The LCD screens would give the ‘status’ of the application. I created two warning-striped tabs, which would act as buttons, ‘behind’ the body on the top and bottom.

 

I won’t go too much into the detail of the process here, as it involves some trade secrets of mine, and the rest is just plain boring. Pixels pushed here, pixels pushed there, and so on. So, let’s skip to the future a bit.

 

And here we have, finally, a metal shard of some space voyaging vehicle with cool shines, metal anomalies, LCD displays, and wires hanging underneath it.

 

 

The PWOPCATCHER title you see in the lower right is homage to the ‘used universe’ / X-Wing paint effect from Star Wars.

 

You’re probably wondering why the makers of this space ship would make a LCD panel facing a metal wall, or why would there be buttons on OUTSIDE of the hull. Y’see this kind of technology and advanced thinking will not be seen in our race for the next 3 millennia. Remember, this is future technology. We haven’t invented it yet.

 

There were numerous changes made in the design process that weren’t in the original concept. There are some changes that will be made still. We keep improving on this, and won’t stop until it’s perfect. I’ll post updates to any major changes here.

 

Here is a screenshot of the skin in action!

http://www.nukeation.net/nukefiles/workinprogress.jpg

 

We have actual 32-bit transparency, full antialiasing, drop shadows that haven’t been seen before in this world (at least to my knowledge), and under the slick looking exterior, is a core that is made with the sole purpose of changing the world.

 

Last but not least, if you want to see an animated timeline of this skin's development, head on over to:

http://www.nukeation.net/nukefiles/NukePWOPSKINBORG.html 

 

Updates on the skins, the actual software and its availability, and much more will be posted as soon as it is available. You can find proper updates about the app at Carl’s blog http://weblogs.asp.net/cfranklin/

 

I’ll be posting another short like this one about our other skin code-named ‘SmokingGlass’. It’s just as fascinating as this one, if not more so.

 

UPDATE: See the step-by-step video of this skin.

 

EQUIPMENT USED:

Hardware - FujiFilm S7000 digital camera, rusty scissors, old hammer, 1 3x3 sheet of used aluminum, grey matter (6 oz.)

Software - Corel PhotoPaint, Pwop SkinMaker (for skin definition)

I've been involved in a project called PWOPCaster with Carl Franklin of PWOP Productions Inc (www.pwop.com) and of .NET ROCKS fame (www.dotnetrocks.com). This is a very cool new podcasting client with a great content delivery system. You can find out more at Carl's blog:

http://weblogs.asp.net/cfranklin/archive/2005/04/19.aspx 

I've been involved in the graphics/UI side of things as well as the designing of Pwop.com. Now, okay, so we're not going to talk about this until it's all done, but I can tell you this - it has been some of my best work - and the functionality these guys have written in is FANTASTIC. Keep listening to .NET ROCKS or MONDAYS (http://mondays.pwop.com) and you'll be the first to get the beta.

If you're into .NET, you will like to know that his one of the best pieces of managed code apps out there! It'll be very interesting.

I recently talked to Nathan Dunlap who works in the Avalon team at Microsoft and is a very hot designer - check out the An Hour with the Avalon team at Channel 9 at http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=58634, where you can see him in the video and his amazing work as well - and I asked him whether Avalon will have Merge modes (Blend Modes for you Photoshop'rs) or not. He said that it is one of the top priorities for him and he also wants them badly. I'm telling you, its so good to have a real hardcore designer working amidst the developers at Microsoft. :) Anyways, so he said that community feedback helps push these features into existance.

So, this is a call to all you designers out there. Start sending feedback to Microsoft. We want blend modes. We want ADD and SUBTRACT and MULTIPLY and XOR and everything! :)

And on a related yet seperate note, I have begun work on my articles while I'm still on the Avalon kick - tho I doubt it will go away. It's a natural high for designers like me. And to have it not only co-exist, but WORK WITH MY CODE --- oh man, I'm... I'm... I'm speechless! You just cant describe the feeling. AVALON ROCKS! It just rocks. PERIOD.

I have decided that with the upcoming release of Avalon and WinFX SDK Beta, the world needs a good developer-to-designer and vice-versa "dictionary" for creation good Avalon apps. I'm currently planning on writing a series of articles (maybe try to get them published on MSDN) about Avalon, the WinFX SDK, and graphics design for Avalon.

The articles will probably be published here (if MSDN turns me down) for the moment and subsequently released as e-books with sample code and all for free. :) I'll be posting updates on the articles, their topics and expected release dates. For now, everything will be based on Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2005 and the March 2005 CTP of the WinFX SDK. If there are any suggestions or questions about the whole WinFX development scene, please feel free to e-mail me and I would try to work them into the articles. Right now, the topics I want to cover are: general Avalon development, how Avalon fits in the Windows Forms world, basic UI with Avalon, 3D UI with Avalon, and Avalon timelines and animations.

UPDATE: The series has been titled "AVALONfiltered", and the first two articles will be "An idiot's introduction to Avalon" and "First crack at practical Avalon".

Avalon is by far the best decision on Microsoft's part since their move to .NET. The designer (and I mean the person, not the IDE component) has always been left out of the Windows app world. With all the mind-boggling web design that you can see out there, there is no telling what designers and developers together can create with the Avalon engine. The intrinsic support for 3D is so cool, you can't put it in words.

I've been working on a really graphics intensive software recently, and it is all being done in a flat 2D environment with PNG alpha channels. There are so many limits to all this. You can easily emulate the things you see in Avalon with proper usage of DirectX, but this is really tough to do for something as "trivial" as a UI. The underlying code layer would be hell, and modifications would be the spawn of satan. But with Avalon, it's all gone! All gone!

The even better thing is, the developer is kicked out. No offense, but developers are not usually the best people to get a UI done from. Sure you can code it all, but they (look at me - speaking as if I were not a developer) don't have the eye for consumer-response oriented design. That is where the designer comes in. That's what they're trained to do. Capture the eye with the coolest designs. And of course these are some of the main services we are offering at www.nukeation.com - avalon based design services to be added BEFORE it is released to the public.

I just jump with boundless joy whenever I see a new feature in Avalon. The impact it will make is totally understated. People still dont comprehend the full spectrum of Avalon. Wow. New UI. No. It's not just new UI - it's your ticket to very high revenues.

Just started reading the blogs I haven't had time to read in a while, and I stumbled upon Nickolas "ActiveNick" Landry's comments on the whole MVPs for VB6 movement. I have to say it is the best comment on the whole thing after Carl Franklin's "Get over it!".

To qoute Nick:

"So where am I going with this? If you started as an “unmanaged” VB developer, let me ask you something: Have you ever been challenged as to the seriousness of your choice development tool by a C++ developer before? Unless you’ve been secluded in a Y2K bunker since Windows came out, it’s probably happened. VB developers have been the target of C++ jabs for ages now (well, you know what I mean, computer ages are much shorter than historical ages) and you may wonder as to why that is. I think I can detect a glimpse of understanding in some of you. You guys have used VB 3.0 before, right?"

and

"VB is now part of the great .NET family as a first class citizen, not some unwanted child raised in the corner as an afterthought."

If you're even remotely connected to VB, go read this 'expose' at:

http://www.infusionblogs.com/blogs/activenick/articles/60.aspx 

I guess I should mention that I've been a BASIC programmer since 1987 (used 128BASIC on a ZX Spectrum+ with 128K RAM), and Visual Basic since 3.0 (well, professionally at least - and Microsoft's Version 3 of everything is always better). Go VB.

A big .!.. to all you VB 6 "stick-on"'s.

I just finished reading Eric Sink's (http://notalegend.com) very cool article in the "Business of Software" series: http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnsoftware/html/software04072005.asp - Go read it. In fact, if you haven't go read all his articles at http://msdn.microsoft.com/longhorn/

As a casualty of an unsuccessful Geek & MBA co-founded company, I know exactly what Eric writes about. Here is a conversation from my past. I'm D, btw.

X: How is the development coming along?

D: A bit behind schedule, but the new features were worth it! We're about 70% finished. It should take us about 3 more weeks to finish up.

X: I see. How about we start selling the stuff you have finished and we can push the rest once you're done?

D: <reply censored to maintain the class of this blog>

A month or so after that conversation we parted ways to prevent us from killing each other. And we both are now much happier.

Eric brings up a GREAT point that Geeks need to develop their business and marketing talents. I know how useful that is as I lead the business and marketing side of my business. Almost half my clients are developers themselves and so far they like working with me. (Or so I believe.) So, I can't recommend his advice enough.

I have another solution. While we don't know the outcome or the specific timeframe of when genetic engineering will be available to everyone, we CAN do something about this right now. I urge each and every fellow developer to try to find spouses who are MBA's and marketing wizards. You can't do much about your life (tho you can do a lot!), but just think what you can do if your children have the genetic material of both geeks and business people! They just might have better childhoods too - and quite possibly less (or none) of the so called inferiorities and qualities that define the standard geek or dork or nerd. But they would still have a developer's blood in them.

This is what we need. A new breed of Geek.

That being said, I'm looking for a Marketing executive. Female. Should like 5'9" geeks. Must be able to adjust to my 18 hour coding stints. Must be able to endure budgets wasted on new technology. I like reading, writing, and long walks on the beach. :P