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.

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.

.NET | Downloads | Geek Stuff | NukeBall | reuxables | WPF

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If you've been one of the rare long followers of my blog you might occassionally ask yourself what happend to NukeBall, and all those other WPF apps and tools I've been talking about.

Well, we went over a lot of changes as Microsoft put WPF, Blend, and ORCAS into shape. Finally, we're ready to talk more about it.

We're bring all those things under one roof called REUXABLES (that's pronounced "reusables"). Click this link to find out more. We're going to reveal more over the next few weeks what other stuff we have in production under the reuxables line.

.NET | Blend | NukeBall | Windows Vista | WPF | reuxables

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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.

.NET | Downloads | Geek Stuff | NukeBall | Toys

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NukeBall's release has been finalized. A short new feature list and release schedule has been posted at the official site.

We are still looking for beta testers. The final feature-complete internal beta will be shipped in 3 weeks.

NukeBall

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What can I say? It's been hell. Both good and bad.

Still not at the best of health, but will pull through. Nukeation is finally undergoing a major change that will split the company into three divisions. I will still reside over all three as undisputed God, but other people are also being brought in. My primary goal from today will be the retail products we've mentioned at Nukeation Labs. And above everything will be NukeBall. The three divisions btw, will be: Professional Services (graphics/web design, etc), Retail (NukeBall, PixelSpread, etc) and ... uhh, the third is a secret for the moment. Let's just say it deals with culture at a high level.

Nukeation has also undertaken 2 top secret projects under special circumstances even though we are no longer accepting new projects at the mo. The first project will probably mean nothing to 99% of the readers here, but the other 1% (and about 2.7 million other people) will be very excited about it when we finally reveal it. This project is directly linked to the new secret division mentioned above. The other 99% will surely enjoy top secret project #2. Here's a hint ... uhh, the suits just came into my office ... will talk more about it later when I don't have a gun pointed at my special place ... my brain, you dolt! My brain. Sheeesh. Kids these days.

Copyright © 2005-2006 Nukeation Studios. All rights reserved.

Here's a look at the new work-in-progress box of NukeBall. We're rethinking the branding while some of the last features are being coded. We seriously need to get the site updated soon too! Now that we're soon be completing all pending projects and won't take new ones, I will finally have some time to do that! Love to hear any comments on the box tho.

I also need to see if I can find some time to write those WPF articles/blog posts that I have been threatening about for so long.

Sigh. I wish a day had more hours! And that reminds me (don't ask how) that I need to post a link to www.andyeick.com - go check it out! It's still in Beta mode. Andy's a client-turned-friend and a terrific photographer. Go check out his site (which I *ahem* helped design, thankyouverymuch) and especially his photos! He has about a million and half ideas for his site, but -847139 hours to implement them in. But check it out nonetheless, the real juice IMO - his photo gallery - is already there. Do notice how he delicately and artistically treats even a seemingly "everyday" pic. Oh, and if you dare to venture into his site's Professional section, do so in a sitting fashion. His resume still knocks me to the ground.

I also need to post some opinionated opinions about Isaac Asimov. I read Asimov for the first time. Shocking. I know. I have just under 60 pages left in "The Edge of Tomorrow". My main reason for buying it was because it has a painting by Boris Vallejo on the cover, and because Asimov wrote the introduction to a book about Boris Vallejo. I've learned a lot about paintings from Boris' works! But can't write about all this yet. Need to finish the book first. And get all the remaining work out of the way too!!

Oh, and btw, I'm downloading Windows Vista Build 5308 32-bit. ~13 hours left. You know the drill.

My Insignificant Life | NukeBall

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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.

.NET | Downloads | Geek Stuff | Graphics | NukeBall | WPF

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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.

.NET | Geek Stuff | Graphics | NukeBall | WPF

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It's 2:45am. My eyes are watering, my hands are cold (its freezing!), I still have a ton of work to do, but I haven't been this happy in a long time!

Less than 10 minutes ago, we just added complete support for Managed Visual C++ 2005 in NukeBall!! We had six VPCs running with 12 different builds and we finally got the code done.

Yes, the colors are AWFUL, but don't worry, we'll use Windows Vista based screenshots on the official site when we update it on 23rd December.

I'm happy that we will be able to give the power of NukeBall to the *ahem* "serious developers" (yup, we VB'ers just have fun, we don't do any REAL world ... hoo boy).

.NET | NukeBall

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If you are a regular (and believe it or not, I do have some regulars) you have heard me boast about this wonderful new product we were gonna release in Q4/2005 called NukeBall (www.nukeball.com).

But it all went quite. The September public beta was never released, and the site hasn't been updated either. What gives? Well, I think we did a bit too hard to be like the geniuses behind Windows Vista, and we wound up with the added disadvantage of delays as well.

The truth of the matter is we are not a giant corporation. We are finally making the transition from service-oriented work to retail products. It's a big leap. The crux of the matter is that we don't want to provide half-hearted service to our existing and new clients, nor do we want to release a not-so-good product to customers. That's why we decided to delay the release. We have been squirreling away code, however, and NukeBall is more feature-rich than before. Alpha builds are being used in-house for our projects and we are happy to say that it is a robust product.

What next? In the next couple of weeks we will release a beta version to our beta testers (email beta@nukeation.com to get involved and recieve goodies and free software). Immediately after that, we will release a CTP of NukeBall Express which will have a full license for anyone who wants to use it in their current projects. Hopefully, by the end of the year, or in early January, we will make the final builds of NukeBall Express and NukeBall Professional available for the masses.

Subscribe to the feed on www.NukeBall.com to be notified when we update the site later this week.

.NET | NukeBall

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NukeBall Express Edition Beta, which was originally scheduled for a August 27 release has been delayed. We are currently planning for a mid-September release, with a full commercial release of the software after the launch of Visual Studio 2005.

The main reason for the delay is quality control. We don't want to release a public build until it is really able to knock your socks off.

More updates will be available soon.

.NET | NukeBall

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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.

Articles | Geek Stuff | My Insignificant Life | NukeBall | Philosophy

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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.

.NET | Avalon | Geek Stuff | Graphics | My Insignificant Life | NukeBall | Windows Vista

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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.

.NET | Geek Stuff | Graphics | My Insignificant Life | NukeBall | Windows Vista

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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...

.NET | Avalon | Geek Stuff | My Insignificant Life | NukeBall | Windows Vista

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