After 10 days of unbearable pain of not being able to witness the end of the Saga as almost everyone else I knew already had, I finally saw Revenge of the Sith. I can now die without regret.

At the end of it all, it somehow felt "good". Even though the entire galaxy plummets towards total darkness, with every being fearing the shadow of the white armor, it still felt GOOD!

Here's a list of my fave things from RotS:

I just loved the intense 'Vapaad' style fight between Windu and Palpatine. You can see Windu edging into his natural anger caused of Vapaad.

The nostalgic command from the Wing Leader, "Lock S-Foils in attack position", and the wookie howl.

The drop Yoda makes near the end after his failure - so reminiscent of Luke's exit on the Cloud City on Bespin.

Palpatine's Force Lightning.

Both Jedi Heroes did good acting this time. I just LOVED Obi-Wan's more natural personality. Ewan McGregor did a heck of a job. Even Hayden Christensen's Vader-mode was cool. The anger in his voice was scary. Natalie Portman's acting abilities were also nicely explored. But the best acting had to be a tie with Yoda (animators/Frank Oz) and Palpy (Ian McDiarmid).

The whole film was like a full mirror of Return of the Jedi. The Apprentice vs Jedi fight with the Emperor watching in a grand seat. The immense space battle. The appendage chopping. Vader's creation as opposed to Vader's redemption.

Some things that were in the novelization were not included in the film, but SHOULD'VE BEEN:

Commander Cody (the clone commander who goes with Obi-Wan on the Greivous mission on Utupal) gives Obi-Wan his lightsaber back, and as Obi-Wan goes away he gets Order 66 from Palpy, and then after Palpy's holo vanishes, he says "you could've given the order BEFORE I gave him his lightsaber back!". And when Obi-Wan loses his lightsaber when chasing the droid general, he says "Anakin will never let live in peace if he finds out" - or something to that effect.

But the thing they REALLY should've added was Yoda talking with the ghostly image of Qui-Gon Jinn before Bail Organa interrupts his meditiation near the end. And this is the REAL conversation Yoda and Obi-Wan have in the end:

Yoda: In your solitude on Tatooine, training I have for you. I and my new Master."

Obi-Wan: Your new Master?

Yoda: Yes. (Smiles) And your old one...

 

The Swamp troops (the clones in green/silver on Kash'yyk) had the best armor.

Sigh ... I gotta go now ... I will keep writing my comments about RotS and its comparison to RotJ later (like you can stop me!).

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 was archiving some old files and found this picture of Dr. J. J. Rawal, a renowned astrophysicist, and the former Director of the Nehru Space Institute, current director of the Indian Planetary Society. He's also an advisor at the Indian analog of NASA.

This picture was taken sometime in 2004 at my father's office. Dr. Rawal is a friend of Dad's. I really enjoyed the brief chat I had with him. He was kind enough to invite me to participate in the new meteorological research center they are soon going to establish in my town.

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!)

If you've visited my blog before (thank you!) you might notice the look has changed. Astute observation.

If you've known me for more than 48 hours, you would probably know that I'm a cipheractive (a hyperactive person who works in mysterious, cryptic ways) and I often end up revamping something or the other to exhaust the build up of excess creativity in my so-called brain.

And yes, that picture above is a painting I recently made on my tablet. And no, that's not me - I'm the sleepy-eyed idiot on the right.

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.

I just finished the processing of a cloud video (the first in a series of many) taken during a bright afternoon. This video was 'shrunk' from a whole 3:47 minute shot.

http://www.pixelatedfocus.com/cloud01-1.zip

Hopefully, I'll be shooting some really cool cloud shots and some lightning shots as well.

I've decided to let go of AFTER-IMAGES.net. It has been a good ride, but some things must end. I've stopped painting for some time now, and I don't think I want an exclusive art exhibit online anymore. I'll probably fuse the existing collections at Pixelated Focus.

If anyone wants this domain, just mail me and I'll *give* it to you. Well, not free, but at a token price of US$12. That's what I paid for registration a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away... :)

I'm going to have to wait to complete my AVALONfiltered series of articles. According to some stuff I've heard and read from Microsoft, the June 30th Beta release of Longhorn and Avalon will have some rather significant changes since the March CTP. I've personally been trying to get Microsoft to add MERGE MODES / BLEND MODES. I hope they add that in Beta 1 or Beta 2 - or at least when they finally release Longhorn. Nate Dunlap (Designer, Avalon Team) has told me that he also wants merge modes put in the Avalon core, and Pablo Fernicola (Group Program Manager, Avalon Team) has also expressed interest in it. It's really cool that even such big wigs at Microsoft listen to the little people.

So, I'm holding off on writing the articles (although I have written at least 6 pages now) until June. Beta 1 will bring important changes and I really dont want to rewrite anything - nor do I want to be proven wrong if Microsoft decides to take something out!! I vehemently hope they don't pull anything out.

I'm still open to feedback and suggestions for the AVALONfiltered articles.

Update:

I forgot to mention, Microsoft has pulled out Longhorn 4074 (WinHEC 2004 Build) from the MSDN Subscriptions. This means that they might put up Build 5048 from the recent WinHEC (2005). Let's see what info I can get from the people at Microsoft.

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.

Even though it is downplayed on our current website, Nukeation is heavily involved in Developer Graphic Services. That is, in addition to our usual b2b graphics, web, and multimedia services, we also provide graphics-oriented services to the Developer community. This includes everything from creating the toolbar and application icons to designing the UI to physical package design. We do it all.

The cool thing is we've recently been hiring people who are either designers turned developers, or developers turned designers. This discovery was an accident, but those of us who are like that have churned out more successes (for us AND for our clients) than the others.

In our upcoming re-vamp of Nukeation (the company as well as the site), I intend to highlight our new(?) focus on Developer Services. In the meantime, if you would like to know more, just drop us a line to be sent the free Developer Sample Kit. We are putting up a new Sample Kit made with .NET 2.0 this weekend. All of you who have asked for it will be emailed a link to it.

In the coming months as the Avalon/WinFX beta 1 will ship, we intend to provide Avalon design services to companies that want to get a headstart on the Longhorn wave. Despite the somewhat drab presentation at WinHEC, Avalon and WinFX will be a major boon to the developer world. For more information on Avalon services, feel free to drop me a line (click that little envelope icon at the bottom of the page).

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)

The cloud photos I posted in my last entry and on www.PixelatedFocus.com turned out to be icemakers! They rained hail in my region (tho not where I live). This is a freakin' desert! We hardly get rain, and now we have hail? Geez!

Well, the expect good rain this year, and early on (usually it starts in July, but may start in June this year) so I'm gonna be uploading QUITE a lot of cloud pics and other natural shots soon.

It's very rare for me to update my sites (content wise, at atleast) twice in one week, but I just couldn't resist.

This first image is part of a project I recently did for www.PWOP.com which I will soon blog about. If you can guess what it is in under 12 seconds, you win a free trip to Hawaii for two.

This second image is my trip to cloud #9.

You can find more images at www.pixelatedfocus.com

I've been waiting for a long time to actually show off my bike! This is where I REALLY start liking having my own blog. :)

This baby is a 150cc, 3-stroke, 5 gear Bajaj PULSAR. I call it the "Pulsar Skate", named after Mirax Terrik's cargo freighter, so the naming credit goes to Michael A. Stackpole.

The Skate still gives me about 70km per litre, and it has run just over 9000 kilometers. I don't go into town frequently. I live close to the hills, and I often go there for hiking and photography.

I've been waiting to customize it, but it keeps getting delayed. If nothing else, I'm going to put those warning stripes in the central and aft body "recesses" - the two long bevels.

The Skate weighs exactly 267 kilograms, which is about 3 average human males combined! It's a drag (no pun intended) when I have to drag it for about 12 kilometers from the hills back to town when I get a flat! It can top at about 120kmph, tho I haven't dared take it beyond 100. And that's only coz there were potholes the size of the Grand Canyon. Wait till I go on the national highway.

Finally found the time to upload another batch of photos taken on my FujiFilm S7000. I made a couple of trips to the hills a few days ago, breaking my 11 day hermitage (I never went out of my house/office for almost 2 weeks!).

There are some new interesting super macro shots, as well as some "wild life" shots, and one of Dad being plain ol' silly. :)

Check it out: http://www.pixelatedfocus.com

(it's Sprite® in a glass, if you can't guess)

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

I feel old writing this. I really do. I always thought of myself as one of the "young dudes". Guess that's not true anymore. It has now officially been more than 10 whole years of being out in the professional world. I started working on the side when I was in school (6th grade, I think) in 1995 - teaching a class once a week about Autodesk Animator Pro and Autodesk 3D Studio 2.0 (we're talking days of 3D in DOS!). Then went on to freelancing, teaching programming, and eventually in 1998 ended up founding Atomic Diaper Productions which was quickly and thankfully changed to NUKEATION Studios - www.nukeation.com - and is the same place I have been since.

When you do a decade of graphics, there are statistics - impressive statistics - and here they are:

Pixels pushed on official jobs:           2,638,400,000+

Pixels pushed on personal stuff:      38,910,580,000+