...sucked!

3 Dwarves felt Happy. So Happy got up and left.

 

I didn't create this! Don't punch me!

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).

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.

When the Darkness took the Galaxy, and the Jedi were being purged, Yoda told Qui-Gon:

"My failure, this was. Failed the Jedi, I did. Too old I was, too rigid. Too arrogant to see tht the old way is not the only way. Changed, has the Galaxy. Changed, the Order did not - because let it change, I did not."

The Dark Side holds a key to great understanding, which Yoda learned much later - after he died, quite possibly. "The brightest light casts the darkest shadow."

The way of the Force is balance. The Jedi became more conservative over the years as Jedi left the Order and fell to the Dark path. They only wanted to protect their own. But life cannot be contained, and the Dark Side is just as much part of life as the Light. The Jedi started becoming too righteous. The younger ones and even some older ones - including Yoda himself - started seeing Light as the only right - and in that itself, the Order was doomed.

Decades later, a young Jedi of the Skywalker bloodline, Jacen Solo, metaphorically threw away his lightsaber after fighting the Yuuzhan Vong and learning great secrets of the Force. He went on a "pilgrimage" of the Force. Wandering the galaxy and learning of the White Current, the ways of the Aing-Tii, and others. In his fight with the Yuuzhan Vong, and especially in his captivity on Yuuzhan'tar, Jacen learned of the Dark's reality. He helped Luke (and other Jedi) realize the greater concept of the Force. That it is the action that is "Light" or "Dark" - the Force itself is complete and inseperable.

Luke Skywalker is no stranger to the Dark Side. But the new understanding of the Force - something even the Old Jedi Order didn't have, or perhaps long along the way - the Jedi are more powerful and dangerous (to themselves as well). Luke hurled Force Lightning while saving Jacen and Jaina on Yuuzhan'tar (a few moments before Jacen saved the galaxy and understood the higher levels of the Force) and will probably be seen again in The Swarm War.

The Jedi Code is now invalid. The Sith Code is now invalid.

But the Light Side and the Dark Side still exist. They're safer, yet they're more dangerous. Can a Jedi truly flirt with the Dark and remain clean?

Only time will tell.

To be continued...

You just *have* to read this blog post from Ted Neward about the "World's Dumbest Spammer".

1 Minute

283 Words

345 Typos

Guess what the record is for.

A being "lost" to the Dark Side is shown as a typical maelstrom of anger-hatred-selfishness-ruthlessness. Through the ages - Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker, Exar Kun, Vos, Dooku, Ventress, C'boath, Malak, and many others. But the Dark Side goes much deeper and has many faces.

This panel is from Republic #50. That's Anakin. "ought to be" is the key. Many turn for the more raw darkness, some fall victim to the Dark, like Anakin. His only dream was to bring peace, and save his love from death. It's difficult to see the terminator line. And even when you see it sometimes, it is difficult to know which side you are on. Padawan Bariss Offee described the Dark Side as "feeling very right".

Yes, anger fuels the dark side, but there are many who go over for willingly and don't show their rage. Emperor Palpatine was very much like that. He fed on pain. His only anger-filled outbursts were when Mace Windu and the other Masters came to arrest him, and many years later when Luke said "You have failed, your Highness. I am a Jedi. Like my Father before me." But even that lasts less than a few seconds.

Palpatine's manipulative powers spanned outside the Force as well. He hardly had to use the Force to turn Anakin. Which is a scary thought. Because if a non-Jedi can do that ... it can exist in our world.

But back to my original point, the popular image is that once Anakin did the things he did, he became a monster filled with anger and hatred. But that anger had the scent of death in it. It wasn't raw psychopathic anger. It was not the essence of who he was, but rather a permanent effect that had settled on him. He had lost his mother, then Qui-Gon - the only man who saw him for who he truly was, and any others. Even the person who he thought of as his brother turned on him and left him in lava pit to burn to death. And he lost Padme, the only person who really loved him. The person who has his balance point. And every living moment he blames himself for failing everyone he loved (except maybe Obi-Wan) and his anger is towards himself and his frustration - his failings.

Matthew Stover described this best:

   And there is one blazing moment in which you finally understand that there was no dragon. That there was no Vader. That there was only you. Only Anakin Skywalker.

   That it was all you. Is you.

   Only you.

   You did it.

   You killed her.

   You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were thinking about yourself. . .

   It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith-

   Because now your self is all you will ever have.
  
   In the end, the shadow is all you have left. Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself-

   And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame. This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker. Forever . . .

To be continued...

I have two lawsuit possibilities in this title. I can see it now Gates & Lucas vs Pandhi. Hon'ble Judge Ackbar presiding. All rise.

Anyways, like I said in my previous post that my psychological condition is getting worse, it's not just the day job either. The too much Star Wars is also affecting me beyond the exclamations.

I had a dream last night. I am in a (Microsoft?) office somewhere (Redmond, maybe) and I'm pestering Robert Hess (why HIM?!) about giving me some secret code for WPF. He is adamant and denies having the code at all. So, I call up Governor Tarkin who comes with the Death Star and threatens to destroy Hess' planet (which looked quite like Alderaan). Torn between varying emotions and loyalties, Hess gives up and says "The codes on Dantooine." But Tarkin goes ahead and destroys the planet. The noise of the explosion was muffled by Robert Hess' screams.

But the thing that stayed with me and horrified me more than I thought possible was when Tarkin grabbed Hess' chin and said "how can someone so beautiful be so foolish?"

There comes a time in every true geek's life when work takes over your mind. Something like that happened to me last night.

I was working inside a DirectX based application that prevented me from seeing the Windows taskbar. I never keep a clock in my personal office, I don't keep my cellphone on at most times, and I don't wear a watch. But I needed to see the time every 10 minutes so I didn't forget an important webcast I was supposed to participate in, and I was loathing the large timespans needed to task-switch between DirectX mode and normal Windows. At that point, a stray thought entered my mind... "What if you could make a small digital device that runs on batteries and shows you the time".

I stopped breathing for four seconds. Then I switched off my DirectX app, reenabled the net connection and went online to search for a good psychiatrist.

This is what I am going to label the Sadness Paradox. Listen carefully ... I've been playing KOTOR over the weekend so I'm still in RPG mode.

Avalon will be more appreciated by the end-users than by developers. But end-users will be able to appreciate Avalon only if the developers appreciate Avalon.

Wrap your grey matter around that one.

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.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, cons- uhh, I mean ... ever wonder where that latin blurb people use comes from? You're probably smarter than me so you already know. Well, I went looking and found all sorts of neat info, as well as a "Lorem Ipsum" generator at http://www.lipsum.com. Check it out. Cool site!

Recently I made a small app called "Pixel Counter" and let it loose on all the images Nukeation Studios has published. Each image's pxiels (height x width) were counted. The result came down to over 78 billion! That's 78 followed by 9 zeroes, ie, 78,000,000,000. If put in a straight strip with a height of 1 inch, this would go on for more than 390,000,000 inches - that's 32,500,000 feet!

To celebrate this, a cool, custom made Nukeation T-shirt is available here. Usually a price markup is added, but this shirt is available at the base price (we don't make a single penny on it).

 

Get yours now! Free shipping is available until Dec 6th!! Enter coupon "FreeShip".

Okay, so I've gone far, but not far enough. This is gonna take me far enough. What you ask? A conversation with my best friend, Parvez, on MSN right now has convinced me that I should do this.

<drumroll>

I'm restarting the work on the long lost thesis on The Force. I started writing this a few years back. Now I intend to finish and publish it. I might even put it up for consideration for a literary or philosophical degree at some university even - not sure about that tho. But it will happen.

More to come on The Force: a thesis.

Take a look at this baby! My first "real" animation with Vue 5 Infinite. The wind feature of Vue is kriffin' fantastic!

Check out the whole WMV file at: http://shrinkster.com/9ey 

I tell my client that I mentioned him in a blog post (see Designer vs Developer post) and he writes me back saying:

I did see that and thought it was me!   --- out of all my witty and insightful comments/questions that's the question that get's me a blog post???

So, here I am trying to find one of those "witty and insightful comments/questions" to blog. Can't have good clients pissed at you, right? Right.

But the only problem is... I just went through like 20-30 emails ... and ...uhmm... can't seem to find the content with the specified criteria.

Seriously tho, I'd like to give a shout out to Andrew Eick - the cool dude who introduced me to SlideshowPro (which you will see in many of my upcoming sites) and told me that VS2005 was available for download on MSDN. He's also a very talented photographer. I will post a link to his site as soon as he updates it with the version I helped design.

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.

I'm still trying to get the hang of this software. It's still better than Terragen at any rate. The EcoSystem and plants are the best! I might make a small animated video (2 minute max) around the holidays in my free time.

 

I got a copy of Vue-5 from E-On Software. This thing boggles the mind. If you're into 3D you have heard of either Bryce or Terragen - or both. I have used both and am fond of them, but I didn't know about Vue about until a few hours ago.

This thing has a powerful renderer as well as a feature-rich set of tools. Bryce becomes too "plasticy" at a point, and Terragen is too technical-sounding and not really that much fun to use - not to mention it is still not a full release yet!

If you are not into 3D, you don't know what a pain it is to create natural terrains and scenes in normal 3D apps like 3D Studio MAX, Maya, or Softimage. Paramount used Terragen 2 (TGD) for the Romulus opening scene in Star Trek X: Nemesis.

Vue has a more standard interface (with a fantastic skin!) that is found in most 3D apps. It has the best of Bryce and Terragen, and not to mention some seriously cool stuff of its own. I'll be blogging more about Vue as I go through the trees and other cool animation stuff. In the meantime, check out this link for a visual feast.

My first render on Vue:

Yes, I am now finally moving a faster pace. I got 512k DSL! For most of you out there, it may not be a big deal, but I spent slaving over a 115k modem for the past few years, so I am happy.

A wallpaper fashioned after this image is coming soon! Just trying to get my hand set on 3D MAX again.

As of November 8, 2005, I have read 117 Star Wars books - and retain over 80% of the material. As a side (or direct) effect, I now use exclamations such as "Sithspit!", "Sithspawn!", and "By the Force!". When subordinates don't work properly, I almost use a Force grip to choke them and say "The Force is with you, young one, but you're not a Jedi yet!"

A person I had delegated a project to said "If we don't deploy locally, we don't deploy at all." to which I replied "Only the Sith deal in absolutes!"

I even answered a client's IM by saying "What is thy bidding, my master?" Thankfully, he said "Rise, Lord Vader."

I even put an audio-clip in the Outlook alert for a particular powerful client that says on incoming mail, "I see you becoming the greatest of all the Jedi"

But even after all this, the Force still leaves me when I get up to find some snacks, sit at a different position, and forget that the remote is out of reach. I try to use the Force to reach the remote, but... well, the remote is too remote if you know what I mean. :-P

The Force is weird in this one.

I've been wanting to make my own hand-crafted lightsaber for a long time. That time is coming near. After successfully defeating Tavion and the spirit of Marka Ragnos on Korriban, I think I am finally ready for my own ligthsaber. This blue-bladed "adept" lightsaber will complete my training as a Knight.

All I need now is a Sith lord to chop up!

The idiot is back on the blog-wagon!

The first thing I noticed in Windows Vista Build 5219 was the sheer lack of performance. In Beta 1, the AERO interface effects worked nicely. Here, it's sluggish - often skipping frames or being stuck. And this isn't a low-end system either, I'd think 2 gigs of RAM, 15GB of Pagefile, and a Limited Edition of 128MB GeForce FX5700 AGP would be good enough.

Outside of the performance issue, I think there are some really nice improvements. The best of them all (for me) is being able to close the window by simply clicking in the top-right corner (even tho close button is a couple dozen pixels away).

After a bit of work, the sidebar was enabled and seems promising - although there isn't much there to see except a pretty clock, instant search, and an RSS reader. It's a lot user-unfriendly at the moment, but I can see where it's headed - and it's gonna be a real cool thing!

There are some nice improvements in the Explorer too. The progress of your current search or navigation is shown in the address bar. The text becomes virtually unreadable, but the idea is good.

I'm gonna try and install the TV Tuner drivers for my old card, and see if I can get the Media Center functionality to work. Initially, I was planning on installing this Ulimate Edition on my TC-1100 Tablet PC, but with this kind of performance issues, I'm gonna have to rethink it.

More to be posted as I dig in deeper.

Not exactly dying (sorry) but I sure feel like it. I have some severe problems in my mouth (too gross to write about) and the only way to solve it (according to the doc) is not to talk much - or preferebly not talk at all. While I feel miserable about it (not to mention the pain, oh the pain!) people are very happy that I'm not talking. Sure, I do tend to cause trouble with my words, but it's all in good natured humor. Is it my fault they don't have any of it? Am I sounding like Rory Blyth now? Well, I don't mind sounding like him, but being sick like him is a problem for me. Of course, from one point of view I am already sick like him.

In any case, I have less than 2MB [1.2 to be exact] of Vista CTP to download. This will provide some relief.

Oh, and for anyone reading this who has kissed me before and would want to in the future (really?! thanks!!) don't worry, my oral condition will be all cool in a few days. I also go back to work tomorrow.

Well, HOPEFULLY the last day.

At ~10kb/sec there are about 800MB and ~21 hours left. And this is where my DVD burner started giving me various errors (whilst ruining 2 perfectly nice discs). Sigh.

There wasn't much to see :-( it wasn't even a quarter eclipse this side of the planet, let alone a full one!

Total: 2802.3 MB

Remaining: 1478.2 MB

Speed: ~8.5k/sec

ETA: ~48 hours

User status: Agitated, possibly suicidal. Trying to forget by trying to work real hard.

See the world's most sophistacted skin design.

Current status: 1908.5MB (downloaded) / 2802.3MB (total)

Time remaining: ~80 hours

User status: Bored

Hopefully, some dental surgery scheduled for tomorrow morning (yes, the graceful person that I am, walked into a metal door, damaged a tooth, has to pulled out, expecting lots of pain) which will show me a more potent meaning of pain that will make waiting for Windows Vista to download somewhat less harsh.

Only 6 hours left before the solar eclipse starts. I intend to be on top of a hill with all my photo equipment. Will be posting pics and videos here later today.

I'm hoping that a digital camera's viewfinder will filter out UV rays. :-P

The pain, the anguish, the messed up bytes, the whole package! It's all starting again.

I've just started downloading Windows Vista CTP Build 5219 at a speed ranging between 5.9k/sec to 9.3k/sec.

I only pray that my broadband connection comes soon!

As you may or may not know, the .NET Rocks crew is hitting the road on the VS 2005 Roadtrip and doing a show almost everyday. I was in charge of the graphics and all, and as usual, went overboard with the branding while Carl and I were brainstorming. While the eccentric graphics won't show up anywhere near the show or the RV, I'm leaking the best one here for your pleasure. This shows the secret plan that Carl Franklin, a seemingly innocent person in the developer community, is really undertaking. After all, they did say that VS2005 is all about VB.

Thanks in advance for the hate mail that Mac, Linux, and C# fans will be sending me.

Select resolution: 1024x768  |  1280x1024  |  1600x1200

PS. The thumbnail does not show all the 'good stuff'.

Nukeation Studios is now offering full XAML and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) based design services. We will also provide appropriate updates and revisions as the runtime and framework changes.

For a limited time, we are providing free 2 hours of consulting with our WPF and Design experts on how you can make your projects in a WPF based front end.

For details, please contact info [ at ] nukeation [ dot ] com.

More information will be posted on www.nukeation.com in coming weeks.