Well, WILL get it it in a few weeks. But finally, in this dustball of a town which should've been named Mos Eisley, I am finally getting a 256k broadband/ADSL connection!

Having the distinction of being the top internet user in the entire province, they're both courting me to take their connection. I'm going for the BSNL (Government) connection first - will see how it is, then if later on the other private one seems better, I'll go for that.

In any case, my T-16 Skyhopper is suddenly gonna be an X-Wing! The womprats won't stand a chance now!

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.

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.

Alternating between cold drizzles and scorching sunshine, the road back home is becoming boring. My blogging addiction keeps me alive - that too only when I'm in range of a wireless service zone.

Expecting to be back home in 6 hours.

Almost finished Dr. Donald Norman's EMOTIONAL DESIGN. He's a brilliant man - check out his site www.jnd.org for a sampler of the book.

I also finished the almost-final draft of my article THE HUMAN UI. Will finish it completely by the time I get home. It should be published shortly. I hope it will be helpful to all developers and designers working under the Windows flag.

Ok ... connectivity is down ... going offline. Sigh.

My sister (whom I'm visiting) and I went to Crossword, the largest book store chain in the country. They used to have such wonderful books. A visit to the store was a regular highlight for this farm boy everytime I visit my sister. But lo and behold, these idiots have a stupid collection of music, books, comics, and just about everything they sell! Quality doesn't stick does it? Well, I'm sticking to Amazon.com from now on!

I did end up buying "Battle Surgeons", a collection of 100 works by O Henry, and an assorted collection of Edgar Ellen Poe. I also got a few CDs: soundtrack from That Thing You Do, Sting: Sacred Love, John Williams conducts Star Wars Symphony (special collection from Sony Classical). I did have to stop browsing for a few minutes when I had to go wash my hands when I accidentally touched a Britney Spears disc.

The highlight of this was that I also found a copy of RESURRECTION OF EVIL - the Doom3 Expansion. Can't wait to get back, and get my hands on the double-barreled shotgun.

I shall be leaving tomorrow (Sunday) and arriving back around midnight.

I leave you with this (very appropriate) quote (for me) printed on free bookmarks they have at the store:

"When I get a little money, I buy books: and if any is left, I buy food and clothes." - Desiderius Erasmus

This is more or less a meaningless post. I just wanted to blog while on the road. Just so that I can say, yes, I've done it too.

Being in the "big city", I'm realizing how much of an isolationist and a "farm boy", I've become. The moment you start being awed by a 20 storey building, you have to come to your senses. Hey, its not my fault. I live in a Class-5 Earthquake Zone - that's as bad as it gets - and we're not allowed to have more than 2 storey buildings where I live.

In any case, I have nice adaptability skills. And I'm not gawking that much. I'm not whining "Uncle Owen" anymore either.

Back on Monday. Might blog before that. I'm addicted. There's no turning back.

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.

Scared of a fast-paced Commando mission being too close to real life (and work) for relaxation, I pulled out Morrowind and reinstalled it. Over 20 hours into the game, this time as an Argonian called Ang-Tii (homage to Timothy Zahn's secret monks), I am on my way to solve the mystery of the Neravarine. I do have a nice bit of cash - the bonus of being a Rogue/Thief.

I am going on a sudden trip for a long weekend. Will have some time on my hand. I installed Morrowind on my Tablet PC so I can play while travelling. This oughta be fun. Never played something so complex while on the road. Thankfully I won't be the one driving.

I can't wait for Oblivion to ship. The voice cast sounds good - Patrick Stewart as Emperor Uriel Septim VII, and Lynda Carter (Wonder Woman) who will possibly play a "guide" role to your character. Check out the HD trailer on the official site. Damn I can't wait to get my hands on this game.

Sigh. Alrights - enough of Tamriel and magic and myth and wonders and bitchin' weapons - gotta get back to work.

So it took less time than I thought. Here is the first clip. Might do more over the weekend or the next.

Click this image to view the video clip - Windows Media Player 9 or later required.

This video clip is © 2005 Dax Pandhi / Nukeation Studios. All rights reserved. The file cannot be distributed in any form without the author's explicit written permission.

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.

My desktop was lonely so I made a nice little Delta-62 "Scorch" (Republic Commando) wallpaper. It's 1280x1024 - "Center" with Black backdrop works best for both 1280x1024 and 1024x768. Enjoy. Feel free to pass on to friends.

RC01.jpg (53.92 KB)

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!

Finally, after days of cloudy, gloomy weather (which didn't result in rain either), the sun shines brightly today. As the sun sets in the west (like it would ever set in North!), and as a large database is being copied to my client's server, I sit in the twilight enjoying the last rays of the day, with a cool breeze, and Dr. Don Norman's books Emotional Design, and The Design of Everyday Things. These books serve as an inspiration for my article "The Human UI" (also inspired by The Human Factor columns from MSDN).

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.

 

Excerpt from a recent highly philosophical and self-insight filled e-mail written at 3am to a close friend after having a great long distance phone conversation. Please bear in mind, these are some very delicate, personal feelings that I'm sharing and I only ask that you be gracious when reading it.

From: Dax Pandhi

To: Unknown

Subject: Epilogue

Hey ...

In retrospect, I think some of my comments were a bit distorted. No, I'm not talking about the audio quality. Aside from sleep deprivation (which is a normal thing for me nowadays), I'm not used to talking. Talking as in with my mouth. I rely too much on text conversations via MSN Messenger and all. I keep placing human beings in a mechanistic paradigm. While I do have a certain degree of "love" and understanding for the machinist and nihilistic philosophies of the early 20th century, I think my work is affecting me. Hence, my saying I will leave it someday. Anyways, before I go off topic and forget what I was gonna say (finally found that digital note I scribbled) here it is.

[ irrelevant content removed ]

The bitch of it all is however that I just remembered that while I did want to share these thoughts, it is not what I intended to ask. And now even with sleep deprivation, I think I'll have to use a mallet on my head to get some sleep, because I'll probably be trying to remember what I forgot. Why do we always need to remember things we forgot? It just makes it all so much harder!

I prefer a direct, non-calculatory, non-scientific (?), non-logical, mind-to-matter approach. I (and probably have been for some time), as they used to say in the ol' west, am gonna wing it. :) Life is much better when you know less - about your life, about yourself, and about the future - unpredictability is the oxygen - especially for a moi. Then again, when the Moon goes dark, I become a micro-manager. Arrgh. I'm gonna be the death of me. :P

At this point in time, I'm only partly conscious and feel like I've been drinking one too many vodkas so don't mind any stupid blabbering I might write or have already written. Then again I don't really like vodka - must be why I feel like crap - I like dark rum above everything else. Never took to beer. Which is good coz Gujarat is a dry state - alcohol is illegal. Damn governments.

"As Good As It Gets" is starting on TV. Am gonna go watch that. I especially love the part when Jack Nicholson suddenly yells in the shrink's office "What if this is as good as it gets?" - maybe that's how life should be lived - like "right now" is the best your life is ever gonna get. Of course, the dark cloud behind that silver lining is that it makes you live in a permanent fear of tomorrow. OH GOD! You're right. About me loving to instigate things, just like you said. Hmm. Maybe you know me better than I do. Okay, next time I'm trying to figure myself out, I'll just ask you. Of course, if I want to ask you I'll probably have to write it down otherwise I'll forget like today and will probably drive myself crazy - even more so if I think of another thing to ask you and remind myself that I had yet one more thing to ask you which I forgot before and still don't remember. Exponential damage. Now THAT would be the death of me.

Sigh. Never mind the senile blabbering of this old buffoon. I'll go watch the movie and pass on silently into the night. Of course, that's damn poetic only until I wake up in the morning feeling young again and start ripping everything apart like hell only to exhaust myself after 48 hours and start feeling old and thinking that I feel like I've been drinking too many vodkas - which I wouldn't like coz I never took to the taste of Vodka. I like dark rum above everything else. Never took to beer as well. Which is good coz Gujarat is a dry state - booze is illegal. Damn those government bastards.

See - old people forget. Damn I'm getting old. Arrgh. There's one of those grey hairs again.

Paradigms, paradoxes, secrets of life, and mysteries enfolding them all - nothing is worth a strong, solid mallet which helps you sleep rather than those other things. A mouse named Jerry taught me that. :)

Okay - I'm going now. Really.

G'night, or g'day - whichever it is for you. :)

Dax

PS. I will understand if your murderous instincts come out after reading this e-mail. I don't blame you. Right now, I want to kill myself too. Of course, being old, I'll forget that feeling and start liking myself again and then go on blabbering more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and then some more until I want to kill myself. Of course, being old I will forget that feeling and start liking myself again and then go on blabbering... :P

PPS. WOW! You're still reading this? Damn. You deserve a lot more credit that I give you. Then again, you probably will always deserve more credit no matter how much I give you. That sentence seems negative, but believe me, that's not how I meant it. Btw, it was great to talk to you. Let's do it again soon.

If you would like to sign that petition about locking me up in a mental asylum, please see Dr. Igor Schmeckle. If you would like to offer your condolences to my family, please contact them directly. If you found this post humorous or hysterical, I think you're a heartless jerk! But I won't mind, coz I'll probably forget about it by morning. Right now, I feel like I've had one too many vodkas - which I wouldn't like coz I never took to the taste of Vodka. I like dark rum above everything else. Never took to beer as well. Which is good coz Gujarat is a dry state - booze is illegal. Damn those government bastards.

"The Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for WinFX Beta 1 are available as a separate download. The The Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for WinFX Beta 1 provide developers with support for building WinFX applications using Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2005. This support includes XAML Intellisense support through schema extensions for the editor, project templates for the Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly known as “Avalon”) and the Windows Communication Foundation (formerly known as “Indigo”), and WinFX SDK documentation integration. It does not include a graphical design surface for either the Windows Presentation Foundation or the Windows Communication Foundation."

This text is from Microsoft's website. Please note the highlighted area. Is it just me or does it sound like visual designers (so dryly referred to as Graphical Design Surface) is *the* thing to see in the upcoming CTPs or Betas of WinFX SDK? I for one couldn't be any happier.

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.

Blogging from Windows Vista.

Something is wrong. DasBlog (this blog's engine) just gave me a plain text box to enter HTML code to write this, instead of the rich-text editor. IE 7 looks cool. Installed it on XP too. Love the tabs.

Ok. Am gonna how to find out how to enable the textbox if I want to write larger pieces. I hope its not a IE7 thing. Damn.

More soon.

Update...

Looking at the editor from my XP installation - it IS in fact IE7. Damn. Gonna try to search for a solution, otherwise I will just uninstall it. This is damn annoying.

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.