XNA Game Development

Well, I’m back trying to make my XNA game again. It feels like forever ago, when XNA was just in beta and I was messing around with it. And it feels like even more forever ago, that I was working in C++ trying to get my game finished.
Today, I don’t get much free time to [...]

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User interface design for an ad-hoc database query form

That’s a mouth full to say and even harder to explain.
It feels like that as long as I’ve been doing web development, the most important and complicated item of the web projects has been making an ad-hoc query form that is flexible and user-friendly enough for end-users, but provide them with everything they want to [...]

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Taxes

Here’s a few thoughts, links, and gripes that I’ve had while doing my taxes this year.
America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation.  ~Laurence J. Peter

Stocks
I’ve never understood why stock brokers don’t include the purchase date and cost basis on the 1099-B forms. Every year, I need to go back through [...]

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Mouse in a maze programming challenge

Nick Gravelyn has posted a programming challenge for beginner programmers. While I’m certain that I don’t qualify for it, I went ahead and submitted my solution.
He presents the classic Mouse in a maze challenge. Instead of finding the way out off the maze, this time the mouse needs to find the cheese in the maze. [...]

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Developers are Clone Troopers and Project Managers are … Storm Troopers

Max Pool of {CodeSqueeze} writes an interesting article titled “Why Managers Are Like Clumsy Storm Troopers“.
Anytime software development or project management can be related to Star Wars themes, it makes the inner-geek in me want to spread the news…
… developers are like Clone Troopers. They are quick, disciplined, and deadly in their specialty.
Managers are [...]

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Convergence 2008: Kevin Schofield Keynote

Part 2 of my Convergence 2008 blog entries…
Kevin Schofield is the General Manager of Microsoft Research. His keynote mainly focused on data and viewing of data.
… we all live in a data intensive world. We’re surrounded by it, it pervades our work lives, it increasingly pervades our personal lives. It’s sort of like the Force, [...]

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Convergence 2008: Steve Ballmer Keynote

Last week, I didn’t get a chance to blog because I was attending the Microsoft Convergence 2008 conference. This year it was held in Orlando, Florida and the keynote was given by Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer.
This was the first keynote that I’ve seen given by Microsoft. In the past, I’ve been to many [...]

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How to load a Google SketchUp model into a XNA game

For casual 3D modelers, Google SketchUp is a good alternative to more complicated and robust software such as Blender and Maya.
For developers who prefer to get decent looking models up and spend their time writing code, then SketchUp could be used to assist in visualizing their concept.
You can use the free version of Google SketchUp [...]

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How to use nested repeater controls with relational data

Oftentimes, you may need to nest repeater controls with relational data. There’s an easy way of doing this, but you’ll need to define your relationships and write a small function to retrieve the related/child data records.
Database Relations
In this example, we’ll use three (3) tables defined below.

This is a simple relational database and does not follow [...]

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Gary Gygax (1938-2008)

Most people will probably not know about Gary Gygax, but his influences have been instrumental in the gaming and fantasy industry for over the last thirty years or so.
If you’ve ever played a role playing game, such as World of Warcraft, Mass Effect, Final Fantasy, or Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, then [...]

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