Damn whippersnappers

Check out this kid. 17 years old and he's well on his way to building a multi-touch table for OS X. Great project and the kinda thing you read about in the biographies of the big buys in Silicon Valley. I wish I could get stock in him right now. This is a guy to watch.

Bridger's Multi-touch

YouTube badge

Thanks to Harper Reed of skinnycorp fame, I added a YouTube badge for all my videos. Neat, lightweight, and I didn't have to do it myself. What's not to love?

Coding for 24hrs straight?

Hackontest. 24 hours of coding. Non-stop. In Switzerland on Google's dime.

Hackontest is a 24 hour programming competition between teams of three open source software projects. The event takes place at OpenExpo on September 24/25, 2008 in Zurich, Switzerland.

There are some pretty interesting projects already registered. I would guess you'd have to be a pretty solid team to be able to work under that pressure all night. Just the time difference alone would mess with my head.

World’s greatest developer

Okay, maybe that’s a bit (lot) overshot. But I want to shake up the world and do something great. I want people to look back and say “Nathan changed the way we look at…” I haven’t quite figured out what that thing is. But I will. All of those start-ups out there with half of an idea are trying to make it work. I just need a good idea. A really good idea.

Learn as Many Languages as You Can

Learn as Many Languages as You Can

Amen. A good review of new languages to learn. If you're all about coding, this shouldn't be a problem. Maybe not the right ordering, but I agree. More is better. It's weird to say/type, but I really love code. Like love it. Like all loves, it some times drives me insane. But can't imagine doing something else. Coding just fits me.

Code of Duty

I am thinking of making a little XBOX 360 game. Just downloaded XNA Game Studio Express and I’m trying to dig in.


Here are some simple GUI control elements for XNA games. This uses events and delegates to link the GUI elements to your game that I grabbed from codeplex

To create a panel and add it to your game:
DPanel panel = new DPanel(Game, 5, 5, 400, 400); // Panel at 5,5 and dimensions
400x400 pixels
Components.Add(panel);

You can add panels inside other panels:
DPanel childPanel = new DPanel(Game, 5, 5, 200, 200);
panel.AddPanel(childPanel);

To register events for your gui elements, you can do something like the following:
DButton button = new DButton(Game, 5, 5);
button.OnClick += new ButtonEventHandler(handleClick);
// Register the click listener

The basic language I think I’ll be able to get. It’s the game development that might be a little bit of a problem. No one needs a better solitaire. I’m better on the other side of the controller in that respect.

A little modeling on the side

I’ve been spending as much of my spare time as I can on subdivision modeling. I’ve been trying to keep my skills sharp while I figure the rest of my life out. I’ve been using Maya and XSI, one because I have license to them. But two, because they these offer me the most robust modeling tools which makes it so much easier to render objects without converting them to high polygon models. The point counts are so small that it makes it simple to manipulate. But I wish I had something specific and cool that I wanted to do. Practicing for practing’s sake isn’t very motivating.

I’ve so how managed to keep my spirits up with a little CoD4.

LOGO

What Became of the LOGO Programming Language?

From Wired: "Forty years ago, researchers developed a programming language that would become a brilliant educational tool."

Awww man! I used to looove . The little turtle. FORWARD 100. And you could change the pen color. I had forgotten all about that. I guess that was my first experience with coding. I think I just thought it was fun and remember there was one computer that was "my computer." I used to rush in before anyone else to make sure I got it. Good times.

xkcd on Python

Hahaha.

Programming as Art

“Demo writers went to great lengths to get every last ounce of performance out of their target machine. Where games and application writers were concerned with the stability and functionality of their software, the demo writer was typically interested in how many CPU cycles a routine would consume and, more generally, how best to squeeze great activity onto the screen. Writers went so far as to exploit known hardware errors to produce effects that the manufacturer of the computer had not intended.”

Programming as Art: IHC’s Fave Demos

How to Recognize a Good Programmer

Got this one from Slashdot. I am thinking more about how I need to market myself as a programmer. I guess I always thought I would just talk to fellow developers, but this guy made me think about the business people I need to talk to. Especially if I go the start up route. A little long, but there’s some good stuff here. It’s a good read for anyone looking for a job.

How to Recognize a Good Programmer

Scott Hanselman's 2007 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

Longest blog title ever. But still, the 2007 list is out. I have been looking at these lists for a couple years and they get better ever time (as one would hope). I kind of measure myself on how many I’ve heard of.

Some new ones from the list that I am particularly fond of:
• Process Monitor
• KDiff3
• Humanized Enso

There’s lots to play with there. Check it out: 2007 list

Coder Tricks

Found this while looking for a simpler the solution this program I am working on for a friend. It didn’t quite answer my question, but might be a good resource if they keep going. It does more than my blog, so I gotta give them props.

Coder Tricks

Coding Horror: In Programming, One Is The Loneliest Number

Great article/summary of articles by Jeff Atwood. Basically, keeping the code to yourself only keeps you from seeing what works and what doesn’t.

If you're serious about programming, you should demand to work with your peers.


In Programming, One Is The Loneliest Number