The Mail Owl Scrolls

The rest of the DX Hot Lab #1 demos

Demo 4 and 5 (More Complicated and Transformation) has been uploaded.

I’ve also done a little more investigation into the light attenuation formula:

Atten = 1 / (att0i + att1i * d + att2i * d^2)

Range (d) is the range of the light

Attenuation0 (att0i) is the Constant attenuation factor

Attenuation1 (att1i) is the Linear attenuation factor

Attenuation2 (att2i) is the Quadratic attenuation factor

By default all the attenuations are 0.

For a simple light, only set Attenuation1.  The closer the number is to zero, the brighter the light over the distance.  Having a larger number makes for a dimmer light.

So that’s it for the next couple of weeks while I prepare my material for a fog demo, meshes and animations.  Be sure to send your questions if you have any.

PodCast Novel : EarthCore

On the advice of Joblog I started downloading the podcast novel EarthCore and I’m thoroughly enjoying it.

It has a very Call of Cthulhu feel; so horror fans should be pleased.

On the topic of this new fangled podcast novel idea, I do just have to blurt out that audio books have been around for a couple of years and while the medium has changed the idea is still the same.

What I do like is the manner in which the novel is being presented.   Using a blogging engine (with RSS feed for easy reading and updates) allows critics and fans to comment on each couple of chapters as they are released.  The fact that the author replies to the comments as well, just adds to the “Must Read” rating.

As the internet quote goes “There are no originals, only the first”; I hope to find more podcast novels.

Luxuries are always optional extras

I was doing a little trivial research with my co-worker this morning and I came across this interesting little fact.

The super truck, Liebherr T 282B (which has a wheel base of 6.6 meters and an empty weight of 203 tonnes) costs about US$ 3 million.  What’s interesting is that even at that price, the CD-player and air-conditioning are still optional extras!

Direct X Hot Lab #1 - Conclusion

I’ve uploaded the code from the first 3 demos of Direct X Hot Lab #1 onto my blog (Basic Device, The Triangle and Light).  I haven’t explained or commented what I’m doing as I struggle to commit to words what I can easily explain in a lab (and this also hopefully, gives you incentive to come to the next Hot Lab).  The rest of the demos will be up by tomorrow lunch-break.

As for the talk itself, I think it went really well.  I got across that 3D programming is easy and I think I stirred a couple of embers of passion for the subject.  Everyone got little triangles rendering on the screen and making their own enhancements to the code for a truly unique experience.

After getting feedback on the Hot Lab; I’ll be handing out hard copies of the demos we’ll be doing at the next session so that people don’t get so easily lost and can compare their code to mine if they encounter issues while the speaker is talking.

The next session will be on loading meshes and animations, a topic I’m not so hot on but I bone up and hopefully fog and alpha blending too.  While I don’t have a date set yet, I would like to have the next session on the 3^rd weekend in July.

The Greatest harm in Africa

Not long ago I did a Gonzo comic showing Bob Mugabe kicking everyone out of the country.  But this latest scheme of his has my jaw dropping to the fall.

According to a report on IOL, it is now illegal to grow crops in urban areas which mean a lot of people in the South of the country who were depending on such subsistence farming, with be severely affected.

Forget Sleeping America, Throttled China and The Burning Middle East; even our own Pestilent Politics can be take a back seat to the horrors that are happening at our borders.

No, I don’t have a solution; but gods wish I did.  Leaders of South Africa! What is happening here?  You can’t tell me you’re going to let these things happen and still claim to want to build a strong continent.

June SA Developer Meeting - Conclusion

I’ve been lax about blogging recently which is no excuse for not telling you all about the great SA Developer meeting in Johannesburg we had last week.

Paul Sainsbury was an excellent speaker and his talk on Reflection was amazing!  Lots of demos with a good sprinkling of slides kept everyone interested but I think the biggest question was what keyboard shortcut he used to quickly minimize the regions and methods and how he got the slideshow to go blank when he was talking.

As soon as I can steal the photos away from Craig, I’ll put them up on my blog.  Kevin was a godsend when he brought the beer and Smirnoff to the break with his new cooler box.

After the meeting we all went down to Ruari’s place to play pool until late into the night (Torque-IT, our host for the evening, shut its doors at 21:00 which was too early for some of us).  From there we decided to meet the next day for chocolate chip cookies and a couple of rounds of pool and a braai.

Other Craig (I’ll have to call him Phyrg0d from now on) brought his girlfriend and baby girl to the party, and they had lots of fun.  Little Blair had lots of fun throwing billiard balls across the room I know.

So I hope to see you all at the next meeting where we’ll be having more fun and doing a talk on Reporting Services.

The Soviet Union of America

I’m a big fan of technocracy and big brother fiction such as 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley; but this picture shot on a US rail carriage looks like it could have come off the cover of one of these books.

The retro, simply shaded, poster of a woman carrying a flag and a man brandishing a torch or club (if you thought they were holding onto the train’s handholds you’re delusional) leaves me in do doubt that the writing should have been in Russian or, if it wasn’t so red, German.

Thanks to Gabberhead for pointing this out.  I do hope that the American people do catch a wake-up soon, because like Monty Python says “Communism is like tooth decay, when one tooth is infected the rest soon follow”.

DirectX Hot Lab #1 - Johannesburg, South Africa

When: 25^th June 2005
Hosted at:    IT Intellect, Rivonia
Presenter:    Andre Odendaal
Topic:           DirectX Hot Lab #1 (Direct 3D)
Level:          100 – 200
Objective:    This first hot lab will introduce developers to 3D programming concepts and developing with Microsoft’s DirectX SDK.  Our goal is to get developers rendering and managing 3D object as soon as possible so that we can explore the rest of the SDK and more advanced topics in game development
URL:               http://www.sadeveloper.net/News_Viewer.aspx?NewsID=405

This is the first talk of the Isambard Brunel Project as well as my first SA Developer talk.  I’m a little worried in that I don’t want to set to great an expectation as I’m still only learning the framework myself.  This talk is meant for beginners and not guys already building their own graphic engines.

Jamming with my i-Mate

I got my i-mate JAM yesterday and I’m as happy as if The Salami from Killarney got high quality pictures of Elisha Cuthbert naked.

This comes after I was due a new phone from MTN at the beginning of April and then told I have to wait until the end of August for a new phone.  I’d like to think that its MTN’s good service that got me the phone (the JAM only being available from June 1^st) rather than me having to throw my toys out the pram a couple of times.  However I think it was a good dose of both.

The i-mate JAM is currently available for R199.00 on any of the ProCall contracts from MTN.

While I admit I’ve had the phone for less than 24 hours and haven’t explored all the features natively available on the phone, I’ve done some searching on the net for free goodies and come across these sites:

https://www.clubimate.com/
http://www.pocketpcportal.com/
http://www.pocketpcmag.com/
http://www.pocketgear.com/

So hopefully my life will become a little more organised as I start to use the calendar and tasks.  This has become vital since becoming a SA Developer lead as I need to organise all the components that make up meetings and events as well as other looking after other community requirements like branded fleece jackets and beanies.

I’m going to expand my blog as well to record all the cool tools and games I find for the Pocket PC and write a couple of articles on my mobile development.  So keep watching this space.