Coding4Fun : c4fnews

RGB in, HLS out

Coding4Fun — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 02:03:07 GMT

David Veeneman wrote a neat little console application that will convert RGB colors to HLS (Hue-Luminance-Saturation) or HSB (Hue-Saturation-Brightness) over at Code Project.

One of the neat things David also did was show off using IValueConverter as well to do some of the conversion for you.

David did use an MSDN article as reference, if you want to see the sample, head over to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms771620.aspx

Trace.Writing in your web applications

Coding4Fun — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 08:45:42 GMT

We’ve talked in the past about debugging your application but if you can’t attach a debugger to your website, why not use the ASP.Net Tracing? This acts very much like a Debug.WriteLine in a Windows application but instead you do Trace.Write.

Since this does have some memory ramifications, you’ll have to add in a line to your web.config file under the System.Web section.

<system.web> 
<!-- Add me! -->
    <trace enabled="true" mostRecent="true" pageOutput="true" requestLimit="20" />

Then you just go to your trace.axd file. So in an example where your application is in “WebSite1” and on your local development box, http://localhost/WebSite1/trace.axd would be where to get this information

IronRuby sketch up

Coding4Fun — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:20:18 GMT

Jimmy Schementi posted about his talk at RubyConf 2009 and talked about embedding IronRuby in another program. His goals were:

2D rendering surface with simple primitive shapes
Simple animation support – callbacks for each frame and each object on the canvas
User-loadable “macros” for drawing and animating

His outcome looks amazing! It is worth noting Jimmy is using Visual Studio 2010 beta 2 for the demo here. His blog states he hasn’t tried it in Visual Studio 2008.

use Less to reduce CSS clutter!

Coding4Fun — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 18:16:00 GMT

Reading a post by Phil Haack, I learned about a neat technology called LESS that helps reduce the amount of CSS and duplicated code you have to create. It was originally a Ruby Gem but now has a .Net port called .Less which can be found at www.dotlesscss.com.

It lets you do some amazing things like global changes and even operations!

Variable:

@brand_color: #4D926F;
 
#header {
  color: @brand_color;
}
 
h2 {
  color: @brand_color;
}

Operation:

@the-border: 1px;
@base-color: #111;
 
#header {
  color: @base-color * 3;
  border-left: @the-border;
  border-right: @the-border * 2;
}
 
#footer { 
  color: (@base-color + #111) * 1.5; 
}

Build your own Windows 7 Sensors!

Coding4Fun — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:00:00 GMT

Tired of having a computer with no sensors? We’ve created a parallax windows 7 sensor driver with source code so you can create your own!

The sensor device we made here is a Passive-Infrared Sensor. So basically it is a motion sensor. The board used in the white paper is the Parallax “BASIC Stamp HomeWork Board”. Sadly these only come in a 10-pack so the fallback would be the BASIC Stamp 2 Module ($49.00) and getting either the BASIC Stamp 2 Carrier Board” ($15.99) or the Board of Education Dev Board (USB) ($41.99).

The code example also has a .Net application that interprets the data from the sensor.

More of an Arduino fan? Coding4Fun is working with Brian Jepson (@bjepson) of MAKE and O'Reilly to create a driver that works with Arduino! I’ll post more when it gets finished.

bugs on your screen?

Coding4Fun — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:13:00 GMT

Adam Kinney created a fun example squishing bugs to show off Silverlight 4.0’s webcam support. He created simple motion detection using a diff calculation on multiple threads to figure out where his finger was to smooth the bugs! Here is a video showing off the project.

If you want to check out the source code for BugCamSmash, Adam has that along with a few other helpful hints at his blog post.

In addition, Adam is posting articles on how he created the application as well.

Coding4Fun at PDC 2009 – Video Montage

Coding4Fun — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:25:00 GMT

We’ll be posting one project each month but here is the Coding4Fun booth at PDC 2009! You can even view the Iron Bartender challenge at GeekFest as well!

Overall Recap of each project

Iron Bartender!

Is this frame straight?

Coding4Fun — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 07:27:39 GMT

Joel Ivory Johnson created a rather functional program for his Zune HD. Joel created a bubble level based on the accelerometer in the Zune HD to get the tilt of the device. From that data and everyone’s favorite theorem, he created a bubble level!

Joel also explains the math needed for doing this such as calculating the direction and the magnitude.

Vector3 accelReading = accelState.Acceleration;

tiltDirection = (float)Math.Atan2(accelReading.Y, accelReading.X);
tiltMagnitude = (float)Math.Sqrt(accelReading.X * accelReading.X + 
                 accelReading.Y * accelReading.Y );

INotify on new changes

Coding4Fun — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:57:14 GMT

Jaime Rodriguez has a great post on some of the interesting things we at Microsoft have on one of our internal discussions, namely the WPF one.

The big one I noticed was that my favorite was smack at the top. INotifyCollection is now going to be part of system.dll so you can make your now see if stuff gets modified!

Subject: Any chance of INotifyCollectionChanged moving to the core .NET libraries?

The System.Collections.Specialized.INotifyCollectionChanged interface is defined in WindowsBase.dll (primarily a WPF assembly) but my customer believes it should be pushed down into the core BCL so that other project types can benefit from it without requiring a reference to WPF/WindowsBase.

Is this planned for 4.0 or later?

Answer:
INotifyCollectionChanged, ObservableCollection<T>, and ReadOnlyObservableCollection<T> have been type forwarded into System.dll for .NET 4.

Silverlight Development

Coding4Fun — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:00:00 GMT

With Silverlight 4.0 just announced, here are some great posts / helpful tips on getting started with Silverlight in general.

Channel9 has a training course.
Tim Heuer has a 7-part series “Getting Started with Silverlight”.
Shine Draw is an awesome “Flash vs Silverlight” repository that can show you how to do an event in either technology.
Silverlight.net has an abundance of information. They also have Community Samples as well.

Coding4Fun at PDC!

Coding4Fun — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:09:56 GMT

Coding4Fun is in attendance at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference! We are demoing 5 projects that will have full how-to’s and will be open-sourced as well. Drinktendr, Mind Blaster, Laser Graffiti, Augmented Reality, and Wi-Fi Warthogs are powered by .Net, XNA, WPF, Ling2Sql, WiiMote, MSMQ, Power Wheels, a Mind Set and a giant freaking laser!

Drinktendr

Ever get tired of pouring your own drink? Have someone get upset at you since it was too strong or too weak? Well, why not have a machine pour you the perfect beverage every time! Drinktendr uses Linq2Sql and SQL Server to know what drinks it can make with what is on hand. Combine this with WPF; the end user is given a top end experience.

Mind Blaster

With aliens threatening to invade Earth, it’s your job to travel into outer space and destroy the alien threat…with your mind! Wearing a brainwave detecting headset, coupled with head tracking hardware using a wiimote, use only your brain to destroy alien ships before they destroy you and the rest of humanity.

Laser Graffiti

Putting graffiti on something is not a very nice thing to do but what if with a flick of a switch, it was gone. With a projector, an off the shelf webcam and a laser pointer, you can do just that. Aim the laser at the building and start drawing. Turn off the laser and it all goes away! Using WPF and XNA, we can apply a variety of effects including fire, paint, and various particles. This project was influenced by the Graffiti Research Lab.

Augmented Reality

We’ll be showing off two AR games. ARroller and AR Domino Knockdown. ARroller is a single-player “marble game” experienced through a 3DOF-tracked video–see-through head-worn display. The player holds a tracked board on which a virtual marble must be manipulated through a maze of obstacles by tilting and moving the board. AR Domino Knockdown is a two-player first-person-shooter. Players hold 6DOF-tracked UMPCs through which they fire virtual balls at a configuration of virtual dominos on a shared table.

Wi-Fi Warthogs

Go big or go home. After seeing Halo, we decided we had to make some remote control wart hogs to play laser tag with. Using Xbox controllers, a wireless network, and Power Wheel cars, we’ve made a game of laser tag like no other.

Facebook SDK

Coding4Fun — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:26:14 GMT

Microsoft just released a Facebo ok client library to help make it easier for everyone to create some interesting applications. The SDK is broken into a few core DLLs, each serving a core purpose. You can download the SDK from Download the SDK.

Facebook.dll: This is the main assembly that will be used by all applications. This has all the logic to handle communication with the Facebook application. This assembly also has specific support of XAML applications (Silverlight and WPF) to enhance the Facebook platform to make databinding and data caching easier.
Facebook.Silverlight.dll: This is the Silverlight version of the main assembly that will be used by all Silverlight applications. This has all the logic to handle communication with the Facebook application. This assembly also has specific support of XAML applications to enhance the Facebook platform to make databinding and data caching easier. The REST API in this assembly is Asynchronous only.
Facebook.Web.dll: This assembly should be used by Canvas applications. The main functionality supported in this assembly is to encapsulate the handshake between the Facebook application and a canvas application (both FBML and IFrame)
Facebook.Web.Mvc.dll: Provide a support building canvas applications using ASP.NET MVC. Separated from Facebook.Web.dll to avoid all developers from needing to install the MVC bits.
Facebook.Winforms.dll: This assembly provides support for writing Facebook applications using Winform technology. This provides a Component that wraps the API to make it easier to use from Winforms. This also contains some user controls to help display Facebook data easily.

If you want some helpful starting points, the Facebook Developer Wiki has some help too.

Does the S in SQL stand for Scary?

Coding4Fun — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:54:04 GMT

Nope, it stands for structured actually. But if you are a bit afraid of SQL, MSDev.com has 20 how-to videos about SQL Server 2008 Express! This series of short how-to-videos will touch on SQL Server Express 2008 features such as: how to backup a SQL Express database, how to backup a remote SQL Express database, how to restore a SQL Express database, how to update SQL Server Express 2005 to SQL Server Express 2008 and more.

Getting Loopy

Coding4Fun — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 01:56:00 GMT

Over at the Visual Basic blog, Matt Gertz has a great post on hidden effects with loops on stuff you may not realize. He talks about how looping backwards versus forwards depending on the situation will drastically simplify your code or if you’re looping and using the array.Count how the Count property will be called on every pass.

Matt also has another article about additional hidden costs too that is an interesting, quick read.

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 released!

Coding4Fun — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:56:25 GMT

You guys want to try out the newest and greatest Visual Studio Express? The Visual Studio team just released VS 2010 Beta 2 for everyone to try out. It should be out in March, 2010 for the full version as well.

Visual Basic
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=167868
Visual C++
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=167871
Visual C#
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=167872
Visual Web Designer
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=167874
ISO with all 4 (Offline installer)
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=167878

This is beta so be warned. If you do have an issue, please comment / send feedback to the team so they can be resolved.