WPF Christmas Lights: see the source!
· 2008-12-13 10:37 by Thijs Kroesbergen for Brokenwire.NET
Not so very long ago I wrote about my quest to re-write the ancient Christmas Lights using brand-new technologies.
I promised to share the code with you (and write some more about it), so I published the Christmas Lights on Codeplex.
Please feel free to browse through the code, and I'll be glad to see any contributions!
Biggest points of interest at the moment:
- Performance, my current method of "blinking" seems sluggish. Maybe the hardware accelerated pixel shader effects in the .NET framework 3.5 SP1 will help here?
- The app needs more blinking patterns and maybe a "create your own pattern" feature.
- Blinking speed based on system events, like network activity. Currently the lights blink based on a timer, or based on the number of keys hit on your keyboard. Other event sources would be nice.
- Nicer light bulb shapes, possible a choice of bulbs.
Now repeat after me:
I will not be bored during the holidays because I have the WPF Christmas Lights to play with!
Just kidding... have fun!
Be prepared: get the Christmas Lights
· 2008-11-05 22:06 by Thijs Kroesbergen for Brokenwire.NET
A long, long time ago I wrote about that cool christmas lights application, written by an unknown author in ancient times.
Recently I took up the plan to re-write this application using the .NET framework (check out the new logo).
I used Scott Hanselman's "BabySmash" as an inspiration to get started, and I was able to write this in a matter of hours.
So as we are getting closer to the holiday season, this is the time to grab your copy of the cool new Christmas Lights for you desktop from the download page. Christmas will never be the same again once you've experienced this!
The application "works" as of right now (tray-icon, blinking lights around the borders) but there is still a lot of room for improvement.
Here is a (non complete) list of features that I wish for:
- Get better artwork for the bulbs
- Be able to mix several types and colors of bulbs
- Let the user choose different blinking patterns (plugins?)
- Prevent the application from starting more than once :-)
- Make the number of lights configurable
- Make the blinking speed configurable
- Tune the frame rate to the amount of CPU power available
- Make a cool page with statistics about the number of blinks produced by this app...
Help me extend this list (and motivate me to work on this) by leaving a comment!
In the meanwhile, have fun! Oh and btw, did I mention you can download the Christmas Lights?
(More about the experiences with ClickOnce, Framework 3.5 and WPF in upcoming blog posts. And once I've tidied the sources I'll put it them here too.)
Tip: Batch files with over 9 parameters
· 2008-10-14 20:27 by Thijs Kroesbergen for Brokenwire.NET
This has been around for ages, but it saved a us lot of work today (once we figured this out)..
So when you are writing a batch file (.cmd file) to automate some stuff you might run in to the issue that you can only retrieve the command line parameters up to number 9, by using the %1 to %9 variables.
Example:
@echo off
SET ONE=%1
SET TWO=%2
SET THREE=%3
SET FOUR=%4
SET FIVE=%5
SET SIX=%6
SET SEVEN=%7
SET EIGHT=%8
SET NINE=%9
So what do you do when you need number ten and up? %10 and up don't exist! Solution: You use the "shift" command!
Every time you call SHIFT the parameters will move 1 position, so if you call it ten times...
SHIFT
SHIFT
SHIFT
SHIFT
SHIFT
SHIFT
SHIFT
SHIFT
SHIFT
then you can retrieve number 10 and up..
SET TEN=%1
SET ELEVEN=%2
SET TWELVE=%3
SET THIRTEEN=%4
SET FOURTEEN=%5
SET FIFTEEN=%6
SET SIXTEEN=%7
SET SEVENTEEN=%8
SET EIGHTEEN=%9
How about that! (Be honest, did you know this?)
Cool Tool: Royal TS
· 2008-10-10 09:43 by Thijs Kroesbergen for Brokenwire.NET
Yesterday my attention was brought to this tool "Royal TS".
Because I often work on projects involving more than just a handful of servers I use remote desktop a lot.
At first, with not too many machines around, remote desktop just works great. But as the list of machines grows I just can't remember all server names, the usernames needed and what the server is used for.
This is where Royal TS kicks in! With this (small!) application you can manage your remote desktop sessions. It will keep a list of all the servers, you can add descriptions and it will remember usernames and password.
And when running multiple sessions your task bar won't get cluttered because all sessions can run within one application. (this is optional, you can still have a window for each session)
Of course Royal TS isn't the only tool out there. I've been using Terminals as well. This open-source project may have more features, but the feel just isn't right. (The menu bars and windows do wacky things every once in a while)
So, if you ever use remote desktop, try one of these tools. I'm sure you'll never use "Win+R -> mstsc" again ;)
PhotoSynth into the Matrix
· 2008-08-26 17:18 by Thijs Kroesbergen for Brokenwire.NET
I couldn't resist, I just had to make a Photosynth of the famous "Trinity Kick"
As source for the images I used a .avi file with DivX compression (that's why you see those mpeg artifacts, sorry about that). Using the .avi file instead of the DVD made the next step a lot easier: I used a nice tool named FastVideoIndexer to grab all frames of this particular scene. I used a 0.1 second interval and used frame numbers instead of running time for the file names. This resulted in 102 images for the entire "Jump & Rotate". Next I made a Photoshop batch job to "Auto Level" all images because the scene is very dark and Trinity doesn't stand out very much. The last (and easiest) step was to put all images through PhotoSynth.
Nice :)
PhotoSynth
· 2008-08-22 12:16 by Thijs Kroesbergen for Brokenwire.NET
I've been waiting a long time for this to be released to the public. I've seen demos of this almost two years ago. A not so long time ago SeaDragon was released under the name of "DeepZoom" and now we can enjoy PhotoSynth.
What is Photosynth?
Imagine being able to share the places and things you love using the cinematic quality of a movie, the control of a video game, and the mind-blowing detail of the real world. With nothing more than a bunch of photos, Photosynth creates an amazing new experience.
I used a tool named FlickrDown to grab a collection of pictures from Flickr.com and then put them through PhotoSynth. The result is amazing!
How does it work?
Photosynth is a potent mixture of two independent breakthroughs: the ability to reconstruct the scene or object from a bunch of flat photographs, and the technology to bring that experience to virtually anyone over the Internet.
Using techniques from the field of computer vision, Photosynth examines images for similarities to each other and uses that information to estimate the shape of the subject and the vantage point the photos were taken from. With this information, we recreate the space and use it as a canvas to display and navigate through the photos.
Providing that experience requires viewing a LOT of data though—much more than you generally get at any one time by surfing someone’s photo album on the web. That’s where our Seadragon™ technology comes in: delivering just the pixels you need, exactly when you need them. It allows you to browse through dozens of 5, 10, or 100(!) megapixel photos effortlessly, without fiddling with a bunch of thumbnails and waiting around for everything to load.
In plain simple English: It looks at the pictures, finds the similarities and places the pictures in a 3d environment.
Cool!
Tip:
Post your cool Synths in the comments!