Managed World

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman 70% Spider-Man 60% Robin 43% Catwoman 40% Iron Man 40% Batman 35% Green Lantern 35% Hulk 30% Supergirl 28% The Flash 20% Wonder Woman 18%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Your results:
You are Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom 47% Apocalypse 40% Mr. Freeze 40% Green Goblin 40% Magneto 39% Lex Luthor 39% The Joker 37% Kingpin 32% Riddler 26% Juggernaut 20% Catwoman 19% Venom 18% Dark Phoenix 17% Mystique 16% Two-Face 16% Poison Ivy 3%

Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.

I have posted my first XNA Tutorial over to the new Xna3Way site that Chris, George, and I are partnering on.

This tutorial is on building a robust Sprite Animation Framework. In this tutorial, we discuss building a Sprite Animation framework that you can use to do all sorts of cool and complex animations of sprites. The framework we implement is very simple. At the same time, it also enables some pretty complex behaviors via animation composition. So make sure to check it out.

For those of you who don't like to read announcements: xna3way.com

A few months ago, 3 of us got together and decided to form a team of game developers. Each of us bringing our own specific talents to create something greater than the sum of its parts. We're like a superteam of game developer friends... the superfriends of XNA, if you will.

The really great part is that we've been working on some truly amazing stuff. One of those amazing things is Paradox.

Paradox (par·a·dox) -noun:
1. an apparently true statement or group of statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition.
2. A truly badass RPG built by the aforementioned superfriends using XNA, Game Studio Express & C#.
3. All of the above.

You can read more about Paradox in the xna3way blog.

Something else cool in the pipeline are the tutorials being created alongside Paradox. Want to see how we did something? No problem, in addition to being 100% open source, we'll also explain the how and the why behind the decisions we made.

Last of all, and quite possibly the coolest thing ever: This January, the xna3way virtual team will step firmly into the physical world for 4 days. In that 4 days (96 hours) we will dive headfirst into XNA and TorqueX and come back up with a game. Not a game idea, or a prototype, but a working, playable game*. We'll also be videotaping the whole process. The design, the coding, the fights, the heavy drinking, the birthday cake, the plastic weapons (how do YOU settle disputes??)

Think of this as XNA Code Room: The Lost (only?) Episode!

*Please understand, this game will NOT be Paradox. A game of that complexity can not be done in 4 days. This will be something totally standalone. Something so cool, so amazing, we don't even know what it is yet. That's part of the fun.

I honestly don't know how I missed this piece of news. I didn't even want to share the news as I wanted to keep it all to myself :).

Have you been messing around with XNA? If so, do you want to see your game on XBox Live Arcade? I know: who wouldn't. But you never know :P. If you would love to see this, there's an upcoming contest just for you: http://www.dreambuildplay.com/index.html. The prize that is currently hinted at is that the winner's game will be posted to XBox Live Arcade for everyone all XBox users to download and play.

Now that's just wicked cool!

It's interesting to see how different the culture is in certain ways here in Amsterdam. For instance, the difference that everyone talks about: marijuana. There were several times where I was sitting in the hotel lobby waiting for someone and I smelt an overwhelming smell of smoke, and NOT cigarette smoke. Not only that, but you find Bongs, Hookahs (sp?), and various other drug parafenalia at the local corner store.

The impression I get though is that Europeans (at least those here in Holland (the small sample that I hung around with)) tend to have a great sense of culture. There is definitely a sense of community and history that you get over here (that I haven't gotten in the States).

I know this is going to be a gross generalization, but it always feels like in the States you are surrounded by people driving their SUVs to work without a care about anyone around them, working all day, and then heading home and not investing back into the community in any way. I know I'm certainly guilty of this type of life myself. But why? Why am I a hermit? That's something I want to think more about while I'm away on this trip.

One other thing, the public transit system here ROCKS. Other than the charter bus I took to the venue a couple of days, I took the train everywhere I went. And it never failed, I was always within three stops on a single train when I did go there. And it's so efficient. Everytime I tried to catch was either on time, or one to two minutes early. I can't imagine this is the way it always is, but it certainly was when I tried to take the train.

Seeing how much traffic sucked when I did take the charter bus here, it's no wonder why bikes and public transit are so popular here. And with how many people I saw riding their bikes or walking, it's no wonder why there were so many people that were not obese.

What a great country. It's so great to get a different perspective on life every once in a while.

Next up: Singapore.

Well, my trip to Amsterdam is almost over. I was here in Amsterdam to do some training of trainers for an upcoming Longhorn Server event that we (DPE @ Microsoft) will be launching world-wide in the coming months.

I knew there were going to be some "big" types of names here, but I don't think I fully understood what that meant :P. There were several MS Regional Directors at the events, countless MS MVPs, and other highly-respected trainers from all over the globe (about 32 people in total). I'm also proud to say that I finally get to meet Christian Weyer in person (and have a beer (or two (or three (or four))) with him). What a fun gun. And he's just as smart as he seems online. It was a blast chatting about TxF with him on several occasions.

Considering it was the first "major event" I talked at, I thought it went decently well. I tag-teamed with Keith Brown from Pluralsight (another pleasure, that's for sure). I gave four talks in total: High Performance Computing and Compute Cluster Server 2003, Windows Virtualization Roadmap (including Windows Server Virtualization), Transactional NTFS (my favorite, but I'm a little biased), and Terminal Services in Longhorn Server.

I definitely don't know enough about HPC. While I was able to answer some questions, I have a very high-level knowledge of HPC so I wasn't able to answer most of the in-depth questions. Windows Virtualization Roadmap went well. I just love this stuff. I love talking about Ring Compression and the new Virtualization hardware assists that are coming (and the like). I'm hoping to work up some demos before I present this again in Singapore next week. Perhaps some two demos using PowerShell: one using CmdLets to add new virtual machines into Virtual Server, and the other one about building a PS provider that allows you to browse Virtual Server -> Virtual Machine -> Virtual Properties by "dir" and "cd" and the like :).

The Transactional NTFS talk went well, but that was the talk I was least concerned about. Since I have been living in TxF land for a bit now, I'm comfortable talking about all the issues for it. In the future, I want to make some demos that are more sexy for TxF. I'm also thinking about possibly coming up with a demo scenario I can use to help tell the TxF Story. The funny part is that I realized I'm missing some slides. I realize this because there were several questions that came up from the audience that would have been addressed directly by some of the slides I had removed. Oops :).

Last was the Terminal Services in Longhorn Server talk. Ouch! This talk is nowhere near technical enough, nor developer-oriented enough. It's my own fault though since I "put together" the deck for the Touchdown program. I'm hoping to get a team member back in Redmond to mail the latest LHS build to me in Singapore so I can setup a Virtual Machine in order to write up some demos and show off features like TS-Remote Programs. We'll see how that situation works out.

That's about it. I managed to take some pictures while I was here, so I will try to put them up when I get back to Seattle (or if I can find time while I'm in Singapore).