Category Archives: News

MoonMen, now for Windows and Windows Phone

I finally was able to spend the time necessary to get my engine for MoonMen running on both Windows and Windows Phone.  It is now a universal app, published in both stores!  At some point I may make a post on things I discovered during the conversion process that made it possible; but for now, I’m just posting the news.  Also, now that the projects are upgraded, I can start doing some other things that I hadn’t been able to do, which is also exciting.

Scintillator, a new particle tool

In small increments of free time, I’ve been building another new engine, this time based natively in DirectX 11, targeting native WinRT for Windows 8 and Windows Phone.  In the process, I’ve found that I need yet another tool to help me make particle effects (ever one of the best bang-for-buck programmer art solutions); and to that end, I’ve decided to make a tool out of the state of my engine thus far, with a WinRT XAML interface on top, and release it to the app store.  It’s a work in progress, and will obtain more features as needed and as I have time to work on them, but I wanted to at least get it to a state where I could release something.  Now that that hurdle is overcome, updates may come more frequently for it.

Visit the info page

Get Scintillator from the Windows Store

BlarghPad returns

121112_1921_BlarghPadre1.pngBlarghPad is back as a Windows Store app. I can’t honestly say the words “new and improved”, because it would be like comparing apples to oranges; but it certainly has features that are new compared to its old incarnation. I made this release for the faithful supporters of the old version (Thanks Jon F.—there may have been others also). Over time, if I have the time and inclination, new features may spring into existence, and updates will show up in the store also.

Visit the info page

Get BlarghPad from the Windows Store

A Good Husband

I LOVE boneless buffalo wings (BBW’s)!  To give you an idea of just how much I love BBW’s, here’s an example: when I was 16 to maybe 20, my friends and I would go out to Applebee’s and get their b1g1 appetizers. Generally, there were 4 of us, so if we were hungry, we’d get 4 appetizers and share. I usually ate most of the BBW’s. If I wanted to, I could eat a whole basket myself (healthy, I know). These days, I could still do this, but I’m cheap and somewhat healthier.

This weekend, as Peter was contemplating what to make for dinner (he cooks on Saturdays – yes, I am blessed), I told him I wanted something “unhealthy”. Something like chili cheese fries, a chili cheese dog, or boneless buffalo wings. After some deducing, we decided upon the BBW’s. Peter used 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, then breaded them with half of Jeff Mauro’s breading recipe (here) and baked them. (Making “unhealthy” things at home allows you to make them healthier.)

 

Finished and Baked
Finished and Baked

After baking, he sauced them with some Frank’s Buffalo Sauce. With a side of blue cheese dressing, they were AMAZING!!

 

Sauced and plated
Sauced and plated

And yes, he is a good great husband!

Why make a new blog?

There were a few reasons contributing to the decision to start over completely.  The old one had languished, untouched, for so long, that it seemed silly, at this point, to simply write new articles or posts for it.  Additionally, I had the idea that it might be nice to form a joint blog where both Bonnie and I could write and share the same space.

While these first two ideas existed, the catalyst for actually doing it was that I now have a shiny new Windows Azure space; and since I have that, I now have an opportunity to save a bit of money by moving all my web-hosted stuff over to it.  So, given the various articles and resources that document the process, I decided to try it out.

For the record, there are a few different articles that outline how to accomplish this, but this one seemed the best written of the ones I found: “WordPress on Windows Azure: Single-Site Deployment.”  It”s worth a read if it interests you at all.  Note that the steps about the “FileSystemDurabilityPlugin” are no longer necessary; it was removed from the scaffolder.  That tripped me up for a bit, until I found this section on an article on the AzurePHP website.

Update: For those that might be interested, it doesn”t quite work out of the box.  One small tweak is required to get it to work properly.