So someone created a comparison picture of all the current available non-handheld consoles. Damn this Nintendo Wii is small.
Source: Aeropause
size matters: console size comparison
dealing with new UI concepts in todays applications…
I really like the new Office UI. And I especially like it when it’s used in future development applications. Great!
“I promised that I would deliver the new Office UI that NStatic uses this morning. Unfortunately, I am currently redoing the icons on the ribbon, so you’ll have to wait another day or two. For now, I’ll give you a partial glimpse.”
Source: .net undocumented
Putty SSH Tunnel as a Service
Putty is a free SSH client for Windows. And here’s a link to a How-To that shows you how to set up a tunnel as a system service:
“First of all, before I wanted to browse the web, I’d have to start the putty client and log into my ssh shell. I had to always keep the putty client open, so it would always be minimized to the taskbar, taking up precious space and often getting closed my mistake. Also, if I lost internet connection my ssh session would be aborted and I’d once again have to log in. There must be a better way. By running the ssh tunnel from a Windows Service it is now always running silently in the background. If my network connection is disturbed, it automatically reestablishes my ssh session.”
Read more here.
Source: Putty SSH Tunnel
after more than 4 years…
… I am back playing a Mario game… soon:
new beta of the Agile Messenger for WM5 available…
Agile makes the beta version of it’s great instant messenger for Windows Mobile 5 available.
The Alpha and Beta versions are free of charge…
Indiana Jones and the FOUNTAIN of YOUTH
When you played and enjoyed the LucasArts Adventure “Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis” then this is great news for you:
“Fountain of Youth is a fan-made adventure game by a team of both Indiana Jones and computer game enthusiasts. A playable demo has been in development and has experienced quite a few delays, but is expected to be available soon – and the design of the full game, (after much revamping) is nearly complete – for development to begin by Fall 2005.
The project has been running almost 5 years, and has suffered several major setbacks. This website contains information about the game we are developing plus information on the developers, screenshots, downloads and much, much more. Just use the navigation bar on the left to find your way around.
We’ve had thousands of offers for translations of the game, thanks!!! Its great to have so much interest and help to hand (believe me, we will contact a lot of you – there’s lots of languages!!) If you CAN offer a translation we are very greatful – but please wait for the release of the demo before you decide how well a translation you can provide :)
We also hope to send out free DVD-cased editions of the demo and full-game once they are available to anyone who donates enough to cover the shipping. We also hope to create a special boxed edition of the game with a printed manual in the future.”
There is a demo available and the full game is expected soon.
802.1x with Vista…
Of course every single one of you knows how to do this: connect to a 802.1x network with Windows Vista (beta 2 in this case). But I just want to give you a short slideshow of how it’s done:
speed tweaking dasBlog…
I got the new Community Server platform up-n-running now on slow-backward.de. But with the help of the dasBlog developers I am able to tweak dasBlog a little bit for speed. You should have noticed a dramatic improvement on front-page loading-times…
Gamers Domino Day
Look what someone who has too much time created in Oblivion:
Windows CE Shared Source Contest 2006
Microsofts Embedded Devices group and WindowsForDevices.com offers a contest to everyone who likes to take part. Read this:
WindowsForDevices.com and Microsoft’s Mobile and Embedded Devices (MED) Group are teaming up to invite developers worldwide to compete at using Microsoft’s Windows CE Shared Source in an exciting real-world project. The contest’s theme is “Show-It-Off at the Shared Source Project Competition.”
“Create a cool, real-world project that combines Windows CE along with either or both of two Shared Source components — the Windows CE WebCam driver and/or the Windows CE DVR engine. If your project is selected by our team of judges for the Grand Prize, you’ll win a complete Xbox 360 dream setup consisting of the Xbox 360 console, a 34-inch HDTV, games, and accessories! Three other winners will be awarded Xbox 360 game consoles.”
So you are actually using shared source components to create new applications. Everything that is needed for the contest is freely available for download. And the prices are quite cool…
I recommend having a look at the Microsoft Shared Source Website. Just to stay up-to-date.
Source 1: http://www.windowsfordevices.com/articles/AT5277795134.html
Source 2: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/default.mspx
Windows Vista Beta 2 graphic driver updates available…
The major graphic card manufacturers ATI and NVIDIA decided to release new drivers for Windows Vista Beta 2. So if you can grab them. In my case there was an improvement in speed…
Download Managers are helpful tools to suck…
Download Managers are helpful tools to suck a great number of files from machines across the network. Since there are many commercial/shareware ones, this guy decided to write his own and give everyone who wants the source of it:
“Right then, a little light bulb went on in my head, and I decided to build her a file download utility. The requirements were simple:
- I should be able to point to a web page and filter URLs on it. For example, “*.doc” should give me a collection of URLs that have .doc at the end of the link.
From the list of available files, I should be able to select the files I want to download. - I should be able to download my selected files simultaneously.
- I should be able to nominate the number of simultaneous threads for download.
- I should be able to cancel a download at any point in time.
- I should be informed of the download status of each selected file.
- I do not want to re-download files that I have downloaded before.”
Source: http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/FileDownloadManager.asp
P.S.: yeah..i know.. it should be leech…but well… suck scores better ;)
cleaning up the keyboard…
When a sugar containing, quite sticky substance is spilled over your keyboard… you have to wash it…
CISCO Catalyst 6509+FWSM to be taken to a test drive…
Today the 6509 + the Firewall Service Module arrived at our office. Quite a heavy machine but we’re really excited to play with it :-)
in all it’s beauty…
more pictures and infos to come…
CM lounge club in Bamberg…
VTrak not VTrack
Oh… just in case you are searching for the Promise m500i…. it is VTrak not VTrack. So try this search.
Ilmenau drive-in cinema
Once a year the HFC (HochschulFilmClub) organises a drive-in cinema. And yesterday was the first of two days of drive-in cinema in Ilmenau. Unfortunately a storm came up just before the show started. I was ready in place for the movie and then the HFC decided to cancel the event for this time…
They told us to come back the next day…well I don’t have time :-( So no drive-in cinema for this year for me.
Oh…we (Microsoft) even sponsored the event…
Source: http://www.hochschulfilmclub.de/
things have to change…
Schrankmonster is powered by a 4-way XEON 2.8 Ghz machine with 2 GB RAM running Windows Server 2003 and dasBlog blog-engine. And believe it or not: dasBlog actually utilizes all 4 CPUs completely at peak times.
Much of this is led by the fact that dasBlog was built for much smaller weblogs (not that schrankmonster is big…). And for MUCH less traffic. When you load the front page of schrankmonster you instantly notice the lag between typing the URL+pressing enter and the completely loaded page showing on your screen.
dasBlog does not use any database server. Instead it uses XML files. Two for each day of the year. And well. It parses them very often…
Very much to my pleasure the traffic on schrankmonster is raising each month. And that means: slower page load times… It became more and more unacceptable in the last weeks.
Beefing up the hardware is not an option. I believe it’s a quite beefy system already. And the main problem remains: the software. So it’s time for a change: I will move schrankmonster bit by bit from dasBlog to a shiny new software called “Community Server“.
I just finished the test-setup today and I am thinking how to move the content to the new platform. The main goal is that nobody will even notice (beside some radical layout changes) that there is a new blog engine powering schrankmonster.
Source 1: http://www.dasblog.net
Source 2: http://www.communityserver.com
one more step to photorealism
I came across a short movie which demos a new animation and graphic engine for all next-gen consoles and PC.
Yes, this actually IS a computer generated character:
The engine yet has some obvious problems with the mouth and teeth animation…but it’s just astonishing what’s possible these days. They even claim it’s in real time. Oh and the first appearence of this technology will be in an adventure game… great news, eh?
Masterchiefs’ Warthog is a Peugeot…
I have to admint that when I first drove the Warthog in HALO 1 my first thought was “It’s a french car! The steering is so indirect and tipsy like in every french car I drove to this point.”
And who would have thought that I was right? (well beside of moi) It’s a PEUGEOT! It’s a concept car and therefore it’s worth a lot of money…though it lacks the turret on the back…
Source: Warthog Testdrive