Doug's Blog

Windows Phone 7 Launch Event

2010-10-03T15:58:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, Octomber 12th Microsoft will be launching the new Windows Phone 7.

You can find out more at: http://www.msdnevents.com/wp7devlaunch/

I will be listening online. Hope you can attend a session or listen too.

The .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2010 Road Trip

2010-05-13T16:10:00.000-07:00

I saw the DotNet Rocks Roadtrip while attending the Chicago Code Camp. Carl and Richard were very entertaining. Their special guests were Rocky Lhotka and Jay Schmelzer. They all talked about VS 2010 in general and how it will affect development in the future.

At the end of the day, Carl and Richard hosted the raffle in the 64 bit question style. It was a blast!!. Unfortunately for me, the conference ran out of raffle tickets before I could get one. Some people had multiple raffle tickets while a few of us didn't get one. It was fun despite that.

The sessions I attended at the code camp were good quality, especially for a free event. I definitely wanted more intense Windows Phone 7 and Silverlight talks. I have been to several entry level Win Phone7 talks and watched all of the MIX10 Windows Phone 7 videos, but I still want more.

Thanks you DotNetRocks for your Roadtrip. I enjoyed listening to your all of the shows, and have had a fun time learning alot about VS 2010.

Thanks again,
Doug Mair, doug.mair@gmail.com

Learning Visual Python

2008-03-29T15:26:00.001-07:00

This last January I went to CodeMash in Sandusky OH. It was a great two days of sessions and keynotes. Thanks to everyone who put it together.

Anyway, my goal at the conference was to attend some sessions that improved my C# understanding and also to attend some sessions that would expand my overall programming experience.

I was most impressed by the F# and Python presentations. I went to 3 seperate sessions on Python. One of them was presented by Catherine Devlin and showed how to use Visual with Python to do some planetary simulations very easily.

It looked so easy to do some pretty incredible things, so I decided to try it out for myself. Here is what I came up with.

I made a Rubik's Cube Simulation and a Magnetic Disc simulation.

I was able to make the Rubik's Cube into an executable using py2exe. It ended up being 40 files in all (YIKES). I then made that exe into a Windows screen saver by changing the extension to .SCR and copying all 40 files into the Windows\System32 sub directory. It's pretty neat, but kinda messy to have to copy so many files.

Here is the source:

PyCube.py
MagDisc.py I added them to http://doug.mair.googlepages.com/

Descriptions of the programs:
Program 1: PyCube.py - Rubiks cube simulation.

215 lines in all!! Amazing. It works, but it probably isn't
very python-like. I know there has to be better Python ways to do some of what I did in this program.
Keys: Q - Toggles Demo Mode. F - Toggles flying the camera around.
Click on the edges of the face pieces to make them rotate.

Program 2: MagDisc.py - Simulation of Magnets which are fixed on a rotating disc.

I'm studying the interactions and forces between the discs. The forces between magnets are shown as gold cylinders shooting out of the front of the magnets.
I think my force equations are correct, but I'm having trouble converting the force between the magnets into the angular momentum of the disc. The discs also have a friction equation built into them,
so they should slow down and stop. They seem to work except when they are at their closest point. At which point the large disc spins out of control.
You can drag and drop the disc to move them around. Also left/right clicking on a disc increases it's speed clockwise or counter-clockwise. It's only 150 lines so far. WOW.