Author: tim

[NVidia Cuda] is a powerful mechanism to transfer CPU computing to the GPU for an obvious performance boost. Start with the [documentation]. Gass released [Cuda.NET]. The Cuda Zone even has a [Dirac Video Codec].

With the [XNA 3.0 Beta] available, it’s time to ramp up with the new version.

I learned something about RAM tonight. I put in the full 8GB of RAM into my [P5N-E] and the bios wouldn’t boot up. I read some helpful forum posts that directed me to adjust my RAM speed and voltage. Now the RAM I put in is 5-4-4-12-2 Mushkin (4 X 2G). Recommended voltage is 1.8-2.1V. This is 800MHz ram, but it needs higher voltage to run all 4 sticks. To be safe you can still run under less than 2.1V if you adjust the RAM timing to 667 MHz. I did that and it works like a charm. I’m now running Vista 64-bit with 8GB of RAM.

Okay, I picked up the [FX4710-UB802A] to replace the [FX7029E]. Now I’m in the process of backing up my files and setting up my [preferred development environment]. I was a little surprised because the ps2 keyboard was not usb and the speakers are a little bigger than the mouse. I’m a little concerned that I’ve had to repair Vista lots after [many reboots failed with a black screen], and I had to use the Norton Removal Tool to get [Norton uninstalled]. The Gateway/Vista automatic repair feature is both good and bad. Pro: it will restore your harddrive files to the last known good state. Con: That includes any external harddrives, so if you backed up any files, they will be removed (DANGER). I have 90-days for return from Sept 6th, 2008 just in case any issues arise. The [motherboard] supports up to 8GB of [DDR2 800 MHz DIMM memory] which matches the specs on my [IBUYPOWER] [Asus P5N-E]. FX4710 had some kind of boot issue that I can’t rely on. Back to the store it goes.

I stopped at Costco and tried to exchange my [FX7029E]‘s monitor with a [dead pixel]. Unfortunately, I couldn’t since the item is no longer in stock. I basically have to return my desktop before Sept. 11th. The new BATES 9000 replacement option is the [FX4710-UB802A] which comes with the next generation video card and 2 less usb slots and 1 more pci slot. I’ll have to setup my [preferred development environment] again, and backup all my stuff… And if I need to backup, I’ll need a [Backup Harddrive]. I’ve been skating on the memory edge of 4GB and need to expand to [8GB].

I recently bought a [replacement DVD drive] from NewEgg for the DVD burner that broke on [Linae’s computer]. I like new egg. They sent the drive, sata cable, power adapter, and drivers. Nice.

A bunch of my fixes, suggestions, and patches are going out with the new release of [Ogre 1.6.0].

I called Gateway tech support over my ([FX7029E])’s [dead pixel]. And even though my Costco warranty lasts 90 days, Gateway will not replace a monitor with only 1 dead pixel. I can still return my desktop/monitor to Costco and get a new one. I have 90 days from from June 13th to get the monitor replaced from Costco (September 11th, 2008). I initially got the FX to replace my other [quad-proc box]. Up to [8GB of RAM] is supported by this desktop.

On the way to the parade in Snohomish after work, there was a hilarious radio program called [“The Shoe Horns”]. I especially liked the segment that talked about the life of a writer. Or in my case a home programmer. Tune in to the program at 78:30.

I picked up a [500 GB My Book My World] external usb/ethernet harddrive. I can say that I’m not impressed. The transfer speeds are dog slow. And the USB interface just doesn’t work. I got the harddrive with the purpose as a redundant backup. But really the thing is too slow to use.

My [Preferred Development Environment] has been working great. The speed of the Gateway FX7029E is good enough to test Crysis mods and various other games that I’ve been working on (Supreme Commander, Warcraft III, Assassin’s Creed, and Crysis). The only problem is that I have a dead pixel on the screen. So I have 90 days from June 13th to get a free replacement. It’s just a pain, because I’ll have to backup my stuff and then reinstall my development environment.

I’ve always been a fan of video tutorials like the ones from [Luxology] that show all the features of Modo (my favorite modeling app). I’ve recorded some of my own videos using [Dr. Divx]. Brad Peebler, author if the weekly “Modocast” suggests [Camtasia Studio] – a full featured video capture, editing, and annotation piece of commercial publishing software. Best of all, Camtasia provides a plethera of . The marketing slogan is, “this is so easy a 6th grader can use it!”.

Another tool that is capable of capturing single frames for analysis comes with DirectX and is called PIX. [GarageGames] has a blog article about using [PIX] to debug a shader and talks about filtering techniques used to diagnose problems with all aspects of DirectX rendering.

It is possible to take screenshots of the desktop and output an image sequence. The image sequence is converted to an MPEG1 in [this example]. The [WMF SDK] provides a WMF writer object to write single images to a WMF movie. [DirectShow] wraps WPF and provides a convenient wrapper. Many DirectShow source examples are already installed with the Windows SDK and found within (‘C:/ Program Files/ Microsoft SDKs/ Windows/ v6.1/ Samples/ Multimedia/ DirectShow‘). To compile, make sure the Windows SDK includes (‘C:/ Program Files/ Microsoft SDKs/ Windows/ v6.1/ Include‘) and add the DirectShow common includes (‘C:/ Program Files/ Microsoft SDKs/ Windows/ v6.1/ Samples/ Multimedia/ DirectShow/ Common‘) are in the include search path. The Windows SDK libs (‘C:/ Program Files/ Microsoft SDKs/ Windows/ v6.1/ Lib‘) should be in the lib search path.

Some of the DirectShow samples failed to find stream.h, which can be remedied by replacing:

#include <streams.h>

with:

#include <Control.h>
#include <evcode.h>
#include <strsafe.h>

Microsoft Movie is capable [importing an image sequence] and publishing a movie.

DirectSound can be used to [record PCM data to a wav file].

If you don’t find the answer to your question on this web site, [Where to Get Help].

June 1st, 2008 was a historic day for me. It was the day I finally transitioned from the ranks of SDET (software developer engineer in test) to a full fledged game developer at [Isotx]. I received the formal offer Tuesday and told my boss Wednesday. July 16 will be my final day at [Infospace] after nearly 8 years. At [Isotx] I’ll be working on indie and commercial game delivery using a platform called [CrosuS]. I’ll be also be adding video editing, upload, and distribution capabilities for CrosuS video. I’ve already been working with [Crysis] and [Assassin’s Creed] with more hot titles in the very near future.

[CryMod] – a website dedicated to providing information about creating mods for Crysis

[CryMod] – a database of Crysis mods available for download

CryMod – Crysis maps [1] and [2] for testing

CryMod – a Crysis mods [1] and [2] for testing

[CryTools] – a useful tool to package Crysis Mods

[Crysis Patch 1.2] – includes a Crysis modloader

Forum: [post]

These are the common steps I use to setup a new machine and my favorite tools.

Create recovery CDs if not available

Remove [Norton] if pre-installed

Enable Remote Desktop access

[Firefox] – Be sure to get these add-ons: [Foxmarks] (bookmark synchronizer), [FireFTP] (ftp client), [ChatZilla] (icq client), and [Firebug] (web debugger)

[Thunderbird] – open source email client, [manually backup] or use [Mozbackup] to backup/restore Mozilla products

[Lightning] – integrated calendar for Mozilla Thunderbird

[TortoiseSvn] – an open source client tool for integrating with subversion source control

[WinMerge] – an open source diff tool excellent for quickly identifying revision changes and merging code quickly

[Cygwin] – UNIX command-line tools on Windows (grep, tar, tail, head, zip, unzip, ssh, scp)

[Textpad] – a text editing utility with built-in regular expression support

[Gimp] – a free image manipulation program

[WinRar] – there’s always some hoodlum in the online community using the rar format that contains a file that you need

[Skype] – online chat/voice communication

[MagicDisc] – allows you to mount ISO files on 32/64 bit Windows

[VMWare Player] – free virtual machine player

[Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008] – Microsoft development tools for doing anything .NET

Visual Studio 2005 Express Service Pack [xp] [vista] – Various bug fixes that fix known problems in Visual Studio

[Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite Service Pack] – fixes numerous bugs in the Team System edition of Visual Studio

[Visual Studio 2008 SP1] – ISO service pack

[Windows Platform SDK] – A development kit of tools, libraries, and source for developing on the Windows platform

[DirectX SDK] – the software development tools, includes and libraries for building DirectX applications [Setup.exe]

[Google C++ Style Guide] – coding standards attempt to keep programmers’ code easy to read and hopefully easy to understand

[Microsoft XNA Game Studio] – all the dependencies that you need to start developing for the XBox

[Quicktime] – for very basic video editing

[ITunes] – to synchronize with my IPod

[Sharepod] – a better way to manage music on your ipod

[Wireshark] – network packet level analysis

[Combined Community Codec Pack] – contains most of the codecs you need to play movies from the net

[Visual Assist] – the best enhancement for Visual Studio Professional or better that you can buy

[BitTorrent] – Popular download and distribution client

There are times when you want to save a [MS Office 2007 file in Adobe PDF format].

We had steaks so good that they didn’t need BBQ sauce; other steaks can’t even compete with. But now we are out and need to order again.

America’s Choice Entrees, LLC
dba Praire Gold Foods
Minneapolis, MN 55344

[Wine 1.0] is an implementation of the Windows API for *unix. Written for X, I’ve followed the progress of this project for years. I first stumbled across Wine, which made it possible to use MS Office and StarCraft on Mandrake Linux.

[Mozilla Firefox 3] has released. Download your copy today. Mozilla is trying to set a world record for downloads in a single day. The release became available 10am PDT, but unfortunately, Mozilla servers have been experiencing intermittent down time.

The free evaluation version of [Spore Creature Creator] is now available for download. Any creature that you make will be able to work in the full version of Spore releasing September 5th.

Intel’s Paul Lindberg talks on about challenges when developing games that utilize multiple cores. Brad Werth talks about the diminishing returns when focusing on performance and implores developers to focus on features to get a better return. Paul describes how decoupling subsystems allow asynchronous designs to be more resilient when more than the allocated frame time is taken.

[Intel Profilers]:

[Thread Checker] – checks whether your application is threaded correctly

[Thread Profiler] – checks whether your application is well balanced between threads

[Threading Building Blocks] – helps design your application for threading

More videos can be found on [Intel (r) Software Network Developer Zone]

June 13th, I picked up the last ([obsolete already]) [Gateway FX7029E] from the Bothell [Costco] while I wait for IBUYPOWER to repair my other [quad-proc] box. As with any new developer machine, it takes about a day to install all the tools needed for the job.