Learning the .NET Stack

I gave my first presentation tonight to the Omaha .NET User Group (OmahaMTG) covering an introductory look into XNA 4.0. The presentation followed very closely to my previously posted tutorial an introduction to XNA. The entire presentation took only about 30 minutes but I didn't get to cover nearly as much as I would have liked to. I was originally planning to write an entire (small) demo game from scratch as part of the presentation but it would have ended up taking too long. I ended up writing the game ahead of time and then commenting all of the code. I then uncommented a section at a time to demonstrate different aspects of the game. This ended up working out pretty well as far as presentations go. I was able to cover a lot more concepts then I would have otherwise given the time saved by not having to code it on the spot. Still, I wish I could have covered XBox 360 controller support and the use of timers.

For those interested, I've provided a link below to the presentation slides and code. This is the exact same code I used during the presentation which lacks a lot of the features I wanted to cover. If you find this helpful or interesting make sure to visit my full post which covers this same material in more detail and also includes many other features I couldn't get to. More...

Tags: XNA, Presentation, OmahaMTG

I took my Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Development with Microsoft .NET Framework 4 exam today and passed with 850/1000. This was Exam 70-513 and is 1 out of 4 tests needed to obtain the Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD). I haven't decided yet if I'm going for the Windows or Web MCPD but they both require test 70-513, so I figured I'd start with that. If I can make any suggestions to anyone else trying for this certification I would recommend reading "Essential WCF for .NET Framework 3.5" and "Pro WCF 4 Practical Microsoft SOA Implementation (Apress)". The Essential book was very heavy reading but it got me very comfortable with the terminology and language of services. I favor the Apress book more for practical reasons but it's not enough by itself to pass the exam in my opinion. For those who are planning to get certified here is a brief overview of getting your MCPD. I am not affiliated with Microsoft so please check back on their official site for possible changes to the program. More...

Tags: WCF, Certification, Achievement

The Heartland Developers Conference was held in Omaha, NE this year. This was my first year attending and I have to say it was a great experience. There were sneak peaks into new stuff Microsoft will be releasing soon such as MVC4 and Visual Studio 2011. I'm sure I'll blog about some of these things once they're released. There were also quite a bit of presentations related to proper UI design and looking at applications through the eyes of a user. One really good example they gave was how LinkedIn gives you a score based on how complete your profile is. This gives the user an indication of how much they have left to do and actually motivates the user to use your site more. There were also a few presentations related to jQuery and RESTful services. I attended the OpenRasta jQuery hands-on lab but had to leave early due to a production issue at work. More...

Tags: HDC, Heartland, Conference

I just completed competing in the first Omaha .NET User Group code challenge and I took second place together with my friend Dustin Horne. The challenge was to solve 5 rubik's cubes in the fewest number of moves in the least amount of time. MattB took first place but I can feel good knowing we gave him a run for his money. We basically went back and forth beating each other until the very end.

Scoring for this challenge was very interesting. You start with 100,000 points and you lose 1,500 points for every move you make along with another point for every millisecond your code executes. Each cube you solve is given its own score and then these 5 scores are averaged out to come up with your final score. The 5 cubes you are passed are in fixed positions to prevent scores from changing after multiple runs and the 5 cubes are passed in a random order to prevent cheating. Our final score was 63,659. Here is a break down of our code results: More...

Tags: Rubik, Challenge, OmahaMTG