I have been selected to speak at this year’s VSLive! conference on the Microsoft Campus in Redmond.  I’m very excited about this conference for a couple of reasons.  First, it’s on campus, which will allow me to get together with my Coding4Fun/Channel 9  friends to do some planning.  Secondly, VSLive! attendees are also allowed to spend some of their own cash at the Microsoft store.  And finally, in addition to presenting two sessions at the conference, I’m also coordinating a special event on Wednesday night which we’re calling Devopalozza.  I am creating a team Jeopardy! style game-show which will pit Microsoft Speakers against VSLive! Speakers against VSLive! Attendees.  I’m currently creating both hardware and software to drive the game, which will later turn into an article on Coding4Fun for those that might want to create a game-show at home or the office.  And, I’ll even be hosting the show at the event.

The two sessions I’m presenting …

The fifth episode of my Coding4Fun Show, is now up on Channel 9.  In this episode of the Coding4Fun Show, I chat with Josh Blake about Natural User Interfaces and Multitouch programming with .NET.  Josh has written a multitouch PowerPoint replacement called NaturalShow, which was demonstrated during his NUI session at MIX10. Watch and learn a bit about how this application was created as well as how you can write multitouch applications with WPF.  And for even more multitouch programming goodness and more on NaturalShow, Josh is currently working on a book titled Multitouch on Windows, which can be purchased and read while he's writing it!

You should see the video below if you have Silverlight installed, otherwise head over to the episode on Channel 9 to watch and download in a variety of formats for offline viewing.

A big thanks to Josh for the interview!

I’ve been working on a version 2.0 of WiimoteLib which reorganizes the library quite a bit to clean up the codebase.  It’s not quite ready for release, and I don’t have an ETA currently, but I wanted to note some of the changes and get some feedback as I finish things up.

• I will be including a VS2010 solution for the project in addition to the original VS2008 solution
• I’m hoping to have support for both sound and the WiiMotion Plus extension completed
• Support for the Taiko Drum and DJ Hero turntable (testers welcome for the DJ Hero turntable)
• Extensions have been broken out into separate classes so their code is self contained:
  • 
  • All extensions inherit from ExtensionController
  • All state objects for extensions implement the IExtensionState interface
  • Here’s an example of the new Nunchuk class.  As you can see, everything related to the Nunchuk is located in this class:

  • using System; …

As I posted earlier, I’ll be attending MIX10 this year, and I will be taking part in the Ask the Experts panel on Monday evening at 5pm.  I will be at the C# table since I’m a C# MVP, so stop by and start a discussion!  Experts in a variety of subjects will be on hand so even if C# isn’t your thing, surely one of the many other topics will be.  And even if you’re an antisocial shut-in like I am, beer will be served and there will be 2 Zune HDs given away to attendees of the event.  So really, there’s something for everyone.  Hope to see you there!

I have written and posted a new library that allows .NET developers to easily connect to and use the Neurosky MindSet headset from any .NET application.  You can find the source code and a binary of the library at CodePlex.  Usage is very simple and may seem familiar to those that have used my .NET Wiimote LIbrary; set a reference to the library and you can connect to a headset as follows:

private ThinkGearWrapper _thinkGearWrapper = new ThinkGearWrapper();
 
private void Connect()
{
    _thinkGearWrapper = new ThinkGearWrapper();
    
    // setup the event
    _thinkGearWrapper.ThinkGearChanged += _thinkGearWrapper_ThinkGearChanged;
    
    // connect to the device on the specified COM port at 57600 baud
    _thinkGearWrapper.Connect("COM4", 57600, true);
}
 
void _thinkGearWrapper_ThinkGearChanged(object sender, ThinkGearChangedEventArgs e)
{
    // write out one of the many properties
    Debug.WriteLine("Attention: " + e.ThinkGearState.Attention;
}

The …