The third episode of my Coding4Fun Show, live from Las Vegas, is now up on Channel 9.  In this episode I interview Rick Barraza of Cynergy Systems, who has put together several very unique applications and accompanying tutorials demonstrating advanced rendering techniques using Silverlight 3.  During the show, we discuss Silverlight 3, UX design, and the three demos he has created showing off advanced rendering techniques.  For more on how these amazing demos were made, check out his (currently) three part series at his blog:

• Fluid Dynamics in Silverlight
• Advanced Render Techniques with WriteableBitmaps
• Rendering Vector Fields in Silverlight

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 Rick for taking a few minutes out of his vacation …

Is there anyone in or around the Las Vegas area between September 7th and September 12th that would like to be my guest for an episode of the Coding4Fun Show?  I’ll be in the area for the week and would love to do an in-person show with anyone doing a cool project with Microsoft technologies.  If you’re interested, please contact me so we can set something up.  Maybe you’ll even get a free lunch out of it.  :)  Thanks!

The second episode of my Coding4Fun Show is now up on Channel 9.  In this episode of the Coding4Fun Show, I interview Arian Kulp, creator of the MEF Utility Runner, a unified host for system tray utility applications.  Learn a bit about MEF and how it can be leveraged to create a plugin architecture for any application, as well as how it was used to create the MEF Utility runner, and how you can write your own plugins for this application.

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.

Enjoy!

I have posted a new version of WiimoteLib as a beta for people to play around with the Wii MotionPlus accessory.  Please note that this is not a stable release and should only be used if you wish to mess around with the MotionPlus.  Also note that only C# source code is included in this release as it is not a final build.  Here’s the change log:

v1.8.0.0

• Taiko Drum Master's TaTaCon drum controller supported (Dean Herbert)
• Bare-bones Wii MotionPlus support (wiibrew.org, testing by Tyler Tolley)
• WiimoteTest UI changed to add MotionPlus data
• Please note that the current version is VERY flakey and may not work at all for you.
• Pair your Wiimote, plug in your MotionPlus, call InitializeMotionPlus()
• Extensions plugged into the MotionPlus will give wacky results...not supported...yet!
• Internal changes to perhaps fix some threading issues

So remember, it’s a beta, it may not work for you, and the data you’ll get back from the accessory is …

The recordings for the session I gave on XNA Game Studio 3.0 and the XNA Framework to the Facebook .NET Programmers Group have now been posted.  In this session, I give an overview of XNA Game Studio 3.0 and the XNA Framework while building a simple Space Invaders clone named Alien Attack.  This game is gone into even greater detail with more features in chapter 1 of our Coding4Fun book.

You can find a quick, low-res, streaming version below, or you can download and play the recording at a higher resolution in Microsoft Office Live Meeting.  I had a great time presenting the topic and hope to speak to the group again in the future!

Meeting #13 - Coding4Fun: Designing a Video Game using XNA Game Studio 3.0 from Muneeb on Vimeo.