Woo hoo!  I was notified earlier today that I've been awarded the 2007 Microsoft MVP Award for Visual Developer - Visual C#!

A gigantic thank you goes out to John Papa for nominating me for the award, and to the entire Microsoft MVP team for selecting me.

My latest article has been posted at MSDN's Coding4Fun site.  This article explains how to create a Wiimote Controlled Car using my Managed Library for Nintendo's Wiimote.  At the end of the article, you will have a remote controlled car that can be driven with a standard Nintendo Wiimote.

Also note that my original Wiimote library and article have been updated with some new features including x64 support, a potential fix for those with incompatible Bluetooth adapters/stacks, and a Microsoft Robotics Studio service.

As always, comments and questions welcome.  Enjoy!

I'm typically not one to link to other sites in my blog, but if you haven't watched the Microsoft Surface Computing video at on10.net, please go watch it now.  Absolutely incredible.  I want a coffee table like this.

Update: The official Microsoft Surface website.

Update - 12/24/07: This issue has been fixed in XNA Game Studio 2.0.  Woo hoo!

While working on my game for Maker Faire (which you'll be able to download in about a month), I came across a timing bug on the Xbox 360 using XNA.  For an application that requires very accurate timing (millisecond precision), one can use the StopWatch object in .NET 2.0.  This was working quite well in my PC build, but on the Xbox 360 build, I would notice that time would drift with no explanation.  After digging around for a couple days and writing a simple sample to prove the point, I determined that the time value returned by the StopWatch object would drift by about 150ms/minute, which is considerable when precision within a few milliseconds is required (and considerable when it should be accurate to begin with).

I eventually found a workaround:  DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks is perfectly accurate on both platforms.  So a quick rewrite to use this property in all locations …

I've received a couple emails in the past week of people using my Managed Wiimote Library to do some spiffy things.

Brent Rossen's project allows one to interact with a virtual patient and is described as:

This project was primarily created to allow the Wiimote to be used as a novel interface for a virtual environment. The goals were to create a Wiimote server, allow interaction with a virtual environment, and provide haptic as well as audio feedback. Six degrees of viewing freedom and stereo vision are provided via a Head Mounted Display and optical tracking system. Sound is provided through FMOD. Much of this project is built on top of code from the Virtual Patient Project.

Evan Merz has created a virtual drum kit available at his site along with a video showing its operation.

Great stuff, guys.  Anyone else using my library for a project?  I'd love to hear about it!