I went to the mailbox today to find a mysterious silver/gray envelope with the return address of:

LOKI
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052

Inside was a letter telling me I am now a decoder and to visit www.vanishingpointgame.com along with a USB flash drive.  Interesting.

After looking at the image, text file and video on the disc and then some googling, it's apparently some sort of viral campaign from Microsoft regarding.... ?  The Vista launch, perhaps?

The cipher key on my USB drive looks like this:

It's a map of the letters/numbers to ROT13 from an image found on various Microsoft sites, such as the Windows Vista blog:

That works out to imm0rtaliz3m3, which, if typed into the box on the main Vanishing Point site listed above takes you to a downloadable MP3 file.  Analyzing that in a spectrum analyzer shows that the "pattern" spells the word FILE.  Take that to www.vanishingpoint.com/FILE and you get yet another message telling you to wait for the expiration of the countdown.

What is perhaps my favorite PC game of all time has been re-incarnated as a daily flash-based game.  Head over to www.youdontknowjack.com to play a new Dis or Dat question every day.  I wonder and hope if this means we'll be seeing a new Jack in the future...

I have updated the article with some new source code and executables, and a video of the beginning of my first sequence using what I’ve built.  Take a look!

Update: If readers of the article/blog have questions regarding the project, please use the Contact link above or use the new Forum topic so that I can respond to you.  If you have a comment which doesn't require a response from me, please leave that comment below.  I've received several questions over the past few days entered as anonymous comments and I have no way to respond to them without cluttering up the section below.  Thanks!

My latest article is now posted on MSDN's Coding4Fun website!

We've all seen those animated, musical holiday light shows videos on the internet, or perhaps the beer commercial last holiday season.  I set out to create my own show using off-the-shelf components and .NET .  So, with one or many Phidget Interface Kits, some extension cords, and Visual C# Express 2005 or Visual Basic Express 2005, you too can create your own holiday light extravaganza!

I'll be posting updates to the article as time goes on, including a video of my own show once completed, so check back often...

I was recently selected as a member of Microsoft's Coding4Fun writing team!  Coding4Fun is a site on MSDN devoted to geeks like me that enjoy building fun and quirky hardware and software projects using Microsoft technologies. My first two articles were for Halloween and can be viewed here:

• Motion-Detecting, Blood Squirting Halloween Skull
• Scary Halloween Application

I will be contributing about one article per month.  I'll post here when new articles become available.  Lucky you.