I will be speaking at Visual Studio Live! in Orlando this December 5-9.  The conference is a full 5 day event and there’s still time to register!  The two sessions I’m presenting are:

TH2 - XNA Games for Windows Phone 7
Date: Thursday, December 8, 2011
Time: 8:00 AM – 9:15 AM 
Level: Introductory to Intermediate

You have Silverlight on Windows Phone 7 under control, but what about XNA? If you're looking to create a more advanced game with better performance than Silverlight, XNA is the platform for you. In this session, developers will learn how to build an XNA game targeted for Windows Phone 7. The basics of the platform will be demonstrated while building a simple Space Invaders-type game that would be Marketplace acceptable. Specifically, this session will cover how to deal with user input, play sound effects and music, display animated 2D graphics, and how to create a game that's ready to be sold on the Marketplace.

TH12 - Multi-touch Madness! …

I have seen a few people talk about using the Kinect for Windows SDK with XNA lately, and many of those projects aren't using the SDK how it's intended to be used from a framework such as this.

When I had a hand in working on the managed SDK, I made a point that the API should allow for both an "eventing" model, and a polling model.  In the land of WPF and WinForms, an eventing model makes perfect sense.  In these frameworks, the SDK is intended to be used thusly:

private Nui.Runtime _kinect = Nui.Runtime.Kinects[0];

private void Window_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    _kinect.DepthFrameReady += DepthFrameReady;
    _kinect.SkeletonFrameReady += SkeletonFrameReady;
}

void DepthFrameReady(object sender, ImageFrameReadyEventArgs e)
{
    // do something with the depth frame
}

void SkeletonFrameReady(object sender, SkeletonFrameReadyEventArgs e)
{
    // do something with the skeleton frame
}

But, in the land of XNA, where all of your code is shared …

My mom desperately needed a new computer (she's still running XP on a very old Dell), so I decided to pick up one of HP's new TouchSmart 420t machines for her, thinking it'll also be a great machine for Windows 8 when it arrives.

HP, in their infinite wisdom, decided that, among other annoyances, one can only create a single set of recovery media from the included Recovery Media Creation application.  Once you make the set, that's it.  If you lose the media, or if you want to make a second set on USB instead of DVDs, you're out of luck, short of ordering the media from HP for a price.

If you are stuck in this situation, there is an easy fix, assuming you still have the Recovery partition available on the hard drive.

1. Open up an Administrator command prompt window
2. Change to the D drive (D:)
3. Change directories to D:\HP\CDCreatorLog (cd \hp\CDCreatorLog)
4. Delete the ResumeSnapshot.xml file (del ResumeSnapshot.xml)
5. Restart the Recovery Media Creation application …

If you're reading this, it means I haven't totally boned the conversion over to BlogEngine from CommunityServer.  It's been a long time coming, but I finally had the time to convert everything to the new system and put it live today.

I would appreciate any and all feedback, especially for broken links or things that just aren't working the way they should be.  I'll be tweaking things a bit more, but it's now live!

The one thing you'll find missing is the Forums section from the old site.  It didn't get much use and I figured it was time to let it go.  I don't plan to have a replacement at the moment.

Enjoy the new site!

Hooray!  I can finally talk about this!  As I've alluded to previously, I had a hand (one of many) in the managed portion of the SDK and what was originally shown at MIX. Since then the SDK has changed a bit but it's finally ready to go!

The Kinect for Windows SDK is now available for download on the Microsoft Research site.  We have also launched several samples over at Coding4Fun that you can begin using immediately:

Coding4Fun Kinect Toolkit

You definitely want to download this one when you get started.  This toolkit contains a variety of extension methods and controls to make using the Kinect for Windows SDK even easier to use.  Some of my code appears in this one. 

Kinect Mouse Cursor

This sample is entirely mine.  Kinect Mouse Cursor is a demo application that uses the Kinect for Windows SDK and its skeletal tracking features to allow a user to use their hands to control the Windows mouse cursor.  Use your right hand to move the …