Categorized in Uncategorized
Trying out today!
Categorized in latest tech
It’s new year’s day and I wanted to create a new banner for my Live Space. I hadn’t downloaded the new Expression Design so I went right ahead to the website to obtain the CTP. After installing, I try to run the program, and it tells me my version has expired. I guess it’s a bug cause I’ve seen a couple of other people posting about this problem as well. When I start up the program, it tells me that the version I’m using has expired and then the program just crashes. Resetting the clock seems to make it work though. It still said expired but once I enter the product key for the 180 day trial, it works fine. So I guess for now I’m stuck in 2006.
On a side note, I’ve been using Vista RTM for quite sometime already and at first the confirmation dialogs have been driving me nuts! I was reminded because Vista asked me to confirm the Licensekeyinstaller.exe (not sure if that’s really what it was called, I didn’t bother reading the name of the program) once I had entered the Product key.
At a recent get together with some of my Xavier College friends, we got into this conversation on Vista (yes wherever I went they were picking on the one that crossed over into the dark side). One of my friends now works for a company, building software for the new machines that will be running on Vista. We were talking about the security of Vista and how these annoying confirmation dialogs are actually quite helpful. I was amused at how my friend said, “at least sure ka nga walay hocus pocus gakahitabo sa imong machine” (At least you can be sure that there’s no “hocus pocus” going on in your machine)
I also got reminded of the dialog I got into with one of the partners when he asked how true it was that you don’t need an anti-virus when you’re running on Vista (due to that statement by Jim Allchin that was blown out of context by the media). We all know that that’s not what he was trying to say. That point aside, although Vista puts in these mechanisms for us to be aware of things going on in our machines such as things that would require admin privileges like updating registry entries etc, there are still people (like me) who just breeze through these confirmation dialogs without reading through what the machine is actually trying to do. That being said, the users actually play a huge role also in compromising the security of their machines. Even with anti-viruses, if the users neglect to update virus definitions, well, you get my point.
Expression Design has a really cool new interface. Will give feedback after fiddling around with it.
Updated: 9:55 pm
Okay, I guess the trade off for the new interface was a LOT of the features. I can’t seem to find the live effects anymore. Oh well.. Can’t wait for the next CTP.
Updated: 1/5/2007
They just released the December CTP Refresh http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=7CC8E068-DB67-4041-B8E7-E6313244E007&displaylang=en
Categorized in Uncategorized
Here’s an interesting new gadget from Microsoft: Windows Multipoint
Definitely something software developers should take a peek at. I would say this could mean a whole new generation of collaborative software that people could start developing.
Categorized in latest tech
i spent the entire day yesterday trying to figure out how to create a mod for iBloks. and finally i got it to work. Their designer website actually has almost everything you need to start. http://www.ibloks.com/designer There you’ll find the intro to creating mods, some sample files, and the mod manager. You’ll also need to download ZAM3D, the software you can use to create your 3d animation before building it into a mod. If you’re using swift 3d, you can actually use ZAM3D to convert it to a XAML file, this is actually what the Mod manager needs to build a mod.
A few things to note so you won’t take as long as i did:
- the iBloksGamesInfo.db file is actually found in yourDirectory\AppData\Roaming\iBloks\bin on Vista
- to create drop targets, create a material and name it dropTarget. The material should be a plain white bitmap, no textures.
- On Vista, create your mods under Documents\iBloks\mods. It’s oest to export your XAML files into their own fresh directories within this directory, for organizations sake. This will help especially if your models make use of a lot of textures, just so you won’t miss one in importing to the mod manager
- For some reason, iBloks can’t load your mod file if you don’t fill out the author, and other not so important fields in the Mod manager so just to make sure you don’t have to redo the process of converting your XAML file into a mod, make sure you fill out the fields. I think i only left blank the “additional xaml files” field.
- Icon file can be any picture file that will be used to represent your mod in the mod gallery.
- Tick the compress checkbox in the mod manager before clicking on save so the manager compresses all your files into a single file, similar to the mods that come with iBloks.
I just finished my first mod today. I realized the shadows and reflective textures don’t get rendered into the xaml files. I also realized my machine was not meant for graphics design, let alone 3D graphics design :p
Post note:
Don’t bother reading the comments on this, it’s all rubbish caused by a troll, but i keep it to have something to do with my time. It’s like having a pet. :p
Categorized in latest tech
I finally got it to work! I emailed the designer alias to clarify some stuff on the Intro to Mod designing guide since i’m running on vista and the file locations are a bit different.
Yesterday I created my first iBlok and i just got to view it today. The site doesn’t have a way for me to view the stuff i uploaded (or remove it for that matter) i had to do a search on it to find it, though this morning i found it on the front page since it was one of the latest holiday iBloks uploaded haha :p if you want to view it its here: http://www.ibloks.com/play/iblok/?id=403
As for the mod development, finally got it to work after several frustrating tries. Let me create a decent mod before publishing :p okay, time to practice my creativity!
Categorized in latest tech
I stumbled upon it this morning while I was browsing for some cool apps on vista. http://www.ibloks.com has a downloadable tool that allows you to create some really cool 3D videos out of your media: music, pictures and videos, based on what predefined Mods or models. I browsed around the site and had some downloadable tools for designers of Mods too (they even have a competition to promote mod creation) I downloaded the CTP version of ZAM3d which is actually similar to 3ds max, one of the animation tools that I used to fool around with. It allows you to create 3D models and animations and export it to a XAML file. After creating the XAML file, you’re then supposed to use their modmanager tool to creat a mod file for the ibloks application. All tools you need including a vaque howto can be found on http://www.ibloks.com/designer. I figured out how to use and fooled around with ZAM3D for a while but got frustrated with trying to create a mod file based on it. I couldn’t get the mods to work properly, though i had eventually gotten it imported into the iBloks application, all I saw was a black screen *sob* I’ll have to figure what i did wrong some other day. Am just to frustrated to pursue it any longer today.
Interesting note, they also have something for indie artists who want to sell their music online http://www.ibloks.com/artists. I think this site has a lot of potential, yet a lot of kinks have yet to be ironed out.
But i’m definitely excited to see the endproduct of this whole system.
Categorized in latest tech