Pete Brown's Blog (POKE 53280,0)
Pete Brown writes on a variety of topics from XAML with the Windows Runtime (WinRT), .NET programming using C#, WPF, Silverlight, XNA, and Windows Phone, Microcontroller programming with .NET Microframework, .NET Gadgeteer and even plain old C, to raising two children in the suburbs of Maryland, woodworking, CNC and generally "making physical stuff". Oh, and Pete loves retro technology, especially Commodore (C64 and C128). If the content interests you, please subscribe using the subscription link to the right of every page.
-
In the second half of March, I traveled to India (Bangalore,
Delhi, and Pune) to speak at TechEd India and TechDays Delhi about
Windows 8 app development.
I flew from Dulles International in VA to Charles De Gaulle in
France, where I met up with my colleague Nisha Singh, who had flown
from Seattle. From there, we flew Air France to Bangalore for
TechEd India Bangalore, then hopped a Jet Air...
-
The Maker Geek Roundup aggregates information of interest to
makers everywhere. Topics include .NET Micro Framework, Arduino,
AVR and other MCUs, CNC, 3d Printing, Robotics, Microsoft Robotics
Studio, Electronics, General Maker stuff, and more. If you have
something interesting you've done or have run across, or you blog
regularly on the topics included here, please send me the URL and
...
-
A large number of apps in the Windows Store follow the "bunch of
boxes in a GridView" approach to the hub screen.
This can work in some cases, but I encourage developers and
designers to move beyond that look, and consider either evolutions
of it, or completely different approaches.
Boxes 1.0
For many, the basic box layout is a very workable layout. Here's
one of my essential app...
-
It seems that each generation is exposed to more mature or
serious situations at earlier ages than the one before it. There
are a lot more ways for kids to get in trouble online than just
running afoul of the creepily mustachioed basement dweller you see
on "that" episode of Special Victims Unit.
tl;dr: A child was banned from Xbox live and that caused me to
investigate some things ...
-
.NET 4.5 quietly introduced several attributes which are useful
for debugging and error reporting: CallerMemberName, CallerFilePath
and CallerLineNumber, all collectively referred to as "Caller Information". One of those,
CallerMemberName, is also very useful for MVVM apps and other apps
using INotifyPropertyChanged for change notifications.
Getting the calling function name
The Cal...
-
Many developers ask me how to get more visibility for their apps
in the Windows Store. Most do not realize, that even on the public
web, visibility is almost never organic. It's the result of hard
work on the part of all involved. In this first post I'll provide
some observations as to things that I personally think help
increase app visibility, specifically, app quality. In part 2, I'll...
-
The Maker Geek Roundup aggregates information of interest to
makers everywhere. Topics include .NET Micro Framework, Arduino,
AVR and other MCUs, CNC, 3d Printing, Robotics, Microsoft Robotics
Studio, Electronics, General Maker stuff, and more. If you have
something interesting you've done or have run across, or you blog
regularly on the topics included here, please send me the URL and
...
Published
Tuesday, January 22, 2013 |
Tagged:
Commodore, Gadgets, geek, c64, Netduino, Electronics, Gadgeteer, 3d-Printing, MakerRoundup, Maker, AVR, Arduino |
-
A common cause of Windows Store app certification failures is a
missing or insufficient privacy policy. Many don't realize that a
network-enabled app must have a policy, or if they do, don't
realize exactly what needs to go into it. In this post, I'll talk
about some of my observations regarding what makes for a good
privacy policy for a Windows Store app.
IMPORTANT: This is neither...
-
I'm working on a Windows 8 synthesizer app using XAudio2 and a
C++ + DirectX/XAML Windows Store app for Windows 8. As part of
this, I thought it would be fun to add a simple bit
crusher effect with included sample rate reducer. The point of
this effect is to make samples sound like they came from older
machines with lower bitrates and sample depth. To do that, I had to
do two things to ...
-
I recently did some work on my MikroElektronika ARM development
board. This was the first time I fired up the board on my
Windows 8 system. Everything in the IDE worked fine until I tried
to do some deploying and debugging on the board itself. It was then
that I realized the board's driver wasn't correctly installed. I
looked in the device manager and, sure enough, the board had the
lit...
-
I have a few pieces of analog gear which either don't support
MIDI, or simply work better with voltage control. This makes
including them in a sequence difficult as timing of arpeggios or
sequences will drift away from the rest of the performance. Not to
mention that synchronizing them by ear is not a simple task in any
case, and impossible to do in real-time if you want to adjust the
t...
-
Windows Store apps go through both automated tests and human
testing. The automated testing uses a process similar to what you
use on the client in the form of the WACK tool. This tool verifies the basics: does
it crash? does it have the right images? does it spin up in time?
etc.
No one likes to waste time by going through the submission and
certification process multiple times. Many...
-
I have a four year old girl and an almost seven year old boy.
From time to time, my son will play games on the nick jr web site,
or watch a video.
Nick has a portal-style app for Windows 8.
This app provides access to videos and photos, as well as links out
to games. Notice how even on my low DPI 30" screen, the tiles are
large and everything is nicely scaled on the hub page. I've see...
-
With the latest update to Visual Studio 2012, the mechanism for
specifying and verifying DPI-aware images has just gotten
easier.
I've written and spoken about automatic DPI-aware image assets
in Windows 8 apps in my book Windows 8 XAML in Action, and also at
events. Here are the details, but in a nutshell, if
you use a specific naming convention for images in your Windows
Store app,...
-
As a geek, there are a number of milestones or rites of passage
for children:
First drawing of any vehicle with more than three guns
First original LEGO model
First time you figure out how to turn on the Xbox and get into
a game without help
First time you solder something
First program written
First cosplay at a geek convention
First computer you build from parts
...
Published
Thursday, November 29, 2012 |
Tagged:
Parenting, geek |
-
In this post, I'll briefly explain how to generate sound in real
time in a Windows Store C++ app using XAudio2.
I've always liked messing around with synthesizers. Quite some
time ago, I built a simple synthesizer using Silverlight. It was
cool, but very processor intensive. All the sound was generated in
real time, and was then pushed into buffers which were read by the
media pipelin...
-
A new version of the Windows Software Development Kit for
Windows 8 was published last week. A new version of the Windows App
Certification Kit (WACK) tool is included as part of this.
Installation
You can download the Windows 8 SDK from MSDN, here.
The installation is simple. I'll include the screenshots here so
you can see what's included. Also, I encourage you to enable the
Cu...
-
When you get ready to submit your app to the store, you'll run
it through the WACK (Windows App Certification Kit) tool.
That tool will report to you the most egregious errors, but it
doesn't catch everything you'll want to do to finalize your app. In
this post, I have a number of suggestions ranging from the most
simple to some more interesting system integration ideas.
Have you chec...
-
By default, your Windows 8 Start Page appears as a base group of
standard apps, plus a group of desktop apps (if you upgraded) or
Office apps (if Surface with Windows RT). Most of us create a
number of additional groups beyond those. Those groups are not
named for you automatically. Did you know you could name those
groups to make organization easier?
Here's how.
On the Start Page,...
-
I recently upgraded my main desktop PC to Windows 8. When I did
that, the Microsoft LifeCam software stopped working. It was
recognized as incompatible with Windows 8. For most people, this is
not an issue, as it works perfectly fine with the built-in Windows
8 camera app.
For me, however, I need a small camera app sitting on my desktop
so I can see the hallway leading to my office. I...
-
I recently updated my primary workhorse PC (a 6 core desktop
with two 30" displays) from Windows 7 to Windows 8. As part of
that, I picked up a Logitech Touchpad T650. This post includes my
observations.
As a Windows 8 platform evangelist at Microsoft, I'm very
familiar with Windows 8, especially in a developer context. So far,
I've used it on touch and non-touch laptops (I have a Len...
Published
Sunday, November 11, 2012 |
Not tagged
|
-
At Build, the Surfaces used by Jordan Rudess (and later provided
to Jordan and his tech Gianluca Trombetta, just like we did with
other Build attendees) were set up in advance with local accounts
rather than Microsoft accounts. This made it easy for me to have
everything ready for when Jordan took the stage.
One thing both Jordan and Gianluca needed to do to make the
Surfaces their ow...
