Welcome to Pete Brown's 10rem.net

First time here? If you are a developer or are interested in Microsoft tools and technology, please consider subscribing to the latest posts.

You may also be interested in my blog archives, the articles section, or some of my lab projects such as the C64 emulator written in Silverlight.

(hide this)

Monthly Archives: December 2012

  • A MIDI clock pulse to analog sync voltage converter

    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...

  • The importance of app submission notes in the Windows Store

    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...

  • A windows 8 trick: Protocol activation of apps (and the nick app)

    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...

  • Scaled DPI-aware image assets for Windows 8 Apps in Visual Studio 2012 Update 1

    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,...