RSS Feed Updated

Just a quick heads-up for folks who have subscribed to my blog’s feed via my old Feedburner URL…I recently moved my blog to a new hosting platform, and in the process I have decided to discontinue the use of Feedburner for my feed. If you wish to continue receiving updates via RSS, please change your feed reader subscription to point to https://devhammer.net/feed/. Apologies for any inconvenience.

The Show that Shall Not Be Named: Episode 1 – All About KickStarter

So, Pete Brown and I had a great time with our new show (which, alas, is still in need of a name…drop me a note if you have ideas). In Episode 0, we talked about toys (and I took out my webcam with my full-auto Nerf gun), LEAP motion, microcontrollers and more.

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The (as-yet) Untitled Show: Episode 0–Pilot

Pete Brown and I are starting something new…a live show featuring all kinds of geekiness in hardware and software. Basically stuff we like, and enjoy. We kicked off our first live show today, discussing topics from new synthesizer apps, Nerf guns, the LEAP motion, and a microcontroller that can be programmed using JavaScript. Gadgets, developer tools, and anything with blinky lights is also fair game for future episodes.

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Weekly East Region Roundup: Vol. 5

Here are some resources and blog posts from my fellow Technical Evangelists here in East Region:

Developer

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Rocking Gadgeteer on DotNetRocks

I’m honored to have had the opportunity to spend some time with Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell from .NET Rocks, to discuss the .NET Gadgeteer platform and some of the projects I’ve worked on using this hardware/software platform. We also discussed some of the great work being done by the Gadgeteer community, including the many community created Gadgeteer modules.

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New Blog Theme

Seemed like it was about time, so I’ve finally gotten around to doing a little housecleaning on the blog, and installed a new theme for Orchard, called Wise Words, by Shovel & Rake. I’ve done a fair amount of tweaking to the theme to get it the way I wanted it, and while I was at it, I’ve cleared away a few of the less important sidebar items.

While I was at it, I took Scott Hanselman‘s advice and did a run-through of all the PNGs on my site (after downloading the code and assets locally), and ran them all through PNGOut via powershell. A few of the largest images, I pulled into Paint.NET and saved in 8-bit format, which makes a HUGE difference in filesize, and with reasonable dithering levels, didn’t make that big a difference in quality.

So hopefully, things will be a little easier to read, and to find, and with luck the site will load a little faster, too. And since the new theme is designed to be responsive, it should hopefully also be more friendly for mobile device users.

I’ve still got a few things to tweak here and there. For example, the code samples in my posts came out a little wonky with the new theme. But I’ve updated most of the images and videos that were hanging over past the sidebar, and tweaked other issues that I ran across.

If you see something that’s clearly not right, please drop me a note and let me know, or simply post a comment here.

Microsoft DevRadio: Using Blend to Help Design Your Windows 8 Apps (Part 3)

Abstract:
In the final part of our Using Blend for Windows 8 apps series, Andrew Duthie and Kirupa Chinnathambi take a look at the Interactive Mode for Blend and demo for us how to style a template using CSS, data binding and more.

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Microsoft DevRadio: Using Blend to Help Design Your Windows 8 Apps (Part 2)

Abstract:
In Part 2 of our Using Blend for Windows 8 apps series, Andrew Duthie and Kirupa Chinnathambi take a deep dive into how you can use Blend to easily design your Windows 8 apps for various devices. In this episode they’ll show you how to use the device panel and how to react to views and view states.

Continue reading Microsoft DevRadio: Using Blend to Help Design Your Windows 8 Apps (Part 2)

Microsoft DevRadio: Using Blend to Help Design Your Windows 8 Apps (Part 1)

Abstract:

Andrew Duthie and Program Manager Kirupa Chinnathambi from the Microsoft Expression Blend team join us for part one of this series as we take an inside look at how Blend can help developers design their Windows 8 apps. Tune in as they build a basic “hello world” application, add HTML assets and style it using CSS.

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Microsoft DevRadio: Reasons Why You Should Develop a Windows 8 App

I’m pleased to announce the availability of my next episode of Microsoft DevRadio, in which I talk to my fellow Technical Evangelist Jennifer Marsman about the top reasons for developing applications for Windows 8. From market potential and size, optimized discovery, flexible and money making opportunities, as well as free tools and guidance— there’s no better time than right now to develop your Windows 8 app.

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