Cross-Disciplinary Observation

So, at lunch I was reading 3D Computer Graphics, a textbook written in 1993, and I came across the following:

An unfortunate aspect of the standards viewing systems is that because they afford such generality  they are hopelessly cumbersome and difficult to interface with. Even if a subset of parameters is used, the default values for the unused parameters have to be appreciated and understood. Perhpas this is inevitable. The function of a standard, in one sense, is not to reflect common usage but to define a complete set of facilities that a user may require in a general viewing sytem. That some of these facilities will hardly ever be used is unfortunate.

Substitute "web services" for "viewing systems" and this is a very relevant statement, IMO.

Managed Direct3D - InitializeGraphics

As part of my continuing coverage of the basics of Direct3D, this time I cover the initialization code needed to set up a Device object. The Device object is central to everything we do in Direct3D.

Master Key Copying Revealed

Holy cow. When I read this in Clemens Vasters' blog, I thought, "Hey, given that all computer is based on physical security, this means we're pretty screwed."

A security researcher has revealed a little-known vulnerability in many locks that lets a person create a copy of the master key for an entire building by starting with any key from that building. [...] After testing the technique repeatedly against the hardware from major lock companies, Mr. Blaze wrote, "it required only a few minutes to carry out, even when using a file to cut the keys." [nytimes.com -- free sign-up required]

I Feel Dirty

I tried. I really did. I made every effort to reuse something existing rather than write my own. But yesterday I caved in when I was told that I was going to have to run my load tests after hours, because the evaluation copy of ANTS Load I was working with doesn't have scheduling capability. It was either start working nights, find something that does have scheduling capability that I can get an eval copy of, or write my own.

The problem with .NET is that it only took me a day to write the basics of a reasonably feature-rich load-testing harness. And I knew it wouldn't take that long, which is what made it so tempting. But of course that same day would probably have gotten me up to speed on some existing tool that a) doesn't have the bugs that mine certainly does, b) I don't have to support, and c) probably has lots more features. It was just tooooooo tempting to write code, rather than download and review some boring tool.

I find it interesting that the CLR made me less productive because it makes me more productive.

Managed Direct3D - The Game Loop

As part of my continuing series on the basics of DirectX, in this post I talk about the basic high-level structure of a typical Managed Direct3D application. Most Direct3D applications will have code that looks something like what I show here.

Welcome Stu Halloway

Stu Halloway has joined the ranks of bloggers. I'm pretty new myself, Stu, but I'm sure you'll have some interesting stuff to say.

Visual Studio .NET Help Integration Kit

Kirk Fertitta just turned me on to the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Help Integration Kit. He says it will let you integrate your help right in with the rest of the Visual Studio help stuff, so your API will show up right next to System.Foo.Bar. I haven't checked it out yet, but it sounds cool.