Hexar Decimal

8 Rules for Losing Weight Like an Engineer

2012-01-31T15:10:00.000-08:00

IntroductionWell, it's January, and that means that many Americans have recently made some new resolutions for 2012, and one of the most common resolutions is to lose weight. So, despite the fact that I am a software engineer and not a personal trainer or nutritionist, I'm going to offer some unsolicited advice on how to lose weight like an engineer =)Engineers like to measure, quantize, track,

Wireless iTunes Syncing with iSyncr WiFi

2010-10-20T11:40:00.000-07:00

Article IndexHow to Sync your Android Device with your iTunes Library via USB How to Sync your Android Device with your iTunes Library Wirelessly Configuring iSyncr WiFi for Optimal Wireless Syncing Wireless iTunes Syncing with iSyncr WiFi IntroductionYou may already be an expert on Syncing your Android Device with your iTunes Library Wirelessly with iSyncr WiFi. You might have already

Configuring iSyncr WiFi for Optimal Wireless Syncing

2010-10-20T11:38:00.000-07:00

Article IndexHow to Sync your Android Device with your iTunes Library via USB How to Sync your Android Device with your iTunes Library Wirelessly Configuring iSyncr WiFi for Optimal Wireless Syncing Wireless iTunes Syncing with iSyncr WiFi Configuring iSyncr WiFi ServerFirst, make sure you've already installed iSyncr WiFi Server, and it's up and running. If you double-click the iSyncr WiFi icon

How to Sync your Android Device with your iTunes Library Wirelessly

2010-10-20T11:35:00.000-07:00

Article IndexHow to Sync your Android Device with your iTunes Library via USB How to Sync your Android Device with your iTunes Library Wirelessly Configuring iSyncr WiFi for Optimal Wireless Syncing Wireless iTunes Syncing with iSyncr WiFi Break Free of the Cable!You may already be an expert on Syncing your Android Device with your iTunes Library via USB with iSyncr, but have you ever wanted to

How to Sync your Android Device with your iTunes Library via USB

2010-10-20T11:34:00.000-07:00

Article IndexHow to Sync your Android Device with your iTunes Library via USB How to Sync your Android Device with your iTunes Library Wirelessly Configuring iSyncr WiFi for Optimal Wireless Syncing Wireless iTunes Syncing with iSyncr WiFi IntroductionAs of this writing, there are approximately 160 million people using iTunes today to manage their digital music on their personal computers, and

Top Ten Things I Like About Seattle

2010-04-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

10. Portland / VancouverBoth Portland and Vancouver are only a few short hours away from Seattle by car, or if you prefer, you can take the train. I've been to Portland a few times and I really like it. I've also spent about a week in Vancouver and it's also a pretty cool place to be. I have to admit, I prefer the Portland / Vancouver combo to Houston and Dallas.9. Sushi / Thai / Indian /

RenameM4A

2010-04-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

IntroductionFor better or for worse, I use iTunes to manage the music on my iPhone. And since I have to have iTunes installed on my computer, I might as well also use it to rip my audio CDs into music files. Traditionally, the file format of choice was MP3, also known as MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3. However, a few years ago I heard about a new file format called AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) promising

How To Install Perforce Source Control On Your Windows Home Server

2009-12-21T09:00:00.000-08:00

Personal Source ControlIf you're a developer like me, chances are that in addition to the programming you do at work, you probably also have some personal projects that you work on at home as well. Whether you are consulting on the side, or just want to write your own applications, it may make sense for you to have a source control server of your own. There are many benefits to having a home

My Favorite iPhone Apps (So Far)

2009-12-08T09:00:00.000-08:00

Why I have an iPhoneSo I recently won a free iPhone 3GS 16GB because I entered my name into some kind of online contest. Amazingly, the day after I submitted my name I actually won, and about a month later my iPhone came in the mail. Being a cheap bastard, and afraid of signing a 2-year contract with AT&T, I declined to get a data plan but I kept the phone anyway so that I could play with it

HexarViz: An XNA Music Visualizer

2009-11-23T09:00:00.000-08:00

Media Player Visualization DataRecently, at a local Microsoft GameDevz meeting that I attended, we had a short 45-minute contest to see which 2-3 person team could come up with the coolest visualization given a relatively simple XNA project that retrieves visualization data from the song currently playing in the Media Center. HexarViz is an evolution of the project that my partner Daniel Taylor

HexShooter: An XNA 2D Tutorial Upgrade

2009-11-16T09:00:00.000-08:00

XNA Game Studio 3.1XNA Game Studio, if you haven't heard of it, is an integrated development environment for the development of Windows and Xbox 360 games using either C# Express 2008 or Visual Studio 2008. It is essentially a Visual Studio Package which includes a set of XNA assemblies, as well as new project types to create Windows and Xbox 360 games. The latest version, 3.1, was released

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Now Available on MSDN

2009-10-19T11:45:00.000-07:00

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 is now available for download on MSDN for MSDN subscribers, and will be available to the general public on October 21st. In addition, the new .NET Framework 4.0 is now available as well.New Features in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2Team Foundation Server - Track and manage work items for your entire development teamApplication Modeling - Create code dependency graphs,

Converting Managed C++ to C++/CLI

2009-10-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

What is Managed C++?Managed C++, also known as Managed Extensions for C++, was a set of syntactic extensions and keywords released with Visual Studio .NET in 2002 which allows you to target the .NET Framework in C++. In other words, with the release of Managed C++, it became possible to write .NET programs in C++. This is particularly interesting because unlike pure managed languages like C#

Internetizing My Ethernet-wired Townhouse

2009-09-28T09:00:00.001-07:00

Sweet PanelsWhen I first moved into a new townhouse, one thing I was very excited about was that nearly every room in the house had a panel with not only a cable port and a phone jack, but an RJ-45 jack as well. In other words, it's wired with Ethernet ports all over the 'house.So the first thing I did, naturally, after connecting my cablemodem on the main floor to my wireless router, was make

Musings on PAX 2009

2009-09-14T09:00:00.000-07:00

Having recently moved to Seattle, this year was the first time I was able to attend the Penny Arcade Expo, despite having heard quite a bit about it during my frequent trips to penny-arcade.com. Unfortunately I only managed to secure tickets for Friday and Sunday, because the 3-day and Saturday passes sold out before I finally got around to buying tickets.Panels - FridayGame Design 101: I

Various Optimization Strategies

2009-04-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit busy lately, and my blogging has suffered because of it. That's really too bad, because I have a big list of topics / code that I'd like to post about, but most of them require at least a few hours of work to clean up and flesh out. It's a bit overwhelming.In the meantime, I wanted to do a quick post on a couple of interesting optimization strategies, especially ones I've come

My Favorite Visual Studio Debugger Tricks

2009-02-23T22:30:00.000-08:00

When I graduated from college with my Bachelors in CS, I knew next to nothing about successfully using Visual Studio, or any other visual debugger for that matter, for debugging. In fact, the majority of my debugging experiences involved liberal use of printf and reviewing output logs, which I suppose works to a degree, but it's just not nearly as powerful as using Visual Studio.Since then, from

Cryptogram Solver

2009-02-12T12:00:00.000-08:00

IntroductionIf you're anything like me, everytime you see a cryptogram in the entertainment section of the newspaper, you stare at it for about 60 seconds and then you give up. I've always wanted to be able to solve cryptograms but I never really learned how. Furthermore, even after I read a few things about the strategies you can use to solve them, I was intrigued by (in my mind) a much more

Lambda Functions in C++ for RAII

2009-01-30T12:00:00.000-08:00

I learned a new trick recently at Microsoft involving the use of C++ lambda functions for automatic resource cleanup, which I thought was pretty cool. It involves combining the RAII programming pattern with a new feature of C++ 0x, namely lambda functions.What is RAII?RAII stands for Resource Acquisition Is Initialization, a design pattern which is popular in languages such as C++, D, and Ada.

Top Ten Things I Miss in Austin

2009-01-23T12:00:00.000-08:00

10. MoPac and 183I never thought I'd say that I miss an intracity highway, but there's something to be said for a 3-lane highway that can get you from the tech suburbs to downtown in 20 minutes. My typical commute from the U-District to Microsoft in Seattle is about an hour on 520 (a 2-lane highway), so I definitely miss being able to get around town fast.9. Barton SpringsBarton Springs might be

Solving Tetris via a Scoring Algorithm

2009-01-16T19:15:00.000-08:00

When I was in college, I wrote a simple Windows Tetris game I called WinTetris, because the name wasn't taken and I wasn't feeling very creative that day. This project was at first just an exercise in Win32 programming and game logic, and the first version featured very ugly GDI graphics with DrawRect.Over time, I polished it quite a bit, and added a lot of new features. I replaced the ugly

How Much Money I Lost in Economic Storm 2008

2009-01-09T12:00:00.000-08:00

I like to track my finances every month; I like knowing not just how much money is in my accounts right now, but also where exactly my money went. I use a new Excel spreadsheet for every new month, with a tab for each individual account, as well as a budget tracking tab and a summary page. It sounds like a lot of work, and it is, but it's worth it for me to know where my money is being spent on.