BrianPeek.com

Visual Studio Live! - Las Vegas

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:20:00 -0500

I will be speaking at Visual Studio Live! in Las Vegas this March 26-30. The conference is a full 5 day event and there’s still time to register! If you use code VLSPK21, you can save a nice chunk of cash off the all-access Best Value Conference Package. The three sessions I’m presenting are:

T05 - Windows 8 Metro-style Application Contracts and Extensibility
Date: Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Time: 10:45 AM – 12:00 PM
Level: Intermediate

Contracts are a new feature of Windows 8 Metro-style applications that allow applications to interact with the operating system and other Metro-style applications in a standard way. With contracts, applications can implement interfaces to allow searching, sharing, settings, app-to-app file picking, and more. In this session, we will explore these contracts and how they can be used in any Windows 8 Metro-style application to provide a seamless, integrated experience for users.

W04 - XNA Games for Windows Phone
Date: Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Time: 9:15 AM – 10:30 AM
Level: Introductory to Intermediate

You have Silverlight on Windows Phone 7 under control, but what about XNA? If you're looking to create a more advanced game with better performance than Silverlight, XNA is the platform for you. In this session, developers will learn how to build an XNA game targeted for Windows Phone 7. The basics of the platform will be demonstrated while building a simple Space Invaders-type game that would be Marketplace acceptable. Specifically, this session will cover how to deal with user input, play sound effects and music, display animated 2D graphics, and how to create a game that's ready to be sold on the Marketplace.

TH09 - Writing Asynchronous Code Using .NET 4.5 and C# 5.0
Date: Thursday, March 29, 2012
Time: 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
Level: Introductory

A variety of new features were added to the .NET 4.5 Framework, including support for easily writing asynchronous code. This session will introduce the concepts of asynchronous programming, .NET Tasks, how to ensure your UI remains responsive, and how to do all of this properly in your own applications using the new async and await keywords. If you’re looking for ways to provide a better, smoother experience for your users, don’t miss this session!

As always. I will be hosting another round of Developer Duel on Wednesday night during the Wild Wednesday event. Join us for the event and have a chance to win fabulous prizes while playing a game similar to one you’ve seen on TV for the past 30 years…

Get more information on the conference at:

Hope to see you all there!

Joining the Mothership

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 21:31:00 -0500

At long last I have accepted a full-time position at Microsoft, working on the Channel 9 team, mainly doing Coding4Fun stuffs. I'll be telecommuting from NY as I have been these past 8 years. It's hard for me to believe that I've been doing Coding4Fun articles and projects for the team since 2006, but I'm excited that I now get to do it full-time.

Also joining the team is master UX-man Rick Barraza. He brings a pile of amazing talent and skill that will really allow us to create some fantastic projects. And, of course, we're joining the existing team of Dan Fernandez and Clint Rutkas, with Greg Duncan heading up the Coding4Fun blog and Kinect Project blog.

Also note that Coding4Fun is looking for a junior developer/program manager. So, if you want to join the team, now's your chance!

Anyway, I'm very excited to be joining Microsoft, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what we can crank out as a team…

Kinect at Tech Valley .NET User Group

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 13:15:00 -0500

For my fellow Capital District folks, I’ll be giving a session to the Tech Valley .NET Users Group (TVUG) Tuesday, December 13th at 6:30pm on everything that is Kinect and the Kinect for Windows SDK Here are the details….

Where: Tyler Technologies, Latham, NY
When: Tuesday, December 13th, 2011, 6:30-8:30PM

Join us as Brian Peek demonstrates the basics of using the Kinect for Windows SDK including: how Kinect works, installing and setting up the Kinect sensor, setting up the development environment, reading camera, depth and skeleton data, understanding what depth data is and how it works, skeletal tracking and working with the Kinect microphone array to record audio and use speech recognition.

Hope to see you all there!

Visual Studio Live! - Orlando

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:59:00 -0500

I will be speaking at Visual Studio Live! in Orlando this December 5-9. The conference is a full 5 day event and there’s still time to register! The two sessions I’m presenting are:

TH2 - XNA Games for Windows Phone 7
Date: Thursday, December 8, 2011
Time: 8:00 AM – 9:15 AM
Level: Introductory to Intermediate

You have Silverlight on Windows Phone 7 under control, but what about XNA? If you're looking to create a more advanced game with better performance than Silverlight, XNA is the platform for you. In this session, developers will learn how to build an XNA game targeted for Windows Phone 7. The basics of the platform will be demonstrated while building a simple Space Invaders-type game that would be Marketplace acceptable. Specifically, this session will cover how to deal with user input, play sound effects and music, display animated 2D graphics, and how to create a game that's ready to be sold on the Marketplace.

TH12 - Multi-touch Madness!
Date: Thursday, December 8, 2011
Time: 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
Level: Introductory to Intermediate

Multi-touch technology is popping up everywhere, most recently in Windows 7 and various .NET technologies. Windows 7 has been designed from the ground-up with multi-touch in mind, and the newest versions of WPF and Silverlight are multi-touch capable as well. In this session I will take you through the 4 biggest areas of Microsoft multi-touch technology: Windows 7, WPF 4, Silverlight, and Surface, including the forthcoming Surface Toolkit for Windows Touch. You will learn how to make your applications multi-touch aware and capable using each of these platforms, how to handle gestures and manipulations properly across platforms, and learn where multi-touch is heading in the future with regard to Microsoft development.

We will also be playing another round of Developer Duel on Wednesday night during the Wild Wednesday event. Join us for the event and have a chance to win fabulous prizes while playing a game similar to one you’ve seen on TV for the past 30 years…

Get more information on the conference at:

Hope to see you all there!

Kinect for Windows SDK + XNA

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:13:00 -0500

I have seen a few people talk about using the Kinect for Windows SDK with XNA lately, and many of those projects aren't using the SDK how it's intended to be used from a framework such as this.

When I had a hand in working on the managed SDK, I made a point that the API should allow for both an "eventing" model, and a polling model. In the land of WPF and WinForms, an eventing model makes perfect sense. In these frameworks, the SDK is intended to be used thusly:

private Nui.Runtime _kinect = Nui.Runtime.Kinects[0];

private void Window_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    _kinect.DepthFrameReady += DepthFrameReady;
    _kinect.SkeletonFrameReady += SkeletonFrameReady;
}

void DepthFrameReady(object sender, ImageFrameReadyEventArgs e)
{
    // do something with the depth frame
}

void SkeletonFrameReady(object sender, SkeletonFrameReadyEventArgs e)
{
    // do something with the skeleton frame
}

But, in the land of XNA, where all of your code is shared between the Update and Draw methods, and where events don't really exist in the normal flow of things, trying to synchronize the Kinect events and the data they provide with the Update and Draw loop can be difficult, and can lead to conditions where data is being updated from an event while you're touching it in the Update method. Sure, you could use locks to help synchronize things, but there's an easier way.

To help with this, the API contains methods to directly poll for the latest data, such as the current depth frame or skeleton frame. These methods can be used as shown:

private Runtime _kinect = Runtime.Kinects[0];
private SkeletonFrame _skeletonFrame;
private ImageFrame _depthFrame;

protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime)
{
    _skeletonFrame = _kinect.SkeletonEngine.GetNextFrame(0);
    _depthFrame = _kinect.DepthStream.GetNextFrame(0);

    base.Update(gameTime);
}

protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime)
{
    // do something with _skeletonFrame and/or _depthFrame
    // such as, draw it to the screen
    
    base.Draw(gameTime);
}

So, if you're using XNA in tandem with the Kinect for Windows SDK, be sure to use the API as it was intended. It will likely save you some debugging headaches later on.

HP TouchSmart 420t Recovery Discs + Software

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 16:53:16 -0500

My mom desperately needed a new computer (she's still running XP on a very old Dell), so I decided to pick up one of HP's new TouchSmart 420t machines for her, thinking it'll also be a great machine for Windows 8 when it arrives.

HP, in their infinite wisdom, decided that, among other annoyances, one can only create a single set of recovery media from the included Recovery Media Creation application. Once you make the set, that's it. If you lose the media, or if you want to make a second set on USB instead of DVDs, you're out of luck, short of ordering the media from HP for a price.

If you are stuck in this situation, there is an easy fix, assuming you still have the Recovery partition available on the hard drive.

Open up an Administrator command prompt window
Change to the D drive (D:)
Change directories to D:\HP\CDCreatorLog (cd \hp\CDCreatorLog)
Delete the ResumeSnapshot.xml file (del ResumeSnapshot.xml)
Restart the Recovery Media Creation application

Alternatively, you could try downloading, saving, and running this batch file as an Administrator: HPRecoveryReset.bat .

A second issue I have is that they don't have their TouchSmart software and other client-side pieces on the driver and software support page on their site. So, if you want to do a clean install of Windows and then selectively add back certain features, such as the HP TouchSmart shell, or the HP client utilities, you are, once again, out of luck. However, there is a bit of a workaround. On the C: drive in the SWSETUP directory, you will find a number of these applications in their installer state so they can be put back on the machine. Simply copy this directory off somewhere safe, clean install Windows 7, restore this directory, and then install the software and drivers you need/want.

This may (and probably will) work for other models of machines from HP that use the same recovery software and drive setup. Of course, this is a YMMV fix, but it has worked here without issue. However, it does make me question purchasing another HP machine in the future. If anyone from HP happens to stumble upon this, please take this into consideration. Don't make it difficult for users to restore their machine and/or do a clean install of Windows. You're not winning people over by making things cumbersome. Then again, you're out of the hardware business so I suppose it doesn't much matter.

I hope to throw Windows 8 on the machine for a quick spin before I remove it and hand it over to my mom and will report back here if I find anything noteworthy in the install/usage of Win8 on the machine.

Welcome to the New Site!

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 20:53:00 -0500

If you're reading this, it means I haven't totally boned the conversion over to BlogEngine from CommunityServer. It's been a long time coming, but I finally had the time to convert everything to the new system and put it live today.

I would appreciate any and all feedback, especially for broken links or things that just aren't working the way they should be. I'll be tweaking things a bit more, but it's now live!

The one thing you'll find missing is the Forums section from the old site. It didn't get much use and I figured it was time to let it go. I don't plan to have a replacement at the moment.

Enjoy the new site!

Kinect for Windows SDK is here!

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 12:47:56 -0500

Hooray! I can finally talk about this! As I've alluded to previously, I had a hand (one of many) in the managed portion of the SDK and what was originally shown at MIX. Since then the SDK has changed a bit but it's finally ready to go!

The Kinect for Windows SDK is now available for download on the Microsoft Research site. We have also launched several samples over at Coding4Fun that you can begin using immediately:

Coding4Fun Kinect Toolkit

You definitely want to download this one when you get started. This toolkit contains a variety of extension methods and controls to make using the Kinect for Windows SDK even easier to use. Some of my code appears in this one.

Kinect Mouse Cursor

This sample is entirely mine. Kinect Mouse Cursor is a demo application that uses the Kinect for Windows SDK and its skeletal tracking features to allow a user to use their hands to control the Windows mouse cursor. Use your right hand to move the cursor, and raise your left hand to press the left mouse button. Use the check box to switch hands…

Kinect Paint

Kinect Paint is a skeleton tracking application that allows you to become the paint brush! IdentityMine built this for us.

Kinect for Windows SDK Quickstarts

This is a series of quick start videos starring the lovely and talented Dan Fernandez, who walks you through the basics of Kinect development from the very beginning. Don't miss these!

Coding4Fun's Kinect for Windows SDK Blog

Add a bookmark to this now. Coding4Fun will be tracking awesome projects using the new SDK here. Have something to show off? Tell us!

Kinect Hack-a-thon

In coordination with the Kinect launch, developers were invited out to the Microsoft campus to develop applications in a 24 hour "code-a-thon". Some health issues prevented me from attending this event, but I'm looking forward to seeing what these people came up with…

We will have more samples and fun projects at Coding4Fun soon, so be sure to check back there (and here) regularly for more Kinect goodness. Until then, enjoy the new SDK, our new samples, and see what you can build! I'd love to hear about any projects you create with these tools…

MJPEG Decoder v1.1

Sun, 08 May 2011 01:25:00 -0500

A quick update to my Motion JPEG Decoder is now available at CodePlex. Version 1.1 adds the ability to specify username/password credentials for cameras that require a login. For example:

MjpegDecoder _mjpeg;

_mjpeg = new MjpegDecoder();
_mjpeg.FrameReady += mjpeg_FrameReady;

_mjpeg.ParseStream(new Uri("http://192.168.2.200/img/video.mjpeg"), "user", "password");

As always, questions/comments welcome. Enjoy!

MIX11

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:18:02 -0500

It's almost time for another MIX conference! Once again I'll be there with the Coding4Fun crew showing off some spiffy new projects for attendees to play around with, along with a few other surprises. I'll also be taking part in John Papa's Open Source Fest on Monday evening, demonstrating WiimoteLib and my MJPEG Decoder.

Anyone else heading to the conference? If you are, be sure to stop by the Coding4Fun area in the Connect Lounge and say hello, and stop by the Open Source Fest on Monday night to take a look at over 50 great open source projects and vote for your favorites. I'd say I'd trade drinks for votes, but those are free, too.

And finally, if anyone attending is working on a fun or interesting project and would like to do an interview for my Coding4Fun Show on Channel 9, please let me know. Almost anything goes, so I'd love to see what everyone out there is working on.

Hope to see you there!