Sat, Nov 29, 2003

Chris -- Thanks for the comments on my theater plans.  I really want to come over and see your setup as long as you promise me I won't drown.

Chris mentioned Paradigms.  I have a set of Paradigm Reference Studio/40 v2 and I love them.  I don't want to take those and repurpose them from my living room to my theater so I'm starting over from that respect.  Getting a full HT setup with the Studio line is probably more than I want to spend.  However, I've been reading good things about the Monitor series.  If I can get a good price on them from north of the border, I'll probably do that.  (I was thinking B&W too, but I like the sound of my Studio/40s.)

With respect to the Infocus ScreenPlay 4800, that projector is just the Infocus X1 repackaged for the home theater retail channel.  It costs a good $300 more for essentially the same projector.  I think that I'm going to up the ante a little bit and I now have a Sanyo Z2 on order.  This is a much higher resolution (720p native) 16:9 LCD projector.  It costs more, but I think that the resolution is going to be worth it.  Supposedly the latest round of LCD projectors have the contrast ratio that the DLPs are famous for.  Beyond this the Z2 has a DVI input.

I couldn't get the deal on the Yamaha RXV1400 that I thought I could (even though I love the idea of a feedback based autocalibration feature) so I'm thinking the Denon 3803 now.  My current 2ch reciever is a Denon and I'm pretty happy with that.  I'll see if I can get a good deal on the 3803.

Beyond that, I'm going to paint the wall or go with painted fiber board to begin with and then look at buying a screen.  I'm not sure what size I want yet!  (6.25ftx3.5ft sounds good to start with.)

Doing this whole home theater thing is a blast!  There is so much to learn and read.  There are tons of good forums and review sites.  The process of just figuring out what I'm going to get is a huge undertaking in and of itself.

Fri, Nov 28, 2003

If you are at all interested in photography, you might want to try out a workshop.  I went on one to Death Valley last year with Steve Kossack.  He knows the area like the back of his hand and runs a great workshop.  You get up before dawn to shoot the sunrise, take it easy during the afternoon and then stay up past sunset.

Here is a page describing the upcoming workshop March 4-8.  I'm actually in the first picture on that page (second from the left).  If you end up doing it, let Steve know I sent you!

Fri, Nov 28, 2003

If you haven't noticed, I've haven't been posting in a while!  I don't know about you, but I've been in a little bit of a funk after the PDC.  It was really exciting but now it is back to life as usual.

In any case, as a Christmas present for me and Rachel, I'm turning our basement room (23'x13'x9') in to a home theater.  We aren't doing anything super elaborate, but I figured I'd put out what I'm doing to see if anyone has comments:

Projector: Infocus X1
Screen: Home Depot Special DIY
Reciever: Yamaha RXV1400
Speakers: Axiom M22ti, QS4 and VP150.  SS16 stands.
Subwoofer: SVS 20-39PCi (thinking about the PC+)
Interconnects (Audio and Video): DIY ala this link
Speaker cable: DIY 4x14 guage wire from Parts Express (100-770) with screw on banana clips

We are planning on getting some new furniture down there along with painting the walls and such. 

Anyone have any suggestions? 

Thu, Nov 6, 2003 Eric Terrell wrote me asking me to point to his interesting looking RPN calculator project.  Hey Eric, how about playing around with longhorn and doing the UI in Avalon?

Tue, Nov 4, 2003

There has been a ton of speculation on SVG and its relationship (or lack thereof) to Avalon.  Here is some thoughts on that, collected from various responses I've made or others have made.

• Our rendering model is very much like that of SVG.  We support a hierarchical compositing model with transforms that affect items in the hiearchy.
• Our markup isn't the same mostly because XAML is a direct reflection of the programming model.  There is a very solid relationship between the markup and the objects and methods.
• Our OM doesn't match the SVG DOM because we choose to go with an object model that more closely matches what we think our users expect.  Specifically, we tried hard to make sure that our object model provided a certain amount of consistency with WinForms (and VB and MFC before it) and ASP.Net.  Beyond this, our object model is strongly typed where much of the SVG DOM is based around strings. 
• WVG is a term that we are no longer using and isn't, in my opinion, very useful.  We were supposed to have scrubbed this from our documentation, but apparently we missed some stuff.  There is no strick subset of Avalon objects and XAML markup that stands on its own with respect to vector graphics. 
  • Whereas when using SVG inside of XHTML there is a very bright line, when using a vector graphic element in a UI authored in XAML, there is no sharp line.  You can put a Rectangle element, for example, in flow with a document without a Canvas element.  To do a similar thing with XHTML/SVG, you would need to wrap all SVG content in an SVG element. 
  • For Avalon, the set of properties and property types is the same between vector graphics elements and other elements.  In this way the background property for a Button is of type Brush -- the same as the fill property for a Rectangle.
  • There are elements that can very easily be seen to belong to both a control subset and a vector graphics subset.  For example, Image makes sense in a UI sense but also in a VG sense.  XHTML and SVG both have image elements.  We avoid this duplicity.  Text is another area where we avoid a large amount of duplication.
• While we share a rendering model with SVG to a large extent, our support and features don't match up completely.  Some of it is stuff that we haven't implemented yet and others are due to choices that we've made because of programming model concerns.  I'll try to put together a guide on this stuff at some point in the future.

I'm sure there are questions around SVG and XAML/Avalon that I haven't answered here.  Post in the comments and I'll update this post with the latest and greatest.

Tue, Nov 4, 2003

Actually, I'm proud of the work that we are doing on Avalon, but I hate the name.  It just sounds lame and dorky to me.  I guess this is what you get when you vote on a code name.  Aero and Indigo are much better names.  In fact, the shell team has the best code names: Aero, Jade, Luna, Plex.  I guess it is because they have designers who are creative types.

The worst code name I can think of right now was for NT4.  It started out being just and update to the shell.  So, it was called the "Shell Update Release" that got abbreviated SUR.  They even made T-Shirts that said "We don't need any stinkin' code name."

Anyone haved examples of other really bad code names for projects?

Thu, Oct 30, 2003

There are some questions that have been coming up pretty often, so I want to put together a series of posts addressing these.  I don't have time to do this now, but I wanted to pull together the questions.  Here is what I have so far?

• SVG vs. XAML?  What up with that?  Why are you guys different?  How can I translate stuff back and forth?
• Will I get to write pixel shaders?
• What kind of color support are you going to have?
• Should I write my custom control using control composition with shapes, or should I be overriding Render or should I start creating Visuals?

Are there any others you guys want answered?

Mon, Oct 27, 2003

We are public!  Ask me what you will.

I've been working on the graphics systems for Avalon for over two years now and it is great to finially talk to people about it.  Let me know what you think and if you have any questions.

If you are here, stop by the hands on labs tomorrow or Wed. and say hi.  They haven't been that busy yet so I'll have plenty of time to chat.

Sun, Oct 26, 2003 It is kind of sad that peoples homes are burning around LA and and I'm just thinking of my flight being canceled.  The house that my wife grew up in (and her dad built -- he is a contractor) probably burned in these fires.  It was on David Way in the foothills in San Bernardino and backed up to the Waterman Canyon.  Her family no longer owns it but it is sad to think that it is gone.

Sun, Oct 26, 2003

Argh!  My flight has been canceled.  LAX is apparently a mess.  SriramS and I are hanging out in the bar near C8 in SEA so come by and say hi.  We are sitting in the back corner, both wearing blue shirts (differnt shades). We are supposedly booked on a flight out of here at 6 to Portland.  And then from there to LAX arriving after midnight. I've heard that Hillel Cooperman (who is giving our demo as part of the keynote) is in flight trouble also.

Here is a picture of me  and Sriram

[Update: Kerry (whose hands you can see here) is coming to join us!.  Fil probably will also after his flight is delayed.] 

[Update 2: Now (9pm) in Portland scheduled to leave at midnight to arrive in the wee early hours!]