I wanted to take a moment on my blog to share a small video on MSNBC by Keith Olbermann talking about Gay marriage and my outrage with the passage of Prop 8 in California.

I've long been a supporter of Gay marriage. I believe it to be the right of all citizens of this planet to be happy. I believe it to be the right of all citizens of this country to have equal rights under the law. I believe that discrimination and intolerance are the biggest problem we face as a society, both locally and internationally. I also believe that any law that takes rights away from citizens based on religious beliefs is wrong regardless of the separation of church and state.

It's difficult to speak about it without breaking down into accusations in anger. Without pointing fingers. Without blaming religion. Without judging people, exactly the behavior I wish, with all my heart, to discourage. Lucky for me, there are others in this world that can speak more eloquently on the subject. Please, for the sake of us all, watch this short video.



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27650743/

A man flying in a hot air balloon suddenly realizes he's lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts to get directions, "Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?"

The man below says: "Yes, you're in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field."

"You must work in Information Technology," says the balloonist.

"I do" replies the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but It's of no use to anyone." The man below replies, "You must work in management."

"I do" replies the balloonist, "But how'd you know?"

"Well", says the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you're going, you expect me to be able to help. You're in the same position you were before we met, but now it's my fault."

Taken from Stack Overflow Thanks Gulzar!

I work at PBJS a creative agency that does a lot of work as a vendor for Microsoft. As a creative agency we do a lot of design work on Macs. The entire Art Department has Macs, I have a Macbook Pro laptop, our editing stations are Mac Pros. You get the idea. This is nothing shocking, the majority of creative agencies I've seen have Macs as their primary workhorse machines.

Since I do a lot of development I have a PC as my primary work machine, along with my fellow Interactive developers. I use Visual Studio for a lot of my coding. I'd even say "I'm a PC" on one of those ads. The fact is, I use them both to do my job depending on the given task.

Right now we are doing an installation for the new Microsoft Company Store. This week myself and the art director are going on-site to tweak in the space. Since we need to have our work computers with us, we needed to find a way to sneak a Mac Pro into Building 92. A picture is worth 1000 words!





MacPro box, turned inside out with Simon, our logo, and the words "I'm a PC". That should do nicely!

Labels: Microsoft, PBJS

At more than one time working with WPF I've wanted to create a generic Storyboard using Blend because it saves me time and gives me a nice time line type layout to create/tweak my Storyboard. What happens is when you save the Storyboard it's added to the Windows.Resources collection the XAML. In Silverlight you can access these Storyboard resources directly using their x:Name value. In WPF, however, you need to do it slightly differently.

• First, You need to specify x:Key for each Storyboard


• Storyboards must be found using TryFindResource:
  
  Storyboard myStoryboard = (Storyboard)TryFindResource("myStoryboard");


• TryFindResource will only work if the Storyboard is in the Window.Resources section of the XAML and you're in the code-behind of that XAML


• Once you have the reference to the Storyboard contained in a variable you can call the various Storyboard methods on it. To run it, use the Begin method:
  
  myStoryboard.Begin();

Here is a quick code snippet to help you out.

<br /><br />using System;<br />using System.Collections.Generic;<br />using System.Linq;<br />using System.Text;<br />using System.Windows;<br />using System.Windows.Controls;<br />using System.Windows.Data;<br />using System.Windows.Documents;<br />using System.Windows.Input;<br />using System.Windows.Media;<br />using System.Windows.Media.Imaging;<br />using System.Windows.Shapes;<br />using System.Media.Animation;<br />using System.Windows.Resources;<br />using System.Windows.Markup;<br />// Make sure to include this reference to use Storyboard Class<br />using System.Windows.Media.Animation;<br /><br /><br />namespace StoryboardSample<br />{<br /> public partial class Window1 : Window<br /> {<br /> // Set up the Storyboard variable<br /> public Storyboard myStoryboard;<br /> public Window1()<br /> {<br /> this.InitializeComponent();<br /> <br /> // Assign the Storyboard to the variable.<br /> myStoryboard = (Storyboard)TryFindResource("myStoryboard");<br /> myFunction();<br /> <br /> }<br /> public void myFunction()<br /> {<br /> // Begin the Animation<br /> myStoryboard.Begin();<br /> }<br /> }<br />}<br /><br />

Here is the XAML:

<br /><Window<br /> xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"<br /> xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"<br /> x:Class="StoryboardSample.Window1"<br /> x:Name="Window"<br /> Title="Window1"<br /> Width="640" Height="480"><br /> <Window.Resources><br /> <Storyboard x:Key="myStoryboard"><br /> <DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames BeginTime="00:00:00" Storyboard.TargetName="myRect" Storyboard.TargetProperty="(UIElement.RenderTransform).(TransformGroup.Children)[3].(TranslateTransform.Y)"><br /> <SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="00:00:00" Value="0"/><br /> <SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="00:00:01" Value="-71"/><br /> </DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames><br /> </Storyboard><br /> </Window.Resources><br /> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot"><br /> <Rectangle x:Name="myRect" Fill="Black" Width="300" Height="150" RenderTransformOrigin="0.5,0.5" ><br /> <Rectangle.RenderTransform><br /> <TransformGroup><br /> <ScaleTransform ScaleX="1" ScaleY="1"/><br /> <SkewTransform AngleX="0" AngleY="0"/><br /> <RotateTransform Angle="0"/><br /> <TranslateTransform X="0" Y="0"/><br /> </TransformGroup><br /> </Rectangle.RenderTransform><br /> </Rectangle><br /> </Grid><br /></Window><br />

Labels: C#, WPF, XAML

So I was following up a Tweet by <head> organizer Aral Balkan and it took me to Qik.com. There I found a fun little app that captures live video streaming and makes it available on the web.

Here's the best part. On my initial test, a co-worker at PBJS came up to my desk to say "hello" or probably ask me how much work I was getting done. Either way, this is raw reaction here people. This is WHY developers make these types of apps.




"That's cool!" Indeed.

I've been working on a cool instillation project for Microsoft and one of the things I need to do is have my application go full screen across multiple monitors. By default, if you maximize your application window inside Windows it fills the Primary Screen or Active screen but it doesn't go across all monitors. You have to manually drag the application window across to have it show up on more than one monitor. What if you wanted to make a screen saver for multiple monitors? Doing some internet searching I pieced together this little solution. Here is a code snippet that maximizes your WPF app window across all monitors in multi-mon setups. It also adds a listener for the ESC key to close the window down. Hope this helps people find this solution faster in the future.

<br />using System;<br />using System.Collections.Generic;<br />using System.Linq;<br />using System.Text;<br />using System.Windows;<br />using System.Windows.Interop;<br />using System.Runtime.InteropServices;<br />using System.Windows.Controls;<br />using System.Windows.Data;<br />using System.Windows.Documents;<br />using System.Windows.Input;<br />using System.Windows.Media;<br />using System.Windows.Media.Imaging;<br />using System.Windows.Navigation;<br />using System.Windows.Shapes;<br />using System.Windows.Forms;<br /><br />namespace MyNamespace<br />{<br /> /// <summary><br /> /// Maximize your WPF app window across multiple monitors logic for Window1.xaml<br /> /// Also ads the ESCAPE key to close the window.<br /> /// </summary><br /> public partial class Window1 : Window<br /> {<br /> int height = 0;<br /> int width = 0;<br /><br /> public Window1()<br /> {<br /> <br /> InitializeComponent();<br /> <br /><br /> foreach (System.Windows.Forms.Screen screen in System.Windows.Forms.Screen.AllScreens)<br /> {<br /> height += screen.WorkingArea.Height;<br /> width += screen.WorkingArea.Width;<br /><br /> }<br /><br /> Top = 0;<br /> Left = 0;<br /> this.Height = height;<br /> this.Width = width;<br /><br /><br /> <br /> this.WindowState = WindowState.Normal;<br /> this.WindowStyle = WindowStyle.None;<br /> this.ResizeMode = ResizeMode.NoResize;<br /> <br /> this.KeyDown += new System.Windows.Input.KeyEventHandler(Window1_KeyDown);<br /> }<br /><br /> void Window1_KeyDown(object sender, System.Windows.Input.KeyEventArgs e)<br /> {<br /> if (e.Key == System.Windows.Input.Key.Escape)<br /> this.Close();<br /> }<br /> }<br />}<br /><br />

Then in your XAML make sure you don't have any values set so the code behind can do it's thing.
<br /><Window x:Class="MyNamespace.Window1"<br /> xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"<br /> xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"<br /> Title="Window1" ><br />

Labels: C#, WPF