Where do I start?  Channel 9 is going to choose a blogger to go to the PDC for free, and armed with my new blog design I think it should be me…  here’s why:

I get more involved with the community every day.  Since I completed my Computer Science degree at the University of Houston in December I have been posting questions and answers on the ASP.NET forums, I have published and updated an article on Code Project that got pretty good reviews, and I plan to give a “tips n tricks” presentation at the next Houston .NET User Group.  This will be my first attempt at speaking, and I’m a bit nervous, but I think it’ll be fun and hopefully I can spread some of my experience to others.   

I attended my first conference recently, Houston DevCon 2005, and absolutely loved it.   I can only imagine how fun it would be to attend.  I pleaded with my boss to send me to DevConnections, then TechEd, and finally a local, cheap, 1 day conference came (DevCon) and I was able to attend. 

I am an active blogger.  I try to post something worthwile every day or so.  Since I find a lot of humor and professional advice in the blogs I read, I hope to pass that on to some junior developers trying to make sense of it all.  Hopefully my experiences and thoughts might help others aspiring to be successful developers.

I know everybody is going to do this, but it’s still valid. I vow to blog religiously about my experiences at the PDC, take pictures and post them here, and generally spread my enthusiasm about the developer community to others.  I might get a little creative with my camera and try and do some amateur interviews.

Finally, my kids just want me to shutup about it!  I’ve been talking about going for so long now, they can’t stand it! 

I even have some audio supporters!  Listen to them recommend me! 

(umm, no, they aren’t robots — what are you, nuts?)

Mike wants me to go.

So does Crystal

Even Rosa, the hispanic lady at the local dry cleaners wants me to go! (hey, how does she know I like .NET?)

(oh, and thanks for looking!)

I have been playing MOH: European Assault for XBox lately, and I think it is a pretty solid WW2 shooter.  The controller gun action is pretty easy to get used to (I’m so used to a mouse it’s sometimes hard to play on a console).  I don’t know what is is that attracts me to WW2 shooters over others like Viet Nam or futuristic ones.  Maybe it’s the terrain, maybe it’s the time period, I don’t know.   I’m addicted and I play just about every single one that comes out.

One thing is bugging me though.  Why is it that in just about EVERY World War 2 game I’ve ever played snipers pop out of windows on the 2nd or 3rd floor, you shoot them, and they fall forward out of the window.  For a genre of games that are supposed to be incredibly realistic, that just seems stupid.  In 1944 did bullets actually pull people toward the shooter?  Not only is this dumb because it happens, but also because it happens to ANYONE who is standing near a ledge.  I know for a fact if I shoot this guy on the water tower that he’s going to fall over the railing.

Here’s a screenshot of what I’m talking about:

Of all of the WW2 shooters out so far, here are my favorites:

Brothers in Arms – I love the realistic team play.  I rarely play a game like this twice, but this one was an exception.  I can’t wait for BIA 2.

Call of Duty (and expansion) – This game was so cinematic, it really kicked MOH out of my favorite spot for a while.  I keep playing this one, simply because it’s so immersive.

Battlefield 1942 – I played this game for hours on end.  The sniper rifle was more realistic than you usually find in games (some people probably found it annoying, but I found it challenging).  I got pretty good at hitting running enemies from 300 yards away, leading the crosshairs in front of their heads by about 2 inches.  Yummy.

MOH Frontline – I feel that this game really set the stage.  It had a great soundtrack and really felt like Saving Private Ryan.  The other Medal of Honors didn’t quite capture the atmosphere like this one, but they were fun to play nonetheless.

Well my copy of Game Coding Complete, 2nd Edition arrived on Friday.  I knew it was going to be good after a good recommendation by Jason Olson.

It is now Sunday afternoon and I am about 200 pages into it.  I am really enjoying his attention to detail on topics that are often ignored in most online resources and even other game programming books!

This book really DOES belong on your bookshelf if you enjoy game programming at all.

Today I wanted to extend my NHibernate implementation to allow for multi-page transactions for certain operations (that I control) and keep with the cleaner ISession-per-HttpRequest pattern for everything else.

To do that I had to modify my HttpModule to allow for this check, but I had no access to the SessionState here.  Why is that?

Here’s what I was doing in my HttpModule:

public void Init(HttpApplication application)


{ 

   //add event handlers
   application.BeginRequest += new EventHandler(context_BeginRequest);
   application.EndRequest += new EventHandler(context_EndRequest); 

}

I was creating and disconnecting my ISession object inside of those methods. The problem is that SessionState is not loaded until after the BeginRequest had fired and before the EndRequest had fired. (specifically it is accessibly after the AcquireRequestState event). So, changing my code to this worked:

public void Init(HttpApplication application) 
{ 
    application.PreRequestHandlerExecute += new EventHandler(application_PreRequestHandlerExecute); 
    application.PostRequestHandlerExecute += new EventHandler(application_PostRequestHandlerExecute); 
}

Also, I saw some people online incorrectly suggesting that one implement the IRequiresSessionState or IReadOnlySessionState interfaces, but if you read the docs, those are marker interfaces for HttpHandlers only.

I had my blog redesigned by Bob Yu, our lead designer at LyntonWeb.  He’s really sharp, and a whiz with just about any design program he gets his hands on.  He also helped me get the css to play nice in both browsers, but we’re still ironing out wrinkles.

You can check his work out at http://bpd.plantedtank.net.  Shoot him an email if you’d like to hire him.  He’s a good guy.

So, what do you think of my new look?

Be sure to visit all the options under "Configuration" in the Admin Menu Bar above. There are 16 themes to choose from, and you can also create your own.

Sometimes for fun I will read a google-translated, chinese blog and giggle at the funny things that it translates. 
My favorite is “My Guestbook” becomes “Abundant Guest Garden.”

Even funnier is Star Wars: Episode III with chinese translated subtitles…

winterson.com: episode iii, the backstroke of the west

This is hilarious!

I updated my article on Code Project, the new Control Injector is much better and more useful than before.  If you haven’t yet read it, please do so and rate the article.

The link is on the right under My Articles.