MVP Weekend
George W. “The Desperate” Clingerman plans something spectacular XNA related for this weekend. You have to see the excitement here in the barracks: everyone’s running around, waving the arms in the air, the Sarg’s hyperventilating and Catalin’s worried about the peer pressure to counter the outcome…
Meanwhile, Chris W. “The Fool” Williams doesn’t like to be called a tool and Jim “The Tool” Perry still pretends to be the Evil MVP, without actually pulling an apple.
Shortly Replicated Pancakes
Jim “First Hand Knowledge” Perry writes XNA and Short Term Memory Loss.
Andy “Not Your Father” Dunn leaksprophesies information of XNA 10.5 (hint: it will take quite a few years and the arrival of the Sith Lords before anyone will get their hands onto it).
Richard “Pancakes” Fine works hard and eats unhealthy.
Charles “Picturesque” Humphrey does some aftermath (if you count photo sharing as that) of the MVP 2010 Summit.
If you’re in HR for your company Down Under and want to make one Glenn “Legendary Legend” Wilson unredundant this is the time!
Promit “Keep On Walking” Roy shares progress of BioReplicant, “a completely reactive procedural animation system for use in video games”.
The Brotherhood
Catalin “Gone Green” Zima recycles posts on Sgt. Conker to feature John “Snow Shovel Master” Sedlak once again.
Jon “Last of the Mohicans” Watte ponders the future of PC gaming and is reflecting about the quality of his subtle way to ask questions.
Andy “Master Of The Brotherhood” Dunn will not put Chris G. “Walk Like An Egyptian” Williams onto his list, but onto the Adult Friend Finder one.
Chad “I Wrote Some Books” Carter encourages the Sarge to pick up SBARG again.
Vincente “Works On Boring Things” Cartas lobbies for Phil “The Quiet Veteran” Bourke (and so do we: IGDA members vote for Phil!).
Loïc “Epsicode And Not-A-MVP” Dansart (the Little Gamers: Teh Game chap) dropped the 1st public screenshot of his Dream Build Play entry.
Glenn “Legendary Seeker” Wilson seeks reasons for an academic XNA Code Camp in Victoria.
About Language
Iñaki “Visionary” Ayucar starts the week with an introduction to or of (depending on whom [or is it who?] you ask) Extension Methods and why they rock and why you most certainly want to use them for, like, everything.
On a bright Tuesday morning, George W. “The Giant” Clingerman pushes some very dark clouds onto the sky by publicly expressing his strong feelings for regions to organize code (that’s a +1e100 reputation thing; As a service for your memory: regions were introduced to hide the verbose, designer create code blobs in Windows Forms et al. when C# did not support partial classes.), finding a strong supporter in Vincente “1.8” Cartas.
To break the flow here’s a tiny, tiny photo of the XNA MVPs at the MVP Summit 2010:
Photo © 2010 Microsoft Corporation
Benjamin "The Invisible Yet Photographable MVP" Nitschke has some more photos from the Summit in Seattle 2010 (that’s the year of the happening, not the number of photos…).
John “Don’t Quote That” Sedlak playstests games.
Pedro D. “Talking Head” Güida has been granted a MAP award (yep, that’s right: there’s a “Microsoft Active Professional” award program for “professionals who are considered to be among the top 5% of most active contributors in the community”, which, basically, translates to “You talk a lot”).
Elsewhere, Andy “Sparkly Crown Jewels” Dunn and Chris G. “Fighter” Williams (who’s already on the meet the team page [hrm, when did that one get updated? Lat I looked, which was not that long ago, it featured fewer members…]) go commando in support of VB.NET, while Jim “Reads a Legend” Perry stays on the other side of the fence (or so). Later, after the dust of the epic and never ending battle settled, Chris G. “Equalizer” Williams embraces all languages (but not PHP).
The best news to last: George W. “Dance Time” Clingerman found his awesome back.
Jim Blogs About the Content Pipeline
Yes, that comes as a surprise: Jim “Eraser” Perry, the chap that deleted your forum posts for Very Good Reasons™, returns from the Global MVP Summit 2010 just to find his I am here for the community by the community spirit refreshed and comes out of the shadows – or, in true Phoenix fashion (that’s the mythical firebird, not the city in Arizona), arising from the ashes – with the master piece of diving deeply into the XNA Game Studio content pipeline to leverage its powers to serialize your game objects into (and out of!) XML.
In more dramatic news: George W. “End of Days” Clingerman lost his awesome – investigations if a certain J. is involved in this traumatic loss have already started: If you have any knowledge about the whereabouts of poor little Georgys awesome, please report to him immediately – and became all emo.
Meanwhile, Andy “Running Man” Dunn pleas to stop bashing the XNA MVPs, Chris G. “Predator” Williams exchanges gold for bullets and tells UPS how it is, Chad “Jingle All the Way” Carter longs for a Windows Phone 7 Series, er, phone, Glenn “Total Recall” Wilson prepares for the Azure launch, Jon “The 6th Day” Watte discovers Charles Darwin, Vincente “Collateral Damage” Cartas unboxes boxy boxes and Joel “Stay Hungry” Martinez progresses nicely.
What Is George Doing?
George W. “I Am Drinking When My Wife Ain’t ‘round” Clingerman just took a break to “eat the lunch and watch [names of a show and a famous internet video rental service removed to prevent being accused of product placement]”. He also plans to setup accounts on Twitter for each of his toes, complete with lists for his left and right foots as nothing compares to bus stories from the very roots.
Then They Met…
INTERMEZZO
Bellevue & Redmond, the 2010 MVP Global Summit
Enter Them Almost All.
Jim. At BWI waiting for my flight to Detroit, then Seattle for#MVP10
Jim. On the plane getting ready to head to Detroit for #mvp10
Jim. Just landed in Detroit. A bit of snow, but not bad. An hour before my next flight.
Jim. Just boarded the plane for Seattle. About 4 hours or so to go!
Michael. up and getting ready for day one #mvp10
John. Jealous of all those attending #MVPS10 
George. Argh! Just want to sign in an sync my Zune! Stinking LIVE service is down (at least the Hotmail portion)
Richard is making candy.
Michael. Registration done #mvp10 now what?
Andy. @mcummings : DO a little dance - cos its dancing time#kissypoo does #mvp10
Andy. @NemoKrad : The whole gang is back in town... i shall be over later this afternoon
Jim. Just landed in Seattle. Snow in Detroit caused problems with icing on the plane.
Andy. @MachXGames : I prefer my icing on a cake
Jim. On the shuttle to the hotel. I hope to have time for lunch before side sessions start. #MVP10 is ON! 
Jim. @The_Zman so do I. Now I'm an hour behind schddule.
Michael. In codeplex session #mvp10
Michael. Heading to DPE session with @corymiller
Chris. Sitting in the DPE session
George. I'm here at #mvp10 need to figure out what to do next..
Chris. @clingermangw start drinking?
Jim. @chrisgwilliams doesn't that start tonite? Don't be an early adopter. 
Chris. @MachXGames when and where?
Jim. Welcome speech getting ready to start for #MVP10
Jim. @chrisgwilliams after the keynote in the Evergreen ballroom where it's free, unless you're buying for everyone!
George. XNA mvps catching up at #mvp10
Jim. Who is the Alaska MVP?!? 1396 MVPs here at #MVP10
George. We need to write a required reading FAQ on how to ask questions at #mvp10 ....
Richard is sad not to be at #mvp10. Have fun, guys! I expect to hear stories of drunken debauchery and old men yelling 'SUPERPIG!' in crowded rooms
Jim. @Superpig not the same without you. Richard already did the "SUPERPIG" text messages.
George. @Superpig we'll do our best superpig was the first text I got when I arrived
Jim. Fish throwing at #MVP10! WTF?!?
Chris. hanging out by the fireplace, just outside the Twister Dork… err, I mean Twisted Cork.
Joel. I just put up a new version of nBayes: http://nbayes.codeplex.com
Catalin. George Clingerman: The first unit test is the C# compiler. #mvp10
Catalin. XNA MVPs are all awesome and fun! #mvp10
Catalin. going to sleep soon. @clingermangw is already asleep, and I shouldn't wake him up. He's violent sometimes Exciting day tomorrow at #mvp10
Andy. #mvp10 - no secrets - its NDA don't you know - just lots of drinkin'
Andy. @CatalinZima : @clingermangw i such a wuss these days
Photos courtesy Charles Humphrey.
Tools And Fools
SCENE XXV
Enter Matt “Gone Native” Pettineo.
Matt. Recently I’ve been spending a lot of time with the various performance and debugging utilities available for Direct3D, and I thought it might be useful to give a quick overview of what’s out there. I’m sure most people who do a lot of Direct3D/XNA work are aware of these tools, but probably aren’t familiar with all of the really cool things you can do with them.
List the tools to cover.
Matt. So at this point just everybody knows about knows about PIX. I mean it comes with the DirectX SDK, for crying out loud. This handy little program started its like as the Performance Investigator for Xbox (original Xbox, that is) and today is useful performance and debugging tool for both Windows and the Xbox 360. […]
If you’re an XNA programmer I’d recommend checking out my in-depth PIX With XNA article, especially if you’re new to D3D in general. For rest of you, here’s a summary of what I think are the most useful things you can do with PIX:
Exeunt.
SCENE XXVI
The VentSpace once again.
Enter Promit “Gone Shoveling” Roy.
Promit. I’m currently working towards the release of SlimTune 0.2.1, which will hopefully happen before GDC. If you’ve been paying attention, that might seem a bit odd to you — 0.2.0 isn’t out yet. That’s because 0.2.0 is the pre-release version, and I need testers for it.
More the details and contact.
Exit.
State And Art
SCENE XXIII
The CodeCube.NET.
Enter Joel “Touch by Madness” Martinez.
Joel. I’ve been very interested in multitouch every since I saw Johnny Lee’s awesome finger tracking videos. Specifically, multitouch as it relates to game development. With the impending release of windows 7 tablet PCs, I have hopes that it might open up new possibilities and markets for games on the windows platform.
Examine the State of Multitouch with XNA.
Exeunt.
SCENE XXIV
The Virtual Realms Down Under.
Enter Glenn “Touched by Sleep” Wilson.
Glenn. This week end worked out to be a quite one, but in during the several down hours I decided to pick up the Tablet again and see what I could do. The main focus was to start top convert some of the developer art I have been using in a small game I am working on. The by product of the session meant that I picked up a pencil and did some more drawing.
Show the drawings.
Exeunt.
Sing And Read
SCENE XXI
The well-known ventspace.
Enter Promit “I Can’t Dance” Roy.
Roy. I wrote this a while back and I keep losing it. Maybe now that it’s here, it won’t get lost again.
Sing along The Eye of the Coder.
Exeunt.
SCENE XXII
The blog of one John.
Enter John “I See Dead Beetles” Sedlak.
John. If you hate reading the XNA Forums because of the low contrast and overly wide style, there is good news. I have managed to rewrite a bit of the CSS to drastically increase the readability of threads. As an added bonus, your overall experience on the forum will be better. The modifications were done using the Personalized Web plugin for Chrome, but it works just as well in similar plugins for Firefox (I was testing in the Web Developer plugin).
Share the code and some before and after screens.
Exit.