Favorite Pictures of 2007

So one of the things I wanted to do this weekend was look through the 3000 or so pictures that I took this year and pick out my favorite picture for each month (that I actually took pictures). I think this is useful because it gives me a chance to look over my photos from this last year and really see what I did well and what I didn’t

Totally Emersive Environments

So I know a lot has gone into making games look as realistic as possible but I think very few games have put a lot of work into having a giant game.  I think the best example of this has been Crackdown (which I have recently started playing again).  I find it really nice to be able to have one load screen the first time I start playing and then be able to move anywhere in the huge game world without another load screen unless I die.  I have to compare this to Oblivion when I was playing that because every time I had to enter a dungeon or city there was a long load delay.  Given Oblivion looked WAY better and had lot items that could be picked up/stolen at any point.  But I have to say that I have had a lot of fun the last couple days just wandering around in Crackdown just shooting at things.  Both of these games have been my favorites of the last couple years because there was so much to explore.  I remember having a lot of fun with Grand Theft Auto too and I’m really looking forward to GTA IV.  I wish more games had this much to explore but I can see how it would be a lot for developers to do. 

A Picture Box in VB.net That Remembers It’s Path

A couple days I was working on a personal project where I needed to sort some images (maybe more on that later ) But while I was working on it I want to throw some quick thumbnails up that I could easily throw up on a panel and remove after I had I was done with them. I found out that the build in PictureBox control only holds the bitmap image and not the path to the file. I could have held this information inside an array in the class that I was working on but I realized that it would be better if I could just extend the PictureBox so then all I needed to do was set the path and it would load a thumbnail of the image.

Cute Animals

It’s no wonder there are so many pet pictures on Flickr. Look how cute they are…

New Years Resolutions

I know it’s almost cliche but I’m going to write a post about my New Years resolutions.  I think that by writing them down that I have more of a goal to work towards.   Plus knowing that there is some record that I decided on these will actually help me go through with them.