To Whom It May Concern...

Wired! offers us this article about playing games for money. Now, it's not a lot of money, but it's playing games for a living...

The task: 1) Update your company's winform application to resolve data entry issues and to implement image thumbnails so that images can be linked with data. Migrate from a jet based database system to and msde based system. Create a new install application that will create an MSDE instance and allow for networked communications at your customer's locations. Create auto-update feature that will allow for database updates as well as application modifications. 2) Add features to the web site your company hosts for it's 3rd party customers so that said 3rd parties can place more complex orders with multiple pricing models. Create an OrderProcessing database to accept these more complex orders. Allow the site to have the apperance of your customer's website so that their customers do notice a great difference in look and feel. 3) Enhance the web site your customers use for there various functions to also use the new OrderProcessing database (instead of Access/Jet), s...

Yea, I know, games aren't everything. But sometimes you just wanna have a little challenge to the cerebral cortex that involves non stressful, un-important stuff. In an effort to provide this for you, I have provided a couple of links to some online multiplayer games. Kigns of Chaos is a pretty good, text based, knights and swords kind of RPG. Ferion Is a little different. It's a space based, some graphical interfaces, and a lot of thought. I like it, cause you can take it at your own pace, if you have to leave it for a while, you'll be okay, or you can be in there more often if you'ld like. Take a look. If you use the links on my page I'll get points, so please do.

Why is this such a popular topic? Cause everybody makes exceptions. It's a polite way of saying you made a mistake, you didn't plan for something. It could be as basic as not validating data entry. It could be you never figured somebody would score 50million on your game... Whatever the case, here is another clear breakdown of exceptions and what they mean. I like it cause it mentions System.SystemException, which I hadn't looked into too much. Check out Eli Robillard's site here. Also from Eli's site, I saw this interesting post . It talks about the nefarious SQL Injection fear, mentioning 'Use Parameters' as well as Regex (Regular Expression) techniques to clense your code. I haven't used Regex yet, but after this article, I think I will. I also liked how he made a simple class to parse illegal characters from strings that may be entered manually. A link on his site also mentioned Request Validation , a feature in ASP.Net 1.1 that has been sa...

Gotta buy this! A DVD Rewinder

There are by some estimates more than a million weblogs. But most of them get no visibility in search engines. Only a few "A-List" blogs get into the top search engine results for a given topic, while the majority of blogs just don't get noticed. The reason is that the smaller blogs don't have enough links pointing to them. But this posting could solve that. Let's help the smaller blogs get more visibility! This posting is GoMeme 4.0 . It is part of an experiment to see if we can create a blog posting that helps 1000's of blogs get higher rankings in Google. So far we have tried 3 earlier variations. Our first test, GoMeme 1.0 , spread to nearly 740 blogs in 2.5 days. This new version 4.0 is shorter, simpler, and fits more easily into your blog. Why are we doing this? We want to help thousands of blogs get more visibility in Google and other search engines. How does it work? Just follow the instructions below to re-post this meme in your blog and add yo...

If you can't see Rotate Clockwise or Rotate Counter Clockwise when you right click on a thumbnail in Windows Explorer, try this: regsvr32 shimgvw I'm posting it here so that it will be out in the world for me and others to find.

Beware of YourGiftCards.com . I accepted an offer of a 'free' $50 dollar gift card for ordering and Entertainment book. The entertainment book cost $15 and has already saved us about $50. So, although I don't usually try these offers, I knew this was something I wanted to order, so why not try to get a free gift card. I ordered my book in April, and received it in less than 2 weeks. Now in August, 3 months later, I still don't have my gift card. In an e-mail I received 1 week ago today, they claim to have received all the necessary correspondence from me, yet still have not shipped my Gift Card. I have had to go through mumbled requirements, even mailing THEM a printed out form. Some offers out their are legit. But there are too many out there like this company.

UPDATE BELOW A post by Rory Blyth reminded me of the days of doors. He mentioned, and even posted a screen shot of, LoRD (Legend of the Red Dragon), an old BBS door. (Basically an online role playing game before the internet.) I found an interview with Seth A. Robinson (aka. Seth Able) . He created LoRD and a couple of other BBS doors. I then found his site . Looks like he's been a busy fella for only 28 years old. I am wondering if he's gotten into .Net (I know he's done some Pocket PC and DirectX stuff) and if so, could Rory and Carl talk with him and maybe do a show about game development? >> Here is the reply I got from Seth. Wow, he wrote me back! >> I’ve never used C#. I’ve only used VB on a view projects, I’m not great with it. C++ is my fave! Thanks, Seth A. Robinson www.rtsoft.com

Check out this Shark Tank Wedding .