Author Archive
Qualche giorno fa ho scoperto una roba fichissima, ma per raccontarvela partiamo dall’inizio.
Quanti social network, chat, servizi e balle varie usate? Io mille, un po’ per lavoro e un po’ per non rimanere “esiliato” quando parlo con le persone. Prima di avere Facebook, ero una persona normale, e le serate erano a suon di risate per le cretinate che si trovavano su FB, ma io non ero mai “taggato”, non mi “scrivevano in bacheca”, “non partecipavo agli eventi” e non ero “fan di un ca**o”. Insomma fuori dal mondo. Alla fine mi sono ritrovato con MSN, Skype, Facebook, Linked-in, Twitter, due blog, pfff…..
Con tutto il lavoro che ho da fare in questi ultmi anni, tra università, clienti e attività Microsoft è diventato improbabile che mi si trovi su tutti tutti i giorni. E’ molto che ho messo la summercard di Vodafone 
.
E’ troppo stressante la finirei così:
e alla fine non riuscirei a vedere più entrambi i delfini:
Ho scoperto un programma GRATUITO e molto funzionale che raggruppa in una sola schermata un botto di servizi, si chiama TweetDeck 
ed è alla versione beta, ma funziona alla grande .
Ecco uno screenshot dal mio TweetDeck per Windows
Bene, il mio post l’ho fatto, ora manca solo usarlo
-dave
Yup guys, I’ve took some weeks to discover new stuff on Silverlight and especially on Silverlight 4 and fun/useful features.
I’ll just show something really cool on this post that came into my hands few days ago.
This post talks about painless COM interoperability, emails from Outlook using Silverlight 4. Whaaat ?? yes send an email from Outlook with Silverlight 4 takes more time to describe it than implement it.
I’m going to use “dynamic” keyword introduced in C# 4.
dynamic is a type, like “int” or “string” but has a lot of meanings, a sort of “var”, but this magic keyword allows us to call methods in python, ruby or whatever COM IDispatch object without an interop assembly, it resolves all the headache for us.
its simply :
dynamic d = GetSomethingCool();
d.MyMethod();
To use it you must import Microsoft.CSharp dll and since we are going to use COM objects we have to import System.Windows dll to use AutomationFactory class that allows us to communicate with any software in your PC and, for our purpose, Outlook.
When using a dynamic expression you do not have Intellisense support, because everything is resolved @ runtime…hey folks I didn’t said that is all for free 
, but is a little cost that sometimes we can pay.
Now, create a new Silverlight 4 project and Add a button in XAML:
<UserControl x:Class="ComInteropWithSilverlight.MainPage" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400"> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="OrangeRed"> <Button x:Name="_installButton" Width="300" Height="100" Content="Install" FontSize="20" Click="_installButton_Click"/> </Grid> </UserControl>
and in C# we add a global variable called outlook
dynamic outlook;
And in the following two methods we’ll open Outlook application and get everything ready to send (including some checks if outlook is available):
private void PrepareOutlook() { try { outlook = AutomationFactory.GetObject("Outlook.Application"); Send(); } catch (Exception) { try { outlook = AutomationFactory.CreateObject("Outlook.Application"); Send(); } catch (Exception) { MessageBox.Show("Outlook is unavailable"); } } }
private void Send() { int inbox = 6; int newemail = 0; outlook.Session.GetDefaultFolder(inbox).Display(); dynamic mail = outlook.CreateItem(newemail); mail.Recipients.Add("myname@contoso.com"); mail.Subject = "CodeZero Team"; mail.Body = "This message was sent from Silverlight 4"; mail.Save(); mail.Display(); }
Last step is to check if the Silverlight 4 application is installed and has elevated privileges. For security reasons we need to let Silverlight run OOB (out of browser) and then give it elevated privileges, otherwise we cannot communicate with Outlook.
To achieve this right click in your solution and select “Properties”
Then enable OOB and click the settings button
Make sure that elevated trust check is selected
Once you have all this stuff ready add few lines to implement what the button has to do in its click event
private void _installButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { if (!App.Current.InstallState.Equals(InstallState.Installed)) { App.Current.Install(); } else if (App.Current.HasElevatedPermissions) { PrepareOutlook(); } }
and you are ready to open outlook with new email ready.
As always the link ad the source code. Enjoy!
-dave
Hi guys, today we got two new contributors. Let me present them:
Francesco & Giuseppe
I’ve seen great stuff from them, we’re sure that they can just make this blog richer
-dave
Waaaah guys, today I received another request for continuing the tutorial I’ve began last year. 15 requests are enough to me to decide to continue it. (The code is at the end)
First, it might not be the same, since I’ve lost the code, so I just tried to do approximately the same.
As you might guess our animation should run on GPU and so we have to create an effect. This effect morphs our window. The morphing algorithm is done with Beziér curbs, and the concept is pretty simple.
We need to get some handle and blend them and all pixels around, like in the figure I want to push L2 and L3 handles down and all others should stretch consequently.
Our algorithm subdivide a texture into 16 handles (Left [1,2,3,4], Upper[1,2,3,4], Right[1,2,3,4], Down[1,2,3,4]).
Since we want to act at window level we can first get a trick, to understand what’s going on and then get real window part and move them. Pass into the effect the Window view as texture.
Here goes the HLSL effect used (the zip at the end )
sampler2D implicitInput : register(s0);
float lp0 : register(c0);
float lp1 : register(c1);
float lp2 : register(c2);
float lp3 : register(c3);
float rp0 : register(c4);
float rp1 : register(c5);
float rp2 : register(c6);
float rp3 : register(c7);
//up-down coordinates
float up0 : register(c8);
float up1 : register(c9);
float up2 : register(c10);
float up3 : register(c11);
float dp0 : register(c12);
float dp1 : register(c13);
float dp2 : register(c14);
float dp3 : register(c15);
float BezierInterpolate(float x0, float x1, float x2, float x3, float t)
{
float b0 = pow(1-t, 3);
float b1 = 3*t*pow(1-t,2);
float b2 = 3*t*t*(1-t);
float b3 = pow(t, 3);
return b0*x0 + b1*x1 + b2*x2 + b3*x3;
}
float4 main(float2 uv : TEXCOORD) : COLOR
{
float left = BezierInterpolate(lp0, lp1, lp2, lp3, uv.y);
float right = BezierInterpolate(rp0, rp1, rp2, rp3, uv.y);
float up = BezierInterpolate(up0, up1, up2, up3, uv.x);
float down = BezierInterpolate(dp0, dp1, dp2, dp3, uv.x);
//apply the warp effect to texture color
if (uv.x >= left && uv.x <= right && uv.y >=up && uv.y <= down)
{
float tx = lerp(0, 1, (uv.x-left)/(right-left));
float ty = lerp(0, 1, (uv.y-up)/(down-up));
float2 pos = float2(tx, ty);
return tex2D(implicitInput, pos);
}
//leave the background transparent
else return float4(0,0,0,0);
}
And we have to map into a C# class with the respective dependency properties, and I’m not going to list here the class since is pretty dumb, and attached into the zip.
Now we need to use this effect.
- Create a storyboard that controls the handles
- Put the window as texture of the effect
- Make window transparent and re-arrange open/minimize/close buttons
- Listen and intercept when window is closing
Lets try.
1. Create a Storyboard similar to this one to open and close the window.
<Storyboard x:Key="L1Point" AutoReverse="False" Completed="CloseAnim_Completed" > <DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames BeginTime="00:00:00" Storyboard.TargetName="fx" Storyboard.TargetProperty="(L3)"> <SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="00:00:00" Value="0" /> <SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="00:00:01" Value="0.8" /> </DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames> <DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames BeginTime="00:00:00" Storyboard.TargetName="fx" Storyboard.TargetProperty="(L4)"> <SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="00:00:00" Value="0" /> <SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="00:00:01" Value="0.75" /> </DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames>
Where “fx” refers to our effect and (L3) to the handler of our texture.
2.Put the window as texture of the effect.
This one is simple. Create a Border to wrap the main Grid and add an effect to this Border.
<Border x:Name="myBorder"> <Border.Effect> <warp3D:WarpEffect Input="{Binding ElementName=win}" x:Name="fx"/> </Border.Effect> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="OrangeRed"> <!-- ... code ... --> </Grid> </Border>
and as you can see the Input parameter of the effect refers to “win” which is the name given to the window
<Window x:Class="WPFGeenieWindow.Window1" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:warp3D="clr-namespace:WarpShaderLibrary;assembly=WarpEffectLibrary3D" Title="Warp WPF Window " x:Name="win" > <!-- ... code ... --> </Window>
3. Make window transparent and re-arrange open/minimize/close buttons
This is a bit tricky. We are going to replace the top control bar with a custom one. So split the main grid into 2 rows, the first 30 px height and the rest to the app. Do not forget to manage the handle to drag around the window.
<Border x:Name="myBorder"> <Border.Effect> <warp3D:WarpEffect Input="{Binding ElementName=win}" x:Name="fx"/> </Border.Effect> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="OrangeRed"> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="30"/> <RowDefinition Height="*"/> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <!--close windo buttons--> <Grid Grid.Row="0" Background="#7825AA78" MouseLeftButtonDown="Grid_MouseLeftButtonDown"> <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" HorizontalAlignment="Right" > <Button x:Name="MinimizeButton" Width="25" Height="25" Click="MinimizeButton_Click" FontSize="18" Content="-"/> <Button x:Name="ExitButton" Width="25" Height="25" Click="ExitButton_Click" FontFamily="Wingdings 2" FontSize="18" Content="V"/> </StackPanel> </Grid> </Grid>
and the fun parts:
a) handle the drag
private void Grid_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e) { this.DragMove(); }
b) intercept the closing event
protected override void OnClosing(System.ComponentModel.CancelEventArgs e) { //allows shutdown if(!state.Equals("close")) e.Cancel = true; base.OnClosing(e); }
where state is a custom variable changed to be able to determine when closing and when minimizing. If not closing, cancel the action.
Here the wonderful app
and here the animation:
Here goes the full source code, as promessed. Hopefully lots comments 
will come, tell me your solutions/experiences.
Next time I’ll going to show another solution, more efficient for sure , based on this one.
Enjoy
-dave
Hello guys! This year CodeZero team decided to participate to Imagine Cup, the largest technology competition for students in the Hearth, organized by Microsoft.
Let me spend two words on Imagine Cup, before to dig into what we’ve done.
To participate to Imagine Cup students have to create a team and submit for one of the offered categories, which may vary each year. Main categories are:
- Software Design
- Embedded development
- Game Design
- Windows Phone 7
- ….
We all have a common theme, which can vary each year, but last two years was to reach one of 8 Millennium Goals.
The competition starts on August 1st and ends on April, but this is decided by each Country. In fact Students first participate to National finals and the first team on Software Design goes to World Finals.
This year in Italy we were 250 competitors, and each year the number is growing, which means, better competitors, and better softwares!
As CodeZero we developed a software called Flexy, and we placed 2nd for Software Design! It’s been a wonderful experience.
Flexy is a software that let you have a better way to Work. Our slogan is BETTER WORK, BETTER WORLD. It does not follow directly the 8 Millennium Goals, but what we thought is that, if we can have less dirty money floating around, let people find work more easily, a good way to organize the work, we can also export this good organization and have money to build schools, reduce the ignorance, do advertising campaign, to reach Millennium Goals.
Now, people said to us, “ok, but you can get money from everywhere, even buying an ice cream and give money to Millennium Goals”. True, but is not an organized massive way to do it, and does not teach something to the community.
But anyway we didn’t directly followed the Millennium Goals, even thought that our work was HUGE, and well organized and presented.
We were amazed how difficult for the jury was to decide among 6 complex softwares (finalists).
Another aspect of the competition was to meet companies that look for talents. We meet them and we’re really satisfied how things turned out well for us. We’ll see and we’ll update as soon as possible. So just for now we won’t open to everybody our secrets as we usually do, but we’ll share the advertising video for Flexy.
For people who speaks enough italian to read some articles we are proud to point out some good articles that talks about this competition and about us (plus all other guys and teams)
Links
Another good source is facebook with our own page, official Imagine Cup italian page, and the official italian blog (designed by Code Zero ).
Comments are always appreciated!
-dave & roby
Prima di iniziare a descrivervi la “tranquilla” pasquetta di quest’anno un po’ di terminologia per i non addetti ai lavori:
Dicesi comunemente porceddu il maialetto schironato (cioè con una spranga che lo trapassa dal c***ulo alla bocca ) questo:
che è diverso da un tizio che pensa a questo:
. “A porceddu tirato” quindi significa “avere un maialetto succulento da cuocere”.
Comunque dopo un’oretta e mezzo di macchina arriviamo nel posto designato per la nostra tranquilla scampagnata in montagna, dove troviamo si e no il mondo 
. Well si tratta di un’area attrezzata per cotture e quindi ci arraffiamo il nostro posto ed iniziamo la ricerca di un tavolino…beh essendo in 9 (5 males e 4 females) siamo riusciti a trovarlo con relativa facilità e a culo pure vicino al barbecue.
La ricerca della legna è stata più difficile, per trovare dei rami grossi abbiamo anche pensato di tirar via da un albero un ramo di circa 50 cm che sembrava ormai morto. “A tipo Jackie Chan”
mi sono pure arrampicato per poi scoprire che non si sarebbe staccato manco “a crick”, ma sono dettagli.
Il dettaglio importante è che la gente lì era stra organizzata, non come noi “di città”, cazzo legna seria e maialetto tirato (e schironato).
Well tuttavia ci siamo difesi benissimo con i nostri 3 Kg e passa di carne. Senza contare le 5 bottiglie di vino (e le ragazze non bevevano) hanno fatto il loro “lavoro”.
Vino rigorosamente Cannonau, da bravi sardi 
Ovviamente la preparazione della carne e legna richiede birra, non vino, e nemmeno quella mancava .
Ce n’era anche per i vicini di barbecue. La cosa incredibile era la quantità enorme di ragazzi che c’erano, una roba da concerto, e c’erano pure dei tizi con un gazebo e della musica a palla, dal reggae al metal. Sti tizi davano merda alla protezione civile in fatto di organizzazione, avevano pure un frigo gigante pieno di birra SERIO!!!! E non è tutto. Dopo pranzo tirano fuori batteria, chitarre e microfono e hanno fatto un concerto, così, gratis, per tutti! Cazzo una mini woodstock. Uno dei nostri “sotto effetto Cannonau” ha cantato tutto il repertorio…Grandi risate, la sbronza goliardica è sempre la migliore .
Beh abbiamo un posto dove andare la prossima pasquetta, nel buco del c*** del mondo è stra zeppo di gente e una gran figata di posto! Dove? Col c++++ che ve lo dico hahaha. Sappiate che è in
-dave
Hi guys, here we go again. Today me and Xar had a speech on C & C++ dev for students who didn’t even know what a programming language is. It was quite hard and fun, and is the first Seminar released by Code Zero Team.
Anyway Xar did the big job, I simply talked about Object Oriented programming style and created simple tasks to show how to manage classes in Visual C++.
Below the video (in italian), the source codes and the slides.
-dave
Hi guys I’m sharing as always the full source code and video about my speeches, and, as you already know each seminar is different, each demo is new, and hopefully you’ll enjoy them
The full video of my speech you’ll find in Code Zero TV, and here the sources.
Please take a look even to Roby’s blog (and src) and Giuseppe’s blog (link to post)to get source codes.
Here goes a picture of Giuseppe during the speech
enjoy
Hi guys on 25th of February 2010 I’ll be giving a speech in Naples with Giuseppe Maggiore, in presence of Joe Wilson, Microsoft Senior Director of Academic Initiatives for Developer and Platform Evangelism, and that’s a big deal
I’ve created in no-time the graphics for blog, cards, posters…hopefully youìll like them
you can find the official blog @ http://blogs.academicclub.org/gameday , definitaly a cool template
hope you like!
-dave