Community developer blogs

Jon Shute

Recent Posts

• This isn't meant to happen

  Posted: 06 Feb 2008 at 23:35 by Jon Shute

  Tonight I actually considered quitting my job because of violence in a computer game. And no, I don't work in the games industry. Nobody tell Jack Thompson. He'll get upset that he's wrong.

• foreach(var eh in blah)

  Posted: 30 Jan 2008 at 00:06 by Jon Shute

  I have a confession to make. I've been using var instead for the correct return type in my code. It's so handy in foreach statements where you can''t remember the type. And so lazy.

• The writers strike and internet usage

  Posted: 04 Jan 2008 at 01:29 by Jon Shute

  So american TV is dead at the moment because of the strike... Does that mean that internet usage numbers are down because there's nothing to download? Isn't that what is said? Why do I suspect there's not been much of a blip at all?

• Moq, doing mock objects right?

  Posted: 19 Dec 2007 at 13:09 by Jon Shute

  Reading Scott Hanselman's blog I came across a link to Moq, which is a mock object that uses the new C# language features in order to do it's goodness. It looks like a pretty amazingly easy to use mock framework for your unit tests that allows you to set return values from your mock objects by setti

• Scene it

  Posted: 31 Oct 2007 at 02:24 by Jon Shute

  It's another games post I'm afraid, but I do actually have some rants on technology coming up. Sorry if you're on the WPF team I have a few bad comments coming even though I think it's the best thing ever. Anyway... So, there's a demo on Xbox live marketplace for Scene It. Basically it's the same as

• There's two Es in Judgement you know

  Posted: 30 Oct 2007 at 11:23 by Jon Shute

  There's a new PS3 game that actually does something new. Eye of Judgment (now I'm all for humouring Americans, but you really do need the E there guys or the word has to be said differently. It's how language works folks) is one of those card games that Wizards of the Coast make, but this time it's

• .NET source code?

  Posted: 04 Oct 2007 at 13:20 by Jon Shute

  Yeah, sure we all just use reflector anyway, but according to Scott Guthrie we'll be able to step into the source code of certain parts of the .NET framework with VS.NET 2008. "We'll begin by offering the source code (with source file comments included) for the .NET Base Class Libraries (System, Sys

• WPF Binding to RichTextBox.Document

  Posted: 04 Oct 2007 at 11:10 by Jon Shute

  I was getting some nice crashes on startup while trying to do some data binding to the Document property on RichTextBox under WPF and so I hit the net and found out that it's not possible. I quickly came up with the following code, which seems to work: class BindableRichTextBox : RichTextBox{ public

• Shifting technology

  Posted: 23 Sep 2007 at 12:36 by Jon Shute

  By day I've been a Winforms programmer for the last few years, but over the last few weeks I've found myself branching out. The first was to do a project with WPF, and there's going to be a slight problem going back to winforms now because WPF is so much better. Time to rewrite the main app I think

• Hardware reliability

  Posted: 20 Sep 2007 at 11:09 by Jon Shute

  The Good: Currently I'm playing lots of Heavenly Sword. It looks great (except the shadows, but shadows look awful on all consoles) and it's a lot of fun to play. I can feel the story running out though. The most amazing thing? It's got good acting and mocap in it! And some bad acting too, but I'll

• Warhawk is still amazing fun, but I feel like moaning about the PS3 store

  Posted: 17 Sep 2007 at 01:34 by Jon Shute

  I've been playing far too much warhawk recently than's healthy and it's great fun. I thought I'd get the pro PS3 bit out before I lay into another aspect... The PS3 store. Is it just me or is the store really awful? It may be that I'm in a backwater of the world (the UK) and so we don't deserve cont

• A problem with WPF and Icons

  Posted: 16 Sep 2007 at 00:54 by Jon Shute

  I've run into a problem with WPF and icons. I got some made up by our graphic designer and he took the opportunity to do some proper Vista icons with high resolutions. I added the icon to my application and got an error. It turns out that although you can set the application icon to a file that has

• How to add a keyboard to a console...

  Posted: 15 Sep 2007 at 15:29 by Jon Shute

  Adding a keyboard to a console is easy, even the Wii is getting (so far limited) USB keyboard support and so you just plug a keyboard in and go for it. On the PS3 you can use bluetooth keyboards too I believe, which helps with that whole sitting on a sofa and not wanting cables problem. Microsoft ha

• A new cut of a classic film.

  Posted: 14 Sep 2007 at 13:35 by Jon Shute

  Well, I think it's a classic anyway. Via Extralife comes this: It's amazing what a bit of re-editing and some different music will do to a film.

• Warhawk

  Posted: 11 Sep 2007 at 01:02 by Jon Shute

  I've been playing a bit of Warhawk on the PS3 lately. Now I could be cruel and say it's nice to actually play a game on the PS3, but something is bothering me about the game and I can't help but feel that they've missed a massive trick. In fact two companies would do what it's trying to do better. F

• Would this make it a SQL Server rollup?

  Posted: 03 Sep 2007 at 13:19 by Jon Shute

  I really wish that every time I see the word Katmai I didn't read it as Katamari. It's making following tech news quite confusing.

• UK iTunes TV support is live

  Posted: 29 Aug 2007 at 00:51 by Jon Shute

  We now have TV on iTunes in the UK. About friggin time! Front page is nearly 100% Lost though, which isn't a good sign!

• Dynamic resizing of images

  Posted: 24 Aug 2007 at 15:21 by Jon Shute

  Dynamic resizing of images? How cool is this? OK, it's changing the photo so that it's no longer a true representation of the scene and so could be used for evil, you wouldn't want to use it to judge what an actual location looks like for instance, but this has lots of uses for stock photography and

• Space Giraffe

  Posted: 23 Aug 2007 at 23:47 by Jon Shute

  I'm really glad I live in a world where a big company like Microsoft can release game like Space Giraffe still. The KLF references are a bit strong (is that a bad thing?) and I'm still not sure I actaully understand what's going on, but I'm pretty sure that the game is pure genius. I suspect it's a

• My new iMac

  Posted: 17 Aug 2007 at 22:41 by Jon Shute

  My 24" iMac turned up today. First thoughts: It's all really high quality but I'd rather that ejected CDs were cool enough to touch. Also 24" is massive and makes my TV look too small, but Logic Pro really needs that much screen. Note to self: write enough music to pay for new computer. Next up is b