June Rose Games

Wow, it has been a really, really, really long time since my last post. In my defense, I have been very busy. Since my last post, my wife and I had our first child, and are now expected our second this April. It is amazing how much you lose track of time once you have children. Plus, work has been crazy busy.

Oh, and there is one more reason why I have not had much time for blogging (which brings me to the point of this post), I have launched a side business – June Rose Games.

Our first game – Photo Challenge is now available in the Windows Phone marketplace. If you have a Windows Phone, check it out. It is free, so what do you have to lose? :-) If you do not have a Windows Phone, no need to worry, the game will also be available for other devices in the near future. The game is of the photo difference finding genre, here is a teaser screen shot.

Verizon Network Extender

I was really stoked when I heard that Verizon was going to release the Verizon Network Extender, a femtocell device for directing cell phone traffic over your broadband internet connection. I live in a very rural area, and cell service at my house is non-existent. When I decided to order the device, there were not many user reviews on the web yet, however there does appear to be a few on CNET now. I decided to give it a try anyway, because as an existing Verizon Wireless customer with no service at home, it seemed like an obvious choice.

The Extender has been hooked up for a few days now, and so far it has been working great. Installation was simple, and phone calls have been crystal clear. My phone went from literally no service to four bars. The signal is strong throughout the entire house, including the basement and garage. If you’re interested, Verizon has a helpful installation video here.

If you live in cellular ‘dead zone’ like I do, I highly recommend the product.

Visual Studio and Auto Toolbox Populate

When I began working for my current employer, I joined the largest .NET software project that I have worked with to date. One of our standards is that virtually every UI element is contained within it's own user control. This makes for great re-usability however, it causes increased build times because each build caused the controls within Visual Studio's toolbox to be refreshed. I was told that there was no way around this, and I just assumed that this was correct. However, recently during what felt like a rediculously long wait for a build to complete, I decided to research the issue. Wouldn't you know it, I stumbled across an old post from ScottGu that mentioned an AutoToolboxPopulate setting (along with lots of other useful information). Setting "Tools --> Options --> Windows Forms Designer --> AutoToolboxPopulate" to False prevents the Toolbox from being populated with each build, and has dramatically improved my build times.

The only drawback to setting this to False, is now your user controls will not automatically appear in the Toolbox. At first, I found myself enabling/disabling the setting depending on if I needed to work with UI elemenets, or not. But, then I discovered a function under the Project menu, "Refresh Project Toolbox Items". This allows you refresh Toolbox on demand, instead of with every build. Problem solved.

Tile Fill Addin

I just finished up a second Paint.NET addin. The first is available here.

This addin fills the current image with a tiled version of another image.Just copy an image to the clipboard, create a new image that is larger than the first, and run the addin.

For example, start with something like this:

And the tiled version could look like this:

It can be useful for creating textures, or patterned backgrounds.

Downloads:

Source
Addin DLL

Radius Fill Corners Update

I have gotten some feedback from the Paint.NET addin that I recently created. Most of the feedback has been positive, except for strange results occuring when a large radius is selected. This issue is related to how the code determines how to color each pixel for the image. Basically my calculations fall apart if the radius greater than a quarter of the height or width of the image. I knew this would be an issue, but decided not to restrict the radius size because I did not want to limit users who were working with large images.

I now realize that it is better to restrict the radius, but base it on the current image's size. This way you should always get the desired results.

Here are updated links:
source code
addin dll

New Paint.NET Effect Addin for rounding the corners of an image

After searching through existing Paint.NET effect plugins, I did not find exactly what I was looking for (quick and easy way to round off the corners of an image, like the one below), so I decided to create one.

With the help of Sepcot's template and tips from BoltBait’s site, the process was not too difficult, and it was an interesting learning experience. Most of the code is pretty similar to other examples, except that I decided to use some WPF libraries to help make the math calculations easier. The source code is available here, or you can just download the DLL for your personal use. Due to the WPF use, the .NET framework 3.5 is required for the effect addin to function. If you need help deploying the addin, there are tips here. Once you have got the addin working, just select the entire image and run the effect with the desired settings.

Paint.NET community

I used to spend a lot of time in Adobe Photoshop, but as the years have progressed I have spent more time coding, and less time performing graphics work. This eventually led the purchase price of Photoshop to be unjustifiable considering the limited amount of time I would spend using it. However, I still had a need for the occasional image manipulation, re-sizing, or touch-up. This is when I discovered Paint.NET. It is a great tool for the price (free!) and is very popular (so, you probably already know about it)...


What I had not realized until this week, is how great the community support for Paint.NET is. The application always just did what I wanted, so I had not taken the time to search for tips, tutorials, addins, etc. This week, I had a need to perform some more advanced task in Paint.NET, and found myself missing Photoshop’s capabilities. This lead me to search for some better ideas on how to accomplish the tasks I was working on. I quickly found out that there is a great community surrounding Paint.NET. There are tons of helpful blog posts on the net, and the Paint.NET forums are full of helpful users, tutorials, and free effect addins by developers such as Michael Sepcot, BoltBait, and Ed Harvey. This makes Paint.NET an even more useful product, and I’m looking forward to diving deeper into some of these community resources.