By Renegade on Friday, December 24, 2010 11:37 PM

Well, I've been having some mysterious problems finding out image orientations as they simply seem to disappear.

Image orientation is contained in EXIF meta data and can be gotten through the Image.PropertyItems property of an Image.

However, when dealing with an image, Windows places a lock on the file, making things rather inconvenient. As such, you need to clone or copy the image then dispose of the Image something like this:

img.Dispose();
img = null;

For slower computers or limited memory you'd also want to do garbage collection with GC.Collect().

However, once you do that, the image orientation EXIF information is no longer available. It just disappears.

So, to get the orientation you must leave the file locked, get the information like this:

PropertyItem propItem = image.GetPropertyItem(274);
ushort orientation = propItem.Value;&l ... Read More »

By Renegade on Friday, October 22, 2010 11:11 PM

Z-Day is coming. The Zombie Apocalypse is immanent, and we must prepare now. If you aren't a believer, well, let's quickly prove that you should believe in and prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse...

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By Renegade on Wednesday, October 20, 2010 9:29 PM

With laptops, tablets, and palm top computers we have a plethora of people predicting the demise of the desktop. They're wrong. And they're morons. No, they are retards. No... retarded morons. No, they are retarded, moronic media whores. But I digress. Let me explain why the desktop is far from dead. And be a media whore at the same time.

At the moment we have 7 distinct kinds of computing:

• Palm top
• Tablet
• Laptop
• Desktop
• Server
• Super
• Cloud

Each of those serve a different purpose or fit a different form factor. If you believe that, then I've already made my point. If not, then read on and I'll explain why each of them is distinct ... Read More »

By Renegade on Monday, September 20, 2010 7:39 AM

Zack Kim has some of his music available for free here (source).

Here's a video of the band:

By Renegade on Saturday, September 04, 2010 5:14 PM

The GDT sale at bits du Jour is over now, and I'm happy with the results. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it went well.

I learned a few things and received confirmation on others.

Sales were 4.5x my record day on a unit basis. Nothing to complain about there. Smiles all the way.

However, I must mention that I did expect higher sales than there were. That may very well have just been wishful thinking on my part though. As I mentioned, I had no idea about what to expect. I saw that a lot of the top sellers were utilities, and GDT really is a niche product.

Part of that could have been that it was only discounted 50%. Perhaps a higher discount of 67% might have yielded better results. That's all just speculation though.

For the contest to win a free copy... That was a complete flop. I didn't even receive a single email on the topic. I thought it would have had a better reception than that. However, it's ... Read More »

By Renegade on Saturday, August 28, 2010 5:58 PM

This Friday, September 3rd, for 1 day only, GDT is 50% off at Bits du Jour. It's a 24 hour sale and after that GDT goes back up to the regular $49.95.

50% Off for 1 Day Only!

The sale won't be repeated, so make sure to schedule 5 minutes to get your copy for half price.

If you want to beat the Christmas shopping rush, this is your chance to get GDT at a fantastic price and beat the Christmas rush all at once!

  &l ... Read More »

By Renegade on Saturday, August 28, 2010 5:45 PM

GDT has a second home now on Facebook here.

The new Facebook page is where YOU will get to say what you want in the 3 NEW versions of GDT coming out!

GDT development is in full-swing now, and I want to know what YOU want in the new:

• GDT for iPhone
• GDT for OSX -- Finally, a Mac version is coming!
• GDT for Windows -- the GDT that so many know and love ... Read More »
  Comments (2)

  Renegade Music

By Renegade on Saturday, August 28, 2010 3:57 PM

With so many totally cheesy decks, I figured I'd make a really cheesy one too.

This deck relies on 2 spells and 1 land card. And ONLY 2 spells. The deck is almost entirely land! It's legal in Classic and Extended, but not Standard due to the Seismic Assault.

  

You want t ... Read More »

By Renegade on Wednesday, August 25, 2010 12:22 PM

While I'm not a huge gamer, I do play occassionally, and Magic is a favorite of mine.

I recently started playing again, and found a nifty little infinite mana combo. Really simple. It's based on an ally deck, so you need to have sufficient allies in there.

It works like this. Get a Harabaz Druid out with a Crab Umbra on it:

You also need 3 more allies. Any ally will do. You can even use changelings in some formats.

Tap the Harabaz Druid for UUUU or as many allies as you have. Untap it for UUU. Rinse. Repeat. Infinite mana. Make sure to have enough mana to untap the Druid ... Read More »

By Renegade on Monday, August 23, 2010 8:51 PM

Samsung has released the final bada 1.0.0 for its next generation of mobile smartphones.

It's been a while in coming, but the full v1 is here. There are some minor changes, but nothing insurmountable. There are still features coming out though.

I'm expecting an announcement on the bada relational database relatively soon that will prove exciting for a lot of CRUD developers.

Cheers,

Ryan

 

By Renegade on Wednesday, August 11, 2010 3:44 PM

Before we get into how to EQ for saxophone to learn a new song, if you haven't already, I'd recommend reading my post How to EQ for Bass Guitar to Learn New Songs. It has a good amount of background information that I'm glossing over quickly here.

The principles for EQing for a saxophone are the same as for a bass guitar. However, all saxophone, or rather, all tenor saxophone and alto saxophone frequencies are directional, unlike bass guitar which has non-directional sound at the extreme bottom end. The practical upshot is that for saxophone, the audio engineers that worked on the recording you want to learn might have panned the audio either left or right to some degree. We're not going to look at that for the moment as it is a very advanced topic.

So, before you get to EQing for saxophone, you need to know where the sound is in the mix. Tenor saxophone fr ... Read More »

By Renegade on Wednesday, August 04, 2010 1:53 PM

When you're learning new songs, EQing for the specific instrument that you're learning can be challenging. With music mixed down into a single file, there's simply no way to truly isolate the part that you want to hear (see below for an exception).

For when you first start trying to EQ out other instruments and EQ up the one you're interested in, bass guitar is about the best place to start. There are several reasons for this.

First, bass is non-directional. That is, when you hear sound at the bass end of the frequency spectrum, you cannot tell where it is originating from. This why when you get a new stereo system, the setup instructions tell you that you can put the subwoofer anywhere. Subwoofers carry all the LFE (Low-Frequency Effects) sound in movies, and all the bass in regular music. That sound ranges from about 3 Hz to about 120 Hz. 120 Hz is about B2, which is an octave and a half-step below middle C (C4). Which leads us to the second reaso ... Read More »

By Renegade on Friday, July 30, 2010 3:54 PM

Not sure if I've mentioned this little gem before:

http://www.manoli.net/csharpformat/

It's a fantastic little tool that I simply LOVE! It lets you format C#, HTML, VB.NET, MSH, and T-SQL for the web. Check this post on free music for an example.

Cheers,

Ryan

 

By Renegade on Friday, July 30, 2010 3:05 PM

More free music for you~! Yep. There's lots of free music out there, and a lot of it is pretty darn good even! ;)

Check out the Free Music Archive for a massive library of free music. Now, a lot of that music isn't totally free as in BSD free, but it's free to listen to at least. A lot is Creative Commons licensed.

Now, not all music is for everyone, but if you like electronic stuff, you may well like "Get Twisted". It's CC 2.0 (Attribution-Noncommercial Share Alike) licensed. So, if you're not using it commercially, and you provide attribution and allow people to share what you create there, then you're good to go. And, Get Twisted is some pretty wicked cool stuff to boot!

You need to sign up to get the most ou ... Read More »

By Renegade on Wednesday, July 28, 2010 10:31 AM

VistaDB is in jeopardy, and may disappear entirely. It's a crying shame, as it's an excellent product.

Read about why here and here.

Regards,

Ryan

By Renegade on Monday, July 19, 2010 1:37 AM

This is the last installment of thumbnails. I'll get the high-res photos uploaded once I can get to a better Internet connection.

NOTE: All links to high-res are broken right now. Check them on Monday, July 19th to see if I've been able to upload them. For now, they don't work.

ED: All high-res links are now working.

Oh... And a BIG congrats to Nico for his SIAF award!

 

 

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By Renegade on Sunday, July 18, 2010 1:39 AM

The Internet speed here at the DFW Hyatt Regency is simply extremely slow, so uploading pics is taking FOREVER. I'll get them up ASP though. I've got more thumbs up below, but the high-res photos will take some time.

 

 

 

< ... Read More »

By Renegade on Thursday, July 15, 2010 10:43 PM

Lots of pictures from the Software Industry Conference (SIC) registration day and the Digital River welcome reception. I'll upload more and higher res versions as well as time permits.

No labels on pics yet, but I hope to come back and label a few.

Mitch & Paris.

Jillian arrives (my little sister)~! =D

Lil sis~!

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By Renegade on Tuesday, June 29, 2010 1:42 PM

Well, I've been checking out the Garmin nüvi, and in a word, wow. It leaves my TomTom in the dust. It is way more responsive, has finger scrolling, and even automatically shuts on/off when you start or turn off the car.

I'm almost sold on chucking my TomTom and getting a Garmin. It's night and day. I don't see how anyone can possibly compare them. It's like a broken down tricycle with 1 wheel compared to a Mercedes-Benz. They're not even in the same league.

Cheers,

Ryan

By Renegade on Wednesday, June 23, 2010 11:33 PM

I fly quite a bit, and there are airports that I love, and those that I loathe. In general, I find airports in Asia are much nicer to travel through. Airports in Canada are better than those in the US.

One thing that I really like about airports in Asia is the free Wi-Fi. While there is Wi-Fi in LAX, it's just useless as you have to be in a specific lounge and get a login or use the tmobile Wi-Fi, which requires a login, if you can get one. It's just too complicated to bother with. When you've just spent 14 hours on a plane, you're tired, cranky, and stuck sitting in those horribly uncomfortable airport chairs... running around to figure out how to login is just a bit too much to ask. The airports in Asia have it right -- just let people login and use it. No hassles.

More and more, I see why Incheon International Airport has won so many awards. It really is a fantastic airport. The Hong Kong airport is also excellent. Kuala Lumpur is also very nice. Their LCCT ... Read More »