If you hate reading the XNA Forums because of the low contrast and overly wide style, there is good news. I have managed to rewrite a bit of the CSS to drastically increase the readability of threads. As an added bonus, your overall experience on the forum will be better. The modifications were done using the Personalized Web plugin for Chrome, but it works just as well in similar plugins for Firefox (I was testing in the Web Developer plugin).

After installing the plugin, open the Options page (through the Extensions menu item in Chrome) and add a rule for the forums that matches the url, http://forums.xna.com/forums/. Add the following CSS into the appropriate textbox and click the Save button.

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body, * { color: #3d3d3d; }
.CommonPagingArea { color: #2d2d2d; }
.ForumPostHeader { display: none; }
.CommonDescription { margin-left: 0px; background: none; }
.XnaCgp_small_CreatorRollUp_Container { float: none; }
.XnaCgp_small_CreatorRollUp_Forums a { display: inline; }
ul.ForumPostUserPropertyList { width: 160px; }
ul.ForumPostUserPropertyList li { margin-left: 0px; }
a, a:link, a:visited, a:active  { color: #0A67A3; }
a:hover { color: #000; }
.XnaCgp_CSCommonTitle { background: #efefef; color: #000; }
div.XnaCgp_shell_wide_body { width: 960px; margin: 0px auto; }
div.ForumPostArea, div.ForumPostArea table tr, div.ForumPostArea table tr td { background: #efefef; }
.ForumPostUserArea { width: 150px; }
.ForumPostUserContent { width: 150px; }
td.ForumPostContentArea { background: #fefefe; }
td.ForumPostContentArea>table>tr>td { background: #fefefe; }
div.ForumPostBodyArea { background: #fefefe; }
div.ForumPostContentText { color: #3d3d3d; text-align: justify; background: #fefefe; font-size: 1.2em; }
div.ForumPostTitleArea { background: #fefefe; border: 0px; border-bottom: dashed 1px #8d8d8d; }
div.ForumPostTitleArea>h4 { font-size: 1.2em; color: #2d2d2d; }

Now just browse to a post and check out the changes. There are many more changes you can make, and some optimizations in the CSS so have at it.

Are you new to Twitter? Are you looking for some interesting people to follow? What follows is an introduction to who you should be following on Twitter. It is by no means a complete compilation of who I think is important but rather the beginning.

• XNA MVP List

  This is a compiled list of the XNA MVPs known to be twittering. If you are interested in XNA, you should be following these guys!

• Michael Klucher

  Speaking of Klucher, he is the Lead Program Manager of the XNA Development Platform at Microsoft. Follow him for an interesting view of the daily life of a Microsoftie.

• Paul Thurrott

  Best known for his website, Paul offers a fantastic viewpoint on the industry and is constantly on top of the latest products coming out of Redmond.

• Bill Gates

  Gates is finally twittering! Follow him to stay up to date on his work and travels related to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

• Shawn Hargreaves

  Shawn, famous for his cat based tutorials has one of the best XNA blogs out there. If you are an XNA developer and don’t know him, you’re living under a rock.

• Sgt. Conker

  Keeping up to date on all things XNA can be a daunting task some times. Thankfully Sgt. Conker has got you covered! Follow these guys for the latest news, articles, videos and releases.

• Ska Studios

  Dishwasher. Charlie Murder. GAME WITH ZOMBIES. What else needs to be said? The leader in XNA game development. Follow for news not just about their latest creation but gatos as well.

It’s a new year and that means it is a time for changes, upgrades, resolutions, and new ideas! Last year was an awesome year for me. I completed my undergraduate career and am now waiting for confirmation from my university. I also completed my first major, professional project (nymagic.com) and learned a lot in doing so. In the spirit of resolutions and renewals I have decided to consolidate my sites and really give them a complete revamping. Here is just some of what I am planning to accomplish this year.

jsedlak.org / jsedlak.com Revamp

I have decided to combine jsedlak.com and jsedlak.org into one site, bringing over content from jsedlak.com from previous years. I have also given it a complete redesign and brought over articles from the Focused Games site. Over the course of 2010 I plan to write more articles and blog posts related to XNA and ASP.NET as well as the usual topics. I have added a few pages, cleaned up others and removed the unnecessary ones in an attempt to make the site more useful to visitors.

focusedgames.com

I plan to move the site for Focused Games to an ASP.NET CMS (to be named) and use it primarily as a house for all content related to the Focused Games Framework. One primary feature of which will be a bug/suggestion database for the framework and any other projects I have published.

Cycling

Last year was my first year getting into the sport and I managed three centuries and a total of over 4200 miles. Unfortunately I do not believe I can top that this year but I am sure going to try. I have already been out once and plan to get out a lot more in January. The other cycling thing I did last year was enter some races. I definitely plan to do this again and beat my previous times, but work may get in the way.

My Zune HD (32gb Original) has arrived, and it is sweet. UI is fantastic, internet is reasonably fast and quality of audio and video is superb!

While some will say that the CD-ROM is not a long term medium for the storage of audio tracks, I believe that it is. Just the other day I popped in a Weird Al CD from ages ago (The Food Album) and it worked flawlessly despite a couple of scratches. No DRM, no licensing, no restrictions of any kind. I paid for the CD once and have (virtually) unlimited ability to listen to the songs.

This probably doesn’t shock you, and it shouldn’t because most of the world purchases music in CD form, or has at some point. The point is to remind you of how nice things were when the CD was the powerhouse. Now that virtual marketplaces have cropped up all over the place (iTunes, Zune, Napster, Walmart, Buy.com, Amazon, et al) people are jumping on board without first thinking about the problems. What happens when a store shuts down? What happens when an artist stops selling their work on the marketplace? For many this will spell doom: I bought an album by CCR on the Zune marketplace and within a month I had no license to play the songs because the tracks weren’t available for sale anymore. Wait, what? That’s right – they weren’t selling something that I already bought so I couldn’t use it. Could you imagine if your car went *poof* and disappeared when the newer model came out?

Similarly, I recently installed Windows 7 RTM and was redownloading my purchased music from the Zune marketplace when I noticed that some were erroring out. The reason? Apparently I had downloaded some of the songs too many times! But don’t get to thinking that the Zune marketplace is the only one with problems like this. The iTunes for a long time had DRM songs which immediately brings any problems associated with DRM. Just ask anyone who bought DRM songs from Walmart only to be asked to back them up when the DRM servers were shutdown.

So what is the solution? Sadly there isn’t one, although the Walmart choice doesn’t seem too bad. If you have burning rights on your downloaded tracks, burn them so you can rip them back at a later date if need be. But this begs the question, why by from a virtual marketplace if you need the physical CD?

By way of a Twitter post¹, developers may become liable for damages caused by known bugs in released software. This is an issue that all developers need to pay attention to because it has a very broad range of implications for the industry. Could you imagine if NVIDIA, Apple or Microsoft were required to not only disclose all bugs in each build but also to close them before a release was possible? What time was spent on Vista could double or triple easily with this law. What about developers who focus on XBLIG and/or iPhone Apps? These small (one person) teams are in dangerous waters now and could face suits that they cannot financially defend.

While I agree developers should not be held responsible for serious damages (can a buggy driver burn down your house?), tying down the industry and its workhorse (developers) is not the way to go.

Notes:

1: @nuvm RT @a_williams: RT @cwoodruff: RT @atomicobject: Developers to be held accountable for shipping buggy software: http://bit.ly/Yhax3

For those who are blissfully unaware, it is the year 2009 and I still have to click three dropdowns to see many videos on popular sites like Shack News. With the recent news about the HTML5 spec and how it could support a geo-location tag has got me thinking about the information we are willing to give and what other information would be beneficial to open up for sites.

The perfect example of this is known by any avid gamer who enjoys watching the latest trailers of upcoming games. Most, if not all, of the video sites have an age block on "mature" videos and it seems none of them are really willing to go out of their way to improve the experience. Instead users are left with clicking the same old annoying dropdowns for month, day and year so that they can simply watch a video. While some are ok, providing many items to remove the need for scrolling or sorting the year in ascending order so we can cheat, others are limited by their host control and force the user to grab and drag the scrollbar.

Wouldn’t it be nice if our browsers new some basic information about us that could also be tied into our local user account? For instance at work a browser could pull in information about myself from ActiveDirectory like my birthdate, position, et cetera. The browser itself, or the OS could provide a layer of security that disables software from gaining access to certain data I want to keep private.

My point is that within the near (5 years?) future we could possibly see an application for Facebook that allows you to see specifically where your friends are while still having to click the same old dropdowns to view a 30 second game trailer. Thanks W3C for focusing on the important stuff!

P.S. This should be bigger than just HTML5 – it would be helpful to have access to the data from any scripting language. I see a big chance here for Microsoft and ASP.NET 4 to lead the way with an open format, however I am sure that I am unaware of something that would cause such data from being available.

Is anyone else getting sick and tired of hearing the rants by people at Opera about how Microsoft isn’t doing enough for their business? I sure am and in the latest round Opera’s “chief technology officer,” Hakon Wium Lie has suggested that by Microsoft allowing the use of logos in the new browser ballot system will make users naturally gravitate towards IE because of the branding.

First off, Microsoft shouldn’t have to play nice and give users a ballot. When you load up any distro of Linux you don’t get a ballot that includes IE. Similarly when Mac users turn on OSX for the first time they don’t get a ballot with IE, Opera and Firefox. This is simply another case of the EU wanting to take down Microsoft for being successful while allowing the underdogs to run free because their products suck.

To allow Opera’s idea of no logos would be rediculous to say the least. Essentially what we have here is one company complaining that it can’t make ground in an overly saturated market because Microsoft and Microsoft alone is forcing users to use Internet Explorer. Last time I checked, there was no forcing and FireFox was making serious gains on the browser from Redmond. It seems that this latest episode is a simple case of poor branding (Opera) trying to take down good branding (IE).

Perhaps instead of complaining so much about other companies’ software packages, Opera should worry about making and advertising a decent product.

This past Sunday I completed my very first Century (100 miles) on the bike. It has been a target I’ve been working towards since I started to get serious about riding last August. Not only was it tough on my body but more so on my mind.

Mile 0-46
The first 46 miles or so were spent leading our normal Sunday group ride out of Loantaka Park. Because I was the only one who knew the route, I was delegated the responsibilities of a group leader. My good friend helped me out when things got a little hectic by staying back or rushing forward to give some instructions but in general the ride was enjoyable. This was only the second time I have led a group ride and I must say that it is tougher than you expect. People, of course, have varying levels of skill in the sport and making sure all of them are happy and not getting lost can be hard work. There was one time where I repeated a hill a couple of times as I shuffled myself backwards in the strung out group. In the end, however, the awesome company from the other riders made the first 46 very enjoyable.

Mile 46-70
At mile 46 I stopped at home to refill the water bottles and was in the mindset that I would just do an extra 20 or 30 miles which would bring me to a season high of seventy. As I set off I remarked how good my legs were feeling and let the idea of a century creep in slowly. It was at this point that my mind started to take a downward turn. When you are in a group for many hours it is easy to pass the time by with conversation. In a sense it is as if the group can feed off itself for energy. On the other hand, when you are alone with the sun beating down, it is tough to stay focused 100% for so long. Luckily at mile 70 I decided to stop at my local bike shop for some food and some discussion.

Mile 70-90
As I left the LBS I made the crucial mistake of not topping off my water supply. I have always been a big consumer of water and with no clouds in the sky I should’ve known that my half bottle of gatorade would not be enough. At about mile 75, I realized the situation at hand but pressed on knowing that I would start to feel really dehydrated. At this point my mind was going crazy because water was all I could think about! At mile 85 I was seriously close to hallucinating and took my last sip to try and take my mind off the increasing stiffness in my back. I stopped by a vending machine but it wouldn’t take my money and so I set off for home, finally making it at mile 90 exactly.

The Home Stretch
Hitting 90 was certainly enough for me to be happy and so my spirits were on the up at this point. As I sat down and consumed at least 1-1.5 liters of liquid and ate a banana I could feel mile 100 was well within reach. I retopped both bottles at this time despite only having to go 10 and set off. I took a fairly flat route and when I hit the 5 mile marker I turned around and headed home with refreshed legs. Suddenly I found myself going 19-20 mph again, a speed I hadn’t seen since the 65 mile mark, but I let it continue since the adrenaline was kicking in.

A tenth of a mile from home I saw it: 100 miles. I was grinning like a stupid kid at Christmas, as happy as the one who got the N64 [in that commercial]. I had finally made it to one of my more epic goals and with fairly no planning either. While it wasn’t the most exciting route ever, the mileage is what counts.

Total time in the saddle? 6 hours and 37 minutes…

Here are some other stats from my Polar CS200:
Execution Time: 6:38.55
Avg HR: 140
Max HR: 185
Calories: 5436
Distance 100.1
Avg Speed: 15.1
Max Speed: 41.7
Avg Cadence: 85
Max Cadence: 126
Ride Time: 6:37.44

Extras…
Start Weight: 214.5lbs
End Weight: 208.5lbs (yikes!!!!)
Water Intake: 5-6 liters
Gatorade Intake: 1-2 liters
Food: 2 powerbars, 4-5 Cliff ShotBlocks, 1 banana

My next goal for distance will be something over 100, but with a much better route. I definitely repeated some of the easier parts of my local courses several times and I can’t help but feel it contributed to my poor mental state in the late portion of the ride. One idea I have toyed with was to ride to High Point Monument (and perhaps back) which will be very interesting and certainly epic.