http://www.agkdesign.net

It's got plenty of Silverlight goodness in there, and if you don't want to install Silverlight, well, lets just say it won't have the same effect really.

But check it out and let me know what you think!

Thanks

Alex

I cracked this open right before dinner and didn't decant it.  On the nose, I smelled cool, dark fruit.  I would describe it best as sour pie cherries with molasses drizzled over the top.

The taste: This wine actually has very nice fruit, tasting of those sour cherries.  Maybe a little darker than pie cherries, or maybe a mix of black cherries and pie cherries.  Plenty of sour, though, which I like. The mid palate was decent (no drop-outs) and it has a good long finish, which surprised me as it doesn't have much in the way of back-end tannins.  The lack of tannins make me fear for the shelf-life of this wine and I'm planning on having the rest of my case consumed by the holidays.  This wine is drinking very smooth right now, although I would love some more tannins.

Dinner was pasta with pesto, tomatoes and spicy Italian sausages.  The wine held up fine against this flavor onslaught.  But, I had it with a carob-nut bar after dinner and it really shone.  The carob brought out the sour nature of the wine very nicely, but also accentuated the sweetness, giving it an almost port-like character.  Pretty darn yummy!

PS: Thanks to ImageShack for Free Image Hosting

Por favor, el siguiente video puede herir su suceptibilidad

Next go to the tool box at the left and choose "Ellipse". Draw one small ellipse and a bigger ellipse on the stage.

Keep in mind that hold your "Shift Key" while resizing your ellipse. So that your ellipse's width and height are the same.

Draw a bigger ellipse beside the small ellipse. Remember to hold your Shift key as well.

Click on the big ellipse or you can go to the "object and timeline" panel choose your big ellipse. Go to the right panel and search for Properties->Brush->Fill->Gradient Brush. You will see two small arrows below your color bar. Left click at the middle of the bar and will see another arrow come out. Choose suitable colors for each of the arrows. First arrow choose a light blue, middle arrow choose black and the last arrow you can choose dark blue. Each of the arrows is representing your gradient colors.

The next is to order your ellipses. Choose the big ellipse and right click select "Order->Send to the back". The ellipse selected will be sent to the back and the small ellipse is now in front of the big ellipse.

Now we are going to align the two ellipses. Select both ellipses and right click choose "Align->Holizontal align and Vertical align". You will see both ellipses are aligned properly now.

The next is create a storyboard which will animate your ellipse. Go to "object and timeline" and click "+" to add your storyboard. You can give it any name.

Add/record keyframe for each second until 4th second for your animation. For those who know flash, definately this will be familiar for you.

Now click on the time line "1" and select "record key frame". Repeat it for your following seconds.

Select your big ellipse and make sure now is at your 1st second keyframe. Go to "Properties->Transform->Rotate" to change the angle to 90 degree. For your 2nd second keyframe, change the angle to 180. 270 for your 3rd second keyframe and 360 for your last keyframe. Now if click the play button you will see your ellipse is actually rotating. You now can view your application by clicking F5 which is to build your project. You will find out that the animation only run once if you do not tell the blend how many times you want to loop your animation.

Browse your "object and timelines" to find "angel" and now you can edit repeat count for the animation by editing repeat count when right click on the angel.

Finally, a vista loading symbol is done within few moments.

So, today, I'm at Starbucks writing this blog post, and thought I'd review the new orange mango blend. While I am a bit irritated at the perkiest Barista ever being not only perky but incompetent, I will let my coffee shop jack ass ways not have an effect on this review. Whenever you drink Mike's hard lemonade, after you take the top off, the very first sip you can taste the alcohol, but the alcohol taste goes away the more you drink it starts to taste more like lemonade. Well, at Starbucks the new mango orange blend starts out the same way, except that the starting taste partying in your mouth tastes like (Nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, Dihearrea) pepto-bismal. As a kid I couldn't decide if I enjoyed the artificial taste of pink pepto hanging out in my mouth, or I preferred it to the phony grape taste of Robbitussin. Either way, I don't think starbuck's first taste idea was supposed to be pepto-bismal. The drink tastes much better after first sip, and you can really taste the flavors the way the drink makes it sound as if they are  supposed to taste. Once you get passed the pepto phase the drink tastes cool and fruity. I'm a huge fan of the banana added to the drink, probably because I like bananas mixed with oranges. I'm not sure about whether or not I like the accompanying taste of mango. Don't you think an orange banana shake would truly rock? I did drink the entire drink. yes. and I will say that as far as drinks go, this isn't the worst one out there.

"Let me tell you this: If you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them."

Personally, I feel that nobody is born to live alone. When a child is born, he or she is often blessed with the companionship of his or her parent(s) and at times, his or her sibling(s). When the child grows up, there are many opportunities for him or her to get to know people: in schools, in the workplace and even during dates. Most of us go through this life cycle of getting acquainted with people, making friends and communicating with loved one.  

If this is the case, why are there loners in this world?

In this aspect, I agree with Jodi Picoult completely in terms of loners being let down by people around them.  I believe that deep down in our hearts, we are all looking for a sense of reciprocity in all types of relationships, be it in friendships or marriages. Many of us are blessed with a loving family and/or marital bliss.  Many of us have received tremendous support and encouragement from our loved ones. Although it's been said that we should not depend on others emotionally, there's always that void that exists when love from our loved ones are non-existent.  And individuals become loners because of that void.

There are people in this world whose feelings are often not reciprocated. There are several reasons leading to this but the circumstances are not important. What's important is the frequency. While all of us have - to a certain degree- been rejected by others, the times that loners have been rejected by others far exceed any of us. It's this continuous and countless rejections by others that transforms a normal person into a loner.  Yes, the adage "what doesn't kill us only makes us stronger" is indeed true.  Through countless rejections, loners have - over time- developed an ability to read people.

There's a misconception to the term "loner". Most of us have the mistaken impression that loners are people who live and stay on their own. While this may be true, most loners actually have friends. It's merely the fact that their social circle is much smaller than others. But more often than not, the relationships between loners and the few friends that they have are sincere and deep.  These few friends of theirs are the ones who reciprocate. So, instead of saying that loners are lonely, we can choose to see things from a different perspective: that loners are really individuals who are not only not lonely, they actually spend quality time with good and sincere friends who really matters to them.

Loners are often perceived to be individuals who lack social skills.  What if there exists a possibility that loners are actually the ones who surpass all of us in their communication skills based on the fact that they possess the ability to profile people accurately while many of us don't? Are loners then the better communicators? 

After all, excellent communication often hinges on the quality of time spent with others, and not on the number of people that are involved. Just think of a friendship forged between someone we have chatted over a period of time and the acquaintances that we meet at any social gathering. Which leaves a deeper impression?

It's true that a lack of reciprocity may be what turns one into a loner. But it's also the lack of opportunities of meeting more people that turns their relationships with their loved ones around them even more memorable.

Ultimately, I believe that loners have the ability to love and deserve to be loved for who they are.

Four Gates Merlot - La Rochelle 2001 - Score: A-
The Four Gates Merlot was a joy to taste.  It was even better, because we got a chance to taste it up against the M.S.C. 2001.  The color on this wine is a crazy blackish blue - with a shimmer of orange thrown in.  The nose was strong with black fruit (a distinct shift from our previous review), sweet wood, and a hint of tobacco.  The mouth feels fuller, definitely softer, and powered by a strong fruit presence.  Cassis starts early and is joined by black plums and raspberry.  The mid palate is ruled by an iron fist of acidity which really adds great zip and depth to the wine.  The finish is strong with wood and spice.  The softness is what throws me on this wine, as I was used to the harder lines.  Those lines have softened to reveal black fruits and a nice backbone of acidity, but still a bit more tannin would have been perfect.

Four Gates Merlot - M.S.C 2001 - Score: A
The M.S.C. has what I wished the La Rochelle had - a bit more body and tannin.  The color on this wine is a deep and brooding black - with a shimmer of orange.  The nose had aromas of black plums and cassis, oak, and a nice sized dollop of chocolate.  The mouthfeel on this full bodied wine was firm yet balanced.  The tannins played nicely with the cassis, plum, and cherry.  The mid palate is backed by an acidic core and nice layers of complexity around the fruit, tannins, and vegetal flavors.   The finish is strong with wood and spice.

Psagot Edom 2005 - Score: B
This was not the favorite of the night (even lower then the aforementioned experimental bottle).  The wine is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon (75%) and Merlot (25%).  The color on this wine was a nice deep ruby red.  The nose was crazy good - filled with cassis, plum, and strong green aromas.  The mouth is where things fell apart.  Really, there was none.  The mouth is filled with a bit of tannin and a medium to full bodied attack.  The fruit was non existent and the feeling in your mouth was of a good Cabernet, but nothing more.  Sorry, I would pass on this one.

The Starbucks store was all decked out, complete with writing on the windows and sidewalk chalk drawings heralding the arrival of the new "nutrition blend." Free samples for everyone!

For four bucks, it's a great lunch or a filling breakfast drink, but the Spoon probably won't stand up for this flavorful concoction when it comes to marketing and merchandising.

It seems a bit "me-too" at a time when the company is supposedly getting back to core values and serving a really good cup of coffee...which they do quite well.

What do you think? Can you think of other examples where less-than-laser focus distracted a brand?

events_admin said somethin about him announcing he was dead.

I found it, back in March he died...then deleted the post as he decided he wasn't dead after all.

Good post, Pete!

En esta ocasión le toca al iphone 3g. Penoso para quien este ansioso por tener uno.

Veanlo a continuación.

Visto en winandmac

It looks a lot better I think, however this method was beyond tedious and took most of the day :(

One more update will look like this, then I'll have my tablet at long last.

Updates every saturday!

Inline is a very simple HelloWorld sample.

AddInDescription("HelloWorld", AddInCategory.Tool)]
public class HelloWorld : IAddIn
{
    public void Initialize(IApplicationService 
      applicationService) {}

    public void StartupComplete()
    {
        // Show we were here
        System.Windows.MessageBox.Show("Hi");
    }

    public void ShuttingDown() {}

    IDisposable Members
}

AddIns are hooked on startup, specified as command line arguments:
path\to\blend.exe /addin:HelloWorld.dll

When initialized, an Application ServiceProvider object reference is passed, which contains accessors to all the major service provider objects of Blend.  Through this, it’s possible to add custom menus and dialogs, possibly even panels, to Blend.

I expect there are alot of limitations.  The most glaring is loading Addins only by specifying them as commandline arguments. Much of Blend is internal and/or sealed, including Nautilus (Blend's code editor), Visual Studio abstractions for Projects, Solutions, and the Build system.  Enough remains open to allow for some customization of existing features, and certainly for new features.

More discovery needs to be done.

100% CONTROLLED ORGANIC GRAPES

For more informations: info@500vini.com

First pour of this wine had me awed by the deep ruby/garnet color.  A gorgeous rich-looking wine that had me really hopeful that its taste would be just as rich.  All I could pick up on the nose was black cherry and maybe a hint of a smoky wood-like smell.

The taste was just as I'd hoped -- full-bodied with rich dark cherry and soft oak flavors.  The mid-palate was a complex layering of dark fruit (maybe plum?) chocolate, a subtle green flavor (which I'm determined to define at some point) and some great soft earthiness (of which I am normally not a big fan, but works well with those curious green flavors).  The finish was beautiful!  A long finish with a black pepper tanginess that I know many people will love.  Its stated at 14.5% and, normally, I would think this to be too much, but its great.  Maybe my palate is ready for bigger and better.  Or, as John W would say... great tannins and great acids make a great wine!

So, tonight, I grilled some beef tenderloin medallions and served them with some grilled asparagus and grill-roasted golden fingerling potatoes.... all prepped very simply with just kosher salt, fresh ground pepper and extra-virgin olive oil (except for the potatoes to which i added some red pepper flakes and a few other spices).  Let me just say... tonight's choices couldn't have been better!  A perfect pairing!  The grilled beef balanced beautifully with the oak flavors of the wine, yet enhanced the cherries.  And the asparagus brought forward those sublte green flavors -- though I was still unable to define the taste.  But, it has me wanting to spend more time getting to know this wine, and that's always a good thing!

All in all, this wine is worth every bit of the $22 i paid for it.. its one of those wines that makes you just want to spend time getting to know.  I'm really looking forward to seeing if this develops any differently.

Every time I edit something with the Visual State Manager within Expression Blend, it edits the XAML to a point where the application won't run.

Here is the error

So there is the error in Visual Studio -
XamlParserException occurred.
DataTemplate does not support Comment as content.

After a little bit of investigation, I found that when i edited the item in VSM, saved it and continued to build and test the application in Visual Studio, it was not building because Blend was changing the XAML to read:

<ItemsControl VerticalAlignment="Top" x:Name="Comments" Grid.Row="1" >
<ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
<vsm:DataTemplate>
<my:Comment x:Name="CommentItem"/>
</vsm:DataTemplate>
</ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
</ItemsControl>

The problem being the vsm: in front of the DataTemplate tag, it is what was breaking the application and to simply remove it would fix the issue and all my updates worked.

So there is the workaround for the issue but I would love to work out if its a bug or if there is something I can do to avoid it completely.

Any thoughts?

I've been chatting to real nice guy I met on the ish event website about esfan08 and his site and we decided to make our own site about him!

This may seem stupid and it is, but I think the guy needs to loosen up.

So this was the post he made today:

"It is surprising to see International Student House (ISH) actually understand the term “shame” and “binge drinking”. Below are just a few words they entered the search engines to see if they unethical charity (international student house - known as ISH ) comes up and they were successful to find their destination - the blog which informed Westminster Fair Trade Office and made ISH to reposition their cigarette vending machines and hopefully NOT letting under age girls get into their ISH-BAR

By the way, good luck to Tanya and David ;) in their non-sense so called management and suing this effective Blog - which informed many universities and institutions and importantly Westminster Fair Trade Office to save the public and encourage the "charity", International Student House (ISH) to consider ethics and cultural values - you are just telling your real names and your IP addresses mach those threatening and abusive comments you made couple months ago with "unreal names". These some how managers (don't know how they've become manager anyway) tend to fight ethics and social responsibilities sadly.

We can see you are still learning and God knows when you want to take care of your so called charity which actually take inappropriate directions for survival.

To see it for yourselves that International Student House (ISH) is not compiled with the Charity Commission set of rules (because of promoting alcohol and placing cigarette vending machines in areas which are easy to access by youths and importantly under age individuals - vulnerable members of public - as well as offensive pictures and text used by the charity (ISH) for "promotion" purposes which indeed mis-educate and mislead the youths society), please visit the charity-commission website and summary of public benefit. International Student House (ISH) is harming the society and through its irresponsible marketing and management strategies. Their lack of ethical and CSR awareness is costing our youths and their future; therefore appropriate actions should be taken to save lives of thousands... Not caring about what ISH is doing allow further misconduct from youths for which they wrongly been criticised by many. Youths are in a sense are victims of vultures alike International Student House (ISH).

NOTE:WE NEED TO SAVE OUR YOUTHS AND STOP UNETHICAL ORGANISATIONS SUCH AS INTERNATIONAL STUDENT HOUSE (ISH) TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THEM AND MISLEAD AND MISEDUCATE THEM.

Mi primera tarea para el proyecto BlackPoint es tratar de modelar las clases que intervendrán en la solución, a continuación expongo los primeros modelos que he diagramado, estos modelos se irán puliendo y modificando con el tiempo pero creo que es un buen inicio.

Estos diagramas representan las siguientes funcionalidades:

1. Un Adaptador recibe la dirección de un archivo en formato Open XML, este se encarga de abrirlo y empezar a leer su contenido, la información del archivo se guarda en un objeto OpenXmlContent (por ejemplo: Nombre del archivo, palabras clave de búsqueda, etc..), los datos de las partes del archivo (por ejemplo: las diapositivas de un archivo Power Point) se guardan en una lista de objetos tipo OpenXmlPart. La idea del adaptador es que trabaje en segundo plano (en otro hilo) y una vez finalizado Notifique al cliente (aplicación WPF) que el trabajo ha terminado y los datos están listos.

2. La aplicación cliente deberá guardar la información de archivos cargados y su contenido en algún lugar como un archivo XML, texto plano o una base de datos, a esto le llamaremos el Repositorio de datos.

3. Por ahora no nos preocuparemos de las clases concretas que implementarán cada una de las funcionalidades, nos limitaremos a definir las intefaces que usaremos.

El primer diagrama modela los Adaptadores (color verde), los tipos de archivos soportados (color kaki) los Repositorios  (color fucsia) y las Notificaciones (color celeste). Los elemetos de color amarillo son tipos del .NetFramework.

Adaptadores

• Descripción: Encargados de abrir un paquete en formato Open XML y extraer su contenido.

• Patrón  de diseño: Strategic Pattern

Tipos de archivos

• Descripción: Lista de tipos de archivos que el adaptor puede abrir. Se basa en la extensión del archivo.

Repositorio

• Descripción: Se encarga de persistir los datos de la aplicación, el objetivo es que se puedan usar distintos repositorios como archivos XML y bases de datos.

• Patrón de diseño: Strategic Pattern

Notificaciones: Publicador/Subscriptor

• Descripción: Registra y mantiene notificados a los clientes cuando un adaptor ha completado su trabajo de extraer infromación de un paquete Open XML.

• Patrón de diseño: Observer Pattern

El segundo diagrama presenta dos conceptos: El primero (colo verde) se encarga de iniciar el respectivo Adaptor Open XML, usa Factory Pattern para encapsular la creación/ejecución de un Adaptor.  El segundo usa Singletone Pattern para devolver una única instancia de un repositorio de datos que será usado a lo largo de toda la aplicación.

 BlackPoint es una aplicación que esta en proceso de desarrollo que permitirá inicialmente leer archivos de Power Point 2007 (.pptx) y generar una vista previa de su contenido, para esto usará de base el SDK de Open XML.

Pero por cuestiones de trabajo en aquel tiempo no pude continuar trabajando en la misma, gracias a un par de comentarios que mostraron curiosidad en la misma (gracias JuamM_L y JB) he decidido terminar esta aplicación y publicar también el código fuente. Creo que a todos los servirá.

También respondiendo a un par de preguntas que me habian hecho:

• P: JuanM_L dijo:
       bastante buena, me gusto mucho.. te felicito, como lograste ese efecto brillante en tu aplicacion, las que yo hago no me quedan asi????

• R: Usé algunos efectos, para los títulos OuterGlow y para las imágenes centrales un VisualBrush basado en la imagen que se muestra

• P: JB dijo:
      ¿Donde la vas a publicar?

• R: Próximamente aquí.

Los mantednré informados en este Post sobre los avances.  Inicio hoy mismo !

Natascha Roeoesli

and explains HOW TO BLEND COLOURS!

Enjoy:D

Feel free to post a comment with a link to your artwork! Maybe you have discovered something new?

Image by Natascha Roeoesli

All the best,
Jimmy.