Going to the Game Developer’s Conference? Check out Microsoft Developer Day. At this event Microsoft will introduce developers to the future of games and entertainment. With technology deep dives focusing on Xbox LIVE and Windows 8, lean about how you can build great experiences by capitalizing on Microsoft’s vision for connected entertainment!
When it is? Tuesday March 6th from 10:00am to 5:30pm.
Where Is It? At the “Game Developers Conference” at Moscone Center in San Francisco.
You probably never knew that Robots Hate Stickmen, but it just so happens, they do! How do I know? Well at my last So Cal Code Camp session on creating XNA Games on Windows Phone 7, I left it up to the audience to draw the art for the hero, for the villain, and for the projectile in an XNA game we built on the fly. The hero turned out to be a robot, and the villain was a stickman. I guess the session should have been about twice as long because we didn’t get through as much of the game development as I would have liked, but I have finally gotten around to cleaning up (and completing) the code for the game.
Grab the source code for the game, or the slide deck from my session.
Enjoy!
Virtualization is certainly not new, in fact its been around for decades. Any more though our data centers have been completely transformed by virtualization. Technologies like Hyper-V make it possible for IT shops to run more “servers” on fewer physical devices. Why do they care? Well, each virtual computer costs significantly less than its physical counterpart (less $ in hardware, power, cooling, and management). In addition, they can spin a a new virtual machine up in minutes where as procuring a physical server can often take weeks or sadly even months once all the red tape has been cut.
“But I’m a developer, why do I care?!” you say? Well because you can benefit from virtualization just like those propeller heads back in the data center can. Hyper-V or the virtualization built in to Windows 7 can help you as a developer gain quick access to:
In addition there are things that you can do with virtual machines (VMs) that you just can’t do with physical boxes like saving a machine at different states, and reverting to those states later.
Well, if you are interested in learning more about virtualization, I’ve got a great tip for you. My buddy Chris E. Avis has a great blog series about the Microsoft’s Virtualization platform. It’s geared towards helping IT pros pass the “Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, Virtualization Exam” (70-659), but don’t let that scare you off. It is a great series to just learn about Microsoft virtualization technologies. And he has a special post in his series just for developers titled “I’m a Developer! Why Virtualize?”
Use these links to get to all the great posts.
Passing the Windows Server 2008 R2, Server Virtualization Exam (70-659) – Part 1 – Study Resources
Passing the Windows Server 2008 R2, Server Virtualization Exam (70-659) – Part 2 – Skills Measured
