Videos
Computer of the Tides,
a discussion (with animated simulation) of Lord Kelvin's Tide Predicting Machine of
the 1870s, delivered at Code on the Beach, August 8, 2014.
(more info)
When World's Collide,
a discussion (with animated 3D simulation) of Vannevar Bush's Differential Analyzer of
the 1920s, delivered at Code on the Beach, August 9, 2014.
Online Articles
Adventures in Electronic Music: Beeps, Bloops, and Klangs: 1974–1982
describes how I spent the late 1970s and early 1980s building electronic music instruments, including a computer-controlled
digital synthesizer capable of generating 40 simultaneous voices. Included are photographs, other documents,
and over 4 hours of virtually unlistenable "music."
Modern-day creationists have claimed Victorian physicist James Clerk Maxwell
as one of their own.
Maxwell, Molecules, and Evolution (February 2005),
analyzes the evidence and discovers that Maxwell's
attitude toward evolution was more nuanced than people assume.
Articles in MSDN Magazine
DirectX Factor
3D Transforms on 2D Bitmaps (April 2014) describes how non-affine transforms perform perspective transforms in the DirectX DrawBitmap method.
Triangles and Tessellation (March 2014) explores the geometry Tessellate method in DirectX for some interesting 2D graphical effects.
A 2D Portal into a 3D World (February 2014) begins a column arc that demonstrates the features in Direct2D that allow programmers to break into the third dimension.
Exploring Filters in XAudio2 (May 2013)
discusses the various types of XAudio2 built-in features and presents a 1/3 octave graphic equalizer.
Touch and Go
Background Audio on Windows Phone 7.5
(February 2012) explores the enhancements in Windows Phone 7.1 for playing audio files in the background
even while the application is no longer running.
UI Frontiers
Finishing the E-Book Reader (November 2011)
puts together the final pieces of Phree Book Reader, which lets you download, save, and read free public-domain plain-text
books from Project Gutenberg.
Pages and Pop-ups in Windows Phone 7 (October 2011)
shows how to create the Windows Phone equivalent of dialog boxes in the context of a program that lets you read four classics of
horror.
Touch for Text (September 2011)
demonstrates how tricky it can be allowing the user to select text in a Windows Phone program. Included is an ebook
reader for Charles Dicken's Bleak House.
Font Metrics in Silverlight (August 2011)
describes how to empirically determine font metric information in Silverlight and use it to perform
fast text layout. Included is an ebook reader for Windows Phone for Anthony Trollope's Phineas Finn.
Page Transitions in Windows Phone 7 (July 2011)
is not actually about transitioning between instances of PhoneApplicationPage but how to transition quickly
between pages in a Windows Phone ebook reader. The sample program let's you read George Eliot's Middlemarch
on your Windows Phone
Principles of Pagination (June 2011)
demonstrates pagination for the printer, but also for Jane Austen's novel Emma
in a program for Windows Phone.
Silverlight
Printing Basics (May 2011) innocently explores the printing support in Silverlight 4
without quite realizing where it will lead.
A Color Scroll for XNA
(January 2011) reproduces one of the first Windows programs written for Microsoft Systems Journal
using XNA for Windows Phone 7.
Touch and Response
(September 2010) looks at alternatives in handling Manipulation events in WPF.
Extreme UI
WPF Foundations
3D Text in WPF (October 2007)
describes techniques to display text in 3D.
3D Mesh Geometries (April 2007)
discusses the basics and explores issues in creating cylinders.
Other
Talks and Speeches
Windows 1.0 and the Applications of Tomorrow
is a mini-keynote (and exercise in retro-computing)
delivered at DevConnections on November 7, 2005.
Included is a full explanation of all the "magic tricks" involved in the presentation.
In Search of the Real-Time Drop Shadow (March 2005)
explores different ways of programmatically applying drop shadow to text drawn on the Tablet PC.
The programs were originally prepared for a talk on February 9, 2005 at the
Windows Anywhere Conference.
.
Interviews
Long interview on the Internet audio talk show
.NET Rocks! on September 11, 2008.
Long interview on the Internet audio talk show
.NET Rocks!
on August 23, 2004.
There's also a
transcript.
Recipes
Miscellaneous
Windows utilities I wrote for PC Magazine
between 1997 and 2002 are no longer free but may illustrate useful programming techniques.
© Charles Petzold, 2015
cp@charlespetzold.com
This page last updated April 2015