Pretty quick tip because it was a little annoying that the huge background on this site took so long to load sometimes and reading the text was not very easy until all the panel images were loaded too. To make sure that the panel images for all the content are loaded first I just had to add this to the main css file:

#preload img
{
height: 0; width: 0; border-width: 0;
position: absolute;
bottom: 0;
left: 0;
z-index: -30;
}

And then just below the html tag (in my case in the master layout file) add the following code:

etc. for each image ..

Found on this good old article from 2006 :)

Yes, first of all ask yourself, wtf are you doing on a mac anyway (well, in my case Objective-C, just implemented this on the iPhone (still work in progress btw), omg).

Well, for testing the new iPad stuff I had to install OS X 10.6.2 (Snow Leopard) on that old crappy Mac Mini I use for developing (via VNC of course) since the newest version of XCode (Visual Studio for poor mac guys) 3.2.2 (iPad beta 4) only works on the newest OS X 10.6.2.

Anyway, after updating for over an hour, everything looked the same, but not much worked anymore. My keychain was not working anymore because all my certificates were gone, dunno why, but I needed to renew them anyway. Then in the XCode Organizer I could not connect or see any iPhone or iPod anymore, no matter how many times I reconnected the devices. On other computers everything was still working fine, the iPods, iPhones and cables were all working, the Organizer was not working anymore.

Only after I installed the new XCode version (iPhone SDK 3.2.2 beta 4), everything was working fine again. Maybe this helps someone sometime in the future :)

As usual here is my post about the CeBIT. This year the conversion was big as usual, but not too much interesting stuff for game developers. Anyway, enjoy the pics.


Welcome to the CeBIT 2010.


The weather was pretty cold. Minus 4 degrees and lots of new snow from the night.


That little cute pinguin was trapped in this server rack.


Micrsoft further pushed Windows 7 and showed a little of the new Windows Phone 7 Series.


Water jumping from one side to another, pretty cool.


Walking trough a server room, pretty loud in here.


Lots of signs for faster internet connections. Many halls had conferences and speakers about lots of topics.


In the halls 14-23 it was VERY full, it took forever to get from one side to the other.


This ball was floating in the air supported by coolers from the PC below it.


If there are free tshirts, everyone is going nuts.


This is the Intel Gaming Hall, was pretty full there too.


A big Quake Live match was about to start here.


Thats it for this year. Till next year then :)

The mission of today is just to get back to Germany. Not much exciting stuff in this blog post. The weather is pretty different in Seattle (sunshine) and Hannover (snow and freaking cold).


The weather in Seattle was pretty good, a little colder than the last few days, but blue sky and sunshine all over the place.


Waiting for the Taxi took forever and the relatively short trip (IMO) to the airport cost me 45 dollars (wtf).


The self-checkin only took a few minutes and I passed all security checks in a few minutes too.


At least there were some power plugs and free wifi (slow however) available at the airport in my 2 hour wait time.


At about 13:00 the weather was still good and we were about to take of to Amsterdam.


This is Bellevue from high up.


And the Seattle mountains, Mount Rainer is here somewhere too ^^


Bad weather in Amsterdam.


Security checks in Amsterdam. The x-ray scanner broke in my line just before my bags got in there. So I had to go to the other side and some security personal did not like that and wanted to check all my bags now (wtf?). Nothing happend and even though all this waiting and checking took almost an hour, I still had some time until my delayed plane came anyway.


The book I read after both my netbook and iPhone batteries both pretty much died. Got almost 100 pages done, but was way too tired to finish it.


Weather in Amsterdam is pretty bad as you can see, our flight was delayed 30min.


Over the clouds in Holland.


And some Germany down below, at least some sun is coming through. The sun reflection (specular highlight) of the streets and rivers was pretty cool.


The weather in Germany. Better sky, but very cold.


Quick picture from the train ride home.


Buildings are much smaller around here, I always notice that when I come back, but not so much when living here.


And finally reaching sweet home. Time to sleep now.

This is the last day of the MVP Summit. There will be one more post of tomorrows trip back to Germany, but it will probably be short. Today was not as interesting as the past few days because the Keynotes were pretty general. I wanted to see one of the side sessions, but it was exactly at lunch time when all XNA MVPs met up, which was way more important. Chuck Walbourn from the DirectX team (now called Windows Gaming Experience (WGX), which sounds strange IMO) did a great afternoon talk to any XNA/DirectX MVPs interested in DirectX11. This just made this day a great ending for the whole conference.


Since I was video chatting, blogging, emailing, etc. all morning I left the hotel a little later, the first keynote session was not so important for me. Later keynotes were not much better because I just don't like a presenter talking to serveral hundered guys and speaking slowly about some technology I probably don't have much impact on. I much rather watch those things online where I can skip over the boring parts :)


So instead I walked to the conference (which was at the Hyatt hotel again like in the first day) and took some pictures of Bellevue. As you can see not everything is Microsoft here, there are some other companies like Expedia located here.


But if you turn your head you can spot Microsoft pretty quickly again.


That big long building is the Westin hotel south of the Hyatt. From this angle looks very thin, but from the other side it is pretty large.


I like all these skyscrapers, maybe I should do a game with some buildings like these ^^



There is the Hyatt hotel where all the keynotes and side sessions are today. Pretty good weather today btw, I just had a T-Shirt and my new MVP jacket on.


These so called sky walkways are pretty useful because it takes forever until a light turns green here and you have to push a button at every single trafic light cross road section.


I just saw a little of the second keynote and then met some XNA MVPs, which were easy to spot because of our XNA MVP jackets we got from the XNA team. We then saw the last keynotes about clouds and hardware, software, etc. which was a bit better than the previous keynotes, but still very general (not a programmer session).


After that all the XNA MVPs met at the so called Farewell Lunch again. As usual lots of stories were traded and the food was very good.


After the lunch we took a few quick pictures of the group, which I can probably link up here later (I did not take a group foto except for this one because the other guys cameras are just much better at those things).


There was 45 minutes of free time between the lunch and the DirectX11 talk from Chuck, so I checked out the mall here.


As usual lots of schicki-micki shops here (thats what we say in Germany to way over the top fancy shops). Other than a Game Stop I could not found anything interesting here.


At the other side of the mall you could get back to the hotels via one of those sky walkways.


The directions were pretty confusing, but once I was on the right track I finally found the way back to the hotels for the last MVP session this year.


We had to wait a little because Chuck was hold up in traffic. I shot some extra pictures from the Cinema upstairs.


This are all the movies at this cinema, nothing to overly exciting I have not seen yet.


The last hardcore XNA/DirectX MVPs like Matt, Richard, Roy, Michael and a few others were listening to the DirectX11 presentations Chuck gave us quickly.


Chuck is talking fearlessly about all the cool new stuff and tricks in DirectX11. Most of those presentations and talks will be released publicly after the GDC in a few weeks, so stay tuned and check Chucks blog for that.


Time fly by and it is already late, time to head back and have a last look at Bellevue at night.



Pretty lights everywhere.


This little boy gives me the impression that he is trapped in there. But he is probably just pissing off his mom because in there it is much more amazing then out here.


Okay, thats it for today. I am really tired and will just watch some VODs this evening and read some websites. Tomorrow the long trip back to Germany will happen and I'm not sure that I will catch any sleep on the plane ..

The second deep session day was also very informative, but still very much top secret stuff. All this stuff will be announced on the GDC and MIX in a few weeks anyway, but I guess for a big company timing is everything for press releases.


It was very sunny today, I did not even take a jacket with me. The weather was still kinda cold, but since I will be indoor all day I do not really need a jacket.


While waiting for the bus a few other MVPs came along and asked me if I want to ride with them in their car to the summit. I said yes and we talked a bit about this summit and that it is way better this year that Microsoft actually tells us about new exciting stuff and not already publiced information as last year.


I arrived early and had some time to read emails and surf a little.


I also checked a few new websites and blogs other guys were talking about, like http://lostgarden.com/.


More XNA team members joined us today. These two are from education and website and product management.


In the lunch break we went to the company store. The Socksup guy also had to explain his nickname to everyone and it took longer the more drunk he was ^^


Shuttle cars and busses were taking MVPs back and forth from the hotels and Microsoft campus.


After walking around in circles for a while we finally got the the Company store, which was only a few hundered meters away from where we started ^^ Lots of products here, not much interesting stuff however.


There were a couple of older Xbox 360 games and I bought Ninja Gaiden for a few dollars, which is good as far as others told me. I also got some cheap t-shirts with some Windows logos on them.


The other guys also got some stuff and we quickly went back to our meeting room for more XNA talk.


In the meantime I was downloading StarCraft II beta (the beta started today finally), which took a long time. I could not do much else because the guest wifi was blocking all useful ports for VPN, VNC, IRC, etc. which was a little annoying because some programs I use depend on VPN working for example.


My netbook CPU should be way too slow for StarCraft II, but I installed it anyway. Still do not have a beta-key however, but I registered for the opt-in beta (which is probably bullshit anyway if millions of people trying to opt-in and they only give away a few more keys).


Okay, the long day is over (some of us were a little tired from too much partying yesterday) and we had some time to get back to the hotels, relax a little and then go to the big party this evening at the Garage in Seattle.


Nick (former MVP, now Microsoft employee) and some other XNA team guys are still talking to George Clingermann (XNA MVP).


On the bus ride back Dong-Hoon Kim (XNA MVP from Korea) and me took a few quick pictures from ourselfs. I learned some stuff about Korea and we talked about XNA and cultural differences quite a bit.


A little later we drove over to the Garage party location:



At the party, which was huge, you could play billard and


Bowling of course.


Lots of crazy drinks at the bar.


The XNA MVPs bunched up around Andy, who had lots of stories for us about his former Microsoft days and having meetings with Bill Gates in it and stuff like that.

A little while later you see some other MVPs talking and discussing stuff:



Other people also took quite a lot of pictures, which much better cameras however.


At 23:30 they tried get rid of us with telling us the last busses are leaving now.


The busses back to the hotel.


And finally reaching the hotel at 00:00, time to go to bed early today (relatively to the last few days where it was always between 01:00 and 02:00 am.

This day we MVPs will go deep into sessions about lots of cool new technology. Everything is under NDA, so we are not allowed to talk about it. Most of my picture will just show people and what happened over the day. There might be information out in the web, but we MVPs are not allowed to comment on that ^^


First thing of the day is to get some breakfast, which was very good in my hotel.


I tried to take the last bus at 08:30, which was not such a good idea because the bus was late 20 minutes, which leaded to getting a little late on the first meeting at 09:00. But at least I met another new nice MVP from Korea: Dong-Hoon Kim


The bus ride to Microsoft Campus was pretty quick once the bus finally arrived.


We are almost at building 92, where Studio A is just a walking distance away.


While searching for Building Studio A we went through building 92 and saw the company store right there (must have moved, last time it was somewhere completely different).


There were lots of guys and girls standing around helping us with directions.


We finally reached Studio A, pretty colorful posters up here, but finding the actual conference room was not very easy, 5000 room numbers, wtf?


Lots of XNA MVPs here.


And even more on the other side.


And some guys from the XNA team.


Dong-Hoon is also taking pictures. Funniest thing he told me yet was a joke from Korea: If someone asks you when the shuttle is coming, answer: You are not Protoss, there is no Shuttles for you.


This is Nick Gravelyn, a former XNA, which now is part of the Borg, erm, Microsoft XNA team :)


This is was happens to gramophone record here ..


XNA guys running around, I am too lazy to tag them now ..


Almost there at the new conference room location.


A big room with lots of MVPs, big meeting ahead. Sorry, not allowed to disclose any more details .. at least it was interesting stuff.


And finally walking back to the bus stop, the day is almost over. Time for a XNA party.


Kathleen explains that we will go to the Big Picture bar and whats going on in general.


On the bus ride everyone was checking and hacking on their phone. Most people have iPhones, which is kinda funny ..


We had some extra time, so like last year we visted the Game Workshop board game shop, but I don't think anyone bought anything.


The problem with the bar this time was that we were way to few people to fill it. Lots of room, but only a few guys in each. Last year this party was at this very same location, but we had some other teams here too and it was more crowded and party-like.


XNA guys like Nick talking to XNA MVPs Andy and George.


Everyone was taking pictures.


After a while the UK and Irish MVPs were suggesting that we go to the Irish pub again because there is not much going on here (even though we had Pizza and free beer, yeah). This is a quick picture from the Big Picture ^^


Some guys have their hotel right here, so they were quickly dropping of their stuff. I didn't want to go all the way to my hotel and back, so I just waited a bit here.


Don't really know how this picture happend, but from the time stamp I can see this was taken BEFORE I was even drunk, which makes not much sense. I still think this is a cool photo.


We stayed way too long in the pub, it was almost 1am when we finally left and I walked back to my hotel. At 7am my roommate got up, so there wasn't a long night sleep. Hopefully I won't be too exhausted the next day.

Today the MVP Summit actually started and I had to move from Seattle to Bellevue. Weather was pretty nice today, not really warm, but it was not raining, there was no fog and the sun was shining.


Looking outside my Seattle hotel window for the last time. Weather is pretty good tdoay.


I checked out from the Holiday Inn and took a cab to Bellevue to register for the MVP Summit and then go to my new hotel.


One last look at Seattle, good bye. I will only see Bellevue from now on and finally depart on Saturday at Seattle Airport.


Going to Bellevue means going over the big floating bridge, which is usually full of traffic. Luckily for me rush hour is over and the ride was pretty quick (otherwise it can take 30 minutes or more just to get over the bridge).


The sky was looking pretty cool out here.


The taxi driver kept talking about all kind of stuff (I better go not too much into details here, he was kinda crazy ^^). Here he was explaining to me how rich people are on average that live at this side of Bellevue.


After about 25 minutes I reached the Hyatt Hotel, where I won't be staying, but here the MVP Summit registration took place. I got my conference badge, a nice shirt, a bag and a drinking bottle. Free swag is always cool, but I heard some MVPs complaining about having too much MVP logos on the free swag sometimes ^^


I had some free time to visit some of the side sessions, but apart from a Codeplex talk there wasn't much interesting things going on. I read my emails, watched some VODs and played a little Fallout 3 on my netbook (which runs great by the way, many other games are not so good).


A quick look outside the window. Time to get to my new hotel and get some lunch ..


The weather outside was still great and I eat a baguette from Subway and ran around in Bellevue a bit.


Pretty nice area to live here, a little loud, but everything looks so new.


The buildings here and the whole downtown of Bellevue are quite new. Pretty amazing skyscrapers if you ask me:



Some shops in a fancy building.


This is still the same building ..


Okay, enough walking around. Time to go to my new hotel and meet my new roommate.


A quick view outside the window of my new room. The highway across the parking space looks really loud, but I did not hear it, neither at the day time nor at night, which was pretty cool.


And this is my new roommate Otto from Hungary. Pretty nice guy. Sorry for the bad picture.


After some relaxing and surfing via the incredible slow internet at the hotel it was time to go to the Hyatt hotel again for the MVP Summit keynote.


This is were I meet several other XNA MVPs. You can see Richard, Catalin, Andy (Z-Man) and George in this picture from back to front. I probably should have met with all the German MVPs too, but I stayed with the XNA guys all evening.


The keynote was about to start. Sorry, I cannot take any pictures from any content of this MVP Summit, everything is highly confidential and under NDA.


The keynote was kinda boring, not because of the content, but more because the speakers were a little slow and IMO there wasn't enough jokes and fun stuff sprinkeled in like in past years. After the keynotes and welcome speeches it was time to move over to the welcome area.


Lots of free beer, let the evening begin. There was also food, but I wasn't very hungry and only ate a small hamburger and some cake.


More XNA MVPs found us and the group became bigger.


Andy was telling stories as usual, but it was also great to meet up with the rest of the guys again and exchange stories and what happened over the year.


More pictures from the XNA group.


The bar was being disassembled, which isn't a good sign. Time to move to a new location. Especially the UK and Irish MVPs were suggesting going to the Irish pub on the other side of the street, which we of course did.


A quick picture from our long walk across the street.


Here you can see the UK XNA guys ready to cross the street.


We finally reached the Irish Pub and are enjoying our first beer here (additionally to the beers we had already of course).


Lots of different beers here. We tried of course several different ones.


Looking at my glass. Not a good sign ^^


An hour or two later some more XNA MVPs came by and joined us. More beer and I was already pretty drunk (I am not as trained as those other guys).


Time to go home now, it is pretty late, 8am on my europe clock, which is 11pm here.


One last look at Bellevue, I just fell into my bed once I reached the hotel. The next day my head was brumming a little, but I guess I still had a good night sleep, which was very much required.

The last thing I recorded this day was this police car at night:

Day 3 (Monday) wasn't very exciting, but tomorrow the MVP Summit will start. The day started with a lot of mist, there wasn't much to see, but later in the day the mist cleared and a little sun came through.


Going outside made it apparent that the fog shader was turned on and its settings were way too high.


Not even the skyscrapers of Seattle Downtown were visible. I would even guess the rendering skipped them completely.


The mist and fog seems to be stronger the higher up you go. With an equally distributed fog the buildings would not fade out that quickly as you go up.


The Space Needle is also fogged out. Not much reason to go up there, I can see the same fog down here too.


Instead I took the monorail to Seattle Downtown. My destination was the Public Library.


There is the Monorail train coming. I also took a few quick videos from the train ride:



And another video from the end of the train ride. The fog is still pretty strong, but a little light comes through from the sky.



The sun is poking through the fog. It seems like you can look farther up here, maybe the fog is clearning already.


Time to run around in Seattle Downtown a little.


Today is a normal weekday, so nothing spectecular is going on here.


Well, except for the smoke coming out of the street. Someone down there is really smoking too much.


A look in between the big buildings here.


The fog is still there plus some additional smoke from chimneys, but the sky seems to get more blue now.


I arrived at the Public Library of Seattle, but guess what, it is closed today. Bummer ..




I walked around a little bit more and did some shopping ..


The sky is pretty blue now. And this building is still cool everytime I walk by it.


On the other side there seem to be a very expensive hotel with a big entrance. There are like 2 million lights on each tree.


And there is the Sheraton in Seattle, which is were I was last year. Some MVP Summit sessions were even hold here, but this year everything is happening in Bellevue.


I also wanted to see a movie. Since most theatres here are still just showing Avatar (many cinemas have only one room), I choose to go to the Regal Merdian cinema once again because they have 16 cinema rooms with lots of different movies.


I saw Wolfman, but even that was only a choice because all the other movies seemed to be even less interesting. Maybe it is not a good time for good movies right now. Wolfman had some good effects, but the story was pretty stupid and overall I am not such a big fan of fantasy films, but I guess for a fantasy film it was pretty good.


For 50 cents you could get like 10 M&Ms, not really worth the effort to rotate the wheel ^^ I also had some popcorn, which was very tasty as usual.


In the afternoon the weather was much better, but I was tired again and needed a little nap (man this jet lag is killing me, why was it so much easier the last years, maybe I am getting old ^^).


I walked around a little and considered going to the Space Needle again.


Not much going on in this part of Seattle. I saw a few more cinemas, but they all just showed Avatar ..


Then there was this strange school for girls building ..


And some stuff for building the next skyscraper, but with this amount of steel it cannot be very high ^^


Because of the bad weather and still kinda poor vision I decided against going to the Space Needle again and took a little nap instead. Watched some vods, tv series, worked a bit and played some games the rest of the day. Also tried out the new NDepend for VS2010, which is now nicely integrated, more about that later.