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XNA related discussions

Blog moved to WordPress and new domain...

I've moved my blog to my own domain and onto a WordPress engine, CS + SPAM was driving me nuts!

Catchup posts: Oh yes, I've been in Japan for a couple of months, first 2 weeks of photos are uploaded on Flickr, I still havent had a chance to upload the thousands after.

Whats more, I've actually written some information about me so you can finally find out my sad sad way of life. See About Thushan Fernando.
posted Sunday, June 29, 2008 2:57 PM by Thushan Fernando

Windows Vista SP1-RC and Office 2007 SP1 Released to public

Grab it while its hawt, Windows Vista SP1-RC and Office 2007 SP1. I think most people on Vista would be most pleased with SP1 as it smooths some of the roughness RTM brought with it.

posted Thursday, December 13, 2007 10:17 AM by Thushan Fernando with 0 Comments

FIX DIRECTSHOW: 'Class Not Registered' 0x80040154 error code

A friend at work was having some issues with his dev box today, working in video means we're constantly messing around with DirectShow filters, capture devices etc. etc. So things break every now and then and we deal with it like normal _sane_ developers (i'll leave you to think of how thats done).

Today however when we uninstalled a certain capture card software (that shall remain nameless...) he found that almost all his filters and video decompressors were messed with. Attempting to use them in GraphEdit would give the dreaded 'Class Not Registered' error message. So being the cool people we are, we got a copy of Paul Glagla's Filmerit and had a looksy. To our surprise there were almost 50 broken filters. So naturally we went through and tried to register them manually. But no luck.

Then I had a double look at what Filmerit was trying to say (now this screen shot is a reproduction of what happend, not the exact shot from his box!):

Filmerit 3.08 Dialog showing broken filters - caused by me on purpose.
Filmerit 3.08 Dialog showing broken filters - caused by me on purpose for 'emulation'.

Notice the 'Server File' has an error, this isnt the 'filter' thats causing it but rather the container itself. The uinstaller had some how managed to unregister a core DirectShow component. Naughty naughty (now do you see why I didnt mention the company name?)!

So now I checked my machine to see which file its meant to goto, turns out its 'qcap.dll' is the culprit (which is in your system32 folder). Register this component and voilla! all those broken filters will be fixed! To be sure, unregister the component first and then force it to be registered again.
C:\>regsvr32.exe /u "C:\Windows\System32\qcap.dll"
C:\>regsvr32.exe "C:\Windows\System32\qcap.dll"
Note, that Filmerit wont fix an issue with DirectShow itself, only for broken filters.
posted Wednesday, July 11, 2007 6:46 AM by Thushan Fernando with 1 Comments

Microsoft PhotoSynth

Out of Microsoft Research, Microsoft Live PhotoSynth, an insanely cool research product. See the official website for more information or try the demo(5.5Mb).

I'm speechless. WOW. *pees pants*.
posted Thursday, June 07, 2007 3:39 AM by Thushan Fernando with 5 Comments

Malware on USB Drives new? Disable autorun on USB Drives!

I was just reading a news thread on eWeek about Malware targeted at USB Drives and had a little chuckle! Its not exactly new, Swinburne's, RMIT's and a couple of Melbourne Uni computers I've used are infected with worms that propogate from people's USB Drives when mounted. Everytime you mount your USB you'll be helping the worm move to new machines. Originally I *was* going to tell our Administrator's at uni regarding this (as far back as early to mid last year) but put it off after I heard someone who did complain got the matter shrugged off. But now I guess this type of issue is in the open they may actually start to do something about it.

So how do you prevent your machine at home/lappy from being a target? For the moment, disable autorun so when you mount your USB drive it will not execute the autorun.inf file. Alternatively at uni hold down SHIFT when you plug in your USB drive so it will avoid running autorun.inf.

To make it easier:
  1. Start > Run, type in 'gpedit.msc' without the quotes, this will show you the Group Policy Editor.
  2. Goto 'Computer Configuration' > 'Administrative Templates' > 'System' and select 'Turn Off Autoplay'
  3. When the properties for the policy pops up, check 'Enable' and select 'All Drives' and hit OK.
There! Sorry, Mac / Linux users miss out on the fun;-)
posted Sunday, May 06, 2007 5:40 AM by Thushan Fernando with 7 Comments

Windows PowerShell RTM's

I've been hooked on PowerShell since first joining the early previews (ahhh the memories of BetaPlace!) and just yesterday MSFT released the final version. Go download PowerShell!

For a good introduction and concept tour of PowerShell take a look at the ArsTechnica guide 'A guided tour of Microsoft Command Shell' from over a year ago (pwoahhH!)

Some cool stuff to try...
  • cd ~/Desktop
    Takes you to your Documents & Settings Desktop folder 
    PS C:\Documents and Settings\Thushan Fernando> cd ~/Desktop
PS C:\Documents and Settings\Thushan Fernando\Desktop>
 -- OR --
PS C:\Documents and Settings\Thushan Fernando\Desktop> cd /
PS C:\>
  • Autocomplete
    Autocomplete by hitting the [TAB] key and PS will cycle through the files in the directory. 
    PS C:\>./ [TAB]
  • Get PS to talk!
    No this isnt BonziBuddy, you can get PS to talk via the SAPI.svoice COM object... 
    PS C:\> $vce = new-object -com "SAPI.spvoice"
PS C:\> $vce.Speak("Mmmmmm yummy yummy in my tummy")
1
Eh thats it for now I'm meant to be revising...
posted Wednesday, November 15, 2006 2:56 AM by Thushan Fernando with 0 Comments

Office 2007 available on MSDN

Microsoft released Office on MSDN today.

Office Professional 2007 (English) English 11/12/2006 7:00:50 PM
Office OneNote 2007 (English) English 11/12/2006 7:48:14 PM
Office Groove 2007 (English) English 11/12/2006 8:06:59 PM
Office InfoPath 2007 (English) English 11/12/2006 8:21:34 PM
Office Project Professional 2007 (English) English 11/12/2006 8:58:25 PM
Office Visio Professional 2007 (English) English 11/12/2006 9:26:33 PM

So if you have a subby get your coppy...
posted Monday, November 13, 2006 11:24 PM by Thushan Fernando with 0 Comments

.NET Framework 3.0 Final Released!

I'm studying in the library so I have to make this quick...

Microsoft just released .NET Framework 3.0, remember that you dont need to "port" your code to use 3.0 (its additions to 2.0)
Enjoy! Dont forget to remove older CTP's! The .NET Framework 3.0 Readme is also available!

Samples are available too!
posted Wednesday, November 08, 2006 2:17 AM by Thushan Fernando with 0 Comments

Whats new in Windows Vista?

Forget MSFT marketing hype, forget the freebies - tshirts, cups, mugs, hugs... just look at Wikipedia's Features new to Windows Vista! Very indepth and has got alot of the major features (and some that havent even been mentioned in many of the articles floating around!)

on the subject of Wikipedia, watchout for the new trend of inserting Malware in articles.

November 30th we'll finally see Vista + Office 2007 being released... If you cant get wait and want to join the hype for the other operating system, go buy a (Big) Mac:p
posted Saturday, November 04, 2006 2:14 AM by Thushan Fernando with