I've been kicking around this idea for a little while and it gives me a good excuse to use Beta 2 of silverlight -- a new, semi-interactive header for my blog.  I'm not completely sure how this'll work, probably with a master page swap out, but we'll see. 

Ideally, I'd like to have my header, as you see it now, only with ...I don't know, maybe a water effect.  You click or move across it and ripples appear on it.  Something seemingly simple ...maybe?  Well, off to work.

8/18

After some of that work I ran into something interesting -- I'd like to stretch out the header text like I have currently and I happen to find a property named "FontStretch".  After some googling, the jist of it is: some fonts you can stretch, others you can't, and its an enum style value as well (normal, expanded, condensed, like in word) and it appears verdana is not one of them which doesn't add up to me.

Quick post -- I tried to get into the project to take out a reference to an object but oh well, my internet connection doesn't want to stay connected for long.  For now, its live, everyone can view it and watch the progress.  I need to get wcf finalized and the visuals are a bit woeful (see the post on the silverengine) but we'll see where this goes!

Take a look at www.codeplex.com/silversurvey

Based on some feedback I got -- I've decided "why not?" and tossed the survey engine I started up to CodePlex.  I'm not going to allow anyone to join in just yet, not until I get the basic stuff setup and there's going to be a nasty learning curve that I feel coming.  So far, I've got the db project up, along with the core project itself (its kinda nice having TFS again!) -- as soon as that's done and rollin', feel free to join in.

Ok, I've got my source code ready and hopefully the sql script will work (much easier/smaller than posting up a bak or mdf).  Download it, take a look, make fun of me on twitter.  Honestly, this was/is going to be used at some point for something real (survey engine) other than a research-ish project.  Anyway, enjoy!

SilverEngine.zip (750.98 kb)

Finally got the chance to sit down and dork around with silverlight.  I skipped right over 1 and 1.1 and went directly to 2.0 hoping that there's something there I can figure out.  What I ended up with was a Linqed, WCFed silverlight app that will NOT accept its rightful place out in the world.  I haven't quite figured it out yet, but I keep getting either a totally blank page (tried all 3 pages I set aside for it) and the service itself isn't working property (thought it was the end point domain but that wasn't it either).

Anyway, if you get bored, take a look at http://silver.rileytech.net and take a look (nothing comes up at the time of me typing this) and the service doesn't either but I won't be posting up that link.  If anyone would care to take a look, let me know, I'll send you the code with the database too.  At least the other site works -- www.columbusstarsbaseball.org :-)

Well, its official, silverlight is out which is good. I’m currently working a new item for CodeMash and we are deciding on which version we are going to use. Now that 1.0 is released and not beta/RC/whatever, this should help out. For whatever reason, I can’t seem to get the aspnet Futures to latch onto Visual Studio 2008. Later on I’ll see if I can’t clear this up.