Sunday, November 25, 2007

How to get updates to my blog automatically

You may think that I am doing this to increase traffic to my blog but that isn't the exact reason. I was asked by no less than six people last week how it would be possible to receive my posts automatically in their Inbox.

I'll give you examples for Firefox
and Thunderbird.

In Firefox, click on the "Atom Feed" link you see on your right. Then, use "Subscribe to this feed using..." and hit "Subscribe Now".

In Thunderbird,
if you already have an RSS News & Blogs account, skip this step. To create one, go to Tools->Account Settings, click on "Add Account..." and follow instructions for "RSS News & Blogs".

Then, select "News & Blogs" and click on "Manage Subscriptions". In the popup window, click the "Add" Button and copy/paste "http://lkalamaras.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default" in the "Feed URL" edit box.

These two methods will allow you to automatically receive an update whenever I have a new article written in my blog (which HAS to be more often :-)).

Monday, November 19, 2007

Beyond Comparison...

Seems I don't post much, but when I do, it comes in batches... :-)

This post is about a wonderful little utility called "Beyond Compare". As a developer / code writer, it's very hard sometimes to keep track of changes that have occurred between file versions and bugs can creep into our products simply because of a file regression.

Beyond Compare helps prevent such problems by allowing levels of file and folder comparison in an intuitive, productive way that I had wished for a long time, but had never imagined existed.

Here's their web site. Well worth the $30.

Engauged Shared Cockpit

Susan posted a very interesting article about shared cockpit / multiplayer coding so I will be investing some time on making sure we can take advantage of this in future products (and by "future" I mean AFTER the MD11 ;-)).

The URL is here.

Back Home!

I am back home after having spent a very interesting week in Seattle. For those who are just catching up with the news, I attended the Microsoft Developers Conference (and I can't say much about it as all that stuff is under NDA) and the AVSIM Fan Conference (and that was NOT under NDA :-)).

While in Seattle, I saw old friends, acquaintances and rival developers (hi Daryl!), some of whom I had met before and some I was getting to meet for the first time and actually talk to (yes, that means you, Lou!).

During the FanCon, PMDG had the pleasure of more publicly revealing the now-in-alpha testing MD-11 (I had shown some of it during the 2006 Aerosoft Conference in Paderborn). Fans and customers had the opportunity to fly it for the first time and comment on usability and new features - I was amazed by how well it was received!!!

Michael Frantzeskakis and Bill Grabowski did a wonderful job in presenting it to the FanCon attendees, showing some of the newly programmed stuff (like the PMDG cursor standardization, variable lighting, overhead panel popups etc) - these guys are truly amazing!

I am now back home, working feverishly on finding a couple pesky problems with the FSX 747-400X and correcting them. After thousands of units sold so far, there's only a very limited number of customers facing issues, so pinning down the problems is hard... but we'll get to them!

Also working on finalizing the bits for our external hardware driver software (GoFlight, Engravity) modules so our customers can get to them too. Be assured, there will be a significant discount for those who've purchased the FS9 versions as well!

I'm getting some feedback from users who own the Aerosoft Australia 747 MCP hardware who wish me to write driver software for FSX. So far, there's only 20 or so users who want this done and unfortunately, it means I can't readily justify time allocation towards that project, however if there are more of you out there, by all means - BE VOCAL! We need to know so we can allocate the time.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Still in the USA (now on business)

We returned to Athens, of course, after the trip to the USA, so how is it that I am now finding myself back in Seattle?

Well, I attended the Microsoft Flight Simulation Developers Conference and am now attending the AVSIM Fan Con which will last until Sunday (so those of you local in the Seattle area, do come visit our booth - we have some cool stuff on display!).

I met with some very interesting people here in Bellevue, had an opportunity to hook up again with some of the ACES people who I've come to consider good friends through the years (Z, yes, that means you!) and get to see familiar faces once again with whom we've shared some war stories.

A special thank you goes to a (will remain nameless) person who helps out continuously and without regard for those who might have the audacity to consider it favoritism (even though the help we receive goes public immediately afterwards). 'Someone', you know who you are and thank you!

There have been some awesome presentations (unfortunately, all of which are under NDA and as such, I can't disclose anything about), but suffice it to say it's been an eye-opener all around!

I am looking forward to the AVSIM conference - we have some cool stuff to show in our booth as I said already, so I am hoping that people will enjoy the weekend as much as we hope.

Trip to the USA, part... err... :-)

The terror! I had forgotten I was supposed to keep writing more about our beautiful trip through the USA last summer, so I guess I owe those of you who visit this blog an explanation:

I got preoccupied: PMDG released the long-awaited 747-400x for FSX, so it became a very important priority to get that out the door, and by the time that was done, my blog was stale.

I promise, I'll write more about that - in the meantime, do visit PMDG's site and take a look at our 747-400X product - it has some very cool features!