C++ Builder... True RAD;

I am finally posting my YouTube video on my blog. Three weeks late! Unforgivable. One of Duncan's tracks stuck in my head for weeks and then I saw the competition was dominated by Delphi folks--no surprise. C++ Builder appears to have a small community, so I wanted to put something up that was a little My motivation behind this was not to win the competition, but to make the tool come alive. I wanted to do something more than exciting than just a How-to demo.I did the screen recordings using CamStudio, the music editing using Audacity, and the video editing using a tool called Jahshaka. Jahshaka is really-really cool, it allows you to make real-time animations, which can include combinations of video-clips, 3d models, 3d text. It offers real-time video effects such as fading, mesh warps, 6dof rotation, chroma keying, etc. It is WYSIWYG for the most part. The Jahshaka project has been inactive since the spring, but I hope it continues.

The music I chose for the soundtrack is called "The Chase (Wait for it Edit)", which Duncan AKA" DJ Rathumos" gave to me to review many years ago. It is very addicting as most of his music was. I also used the last few seconds of "Dream splicing" to play during the credits. I hope one of his buddies on Lethargic Records puts out an Anthology CD sometime soon...(Froggy?!?)

Are you in?

Some of our fondest memories of Duncan are centered around the espresso machine in the small kitchen at CleveMed. Several times throughout the day Duncan would drop by my office wagging his demitasse asking "Are you in?" An answer of "No" or, "I'm loaded", or "5 is enough for one morning" would be answered with the classic "disapproving scowl", or he would click his tongue and say "...you're missing out" Whether we were "in" or not, we would go and hang out and just chat about whatever.

Duncan always had something interesting to say--he was constantly tuned into all kinds of news on just about every subject--its like his brain had an RSS feed. Every morning he would ask us, "so did you hear about ...." Most of the time the answer was no, but we would leave the kitchen well informed.

When Duncan found me in the hospital...

I will never forget the time I wound up in the cardiac ward and spent about 3-days and tried to pretty much keep it a secret where I was, and through what he called "social engineering", he was able to figure out what section of the hospital I was in, and what room, and all of a sudden he waltzes in his typical t-shirt and jeans with the Lethargic Records bag slung over his shoulder "hey hey!". I was in a state, three-days without caffeine and one to many nitro-patches--exhausted after having passed out the night before.

He brought me Kris's gameboy and suggested that Tetris and pac-man were very therapeutic, we talked shop a bit and he scolded me a bit on my stress level, which is what probably landed me in the state I was in.

I didn't use the gameboy, but his visit was really special

Unintended Use

I had originally created this blog to post my thoughts on software development, with specific emphasis on my tool of choice - Borland's (now CodeGear's) C++ Builder. I will instead, for the time being use this as a place to post my thoughts and memories of my friend Duncan, who recently passed away.