Countdown to PDC2008: Technical Fellow John Shewchuk Talks About His Talk at PDC2008 (Channel 9)

Technical Fellow, and longtime PDC veteran, John Shewchuk join Mike and Jennifer to talk about his session at PDC. What’s the scoop? He’s going to explain how easy it is to take your apps, using Microsoft’s collection of services, to make them better and easier to build than ever. What’s that you say? Listen as John shows his glee for this year’s PDC as we usher in the next generation computing platform! Are you really going to miss out on this event? Plus, after lots of begging and pleading, Mike let’s Jennifer deliver this week’s Hard Hat Challenge as Liberace listens in.

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Sokol

Sep 12, 2008 at 12:34 AM

Mike,

Is it possible to post a higher resolution image with the challenge? Until then, back to real life challenges

Regards,
mswanson

Sep 12, 2008 at 8:20 AM

Sure!
spivonious

Sep 12, 2008 at 12:19 PM

Rinnnng, cut it off in mid-sentence? Huh?
NMStoker

Sep 12, 2008 at 2:40 PM

yes - i get the ringing too and the video ends abruptly... did something go wrong with posting or editing?
DouglasH Just Causual

Sep 12, 2008 at 5:47 PM

That is the format of the show. A timer is set when it rings the show is over. no matter where they are in the discussion.
Sokol

Sep 14, 2008 at 2:24 PM

Speaking of the challenge, the longest distances I could go so far were between 31 and 52 hops depending on the assumptions. And that’s after quite a bit of rather contrived coding to eliminate loops. This one seems to be more difficult than the previous two (unless I’m heading in the wrong direction J ). I wonder what I’m going to do tomorrow lunchtime… J J J
Fridjon

Sep 14, 2008 at 3:18 PM

Well, I found the three sentences that Jennifer said while showing the picture, really said it all There was one word in each sentence that really gave the whole thing away...
Sokol

Sep 14, 2008 at 11:24 PM

I think I know what the words are (there are only three object nouns in the sentences). I just can't get the point or I got it, but I didn't realize that. BTW, I appreciate you apparently knowing the answer and letting others to solve the problem. I think I'll give up on that one, although I can't get rid of a feeling that I'm almost there...
Fridjon

Sep 15, 2008 at 1:27 AM

I think this challenge "smells" a little bit of the eighties in more than one way...
Sokol

Sep 15, 2008 at 1:59 AM

Let me guess... Olympics in Los Angeles (1984)? No, Fridjon, thanks for the tip, but I'm out. My kitchen timer rang up a couple of hours ago
Captain JiNX J i N X

Sep 22, 2008 at 1:13 PM

I asked the brain about XYZZY, and...

Brianna says:
A hollow voice says "PDC."
mswanson

Sep 22, 2008 at 4:03 PM

And we have ourselves a winner! Congratulations, Captain JiNX! Awesome job. Drop us an e-mail at pdccount (at) microsoft.com, and we'll coordinate your limited edition PDC2008 t-shirt.

As with prior challenges, I'd love to hear the thinking process behind your solution, if you want to share it.
Captain JiNX J i N X

Sep 23, 2008 at 12:08 AM

-----------------SPOILER--------------------

Actually, I saw the challenge yesterday morning for the first time. I read the nice clues above fromFridjon (Thanks btw...), and I immediately associated everything to the good old Amiga-days, when we used to make demos with nice vector graphics in them... These numbers just had to be vectors. I figured that the groups of four numbers must be "Distance" (the length of the vector), a "Point" (X and Y coords) and "Direction" (the angle). The problem was just which number was what? The last number was the only one in each group that was larger than 0, so that had to be the length. The third number spanned from negative to positive numbers, so I guessed that had to be the angle. That left the coordinates to number one and two.
Then I created a small C# program that would draw all these vectors (using what's left of my old trigonometry knowledge from the scene). Of course nothing showed up... But then I thought about "the wrong direction", so I animated a rotation on every vector, and after some "trial and horror" a text magically appeared in front of me... "ASK THE BRAIN ABOUT XYZZY". So I did...