Writing

As I was building OpenSpartan Workshop for Windows I needed the ability to convert a hexadecimal HTML color code to a SolidColorBrush object. Unlike with previous UI frameworks, WinUI 3 (which is what I use) doesn’t have a built-in construct for this kind of conversion. Naturally, I had to improvise.

This past weekend most of the Greater Seattle got to experience the thunder of US Navy Blue Angels jets buzzing the trees around the city as part of Seafair. I decided to take the time and actually venture out around the city to take some good photos this year.

So, check this little idea that I have - I want to browse the internet without all sorts of unscrupulous actors collecting every little bit of metadata on me and my family they can possibly get their hands on.

Way overdue, but with the release of Microsoft PowerToys 0.83.0, my very own PowerToys Awake comes in tow with a bunch of improvements that I wanted to do for a long time. This release is codenamed DAISY023, in reference to, of course, Daisy-023.

As part of the work on OpenSpartan Workshop I needed the capability to convert a Xbox gamertag into its immutable identifier - the Xbox user ID, also commonly known as the XUID. My plan was to add the option for someone to find all the matches where they played with a specific player.

OK, look - I am not the one to tell you that you absolutely have to track your stats for a damn video game, but I am the kind of person that finds a certain fun in that, just like I find the fun in reverse-engineering the entire Halo Infinite API. There is a certain beauty in looking at your own numbers, even if they are for some meaningless, entirely made-up progression system.

How to easily create automatic rich captions for your videos in DaVinci Resolve without having to pay for the Studio version or using third-party plugins.

I talked about Halo Infinite career ranks some time ago, but I kept needing to come back to the idea that I just wanted to have a quickly accessible list that just tells me what rank experience requirements are and how far along to Hero each rank is. No ads, no, fluff, just the table. Said table is now here.

With the launch of Halo Infinite in 2021, 343 Industries introduced the concept of battle passes in Halo. The concept itself is not new in the gaming industry per-se, but it’s new to Halo. It’s effectively a limited time opportunity for players to earn in-game rewards during what is referred to as a season (although that term becomes a bit overloaded now).

Just yesterday the new build of Halo Infinite dropped. With this build, one of the biggest changes that graced us with its presence is The Exchange - a new virtual venue where a player can use a new in-game currency, Spartan Points, to acquire all sorts of already known cosmetics.

To remove the toil of writing authentication code directly, our team at Microsoft has been working on adding a new tool to the developer toolbox - an authentication broker.

How I dove into the Halo Infinite AMQP API to dig for treasure - wait times for every single playlist available.

There’s a good reason why I don’t want a cloud account to manage my networking infrastructure.

How to get your game build identifier without firing up Fiddler.

How to collect and aggregate MSAL metrics in the cloud with minimal code.