dax frost - art | sound | code | lifestyle

2 nights in Paris and Contiki adventures in Europe

Dax Frost — Sun, 22 May 2011 16:53:35 +0000

The Amazing Race…

I jumped at the idea of having an adventure through Europe like a fat kid loves a cupcake. There was little time to save cash for this epic journey… but, I knew, if there wasn’t a date looming over us, my trusty brother Marc Frost and I may never have felt the pressure and pulled this off. There’s no time like the present! And with 2 months till launch date (April 12 2011), we went through the extremely tedious process of aquiring Holiday Visas – which was fairly simple at the UK embassy in Cape Town, but not so much with the French… damn French. ;)

The French placed the Schengen Visa in my hand the same second my plane took off… bureaucracy’s a bitch. Needless to say, I wasn’t ecstatic… I jumped aboard the very next flight and raced against time to catch up with the tour group as they make it to Paris.

London, Paris, Nice, Monte Carlo, Pisa, Florence, Rome, Venice, Munich and Amsterdam…

The good news was that we made it in time… with an hour to spare. Paris was truly the most amazing city I had ever seen. I decided to take a MXit badge with me to brand some of the world’s famous structures…

From my first time giving body shots (when in Rome…) to the Australian hickey orgies in the Rhine Valley… There’s just too many epic, wild and distasteful stories I would have to share here, some that could win me a spot in a prison cell with a big lovable guy named Tiny. So here are a few of the hightlights…

My leaning tower of Pisa

Advertising for Soviet Man

At the palace in Monaco near Monte Carlo

Sniffing statues in Paris

Chilling in the Colloseum

Me in Monaco doing a jump shot with Marc Frost ;)

MXit API / SDK – How to develop a game / application for MXit

Dax Frost — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 12:39:04 +0000

MXit API unveiled…

Yesterday I attended the release of the MXit API for external applications and games. What can I say, as usual for a MXit event, my high expectations were met. Hosted at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, the lucky attendees were welcomed with good food and drinks, a gift pack of MXit branded stuff and one of the all new MXit Gear (MXit clothing range) items on their seats.

MXit Gear Caps

The past, present and future…

After two very interesting and informative presentations on the past, current and future of MXit and the now open platform API from Herman Heunis and Sayed Mohamed it was time for lunch. The lunch could have easily been more spectacular than the MXit API release itself.

After lunch, Gustav Mauer (the head of MXit development) gave the final presentation which was paticularly exciting for the more technical attendees as he explained a high level overview of the architecture and strucure behind the complex systems at MXit and the way you will connect through the API.

I think most interesting of all, he went on to demonstrate attaching a new MXit application (even over a terrible wifi connection) to the MXit system in a few lines of code, which was more than impressive as everyone could follow the demo live as changes were applied in a few seconds. Creating a simple numeric guessing game, and a short hello world example were among the few things seen.

How to start using the MXit SDK…

The demonstrated SDK can be obtained from code.mxit.com where you just sign up for a new account and start using the SDK, that though mature is still considered in a beta release. After creating an account you will get a application username and password… from this a service name to add and test your application live on MXit.

code.mxit.com

There’s a forum and definitely going to be a massive influx of documentation as time goes on through code.mxit.com. But I will have a series of posts on how to create your own game and applications for MXit.

What you’ll need…

You will need Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 or later which can be obtained for free as an Express Edition.

The MXit SDK utilizes WCF to communicate with the MXit system, this comes with your Microsoft .Net development kit.

Hosting… this was stressed heavily, but this is definitely something to take into account. Once live and gaining users, your application is likely to sky rocket in user base and activity and due to the nature of the network operator connectivity you will experience waves of requests at times that can funnily enough seem like DOS attacks – they’re not ;)

MXit API – Develop Applications for the open MXit Platform

Dax Frost — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 20:48:19 +0000

Have you ever had an idea for MXit that you’ve always wanted to see make its way into the community?

Maybe you’ve always had a plan to make a powerful mobile application or game…

well now’s your chance!

It’s a matter of hours before its live… and the MXit open API launch is tomorrow. MXit will soon be an open playground for non profit and commercial 3rd party developers alike to have fun and maybe even make some Moola ;). As long as you abide a few simple rules around the way it all works so nobody gets hurt :)

The MXit API Launch tomorrow is set to have some key people discussing the developments of the external applications in MXit and the plans for these applications going forward…

Herman Heunis – CEO of MXit Lifestyle

Adrian Frielinghaus – CEO of Blue Leaf Games (developed and built the first external game using the MXit API)

Sayed Mohamed – MXit API Product Manager

Gustav Mauer – Head of MXit Development

After all is said and done we can expect some serious activity around the development of external applications. Good examples of games already visible are Tixi and Chess made inhouse by MXit as well as the very popular Blue Leaf Games’ creation, Moonbase

In coming weeks I will be sharing a set of tutorials on how to create a MXit game and MXit applications externally using the MXit API… So expect some guides on all the tools you will need and what to do when creating your MXit app…

MXit Gear – MXit t-shirts, belts and clothing to buy

Dax Frost — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 05:48:22 +0000

MXit’s cool… and you’ve always wanted a MXit shirt like you see some of the MXit Team or other celebrities sporting around right?

Well now’s your chance to finally get some official MXit branded clothing. MXit have decided to launch a clothing line branded as MXit Gear.

The official site will go live in the next couple weeks, but before then you can already get first in line by going to the official MXit Gear site and sign up for the release notification.

I tried on one of these MXit belts today. They’re excellent quality, and tomorrow I will be the proud owner of one.

Still to come are a bunch of MXit shirts that haven’t been shown to the public yet, one of which was designed by yours truly :evilgrin: (no kidding), I will do a follow up article on that if you don’t believe me, but until then here’s a sample of the original MXit shirt to be on offer…

You can also check out MXit Gear on facebook here.

Don’t miss out, from what I’ve heard MXit will only be creating an exclusive set of limited batches… and I know everyone is going to want one…

Forgot MXit login or lost pin problems?

Dax Frost — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 21:26:49 +0000

A forgotten or lost MXit pin – struggling to remember that clever login name? You’re not alone, and there seem to be an abundance of forgetful MXit users out there, just like you! :)

I’ve had a lot of people asking for help with this and I thought I’d try put it to rest once and for all – so here are some solutions…

1. I forgot my MXit pin…

Q: When you registered or updated your MXit profile – Did you enter an email address or mobile number that you have access to?

I entered my email address correctly on my MXit profile…

A: Yes, I entered my email address… then theres hope for you… If you did input your email address on your MXit profile you can merely go to http://password.mxit.com and fill out the form. This will email your MXit pin to your email address you setup on your MXit profile. You will need your correct MXit login name, if you don’t have that, see 2.

I entered my mobile number correctly on my MXit profile…

A: Yes, I entered my mobile number… then just send an SMS with the word “PIN” followed by your login name to 34006. So for example, if I login with john – I send “PIN john” to 34006. An sms will be sent to the mobile number registered on your MXit account with your MXit pin. Make sure you send the SMS from the same mobile number that you are registered on MXit with. This is one of the reasons why you must have the SIM card for the mobile number registered on the MXit profile that you are using. You will need your correct MXit login name, if you don’t have that, see 2. Sending an SMS to 34006 will only work for South African users at this time, if you are an international user, please contact MXit support.

I didn’t enter my mobile number or email address on my MXit profile…

A: No? …well then you’re almost out of luck, you have 1 option left which most won’t tell you… Emailing MXit support for assistance, contacting MXit support or calling the MXit interactive line on 086 100 MXit.

2. I forgot my MXit login name…

Q: When you registered or updated your MXit profile – Did you enter an email address or mobile number that you have access to?

A: Yes? Then there is hope for you… Emailing MXit support for assistance, contacting MXit support or calling the MXit interactive line on 086 100 MXit are the ways to go. Make sure you explain your situation clearly and state that you know your PIN and or the email address/mobile number belonging to your account. It’s quite possible that it’s your lucky day and your MXit profile credentials could be retrieved for you.

MXit Troubles? try the best MXit pc client – daxtop – the pc client for the people…

Vocals for Blur – Song2 & Ramones – Blitzkrieg Bop

Dax Frost — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 21:01:33 +0000

A trusty old bass playing friend of mine was doing some rough recording earlier this year for a few projects in Cape Town’s City Varsity Sound Engineering…

Not my usual vocal style (At All, so no laughing! :rotfl: ) …but I agreed to helping him out. It was fun and funny…

Here’s snippets of what he and I managed to track in a very rough 2 hours or so vocal session…

Blur – Song2

Ramones – Blitzkrieg Bop

If this hurts your ears or doesn’t hurt your ears, you can get more of that same feeling at my band, d-frost’s website…

daxtop – a MXit pc client

Dax Frost — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 19:28:01 +0000

MXit on your desktop

A new pc client written entirely in Java, daxtop is a lightweight multi-protocol instant messenger geared originally for MXit on the desktop but holds support for multiple other protocols like Google Talk, Skype, Twitter and many more.

daxtop - Chat Tab Previews

Potentially, a multitude of plugins (even an RSS reader, Google Talk or mp3 player) could run within daxtop instead of having many social networking applications open. This functionality is built under the hood and kept in mind for the future – however, for the moment the MXit protocol is just gaining some traction on its own.

daxtop - MXit contacts

It’s new, and independently developed here – so feature requests and bugs can be quickly reported from the community and hopefully added or fixed just as fast. Frequent releases on an almost weekly basis are made available on http://www.daxtop.com and a notification will popup when running the client which can be clicked on for the update.

daxtop - MXit contacts

Over 20 themes are available to pick from, light – dark – bright – round – square… head on over and download daxtop to try it out for yourself.

Test Driven Development in Cape Town

Dax Frost — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 19:37:19 +0000

TDD in the Cape

Most conventional forms of development developers use in their day to day efforts – are in the form of design first, develop after or develop and design as we go or some sort of mixture of the two. Then, just maybe – if you haven’t already juiced the tiny bit of time you have left before the deadline – you might have enough time to write a couple tests.

Recently however, I was fortunate enough to find myself plunged into the edgey world of Test Driven Development. Myself and the rest of our team spent a few days acquainting ourselves with the many interesting concepts that make up the Test Driven Development life cycle. factor10‘s TDD course was the tour, and Aslam Khan was our guide. Aslam’s angle was clearly to take what seems like the tedious and daunting attributes of TDD, and break them down into the obvious and needed design fundamentals of agility and simplicity using the test first approach. However, it’s not all sunshine and roses… once set in your ways, its a difficult and almost unbearable to break out. Needless to say I felt like a pilgrim in an unholy land :) but that soon changed.

TDD takes some guts to tackle, but once you have it fairly under your thumb it can save you hours of debugging – and any extra time you may spend scope creeping. Adjusting to the ways of TDD seem ridiculous but at the same time it doesn’t take long to realise the obvious benefits. In my honest opinion, it can be very difficult to incorporate a test first approach in your day to day development work right away – you will find there just isn’t enough time when you’re still a newbie writing tests at a snails pace. But I suggest you write just a few tests, and perhaps attempt some of your own fake tests in your spare time to increase your fluency in TDD.

The Tools

Getting started with TDD is pretty easy, all you need to do is find the appropriatte testing framework for your language of preference. There are plenty for almost all languages, for example, if you are working in C# or any .Net language you can download NUnit. NUnit is free and was originally ported from JUnit, which as you might expect is the Java counterpart.

Referencing NUnit

With your unit testing framework installed, you merely need to reference your unit testing framework in either a seperate project or in the same project as your code base, and you can write tests using their API library functions provided.

GhostDoc – A Free Code Documenting Visual Studio Plugin

Dax Frost — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:25:31 +0000

I have a number of favourite Visual Studio plugins that I make use of… but if I was told I could choose only 1 plugin, it would undoubtedly be GhostDoc. This software is by far the most useful little plugin I have ever come across, and upon using it, I found myself questioning the countless hours of coding time I had spent before using GhostDoc.

So what is GhostDoc? It’s a lightweight, fast and robust tool that provides automatic documentation of your methods, properties and classes all with a simple and configurable shortcut: ctrl+shift+D

GhostDoc does more than add random documentation, its intuitive and will deduce exactly what you intended doing when automatically documenting your methods or properties, this for me was probably the big selling point. I can highly recommend downloading GhostDoc and just give it a try… I can guarantee you will NOT regret it…

Download GhostDoc

The beauty of GhostDoc is its completely free, and the community is listening…

Razer Megalodon BETA firmware installation problems?

Dax Frost — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:15:35 +0000

Struggling with the installation?

I found that my installation automatically updated from Windows update instead of letting me browse for the directory of the firmware i wish to use…

And each time I plugged into the same usb port more than once – the driver update wouldn’t initialize either as if that usb port was caching the fact that the install had been “successful”.

I did get around this, please follow this at your own risk though!

My Fix

First of all… Delete all remaining extracted folders containing the old firmware (if you updated in the past so that Windows wont automatically use these).

Secondly, disconnect yourself from the internet entirely (this is for windows update to fail – this shouldn’t be entirely necessary – but just for safety).

And thirdly, open up your audio device driver properties for the Megalodon through Control Panel and uninstall the current drivers for the Megalodon. To do this, follow the following instructions…

Select "Manage Audio Devices"

Select "Razer Megalodon" then select "Properties"

Under "General" tab, select "Properties" again...

Under this "General" tab, click "Change Settings"

Click the "Driver" tab, then click "Uninstall"

Once you have uninstalled the driver, unplug the Megalodon – plug it back in… and get back to the above screen… click “Update Driver…“

Finally, now you can click manually browse to the BETA firmware drivers by selecting "Browse my computer for driver software"

Once you select the directory it will warn you it is untrusted as this is a beta release. After installing the beta firmware, you may finally remove the Megalodon and plug in again as specified in Step 4 of this article…