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1840-O $5 Broad Mill MS61 NGC....
2009 February Long Beach, CA Signature US Coin Auction #1122
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1840-O Broad Mill Five Dollar, MS611840-O $5 Broad Mill MS61 NGC. Broad Mill half eagles are perhaps one of the most under-researched areas in U.S. gold coinage. The first widely distributed information about them was published 45 years ago in Walter Breen's Hewitt monograph series on gold coins. In his booklet Varieties of United States Half Eagles 1839-1929, he wrote at length about these pieces:
The Only Uncirculated Coin Certified
The Only Uncirculated Coin Certified
"Mintage commonly quoted as 30,400. The true figure seems to be 40,120. This includes some 4,620 Broad Mill coins struck from the first dies (January through March 1840) plus 35,500 Narrow Mill coins struck between August 1840 and February 1841 inclusive. This particular division may seem arbitrary but it is completely documented in the Archives. Deliveries:
Jan. .... 1,420 Nov. .... 14,000
Feb. .... 3,000 Dec. .... 5,200
March ... 200 Jan '41 .. 6,300
Aug. .... 8,000 Feb. .... 2,000
The first pair of dies was furnished on Jan. 21, 1840, and they were used for the Broad Mill coins, as the error had not yet been discovered at the Philadelphia Mint. Broad Mill coins exist and are quite rare. The second pair of dies was not sent until May 29. These dies were used for the remaining coinage. ... These dies were not destroyed until Feb. 27, 1841, one reverse being left over. The obverse die of 1840, sent Dec. 21, 1840, was not put into use until the following August."
The next appearance of information about these pieces occurred in 1987 and 1988. Breen mentioned them in his 1988 Complete Encyclopedia (page 531) but incorrectly listed them as 22.5 mm in diameter. In the October 1987 Norweb I catalog, Michael Hodder wrote "An Essay on Coin Diameters." Hodder used the coins in Norweb as a starting point for research on this intriguing subject, but left several questions unanswered for future researchers. What he discovered from measurement of half eagles from 1839 through 1847 is that there are actually three diameter ranges. He stated:
"The measurements can be classified into two categories among the earlier pieces on the list, the so-called 'Narrow Mill' coins, measuring 21.7 mm. or 21.8 mm. When we arrive at 1844-O, the first New Orleans Mint half eagle in the collection (New Orleans Mint issues of 1840-O, 1842-O and 1843-O are not in the collection), we come to a 'new' diameter of 21.9 mm., which we shall call the 'Medium Mill.' ... New Orleans Mint coins studied are from different diameter collars producing 21.9 mm. 'Medium Mill' coins."
With the new NGC holders it is now possible to exactly measure the diameter of a coin even though it is encased. This piece measures 21.9 mm, just as Hodder predicted 21 years ago. The coin is noticeably wider than the Narrow Mill variant, and this is especially noticeable with its wider rims. To date (1/09) this is the only Uncirculated Broad Mill 1840-O five certified by NGC (PCGS does not certify this variant). Only eight others have been graded. When encountered such pieces are usually in much lower grades, most often XF40-45, rarely in AU.
Unlike most 1840-O half eagles, this piece is only minimally abraded. In fact, there are no singularly mentionable marks on either side. This is worthy of note as Doug Winter remarked in his latest O-mint reference: "This date is nearly always seen with very heavily abraded surfaces." Another remarkable feature on this piece is the strength of strike. Again, using Winter as a reference, he notes that Broad Mill pieces are usually weakly struck. Light reddish patina is seen over each side of this otherwise green-gold example.
In theory, a case can be made that this is the rarest New Orleans half eagle. Only nine pieces have been certified, and this is the finest. Specialists will surely take note of this special coin. The question that will undoubtedly go through collectors' minds is, "When will another Broad Mill 1840-O five be available in Uncirculated?"(Registry values: P6) (NGC ID# 25SK, PCGS# 8200)
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Thread: what are 'points'?
August 14th, 2007 #1
what are 'points'?
when i go to my profile page, theres that little blue star with a number beside it. apparently these are my points... but what does that mean?
they're probably something completely pointless.. but now i'm curious!!
Hide this ad by registering as a memberAugust 14th, 2007 #2
It is based on your "activity" level in that part of the forums, i.e. how much you post in your blog, leave comments for other members, etc.
I wouldn't worry about it--that part of the forum is being redone soon.
August 17th, 2007 #3
ah, ok. thats out of the way then.

subset: commoncrawl


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Originally written on Fox Sports | Last updated 6/29/13
Jacob Turner pitched a seven-hitter Saturday for his first complete game in 19 career starts, helping the Miami Marlins beat the San Diego Padres 7-1. The complete game was the first for the Marlins this year. They had been outscored 20-3 while losing their first four games to San Diego this season, but the lowest-scoring team in the majors gave Turner a 6-0 lead after four innings. Giancarlo Stanton hit his eighth home run, Jeff Mathis had two RBIs and Placido Polanco became the 22nd active player to score 1,000 runs. Turner (2-0) struck out seven, walked one and threw 111 pitches, 77 for strikes. The right-hander lowered his ERA to 1.76 in six starts since being recalled from Triple-A. The Marlins have the worst record in the majors, but they're 14-10 in June. Eric Stults (6-6) gave up a season-high six runs, five earned, in 3 2-3 innings. The stint was his briefest as a starter since 2009. The Marlins took a 3-0 lead in the first inning. After Justin Ruggiano and Ed Lucas s...
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WALL AT WAM: Charline Von Heyl
museum hours Sun, Jan 1, 2012 - Sun, Feb 24, 2013
Venue: Worcester Art Museum
55 Salisbury Street, Worcester, MA 01609Contact:
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Von Heyl's inspiration for this commissioned mural, part of the Museum's Wall at WAM series, was Ellsworth Kelly's Orange White, a 1961 abstract painting in the Museum's collection. In a quickly executed initial sketch, von Heyl instinctively adapted the orange and white palette and vertically-stacked lozenge structure of the Kelly to the horizontal demands and architectural setting of the mural. Von Heyl's challenge in translating her drawing on site at this monumental scale (17 x 67 feet) was to reinvent each gesture with equal degrees of precision and liveliness (the painting process did not allow for mistakes or revisions) in order to keep the overall image, rhythm, and freshness of her original sketch. Simultaneously structured and improvisational, the Worcester mural is a painting that can be experienced as a single expansive composition as well as one that unfolds in contiguous segments spatially defined by the lozenges. In her ambitious reincarnation of the museum's Kelly, the intrepid von Heyl recharges that modernist moment while invigorating both the long history of murals and the current chapter of abstract painting.
RambleWild: Getting Wild in the Berkshires This Summer
From gleaming waterfalls to majestic panoramic views there's never any shortage of ways to...
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Ladies there is HOPE. I had hypothyroidism and my husband was diagnosed with low sperm count and somehow I got a BFP today for baby #2 - I am shocked to say the least. Please don't give up hope *hugs*
There is hope
Comments (3)
Posted 10/04/2012
Congratz!!! H&H 9 months!!
venessa (28) DH (37)
IVF #1 - miscarrage
Posted 10/04/2012
Congrats to you!!!!
Posted 10/04/2012
You definitely give me hope. DH is fine but after being diagnosed a year & a half ago with hypo, it's been a constant struggle to keep my TSH regulated (started at 153...now down to 0.60). Best wishes you & your family!
Darcy (37) + Bryan (36) = Shaybear 08.19.13


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Celebrity engagements
Feb. 26, 2012, Brad Pitt, left, and Angelina Jolie arrive before the 84th Academy Awards, in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles. After seven years and a handful of children, "Brangelina" became engaged in April 2012. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta, File)
May 13, 2013 10:17 pm • Amy Sancetta


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The stadium/convention center conundrum
So we've set about to design a facility that meets the Convention Center's needs at a cost the city can afford. We're engaged in a dialogue with the public about the design. Our schedule has us getting to the Port Commission by mid-2012 and then on to the Coastal Commission. Our goal is to have this facility completed in 2016.
CUSHMAN: There are 100 conventions in the United States that need between 600,000 and 800,000 square feet. We'll be 750,000 with the new facility. We only need three or four of the 100 a year and this whole thing works.
SANDERS: On the stadium, we are working with the county, with the San Diego Association of Governments. This is a regional issue. Not just citizens of San Diego go to Qualcomm to watch a football game. About 75 percent live outside the city, and a good number live within the county. We have sat down with Dianne Jacob and Ron Roberts, who are representing the county board. People seem receptive. But the county made it very clear they want to see a return on their investment, which is something we'd like to see also. If you site a stadium downtown and we see a huge expansion in property tax, that's a pretty good return on the investment. An increase in sales tax because of all the activity down there, that's certainly a return on investment also. We believe we could link Petco, the Convention Center and a multiuse stadium on the east end of downtown, which activates that whole end [economically]. That's where the return on investment would come from.
[The city has] engaged George Bilicic from Lazard, based in New York, to help us create a financing plan for the stadium. Lazard is one of the premier municipal financing firms in the country and this is what they do. So we're excited about that. [The contract] is under $250,000. Most of it will be contingent on a deal actually being made. If we develop a joint powers authority or whatever with the county and with others, obviously [that cost] will come under that.
Q: The original Convention Center was too small the day it opened. The expanded Convention Center was too small the day it was finished. The way the convention business works, it always seems to be bigger and bigger. Will this expansion if it goes forward be too small the day it opens? If it is, where do you go from there? Wouldn't a stadium be a plausible possibility for the next expansion?
CUSHMAN: If all of this works, we will be able to service about 90 percent of the available conventions in the United States. This is what we believe is the maximum that we can put on the footprint we have. [The next time expansion is considered] if we combine the two, there would be great synergy, and there is a belief we could then attract national party political conventions and Super Bowls. In 1996, we did handle the Republican Convention in San Diego, and Bob Dole made the acceptance speech at Qualcomm, not the most convenient place. But today we have Petco, so if we wanted to have a political convention tomorrow we could do it. We use Petco right now for events. It's right across the street. The problem is that six months of the year, you would not be able to make a commitment until one year out to use the facility itself [because of uncertainties about football scheduling].


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Annisa's Mommy's Mom Answers Activity
How can I get motivated to exercise while I'm pregnant?
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I am 8 weeks and EXHAUSTED, but exercise helps. Not always immediately, but I feel better while exercising, it's a stress reliever d...posted by a BabyCenter Member
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I am 12 weeks and have actually lost 10 pounds! so I'm actually smaller then I was before I was pregnant. I'm now 118. and still ...posted by carebaby1
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The team blog of the Expression Blend and Design
Here are some links to news and samples from Electric Rain.
Electric Rain RainStorm Newsletter Jan/Feb 2006 [1]
MSN Community Portal 3D UI Concept ApplicationPortal (please visit http://www.erain.com/products/zam3d/examples to see previews of the sample applications) This sample concept portal provides a 3D user interface control that also integrates 2D images that are also databound to provide additional functionality. This sample explores how 3D controls and components may fit into next generation applications.
On the download page above you can also sign up for ZAM 3D new and product updates.
ZAM 3D / Expression Integration White Paper [2] – Brief overview of how to integrate ZAM 3D XAML in Expression Interactive Designer projects.NEW ZAM 3D to Expression Wokflow Page [3]
[1] http://www.erain.com/mailings/rainstorm/2006/jan2006.html
[2] http://www.erain.com/downloads/trials/ZAM3D_Expression_Integration_WP.doc
[3] http://www.erain.com/products/zam3d/workflow
People have been wondering how to do this so I thought I'd write up an explanation.
The HyperBar sample which ships with Blend Beta 1 has a fixed set of eleven images in it. But what if you want to combine the HyperBar effects with the flexibility of binding to data – be it XML data or CLR object data? The solution is to draw out a ListBox and bind your data to that. Then you edit the ListBox's control template and place a HyperGrid panel in there as the items host. It's the HyperGrid panel that does all the magic in the HyperBar sample. Here are the steps you'll need to follow to get this to work, and then links to some files so you can study/copy the code in there.
// Clear the ColumnDefinitions and re-add one per child.
foreach (UIElement uie in InternalChildren)
this.ColumnDefinitions.Add(new ColumnDefinition());
protected override void OnInitialized(EventArgs e)
Update(new DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs());
Now you're done. Build and run. If you have any problems then you can study the following files to see if they differ from what you have. One final point is that the image files are still embedded in the project and the data.xaml refers to them as embedded resources. An exercise for the reader is to store these in a folder which the .exe reads at runtime.
Hi everyone, For a limited time, there is a 30% discount on all Microsoft Expression 3 products (Microsoft Expression Studio + Expression Web, both full and upgrade versions) through the Microsoft Online Store for US-based customers:
No promo code required at all – just go to the store and add to the shopping cart!
Cheers, Kirupa
When you preview a Silverlight application in Expression Blend, we run the ASP.NET Web Development server in the background to preview your content in an environment that emulates a real-world web server:
On March 9, a signature update to Windows Defender and Microsoft Forefront Security was released that modified your system's hosts file to address a vulnerability. One of the side effects of this update was that an entry for localhost may have been removed from your hosts file.
This means that, when you preview your application using the ASP.NET Development Server, your browser will simply show a "Page cannot be displayed" (or equivalent) message.
To fix this problem, open C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts in Notepad, and add the following entry:
For example, here is what my hosts file looks like (as Lucas pointed out in the comments, if you are not running Windows 7, the below lines may not be commented out):
A subsequent signature update to both Windows Defender and and Forefront Client Security, released on the same day as the earlier update, should not cause this problem.
The original source for this information comes from the Visual Web Developer Team's blog post on this topic.
Cheers! Kirupa :)
Hi everyone, If you have watched the BUILD keynotes and sessions, you may have seen some exciting things about Expression Blend's support for Metro-style applications.
For all future news and updates concerning Expression Blend, please visit our new team blog called BlendInsider. The BlendInsider blog will provide you with the types of content you found here…and hopefully much more!
This blog will be kept around for archival purposes, but no new content will be added.
See you all "on the Inside!"
Hi everyone, As many of you probably already know, the Expression Community site is where you go to learn more about how to use Expression Blend. One of the big components of the Community site is the Expression Gallery where you can download and share all kinds of content with the rest of the world.
I had some time recently, so I've uploaded many of the samples that have shipped with Expression Blend to our gallery:
Just head over here and download them all.
I'm not fully done uploading all of them, and I'm tracking down some of the samples we shipped as part of Expression Interactive Designer many moons ago as well, so do periodically keep checking to see if any additions have been made.
Cheers! Kirupa :)
You're probably very familiar with Content in WPF and Silverlight. For example, two Buttons can use the same Template but can look different by virtue of having different Content in them. And the Content property is of type object so it can be Text, or an Image, or a Panel containing yet more elements, or anything else. In the Template, the uncertainty of what the Content might be is taken care of by the ContentPresenter element which is analogous to a TV screen showing whatever Content happens to be in the control instance. This generality of Content is a good thing. But it does give rise to an issue in scenarios where you would like your Template (or Skin, if you prefer) to alter some aspect of the Content in a visual state. Say you'd like the Content's Stroke color to animate to red during MouseOver. Naturally, that requirement only makes sense as long as the Content has a Stroke property.
A safe, but limited, solution is to make use of the small number of properties that ContentPresenter has. For example, in WPF, the Template might respond to an IsMouseOver Trigger by animating the ContentPresenter's OpacityMask to Red. Then the Templated control instance could bind some property of its Content to that OpacityMask like this:
That approach is limited because you soon run out of ContentPresenter properties. Another approach is for the Template to make assumptions about what will be in the the Templated control instance's Content. You can try this in a Silverlight 2 project in the Blend 2.5 June Preview. Draw a Button and then draw a Path into the Button's Content. Then edit a copy of the Button's Template, select the MouseOver state, select the ContentPresenter and change its Background to Red. Now you'll need to do some XAML editing. In the XAML, find the MouseOver state and the Background animation and change the Storyboard.TargetProperty attribute's value to "(ContentPresenter.Content).(Shape.Stroke).(SolidColorBrush.Color)".
Build and run and you'll see the result. This is flexible, but it is also unsafe in the sense that if a control instance uses your Template without satisfying the Template's assumptions (say its Content is a TextBlock instead of a Shape) then a run-time error will result. However, so long as you're careful to only use this Template on control instances whose Content is a Shape then you'll be fine.
Corrina Barber came up with a scenario which is not addressed by the above approaches. The scenario is that of a Button which, in its Normal state, shows a still image (say, vector art of the MSN butterfly) and, in its MouseOver state, shows an animation (say, an image sequence or video of the butterly exercising its wings). Naturally, each Button instance should be able to specify the Normal and the MouseOver Content. This can't be done by simply animating existing types' properties in states so in this post I'll show some of the principles of my solution to that requirement.
I wrote a fairly simple subclass of ContentControl and I called it FlipContent:
The value proposition of the FlipContent type is that it can be made to flip its Content in reponse to a property change, therefore it can be made to flip its Content in reponse to a state change in a control template. Further, the Template needs to know nothing about the objects which constitute the FlipContent's Content; the control instance contains those:
You can try this in a Silverlight 2 project in the Blend 2.5 June Preview. Paste the class definition given above into Page.xaml.cs then add the Button XAML above. Then edit a copy of the Button's Template, select the MouseOver state, select the ContentPresenter and change its Opacity to 50%. Now you'll need to do some XAML editing. In the XAML, find the MouseOver state and the Opacity animation and change the Storyboard.TargetProperty attribute's value to "(ContentPresenter.Content).(local:FlipContent.IsFlipped)". Now press F5 to test the result. You experiment with different content, and you will be able to use Blend to add and edit UnflippedContent because it is the default content property. But you won't get as much help with FlippedContent.
You can download the project source files from below:
Please note that the solution to Corrina's exact requirement (switching an image for some video) will probably call for a FlipMediaElementSource class which assumes its content is a MediaElement and which switches its Source property instead of its own Content property. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader – you maybe!
This webcast describes the powerful features and capabilities of Microsoft Expression Graphic Designer, Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer, and Microsoft Expression Web Designer, and includes a 40 minute demonstration of Expression Web Designer.
The first twenty minutes cover concepts of user experience, the .NET 3.0 and WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) platforms and how they enable the next generation of user experience, and designer and developer collaboration using XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language). The discussion about Expression products and CSS begins around minute 21, and the Expression Web Designer demo begins around minute 27.
Register now to replay this session:
Hi everyone, We have released an update to last week's Deep Zoom Composer release to address a fairly serious bug related to the image paths we generate during export. You can download the latest version from the following location:
As always, please uninstall all existing versions of Deep Zoom Composer before installing the new version.
The export related bug we fixed has to do with image tiles not loading when you export using our custom templates. If you exported using the Default template, everything worked great. To summarize the problem and the solution, if you looked at dzc_output.xml, in our earlier release, we produced URLs to images that looked as follows:
<Items> <I Id="0" N="0" Source="/dzc_output_images/chrysanthemum.xml"> <Size Width="1024" Height="768" /> <Viewport Width="2" X="-0" Y="-0" /> </I> <I Id="1" N="1" Source="/dzc_output_images/desert.xml"> <Size Width="1024" Height="768" /> <Viewport Width="2" X="-1" Y="-0.75" /> </I> <I Id="2" N="2" Source="/dzc_output_images/tulips.xml"> <Size Width="1024" Height="768" /> <Viewport Width="5.1975051975051949" X="-1.5987525987525975" Y="-1.9490644490644482" /> </I> </Items>
The change we made is to remove the leading slash that appears in front of the XML file. The output now looks as follows:
If you already have existing projects that you don't feel like re-exporting using our new version of Deep Zoom Composer, then feel free to manually remove the leading slash from the image Source value in dzc_output.xml.
Cheers! Kirupa & Janete
Hi, I'm Bret Ahlstrom, the new release program manager for the Expression Studio suite of products. I've only been in this job a few short weeks, and the first thing I get to report on is a problem with the Expression Blend Service Pack 1 that was released last month!
It turns out that some people can't get the patch to install on their systems. This is due to an incompatibility between the SP1 patch and some versions of Blend (Japanese, Korean and German for starters.)
We think we have identified the problem and are building a new SP1 patch to address it, and this updated path should be ready to go in a few days. To clarify, only people who have had problems installing SP1 should need this patch. If you have already successfully installed SP1, then you won't need to download and install it again.
Thanks and stay tuned.
- Bret
Fellow Blender, Pete Blois, has written a small application called Rooler that allows you to make measurements of everything visible on your screen. You can download it by clicking here.
Rooler helps solve a common problem you have when designing UIs. That common problem is figuring out how large something is or how much space exists between elements. To help with this, you have this nifty tool called Rooler which, to think about it differently, is like having a virtual ruler that you can use to measure things on your screen.
Rooler is a small application that soars above all of your windows and provides you with some common screen measurement tools:
For example, let's say that I need to create a graphic whose width is the exact size as some text I have:
The above text is actually an image. Right clicking on the image and seeing its properties will give me the width of the image, but it may not translate to the actual width of the content stored inside it. Finding the size of the actual content is where a tool like Rooler comes in handy.
You can click on the Bounds icon to draw an overlay rectangle over the area you want to measure:
Once you have drawn the boundary, release the mouse cursor and Rooler will automatically create the smallest box that bounds all of your data:
Best of all, you all get the width and height of this bounding box as well, and you were able to do this without using another image editing tool and performing various (albeit simple) steps needed to get a similar value as what you see above.
I just showed you one example of what can be done, but you can do a bit more as well. Go check out Pete's Rooler page for more examples and information on other things this tool does.
But if you want to continue to use the January CTP of EID then please read this post before rushing off and installing anything.
As you know, the WinFX Runtime Components (RTC) are the redistributables (runtime binaries) needed for executing WinFX applications. You target a particular version of WinFX when you develop your Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications. You'll also be aware that Expression Interactive Designer (EID) is itself a WPF application so it is built to run against a particular version of WinFX, as are the WPF applications you build using EID.So, if you want to continue to use the January CTP of EID then you'll need the WinFX Jan CTP installed on your machine. If you've downloaded and played with the new WinFX Feb CTP then you'll need to revert to the WinFX RTC Jan CTP [1] in order to continue to use EID.
That is, at least for just a little while longer. We have a March CTP of Expression Interactive Designer under starter's orders as we speak so please be patient just a little longer. And the EID March CTP will work with the WinFX Feb CTP.If you'd like to experiment with the new WinFX RTC Feb CTP [2] then please do so. If you're a developer-type then you'll also be keen to try out the compatible Visual Studio "Orcas" CTP [3] which contains a WPF visual designer (code name "Cider").[1] http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=61DD9CA7-1668-42E4-BD37-03716DD83E53&displaylang=en[2] http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F51C4D96-9AEA-474F-86D3-172BFA3B828B&displaylang=en[3] http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=AD0CE56E-D7B6-44BC-910D-E91F3E370477&displaylang=en
The Expression Blend team is currently planning features for future versions of Expression Blend. We encourage everyone to take our Blend 3 Survey and send us your feedback. All eligible participants will be able to enter a drawing to win a FREE Zune HD!
As the winner you will be able to customize your own 32GB Zune HD (color and pattern).
The deadline for submitting a survey response is October 5th, 2009 @ 11:59pm. The winner will be announced on October 9th, 2009.
The survey contains various areas, feel free to respond to the areas you feel most relevant to your experience with Blend. We look forward to receiving your feedback and suggestions.
Cheers! Expression Blend Team
I love 3D, so I'm always trying to incorporate it in my projects. And what better opportunity to work with 3D than a blog post! This week I want to share this Mini Cube project, which is a (2x2) simplified version of that famous game that gave me so many headaches in the past. This is a perfect candidate for a 3D sample, since you have to visualize the cube in three dimensions in order to play it properly.
This project is not finished yet, I've prepared the 3D objects and some interaction, but the cube doesn't "work", which means you can't rotate the blocks. But that's the point of this post... invite you to finish it ;-) So, let me give you an idea of what I have done so far and see if someone wants to take it to the next level:
The workflow I used was Maya 6.0 > Export to Obj > Import Obj in Blend. In Maya I was able to create the geometry, separate materials, and adjust the pivot points for each block. For the geometry, I also created a few extra objects that will receive mouse events in Blend. If you click on one corner, you will notice that a Message Box shows the name of that corner (red1, red2, etc...) Please, see the following image to see where they are located. You can find the original Maya project in the project ZIP file (/miniCube/Maya_files).
To import a Obj file you just need to drag the files to your WPF Project in Blend. Just remember that you have to drag the .obj and the .mtl files. The latter contains all the materials that you defined in Maya. Double click the file cube.obj to insert into the Artboard. Then use Camera Orbit to rotate the 3D space.
Ok, that's the general idea. Now if you open the Blend project you will see that I've prepared a few more steps:
Well, since you have the Holidays, you can use that time off to finish this project! The next steps are not easy, but interesting. You can use the Storyboards that are already there, or you can rotate the blocks using just code. The idea now is to make the cube work, so you can come back from the Holidays and spend your time playing the game at work! Just kidding...
I will publish the final project in January, but I would be glad to publish any solution that you might send us!
Enjoy, and Happy Holidays! -Celso
Because the Silverlight 2 RC that was released is aimed primarily at developers wishing to update their projects to the final version of Silverlight 2 due out sometime this year, we didn't provide an update to Deep Zoom Composer because most everyone who views Deep Zoom content will still be on Silverlight 2 Beta 2.
Instead, we have provided you with the updated project templates that are compatible with Silverlight 2 RC:
Once you have downloaded the above ZIP file, extract its contents to your [Program Files]\Microsoft Corporation\Deep Zoom Composer\ folder. Your ZIP file contains an updated version of the DeepZoomProject folder, so your old files will be overwritten with your new ones.
Anyway, once you have overwritten your old files, if you run Deep Zoom Composer and preview your output via the Export view's Silverlight tab, you should be able to see and interact with your Deep Zoom images.
Comment below if you are running into any issues or things just aren't working.
Cheers! Kirupa
Many of you may not know that Expression Blend (and the entire Expression Studio) is available in eight languages other than English. In fact, we just released them earlier today! Here is a small screenshot of Expression Blend running Japanese:
My name is Marco, and I help to create the versions of these products that ship in Japanese, German, Korean, French, Italian, Spanish, and Chinese (simplified and traditional). Creating the international versions of our products is a challenging process that requires several steps, so let's take a brief look through them in this post.
In order to create our international versions, we first need to be sure our products are globalized so that they can be adapted to different markets around the world where we sell our products. Once our products are globalized properly, we test them via a pseudo localization process. In this process, we introduce different kinds of characters into our UI strings to ensure that our application behaves as we expect it to regardless of which character set is used.
To see why, let's look at the strings in the English version of the Expression Blend options dialog:
Notice the size of the various text fields and how much space each piece of text takes. Now, let's look at the corresponding Japanese version:
Notice that in the Japanese version, the amount of space your text takes up varies a bit from the English version. This is important, because, as a designer/developer of an app that needs to be localized, you need to ensure that any control that stores localizable strings will still look OK when the strings inside them are of various sizes as you see above. This is where pseudo localization comes in handy. While we may not have the exact translated strings to use, we have a good idea of whether the user interface can handle the text of various sizes when the pseudo localization process throws random text of various sizes.
Once we are convinced that our code is fully localizable, I work with our developers to isolate all of the visible user interface strings within the application. This includes all of the menus, dialogs, error messages, etc. If a string can be seen in the UI, then I need to be able to access it. I then work with software localization specialists to translate the UI strings.
After the strings get translated, we create the localized versions of our applications. These applications are then tested for both linguistic accuracy as well as functional quality.
As you know, we are always looking for feedback on our products, and this includes our international versions. Feel free to leave a comment here if you have used any of the localized versions of Expression, or if there is something more you would like to see from our international versions.
Alternately, feel free to contact me directly at marcoda[at]microsoft.com.
Marco D'Amico
Five (5) new Expression Web Designer training videos are now available for viewing and download at http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/demos.mspx. Simply click the Web Designer tab near the bottom of the page, and then click one of the video links under Training Videos.
Since we released Deep Zoom Composer a while ago at MIX, we relied extensively on all of you to both create cool things using it as well as suggest new features for subsequent releases. Another major area that many of you have helped us with is documenting some of the cool things that you all have done with Deep Zoom.
In this post, I'll try to point out some of the cool documentation to help you out in your deep zoom quest:
If you have something really cool about Deep Zoom that you've written that I did not mention here, please send me an e-mail kirupac[at]microsoft.com, and I will look into adding it.
Ok, Jeff Kelly is back with Part IV of his coverage on behaviors-related topics. This one talks about some of the built-in value editors we provide to make it easier for your users to use behaviors that you create - Kirupa
In Expression Blend 3, we've provided a number of custom ValueEditors in the property inspector to enhance the usability of our standard Behavior set. As an added bonus, we've introduced some limited extensibility to allow third-party controls and behaviors to reuse a few of these.
Specifically, the ElementPicker, the StateNamePicker and the StoryboardPicker can all be reused by placing the CustomPropertyValueEditorAttribute on the property you wish to use the editor. The CustomPropertyValueEditor enum provides the available options:
Note that both the ElementPicker and StateName picker expect to be used on properties of type String, whereas the StoryboardPicker expects to be used on a property of type Storyboard. It's up to your control or behavior to figure out what to do with the value you get back.
A Note on Design-Time Metadata I've covered a number of attributes that are meant to help improve the tooling of your behaviors and controls in Blend 3. It is perfectly valid to place these attributes directly on your class and property definitions; they will work fine. However, doing this raises a general architectural concern: design-time metadata should not be encoded in a run-time DLL. This is a valid concern both from a simple conceptual standpoint, as well as a more practical standpoint, as each attribute adds some overhead in terms of size to your run-time assembly.
While an in-depth discussion is outside the scope of this post, there is a way to segregate your design-time metadata from your run-time classes in the form of a .Design DLL. You can find some introductory information about creating and using design assemblies in Blend 3 on UnniR's blog here and here.
Conclusion I hope that this blog series has provided a solid overview of the API and mechanics behind the new Behaviors feature in Blend 3. While you hopefully have a good understanding of the fundamentals now, we've barely scratched the surface of what can be done with this exciting pattern. I encourage you to check out the Expression Gallery to see what amazing things our community can come up with using Behaviors, as well as to watch this blog and others for more tips and tricks in the weeks and months to come!
One of the things that we are planning on doing is providing easier access to learning content. Besides the influx of learning content (videos, articles, etc.) we will be generating ourselves, we also want to link to content around the web that many of you like as well.
Please comment below on sites, blogs, etc. that you have found very useful for learning more about Expression Blend. In the future, I will create a follow-up post that will hopefully act as a central location we can point individuals to if they want to learn how to use Expression Blend.
Thanks, Kirupa
A few months ago, we asked you for feedback on what are some of the things you would like to see improved in Expression Blend. You all had a lot of great suggestions...A LOT. If you are interested in helping us both implement some of the feedback but also help define cool features, we are looking for Program Managers to join our team!
The specific job details can be found on the following links for our two current PM spots: Position 1, Position 2.
Cheers! Kirupa
EDIT: Updated post to reflect an additional PM opening we have.
Jeremy Kuhne has written an article Liven Up Your Office Clip Art [1] which you can find by visiting the gallery of Expression Graphic Designer samples over on the right of the blog. Look for the box titled 'Article Categories' and then click Samples and Tutorials Gallery - Expression Graphic Designer Jan 06 CTP to take you to the gallery (or just click the link given above). Jeremy is an SDE/T (Software Design Engineer in Test) for Expression Graphic Designer.
[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/articles/517537.aspx
You can get to the preview either through the Expression website or the Download Center:
Expression site: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/download.aspx?key=blend2preview
Download Center: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=69540337-B619-4A47-AC27-52D8AF3A7830&displaylang=en
Also available is the Update for the Expression Media Encoder Preview…this update ensures templates work properly with the latest Silverlight bits: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3A3C901C-C23D-4567-A76F-CC46CB113D1E&displaylang=en
We are pleased to present new CTPs of Expression Graphic Designer and Expression Interactive Designer that target Microsoft WinFX Runtime Components Beta 2--the latest release of WinFX.
Follow the links below to start downloading the May CTPs...
Remember, you will need to install WinFX Beta 2 first before installing Expression Interactive Designer May CTP.
Also, before installing the latest CTPs of WinFX and Expression Interactive Designer, please be sure to uninstall previous CTPs of these 2 products to prevent compatibility issues.
Found a bug? Report it to us.
Have something to say about the CTPs? Join a discussion group.


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You can now invite anyone to meet at your favorite Starbucks.
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34 year old woman | New York, NY, USA | Seeking men 33-80 within 50 miles of Flushing, NY
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Baseball, Basketball, Cycling, Dancing, Golf, Running, Skiing, Swimming, Tennis / Racquet sports
I exercise 3-4 times per week.
I like Birds, Cats, Dogs, Exotic Pets, Fish, Horses, Other
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I like to watch TV shows, sport games, enjoy nice food, and go shopping with friends and family in my free time.
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