RTL just put the same gadget on their own website. All they did was change a label move two buttons and change the gadget’s color from red to green. Nice job! I think you guys at RTL owe me some credit for that. You copied the overall gadget design and even the fly-out window. You didn’t even bother to change the settings dialog! This is a copy and paste job!!! I guess some intern then was asked to change a thing or two, right? A color, a label, even a button… I guess at least someone in the copy-cat company has heard Einstein’s wise words before: “Real creativity is knowing how to hide your sources”

Can you tell the difference?

Well I think you should have given me some credit for the hours of work in which I designed this gadget. If you didn’t want to do that I wish you had at least been kind enough to spend some extra money to come up with your own gadget and not just copy mine!!!

Anyway, I guess I should feel honored if not directly, at least indirectly by the mere use of my own gadget as THE template for your own, official sidebar gadget. Thanks, I guess!

Deutsche Version:

Das ist mir dann doch einen Blog Eintrag wert: Offenbar wurde das Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget dass ich vor einiger Zeit entworfen habe um den RTL Formel 1 Ticker in der SIdebare zu folgen, zur Vorlage für RTL, genauer gesagt zur 1:1 Vorlage für deren Klon!

RTL hat vor kurzem ein solches Gadget auf deren eigener Website online gestellt. Dabei wurden gerade einmal zwei Buttons, eine Textbeschriftung und die Farbe des Gadgets geändert. Tolle Leistung! Ich denke dafür schuldet ihr mir etwas Anerkennung! Ihr habt das komplette Design samt Fly-Out Fenster kopiert. Dabei habt ihr es nicht einmal für nötig befunden den “Einstellungen” Dialog zu ändern. Ein echtes Copy & Paste Meisterwerk. Danach wurde wohl noch ein Praktikant gebeten zwei, drei Dinge abzuänderen? Die Farbe, eine Beschriftung, sogar einen Button… Wenigstens einer in dieser Klonmaschinerie dürfte wohl mal über Einsteins weise Worte gestolpert sein, worin der Schlüssel zur Kreativität in der Geheimhaltung der eigenen Quellen liegen soll.

Ich denke mir steht durchaus ein wenig Anerkennung für Arbeit zu, die ich in den Entwurf dieses Gadgets gesteckt habe. Wenn schon nicht das, dann wäre es zumindest angemessen gewesen ein klein wenig mehr Geld für die Entwicklung desselben auszugeben und tatsächlich ein Gadget zu entwerfen, anstatt nur meines zu kopieren!

So muss ich mich jetzt wohl indirekt dadurch geehrt fühlen, dass mein Entwurf als DIE Vorlage schlechthin für RTLs offizielles Gadget Verwendung fand. Danke, denke ich!

A few days ago I finally uploaded a short description together with the slides and paper of a talk I gave a few weeks ago on the topic of “Rendering Smoke & Clouds” in the context of a game design university course. Have a look at it here.

The second update is a Windows Vista sidebar gadget, my first one actually. It displays the content of a (German) Formula 1 live text ticker (sport.rtl.de) in the Windows sidebar and includes features like a flyout window for detailed view, automatic refresh, quick access to the original website and a Formula 1 live stream. Feel free to give it a try here and please leave your feedback!

As always, more info and download here.

They’re both based on Google Maps, with the first one showing the realtime positions of Swiss trains…

… and the second doing the same for planes over Zurich.

Absolutely awesome! The latter one comes really close to FSXGET just for the real world and looking at the technique behind reminds me of a passive radar I’ve seen in action during a visit to INDRA‘s plant in Madrid.

Besides, since my internship at AENA, I somehow just enjoy looking at realtime maps with planes moving around

Basically I found three ways how to determine these version number in a C# application:

1. Using the System.Environment.OSVersion class
   - Fast and easy, perfect to get Windows version including major, minor, revision and build section of the version number.
   - Problematic to get the service pack version: Gives you a string like e.g. ‘Service Pack 1, v.744′ which you’d have to parse then. Not an ideal and very stable way (regarding future service packs) to get the service pack version number.
2. Using the WMI Interface

   SelectQuery query = new SelectQuery("Win32_OperatingSystem");
   
   ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher(query);
   
   
   foreach (ManagementObject mo in searcher.Get())
   
      int iSPVersionMajor = int.Parse(mo["ServicePackMajorVersion"].ToString());

   Allows to retrieve numeric (major and minor) version number of installed service pack

3. Using native Win32 API: GetVersionEx

   I didn’t try this solution myself but it seems quite promising, too. More details can be found here.

Last but not least, some information about Windows Version and Build numbers:

• Wikipedia on the Comparison of Windows Versions
• Wikipedia on Microsoft Windows
• Wikipedia on Windows NT

Remote Connection – Run FSX and FSXGET on different computers

The new version includes a new configuration dialog that facilitates setting up FSXGET to connect to Flight Simulator X running on a remote computer, i.e. a configuration where Google Earth AND FSXGET run on one computer but Flight Simulator X runs on another. I’ve also released a new tool called SimConnect Config Tool which helps changing Flight Simulator X configuration to allow remote access (e.g. from FSXGET). A howto article about setting up FSX and FSXGET for remote connections can be found here.

Till migration is complete, you can still visit my old website at http://www.juergentreml.de/joomla/.

Update 2008-01-28:

Migration is complete. The old website has been taken offline and is no longer available.