This should be fun.

Watch it. It's great.

Sadly, much like the Tilt sensor, the Nav Sensor (for want of a better name) doesn't have a clearly defined SDK to allow developers to access it. Well, now it does :)

I've updated my Sensor Test sample application to include the APIs necessary to generate the Nav Sensor messages and show you how to get very basic information out of them. I make no promises, but this will probably be my last post about the Touch Diamond for a while.

Exciting, eh? Well, the fun is in getting it to work. I asked HTC if they provide a development kit (SDK) for the tilt sensor, and they said "No", so I had to figure it out myself by digging around (and trying to remember what I knew of ARM assembly). I'm just happy I managed to figure it out, and so others can write interesting games with it, I'm giving the source code to what I figured out away. Have fun, create something with it.

You can download Sensor Test here, it's the small app I describe, along with the project necessary to compile it. You'll need Visual Studio 2008 and the WM 6.0 SDK to compile it yourself, though if you're a Windows Mobile developer, I suspect you'll only need to see the top of the main code file and the first couple of functions to figure things out.

I'm going to work on a little game idea I have, but with the way I bounce from one project to the next, don't be surprised if it takes me a while.

Edit: 7/3/2008 7:51 am I added a bit more information to the struct of data, I still can't figure out one field

After a lot of digging around, I decided to give in and pick up an HTC Diamond. So far I'm impressed, this little guy does everything I'd want, and does it well. Hopefully I can manage to not drop this phone once the next big thing comes along on the market.

Guess what? I can't play it. The designers decided to drop all the nice little symbols from the board game version when making the Xbox version, so the player has only colors to match to routes. While I don't think the world should cater to my needs just because I'm colorblind, it's damned frustrating to not be able to enjoy a game very nearly made for me in every other respect.

Hope I'm not sick on Wednesday =)

Amazingly enough, on my first try I managed to get it. I can't believe my luck. As a kid, I never managed to get the toy I wanted from the Claw Machine, if I managed to get anything. I guess only having to spend fifty cents on a stuffed toy is my personal payback for all the money I wasted on these things as a kid. Whatever the case, my stuff Sonic and Knuckles have an enemy to battle against now. =)

Little did I know the opposite would happen. Amazon has stopped selling non-Kindle eBooks all together. I can guess they did it to create a more compelling product, but by dropping supports for other eBooks they've fractured the market for people like me. It's annoying, and I've got to wonder if it'll end up hurting the eBook market.

I just hope Amazon doesn't use their pressure on publishers (like they are with small publishers) to force publishers to abandon the non-Amazon eBook market all together. There's hope other sites will eventually pick up the slack, but of course the plethora of eBook DRM formats isn't helping.