Jing project... would have been great!

Been getting some good comments from friends regarding The Jing project. So I tried it to see if I could showcase some of our upcoming 747-400 and MD11 for FSX new features. Unfortunately, when I applied it to the FSX window (which was 1024x768 pixels in size), Jing made the entire machine crawl to a halting stop...

Hopefully, newer versions might work better... in the meantime, Jing is benched until something makes me change my mind :-).

MVP status

It just occurred to me that I neglected to publicly thank Microsoft for awarding me MVP status for 2007 in the PC Games category.

I've always tried to do my best as a professional and as a hobbyist to support Flight Simulator newbies and experienced users alike, as a PMDG developer and as a VATSIM founder and previous Software Development VP, so I am very grateful that Microsoft recognized my contribution through the MVP award.

Thanks to everyone at ACES for pointing my way when selections were made! Hope I can continue helping in the future as well!

Huh?

So my kids are spending time at summer camp for three weeks. So we went and bought some supplies for them - the usual: toothbrush, toothpaste, etc. Also bought some kids' shampoo: Johnson's Kids Shampoo, Watermelon flavor.

Imagine my surprise when I read at the back of the Johnson's Kids Shampoo label:

"Please keep out of reach of children".

Hello? Anyone? Buehler?

Select C comments in my code...

So you think hitting Ctrl-Shift-R to record a macro, then Ctrl-F to find "/*" and then something-something, and then Ctrl-F to find "*/" to finish the selection would be enough.

Huh? Let me explain myself.

As we transitioned from FS9 to FSX, one of the most major pieces of the work was to replace all the FSUIPC code in our SimLibrary with SimConnect code. As this wasn't going to happen overnight (or even in a week) but instead took almost a year (yes, that's right - people said it'd be easy), I gradually went ahead and wrote all my SimConnect code snippets below their FSUIPC equivalent, commenting out with /* ... */ in the process, so in case of a bug (and there were a few), I could have easy access to "the older way". That also allowed "mix-and-match" code so we could test without needing to finish the transition first.

The end result was that our .cpp files, when all was said and done, were littered with multi-line comment areas such as this one:

/*
if (theFSUIPC)
{
theFSUIPC->Write(PMDG_CFSUIPC::PMDG_FIRE_CONTROLS_SWITCHES, 1, &val, &m_result);
if (m_processNow)
theFSUIPC->Process(&m_result);
}
*/

m_SimConnectMiscData->setFireControlSystem_Switches_PMDG(val);

I had always thought that it'd be easy to simply delete the commented areas when the transition was over, to clean up our C++ source files. Yes. So easy, he said.

(Disclaimer - I am NOT a VB guy, but I know how to read VB and do tiny bits).

I spent hours trying to figure out if and how I could record a macro that would enable the following in a couple key presses:

1) Find next commented code area
2) Select it
3) Delete it (if old code)

Ideally, I'd like to press "Ctrl-Shift-P" (for Macro Playback) to find the next area, then "delete" if needed or "Ctrl-Shift-P" again if this wasn't a comment to-be-deleted.

Sounds simple? Turns out that there's no way (that I could find) to record a "start-select" / "stop-select" keyboard activity. Instead, after hours of searching the net, I came up with this (admittedly easy) piece of code that I have now placed under a nice macro of my own (using VS2005's nice Macro Editor/Debugger):

Sub TemporaryMacro()
Dim objSel As TextSelection = DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection
objSel.LineDown()

'Look for the beginning
objSel.FindPattern("/*")
Dim lStartLine As Long = objSel.TopPoint.Line
Dim lStartColumn As Long = objSel.TopPoint.LineCharOffset

' Look for the end.
If objSel.FindPattern("*/") Then
' Select the entire section.
objSel.SwapAnchor()
objSel.MoveToLineAndOffset(lStartLine, lStartColumn, True)
End If
End Sub

Soooo simple. And yet, it took me so long to figure it out. Maybe I am getting old(er).

FSX Load Manager

I've been tinkering...

and results are promising that our aircraft Load Manager can now update pax and cargo payloads on the fly in the upcoming FSX version of the 747-400. I'll make sure that this functionality also finds itself in the MD-11 Load Manager as well.

On to fuel updating!