As some of my blogging friends know quite well by now, I'm really bad about linking out. I figure it isn't that big of a deal as long as you're using trackbacks in your post, so I'm not feeling that guilty.

Anyway, I still like to get a shout out to my homies every once in a while.

The other thing I'm guilty of, by the way, is that I never manage to link to everyone I'd like to. I only get a small sampling up of what's been interesting me lately.

So...

Robert got upset last time I didn't include him in the shout out :)

Anyway, seeing as how he's one of the people who's helped push my site to the first two google returns for "Rory," I think I owe him a link or two (OK - that's a bit of an understatement).

Paolo Hutchison is in the Phoenix, Arizona area, and he's looking to get a geek dinner going. Head over to his blog and let him know you're interested.

Geek dinners are a great thing. They're like user group meetings with twice as much indigestion and none of the learning.

Brad says: "Apple Does Something Wrong!"

However, he also says:

I have the company iBook at home, and what I was sure would be a love affair is really actually full out grinding lust. I totally adore this thing. It's a cute little unassuming thing that just always works.

<Stuff snipped by Rory>

I suppose the fact that I absolutely love it makes me nit-pick something like this. :)

The bit that I snipped is a complaint about some weird QuickTime behavior and some weird software update madness (OS X has a software updating system that serves a purpose similar to Windows Update).

I haven't had the problems Brad's talking about, but I like the way he's talking about them, and why. The last line about absolutely loving something and, therefore, picking it apart, is something I can relate to. It's hard to communicate to people, too, which is why I sometimes get into trouble when I talk smack about this/that/theother technology: I'm doing it because I actually give a damn.

It's nice to know Brad operates the same way. The major difference between my typical presentation and his is that he was smart enough to mention that the reason for the complaint was his love for the offending device. I usually forget to write that part (although I suspect most people would just ignore it if I did write it).

Anyway...

If you have any interest at all in learning managed DirectX, then head over to this section of Jason's blog.

He has the following tutorials up so far:

1) The One With The Game Spec

2) The One With The Game Loop

3) The One Where DirectX Gets Initialized

4) The One With All The Input - Commands

5) The One With All The Input - Console

6) The One With All The Input - Keyboard

Something that I thought was really cool is that Jason doesn't just say, "Here's how to create a sprite using DirectX and C#." Rather, he gets into the issues that surround game programming. The fact alone that he covers the game loop is really cool - that isn't something you're always going to get in a purely technical article.

So, yeah. Good stuff.