Ubuntu on Windows

After all my attempts to install (K)Ubuntu side by side with Vista, I may have at last found a good solution if it does what it says. Dual-boot methods and virtual machines have so far either been bigger hassles then they seemed or simply failed to operate. Wubi 7.04 claims to install Ubuntu (*wonders whether there's an installer for the KDE/Kubuntu version too now, but will suffer with GNOME*) as a program in the start menu and will run off a virtual drive and virtual memory. Likely I will wait a short while until it's out of beta and then cautiously attempt to run after doing a complete back up, which is much overdue. The reviews on the CNET site were mixed, but I'll be adding my own here for anyone interested to read.

XNA inside Windows Forms

XNA was designed to be as simple as possible to set up and use - it's main purpose was to take the low-level graphics device/DirectX initialisation and handling away from the game developer. However, this came at the price of usability, and anyone who's tried to use XNA inside standard Windows Forms will have to go back to the old Managed DirectX way and re-write all the low level code again, not to mention the handling of game components and services typically provided by the XNA game class. Forunately, Nuclex has released their XNA UserControl component to allow developers to easily integrate XNA into their Windows Forms applications - an absolute necessity when designing a complex map editor, and useful in other situations too.

You can download it here, along with a demo game (Pong).

Desktop Tower Defence

As good of an online time waster as any: you can play Desktop Tower Defence here.
It seems rather like the sort of user-made maps many gamers play in big strategy games, so I doubt it's really an innovative game, but it is well made and pretty challenging, even on normal mode!