If you've ever tried to work with Direct2D from scratch, you may have found the boilerplate code overwhelming. With Direct2D Succinctly by Chris Rose, you have a straightforward, step-by-step guide to rendering graphics with Direct2D. After starting a simple Hello, World! template application in Visual Studio, you'll gradually add to it until you have a complete charting system that features multiple pages, zooming functionality, and printing support. The final chapters of the book are devoted to Direct3D. Though Direct3D is capable of rendering 3-D graphics, it can render 2-D graphics much faster than Direct2D.
I was born and bred in the city of steel: Sheffield.
I spent – or misspent, whichever your viewpoint – the majority of my ‘young’ years on the Northern Soul circuit. I say circuit, although that mainly consisted of trips to Wigan’s ‘Casino Club’ just about every weekend, with the odd trip to other venues interspersed. One reason I mention this is because it’s around this time and place that my first novel is set – Wood, Talc and Mr.J.
My academic education came much later, from scratch, in a sense.
In time, I fell in love with the idea of languages, French in particular, and went on to get a BA Hons in French Language and Literature with subsidiary Spanish at The University of Sheffield.
After that, I moved down south – mid 90s, and eventually further down to the South of France for a few years, where I taught English. I then moved up to northern France to do much the same thing.
But it was here where I also began to write, or experiment with writing.
I came back to England in the mid-00s and lived in North London for five years, teaching and writing again.
And for the last three years, I’ve lived in Norwich, where I’ve completed a Masters in Literary Translation, at the UEA.
I’m now working my way toward making a living by writing, with a little translation on the side…
We’ll see…
To ask me what I like to read and write about is a tough one. Fiction, mainly, though I don’t necessarily go for detective fiction, or anything formulaic – I still recognise there’s real skill involved in any composition of the genre, something I don’t think I’d ever master.
I tend to be picky and take my time reading a book; I expect each word to count. I like something I can come back to, read again – and again. Things witty, satirical, poetic… Things that move me.
Favourite writers of late? Maybe Markas Zusak. Read his The Book Thief last year. Susanna Ross, I recently read her Trust In Me. Anna Funder, her All That I Am. Actually, I’ve only just discovered Kurt Vonnegut, and read The Slaughterhouse Five – must read more of his! Writers who manage to pull me into the water with the least effort.
Soulful writers, and their soulful things. And maybe I try to emulate them…
Same goes for my taste in films, music… and, I guess, people.