sandcastle

Giant sandcastle Minas Tirith survives orcs, falls to rain

When Joseph Alvernaz set out to build a sand sculpture replica of Minas Tirith from "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," he didn't take any shortcuts. The structure took two summers to create out of a sandy loam that holds together better than regular beach sand. Once finished, he could stand atop the 10-foot-tall structure without breaking it.

While Minas Tirith in the books and movies had to deal with orcs and lumbering oliphaunts, the sandcastle version had to contend with birds and waves. The creation was made entirely of sand and water, with the exception of a single brace in the top tower, which was necessary to counteract the ruthless attacks of birds landing on it and breaking it.… Read more

Filmmaker shoots kung-fu vid on Samsung Galaxy S3

Freddie Wong, also known on YouTube as FreddieW, makes videos packed with dazzling special effects that appeal mainly to gaming geeks. His latest effort, "Sandcastle Sensei," is born of his claim that anyone can make good videos without high-end equipment as long as they have a good idea and the right execution.

The short film was shot entirely on the Samsung Galaxy S3. … Read more

Microsoft opens up Sandcastle, this time with source code

A month ago, Microsoft was called out on releasing Sandcastle as open source...without the source. Sam Ramji, Senior Director of Platform Strategy at Microsoft and one of its key open-source advocates, immediately pulled the project from Microsoft's CodePlex open-source hosting site.

One month later, Sandcastle is back up, and is fully "dressed" in open-source code. What might have passed as a simple mistake for another company was pounced on by me and others. Sam, for his part, explains that Microsoft can't afford to be treated like "another company" when it comes to open … Read more

Microsoft dumps Sandcastle, does right by open source

When I texted Sam Ramji to let him know about Sandcastle, and he quickly texted back that he would look into it, I figured that a) it hadn't yet hit anyone's radar at Microsoft and b) that he'd fix it.

Fix it, he did. As Mary Jo Foley notes, it was "doubtful [that] Microsoft was willing to risk the wrath of the OSI over a documentation compiler." I'd go one step further. Once alerted to Sandcastle's violation and to the importance thereof, it was doubtful that Microsoft's Sam Ramji and Co. would be interested in the code, however important/non-important it might be.

Sam gets open source. He's not always supported in this understanding by the larger Microsoft entity, but Sam gets it. His apology to the OSI is direct, concise, and appropriate:

This is unacceptable and represents a violation of Microsoft's Open Source policy. I take it extremely seriously.

I have directed the project to be unpublished from Codeplex immediately, including removal of the project's use of the Ms-PL. If the team chooses to publish the source code and follow Microsoft policy, then the project may be re-published in the future. If not, we will remove all references to Sandcastle from Codeplex.… Read more