When the XNA-fuelled fireworks were over at yesterday’s Last Stand in Dublin (literally and figuratively) I was totally lost for words. When does that ever happen?!

What I really want to say most is thank you – especially to Clare Dillon, Philip McKeown, Fergal Breen and everyone else at Microsoft, MTUG, IrishDev and beyond who made my time with the Ireland developer communities so enjoyable. I love the communities because you guys WANT to be there and so it makes it worth my while to shower you with my honest (boundless?) enthusiasm.

And thank you so much for letting me keep the Lego Mindstorms NXT kit! (!!!) I promise you it will be well looked after and is staying in a loving home where it will get all the attention it deserves. And Siofra and I may have to share the table between mosaics and Lego from now on :)

You probably could tell, I really enjoyed the chance to pull out all the stops and show you what I’ve been up to.

Just like the guy who forgets that his glasses are on his forehead, I forgot that my speaker notes were in my pocket. There were about 4 other things about XNA and Robotics Studio I forgot to show you yesterday… but those all are for another day, except this one thing:

With the XNA 1.0 Refresh, it takes just one step to package up your games (code+content) to distribute as an install for Windows and XBox360! At present, you need to be a XNA Creators Club member to play the XBox versions, but the Windows ones are good to go for free.

So if I can have the permission of the inimitable Phil McDarby to distribute the beautiful background image behind the fireworks, I’ll take my Guitar Hero XPlorer-controlled finale, pack it up, and you can all answer Ireland’s Call with your Guitar Hero controllers any time you want, even when Ireland aren’t playing rugby at Croker.

 [Update: I've done this, and also released the code.]

p.s. thanks for reading this on my new blog… you’re at the right place, and I may be traveling the Earth but I’m not falling off the face of it :)