Archives / 2003

1-10 of 105
  • Have your app startup when user logs in

    Tuesday, December 23, 2003
    This is simple, but I thought it was kind of neat. Public Class Common     Private Const StartupRegistryFolder As String = "Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run"     Private Const StartupRegistryKey As String = "PSEDesktop"     Public Shared Property LaunchOnStartup() As Boolean          Get               Dim Key As RegistryKey = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey(StartupRegistryFolder)               If Not Key Is Nothing Then                    Dim Value As String = DirectCast(Key.GetValue(StartupRegistryKey, String.Empty), String)                    Key.Close()                    Return Value <> ""               Else                    Return False               End If          End Get          Set(ByVal Value As Boolean)               Dim Key As RegistryKey = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey(StartupRegistryFolder, True)               If Not Key Is Nothing Then                    If Value Then                         Key.SetValue(StartupRegistryKey, Application.ExecutablePath)                    Else                         Key.DeleteValue(StartupRegistryKey)                    End If                    Key.Close()               End If          End Set     End
  • XBox Live Gamertag

    Monday, December 22, 2003
    Thanks to Cory Smith, I now have my gamertag on the left hand side of my blog...very cool...thanks, Cory!  :) Sure would be nice to have something to link it to like a profile page or something, Microsoft...*hint hint*  ;)
    Filed under | 1 comment »
  • WindowsForms Rant

    Thursday, December 11, 2003
    I don't rant very often, but there are a couple things really getting on my nerves so I figured I'd blog about them and see if anybody knows of any workarounds or maybe feels my pain. <rant> When setting the Focus of a Control in the Form's Load Event, it DOESN'T WORK!  Instead I have to go put it in the Activated Event with a Boolean around it to make sure it only calls it once. Why is it that if I set the ControlBox Property of a Form to False AND set the FormBorderStyle Property to FixedDialog, I can
    Filed under | 7 comments »
  • Cool &quot;VS.NET-like&quot; WindowsForms Controls

    Thursday, December 11, 2003
    I'm sure many of you have already seen these, but those who haven't, check them out! Tim Dawson made some pretty neato controls.  I'm working on a little administration app and I thought it would be cool if it was laid out like Visual Studio .NET, so I went searching and found Tim's controls. The two I used in particular were the Docking Suite and the Document Manager. The Docking Suite is simple and awesome.  Just use the excellent design time support to add some tabs, put in your own controls inside of them and you're done.  Then you can
    Filed under | 0 comments »
  • Blogging and CS Projects

    Sunday, November 30, 2003
    My significant other and I had dinner with a long time friend of mine (grew up across the street from him) and his significant other and had an interesting discussion about one of his latest CS (Computer Science) projects that he had to work on.  One thing that was interesting was how much he hated it.  They had to design a 3D pinball game using Java.  I told him that was the bad part right there...Java  ;)  But what was more interesting was that he bitched and complained about how one student in his group for the project had pretty
    Filed under | 8 comments »
  • New Network

    Sunday, November 30, 2003
    I picked up the Microsoft MN-700 Wireless 802.11g Base Station Router and got it installed.  The management interface is fantastic and easy to use.  I seriously would've had it installed in 10 minutes if it wasn't for an error on my part (read the wrong MAC Address that my ISP requires me to use).  It was super easy to setup everything I need like Port Forwarding so I can TS into my box from work if needed. It has 4 10/100 ports for your machines that don't have a wireless card in it (my main computer and my longhorn machine). 
    Filed under | 2 comments »
  • Programmer -&gt; Writer

    Friday, November 28, 2003
    I had mentioned previously about being an “official” author in print now earlier.  Thanks everyone for their congratulations.  Roy had a good suggestion I should've thought of...which is talking about my first time experience with writing.  Well, after going through a bit of it, I have to say I have more respect for those who do it.  It's not the easiest thing in the world.  However, that's one of the reasons I'm getting into it.  I enjoy coding very much, but sometimes it's great to take a break for a few reasons. It's just nice variety from coding all day and
  • Officially an Author

    Tuesday, November 25, 2003
    Today I received on my doorstep my two free copies of Duncan's new book Visual Basic .NET 2003 Kick Start from Sams Publishing. For this book, I acted as the main Technical Editor.  Later on I was offered an opportunity to do some actual writing.  I ended up writing chapters 5 and 6 (ADO.NET and DataBinding) and was the technical editor for all the other chapters of the book.  It was a great experience for me as I am halfway new to writing.  For anyone that comes across my blog and have used VB6 and are wanting to move to VB.NET
  • Backspace in C# in Whidbey

    Tuesday, November 25, 2003
    Do my eyes deceive me?  Did I just use C# Whidbey and after completing out a Property, then decide it was the wrong one and hit backspace and see Intellisense come up just like I'm used to in VB?  I must be dreaming! Anyone else see any “nice” C# IDE features that we VB'ers might be used to?  Or do not too many people jump back and forth?  :P
    Filed under | 5 comments »
  • Skinnable Template Site

    Monday, November 24, 2003
    Need a quick site up with a template and allows for skinning?  I went ahead and uploaded one.  If you're new to ASP.NET this should be a good start to get the base of a site going that you can build on. Hopefully someone will get some use out of it...enjoy!  :) Skinnable Template Site