Channel 9 - Discussions by asqui

Tech Off - Incrementing Font sizes

asqui — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 16:27:24 GMT

So it seems that System.Drawing.Font is immutable. What is a nice way to increment the font size of a given control?

You can initialise a new Font object from an existing one and specify a different FontStyle for the new object, but that's all. And there are no methods that return a new font object with one of the properties updated to a new value. (eg. myFont.NewSize(10) returns a handy copy of myFont with the size changed to 10)

What am I missing? There must be some alternative to manually specifying all the properties...

Thanks in advance,
Dani

Tech Off - Code re-use in Visual C# .NET Projects

asqui — Fri, 10 Jun 2005 08:21:44 GMT

Thanks guys.
I completely missed the "Link" option in the Open button's drop-down.

Works a treat!

Tech Off - Code re-use in Visual C# .NET Projects

asqui — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 15:08:03 GMT

I am trying to re-use a generic database selection form between two projects by pulling the *.cs and *.resx files into another directory and then having both projects use those files.

Unfortunately, having done this, I can't work out how to include this form in both my projects.

If I "Add > Existing Item..." to my project it simply copies the files into my project directory.

I tried hacking the *.csproj file as follows:

Before:
    RelPath = "ServerSelectForm.cs"
    SubType = "Form"
    BuildAction = "Compile"
/>
    RelPath = "ServerSelectForm.resx"
    DependentUpon = "ServerSelectForm.cs"
    BuildAction = "EmbeddedResource"
/>

After:
    RelPath = "..\_Common\DatabaseSelectorForm\DatabaseSelectorForm.cs"
    SubType = "Form"
    BuildAction = "Compile"
/>
    RelPath = "..\_Common\DatabaseSelectorForm\DatabaseSelectorForm.resx"
    DependentUpon = "..\_Common\DatabaseSelectorForm\DatabaseSelectorForm.cs"
    BuildAction = "EmbeddedResource"
/>

If I do that Visual Studio doesn't like that -- it ignores those entries, doesn't load the form, and, upon saving the project, simply strips them out of the new project file!

I strongly suspect that my whole approach to code re-use is a bit "vb6" -- could someone enlighten me to the 'proper' way to do this?

(I was trying to avoid going all-out and compiling the form into a standalone DLL as I think that would be overkill.)

Thanks in advance.

Tech Off - Outlook 2003 - Calender - Prune View?

asqui — Mon, 09 May 2005 12:00:34 GMT

I'm not too sure what you're asking here.

The view you show only displays two weeks history and two weeks future. If you want to see further into the future scroll down a bit.

As far as I know, the calendar skeleton is fixed, though you can set up filters to pick what appointments are shown.

Coffeehouse - C9 Birthday guy

asqui — Tue, 26 Apr 2005 14:23:40 GMT

Hmmm, maybe I should celebrate my birthday for an entire month too!

I don't know, though... my lack of enthusiasm is already apparent -- if I divide it by thirty it might be spread so thin that it would just be a normal month like all the others (except with presants at the end!)

Coffeehouse - 'One more time...' or C9 Videos CD+DVD

asqui — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 10:01:31 GMT

Skriker V1.0 wrote:

Ill make 5 DVDs free of charge just postage to anywhere, email me if you want a disc

Now that's what I'm talking about!

PS: Apparently the full collection is three DVDs...
(if there's significant demand for the archive amongst broadband users we might even get a Torrent going.)

Coffeehouse - 'One more time...' or C9 Videos CD+DVD

asqui — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 08:29:59 GMT

Hmmmm, I was assuming that demand for this is likely to be low (limited to people who don't have broadband) therefore each person wanting a DVD set could find a willing volounteer to burn and mail the media.

That would be informal enough, and the volounteers could even negotiate a price to cover costs and discourage 'unworthy' requests (though the hassle of transferring a few bucks across countries and currencies is unlikely to be worth it).

I don't have a DVD burner at the moment, though if I did I'd be happy to send out a couple of packs for free. (Just to keep my Karma topped up, if nothing else)

What do you guys think? I have seen this sort of thing work quite well in some communities.

Coffeehouse - so guess who's one year old? ;)

asqui — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 13:37:25 GMT

A couple of people have mentioned that they're on dial-up connections and find it inconvenient or expensive to download videos.

One possible solution would be to formulate an archive that fits on a CD or two (maybe even a DVD, if needed) with the entire year in Channel 9 videos (and possibly the associated commentary, or entire forum archives (?))

CD burning is pretty inexpensive these days and, for the people with broadband, downloading a few meaty ISOs won't be too taxing. If the archive is made easily available then each ~~third-world~~ dial-up patron could find a broadband buddy to burn him a CD to send via postal mail.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

I'd love to spearhead this campaign however I'm currently living away from home and don't have a PC at my apartment!

The key questions are:

Will the Channel 9 admin facilitate this by overcoming the primary hurdle and making an archive easily available.
How big is such an archive likely to be?

Coffeehouse - Picture Encryption

asqui — Mon, 24 Jan 2005 18:55:22 GMT

I recommend you read Practical Cryptography by Niels Ferguson and Bruce Schneier (http://www.schneier.com/book-practical.html). It will shed a lot of light on cryptography, including why your idea, whilst novel, is not practical.

Coffeehouse - Mac Mini?

asqui — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 09:50:20 GMT

adam_tj wrote:

Who's going to purchase the mac mini and ditch XP? www.apple.com/macmini

The machine I built three years ago has a higher spec than these devices -- why would I pay for a downgrade?

Tech Off - Displaying changes to a DataSet in C#

asqui — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 17:28:04 GMT

I have an app which allows the user to effectively free-edit a database table. In a seperate datagrid I am displaying the changes to this table before they are commited.

Currently I am just binding the audit grid to a dataview on the underlying table, selecting Added, ModifiedCurrent, and Deleted row states. Unfortunately this is a bit unclear as it does not distinguish, to the user, the difference between updated and deleted rows. Furthermore, if you update a row it is added to this audit list; if you then delete that same row, nothing changes in the audit list, so you may be forgiven for mistakenly thinking that the program is just going to commit the updated value as opposed to actually delete the row.

I think the correct way to do what I want would be to hook some events on the underlying datatable, and generate my own dataset with the audit information, including details about row deletion/update status.

Would this be the correct way to tackle the problem? If so, how should I go about it?

Thanks in advance.

Coffeehouse - Instructions...

asqui — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 15:09:18 GMT

Rossj wrote:

asqui wrote:
Plug in the sandwich maker and observe the green light once it has reached a steady-state. Wait until the state of the green light changes (approx. 4-5 minutes). The machine has now reached the correct temperature.

Here:

sandwichMaker.plugIn(ringMains.getNearestFreeSocket(sandwichMaker.location));
assert(sandwichMaker.redLight.state == true);
bool greenLightState = sandwichMaker.greenLight.state;
while (sandwichMaker.greenLight.state == greenLightState) {};

// the machine has now reached the correct temperature.

Reminds me of the joke : How do you keep a programmer busy in the bath? Give him some shampoo - lather, rinse, repeat. At least I thought it was funny.

I tried to put some sort of timeout around the while loop but I couldn't work out how to do it -- I'm not very proficient with C# and the .NET Framework.

Coffeehouse - Instructions...

asqui — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 16:14:31 GMT

Plug in the sandwich maker and observe the green light once it has reached a steady-state. Wait until the state of the green light changes (approx. 4-5 minutes). The machine has now reached the correct temperature.

Here:

sandwichMaker.plugIn(ringMains.getNearestFreeSocket(sandwichMaker.location));
assert(sandwichMaker.redLight.state == true);
bool greenLightState = sandwichMaker.greenLight.state;
while (sandwichMaker.greenLight.state == greenLightState) {};

// the machine has now reached the correct temperature.