When using previous incarnations of Windows, the windows key + 'R' combination was indispensable as a short cut to all things that were found in C:\windows\systeme32. Within Vista, however,  there has been a marked attempt to bring in all programs into this shortcut loving world by presenting and alphabetized list of all your installed programs by simply pressing the windows key.

I noticed today when I type 'n' in the run command prompt Microsoft Visual C# Express was at the top of the list despite that fact that it clearly does not begin with the letter 'n'. Clearly this violates the alphabetic order that the list is supposed to be presented in, but I think I am to blame as interprets my previous fat fingered errors as a preference to select Microsoft Visual C# when I click 'n'.

Not sure why this is, but now I just want to figure out why notepad2 will not go to the top of my list!

I am currently working on a small tool designed to access the Common RSS list found within the Windows OS. It helps me because I have grown accustomed to using Internet Explorer for my RSS fix, however, there is currently no system wide desktop alert that will let me know if there any new feeds (that I know of).

This simple application is designed to check if any new feeds are available, give the user an indication within the system tray and then allow the user to launch IE, the user can the review the new feeds from the Favorites Center!

While there are a plethora of great RSS tools out there (better than this one), it has been a couple of years since I have done any continuous Forms based Windows programming so I wanted to throw my hat into the ring and shake the rust off. This will also give me the chance to have a closer look at Microsoft Visual C# Express 2008.

p.s. This tool is only useful in XP and below. There are sidebar gadgets that do the same thing for Vista!

I did not have the time to watch the entire speech by Bill Gates, if your time is a premium like mine check out this 5 minute highlight!

A fascinating announcement by Warner Brothers should ensure the demise of the HD-DVD format and thereby allowing Sony to enjoy its first real format victory. In a move that seems to echo back the historical figure of Benedict Arnold, Warner Brothers has jumped ship from HD-DVD to Blu-Ray!

It was Warner Brothers support of an alternate form to Blu-Ray that started this whole thing in the first place:

In March 2002, the forum voted to approve a proposal endorsed by Warner Brothers. and other motion picture studios that involved compressing HD content onto dual-layer DVD-9 discs.

I must admit that my decision was made when Warner started distributing the Complete Matrix Trilogy in HD DVD format, together with Sony's propensity to lose format wars I thought Blu-Ray would lose for sure. When the triple layer (51Gb) out did the dual layer of the Blu-Ray (50Gb), with almost identical production costs I thought for sure that it was over.

Now that the Matrix will no longer be available on HD-DVD I am on the Blu-Ray band wagon!

I have been using Paint.NET for several years now it is a better than good for image and photo manipulation, and considering that it is free it becomes the obvious replacement for the native MSPaint.

I have been doing a bit of basic Windows programming recently and needed to create some icon files. I found this excellent add-in to Paint.NET that allows you to save files to directly to the icon format in Paint.NET.

The installation simply requires that you place the IcoCur.dll into C:\Program Files\Paint.NET\FileTypes folder!

Enjoy!

I was looking at the DataSet object the other day and realized that there is both a Copy and a Clone methods. They are designed to fulfil similar functions which the following code highlights.

The Clone method is designed to only copy the structure i.e. the schema, relations and constraints.

The Copy method is designed to replicate the structure and the associated data.

DataSet data1 = new DataSet();
DataSet data2 = new DataSet();

System.IO.FileStream fs = new System.IO.FileStream(@"C:\test\test.xml", System.IO.FileMode.Open);
data1.ReadXml(fs);

data2 = data1.Clone();
foreach (DataRow dr in data2.Tables[1].Rows)
{
    Console.WriteLine(dr[0].ToString()); // We called the Clone method
}

 

data2 = data1.Copy();
foreach (DataRow dr in data2.Tables[1].Rows)
{
    Console.WriteLine(dr[0].ToString());
}