Arno's Blog

Wrox VB.NET 3rd Edition

Arno Vyncke — Sun, 03 Jul 2005 21:08:00 GMT

I started reading in my Wrox VB.NET 3rd Edition book.
I must say I am very pleased with the book.
It teaches everything very well, and it is all well explained.
I am only 160 pages far right now, but already, I am learning about OOP, and I feel it is all very good explained.
Recommended!

New Website - Feedback please

Arno Vyncke — Mon, 16 May 2005 14:58:00 GMT

Soon, I will launch my new website. My old one (http://www.vyncke.be.tc) was immensly slow due to the design I had given it. I now redesigned my website, and I believe it is better now.
I now used CSS instead of tables (as W3C says tables are for tabular data and you have to use CSS for your layout)
You'll notice the image-count is very low on this website, just a header, and of course my Graphics page ;)

I have created a little dynamic menu that I hope is clear to use, it is to me, but I'm the one who designed it, so it's all obvious to me. I would like a lot of feedback on this one, because I want to improve it, if that is necessary.

You can see it here: http://bb.1asphost.com/Vyncke/news.asp (sorry about the popup... it still is a free host)

RealBASIC Contest

Arno Vyncke — Thu, 28 Apr 2005 22:23:00 GMT

Today, the people from realsoftware (http://www.realsoftware.com) notified my that I won a contest.
I was one of the 100 people that referred most people to their temporarily free VB6 alternative: RealBASIC.
If you haven't seen it, that's too bad, because the promotion has ended. It is a cool product, because it really codes like VB, but can compile to Mac and Linux too!
Anway, I still like VB of course, but now that I won RealBASIC Professional Edition, I might get into coding with RealBASIC a bit more :D
My coding has been a little off-track lately anyway.

Learning C# and ADO.NET

Arno Vyncke — Mon, 04 Apr 2005 23:48:00 GMT

About a week ago I went to the local library and got myself four books.

C# in 24 Hours
ADO.NET in 24 Hours
ASP.NET in 24 Hours
Java in 10 Minutes

I have focused on C#, but when I came to the database access part, I had trouble understanding it, because I am use to ADO, which differs quite a lot from ADO.NET in my opinion. So I got my ADO.NET book and started reading.
I think I kind of understand what it is all about (I must say it is a good book), but I haven't made any samples yet, and I do need the exercise.
Anyway, when I'm am done with reading through those books, I think I'll be learning ASP.NET, and use C# and ADO.NET in it. I want to redesign my website using it, and I am thinking about paying for some webhosting (as the free ones all have limitations...)
Anyway, I also got the Java one (very small book - hence the 10 minutes ;)), to ease my mind of all the .NET that is coming to me. I'll need it in the coming years, as that is what they teach in university, so I though I better get to know it already.

Updated website

Arno Vyncke — Mon, 04 Apr 2005 23:38:00 GMT

I updated my website today. I added a whole bunch of new (read: old :p) graphics and I added a bunch of downloads too. I had them lying around, but never gotten to uploading them.
Mark (markblue777) pointed out my site was kind of empty, and I must say, he did have a point *shame*
So, I uploaded some of the things I had lying around, and I'm quite happy with the result.
It was done rather quickly thanks to my design (I'm glad I did it this way). I'll probably try to do the same when I redesign it in .NET.

Windows 98 Fading Form

Arno Vyncke — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 20:35:00 GMT

Even though make a fading form in Win2K or WinXP is fairly easy, it is not in Win98. In Win98, we cannot use the SetLayeredWindowAttributes API, which makes it *impossible*.
The last couple of days, during my breaks, I had a look into this, as I would like a fading form in Win98, it's just a nice effect. So after some fooling around with the AlphaBlend API, I came up with a way.
But the problem was the AlphaBlend API wasn't able to do the job, I kept getting a "Cannot create AutoRedraw image". After searching a while on this error, I found out there was no solution to it...

So I remembered I had downloaded a DLL one day, that also provided AlphaBlend functions. So I went looking for it. After I found it, I tried it again, to no avail. But the supplied example WAS working...
After another bit of fooling around, I finally got it to work.

I now have a fading form, actually meant to show a splash screen (image only that is), but maybe some minor/major improvements later on. I'm just happy I created something like that.
The next step would be making it translucent, but it seems a lot harder as I am working with images right now, and I just capture the desktop, and let it blend with my picture, but the background changes constantly, so I would have to capture the desktop each and every second. That is a job that "can't" be done. But I'll see where I end up.

Learning way too much...

Arno Vyncke — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 22:57:00 GMT

Only one more week after this one, and I'm back in my exam period. Two weeks of constant learning, pressure and going to bed way too late for my brain to function properly.
Nevertheless I have decided to start learning both C# and XHTML :D
It seems C# has a future, and I cannot stay VB.Old forever, so it seems like a good choice.
Why C# and not VB.Net? Well, I'm planning to learn both, but actually, I wanted to learn VB.Net first.
In the library all VB.Net books were gone, so I took the C# one and I've been reading in it a few pages each time I go to bed.
And today I was returning my other books I picked too (I always take way too much books with me after a visit) because they were too late. And I saw two books, on XML, the other XHTML, lying around.
So I decided to take them with me, you never know ;)

Anyone knows if it is really useful to learn XHTML? Wouldn't want to waste my time...

Skinning is ready!

Arno Vyncke — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 14:44:00 GMT

Yesterday I blogged about creating the skinning feature. Well, the skinning feature is now available.
The user can just go to the "skins" page, choose a skin and the browser'll remember it.
At this time, I have 4 installed skins, but I'm thinking about making more of course.

Default: this is the default skin, I think it's nice, some people find it bland :p
Blueish: this is a blue skin, pretty "cool", in the "cold" meaning, but I like it a lot
Redish: this is a red skin, but it really sucks; I tried out something, but this is a skin that is going to be removed, or going to be adjusted
Yellowish: a nice warm feeling when I see this, makes me think it's summer :D

Have a look and try it out if you want.
I know there still is a bug, but I haven't fixed it yet (try moving your mouse over the buttons and check the border - especially visible in Redish and Yellowish)

Skinning for my Website

Arno Vyncke — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 21:25:00 GMT

Today I messed around a bit with my code and I have a kind of beta version of what will become my skinning for my site. The user will be able to choose from a few color schemes I defined. The color schemes are stored in the database, so I can add a lot of them easily, I just have to define 7 colours. For now I'll just stick with different colour schemes, and make sure I worked it out correctly so it works.
Maybe later on, I'll will make a few new designs, which can then be chosen by the user too.I already have a bit in my head how I'll do that, but first things first.
I still have some administration stuff to take care of too, but I've been too lazy to code it.

I'll upload the skinning in today/tomorrow, somewhere in the next week. You'll see ;-)

FAQ About Serial Protections

Arno Vyncke — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 23:30:00 GMT

I just submitted a FAQ about Serial Protections to the Security section of the FAQ departement of VBCity.
As up to now, Stuart's FAQ about Time Trials was lonely in there...
Tomorrow, I don't have to go to school, and therefore, I took the time to write something tonight.
I was going to make it a small FAQ, not too much information, but well-explained.
I seem to have some kind of curse over me, once again this FAQ is more than 9000 characters...

I'm surprised I have written this FAQ this fast (didn't take me more than 2 hours), while I have this Time Trial FAQ start lying around, but I don't find the time to finish it (or is the courage...)
I promise you I'll finish it one day, question is when.

I'm going to start a FAQ on Advanced Serial Protections too, as this was a FAQ about a very basic protection.

See you around laddies

The Power of CSS!

Arno Vyncke — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 23:30:00 GMT

I like designing webpages. I'm not the best webpage designer, but I enjoy doing it, so that's what is important.
I always used to create my design in a graphics program and then cut it up in pieces and use a table and make sure everything fits right and so on. I thought I had some nice designs, but with all the work to maintain that (whenever something changes, all images had to change too) and I just never found anything to put on my website. I'm a content-less man :D

Anyhoo, this week (I'm having a one-week holiday) I decided to create another webpage. I mean, I've been having a link to my "homepage" for quite a while in my vbCity profile, but all there was, was some design and absolutely no content. Now, I first created a new design, once again one graphic, which I was going to cut in pieces. It seemed that it wasn't that good. It was white + blue + black color scheme and there was like a huge void... I found it very empty.

After asking around, and the more I looked at the design, the more I started to think it was worthless.
So I created another one... once again an image.
This time I was quite happy. Stuart (wonkotsane) helped me picking out a font (I'm really bad at this and I wish I had his font-choosing talent :p), Dries (dries_neyrinck) helped me out with a few ideas too and finally Mark (drydo) told me about the magical box. CSS - aka Cascading Style Sheets. I had heard about them, and they were something that was "interesting", but nothing more to me. Until Mark recommended me to have a look at it.
I did, and after that I was able to "recreate" my image with HTML and CSS almost exactly as it was in the image.
I was thrilled, I must say.

I'm done with the design now. My ASP skills have joined forces with me again to, and all buttons are created in run-time. Each and every button can be added/removed very easy from each webpage using only three lines of code.

Man do I love programming!

http://www.vyncke.tk

Started writing a new FAQ

Arno Vyncke — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 16:27:00 GMT

Yesterday, I finally started a FAQ that was planned quite a while ago.
The FAQ is showing how to try to protect your software against cracks.
I'll be writing a few, but this one is about using a time trial so your users can taste your application, but cannot use it for free.

I've already got some code that I can use, so that won't be a problem I suppose.
But I wish I knew how crackers these days crack VB applications. If you know this, you can build protections against that, but I don't know it right now. If people can point me in the right direction for finding information about this, I'd highly appreciate it. You can't protect yourself unless you know how the attack is done of course.

I'll try to finish the thing at the end of this week. I'm still busy updating http://aromax.bizhat.com too, as the catalogue isn't quite finished yet. What do you guys think about that website? I mean lay-out, as it's all Dutch, so you guys probably don't have a clue what is said.

Searching exclusive Atlantis information ...

Arno Vyncke — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 16:21:00 GMT

I'm not sure if I'll get reaction, but I think it's worth a shot.
Is there anyone that can provide me some exclusive information about Atlantis? I mean things you don't read that often and so on. I have to prepare a lesson about it (the subject was my own choice), and I already have a lot of information. But of course, if I could have some "exclusive" information, that would be very cool indeed.

All help is appreciated :D

A wonderful week

Arno Vyncke — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 16:16:00 GMT

Ah what a wonderful week this was.
It started off being lovely on Tuesday. After having a great Physical Education lesson (squash :D), I should've got a Chemistry course which I don't really like. It turned out the teacher was absent. Hooray!
Only thing that could spoil my day was the basketball training I had to go to. I love basketball, but our coach is a real ass sometimes. Turns out our coach wasn't there. Hooray!
Now Wednesday was a Wednesday like very other, but then it started on Thursday. The celebration of our "100 Days". We celebrate the fact that there's only 100 days left until we can leave high school - and we get dirty. And drunk. Very drunk.

We celebrated from Thursday evening off, until around 11 o'clock. Then we went to "sleep" for 1h and about 50 minutes. So we prepared ourselves for the pre-party. We then partied from 3 AM until around 8 AM, because we had to go to school then. There we still had a lot of fun of course, because there was no teaching. We then had a show prepared (that's mostly laughing with teachers) and then we went on partying after school until around 3 AM.

The only thing was that I had a basketball match Saturday, and I was kind of tired. Oh well, we won the match, but played really, really, really bad :D

I wish I had more weeks like this.

Searching a permutations algorithm ...

Arno Vyncke — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:43:00 GMT

On VBCity I just saw a question related to permutations.
As I am seeing this in my math class (that is 8 hours a week :D) I thought it would be interesting to be programming a bit in that direction (question of having the feeling I really am doing something for school).
I still have to find my solution though, as right now I just using a few nested for-loops, and thus that is not that customisable. Say I need 4-number permutations from something, and then I need 5-number permutations ... that would mean I would need to add a for-loop. That would be like that everytime I changed that number...

Doesn't seem right to me. I just had some kind of idea, but it slipped my mind as my mother walked by telling me to check her mail. Oh well, it'll pop back in.