Timothy’s Brainwaves!

I’m happy to report that the Giveaway of the Day Launcher is back! We’ve restored functionality by using the mirror sites. Back when I looked over a month ago, no mirrors were available as only the WikiFortio system was used. Here’s the latest changes made to the program:

07-05-07:
- Restored functionality utilizing mirror sources.
- Used new transparant background icon. Thanks stamba!
- Moved buttons around a bit to better allow the viewing of the day’s offering.
- Added scrollbars to offering viewer.

Technorati Tags: Giveaway of the Day Launcher, Update, V1.0.2, Timothy’s Brainwaves

I’m sad to say that the GAoTD Launcher no longer works. Ever since GAoTD switched to WikiFortio for file hosting, the program fails to run as it doesn’t know how to get files from WikiFortio, a site which requires user input to download. We’ll be thinking of a way to get it to work again, but until then, this piece of software has reached the end of it’s useful life and is just a piece of junk - so feel free to uninstall it and we’ll let you know of when a new version is out (should there be one).

Technorati Tags: Giveaway of the Day, Launcher, Timothy’s Brainwaves

After some more testing and bug squashing, I’m happy to announce a bugfix realease of the GAotD Launcher.  Special thanks to MASA, Gaev, and Sam Cox for helping me with ideas and catching a good number of bugs.  If you haven’t been to Giveaway of the Day yet or Game Giveaway of the Day, you have to check it out!  It’s a great site for commercial software given for free on a unique licensing structure (it’s free only on the day it’s given and so likewise are the install priviledges).

I’m happy to announce the release of v1.0 of the GAotD Launcher!  After getting some ideas from JohnRR003 from the GAotD Forums.  I decided it would be an excellent programming project.  It features support for both the standard GAotD offering as well as the Game GAotD offering.  It includes features such as preventing the user from any action after the process starts so that if some windows such as registration info boxes come up, it would let the user know that there is still more to do before the software is activated.  So far this has been tested on 3 computers in the house.  But I definately would want reports of any bugs should people experience anything. 

The terms of use upon installing this software is quite simply, it’s freeware and I’ve programmed it to the best of my ability. I cannot be held responsible if anything goes wrong. Please submit all bugs and feature requests to me at tjchan@gmail.com.

What this program does:
1. Check offerings.
2. Download offerings.
3. Un-zips the file.
4. Run installer(s) (this includes activation stuff).
5. Deletes files downloaded.

As soon as you launch the program, it will connect to get ticker information. If the ticker does not show up, then something is wrong with your connection (it may take up to 5-10 seconds for it to show up). Perhaps I should talk to the GAotD team and get this program to be official. For now though it’s one of those projects in which it was just plain fun to write and it was a challenge as I’ve never done something like this before!

Yesterday night I spent way to long (at least 3 hours) trying to get a label to display “1.2″.  Finally the LORD showed me the proper way on doing this.

 Instead of:

double x = 6/5;
lblLabel.Text = Convert.ToString(x);

I have to do this else the value of x will be 1.

double x = 6.0/5.0;
lblLabel.Text = Convert.ToString(x);

Hallelujah!  Learned something new.  In addition, I got more ideas for “Tapper” and talked with Mrs. Ginnette Serrano-Correa about methods on achieving goals of that program.  In addition I met Carol and Andy and found out about a Mr. Crawford in E220 who does Game Design which may be able to help out with some more ideas.

After much toying around with it today, I learned that FMOD’s WINCE API does not support MIDI or WMA.  I should have read the documentation.  WMA it was said to support on their website, but the documentation that came with the API’s were correct in saying they won’t work.  As the use of MP3 files for a program require a license (from my understanding including free projects), I have opted to use Ogg Vorbis for my sound format.

Freetip is a clone of Iambic’s tipper.  It was an excellent start for a first C# .NET CF project.  I learned the basics of Windows form programming - never did that before.  In the past I only used C++ and programmed console apps.  I’m still struggling with some of the basics such as classes.  But I know I’ll make it through.  Initially I was trying all sorts of methods to create an “Exit” button.  Took me about 3 hours just to find out that all I needed was 1 line of code “Close();”.  That was disheartening.  Also I didn’t know that there was a control called “numericupdown”.  I was using “domainupdown” and using it with an array in an attempt to do the same thing as a numericupdown.

So overall, the things I learned from this project are:

• How to close an application:  Close();
• How to round up:  System.Math.Ceiling(str);
• How to create a SmartDevice CAB installer.
• How to make menus.
• How to convert strings to another data type such as double or decimal.
• How to limit the number of decimal places: str.ToString(”F2″);
• How to create a dialog box: DialogResult result= MessageBox.Show(”Message”);
• How to use textbox, numericupdown, and checkbox controls as well as modifying properties of each such as “.text” or “.increment”.

As for today, I started work on Pocket Hymnal.  With the LORD’s help today I learn a bit on how Microsoft SQL 2005 mobile worked as well as how to interface with FMOD for audio playback.  Man that was confusing - took me about 6 hours to finally get it to work.  When using the wrapper class, make sure you use:

byte[] filenameBytes = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(filename + ‘\0′);

rather then:

byte[] filenameBytes = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(filename+null);

Also note that objects in C# seem to be casesensitive so “filenameBytes” is different from ”
“filenamebytes”.A tutorial on audio playback using C# with a FMOD wrapper class can be found here:
http://www.fmod.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4874&highlight=visual+studio+2005