Alex Papadimoulis' .NET Blog

There are few emails that one will receive in his lifetime that will render him completely speechless. This past weekend, I received one such email. Its subject read Congratulations on your MVP Award!

I struggle with the words to describe how elated I am to be chosen for this award. Sure, I’ve worked my butt off in microsoft.public.accessories.paint, helping both newbies and vets solve their problems. But I never expected this. For me, it’s always been about my love of the Paint, and sharing my knowledge and expertise of Paint with the world.

I don’t want to bore you with me patting my self on the back, so I’ll just use the rest of this space to share my top three tips and tricks. I’ve got plenty more, so if you ever need some help with Paint, don’t hesitate to ask this MVP!

Why are some of my edges jagged?
You’ve discovered one of the dark secrets of digital art: pixilation. Because everything in your Paint image is made of small square blocks, the only way to make a diagonal line or a curve is to arrange the pixels in “steps;” these very steps give the image that ugly, jagged appearance.

Fortunately, we can help smooth out the jagged edges with a technique called anti-aliasing. The trick is to make the jagged edge an in-between color of the two bodies of colors. For our red circle and white background, all we need is pink, applied with the spray paint can tool.

And like magic, the jagged edge is no more!

How do I do shadows?
Shadows in Paint are incredibly easy to do:
1) Draw the shape you want to draw, but instead use black
2) Draw the shape you want to draw, using the colors you really want to use, but draw it at an angle slightly away from the black shape

Look ma, a shadow!

How can I make realistic looking Hair?
This is one of the more difficult things to accomplish in Paint. But it’s certainly doable. First, you need to figure out what hair style you want to use. Once you figure that out, it’s just a matter of using the right tool.

Curl

Believe it or not, this is a simple matter of using the wonderfully handy spray can tool. Just pick the hair color, and go crazy!!!

Baldy

This hairstyle is so ridiculously simple you’ll wonder why more cartoons characters aren’t bald. Simply apply the ellipse tool twice, above each ear, and you’ve got yourself a bald guy!

Side Part

When you want to make your character look neat and orderly, only the polygon tool will do. Here’s something funny: I like to part my own hair on the left, but draw it parted on the right. Funny, see, I told you!

Bed Head

Oh no, caught red handed without a comb! You can easily achieve this look with the use of the paint brush tool. Don’t go too crazy, it’s pretty easy to slip and go through an eye.

Be sure to congratulate Jason Mauss as well. He was awarded this year’s MSN Messenger MVP.

UPDATE: My appologies, but with the advent of relatively inexpensive commercial solutions avaiable, I've decided to suspend this project indefinitely. If I do need a solution for myself, I may take it up again. But until then, I would recommend getting a commercial version (http://www.valesoftware.com/products-express-agent.php is one source) or using the Windows Task Manager to run batch files.

I was pretty excited to learn about SQL Server: Express Edition. It is a stripped-down of version of SQL Server that is free to get, free to use, and free to distribute. This is great news if you're in the business of building small- and mid-sized database applications but not in a position to fork over five grand for the full edition.

A free, stripped-down version of SQL Server is nothing new; afterall, MSDE filled this niche for the previous version of SQL Server. One thing that sets SQL Server Express apart is its branding and accessiblity. Not only does Express "feel" like SQL Server, it's easy to install, use, and administer. MSDE did not have these qualities, which kept it out of the reach of many would-be database developers.

The limitations imposed by SQL Server Express do not hinder most small- and mid-sized applications. A single processor and a gigabyte of RAM is enough to run most of these applications and it certainly takes a *lot* of data to fill a database up to four gigabytes. One thing that makes Express a deal-killer is the lack of SQL Agent, which runs scheduled jobs and automates backups. That's important in just about all-sizes of applications.

I'm developing an application that will fill this functionality gap: Express Agent. I was hoping to have this complete before the launch of SQL Server Express, but other priorities prevented this from happening. Express Agent strives to replace and improve upon the SQL Agent that was left out.

Like the SQL Agent, Express Agent runs as a service. However, Express Agent can also be "plugged in" to a hosted web-application as a HttpHandler. This allows Express Agent agent to run as background thread, running jobs and sending email as needed.

The jobs are modeled in a similar fashion to the way SQL Server handles them. A job contains a number of tasks (SQL Scripts) that are run depending on whether the previous task was successful (no errors) or successful (errors). Jobs can also be scheduled on a one-time, idle, start-up, and recurring basis. The recurring schedule is handled much the same way SQL Server handles jobs as well.

Express Agent also adds database-email capability to Express Edition. Though not as complex as SQL Server's implemntation, this should cover just about any emailing you'd need to do from within your stored procedures. The mail feature is used to send success/failure notifications after jobs have been run.

It's difficult for me to show progress, since much of the work I've done is the "behind the scenes" stuff. I'm still working out the UI, HttpHandler, and some other issues, but so far it works great on it's own, so long as jobs are added via the stored procedures. No less, here's a few screen shots from the Jobs Manager UI ...

If this app looks like it may be of interest to you, I'd appreciate your feedback. If you're interested in lending a hand with some of the remaining portions, I'd really appreciate that, too. I plan on offering this completed product for free, but most likely not open source.

I saw that Jason Mauss wrote about his experience at the San Fransisco 2005 Launch Party, so I thought I'd share my experience at the Detroit venue. Because it wasn't the "real" Launch Party, we didn't have anything fancy like a speech from Steve Balmer, songs performed by AC/DC, or appearances by the guys from Orange County Choppers. But it was still a good time. Please bare with my lack of actual photographs, as I did not have the foresight to bring a camera.

Although the "doors" to the event opened at 7:30AM, the insatiable desire for inexpensive liquor required a stop at the duty-free shop first. I loaded up on Courvoisier, Chambord Royale, and many other fine spirits, saving easily $80 - $100. The US Customs agent even waived the "required" $2.85 duty per liter. He was surprisingly much nicer than the Canadian Customs agent, who demanded a birth certificate, a certificate certifying the birth certificate, the presence of my parents to certify the certified birth certificate, and a certificate certifying my parents are really my parents. Either that or a passport.

Tax-free Booze

The event was at the Renaissance Center, located in the heart of downtown. Despite being the tallest building in 100-square miles, it was surprisngly difficult to find, especially if you're unfamiliar Detroitonese, the language of the locals. They call it the "Ren Cen" and I'm surprised that any out-of-towner would find it.

The Ren Cen

Arriving there at 8:30, it was a bit disappointing to have to shell out $12.00 for parking. But such a high price does offer us protection from the Linux Crashers, who have a hard enough time getting a car to go downtown, let alone money to pay for parking. You know who I'm talking about, right? Those basement-dwelling fanboys who go to Microsoft conferences armed with Ubuntoo discs and try to dissuade people from attending because the carpet is not open source. They actually used to protest the building being "closed source," until someone pointed them to the city planning department for architectural diagrams.

Coming in so late offered one other large disadvantage: missing out on many of the cooler freebies given out by the vendors. Here's a quick classification/rarity guide on the Detroit Launch Event vendor free stuff:

• Laser Pen (Rare) - Offered by Berbee, this was by far the coolest give-away. Only a few lucky attendies scored this combination pen/laser pointer. Surprisingly, no one abused these devices during the sessions.
• Blinking Yo-yo (Rare) - I somehow managed to get one of these. It was really cool until I realized it was not a "sleeper" yo-yo, so I gave it away to a colleague.
• Blinking HP Necklace (Uncommon) - About a third of the attendees had these, leading to two simultaneous yet conflicting feelings: "those are incredibly tacky" and "I wish I had one."
• Quest Software Weeble (Uncommon) - I don't know what these were called actually, but it was just a yellow cotton ball with paper feet and plastic eyes glued on. Despite having an uncommon rarity, no one really wanted these.
• Intel Mints (Uncommon) - These were in a neat, small metal container. They are borderline rare, mostly because you had to actually talk to the rep to get one. They were not just lying out like everything else.
• Pens (Common) - A handful of vendors were giving these away, giving to a good variety of pens. All however were cheap and plastic.
• Post-It Pads (Common) - Surprisingly, only one vendor was giving these away. Probably a good thing, just one less thing to end up in the landfill after the event.

Fortunately, there was plenty of free continental breakfast food. A good variety of bagels, danishes, and other pastries. The most notable thing from breakfast (and possibly even the day) was the itsy-bitsy jars of honey. They are about half the size of the mini-jars of jelly, and a fourth the size of baby-food containers. I was left speechless at the absolute adorableness of these mini-jars. I think I ended up with 12 of these.

Too cute to eat

After breakfast, there was the keynote speech and then a technical session. Not quite sure if there's anything more I can say about those.

Lunch time was absolutely incredible. There were tables and tables *stacked* with boxed lunches. I felt bad that they ordered so many more lunches than attendees, so I took three. My colleague was a bit less generous and had two. We also snapped up a highly-treasured premium: seats at a table. That's right, we were actually sitting down for lunch. I probably would have considering trading the seat for a blinking pendant and two pens, though. The boxed lunches were pretty good, too. I was only able to eat one, the others went in my already-overstuffed bags of goodies.

After lunch, they had another technical session.

I was "wowed" yet again after the second technical session. The community area was filled with lots of snacks: peanuts, pretzels, white-cheddar popcorn, etc. They even had this awful-tasting energy drink called Rockstar. Tried as I might, I was only able to down half of it. I was really hoping I'd like it, too, because there were a whole lot of them available. I did consider taking home a few, but I just couldn't imagine ever getting desperate enough to drink one of those again.

Gives you the energy to throw it away

My colleague and I decided to turn in the evaluation forms early and get the T-Shirt and SQL-Server/VS.NET/BizTalk software before there was a rush. And wow, let me tell you, that was quite a moment. It's one thing to experience Visual Studio 2005 through your buddy's work's MSDN subscription, but you really feel alive having your own, fully-licensed copy of the software. I'm still buzzing from that.

Things went a bit down hill from there. I was a bit disappointed at the next break between sessions three and four. It was very bleak. There were hordes of developers, all hungry and thirsty, scavenging through the remaining pop, water, and Rockstar drinks from the previous breaks. I felt bad for them; some were so desperate that they had to buy drinks the vending machines. Thankfully, I had about a weeks-worth of snacks and beverages saved up from the other breaks, so I was good to go.

All in all, it was a fun event. If you weren't able to make it, make sure to catch the "Best Of" tour starting next month. There probably won't be any vendors set up, and I doubt you'll see much free food, but you'll get the software. It's so worth it for that. If anyone is planning on attending the Brooklyn, Ohio "best of" event, I'll see you there!