Archives

Archives / 2003 / May
  • Random Color from Known Color List

    Some one in an asp.net forum asked how to select a random color from the list of known colors so I wrote a little code to do this. I wrote a GetRandomColor and GetRandomNumber method which uses the RandomNumberGenerator from the System.Security.Cryptography namespace. As far as I know this is the best random number generator built into the .Net Framework.

  • Retrieve the current Framework Directory

    I needed the ablity to get the directory of the most current version of the framework on them machine, but there were no built in functions in the framework to do this (at least none that I could find). So I did a little hunting around and found where the framework installation path is stored in the registry and combined that with the Environment.Version to get the framework directory. Here is a sample function to retrieve the framework directory:

  • SourceForge.Net RSS Feeds

    I know that there has been some talk recently about the RSS feeds for projects hosted at SourceForge.Net but I also just discovered that there are some site wide RSS feeds as well.  Things like Site-wide news, Newly Registered Projects, Top Projects By Download and Top Projects By Activity to name a few.  You can find out about all their RSS here.  I need to stay up to date with projects going on there.  I always seem to forget about them, I guess because they don’t show up very much in google searches.

  • Minimize to SysTray

    I was checking out some of the links on Roy’s weblog and I noticed something called minimize magic so I checked it out.  I really like the idea of being able to minimize my active windows to the systray.  I felt that the particular program minimize magic was a bit sloppy.  So I googled for some other possible programs and I ran across AllToTray and I think it is a lot cleaner.  It does cost $10 but I think it is well worth it.  I actually don’t know how I have lived without a program like this.  It’s great.

  • Enlightenment

    I must be the last person to be "Enlightened" about using NedStat for webstats.  What stat collector do other people use?  Is there a webservice (free) that can collect webstats?  Is there something that can collect stats for rss feeds?

  • Parsing Web Command Line Args Example

    Recently I needed to pass parameters to a smart client exe, so with some assistance from some people on the Develop Mentor lists and some pure hammering of my head against the wall I came up with the following example. I hope this proves useful to others.

  • MyIE2

    A couple of weeks ago I saw mention of MyIE2 from Robert's Blog.  Tonight I finally got a chance to play around with it and it's pretty cool.  I think I'm going to use it as my web browser for a while. Here is a list of things that I like:

  • New .Net De-compiler

    Lutz Roeder has started a blog. If the name doesn't ring a bell, he's got a bunch of useful tools for .NET, including Refelector (for which he released a de-compiler plugin). Unfortunately, his RSS seems a little hosed (it contains unescaped HTML in the <description> tags), which we hope he gets fixed real soon now. Anyway, welcome!