December 2004 - Posts
Recently I started using iTunes (iTMS) as my music library software and from October, I was able to buy music online with it (in Belgium). For me it looks good and works well, however there are a few shortcomings if you don't have an iPod. I must say, that I'm tempted to buy myself one, but nevertheless, I want to play my music on my home cinema system or in my car audio system that supports MP3.
So, I started with an idea to get my music from iTunes onto an MP3 CD. Now it turns out that you can organize your MP3 files on a CD in Albums by using subdirectories. So, if you create an CD with let's say 5 folders and you store MP3 songs in them, most MP3 capable devices will consider these folders as MP3 Albums.
So, what is the purpose of iCollector? Well, to get music out of the iTMS library and to organize them automatically into MP3 Albums. The goal is to be able to burn the MP3 CD right away from iCollector, however, today you need to use your own burning software.
Today only unprotected AAC and MP3 files can be collected. I hope to find a way to collect also the protected AAC files but I'm a little bit stuck because hymn doesn't support iTMS 4.7.
Wesley is writing a C# wrapper around the Nero 6 API and hopefully ;) , another one around the Windows XP burning capabilities.
I will post on a regular basis a new release of iCollector. And of course staying Truth to the vision of dotnet6, the source is provided (as an VS.NET 2003 project)
Download iCollector
Download the latest iCollector Source code
Read the full article on iCollector here
Special thanks to James T. Johnson for providing an excellent .net base wizard framework.
- Erik
This morning I ran into some troubles with an ASP.Net site. I had to access a file resource on the server, however the default website settings didn't allow me to access the file. Although that I could access the file myself via the network, I wasn't able to access it via my website.
So, I looked into the subject of impersonation and decided to write a small article about it to share my findings.
Read the article here
- Erik
A few days ago I started learning flash. I liked it right away and decided to make a trial on the dotNet6 logo. I spent like 3 hours on it and had a lot of fun. Here's the result:
- Erik
Lately, I've read some articles on how to best manage your passwords. Most of the time people propose one or the other password management tool to keep track of all your user accounts in a safe manner.
However, what about fingerprint recognition?? I'm actually wondering why it doesn't really take off perhaps its because of the lack of devices, or because it ain't that bulletproof anyway... I don't know.
Microsoft (and most likely others like logitech etc) is now offering this technology into the mouse or keyboards. I got to get myself one these, just for the sake of the comfort of my brain.
As soon as they arrive over here in Belgium, I'm going to get one myself. I let you know if it is heaven or hell.
http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/productlist.aspx?fprint=yes
We've changed the skin of this blog and created a logo for the dotNet6.com site.
Special thanks to Mark Wagner for providing the good looking skin which we used as a basis
- Erik
In my VB6 days, I used to store application settings data into .ini files or the registry when I had to support multiple users in my App. Later on, I learned that XML was an ideal format to store this type of data.
So, in my first .NET applications I continued using XML to store application settings data. The XML facilities provided by the .NET framework were ideal to read and write the application settings onto disk. However, as the applications got bigger and bigger, the code to parse and save the XML became pretty huge. So, I decided to browse the internet in search for a better (read ‘easier’ or ‘more lazy’) way. Finally I found some interesting pieces of code/info here and there and decided to share it with you.
The sample code is using the XmlSerializer to serialize a settings object to disk. To make it a bit more interesting I organized most of the Serialization stuff into a base class called ApplicationSettings. So, you only need to derive from this class to start creating your own Application Settings classes.
Read the full article
Download code and sample.
- Erik
Well I just spend two hours looking for a domain name that suites the goal of it. Finally I came up with www.dotnet6.com.
Basically these are just two things I like; dotNet because I’m enjoying it and 6 as this is my lucky number.
- Erik
Here’s a little story…
Have you ever created a piece of software where you really went to the bone? We’ll I guess you did, and most likely you immediately called your best friend who’s also into dotNet and explained him every tiny detail of your new app. At the end of your call, you got some new ideas and then you’re thinking when you will have some time again (besides spending some quality time with the wife and kids) to do some fine-tuning.
A little later you are about to find a great name for your tool and you are redesigning and enhancing the user interface to make it look really sharp.
The tool gets better every day, and you wonder if there’s anybody else that could use the result of your hard (but satisfying) work… So, you are about to publish it on the internet but where?
Besides that you sometimes run into trouble and search everything for days. You searched news groups, discussion boards, blogs, etc. Finally you solved the issue by analyzing (or try-and-error) all the pieces you found during your quest.
You are so happy that you want to tell all others that you have found the solution. The thing is, you forgot all the sources you’ve visited and secondly, you don’t want to register on every discussion group to just post this one answer you have found. So, you want to publish this knowledge, but where?
We’ll you create a blog like this and decide to put all your developments and solutions on it so you can share them with the rest of the world.
- Erik