WebMatrix is Powered by People

So much of today reminds me of the movie Solent Green (I bet you thought I was going to say the Matrix). Well Microsoft giving away web development tools is something new. In the past Front Page was a easy and expensive way to get started. We now see web development integrated into many Microsoft products such as Office. Publisher is pretty nice to work with and quite powerful. They have a host of different tools for web develpment which for most people not earning a living from it, the prices are out of range of most budgets.

This can lead people to free open source products where they develop first an affection for then later a dependence on these open source tools.

http://www.microsoft.com/web/webmatrix/?WT.mc_id=MSCOM_EN_US_DLC_CONFIRMATION_121LMUS007468


WebMatrix is a free and gives you a web server, a database, and programming frameworks. WebMatrix lets you use both ASP.NET and PHP applications side by side.

WebMatrix includes four integrated workspaces that help you focus on different areas of your Web site. Monitor real-time web requests and configure your Web site server settings with the Site workspace. Manage your files and edit your code using the code editor with syntax highlighting in the Files workspace. Add and manage databases using the Database workspace. And last but not least, generate SEO reports and optimize your web site for search engines using tools in the Reports workspace.

Nex time someone asks me how to get started I'm going to point them to WebMatrix

How to Make a directory list from your hard drive

I have a hard drive dock where I can swap in or out different WD Green Sata drives. Mostly 2 Terabyte drives. This have my movie collection. I need a way t keep track of what movies are on what drive. This is easy with some old fashion DOS.

dir e: /b/p > Movie1.txt

e: is where the movies are

movie1.txt indicates the movie disk 1 directory being written to movie1.txt

run cmd

paste in the first line of this email, then enter

So there is a separate text file for each movie drive showing the directory names that tell me what is contained on each drive.

vb.net bring form to the front

Question How to bring an already running application in front


Focus On Another Application

set the focus - VB.NET

Form.BringToFront
 
I was programing in Visual Studio 2010. I ran into this problem and saw no answers in any Google searches. I Saw a whole lot of very complicated and even crazy work arounds so I'm posting this to possibly help someone else who runs into a similar issue.
 
The problem was when I tried to get focus on the new form after it opened it would always stay in the background. This subroutine simply checks to see if a window is open with a flag I set and if it is I focus on it. When the program closes it sets the flag back to 0. I could not get the window to focus when I used
 
Dim frm as New vtfrmsearch
 
by removing the Dim statement everything worked perfect.
 

Private Sub SearchTempToolStripMenuItem_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles SearchTempToolStripMenuItem.Click

     If SearchOpen = 1 Then
        vtfrmsearch.Focus()

     End If


    If SearchOpen = 0 Then
        vtfrmsearch.Show()
        SearchOpen = 1
    End If

End 


If you want a form to always stay on top until it is closed use:

vtfrmsearch.ShowDialog()


Sub

The Devil is in the Details

I recently bought a PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series sound card. I know it doesn't follow with the whole concept of high tech on a budget except for the fact that I picked this up for $60 on a black Friday deal at Newegg when it normally runs for about $150.

I picked this card over other brands because it has a s/pdif output that I was hoping to use the fiber optic connection on to eliminate some noise hum. 28% of the reviews were 3 eggs or less out of 5. If you buy something and you rate it less than 4 eggs then there is a real problem. One of the biggest problems was what I ran into and I saw countless people including myself complaining that this board doesn't play multichannel 5.1 or greater Dolby out the S-PDIF/SPDIF optical connector.

This just happens to be one of the distinguishing features about this board when compared to it's much cheaper competition. The install process takes about 30 minutes to 1 hour depending on how attentive you are to the process. Once installed the software informs you that you are not running the latest versions of a few of its software packages. This download and re-install took another hour. After 2 hours of mind numbing installs I was ready to test the card. Well I needed music for that or at least some good audio testing software. It turns out the card comes with a dashboard that is actually quite nice for setting up and testing your speaker setup.

To sum things up a bit Windows 7 does not support multi-channel audio (over 2.1) on spdif.
Creative handles this in the most part by providing PowerDVD9 by cyberlink which is a great addition. This is the full version of this software. You can then play upto 7.1 audio through the spdif.
Secondly the Creative software is buggy and in most cases it will say you don't have the hardware installed after your hardware check passes. DRM fail is my guess. I hope this hurts thier sales none the less. I compiled a few hints, tips, and links that I reallt don't want to get into detail about because of the mass frustration dealing with the software included with this card. There are much cheaper solutions out there.

There are 3 components to the set up process.

1.) First you need to ensure the operating system is seeing the card. Many help and forum sites on the internet say you need to disable onboard Realtek audio as well as any other audio sources. This is not true. It might eliminate some confusion but the Windows 7 sound properties clearly indicate what sound devices are installed unless you don't have the manufacturer drivers installed properly.

You need to check off the box in the advanced tab "Allow applications to take exclusive control.."

The software comes with some tools that allow you to change some presets and give you some control over the sound card. Here are some links to play around with:Dolby* Control Center:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3065&DwnldID=17893&ProductFamily=Desktop+Boards&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+5+Series+Chipset+Boards&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+Desktop+Board+DP55SB&lang=eng

fails to launch even with Windows 7 compatibility mode and running as administrator
http://www.dolby.com/consumer/product/pc/software/windows-7.html

From the windows 7 site:
http://www.dolby.com/professional/technology/home-theater/dolby-digital-plus.html

Channels: 1.0 to 7.1, discrete
Data rate: 32 kbps–6 Mbps, scalable; typical range on HD optical discs is 768 kbps–1.5 Mbps
Supports Dolby metadata: Yes
Connections: S/PDIF, HDMI, IEEE 1394
Mixing/streaming capabilities: Yes
Backward Compatibility: Yes; S/PDIF to legacy A/V receivers (640 kbps data rate)
Connector Signal TypesLine output: Two-, six-, and eight-channel analog
S/PDIF: Two-channel PCM and Dolby Digital
HDMI 1.1/HDMI 1.2: Two-, six-, and eight-channel PCM and Dolby Digital
HDMI 1.3: Two-, six-, and eight-channel PCM, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, and Dolby TrueHD bitstreams

http://kadaitcha.cx/xp/3dsurround.html

http://ac3filter.net/

ac3Filter is a high quality free audio decoder and processor filter. It allows media players to playback movies with AC3 and DTS audio tracks. Also it can process any audio track, much of processing options allows to adjust the sound in almost any way. It is possible to upmix any audio source to 6 channels. Filter can do multi-channel and digital (SPDIF) output. It can encode any audio source to AC3 on-the-fly and send it over SPDIF to the receiver.

http://www.lynnemusic.com/surround.html http://www.dvddemystified.com/disc.html

Lost and Found

WinDirStat creates a directory tree if you file and folder usage. This is useful for hunting down heavily populated folders. The graphical representation is the most impressive part in that is sorts both by file type which is color coded and disk realestate usesage. If you hover over a large file or group of files it will show you where that file is in the lower left.

Find stuff you lost, find stuff you didn't know was there, and get rid of unwanted files.

Sky Dive? Not Really Sky Drive? Hell Yeah

Mapping Windows Sky Drive to get 25 GIG of free online storage can' t get easier but requires some voodo to pull it off.

Open your browser, and navigate to http://skydrive.live.com/.

Login and then click on a folder to get your CID
https://cid-1234567890abcdef.skydrive.live.com/.Documents

or with office live

http://cid-1234567890abcdef.office.live.com/documents.aspx?sa=895693244
Copy the UID part of the displayed URL

Sign in with your Windows Live ID.

Leave SkyDrive open, and take note of one of your folder names.
Open Windows Explorer.

On the left sidebar, right-click on Network. Choose Map network drive.
Enter the following URL:

Right Click on Network and select Map Network Drive

Note: Replace “Documents” with “^2Documents”, and “Public” with “^2Public”.
\\docs.live.net@SSL\1234567890abcdef\^2Documents

Replace “XYZ” with the folder name you noted and that you want to map.

Choose a drive letter, and submit the dialog.



You will be prompted for your Windows Live ID. Sign in.

Then, you can access all the files and subfolders within your SkyDrive folder, including copying and pasting. You can even open and edit files directly!

Multi Core Conversion Tool - Free - Not So good

Here is a free multi core conversion tool with some simple and helpful features. He has some other tools at his site that might be fun to play with as well.

http://www.awpersoft.com/

• Capture screen's activities to video clips (.avi format) or image files (.jpg, .jpeg, .bmp formats).
• Create movie clips from image albums with sound (musics) adding option.
• Record live audio (musics) to audio file (.wav format).
• Extract (rip) songs from your favorite musics CDs to .wav files.
• Convert music files between different formats (.mp3, .wav, .wma, .ogg, .m4v).
• Join .mp3 musics files (Extremely fast like in a blink of an eye).
• Convert video (movie) clips between different formats (.asf, .avi, .flv, .mpg, .mp4, .rm, .rmvb, .wmv).
• Join video (movie) clips from different formats and sizes (.avi, .flv, .mpg, .mp4, .rm, .rmvb, .wmv).
• Rip DVDs to video files or extract only Audio (Music) to .mp3 files.
• *NOTEs: All DVDs, videos, movies, audios and musics processed using the above functions is strictly
  for personal use only. The processed medias may be Copyrighted pertaining to their respecful
  Authors, Artists or Agencies.