Recent Posts

2551

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: NANY Excuse Manager (v0.96 as of 12/30/10)

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 30, 2010, 10:05 PM »

The OP has been edited to include links to screencasts demonstrating a few program features.  As I've stated in a previous post, I conceived "N.A.N.Y Excuse Manager" in a rather tongue-in-cheek fashion.  I don't expect very many DC members will actually use it.  But it's been a good programming workout for me, and has, in the process, provided me with a foundation upon which I believe I'll be able to build a Play-By-Email game.

Among the new areas I got into in this endeavor, I was able to get my mind around the .NET backgroundWorker object, which can run lengthy processes on a separate thread (so as not to lock-up the UI), while still updating the UI with progress updates.  I also got my hands dirty fooling with a FileSystemWatcher object.  It prevents any non-excuse file from being placed in the Excuses folder.  To be honest, it does this on the basis of filename extension.  It doesn't really scrutinize files at the binary level (although that wouldn't be difficult to code).

Anyway, I've thought of several ways that I should abstract this project's code a bit, so that it could be repurposed in a number of interesting ways.

If anyone thinks they could make use of the code's utility, I can share the code.

2552

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: NANY Excuse Manager (v0.96 as of 12/30/10)

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 29, 2010, 05:15 PM »

I've about got NEM wrapped up.  I'll upload installer and screencast either tonight or tomorrow.

2553

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Partial Download

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 28, 2010, 02:50 PM »

Hey, you know that really is a good idea!  I wish I'd had something like that a couple of years ago, when I was downloading LOTS of movies.

2554

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: JottiQ

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 27, 2010, 06:04 PM »

Nice idea. Not sure how to implement it though, as .NET gives such relatively low-tech things little importance, and as might be imagined, I don't have 24/4 to work on it the coming few days. I gotta scramble as-is to get JottiQ ready for its final NANY v1.0.0 release.

I can't remember the exact namespace now, but I've easily implemented detection of all running processes in past projects - just a few lines of code.  Must be easily found on search engines, or I wouldn't have been able to do it

2555

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: NANY Excuse Manager (v0.96 as of 12/30/10)

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 27, 2010, 03:52 PM »

Version 0.95 doesn't really introduce any new functionality, so far as users would notice, but it's important in that it isolates what can be a moderately intensive foreach-loop (that retrieves and processes emails) into its own BackgroundWorker thread, so that the UI doesn't become "choppy"/unresponsive.

I'm also thankful to fodder and Ath for their help in another thread with some InnoSetup questions I had.  I'm learning a lot by working on this project, and that's what it's all about!

Version 0.96 will examine all downloaded attachments (which are the excuse files that the program's users have emailed to me), and will process them.  This will involve determining:

• the overall number of excuse files downloaded
• the total number of program users who have sent excuse files as email attachments
• how many total excuse files each individual program user has sent
• the total number of times each individual has sent an email

... that kind of stuff.  I'll use these excuse files to programmatically build a webpage and upload to my website, for everyone to enjoy.

I also plan to make the text boxes for "Excuse" and "Result" multiline-capable, so that those that need to type a bit more can do so.

2556

Developer's Corner / Re: Need help from Inno Setup gurus

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 27, 2010, 03:18 PM »

Good idea.  I'll remove it for v0.96 release.

2557

Developer's Corner / Re: Need help from Inno Setup gurus

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 27, 2010, 02:43 PM »

Eureka!

[Select]

[Icons]
Name: {group}\ExcuseManager; Filename: {app}\ExcuseManager.exe
Name: {group}\Uninstall Excuse Manager v0.94; Filename: {uninstallexe}
Name: {userdesktop}\NANY Excuse Manager v0.94; Filename: {app}\ExcuseManager.exe; IconFilename: {app}\excuseMan.ico; Tasks: desktopicon

2558

Developer's Corner / Re: Need help from Inno Setup gurus

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 27, 2010, 01:46 PM »

As said earlier, the newsgroups are quite helpful, but we expect you to have done at least a little homework...

I find, with a few exceptions, that people on this site respond more quickly and with less chastisement in their tone, and that it saves me time.  DC is like having a bunch of friends who are experts.  Instead of me digging and slogging through dry subject matter, 99.9% of which doesn't pertain, I can get the answer quickly and with little time/energy expenditure.


Thanks for pointing me to those tools

2559

Living Room / Re: Cynic.me - My new ranty fun place =D

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 27, 2010, 01:41 PM »

I like the layout/appearance 

2560

Developer's Corner / Re: Need help from Inno Setup gurus

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 27, 2010, 01:08 PM »

Here's a question.  It must be in the manual somewhere, but darned if I can find it:

I'm able to specify a custom icon for the setup installer that Inno Setup creates, by using the following in my script:

[Select]

[Setup]
SetupIconFile=src\excuseMan.ico

My question, then, is this: how do I similarly specify that same custom icon so that it will be used if the user specifies for a desktop icon to be created?  Something like the following, maybe, but I don't know the correct syntax:

[Select]

[Setup]
DesktopIconFile=src\excuseMan.ico

2561

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: Snap DB

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 26, 2010, 10:18 PM »

Nice screenshot, Skwire.  I like apps with a clean interface, that are simple to use, yet useful.  Might be able to put this to work.  I notice the file extension is .snp.  Is it in essence a text file, or non-text but flat in the sense that there is no internal hierarchy of tables, etc., such as in a structured database?  In other words, could the files created/used by the program be opened in a text editor?

2562

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: NANY Excuse Manager (v0.96 as of 12/30/10)

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 26, 2010, 06:41 PM »

Okay, I just released v0.94, a fairly hefty update (adds about another 150 lines of code).  See the Version History of the OP for details, but this newest version includes the ability for the developer to log-in to his email account and selectively download any emails that have been sent by program users (presumably DC members) -- including their individual excuse files as email attachments.

Tested this with eight emails in my Inbox (3 of which matched criteria the program looks for).  Dowloaded 3 sets of email attachments (5 attachments per set), and copied them into a separate subdirectory for each emailer.

Quite pleased with this 

2563

Developer's Corner / Re: Check Gmail using C#

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 26, 2010, 02:59 PM »

@fodder:  Thanks for being willing to take time and try to help.  Turns out there isn't a problem, except me being inattentive.

If you can programmatically create a subdirectory, you can write a file there, as you'd expect.

2564

Developer's Corner / Re: Check Gmail using C#

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 26, 2010, 02:53 PM »

Figured it out: I wasn't adding a filename and extension to the end of the filename I tried to build.  DUH and DOUBLE-DUH!

2565

Developer's Corner / Re: Check Gmail using C#

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 26, 2010, 02:35 PM »

RESOLVED (see my next post).

An interesting issue has arisen in a project I'm working on:

I've created the "C:/[User]/AppData/Roaming/Kyrathaba/ExcuseManager/" subdirectory programmatically, using:

Directory.CreateDirectory()

So far, so good.

But then, using my Imap code, I try to download email attachments to the above directory, and I get an Unauthorized Access Expression.  Funny, because it just let me create the directory, but it now won't let me download anything to it.

The code referenced by the link above works, if you just create a default Windows Forms project in C#.  Must have something to do with the fact that I'm trying to write a binary file into a subdirectory of /[User]/; must be upsetting UAC or something, because I am able to write simple text files to the directory.  

Any ideas what's going on?

2566

Developer's Corner / Re: Need help from Inno Setup gurus

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 26, 2010, 02:30 PM »

Thanks, Ath.  RTFM, right? 

2567

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: NANY Excuse Manager (v0.96 as of 12/30/10)

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 26, 2010, 07:41 AM »

Nice job!    Thanks again 

2568

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: NANY Excuse Manager (v0.96 as of 12/30/10)

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 25, 2010, 06:40 PM »

App, what program did you create the icon with?  I don't know much about this, but I assume you set white as the transparent color, and that's what helps make it look good on the form's title bar?

2569

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: NANY Excuse Manager (v0.96 as of 12/30/10)

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 25, 2010, 03:58 PM »

Yay!  Check out the v0.93 and v0.93b screenshots above, featuring the beautiful icon!  Very appreciative, App103!

Also, the download links have changed, because Filezilla won't upload non-zero-length files to my DC space.  Put them on some other webspace for now.  At first I thought it might be my file permission settings.  But they've always worked before for DC, even after the server migration. 

What happens to the 'Results' field?

Actually, I think it'd be cool to have people vote separately for their favorite excuses and favorite results.  It might really be fun to code a function that would take a large number of these and randomly recombine excuses with reasons.  Might be hilarious!

2570

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: NANY Excuse Manager (v0.96 as of 12/30/10)

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 25, 2010, 03:42 PM »

Thanks, App!  I've got the icon installed in v0.93, and it looks fantastic (see updated screenshot in OP)!!  Having trouble FTPing to DC, though.  Dunno if maybe the new server is being fussy:  my other webspace accepts file uploads without problem, but I can't seem to upload my new files to DC.  Will try again later.

2571

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: NANY Excuse Manager (v0.96 as of 12/30/10)

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 25, 2010, 08:05 AM »

Extremely nice, App!  As for the center, not sure: I've been styling my programs as "produced by 'Kyrathasoft'.  Maybe some sort of K & S logo, or would that not look good?

2572

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: NANY Excuse Manager (v0.96 as of 12/30/10)

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 25, 2010, 07:04 AM »

What kind of image did you have in mind for the icon?

No idea, App, honestly    I mean, what icon can suggest making excuses? 

2573

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Pledge: "VeggieWorld" - Children's Game

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 24, 2010, 11:27 PM »

Is there going to any sound in your app?  Voiceovers?  Background music?

2574

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: NANY Excuse Manager (v0.96 as of 12/30/10)

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 24, 2010, 10:50 PM »

Thanks, worstje.  I'll do some reading/experimenting.

2575

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: NANY Excuse Manager (v0.96 as of 12/30/10)

« Last post by kyrathaba on December 24, 2010, 10:19 PM »

I wouldn't mind a nice little icon for this admittedly humorous program.  Anyone any good at creating them?

I'm gonna try to remember how to do a nice splash screen.  Not the easy, straightforward type, but one I managed about 3 years ago, with C# Express 2005.  Used BitBlt to only show non-transparent portion of splash screen image...