The blog of a VB MVP, Cory Smith
Displaying 1 to 25 of 140 archived entries.-
Published on 16 Jan 2006 by Cory Smith
I recently received a comment regarding XboxFriends that goes as follows: So do you store the Passport info so you can keep signing in every time Passport logs you out? And doesn't your program communicate through your server? Why should I trust you with my Passport info? Let me answer the questions
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Published on 15 Jan 2006 by Cory Smith
I'm looking for a few people to test XboxFriends as thoroughly as they can before I release it publicly. The release is very behind since I had to make it a priority to obfuscate the code to protect one of the newest features (which was a requirement for XboxFriends to work continuously). If i
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Published on 12 Jan 2006 by Cory Smith
I was experiencing a bit of lag while playing DOA4, so did some research. What I found is this link that measures your actual travel time performance (instead of generic ping) utilizing Quake III type of traffic. This test demonstrates how their StreamEngine QoS technology works and what
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Published on 10 Jan 2006 by Cory Smith
As I talked about back in December, I got a chance to play an early version of SiN Episodes but since I am under NDA (non-disclosure agreement) I couldn't really talk much about the game. Well, the game was demonstrated at CES 2006 and GameSpy has the scoop. Rather than repeat what they
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Published on 10 Jan 2006 by Cory Smith
I was talking with a friend of mine last night and the topic of Google vs. Microsoft came up. Essentially his stance was that Google is “winning” and it's too late for Microsoft to gain momentum to dethrone them in many areas. I, of course, had the opposite stance. So w
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Published on 09 Jan 2006 by Cory Smith
Here's a few items that I wanted to share (or follow up later) regarding various cool things you can do with Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (MCE). Case I haven't decided what I want to do regarding a case, but this one looks nice. Need to do some evaluating... Caller ID Although MCE
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Published on 09 Jan 2006 by Cory Smith
On top of it being the holidays, work, interacting with family, buying gifts, cooking turkey and the occasional Xbox 360 gaming session, I've been extremely busy working out the kinks with a new side project that is really starting to take shape. Of course, now that I've invested a significant amoun
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Published on 07 Dec 2005 by Cory Smith
This guy states: “I just can't LIVE without being able to do things like:“ string oink = myHashTable[someKey] as string;if(oink != null) “Or“ lock(this) { // yada yada yada} Hmmm... let's see. He states that VB can't do the above by stating that he “just can
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Published on 07 Dec 2005 by Cory Smith
I can't help it... this crap is so wrong that it *MUST* be discussed. It's been picked up my many people in the blogsphere and used as “reference“ material in forums. It's wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG! You'd think after almost 5 months of being posted people would check t
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Published on 05 Dec 2005 by Cory Smith
To all those that didn't get in on the SiN play testing that occurred yesterday, my apologies. There were only a limited number of seats available and I had to hand them out on a first come - first served basis. Micheal and I will be making an attempt to do this sort of thing in the
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Published on 02 Dec 2005 by Cory Smith
There's officially no Geek Gathering for December, however, one of our members has extended an excellent opportunity... Did you ever play a game called SiN? Do you like the Source engine (Half-Life 2)? Are you in the local area (Dallas/Fort Worth)? Is your schedule open this S
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Published on 02 Dec 2005 by Cory Smith
When: December 13th, 2005 Come to the event for you chance to win a free copy of DVDs containing both Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005! There are *FIVE* of these to be given away, so you chance is pretty good... Who's presenting? Good question... the answer is that Stephen Swienton
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Published on 21 Nov 2005 by Cory Smith
While working with VB 2005, I'll try to take note of the little things that help make VB stand out above other development products. Here's one that I haven't really heard anyone speak upon and it kind of surprised me when I used it the first time. Don't get me wrong, it was a
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Published on 11 Nov 2005 by Cory Smith
“Some people live an entire lifetime and wonder if they have made a difference in the world. Marines don't have that problem“ -- Ronald Reagan Many people that know me think that I'm anti-establishment and against “the man” by the way that I speak regarding various top
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Published on 10 Nov 2005 by Cory Smith
Several questions arise surrounding performance with web applications. Many times it's difficult to tell exactly where the bottleneck in the loading time of the page may be. Is it the page size, page generation duration, image sizes, number of images, connections to other locations, DNS
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Published on 17 Jan 2006 by Cory Smith
... and I'm really not all that upset. A little over a year ago, the radio automation software company I worked for was acquired by dMarc, a small startup focused on delivering advertising to radio stations through piggy-backing upon the radio automation software. Shortly after being acquired,
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Published on 05 Feb 2006 by Cory Smith
I'll be presenting at the Oklahoma City users group meetings tomorrow discussing creating feature rich custom controls (from both the UI and developer viewpoints) including System.Drawing, Generics, SmartTags and the joys of Late Binding. If your in the area, be sure to stop by and say “HiR
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Published on 12 Feb 2006 by Cory Smith
Although an early version, this project is shaping up rather nicely. Here's a few preliminary screen shots. The application allows you to point to a UNC based path and it will display the recorded shows in a similar manner to the actual Microsoft Windows XP Media Centered Edition softwar
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Published on 16 Feb 2006 by Cory Smith
Someone at a presentation I presented at recently asked, "Instead of inheriting from a base control (TextBox), couldn't you just create a partial class and add the additional functionality?" It's an interesting idea; however, there are several problems associated with the idea... some technical, oth
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Published on 16 Feb 2006 by Cory Smith
As Lutz Roeder describes it, a “.NET version of an old East German Boulderdash game”. Using the source that he put together to build from, this version is initally a port to Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 and contains new graphics done by yours truly. In addition to a simpl
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Published on 19 Feb 2006 by Cory Smith
I've used this term previously and some people have asked “What exactly does VB'ified mean“? VB'ified is a term I use to describe code that has been modified to “feel” like VB. This may sound simplistic at first glance; however, there's a lot of areas where th
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Published on 24 Feb 2006 by Cory Smith
In my previous post regarding trying to use partial as a mechanism to extend existing functionality in a base user control, someone asked: “Does VB work differently or are you just assuming? Using the same namespace across 2 different assemblies (even) works perfectly fine?” Let's answer
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Published on 02 Mar 2006 by Cory Smith
So that people can have an opportunity to meet me in person (man, does that sound vain or what?), I've added a 'meet cory smith' link to the top navigation. I'll make every attempt to keep that up to date, so if you happen to be attending one of these events, be sure to stop by and say hi.
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Published on 09 Mar 2006 by Cory Smith
If your in the Dallas area and can make the presentation tonight, be sure to stop by and say hi.
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Published on 21 Mar 2006 by Cory Smith
If your in the Fort Worth area and can make the presentation tonight (yes, I'm presenting...), be sure to stop by and say hi. Update - For those in the audience with laptops... you can download the presentation and code here.
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