SMO Connection to a Database and Return Server Information

Tuesday, July 22 2008 - , - 0 comments

Here is a Quick sample which shows how to connect to a Database Server and collect the Base information using c# and the Microsoft SQL Server Management Objects (SMO). To use this example you will need to make sure that you add (Reference) the SQL Server Management Assemblies to your project. Here is a list of the Assemblies you will need to reference. Microsoft.SqlServer.ConnectionInfo Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo Microsoft.SqlServer.SmoEnum Microsoft.SqlServer.SqlEnum Here is the Code Sample... using System ; using Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Common ; using Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo ;...

Reading a list of Servers from XML using LINQ

Tuesday, July 22 2008 - , , - 0 comments

For one of the smaller projects I am working on I needed to get a list of database servers from a configuration file. To do this I have loaded up the servers and the database connection information into an XML File. < ?xml version ="1.0" encoding ="utf-8" ? > < DatabaseServers > < Servers > < Name > DatabaseServer1 </ Name > < Server > DatabaseServer1 </ Server > < Integrated > true </ Integrated > </ Servers > < Servers > < Name > DatabaseServer2 </ Name > < Server > DatabaseServer2\SQL2005 </ Server > <...

XNA DBP - Tail Gun Charlie Sneak Peak

Monday, July 21 2008 - , - 0 comments

Here is a small video of a possible entry into the 2008 Dream Build Play.

{YouTube:Kz7H1k2lu-4}

Tail Gun Charlie or TGC for short. XNA 360 and Windows. Working towards an entry in to www.dreambuildplay.com 2008 competition.

WPF Data Entry Tutorials

Sunday, July 20 2008 - - 0 comments

Over the last few weeks I have started to play around a bit more with some WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) Applications. As I am working on some Business applications I need to have access to Data. Going through the blog posts and such this morning I came across some new tutorials on the windowsclient.net web site, for those who do not know you will find that the windowsclient.net site is a good resource for all things WPF and Windows Forms. The first tutorial goes though a process of creating a WPF data entry application , and the second takes you through the process of displaying your data...

mIRC 6.33 Released

Saturday, July 19 2008 - - 0 comments

I have been a long time user of mIRC , and the latest version has been released. mIRC 6.33 has been released! (July 18 th 2008) This version of mIRC continues to build on recent releases and addresses a number of issues that have been reported by users since the last release. It includes improvements, changes and fixes to a number of features. In particular, a new editbox "automatic" lines option has been added that dynamically changes the size of the editbox in a window to show the whole of your typed message, up to half the size of the window. This allows you to easily see and review a long,...

Blender 3D - Texturing a Box

Sunday, July 06 2008 - - 0 comments

I thought it was about time that I posted another Tutorial, this time taking the artistic side I have decided to put together a simple tutorial on Texturing a Box. I plan on going through the process of Drawing a simple box, Adding the UV Map and Breaking it up, then extracting the UVMap and using Photoshop to create a texture for it. Drawing the Model The first step is to open up blender and clear out the default model, we could just use what is there but I thought I would start with nothing... So open Blender and press 'x' to remove all objects from the scene, this should leave you with a blank...

Codeplex - Zune Minesweeper

Sunday, July 06 2008 - , , - 0 comments

A new Zune XNA game project has been added to the Codeplex site, this game is based on the good old minesweeper game. Zune Minesweeper Included in this game is the option to add different skins to the game to add that little bit of personalization to it. Zune Minesweeper v2.0 So this is version 2. New features include: Font-based menus. Saving of best times. Saving of preferences. The option to switch which button is used to flag tiles. Custom skins ; 3 skins have been included (detailed below) and the skin can be chosen from the options menu. Auto-selection of a tile after a tile is clicked is...

Blender Model - Hex Tile

Sunday, June 29 2008 - - 0 comments

Talking today on the IRC one of the users was asking about a Hex Tile Model, so as I needed something quick to play with I have decided to put one together. The model is just a simple Hex Tile that can be used in you XNA Games, the File includes the model exported into several different formats as well as the texture and UV Map template for your 2D Editing program of choice. Here is a link to the zip file . (Included in File, is the .Blend file, PSD Files for the Textures and UV Maps, as well as the model exported into x, FBX, and OBJ Format)...

XNA Game - ArkZunoid

Sunday, June 22 2008 - , - 0 comments

I remember playing Arkanoid for hours on end back in the C64 days, enjoying the powerups and the various layouts you where presented with. Now Exhale games have produced a version of the game for the Windows and Zune Platforms using the XNA Game Studio 3.0 system. {YouTube:OXzeyoLFe7g} Technorati Tags: XNA , Zune...

Using Powershell to Generate TinyURLs

Sunday, June 22 2008 - - 0 comments

I cam across a small Powershell function that will allow you to pass a URL to it and it will return a TinyURL. TinyURL is a web service that provides short aliases for long URLs. Here's a function to generate URL aliases using TinyURL's API. The returned URL is short and never expires. Here is the function and a small example of how to use it. Thanks to Shay for passing this on. function New-TinyUrl($url) { ( new - object net.webclient).downloadString( "http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=$url" ) } PS > $vug = New-TinyUrl -url http://marcoshaw.blogspot.com/2008/06/windows-powershell-virtual...