What am I working on?

[HaLo2FrEeEk]

I've been delving deeper into C# the last few weeks and I'm really starting to get a hold on things. I'm working on a few projects to help better my understanding and maybe actually get a few things done.

First, I'm planning on making a client and admin program for the HD Recording Service. The client program will be for people to submit new requests and check on the status of their open or archived requests. The admin program will allow me to administrate all aspects of the process, from recieving new requests to uploading the files and validating payments. It should simplify the process, but more than that it's an excellent opportunity to get my hands really dirty with C# and learn a lot about the language. I'll have to learn about mail access, mysql access, file uploading...all sorts of things.

I'm also working on a program that will get hardware information about the computer it's running on. Things like CPU model, speed, number of RAM modules and their individual capacities, total RAM capacity, number of harddrives and their individual capacities, total harddrive capacity, etc. I'll get all this information and then have the person running it sign in with their Infectionist forum credentials, doing that will upload the information to that user's profile here on the forums. Nothing personally identifiable will be retrieved, just basic hardware information, so no worries there, I just want the challenge of getting the information from the computer and communicating with the server, should be fun.

Finally, I'm planning a program that will download the list of recent screenshots for a given gamertag than display the thumbnail version along with the title, description, date taken and a checkbox. Check the boxes for the screenshots you want to download and click a button and you're prompted for where you want to save them, the program then downloads all the full-size screenshots to that location. In addition a configuration file will be saved with the gamertag and save location so that next time the program runs it can automatically get the information you need with no user input (except to check the boxes, and there will be a "check/uncheck all" button.) This one should be neat because it'll encompass downloading the XML document containing the links to the screenshots, parsing that document, saving the individual files, threading (to keep the program responsive), and saving/using a configuration file. It should also be a useful program, I don't want to manually download 30 files at a time.

Anywho, I'll try to keep you updated on my progress, 2 of them are in testing mode now, I've got builds loaded onto my flash drive so I can test them on another computer. This should be loads of fun!
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~HaLo2FrEeEk

[HaLo2FrEeEk]

I've been delving deeper into C# the last few weeks and I'm really starting to get a hold on things. I'm working on a few projects to help better my understanding and maybe actually get a few things done.

First, I'm planning on making a client and admin program for the HD Recording Service. The client program will be for people to submit new requests and check on the status of their open or archived requests. The admin program will allow me to administrate all aspects of the process, from recieving new requests to uploading the files and validating payments. It should simplify the process, but more than that it's an excellent opportunity to get my hands really dirty with C# and learn a lot about the language. I'll have to learn about mail access, mysql access, file uploading...all sorts of things.

I'm also working on a program that will get hardware information about the computer it's running on. Things like CPU model, speed, number of RAM modules and their individual capacities, total RAM capacity, number of harddrives and their individual capacities, total harddrive capacity, etc. I'll get all this information and then have the person running it sign in with their Infectionist forum credentials, doing that will upload the information to that user's profile here on the forums. Nothing personally identifiable will be retrieved, just basic hardware information, so no worries there, I just want the challenge of getting the information from the computer and communicating with the server, should be fun.

Finally, I'm planning a program that will download the list of recent screenshots for a given gamertag than display the thumbnail version along with the title, description, date taken and a checkbox. Check the boxes for the screenshots you want to download and click a button and you're prompted for where you want to save them, the program then downloads all the full-size screenshots to that location. In addition a configuration file will be saved with the gamertag and save location so that next time the program runs it can automatically get the information you need with no user input (except to check the boxes, and there will be a "check/uncheck all" button.) This one should be neat because it'll encompass downloading the XML document containing the links to the screenshots, parsing that document, saving the individual files, threading (to keep the program responsive), and saving/using a configuration file. It should also be a useful program, I don't want to manually download 30 files at a time.

Anywho, I'll try to keep you updated on my progress, 2 of them are in testing mode now, I've got builds loaded onto my flash drive so I can test them on another computer. This should be loads of fun!
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~HaLo2FrEeEk

[KJdog23]

Very cool, but sorry to tell you but the second one has been done. System Requirements Lab uses one.
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[HaLo2FrEeEk]

I know that, I'm not doing anything original, just using the data in an original way for us. Most sites that let you put in information about your computer make you manually type it in. This tool will automatically get everything that it needs to know and post it directly to your user profile here on Infectionist. I'm sure that's been done, too, but not here. And these are more "can I do it" projects rather than something original or new. The challenge is in getting the information, sending it to the database (which is complicated, communicating with a MySQL database through C#) and displaying it in the profile.

On a slightly more depressing note, I loaded builds of the halo 3 screenshot program and another simple mailer program that I wrote onto a flash drive and took them to the library for testing on Windos XP. No go, I think it's because I'm using .NET 3.5 in my programs and .NET 3.5 only came out for Windows Vista and above. Darn. That's ok, I should be able to change the target .NET version to 2.0 and it should still work on both platforms...hopefully.

Oh, and the Simple Mailer is just a little program that accepts a to and from email address, subject, and body, and sends an email to the "to" address, from the "from address". It's quite cool, actually. Useless by itself, but I plan on incorporating it with the HD Recording Service programs to send emails at each stage of the request. Saves me an extra step (and makes it more likely that I'll be able to write the whole thing in C# and have nothing web-based.) Of course I'm sure I'll still build a web-based interface for the people that don't want to download and run a program, this is just for fun!

KJ, do you know anything about C#? I thought I remembered you saying something about it once.
_________________


~HaLo2FrEeEk

[HaLo2FrEeEk]

I know that, I'm not doing anything original, just using the data in an original way for us. Most sites that let you put in information about your computer make you manually type it in. This tool will automatically get everything that it needs to know and post it directly to your user profile here on Infectionist. I'm sure that's been done, too, but not here. And these are more "can I do it" projects rather than something original or new. The challenge is in getting the information, sending it to the database (which is complicated, communicating with a MySQL database through C#) and displaying it in the profile.

On a slightly more depressing note, I loaded builds of the halo 3 screenshot program and another simple mailer program that I wrote onto a flash drive and took them to the library for testing on Windos XP. No go, I think it's because I'm using .NET 3.5 in my programs and .NET 3.5 only came out for Windows Vista and above. Darn. That's ok, I should be able to change the target .NET version to 2.0 and it should still work on both platforms...hopefully.

Oh, and the Simple Mailer is just a little program that accepts a to and from email address, subject, and body, and sends an email to the "to" address, from the "from address". It's quite cool, actually. Useless by itself, but I plan on incorporating it with the HD Recording Service programs to send emails at each stage of the request. Saves me an extra step (and makes it more likely that I'll be able to write the whole thing in C# and have nothing web-based.) Of course I'm sure I'll still build a web-based interface for the people that don't want to download and run a program, this is just for fun!

KJ, do you know anything about C#? I thought I remembered you saying something about it once.
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~HaLo2FrEeEk

[Poisonblood]

Pretty sweet dude, gonna be good. What kind of system info though? Like Hardrive space? Ect. Or would it be like "Runnig on Windows."
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[Poisonblood]

Pretty sweet dude, gonna be good. What kind of system info though? Like Hardrive space? Ect. Or would it be like "Runnig on Windows."
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[HaLo2FrEeEk]

Well obviously anyone who can run this program would be running windows...mac's can't run executables (.exe's) in it's native environment.

But no, it'll be things like how many harddrives you have and how much space, how many memory modules you have and how much RAM total, CPU speed, stuff like that.
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~HaLo2FrEeEk

[HaLo2FrEeEk]

Well obviously anyone who can run this program would be running windows...mac's can't run executables (.exe's) in it's native environment.

But no, it'll be things like how many harddrives you have and how much space, how many memory modules you have and how much RAM total, CPU speed, stuff like that.
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~HaLo2FrEeEk

[KJdog23]

Nope, not C#, Objective-C some (iPhone apps) and Java but not C#.
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[HaLo2FrEeEk]

Damn. Woulda been nice to have someone to talk to about it.
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~HaLo2FrEeEk

[HaLo2FrEeEk]

Damn. Woulda been nice to have someone to talk to about it.
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~HaLo2FrEeEk

[KJdog23]

Yeah it definitely helps to have a partner sometimes. That way, when you get stuck, its way more likely one of you can figure it out.
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[HaLo2FrEeEk]

So it turns out that the reason that these programs didn't on the library computers is because they don't have the .NET Framework installed. They seem to work perfectly fine in Windows XP though. I had Poisonblood test them, and I also tested them in Windows 7's "XP Mode" with no issues.
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~HaLo2FrEeEk

[HaLo2FrEeEk]

So it turns out that the reason that these programs didn't on the library computers is because they don't have the .NET Framework installed. They seem to work perfectly fine in Windows XP though. I had Poisonblood test them, and I also tested them in Windows 7's "XP Mode" with no issues.
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~HaLo2FrEeEk

[Poisonblood]

Yes, they worked perfect. When are you going to make them look better? :D
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[Poisonblood]

Yes, they worked perfect. When are you going to make them look better? :D
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