Polarization

Just checking my subscriber base today I notice that interestingly a massive 68% of my readers are C# programmers. I really expected to get more VB readers simply because of the supposed disparity in numbers between the VB and C/C++/C# programmers.

Is this because there are now more C# programmers than VB.NET programmers? a situation I somewhat doubt.

Perhaps VB programmers are more concerned with DB apps than application and graphics fundamentals or perhaps I don't target that community so efficiently.

Moving time

I've finally decided to bite the bullet and move my site to a new server. The bandwidth requirements of the site seem to be causing yahoo to put the brakes on it from time to time and moving will enable me to do sensible things like provide ASP pages that are a bit more interactive than the plain old html I have up at the moment.

This move will take place somewhen in May. The last time I moved a site from yahoo to another host it took over a week to happen. I'm hoping I can streamline this a bit better this time around but you never know.

This blog will still be up though and anyone wishing to contact me while my e-mail is offline can do so on bobpowell1@yahoo.com

Odd week. [non tech related]

What a blinkin week it's been. On Monday I fell down stairs and caught my hand on the bannister rail on the way down. I all-but tore the little fnger of my left hand right off. I had to go get it stiched back on again. I suppose I can be thankful that I'm not much of a touch typist and I can adapt back to the old four-finger hunt and peck method. After that, on Wednesday my son Jeremy, who is 14, poked himself in the knuckle with a screwdriver and then went and messed about in the river that runs through our garden. A couple of days later his hand swelled up like a ballon and he was admitted to hospital with a bad dose of blood poisoning. He had to have an operation to clean the hand and save the finger. To cap it all this morning I was head-butted in the face by my daughter's horse, a young stallion who is probably destined for the old snip-snip any time now. Maybe I should just go out and buy a couple of bricks!

New Article

I just published a new article in the GDI+ FAQ on using the PathGradientBrush.

Freeware, at what cost?

I just had an interesting experience at http://www.toniarts.com, A site that provides a "free" system cleaning utility which came highly recommended on a newsgroup that I frequent. Easyclean, the software in question, is listed on that site has being freeware but before you can download it, supposedly for free, you have to pay a 19.95 membership fee.

Now don't get me wrong, I have no objection to somebody making money through their web site. Indeed, I make my living through my web site, but this particular tactic seems to me to be just a little bit silly. I buy a lot of software online and when a piece of useful software has a fair price tag I'm more than happy to pay if I believe it's going to be worth the money. Sometimes, I pay just because I think the person or product needs the support.

I certainly won't be buying this particular piece of "freeware"

Updated Article

I've just updated the RGB-HSL article to include VB listings of the utility code and the demonstration applications.

Bogus e-mail

If you don't already know, no-one will ever receive mail from "my staff" or the webmaster at bobpowell.net or anyone else but me personally.

I have seen a bunch of mails proporting to be from the e-mail gateway team at bobpowell.net which have a virus attachment. This is a spoof.

Be very suspicious of all attachments, yes, even Well Formed if you like and use an up-to-date virus scanner at all times.

Mail from me is scanned when sent.

Whidbey Poll

I was using Whidbey recently and found that Microsoft have changed the way overrides are generated from the IDE. If you override a method the new wizard generates code that doesn't automatically call the base class but throws a NotImplementedExeption instead. I was just wondering what the general opinion of this was?

New Tip: How to find and use the ToolboxBitmap icon in your DLL

One of the more confusing subjects in control design is how to correctly locate and use the icon which is displayed in the toolbox alongside your controls. After some experimentation and finding an apparent error in Microsoft's code I have published the details in the Windows Forms tips and tricks pages.

New Tip: Display a check-box in the property grid for Boolean values.

My Windows Forms tips and tricks page has a new article with code in C# and Visual Basic.net that explains how to draw a check box in the property grid next to boolean values.

New Tip: Display Yes/No instead of True/False

Many people would like the option to display yes or no instead of true and false for boolean values. my Windows Forms tips and tricks page now includes an article with code in C# and Visual Basic.net that explains how to create a type converter to do this job.

Updated GDI+ FAQ article

The article on manipulating graphics on screen has been updated to include techniques that enable transformations such as scaling and rotation of the graphics. Any transformation has the potential to upset the mouse input so a method of backtracking the mouse is included. See Manipulate Graphics for details.