Misc

Creating a .NET Sidebar Gadget - The Easy Way

Mark Schmidt — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 18:49:04 GMT

Take a look at my recent MSDN blog post to see how you can get around the common issues related to .NET development of Vista Sidebar gadgets. Don't want to write registry access code in javascript? Can't figure out how to uninstall your .NET based gadget? Read on...

http://blogs.msdn.com/markhsch/archive/2007/07/17/creating-net-sidebar-gadgets-the-easy-way.aspx

My Vista ScreenSaver Sidebar Gadget

Mark Schmidt — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 22:22:00 GMT

For some reason, I'm drawn to creating things that are just cool while not altogether useful (see my Animated Activity Designer post, though one could argue that it may in fact be useful). To that end, I decided to create a Vista Sidebar gadget that displays a screen saver of your choosing. Vista has some good screen savers that it shipped with and I've embedded screen savers before (in fact, I show how to do it in one of my books).

So go ahead and grab it from the Windows Live Gallery (link below). If enough people clamor and beg, I will post the source code. Here's a quick rundown of what I did:

1. Create a .NET User Control
2. Embed a screen saver in the user control whenever the ScreenSaverPath property is set (and the control is visible)
3. Create the HTML page for the sidebar (sidebar controls use Javascript and HTML in case you didn't know already)
4. Embed the UserControl in the HTML page (using COM interop naturally)
5. Create a settings page that also uses COM Interop. The settings page calls a .NET component that I wrote that simply returns a collection of screen saver paths on the local system.
6. Create the installation in Javascript. I had to get some help for this one. Basically, I do what regasm does by using the WSHShell object to set registry entries. I found some code on the Internet to help.

Here's a screenshot of it in action using the Ribbons screensaver:

Here's the link:

Screen Saver Vista Sidebar Gadget

My new toy

Mark Schmidt — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 18:33:00 GMT

My new toy. Just finished the paint job last night (though it needs some touch up)

View the spec's here: http://www.helimax-rc.com/helis/hmxe0205.html.

Mod your Nano to hold 200 Gb of data

Mark Schmidt — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 15:40:00 GMT

This is just too funny. Some people have way too much time on their hands.

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Ipod_Nano_200gb_Instructions/Page_1

Here's the result:

Captain's Log: Scotty has died!

Mark Schmidt — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 15:56:00 GMT

I'm surprised I haven't seen someone with a geekswithblogs account mention this. It appears that Scotty from Star Trek has passed away. I'm actually not a Star Trek fan at all although I did see some of the first movies and occasionally would watch an episode here and there. What really surprised me was that “Scotty” lives right next to me. I live in Sammamish and work in Redmond and he lives in Redmond. Small world.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/07/20/news_6129473.html

Only 3 hours left to buy your mech!

Mark Schmidt — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 21:08:00 GMT

What are you doing reading this. Head on over to ebay and purchase a fully functional (somewhat) mech! No joke!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1468&item=5596708699&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

No new Nvidia drivers for laptop computers (until now hahaha)

Mark Schmidt — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 22:27:00 GMT

Nividia does not support any of there laptop chipsets with their Forceware drivers. I have a Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC and the driver is dated November 2004. What is a guy to do?

Well, being the geek that I am, I wanted to circumvent that. I basically opened up the nv4_disp.inf file, added a new string based on the device ID of my particular chipset (GeForce go FX5200) and then added another line. I just followed what they had in there for a regular FX5200 but subsituted my device ID and chipset name in the INF file. Well, it worked. I'm now running Forceware 77.72 on my tablet and so far haven't seen any side effects. Now to install Battlefield 2 to see how well it runs.

Orwellian Cubicles

Mark Schmidt — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 20:38:00 GMT

I envision a Orwellian Society in the near future where everyone will change their name to Julie and every cubicle will become a Taco Bell.

Discuss...

Star Wars: Revelations - Simply amazing

Mark Schmidt — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 18:09:00 GMT

Talk about serious Star Wars fans. A group made a fan-film of unbelievable proportions. It's 40 minutes long for being an independent film has some surprising special effects. Check it out:

http://www.panicstruckpro.com/revelations/

My nerd score

Mark Schmidt — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 23:45:00 GMT

Saw someone else do it, so I did it too. Honestly, I know I'm a nerd (I prefer the term 'geek' however) but didn't know it was going to be that high. I always tell people that I'm a geek in disguise since I don't really look like a geek...no...honestly...I don't. Anyway, here's mine.