Uday's Blog

Programmatically changing MSN Messenger's status

2005-10-13T18:24:00-05:00:00

Here's how you can do it. http://forums.msnfanatic.com/index.php?showtopic=11226

Programmatically changing Yahoo Messenger's status

2005-10-11T21:10:00-05:00:00

Alright, I'd been looking for this stuff for a while. I couldn't find any useful resources on the internet so thought of giving it a try to find out how its actually done. Thought people like me would be interested in knowing.

Seems like we need to setup a custom message in registry and notify yahoo of this change we've made. We need to set the “HKCU\Software\Yahoo\Pager\Profiles\[current user]\Custom Msgs\5” to our new status message and send WM_COMMAND message with wParam set to 392 (write me a mail if you need to know how I figured this out) to the yahoo messenger's main window(see the code snippet below to see how current user is retrieved).

Here is how you can do it in C#(I guess you can figure out the PInvoke declarations)

private void ChangeYahooStatus (string newStatus)

{

// Get the current signed in user

RegistryKey keyYahooPager = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey ("Software\\Yahoo\\Pager");

string sUserName = (string)keyYahooPager.GetValue ("Yahoo! User ID");

keyYahooPager.Close();

System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine ("The currently logged in user is " + sUserName);

// Now open the current user's profile and set the current status message, pass true to

// OpenSubKey to request write access

RegistryKey keyYahooCustomMessages = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey ("Software\\Yahoo\\Pager\\profiles\\"

+ sUserName + "\\Custom Msgs", true);

// Set the 5th message, seems like yahoo messenger has the functionality to move the newly set

// message up as the first one.

keyYahooCustomMessages.SetValue ("5", newStatus);

keyYahooCustomMessages.Close ();

// We are done setting the value in the registry. We now need to notify y! of this change

// Find the yahoo messenger window and sent it the notification

// 0x111: WM_COMMAND

// 0x188: Code 392

IntPtr hWndY = FindWindow ("YahooBuddyMain", null);

System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine ("Find window got: " + hWndY.ToString());

PostMessage (hWndY, 0x111, 0x188, 0);

}

OpenGL shaders in software

2005-07-05T19:59:00-05:00:00

I had been desperately looking for some software emulation for ARB Vertex/Fragment programs in OpenGL for a past few days.

I have a pretty shitty display chip on my notebook, ATI 345 IGP. Well, not all that shitty though, it does support vs 1.1 in hardware. However, the OpenGL driver that I presently have doesn't export a vertex program extension (is it expected to?).

So, in search for vertex/fragment programs software emulation, I found MESA. I had previously ignored MESA as software emulation stuff for OpenGL(who needs it anyways, I have real hardware!), but now it bounced back again into my head. The current version 6.2.1 supports ARB_vertex_program and ARB_fragment_program. I ran a test application with it yesterday and it seemed to be running great (I just ran a vertex program, not sure about fragment programs yet). I'll be looking forward to MESA coming out with ARB_vertex_program_100. I would then be able to try out some GLSL with it, but well, Cg is working fine for me at the moment and I hope to have a better machine sometime soon.

Batman Begins

2005-06-27T09:02:00-05:00:00

Went for Batman Begins last night. Amazing movie! Very different from the earlier ones. Well placed, well directed, well executed.

Must watch!

Fried Hardisk

2005-06-26T13:16:00-05:00:00

Just recently I got my notebook's harddisk fried. I don't know what happened to it. Just suddenly stopped working. I had already applied for an extended warranty on my notebook so I got it replaced all for free. HP returned my notebook with an all new bios and cleaned the screen for me, which I always find a pain. It feels so new to me now. I am in love again.

Had been downloading software for past two days now. I have the MSDN download subscription, so starting from Windows XP to Visual Studio.NET to MS Office all downloaded in a couple of days. But this time I am burning the software to disks; don't want to do this again in case something else gets fried. I have my fingers crossed though.

Blender3D

2005-06-23T01:55:00-05:00:00

Seems like a pretty cool tool. Lightweigth(4.78MB) and feature-packed, this tools can really let you create some amazing models and scenes. Check www.blender.org. GameDev.net has recently come up with “Using Blender to Make Game Models “ series of tutorials which seem to be very descriptive and with a lot of screenshots :). You can, however, order the entire tutorial guide for 39 Euros from blender itself.

Another tool I like playing around with is gmax. The younger brother of 3DMax, this tool is aimed at game developers. I haven't been able to look to deep into it, but I believe I would be more comfortable using it since I have a bit of experience with 3DMax.

Do check these tools out.