The premise is quite simple, the control cycles through a list of user provided colours, changing the background colour on each click to the next one on the list, wrapping around to the beginning when it reached the end.
(the CMS I was developing for a client required a series of flags that could be set to alert the user to details about the person calling [eg, problem client, unpaid bill, priority client etc])

As I wanted to save the value of the current I wanted to make the button data bindable. Each time the button is clicked the value of a property is incremented to represent the current flag state, this value would be databound.
Unfortunately, although the value updated internally, it wouldn’t push the changes through the databinder automagically for me. The state index would be set on load, changing the colour to the required value, meaning that the databinding is indeed working, but that there was nothing causing the binding manager to write the changes back the other way.

After a little reading, and some autocomplete-fu I got my solution, 1 line of code forcing the databinding to write its changes.

Public Property StateIndex As Int32
Get
  Return iStateIndex
End Get 
Set(ByVal value As Int32) 
'relevant code
  Me.DataBindings.Item("StateIndex").WriteValue() 
'
End Set 
End Property

To begin with, (at least after dumping everything in a big pile in the middle of the room and sleeping on the floor for a couple of weeks) I plotted out my space in SketchUp, and threw in my basic furniture mock ups to get a sense of available space (I am terrible at visual estimations).
Not wanting to spend months building furniture, I cheated a bit and bought myself a swish new wardrobe cabinet (on sale) as it had enough space to store all of my clothes, towels and linen, which accounted for about half of my storage problems.

The other half, was my myriad of textbooks, DVD’s, novels and study materials. Having very limited remaining space, I found myself with a perfect opportunity for a little DIY cabinet making.
Having roughly only 700 by 500 mm of space to work with, I wanted to make as much shelf space as possible, unfortunately 500mm deep shelves seemed a little awkward and unnecessary to me. So, after a bit of mulling, and some cogitating, followed by some measuring of text books, and then a bit more cogitating, I ended up with the idea of a sliding stacked shelf (as shown below). The idea being to maximise shelf frontage, and minimise footprint so not to clutter the room any more than necessary.

The design of the back shelf is to slide into the cabinet when not in use minimising impacted room space.
The result being, as shown below, plenty of shelf, that will tuck neatly into the remaining floor space.

Next thing to do is complete the design, finalise measurements, and figure out how to make the sliding shelf actually slide, and how to stop it from falling off. Part 2 of this project will cover the result.

Interestingly you can use regedit still to look at offline hives.

select hkey_local_machine or hkey_users

then on the file menu, select load hive… (note,if one of the two root hives above are not selected, this option is disabled)

navigate to the hive files stored in
{drive}:\windows\system32\config

the files being SAM SYSTEM SOFTWARE SECURITY

for user hives the files are in

{drive}:\documents and settings\{user}, (XP and before) or
{drive}:\users\{user} (vista or after)

the file is called ntuser.dat

A name for the Hive is asked for, and then it will appear as a sub item of the root hive you selected at the start.

something to note, you can now access this hive both via regedit, as well as via scripts and applications.

When you create an instance of a form, as an MDI child, if you set the WindowState property to maximised, your form will not correctly span the whole window until you resize the parent.

After a bit of investigating on the internet, I came across many weird and wonderful suggestions,
things like setting the dock state of the form to ‘fill’, which works, right up until you want to un-maximise the form.

by far the easiest solution I have so far is as follows

dim frmMyFormInstance = New frmformTemplate()
With frmMyFormInstance
  .MdiParent = frmParent
  .Show()
 ' setting state in property of form results in incorrect display
  .WindowState = FormWindowState.Maximized
End With

That’s it, simple. Nothing fancy required like docking the form, or creating custom constructors that set properties before calling InitializeComponent(), just show the form, and then maximise it, not the other way about.

A man who hungers
will be more grateful of food
than he who is full

If at first you don’t succeed,

Try Smarter.

1. press control+alt+delete to bring up the menu screen
2. press tab 3 times, this should select the power off button
3. now push the menu key (that one between ctrl and alt on the right)
4. you should get a message asking you if you want to do an emergency restart.

What the purpose of this is over a normal restart is, I’m not 100% sure. I guess it’s just forcing all processes to terminate without waiting for a response from them.

Regardless of use, there’s a little 4am morning curiosity for you.

after about half an hour of fiddling about on my midi keyboard and various bits of music software, I ended up with something a little more lively.

Grab a copy below if you’re interested

8BIT-Dancer-Ringtone

This year I am participating in Movember, a pretty worthy cause if ever there was one. See, as blokes, we don’t really tend to pay too much attention to our general well-being, the general attitude is, ‘ah she’ll be right, just walk it off’

Movember is all about raising awareness that every now and again, we need to stop and make sure all our bits and pieces are all still attached, That everything is all still in working order, both physically and mentally.

The benefactors of the Movember charity event are Beyond Blue, and the Prostate cancer foundation. Both very worthy causes.

For those who aren’t aware, Beyond Blue are all about dealing with depression, as well as drug and alcohol rehabilitation. Did you know that roughly 1 in 6 men will suffer depression, with increased likelihood during teenage and later  years? Yup, it’s that prevalent an issue

So, as I get behind Movember this year, I’ll be using this post to record the progress of my Mo-mentus attempt at growing a mo, for a Mo-numental cause.

Check back here daily to see my mo-gress.

Update:

So Movember is finished for this year, All up our team raised $215.00, which is pretty rad for minimal effort

Thanks to all those people who donated to me, Holly, Alicia, my Folks, it was very appreciated.
I look forward to doing this again next year.

I’ll leave the link to the movember site here, incase you still want to make  any last-minute dontations

Day 29

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Second last day! It didn't show very well in the photo, but that Mo is actually bright blue. Now that HAS to be worth a donation! any last minute dontations are just as good as early donations :D