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May 29, 2005
Obfuscation
We have some decent reading material on obfuscation for CPT 355, but Mike Downen gives a good overview in this post.
http://blogs.msdn.com/clrsecurity/archive/2005/05/26/422440.aspxw
Posted by mikel at 12:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 27, 2005
Windows Mobile Security
A good overview of the different security options for Windows Mobile 5.0.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/smartclient/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnppcgen/html/wmsecurity.asp
Useful for DelMar and would make a good research type project for a CPT 355 student next fall with the new phones and other devices we have.
Posted by mikel at 08:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 26, 2005
Playing music in .NET
I did a quick bit of research and created a little project to play music files (wav, mp3, wma, etc). It used the Windows API to play wav files as outlined here. I also embedded Windows Media Player and used it to play wav, mp3, and wma files as outline here. All pretty simple and straight forward once you find the right resources since I wasn't trying to do anything to complicated.
One thing I ran across is that version 2.0 of the freamework is supposed to include a managed class for playing sounds called SoundPlayer. I downloaded C# Express (I'm really getting into Virtual PC for stuff like this) to try this out and couldn't find it. Anyone know if this has been dropped or was I just missing something? Not that it's a huge deal since it looks to be just a simple wrapper. Of course that's what most of the .NET framework is and it sure is nice to have stuff just included.
Posted by mikel at 05:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Graphing and Plotting
Some stuff to look into later, both from the Daily Grind
http://zedgraph.sourceforge.net/
Posted by mikel at 11:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 25, 2005
Getting kids interested in computers
Ran across Bitman's Place via Scoble. I signed up and gave it a quick look around. It looks OK. I'm not the target audience, but it seems to fake to me. A bit to much like a commercial. I think maybe it's trying to hard to make computers sound cool to the cool kids. The kids who might naturally be interested in computers (which is probably really just kids who are interested in figuring out how things work and thinking logically) probably wouldn't get into this. At least I can't imagine myself really getting into this when I was younger. I had more fun just copying HTML and JavaScript trying to mimic bigger sites. That's how I really started playing around.
Scoble talks about being real and open on his blog but this site just seems a bit to fake. But I'd still recommend it to the 4Hers to check out. Let me know what you think. Head over to Jeff Sandquist's blog to signup (you'll need to click on the invitation link).
The 4Hers and middle school students in Jessica's class have really taken to programming in Alice. The girls tend to like to make stories or movies and the boys tend to like to make games. It's an open environment that let's them be creative. The most important thing I've seen is that it forces them to take bigger problems and break them down into smaller problems. That's something useful regardless of if your future career is computers or not.
Posted by mikel at 08:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 18, 2005
Programming for SPOT
Kyle and I were just discussing that we hadn't heard anything about SPOT in a long time. Kyle didn't see anything about it at MEDC. But today I ran across this article from Chris Tacke.
http://dotnet.sys-con.com/read/84123.htm
A good link for CPT 355, maybe we can get a SPOT device.
Posted by mikel at 08:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 16, 2005
Windows Mobile 5.0
Hopefully we'll be using Windows Mobile 5.0, Visual Studio 2005, and .NET Compact Framework 2.0 next fall for CPT 355, regardless of if they are out of beta or not by the start of the semester.
Here's a good article of the new features in Windows Mobile 5.0. I wonder when we'll get the first devices in with the OS installed. I guess we need to review what devices we already own can be upgraded.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/mobility/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnppcgen/html/whatsnew_wm5.asp
BTW, the author of the article is Jim Wilson who taught the training course at DevelopMentor that Kyle and I attended. Looks like he now teaches for PluralSight in addition to his own company.
Posted by mikel at 05:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 11, 2005
Application Logging
A good intro article on log4net along with several other useful links.
http://weblogs.asp.net/nleghari/articles/easylog.aspx
Posted by mikel at 08:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Forget job fairs, start a company
More interesting quotes from Paul Graham's latest article.
http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html
The main cost of starting a Web-based startup is food and rent. Which means it doesn't cost much more to start a company than to be a total slacker.Any company that hires you is, economically, acting as a proxy for the customer. The rate at which they value you (though they may not consciously realize it) is an attempt to guess your value to the user. But there's a way to appeal their judgement. If you want, you can opt to be valued directly by users, by starting your own company.
Big companies also don't pay people the right way. People developing new a new product at a big company get paid roughly the same whether it succeeds or fails. People at a startup expect to get rich if the product succeeds, and get nothing if it fails. [1] So naturally the people at the startup work a lot harder.
But if you fail at 22, so what? If you try to start a startup right out of college and it tanks, you'll end up at 23 broke and a lot smarter. Which, if you think about it, is roughly what you hope to get from a graduate program.
All through college, and probably long before that, most undergrads have been thinking about what employers want. But what really matters is what customers want, because they're the ones who give employers the money to pay you.
Posted by mikel at 08:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 09, 2005
High school is easy
More info for all my teacher friends and family.
http://www.insideindianabusiness.com/newsitem.asp?id=13776
"Students reported that their effort was adequate for their high school courses, yet it falls well short of what will be required of them in college," said IU Professor Martha McCarthy, director of HSSSE and author of the new report.The findings suggest that high school courses should be significantly more rigorous in all grades and instructional tracks.
One interesting thing is that 82% of respondants said they planned to go to some postsecondary institution but only 27% of ninth graders will actually end up enrolling in a second year of college. So there's a lot of people "preparing" for a life that includes a college education but way less succeeding.
Posted by mikel at 01:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 06, 2005
CPT 355 Semester Projects
The CPT 355 students again wrote some really neat software programs for the Pocket PC. I've posted summaries of four of the best ones on the CPT Mobility projects page. Be sure to download Jason Fish's Tiled Picture Game for your Pocket PC. It would be great for a Pocket PC with a camera phone but will work with any picture on your Pocket PC.
Posted by mikel at 09:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
PDA Sales Numbers
A good link for CPT 355.
http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=1236
A few select quotes.
According to a research study by Gartner, sales of PDAs in Q1 of 2005 are exceedingly better than the same time period in 2004. Generally, the sales of PDAs are at a record level high, according to data obtained by the research firm.Research In Motion’s Blackberry showed immense growth, as its shipments grew to 75.6 percent. PalmOne, however, showed poor sales with an overall drop of 26.3 percent in shipments;
Gartner research also pointed out an increase in operating system market share with Microsoft taking the lead with 46 percent overall for its Windows CE.
Posted by mikel at 06:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 04, 2005
Mainfunction
They mentioned this site on .NET Rocks
https://www.mainfunction.com/Home/default.aspx
It's a "community" site focused on education, I think leaning a bit more towards high school but I saw some university stuff in my quick look around.
The editor has a blog and recently posted a review of an Intro VB.NET book. Sounds like something similar to the CPT Professors' new Intro C# book.
Posted by mikel at 10:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack