Working with MDI Window Backgrounds in .NET
Its not unreasonable to want to work with the background of an MDI container area; in a project I'm working on I thought it would be neat to have a custom background image in the container rather than the boring SystemColors.AppWorkspace gray. Turns out this isn't all that straightforward, especially if you want to be a little bit cleverer than just a static image... There's very little help floating around for this so I thought I'd document how I got it working.
Iconbase is Restocked!
In a long overdue move I've wiped out my icon collection - iconbase - and started again from scratch, this time with everything in lovely 32bit translucent glory and saved as individual PNG files for each icon size (working with .ico files was too much of a pain).
Iconbase now allows you to browse and download a wide range of 'real' (i.e. not replicas in the same style) of Microsoft Windows Icons and other product icons. I've imported all the 'Standard' Windows XP and Windows Vista icons (as extracted and acquired from a range of sources) as well as some others from commonly used applications such as Quicktime, iTunes, Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Office 2007 and others. When I get round to it I'll upload some older styles from Windows 9x just for completeness.
You can use the icons to create a professional and intuitive user interface quickly, maintaining consistency with your target operating system. They're available to browse, download and link to online through a shimmie powered gallery, if anyone wants them all as a pack let me know...
Disclaimer, don't forget that re-use and distribution of these icons may or may not be restricted depending on what they are and what you do with them...
Van Mildert Summer Ball
This year I was fortunate enough to be involved with Van Mildert's Summer Ball, as technical director I was responsible for all the event's staging, lighting, sound and PA, rigging and health and safety. A mammoth task!
The night was headlined by B*Witched (well, two of them...) and also featured boat rides on the lake, a ferris wheel, a three course meal or buffet dinner, comedy performances, living statues, burlesque dancers, professional magicians, living statues, gladiator jousting, angle grinding, a Ministry of Sound DJ, silent disco, popular motown and soul covers band "Souled Out", a jazz band, an incredible indoor marquee, a real outdoor marque, a giant bed, a theatre, fire artists, giant props, a chocolate fountain, cocktail bar and much much more!
The setup was ridiculous, over a week preparing decorations and fireproofing, three very long days rigging the event, not the mention all the rest of the paperwork, organisation and preparation that went into the night. With the support of Becky Grigg (who did an amazing job as Head of Summer Ball), the rest of Summer Ball Committee and various other helpers we pulled it off though... the night was an amazing success. We sold an unprecedented number of tickets, made a safe profit margin, got (almost) everything we wanted past the Health and Safety men, found enough electricity to plug everything in, and didn't have any major disasters (despite a slight technical hitch during B*witched, not our fault honestly!).
When we set out to organise the ball is was taken for granted we wouldn't be able to even get close to matching last year's event - it was suggested we didn't event try - but most of the feedback we've had from this year is that we pushed past even last year's spectacle, setting the bar even higher and without any shadow of a doubt giving K-Lee and the 2008 team a pretty good run for their money!
Now who will be crazy enough to take it on next year? Hmmmm....
Web Services
Web services are a new breed of Web application. They are self-contained, self-describing, modular applications thay can be published, located, and invoked across the web. Web services perform functions, which can be anything from simple requests to complicated business processes ... Once a web service is deployed, other applications (and other web services) can discover and invoke the deployed service
IBM Web Service Tutorial
Distributed Systems
A distributed system is a collection of independent computers that appear to the user as a single coherent system, this is in contrast to a networked system. In a networked system computers exchange information, however in a distributed system an application has many parts running on different computiers, and information is shared to accomplish a specific purpose.
Distributed Systems allow resources to be more easily shared, to be location independant, to distribute human resources, to increase performance, to increase modularity and scalability and to increase availability and reliability.