Thursday, 30 April 2009

.NET Glass Button

I was looking for a nice colourful, rounded, animated lozenge which I could use in Callmedia for some new code I'm currently writing. I'm not particularly graphically minded to say the least - however I stumbled across this code on CodeProject


The small project provides you with with a fancy looking vista like button and is available in c# and VB.

Well worth a look.

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Wednesday, 29 April 2009

Strelitzia or Bird of Paridise

My folks have been growing a Strelitzia plant or can be known as Bird of Paridise for years now and finally this year it has flowered.

I've been taking pictures of it over the last 7 days as it has been changing. Some of the first images are posted in the gallery section of the website. (http://www.sceniceye.co.uk/)

I will be posting more over the next few days as it is still changing.

This picture was taken with a 300mm lens and aperture of f/5 to help blur the background.

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Tuesday, 21 April 2009

Twitter increasingly used by business

There are some huge companies currently taking advantage of "Twitter" for customer service.   

Today Azzurri Communication's (the parent company of Callmedia who I work for)  is about to start communicating with customers via the use of tweets.

I have started to build a list of companies embracing Twitter for providing customer service and communicating information:
  • Dell
  • Ford
  • Samsung
  • Whole Foods Market
  • Starbucks
  • Jetblue
  • Virgin Atlantic
  • Southwest Airlines

More to follow........

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Monday, 20 April 2009

WCF - Creating Endpoints in Code

Here is an example of how you can define a WCF Server in code without having to have the configuration in a config file.

 Private Sub StartServiceFunction()
        Dim host As ServiceHost

        Dim tcpBaseAddr As Uri
        tcpBaseAddr = New Uri(ReturnTCPUri())
        Dim httpBaseAddr As Uri
        httpBaseAddr = New Uri(ReturnHTTPUri())
        Dim baseAddresses() As Uri = New Uri() {tcpBaseAddr, httpBaseAddr}

        host = New ServiceHost(GetType(ChatService), baseAddresses)


        Dim metadataBehavior As ServiceMetadataBehavior
        metadataBehavior = New ServiceMetadataBehavior()

        metadataBehavior.HttpGetEnabled = True

        host.Description.Behaviors.Add(metadataBehavior)

        Dim tcpBinding As NetTcpBinding
        Dim mexBinding As System.ServiceModel.Channels.Binding
        tcpBinding = New NetTcpBinding()
        tcpBinding.ReliableSession.Enabled = True
        tcpBinding.Security.Mode = SecurityMode.None


        mexBinding = System.ServiceModel.Description.MetadataExchangeBindings.CreateMexTcpBinding()

        host.AddServiceEndpoint(GetType(CMExpertAssistanceServer.IChat), tcpBinding, ReturnTCPUri())
        host.AddServiceEndpoint(GetType(IMetadataExchange), mexBinding, "mex")

        Try
            host.Open()
        Catch ex As Exception
            m_oCMLog.SendLogEx(cmLogAPI.Callmedia.CMLog.cmLogType.cmLogError, ex.Message)
            End
        End Try


    End Sub

 Public Function ReturnTCPUri()
        Dim sURI As String
        Dim sIP, sPort As String

        sIP = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("BindIPAddress")
        sPort = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("TCPPort")

        sURI = String.Format("net.tcp://{0}:{1}/chatservice", sIP, sPort)

        Return sURI
    End Function

    Public Function ReturnHTTPUri()
        Dim sURI As String
        Dim sIP, sPort As String
        sIP = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("BindIPAddress")
        sPort = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("HTTPPort")

        sURI = String.Format("http://{0}:{1}/CMChat", sIP, sPort)

        Return sURI
    End Function

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Oracle buy Sun for $7.4


After less than a month after IBM walked away from a $7 billion merger with SUN Microsystems, Oracle have now entered an agreement to merge with them for $7.4 billion subject to approval from the Sun stockholders. Until the deal closes each company will continue to operate independently, and is business as usual.


The Sun Solaris operating system is the leading platform for the Oracle database. With the acquisition of Sun, Oracle can optimize the Oracle database for some of the unique, high-end features of Solaris.


Therefore I hope that good things continue for MySQL considering when Siebel was acquired by Oracle it seemed to go downhill.


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Friday, 17 April 2009

Booked a wildlife photography course

Just booked a course at the Arundel Wetlands Centre in October on learning how to take spectacular wildlife images with an SLR Camera.

The course is October 3rd and October 4th at the Arundel Wetlands Centre.

The course covers exposure; manual controls; composition; depth of field; making a good shot better.

In theory after the course I should be able to know some more in depth stuff on my SLR and improve some of my photo's. Most of my photography up until now has really been through self learning and help from others.

I'm really looking forward to taking some great shots. Lets hope the weather is good in October.

Course Information

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Wednesday, 1 April 2009

Microsoft Virtual Tech Day 2009

This is well worth a visit today. This is a one day event across the world - 24 hours of live presentations on various different subjects from Silverlight, WCF, WPF, exception handling and clustering web servers.

Link

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