Wednesday, March 28, 2001

Interactive poll's Cory Smith

I've revamped the interactive poll functionality. If you have any suggestions for interactive poll's, please email them to me.

Saturday, March 17, 2001

How-To's Cory Smith

I have started a how-to section. Obviously, it will be a while before there is a large amount of content, but feel free to use what is there and send me requests for additional how-to's. You can check out the section by going here.

Thursday, March 01, 2001

DVD Movie Menu Cory Smith

I've developed a prototype application to manage my DVD collection.

This application is also used to generate the data that you see for my dvd list located here.

Check here for additional information and screen shots.

If you are interested in obtaining additional information on this application, please contact me directly via email.

Saturday, February 10, 2001

ASP with Class Cory Smith

Although not a whole lot of information is available for doing so, it is possible to add classes to script contained within active server pages. I have converted the news display code to use this class mechanism and, as you can see, it works like a champ.

This allows me to add the proper layers that should be done during development (ie. display, business, and data). I can also leverage component-based re-use. As an example, you will see this news component being used throughout this site. So how is this different from just using includes? Although the same type of functionality can be done by simply using functions, subs, and global variables (including arrays), you lose the definate seperation of the layers as people tend to mix and match the code throughout the code. By using classes, it's much simpler to keep these lines seperated; thus allowing for the code to be extremely modular and hopefully re-usable. Yes, it is true that this takes more planning and usually more work to implement; but in the end you will save yourself work as you will continuously be adding functionality to your projects. Anyways, just wanted to give a reason as to why I'm attempting to do this; now on to some observations.

It takes a bit of work, but you are able to mimic collections as well by using arrays. To take it a step further, you can also implement For Each type statements on these classes using a bit of trickery - even without the ability to use IUnknown. You can take your data, create a temporary string with a unique delimiter and use the split function to pass the values back to the caller. The returned object (array) can be used with For Each. So with a little creativity, it is possible to leverage component type programming even if you are unable to use actual components and achieve code re-use without cut-n-paste. Of course, you will still have to use includes.

Sunday, January 21, 2001

New Downloads (DieRoller and ADnDClock) Cory Smith

I have added downloads (including source) for two utilities for use with role-playing (specifically AD&D. Download and enjoy. More to come soon.

Projects:

DVD MoveMenu	An application to manage your personal DVD collection. Also, a footstep to a Pioneer 300/600 disc video jukebox automation prototype.
Simple Die Roller	Here is a simple die roller program I threw together for roll playing. I forgot my dice one day, but had my laptop. The graphics, unfortunately are not my own (I salvaged them out of Core Rules), but are pretty nice nevertheless. I know that Core Rules comes with it's own die roller, but it wasn't installed that day. The graphics were added after the fact. Anyways, this program is written using Visual Basic 6.0 and takes advantage of the PaintPicture functionality added with 6.0. This program is free and includes source code if interested.
AD&D Clock & Calendar	Here is a simple clock and calendar program I threw together for AD&D 2nd Edition. A dungeon masters tool that keeps track of all time and date calculation as it is done in AD D 2nd Edition. It is written in Visual Basic 6.0. This program is free and includes source code if interested.