Mondays on Monday!

Tune in to A&E’s Caesar’s 24/7 on Monday night 10PM (check your local time) to see the cast from Mondays, (Carl Franklins, Rory Blyth, Nick Landry, and Geoff Maciolek) as Nick tries to pick up a woman in the bar at Caesars Palace.

Nice one, Messenger!

Somebody may want to think about some fricken custom errors! Guess I can forget about those live message alerts working...

You know you're coding too much when...

... when you try and "BUILD" a fricken Word document. I was like "What happened to my Build menu?" Whoops. I'm in Word. Just click the save button you idiot.

Live message alerts

Roy just added live message alerts to his blog and I wanted to be cool like him so I did it too. You can now sign up for alerts when this blog updates (see right-hand sidebar for the link or click here). This is handy if you're really really interested in what I have to say the minute I say it and you don't live in an RSS news reader all day. Not really sure who would subscribe... maybe I'll tell my mom.

Hung my diploma today...

I mentioned a few posts ago that I moved and as you know, if you've ever moved, it takes forever to get the little things unpacked and put in their correct place. I just hung my diploma on my office wall and I had a semi-proud moment. "Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Minor in Mathematics" it reads. I'm pretty good at the computer dealio, but the math... can't say I remember calculus. I can't even balance my checkbook anymore :-/. OTOH, why would I need to? That's what online banking is for.

It's funny how I ended up in the business side of software. I remember (vaugely) all those baloney C++ assignments about calculating how many slices in a 14" pizza or writing a craps game my sophomore year. It didn't get interesting until my junior year when I transfered to a real university and started programming with cool graphics packages on sparc station 10's... which were totally expensive back then. Of course I had all the math down and when I graduated I applied at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for some geek-y C++ programming job.

Of course I didn't get the job because there were like 1000 applicants. So I took the summer off... practically. One August morning as I was heading out to the jacuzzi my mother found a job in the classifieds that read "Computer programmer. BS in CS required. No experience necessary." So I called, faxed my resume in (litteraly a half of a page) and got a call back for an interview. The company was a small healthcare software company nearby. I nailed the interview and was practiacally hired on the spot.

The first month was basically me learning Clipper (summer 87 -- the cool version). I was too afraid to tell them that I wasn't a CIS graduate and I had no idea what an IDX was so I took the Nantucket book home and learned all about relational database programming. I couldn't believe I spent all that time in college and none of it prepared me for writing business software products. However, within four months I had rewritten their internal office management system and they promoted me from junior programmer and gave me a $10K raise (which let me tell you was a shitload because I was still living at home and driving an 81 LeBaron). I realized that college taught me how to think about programming. Even though they didn't specifically teach me about databases, I gained the skill to be able to make sense out of any computer gobbely-gook. (Granted, later going from Clipper to FoxPro 2.0 was maybe like 5 syntactical differences, but still). But of course I still can't figure out what Math ever gave me.....

Disable Tabs on a TabControl

Here's a complete subclass of the TabControl that has disabled tab page functionality built in. When you set one of the contained tab pages' Enabled property to False, the tab will render in a disabled font color and will not allow the user to open the tab. This version of the tab control handles the EnabledChanged event of any of its contained tab pages and redraws the tab appropriately. Add this class to your toolbox, drop it on a form, add a few tabs like normal. If you want to disable a tab simply set the Enabled property to false in your code:

MyTabControl.TabPage2.Enabled = False

Here's the class:

Imports System.ComponentModel
Imports System.Drawing
Imports System.Windows.Forms

<ToolboxBitmap(GetType(TabControl))> _
Public Class BaseTabControl
  Inherits System.Windows.Forms.TabControl

#Region " Windows Form Designer generated code "

  Public Sub New()
    MyBase.New()

    'This call is required by the Windows Form Designer.
    InitializeComponent()

    'Add any initialization after the InitializeComponent() call
    Me.DrawMode = TabDrawMode.OwnerDrawFixed
  End Sub

  'BaseTabControl overrides dispose to clean up the component list.
  Protected Overloads Overrides Sub Dispose(ByVal disposing As Boolean)
    If disposing Then
      If Not (components Is Nothing) Then
        components.Dispose()
      End If
    End If
    MyBase.Dispose(disposing)
  End Sub

  'Required by the Windows Form Designer
  Private components As System.ComponentModel.IContainer

  'NOTE: The following procedure is required by the Windows Form Designer
  'It can be modified using the Windows Form Designer. 
  'Do not modify it using the code editor.
  <System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThrough()> Private Sub InitializeComponent()
  '
  End Sub

#End Region

#Region "--- Disabled Pages Functionality ---"

  Private Const WM_LBUTTONDOWN As Integer = &H201

  Protected Overrides Sub WndProc(ByRef m As System.Windows.Forms.Message)
    If m.Msg = WM_LBUTTONDOWN Then
      Dim pt As New Point(m.LParam.ToInt32)

      For i As Integer = 0 To Me.TabPages.Count - 1
        If Me.GetTabRect(i).Contains(pt) Then
          If Me.TabPages(i).Enabled Then
	    MyBase.WndProc(m) 
          End If
          Exit For
        End If
      Next
    Else
      MyBase.WndProc(m)
    End If
  End Sub

  Protected Overrides Sub OnKeyDown(ByVal ke As System.Windows.Forms.KeyEventArgs)
    If Me.Focused Then
      Dim selIndex As Integer = Me.SelectedIndex

      If ke.KeyCode = Keys.Left AndAlso Not ke.Control AndAlso Not ke.Alt Then
        For i As Integer = selIndex - 1 To 0 Step -1
          If Me.TabPages(i).Enabled Then
            Me.SelectedIndex = i
            Exit For
          End If
        Next
        ke.Handled = True
      ElseIf ke.KeyCode = Keys.Right AndAlso Not ke.Control AndAlso Not ke.Alt Then
        For i As Integer = selIndex + 1 To TabPages.Count - 1
          If Me.TabPages(i).Enabled Then
            Me.SelectedIndex = i
            Exit For
          End If
        Next
        ke.Handled = True
      End If
    End If
    MyBase.OnKeyDown(ke)
  End Sub

  Protected Overrides Sub OnDrawItem(ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.DrawItemEventArgs)
    Dim leftImgOffset, topImgOffset As Integer
    Dim rBack As Rectangle
    Dim rText As RectangleF
    Dim img As Bitmap
    Dim format As New StringFormat
    Dim foreBrush As Brush
    Dim backBrush As New SolidBrush(Me.TabPages(e.Index).BackColor)

    If Me.TabPages(e.Index).Enabled Then
      foreBrush = New SolidBrush(Me.TabPages(e.Index).ForeColor)
    Else
      foreBrush = New SolidBrush(SystemColors.ControlDark)
    End If

    If Me.TabPages(e.Index).ImageIndex <> -1 Then
      img = CType(Me.ImageList.Images(Me.TabPages(e.Index).ImageIndex), Bitmap)
      rText = New RectangleF(e.Bounds.X + (img.Width \ 2), e.Bounds.Y, _
                             e.Bounds.Width, e.Bounds.Height)
    Else
      rText = New RectangleF(e.Bounds.X, e.Bounds.Y, _
                             e.Bounds.Width, e.Bounds.Height)
    End If

    If e.State = DrawItemState.Selected Then
      If e.Index = 0 Then
        rBack = New Rectangle(e.Bounds.X + 4, e.Bounds.Y, _
                              e.Bounds.Width - 4, e.Bounds.Height)
      Else
        rBack = e.Bounds
      End If

      e.Graphics.FillRectangle(backBrush, rBack)

      leftImgOffset = 6
      topImgOffset = 5
    Else
      leftImgOffset = 2
      topImgOffset = 2
    End If

    format.Alignment = StringAlignment.Center
    format.LineAlignment = StringAlignment.Center

    e.Graphics.DrawString(Me.TabPages(e.Index).Text, e.Font, foreBrush, rText, format)

    If Me.TabPages(e.Index).ImageIndex <> -1 Then
      Me.ImageList.Draw(e.Graphics, e.Bounds.X + leftImgOffset, _
                        e.Bounds.Top + topImgOffset, Me.TabPages(e.Index).ImageIndex)
    End If

    MyBase.OnDrawItem(e)
  End Sub

  Private Sub Tab_EnabledChanged(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
    If TypeOf sender Is TabPage Then
      Me.Invalidate(Me.GetTabRect(DirectCast(sender, TabPage).TabIndex))
    End If
  End Sub

  Protected Overrides Sub OnControlAdded(ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.ControlEventArgs)
    If TypeOf e.Control Is TabPage Then
      AddHandler e.Control.EnabledChanged, AddressOf Tab_EnabledChanged
    End If
    MyBase.OnControlAdded(e)
  End Sub

  Protected Overrides Sub OnControlRemoved(ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.ControlEventArgs)
    If TypeOf e.Control Is TabPage Then
      RemoveHandler e.Control.EnabledChanged, AddressOf Tab_EnabledChanged
    End If
    MyBase.OnControlRemoved(e)
  End Sub

#End Region

End Class

The Future of TV

I was talikng to Alan the other day about how it would be cool to have multiple signals per TV channel so that you could select your own camera angles durring a football game. Guess what? It's coming!

Happy New Year! Now get to work!

Well I'm back after an *awesome* winter break! (Even though I was back to work yesterday, I was overloaded with catch-up work and I just couldn't spare anytime to get a post out.) Okay what's new? Well, we bought a house and we moved in right before Christmas! This was good and bad timing. I had last week off so it was nice to not have to take regular vacation to get moved. On the other hand dealing with the banks, getting new carpet installed and scheduling a move in the rain is not my idea of fun and would have probably been easier to do in the spring or at least away from the holidays. I was a total stress case. Now I'm back to work and felling more relaxed believe it or not. I'm still dealing with a bunch of boxes and my whiteboard in my office is still on the floor, but at least the cable modem is working.