Mcisendstring in .NET for recording audio
September 2, 2005
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Just found out how to record and playback audio. Really easy.
Private Declare Function mciSendString Lib "Winmm.dll" Alias "mciSendStringA" _
(
ByVal lpstrCommand As String, ByVal lpstrReturnString As String, _ ByVal uReturnLength As Long, ByVal hwndCallback As Long) As Long
Public Sub recordToWave(ByVal filename As String)
mciSendString("open new type waveaudio alias capture", vbNullString, 0, 0)
mciSendString("record capture", vbNullString, 0, 0)
blnIsRecording =
True
While blnIsRecording
Application.DoEvents()
End While
mciSendString("save capture " + filename, vbNullString, 0, 0)
mciSendString("close capture", vbNullString, 0, 0)
End Sub
Public Sub playWave(ByVal filename As String)
mciSendString("Play waveaudio!" + filename, vbNullString, 0, 0)
End Sub
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RentACoder Rants
September 1, 2005
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I have developed a personal hatred for RentAcoder.com, after they asked me for $100 up-front for a programming project, then cancelled my account as soon as I paid.
Whatever their excuse is, I lost $100, and have nothing to show for it. So avoid them like the plague.
Here is a good alternative GetaFreelancer (RSS feed)
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Speaking clock in VB.NET
August 31, 2005
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I never realized how easy it is to use SAPI in .NET, I developed a "Speaking clock" with just these three lines of code:
Dim
Voice As SpeechLib.SpVoiceVoice =
New SpeechLib.SpVoiceVoice.Speak(DateTime.Now.ToShortTimeString(), SpeechLib.SpeechVoiceSpeakFlags.SVSFlagsAsync)
This needs a reference to SAPI 5.1. (Microsoft Speech Object Library)
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Yahoo Adsense
August 29, 2005
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Just saw that Yahoo has released their own version of Adsense to counter Google’s amazing Adsense system. http://publisher.yahoo.com/ – It’s still in beta, but from what I’ve seen, it’s virtually identical to Google Adsense, as you can see from the Javascript below:
<script language="JavaScript">
<!–
ctxt_ad_partner = ‘<some number>’;
ctxt_ad_section = ”;
ctxt_ad_bg = ”;
ctxt_ad_width = 336;
ctxt_ad_height = 280;
ctxt_ad_bc = ‘FFFFFF’;
ctxt_ad_cc = ‘FFFFFF’;
ctxt_ad_lc = ‘A80054’;
ctxt_ad_tc = ‘000000’;
ctxt_ad_uc = ‘000000’;
// –>
</script>
<script language="JavaScript" src="http://ypn-js.overture.com/partner/js/ypn.js">
</script>
<!–
ctxt_ad_partner = ‘<some number>’;
ctxt_ad_section = ”;
ctxt_ad_bg = ”;
ctxt_ad_width = 336;
ctxt_ad_height = 280;
ctxt_ad_bc = ‘FFFFFF’;
ctxt_ad_cc = ‘FFFFFF’;
ctxt_ad_lc = ‘A80054’;
ctxt_ad_tc = ‘000000’;
ctxt_ad_uc = ‘000000’;
// –>
</script>
<script language="JavaScript" src="http://ypn-js.overture.com/partner/js/ypn.js">
</script>
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Internationalising www.sms-txt.co.uk
August 27, 2005
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Just been translating www.sms-txt.co.uk into French (www.envoyezSMS.com) and German(www.handyspruche.com). It’s 90% done with Google Translate 10% done with a bit of manual translation, to try and pin down the odd turkey that Google translate comes up with.
On a seperate note, 2-18,1-14. A sad day for Dubs – even though I’m more of a Donegal fan myself.
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Hotfix for KB 896181
August 20, 2005
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I recently found two of my websites (www.sms-txt.co.uk & www.findpeoplefree.co.uk ) were throwing up the following error:
Unable to generate a temporary class (result=1). error CS0011: Referenced class ‘ASP.webservice_aspx’ has base class or interface ‘System.Web.UI.Page’ defined in an assembly that is not referenced. You must add a reference to assembly ‘System.Web’. error CS0011: Referenced class ‘ASP.webservice_aspx’ has base class or interface ‘System.Web.SessionState.IRequiresSessionState’ defined in an assembly that is not referenced. You must add a reference to assembly ‘System.Web’.
After searching on Microsoft, they said it was an issue with "This problem occurs because the temporary serialization assemblies do not reference the System.Web assembly. This behavior causes the Web service to fail at run time. "
Unfortunately, the gix won’t be available unil .NET 1.1 SP2 is out, and I don’t know hos to email microsoft for the hotfix. – anybody know?
I found a temporary work around, by migrating both sites from ASP.NET 1.1. to 2.0 beta 2. This threw up an error "Validation of viewstate MAC failed. If this application is hosted by a Web Farm or cluster, ensure that <machineKey> configuration specifies the same validationKey and validation algorithm. AutoGenerate cannot be used in a cluster." – but went away after I closed and re-opened the page.
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Spoofing an IP address using a VPN
August 15, 2005
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I was looking for a way to appear to have a different IP address from the point of view of a remote website. When I remembered a quirk with VPNs.
When you set up a computer to accept incomming VPN connections, and connect to it, all packets will be routed through it by default. This means that if you navigate to a website without a VPN connection you will appear to have a different IP address to when you navigate to a website with a VPN connection open.
Usiually, I would disable this feature, since generally, routing all internet traffic via a VPN is much slower than a direct connection. To disable VPN default gateway routing, hit the VPN conection | properties | Networking | TCP/IP | Settings | use default gateway on remote network.
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Double joins in access
August 13, 2005
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With SQL server, there is no problem with joining multiple tables in the same query like so:
select * from a
join b on a.bid = b.id
join c on b.cid = c.id
But this doesn’t work in MS Acess, but this format does
select * from a,b,c
where a.bid= b.id and c.id = b.cid
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Generating a 1×1 pixel jpeg in a aspx page
August 13, 2005
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I was looking at a way to track website referers using aspx, and to my horror, I found that Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_REFERER"] was blank under many circumstances. However the javascript equivalent , document.referrer works much more reliably. However, ths javascript variable is only available after the page has loaded. So it needs to do a round-trip to the server to store this variable, without distracting the user by refreshing the page. There are a number ways to do this (a) hidden IFrame (b) out of band calls using XMLHTTP (c) aspx image tag Option C., was what I decided to go for…
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Automatically expanding drop down lists
August 11, 2005
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Just noticed that pressing F4 will automatically expand a drop down list (or 5 on a numeric keypad).
This came in quite handy in a VB project with "SendKeys "{F4}""
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