Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Feb 9, 2012, 1:58 pm
You've been using VMWare too long when... You try to log on to your host computer using instead of . You wonder where the VMWare menu is when you move your mouse to the top of your monitor on your host computer. You can't find the shared folder with Windows Explorer on your host com...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Feb 5, 2012, 10:09 pm
Here's my Naan, made with Bob's Red Mill Low Carb Baking Mix and Vital Wheat Gluten. This is a yeast proofed dough, and to my amazement, the yeast actually worked! The yeast starter I used adds about 7 net carbs to the bread, or about 1 g per Naan.     Yeast star...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Jan 11, 2012, 9:05 am
I have been on a low carbohydrate intake diet since October 1, 2011.  I've lost nearly 40 lbs while on this diet.  While a lot of folks use these diets as an excuse to eat fatty meats, I do not.  I consume mostly fish interspersed with chicken.  I consume a couple of servings of pork or beef eve...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Jan 8, 2012, 10:19 am
If you work with message files in your C++ project, you may have encountered the following error: CVTRES : fatal error CVT1100: duplicate resource -- type:MESSAGETABLE, name:1, language:0x0409 fatal error LNK1123: failure during conversion to COFF: file invalid or corrupt I wrestled w...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Jan 1, 2012, 7:40 am
I didn't wait for the New Year to make some resolutions and changes in my life: Get more exercise I started in August.  Besides very demanding yard work, moving dirt, grading and disposal of a trash pile (branches mostly), I've set aside 30 minutes four times a week.  The results can...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Oct 27, 2011, 9:24 am
I purchased a replacement battery for my laptop, that contains 9, rather than 6 Li-ion cells.  Battery life now appears to be 5+ hours, versus 3 with the original battery.  I also purchased a power supply that uses my automobile cigarette lighter.  This means my daughter and granddaughter can wat...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Oct 23, 2011, 12:24 pm
I've had an HP P1102w hooked up via WiFi to my home network for about 4 months.  The printer has performed flawlessly. Yesterday, the printer lost its WiFi connection and would not re-establish the connection, despite all of my attempts.  I found using the wireless configuration utility fro...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Oct 22, 2011, 8:43 am
My wife's grandfather had a family famous saying that I will always cherish: "If your mind won't do it, your feet will have to." This statement carries so many truths on so many levels. The moral of the story: "Don't be in such a hurry that you don't think!"
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Oct 22, 2011, 8:16 am
I've been working on data classification algorithms for the last several weeks.  For the multi-feature (multi-dimensional) data I am working with, I've settled in on a modified version of DBSCAN that utilizes Mahalanobis distance.  Using the Mahalanobis distance instead of the Euchlidean distance ...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Oct 21, 2011, 12:06 pm
Do you remember the days of dial up internet connections? My son is renting his first apartment!  (Yes, he's 22, it's time!)  He has a good job and a bright future.  However, I was pretty surprised at the amount of money he is willing to spend for a high speed internet connection and phone...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Oct 14, 2011, 3:08 pm
When I was about 8 or 9, I once made the outlandish statement to my Dad that we should take all the money the Rockefellers had and give it to everyone.  My Dad made me do some research by hauling me down to the Montgomery, AL library, on a Saturday, no less!  I discovered that distributing the Roc...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Oct 14, 2011, 10:27 am
Hot diggity dog!  This weekend is mountain biking weather.  Most of my honey-dos are honey-dones, so Saturday is looking like an open day for biking.  I cannot wait! Getting back to smart phones. I am trying to figure out how I would use a smart phone. What will $150 and $30/mo mini...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Oct 13, 2011, 12:14 pm
You can't help but notice that smart phones seem to have taken over the world.  I decided when I wanted to upgrade my account at Verizon that I would go with an HTC Trophy -- until I noticed I would have to buy a "data plan" to use the phone.  $30 per month!!??  For the cheapest plan?  This caus...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Oct 10, 2011, 9:10 pm
I've not been posting much lately.  I used to spend hours working on code that interested me.  However, a year or so ago, I realized I needed to get more exercise and lose weight.  I started eating right and engaging in a number of outdoor activities.  I began a process of reading for enjoyment,...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Jul 24, 2011, 11:04 pm
Here's some photos from today's ride. My new bike: Rain storm that missed our house, darn it:  
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Jul 19, 2011, 10:48 pm
These Sunset scenes are brought to you courtesy of MelonBike in OKC, who sold me a GT Aggressor 1.0.  I've been biking in the evening and I am getting hooked on getting out.    
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Jul 18, 2011, 9:37 am
I cleaned up my hard drive several weeks ago.  One task that I accomplished was removing a splattering of Windows SDK installations.  I think I had six different versions installed.  It certainly felt good and freed up some disk spaced consolidating everything to Windows SDK 7.1. Except, I...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Jul 9, 2011, 10:37 pm
I am putting the finishing touches on a WTL version of the MFC TaskBarNotifier class.  I'm finally getting back to C++ programming, after many months of working on several C# projects.  Here's a screen shot of the notifier window, executed as a 64 bit C++ program.  I've added a few new properties...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Jun 18, 2011, 9:31 am
On Wednesday, June 15th, my family and I visited our local Outback Steakhouse.  I don't usually go to this restaurant because I find it expensive and the food is only "fair".  This last visit was disappointing, even by the fair standard.  My daughter and wife enjoyed their steaks.  I ordered a r...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Jun 14, 2011, 11:54 am
I just ran across Roman Ryltsov‘s blog.  Very interesting, particularly if you are using ATL.
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Jun 14, 2011, 10:34 am
A few years ago, I purchased a Hauppauge PVR-150 card.  This card enabled me to copy home video from tape to digital files and DVD (and the card does work, it's just that the process is not so simple).  The PVR-150 has a hardware assisted video compressor for converting analog video to MPEG...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - May 31, 2011, 9:59 am
I have found the new help viewer supplied with the VS 2010 Service Pack to be fairly worthless.  My primary problem has been that I can only follow content by clicking on the TOC treeview.  Clicking on internal hyperlinks in the help document window brings up a raw xml file that tells me it can't ...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - May 22, 2011, 12:46 am
I've been avoiding electronic books.  I prefer to have a hard copy in my hands.  (If I'm going to the beach, I don't like the idea of hauling around an expensive electronic toy in the ocean air.)  My new laptop came with a copy of Nook installed.  I played around with it, and ended up downloadin...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - May 11, 2011, 10:09 am
Migrating Common Files and Data I continued the move process for my wife's computer last night.  I ran into a couple of things that set off alarm bells while using Easy Transfer to move common computer files and settings.  (Note: I did not say that anything was broken or did not work correc...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - May 10, 2011, 3:41 pm
I sit a lot.  It's hard to code when you are hiking, jogging or fishing.  This little graphic is an eye opener!  Trust me, I am one person this informative graphic is aimed at. Via: Medical Billing and Coding
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - May 9, 2011, 11:54 pm
This is a quick atta-boy concerning Easy Transfer... I replaced my wife's HP Pavillion (Model a1250n) with my Gateway GT5040 tonight.  The HP computer is working fine, but it has become very slow to use for reasons I have not been able to discern. I was prepared to spend the next few ...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Apr 18, 2011, 10:12 pm
I was having a cup of coffee with a couple of programming buddies when the subject of .Net and C# came up.  Because I spend a lot of time on my blog coding native applications, they assumed I really did not know .Net.  I guess I may give that impression if you only view my blog.  However, native ...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Apr 18, 2011, 9:54 pm
Most articles you find on the internet regarding ADO illustrate using #import to do the hardwork of importing the COM object's interface.  However, #import drags in a lot of heavy weight classes that aren't really necessary. This article illustrates using the header files initguid.h, adoid.h...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Apr 17, 2011, 7:16 pm
This is a small departure from the ATL/WTL threading series I am writing on my wiki.  This is a framwework WTL application that utilizes the MS DataGrid Control from Service Pack 6 of Visual Studio 6.  This program provides a complete COM interface to the control, similar to what might be used in ...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Apr 12, 2011, 7:21 am
Mother goose rhymes are appropriate for this post.  I've been away from home for the last two months, working on software in San Antonio.  Being holed up in a Holiday Inn for two months sort of makes you stir crazy.  I have a lot of wiki articles ready for posting.  I spent most of my off time e...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Mar 30, 2011, 11:06 am
Right after I posted to the WTL group on Yahoo!, I began to get very strange errors in the Screwturn wiki system log.  Most of the code I've placed on the wiki is no longer formatted.  I am attempting to return the code to normal format (black and white, courier font).  This is really a pain.
...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Mar 22, 2011, 9:28 pm
This is a quick example of using the the ATL Security classes.  The original source code for the project is displayed on the MSDN web site: Creating a Security Descriptor for a New Object in C++.  The example presented in the MSDN topic creates a registry key in hive HKEY_CURRENT_USER.  This allo...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Mar 16, 2011, 8:43 pm
I've been working on a series of articles regarding threading and ATL 9.  I recently decided to update Microsoft's sample multithreaded IConnectionPointImpl implementation, called IConnectionPointImplMT.  You can read about the original work on the Microsoft Support WebSite: SAMPLE: ATLCPImplMT en...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Feb 21, 2011, 9:50 am
I completed (or so I thought) a project about 9 months ago.  Due to some dithering and dathering of resources by our team, we finally got around to full scale testing this month.  Changes were requested by various team members.  Some things were the result of data that was out of date.  These we...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Feb 16, 2011, 9:24 am
I recently cleaned out my collection of MSDN CD's and DVD's.  I came across a DVD containing Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise Edition and VS 6 Service Pack 3.  I also found the October 2001 MSDN DVD.  I decided to keep these discs, even though I have not worked on any projects with this type of legac...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Jan 20, 2011, 9:26 pm
The last few days have been one of disease and pestilence in my household.  The stomach flu struck us with a vengence.  First the baby came down with it.  We struggled mightly to keep her hydrated during the ordeal.  Then my daughter got sick and finally I was came down with symptoms.  It was j...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Jan 17, 2011, 9:47 pm
I updated my old Gateway GT5040 desktop over Christmas.  New 1TB hard drive and Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.  Everything went great.  Even my Hauppauge PVR-150 was recognized!  Sound is great.  Performance is very good. Then I noticed my spiffy new 64 bit OS was not utilizing all of th...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Dec 20, 2010, 8:52 am
I found this article to be very disturbing.  Rather than defending the constitution, and our borders, our current government would rather snoop on us.
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Dec 18, 2010, 7:00 am
It looks like Delicious, the granddaddy of the bookmarking services is going to be shutdown.  I use Delicious a lot to bookmark links that I want to save.  I liked the ability to find a bookmark from anywhere, using any browser.  I guess I am just old fashioned. Social Networking Site Deli...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Nov 18, 2010, 6:53 pm
Regarding all the media ruckus about the TSA and its search techniques, a quote from Benjamin Franklin comes to mind: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."  - 1775, Ben Franklin In fact, a second variation of ...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Nov 16, 2010, 9:45 pm
I took a break from DCDFLIB and the clean up of the gamma_inc_inv function.  I played around with a native C++/WTL application to encrypt and decrypt a string using the native Windows XP crypto package. Here's a screen shot: And here's the application.  You'll need to download...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Nov 14, 2010, 9:32 pm
I may have met my match with gamma_inc_inv.  So far, there are a few sections of code that should probably be moved out to separate functions, or the goto statements should be left in.  Theses sections are referred to in the calling code five or six times.  It will be very difficult to resection ...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Nov 14, 2010, 10:06 am
I completed the clean up of E0000 and E0001 Friday night.  (Sad, I know.)  I was going to continue with the next few functions when I realized that E0000 and E0001 were child's play compared to the spaghetti code in gamma_inc.  Ouch is all I can say.  I'm trying to get rid of labels by cleaning ...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Nov 11, 2010, 10:59 pm
DCDFLIB employs two reverse communication zero finder functions: E0000 and E0001.  I completed the clean up and analysis of E0000 tonight, finally removing all traces of labels and goto statements.  A funny thing happened.  The C++ optimizer must have kicked into high gear after removing all of t...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Nov 8, 2010, 9:43 pm
I started work on the clean up of E0000 and E0001 tonight.  These are reverse communication zero finders.  Most of the routines in DCDFLIB so far can be cleaned up with visual inspection.  I found myself drawing flow charts and making notes for the code flow in E0000.  The logic is fairly clea...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Nov 4, 2010, 11:42 pm
Ten days after my last post, my brave little Mother died in the hospital.  My Mom was a fighter.  She loved life and loved her family.  I miss her terribly.  My brother and I are all that is left of my immediate family. I know my Mom is in a happy, peaceful place.  No more needles and PI...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Sep 18, 2010, 8:23 pm
I've been tied up with some coding and documentation at work.  This is the kind of stuff you buckle down and get done.  Tight schedules, tight budget.  Unfortunately, I am not working on anything earth shattering.  No new algorithms and no hot-shot coding, but it does pay the bills. I cam...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Aug 31, 2010, 10:51 pm
I admit it, I read the 2010 equivalent of dime store novels.  I love Simon Scarrow's "Eagle" books, and I follow Bernard Cornwell's The Grail Quest and The Saxon Stories.  I also read Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant chronicles.  My complaint is that I've devour...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Aug 31, 2010, 10:35 pm
I work with multiple database servers: Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL.  I like to keep copies of the free versions, Oracle XE, SQL Server 2008 Express, SQL Server 2005 Express and MySQL on seperate VMWare machines at home for testing and experimentation.  You learn quickly that installed dat...
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Old C. posted an article on The Code Wizard's Musings - Aug 30, 2010, 8:52 pm
I've been experimenting with jQuery and AJAX in VS 2008.  Today, I ran into an issue that nearly made my head explode.  I have some javascript code that I use to detect if a user has a popup blocker installed.  This is an internal application and it makes use of popups to deliver ...
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