Ready, set, ....

1. Team: 3 peeps including myself, committed and ready.

2. Get MACS: One person already had a MAC and myself and the other guy just bought refurbished MAC minis for 499, with keyboard, mouse and tax, $609 canadian, not bad.

3. 40% of the way through Apple's objective C documentation. Not too bad, once you understand the slightly obscure syntax.

Next step: Keep reading, then on May 10th, meet up with team and pick one of several ideas we have. Then we go! Nice thing is that we each had to shell up some cash which really puts the heat on us to produce something.

Progress so far

1. Team: Gonna roll with a 2-3 person team, depending on ability to get Macs for everyone... The team is picked, but will be finalized based on everyone's ability to get a Mac.

2. Get a MAC: Messed around with PearPc trying to get a virtual environment up...FAIL. Kijiji and Ebay, sometimes a bit dodgy.....Down to 2 options: One buy a mac mini, $729 bones. Reliable option, just a bit expensive. Door #2: A guy I know has a consulting firm and they have Mac clients. One client is replacing their Macs and the old ones have Tiger on them. At most will be $300. Lets assume I can get one of the intel based ones for $250, and then Leopard costs $129, so I might be able to get one there for about $400, which is basically half the price of the mini.

3. Read documentation: Currently on page 78 of 164 of the iPhone application programming guide.

iPhone Dev

Alright, decided to make the plunge into iPhone development.. Looks interesting and fun and it should be a great learning opportunity as I think I've touched a Mac a handful of times. I will document my progress from zero to hero and hopefully provide insight on a good road map on how to produce an iPhone app. Here is what I have done so far:

1. Assemble a team (always easier and more creative with more people).
2. Get my hands on a Mac to develop with... and maybe one day an iPhone.
3. Read Apples dev documentation.

Drawing an image with transparency

I had a bit of trouble finding this, and I see other people asking it, so here it goes:

I found the key was using the imageAttributes class. Basically set the color key to the color you are using to represent the transparent area, and use one of the drawImage calls that accepts an imageAttribute parameter...

Imports System.Drawing.Imaging

' and in a sub somewhere:

Private mImageAttributes As New ImageAttributes
mImageAttributes.SetColorKey(Color.FromArgb(0, 220, 20, 255), Color.FromArgb(0, 220, 20, 255))

Dim imageRectangle As New Rectangle(pX, pY, pBitmap.Width, pBitmap.Height)
e.Graphics.DrawImage(pBitmap, imageRectangle, 0, 0, pBitmap.Width, pBitmap.Height, GraphicsUnit.Pixel, mImageAttributes)

SQL Server Migration - The easy way

I have had the experience of moving an instance of SQL Server from one machine to another a few times and tried a few different ways of doing so. In simple cases, it can be as simple as scripting a few logons, and restoring backups on a new machine. Sometimes it is a little more involved if replication is involved. The scenario I am covering here is where you would like to replace a machine with SQL and move it to a new machine. I have used this method successfully to move a SQL instance from windows server 2003 to another 2003 box and even from a windows server 2003 box to a 2008 one. Here is an example of what has worked for me, where I want to replace a server named MainServer with a Server called NewBox

1. Backup all databases on MainServer.
   
2. On NewBox, install the same version of SQL as on MainServer, and make sure it has the same service pack if any. ALSO, make sure that the data and log paths on NewBox match that of MainServer (this is important).
3. Shut down the SQL server on MainBox and set the SQL server service to start up manually as opposed to automatic. Rename MainServer to MainBox-Old or some other name and reboot.
   
4. Rename NewBox to MainServer and reboot. Now shut down SQL Server.
5. Now, since we had the data and log paths set the same on the new server, all we need to do is copy the data and log directories over to the new machine in place of the current install. So, for example, if I had a default install where the logs and data are in the same path (C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\Data\MSSQL.1\MSSQL), I would find the MSSQL folder for my instance that has the Backup, Data, LOG, etc subfolders and rename that folder MSSQL.OLD (as a fallback). I would then copy over the MSSQL folder from my old instance to the same location as MSSQL.OLD and then I can simply restart the SQL Server and it should start with all logons, replication, and settings of the SQL instance prior to the move.