In the last time I haven't had much time to work on my blog or some of my private sites, because at my job we've (fortunately) very much work to do which is sometimes (unfortunately) a little bit short of time.
To not open a larger theme in here, which I'd like to explain much more detailed, but wouldn't have the time to, I decided to just post some things that I found during the daily work of the last weeks:
VSO DivxToDVD
Some days ago I was asked to get a very debatable video from the internet on DVD, because a friend of mine has no computer to use the internet himself or at least watch the downloaded video. After some flops of software I tried, I was guided by Google to the page of Softonic, where I found the VSO DivxToDVD Converter 0.5.2.99. It's a pretty cool tool, simple to use and free:
As I went to the producers page to check out for some updates, I found out (to my regret) that the nice (and, much more important, free ;-D) Tool became fee required. I think it's a good thing that VSO decided to bring it to the market, because I really like that tool, but I don't want to pay for it as long as I just need it from that rarely. The new name of the tool is ConvertXToDVD and costs about 40€.
(Hint: Softonic still offers the link to the old, free version).
SDP Multimedia
As I was searching for the solution of a problem during the last week, I found a webcast which I'd like to watch, but which had no download link. It seemed as if there'd be some very interesting infos inside of it, but because it was to long, I tried to download it on various ways (which didn't actually work) - until I found the stream ripper SDP Multimedia.
It's a little bit slow while downloading (or perhaps it has just been the streaming-server :-D), but in any case: It's also free!
You only need to add a stream via the MMS protocoll and instantly the SDP starts downloading it to your harddisc.
FileSystemWatcher
At work we're using VisualCron since several months to do our filesystem-based cronjobs. Some days ago I found out that that the .Net framework allready offers a helper class, which can be used to do exactly this thing: System.IO.FileSystemWatcher.
This object allows you to watch filesystem and react on various events (e.g. changes, updates,...). Therefore you only have to instantiate the object, choose the directory to watch, (optionally define a file mask (e.g. to just react on .cs-files)) and to tell the object to start watching:
System.IO.FileSystemWatcher fsWatcher = new System.IO.FileSystemWatcher();
fsWatcher.Path = @"C:\fsWatcherTest";
fsWatcher.Created += new System.IO.FileSystemEventHandler(FileCreated);
fsWatcher.WaitForChanged(System.IO.WatcherChangeTypes.Created);
With this code, you get the FileSystemWatcher to wait for the creation of exactly one file and call the method FileCreated afterwards. To react on the renaming of this file - and this not once, but several times, I extended the program in the following way:
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
System.IO.FileSystemWatcher fsWatcher = new System.IO.FileSystemWatcher();
fsWatcher.Path = @"C:\fsWatcherTest";
fsWatcher.Created += new System.IO.FileSystemEventHandler(FileCreated);
fsWatcher.Renamed += new System.IO.RenamedEventHandler(FileRenamed);
while (true)
{
fsWatcher.WaitForChanged(System.IO.WatcherChangeTypes.Created);
fsWatcher.WaitForChanged(System.IO.WatcherChangeTypes.Renamed);
}
}
static void FileCreated(object sender, System.IO.FileSystemEventArgs e)
{
Console.WriteLine(String.Format("File Created: {0}", e.FullPath));
}
static void FileRenamed(object sender, System.IO.RenamedEventArgs e)
{
Console.WriteLine("---");
Console.WriteLine("File Renamed:");
Console.WriteLine(String.Format("Old path: {0}", e.OldFullPath));
Console.WriteLine(String.Format("Old name: {0}", e.OldName));
Console.WriteLine(String.Format("New path: {0}", e.FullPath));
Console.WriteLine(String.Format("New name: {0}", e.Name));
Console.WriteLine("---");
}
}
After I entered the code I did the following steps
1.) Started the program.
2.) Created a text file in the specified directory.
3.) Renamed the newly created text file.
This caused the following output:
Interesting: If I create a new file on Vista via right clicking, I get a new file where the file name (without the extension) is marked, to ease the renaming. As I just said - the file is firste created an renamed later on (as can be seen at the image above). So take care that a file you handle might not have its final name after the creation.