Chris's Development Blog

Creating Custom Search Providers for the Browser

2008-07-17T22:05:00Z

One of my favorite time saving features in most current web browsers, besides tabbed browsing, is the ability to search the web from any web page. Just type your search query in the search bar at the top of the browser and hit enter. Most people know that you can search Live.com, Google, Lycos, or whatever your favorite search engine is. What many people do not know is that you can configure your browser to search using any search engine, or configure your web site to allow other people to search...(read more)

Research Awards

2008-04-28T02:44:22Z

I usually do not write about non-technical issues in my blog, but I was honored to receive awards from both the graduate school and the Appalachian State University chapter of Sigma Xi for my thesis research and thought this presented a good opportunity to post some photos and thank the people involved. Receiving the Appalachian State University 2007-2008 Outstanding Thesis - Science and Technology Award. Left to right: Dr. James Wilkes (CS department chair), Dr. Jay Fenwick (CS graduate studies...(read more)

Master’s Thesis

2008-03-11T19:02:40Z

After years of hard work, I have completed my Master's research and thesis in Evolutionary Robotics. This body of work spanned the disciplines of electrical engineering, software engineering, and some mechanical engineering (I designed several custom parts that were manufactured in our machine shop). Using these skills, I applied the scientific method to perform an extensive series of experiments and analysis of the resulting data. This research is formally presented in my thesis "Simulation-Based...(read more)

Engineering Principles

2007-06-06T21:25:00Z

Recently I have been working on my curriculum vitae and decided to add a section regarding my engineering principles. I was thinking about what was important to me when it comes to system design and implementation and an analogy came to mind. The hole may initially look square, but after going through the process of making the peg it may become clear that the hole is in fact round. In this case, it is often better to make a new round peg than it is to try and make the square one fit (which may not...(read more)

Word 2007 Citations - ISO Numerical Format

2007-04-02T22:49:43Z

I have been using Word 2007 since it was in beta and really like all the new features. As someone who typically writes technical papers, the new features that have had the biggest impact on me are the table of contents and citation/bibliography generation tools. They are seamlessly integrated with the interface and save a great deal of time over doing things the manual way. I use the ISO 690 numerical style for citations and am used to the standard notation of using brackets to enclose numerical...(read more)

Nice Programming Font (Inconsolata)

2006-12-07T20:49:06Z

I recently stumbled across a new programming font called Inconsolata over at Scott Hanselman's blog . I typically use Microsoft's Consolas font in all of my development tools, but I think I am going to try Inconsolata for a while and see how I like it. While the font is still in development, my first impression leads me to believe that it is going to be a significant improvement over the already great Consolas....(read more)

Vista RC2 and SQL Server Express 2005

2006-11-06T23:54:00Z

Like many other people I know and read about, I switched my primary production system over to Windows Vista starting with the release of Beta 2. I spend most of my time in Visual Studio 2005, Office 2007, and a few miscellaneous CAD tools for embedded systems development. Since the release of Beta 2 I have had very few stability problems and most of my software has worked without issue (with the exception of Camtasia, which I think is a TechSmith problem). When I was getting ready to update from RC1 to RC2 I was assaulted with a horrific message, "SQL Server 2005 is not compatible with RC2". I use SQL Server Express 2005 almost on a daily basis and depend on it for many of my development projects. The update looked like it could continue and would not uninstall SQL Server Express 2005, so I decided to give it a try and hope for the best....(read more)

Java Concurrency API Example

2006-11-01T00:01:24Z

Download the example code. I was asked to put together some teaching materials for a Data Structures class as the second part of their introduction to threading. I decided to go ahead and jump right in to the Java Concurrency API and needed a simple example to illustrate the concepts. I adapted this from an example in their textbook (not sure about the authors name), although no code actually remains from the author. It is a problem domain that they where already familiar with, animated sorting algorithms....(read more)

Implementing a Presentation Layer Using ASP .NET 2.0 And Visual Studio 2005 (Screencast)

2006-10-26T11:07:00Z

This screencast walks through the use of Visual Studio 2005 and ASP .NET 2.0 to implement a presentation layer. Web services are consumed from a Business Layer....(read more)

Implementing a Business Layer Using .NET 2.0 And Visual Studio 2005 (Screencast)

2006-10-26T11:03:00Z

This screencast walks through the use of Visual Studio 2005 to implement a business layer. Web services are consumed from the Data Layer, business logic is implemented, and services are then exposed for consumption by the Presentation Layer....(read more)

Implementing a Data Layer using .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 (Screencast)

2006-10-26T10:58:00Z

This screencast walks through the use of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server Express 2005 to create a data access layer....(read more)

The Stamp Controller Interface Board and the BS2e

2006-07-28T20:08:00Z

I was recently working a project that was based on Parallax's industrial Stamp Controller Interface Board and the BASIC Stamp 2. We needed to upgrade the system to use the more robust BS2e microcontroller and were told by Parallax support that this was no problem. We received the new parts and began testing the setup only to find that the line drivers where not supplying enough voltage on logic high (only 1.5v) to trigger the BS2e's input pins (when it had worked fine with the BS2). After talking numerous times with Parallax support we came to the conclusion that there needed to be a pull-up resistor soldered to the boards prototype area. A 5.6k-Ohm resistor between each input pin and +5v seemed to do the trick. While this worked, I was not very happy with the solution. The problem stems from the fact that the BS2 is based on the PIC microcontroller and the BS2e on Ubicom's SX chip. When I asked if they where going to update the board design to resolve this issue, tech support said that they where not because the person who originally designed the board is no longer at Parallax....(read more)

Software Flow Control on the BASIC Stamp 2

2006-07-15T16:22:00Z

Most BASIC Stamp carrier boards include a DB-9 connector for programming the microcontroller and for performing simple debugging. Unfortunately only three pins are actually connected to the DB-9: TX, RX, and ATN (for programming). This severely rules out any possibility for hardware flow control. Last year I needed to communicate with a device that was much faster than the little BS2 microcontroller, and implementing some kind of flow control was the only way to keep from losing bytes. After a decent amount of reading about flow control and RS-232, I came up with the following solution....(read more)

Introduction to XML Web Services (Video Podcast)

2006-02-09T05:28:00Z

This introduction to XML Web Services examines the standards which make up the Web Service specification, how Web Services enable the Service Oriented Architecture, and walks through the development of a simple Web Service using Java and the Eclipse IDE....(read more)

Consuming Web Services in C++ and Visual Studio 2003

2006-02-09T05:15:00Z

This tutorial walks through the process of consuming an XML Web Service using Visual Studio 2003 and C++. Download the source code for the example....(read more)