Cyber-Lane

Unfortunately I have been busy with a lot of other work which takes precedence over me completing this website.

However I am now slowly finishing it all off, I’ve just about finished the Home page, and Blog, just need to make a few tweaks. I need to sit down with my friend who is a technical writer to sort out the Products and Portfolio sections, and I should hopefully have the Contact form completed today at some point.

After I’ve finished up the frontend, I can whip up a nice little CMS for myself, as my previous CMS, I wrote in PHP, and this new website runs purely on ASP.NET. I’m trying to make best use of all the functionality of .NET - so far I’ve done MasterPages, and a few Server Controls, however I think for the CMS I will make a few custom usercontrols.

New hosting package, and new blog, so I guess I need to give a bit of a rundown about myself.

My name is Justin Nel, I’m a software developer, but I also dabble in graphic design. I’ve been programming for 10 years now, originally started as a hobby, and then turned into a career. Well versed in a number of programming languages, the following are the list of languages, I am most commonly found using today:

• ASP.NET
• C# (Windows Forms, Web Applications, ActiveX/UserControls)
• C++ (Windows Forms, DirectX Media Applications)
• JavaScript (Including AJAX)
• PHP

At my day job, I’ve only recently started to do software development (the previous 3-4 years, I’ve been doing Database Design/Data Manipulation), but for the last 6 years I have done a lot of different freelance jobs, for numerous different clients, a summary of the projects include:

• Website Content Management System Design and Implementation (XHTML/AJAX/PHP/MySQL)
• Database Content Management System Design and Implementation (C#/XML/MSSQL)
• ActiveX/UserControl Design and Implementation (C#/XHTML/AJAX/XML/MSSQL)
• I’m currently designing a couple of software applications which should appear on the website in the near future.

As and when I have more to say about applications I am developing, or anything in general, I’ll post it up here on the blog.

Well it’s a been a few days since I last updated this, so here is a what is what has changed:

Completed:

• Import *.SV Data file into DataTable (linked to DataGridView)
• Manually enter/edit/remove records to DataGridView
• Draw Points onto ModelArea
• Draw Labels next to each Point
• Draw Contour Lines (only supports positive whole numbers at present)

To Do:

• Add Support for Contour Lines with 2 Decimal Places
• Group Contour Lines by the Z
• Export Data back to Custom Editable Format
• Export to AutoCAD (*.dxf) format
• Drag Labels to new position
• Contour Lines to Re-Draw each time a Point is moved
• Add Grid Lines to ModelArea
• Resize ModelArea to suite the Data

It’s looking quite good, the client is please with the state of the application at present, and I’m looking forward to playing around with it a bit more. The best part is that working on this, relieves a heck of a lot of stress, as one of my other projects (CartoLogix) was seriously starting get to me.

Last night I added the following features:

• Enter in x/y/z Co-ordinates
• Draw lines between each x/y located on the same z

I also added 2 additional bits:

• Enter in Tag/x/y/z/Code (change)
• Draw Label with text Code

I will also look into adding the ability to drag the Labels around, thus allowing the user to have control over them.

To do:

• Specify how smooth line edges are to be drawn
• Save to local editable format
• Export to AutoCAD (*.dxf) format
• Drag Labels to new position

I also need to add some math for the line draw function, as at the moment it just draws all lines on the same Z by going through the list in order, rather than determining which is the nearest co-ordinate.

A new project is starting for me, and I think this one is going to go far as well, as there seems to be quite a large demand for it, plus I believe it will be easy for me to develop.

This application is yet another drawing application, but what this one will need to do is:

• Enter in x/y/z co-ordinates
• Draw lines between each x/y located on the same z
• Specify how smooth line edges are to be drawn
• Save to local editable format
• Export to AutoCAD (*.dxf) format

This is the basics for the initial release, in future releases there will be a lot more. I have a lot of ideas of numerous other things I would love to add to this, but for now, I will get the initial application up and running and add from there.