Andy Cheese

Hi If I can build on the above; I would import the 'System.IO' namespace, just to make your code cleaner. Then, I would put the ‘txtUsername.Text’ into a variable which will make it easier to work with i.e. is it missing? is it too long? or does the ‘txtUsername’ contain a character that cannot be used as a file name? Do the same with the path of the file you want to write too. Also, put anything that could fail into a Try / Catch format and catch any errors. Thanks Andy 'Import the namespace 'System.IO' here Imports System.IO Public Class Form1 Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles save.Click 'This is variable to store the txtUsername.Text Dim FileNameToCheck As String = txtUsername.Text 'This is variable to store the path Dim PathOfFile As String = "H:\" + FileNameToCheck + ".txt" If File.Exists(PathOfFile) Then MsgBox("File Already Exists") 'Exit the sub if the file already exists Exit Sub End If 'Put anything that could fail into a Try / Catch format Try Dim objWriter As New StreamWriter(PathOfFile) objWriter.Write(FileNameToCheck) objWriter.Close() Catch ex As Exception 'Catch any errors here and feed it back in a MsgBox MsgBox(ex.ToString) End Try End Sub End Class

Hi I’m not sure what setup you are using or what your goals is, so It’s hard to recommend something to fit in with your needs; For a really small footprint, have a look at SQLite. It can be used to almost anywhere web, desktop and app’s. MySQL is mainly for Web. It’s a great DB and there are tons of online guides. Check out WAMP for windows, LAMP of Linux or MAMP for Mac. Then have a look at PHP / HTML to use as an interface to pull and push the SQL. Microsoft have MS SQL so you could look a Visual Studio (Visual Studio will also work with almost all SQL Databases). To make your life easier then pick a platform to start with (web, desktop or app) then pick a programming language or interface to use to send and receive the SQL. For me, I would look at VB.net (or C++ / C# ) with Visual Studio and either MS SQL or SQLite. At the end of the day it’s all SQL Andy

Thanks all for your input. ‘KCmetro’ raised a great point that I did not ever think about: Dam, I missed that in my costings. I using two monitors, one 24” wide-screen and another one is 21”. Both are a few years old, one is HD 1080 and the other DVI both low refresh rate and yes, the smaller is the HD 1080 screen which sucks big time. ‘rucdoc’ also highlighted the 8350 which is spot on. I’ve checked the spec’s and is now on sale at £130 so that looks like the way to go for me. Also, due to cost I’m probably going to have to go with an RX480 8G unless something else gets pointed out in the meantime. Thanks again Andy

Hi I've not used this in a long time but I have used 'EasyBCD' from http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/ to move boot files. Not sure if the free version can still do this? Thanks Andy

Hi I don’t believe there is a way to do this easily as every way I can think of can be bypassed unless you go down the advanced steganography route. Metadata is the easiest to remove with a simple right click, Embedded data can be distorted by compressing or as you said applying a colour filler of some kind. Even watermarks can be removed in a short amount of time. I did this recently after some friends went mountain biking and the person at the event wanted to charge them about 3 time the normal amount for photos (Note, I do not condone this and would NOT normally did it however if you going to be greedy then what do you expected!) It took me less them 2 hours to do 6 photos in photoshop by simply cloning pixels. Some reading points ideas could be: Disappearing Cryptography: Information Hiding: Steganography and Watermarking (Book covering DRM) Digital Rights Management: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (Book also covering DRM but with sample chapters online at https://books.google.co.uk/books?isbn=1466621370) https://www.controlledvocabulary.com/blog/embedded-metadata-wont-help-seo.html (webpage covering Metadata) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4119663/ (webpage covering Digital Watermarking and Fingerprinting Techniques, also checkout their ‘similar articles’ on the right-hand side of the page) http://scisweb.ulster.ac.uk/~kevin/spvol90.pdf (26-page pdf covering steganography) Something to think about is how much is the value of the images against the amount of time you want to invest on a solution and also the cost of its implantation. All the best Andy

Hi KCmetro, thanks for replying. I've seen the min specs (I'll be getting my AURORA MR starter package next week ) but I was hoping to get as near to possible to the current recommend specs for the low price. If you has a spare system with the above specs, what would you do? Thanks

Hi all, I’m currently running an AMD FX-6100 Six-Core Processor on a M5A78L-M/USB3 MB with 16G of 10666 DDR3. My GPU is only a Radeon 6850 1G. So, as you can see it’s an old system which I mainly use for running multiply VM’s (LAMPs and WAMPS, SQL servers and various versions of Windows) for programming, web design and the odd few older games. I’m looking to upgrade to be able to run Star Citizen at 'around' the recommended specs BUT this upgrade needs to be at a low cost. Can this even be done for £300 – 400($400 – 500)? I would like to keep the MB and just update the CPU and GPU if poss. “Recommended System Requirements are as of June 11, 2016, Alpha 2.4.0 are: Processor - Quad Core CPU (Intel Core i7-4770K or comparable) GPU (Graphics Card): DirectX - Version 11- AMD A10-7700K, AMD Radeon HD 7990, GeForce GTX 780 or similar with at least 4GB Video RAM” Would you buy a FX-8370 for £170 (I’ve got a max of 140W TDP to play with) and spend the rest on and Radeon RX 480 4GB or GTX 1050 4GB? Maybe keep the CPU and go for a RX 480 8GB or GTX 1070 8GB. I know at this price point I’m pushing this however I can’t justify spending much more. Thanks for looks and any input is welcome. Cheers

Hi all, My first post on this forum, I joined to ask some questions however I would like to offer some input here if I can. Over the last ten years I’ve been playing with hobby web programming / sites (with a few commercial web sites) and some windows desktop applications (I released some not very good freeware many years ago). One way to start is to have a goal. Are you a member of a sports team, in rock band or are you a DJ that needs a website? If so you could try HTML / CSS (for Web design) then move onto PHP / MySQL (for Web programming and Database). You could install a web server on your local PC (search ‘WAMP’ for windows or ‘LAMP’ for Linux, both are free). There are lots of free HTML and PHP editors. If you have an older unused PC then you could turn it into your own Web server at no cost which is also a great project. If desktop programming floats your boat, then I would like to recommend Microsoft’s Visual Studio community (which is also free) and Visual Basic .Net. Visual Studio is a great IDE and VB.net has a very easy learning curve. There are 100’s of hours of good video guides on their website. Plus, you can also use Visual Studio for web design. For mobile apps then check out Android There are 100’s of different languages and they all have their good and bad points but once you learn the basics of any language you will find its common tracts to most i.e. objects, variables and functions. Check out edx.org which offers free IT starter courses from mayor universities like MIT, Harvard and Cal tech. Hope this helps