27 May 09 First Annual Kevin Duckworth Scholarship Car Show

 

June 27th 2009

12P.M. - 6P.M.

We'd like to welcome one and all to the first annual Kevin Duckworth Scholarship Car Show, a part of Kingpin Car Audio and Motoring's 3rd annual Summer Bash Sale! Not only will almost 60 trophies be awarded. But there will be many chances throughout the day to win some of the best raffle items EVER to be given out at a car show! Meanwhile, you will be able to purchase some of the best audio equipment around, for the best deals around. Because of Kingpin Car Audio and Motoring's 3rd Summer Bash Sale. Providing outstanding prices on anything you could possibly need for your car. So mark your calenders for June 27th 2009, but register today!

SPECIAL AWARDS
- Kevin Duckworth Award (Best of Show)
- SiKKreations Choice
- KingPins Choice - Audio

BEST OF CLASS
- Best Engine Compartment
- Best Paint
- Best Interior
- Best Custom - Import
- Best Custom - Domestic
- Best Muscle Car - Modern
- Best Muscle Car - Classic

IMPORT CLASSES
- Best Honda/Acura (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
- Best VW/Audi (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
- Best Subaru (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
- Best Scion (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
- Best Toyota/Lexus (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
- Best Mazda (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
- Best Mitsubishi (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
- Best Nissan/Infinity (1st, 2nd, 3rd)

DOMESTIC CLASSES
- Best Classic Ford (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
- Best Modern Ford (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
- Best Classic GM (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
- Best Modern GM (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
- Best Classic Dodge/Chrysler (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
- Best Modern Dodge/Chrysler (1st, 2nd, 3rd)

MISC CLASSES
- Best Truck
- Best Motorcycle/ATV
- Best Other
- Best Luxury/European
- Loudest DB Award (Audio Contest)
- Club Participation Award

GUITAR HERO COMPETITION
Just one more bonus in there for you guys, there will be a Guitar Hero competition going on throughout the day at the Kevin Duckworth Scholarship Car Show! Stop by day of, you don't even need to be showing your car to partake! The winner of the bracketed contest will walk away with some serious prizes!

More information and registration can be found by clicking here!

Tags: auto, cars, racing

21 May 09 Why did I take so long to switch to a mac?

So a couple weeks ago I decided to pick up an apple powerbook. It's not my first mac by any means, but the first one in about 10 years. It's my first OSX mac, we'll put it that way.

Mac users talk all the time about when they switched, and how they never look back, etc, and I already knew I'd feel that way. So why did I wait so long? That's a pretty good question.

 

 

Reasons a mac is right for me

There are a lot of reasons people use them, but here are a few of the reasons I decided to switch.

1. Unix. OSX is based on it, and I've been a unix buff for years. Ever since the first time I figured out how to break out of the shell program at the public library in the 80s, I was curious about this operating system. I could write tons of articles on what makes unix great, but that's not the scope of the article. Bottom line: Unix is the greatest operating system I've ever used, and OSX puts a really nice interface to it.

2. Reliability. This ties into the OSX operating system as well, far more stable than windows. but this goes for their hardware too. Apple controls all the hardware, which makes it more expensive, but the integration between the hardware and OS are rock solid. Not to mention you don't have to worry about relying on a soldering job some 8 year old in china performed.

3. Power. Macs have it. Lots of it. It takes way longer for a mac to go obsolete. You can keep them for years and years.

4. Viruses and Malware. Yeah you don't exactly have to worry about that. Yes, you can lock down a windows system, I do that. But the extra time you have to put into that is a pain. And some people argue "viruses and malware are written for PCs because that's what everyone is using, it's not because OSX is so much better".  Even if that is true, who cares? The bottom line is you don't have to worry about it with a mac.

5. Windows sucks. I can honestly say after years of using XP, I find it somewhat tolerable. You can dial it in and lock it down, and use it pretty reliably. But it's still not OSX, and it's still a pain in the butt. And the direction Microsoft has been heading with their operating systems has me searching for alternatives anyway.

6. Smug factor. Admit, it feels kinda good to say "I use a mac, so I don't have to worry about that"

Anyway, so a couple weeks ago I picked up a powerbook, and now my PC is collecting dust. I use my computer for the following things:

1. Web Development
2. Graphic Design
3. Software Development
4. Lolcats
5. .net development
6. blogging

There is only one thing on that list I can't do with a mac, though I do it often. So basically if I want to do .net stuff, I'll fire up my PC, but for the most part the mac is now the daily driver. I bought it, configured it with Xampp, Zend Studio, Adobe Creative Suite, etc and dialed it in and I'm ready to go.

I don't know why I waited this long to switch, but it sure has been really easy to do so.

Get a mac. Too expensive? find a used on on Craigslist.  Even if it's a few years old, it's probably faster than your current PC. Give it a shot, you won't regret it!

03 Feb 09 How to write text files in C#

So you want to know how to write a text file in C#? It's actually super easy. This tutorial explains how.

Tags: c, C sharp, C#.net, C++ tutorials, Visual Studio

31 Jan 09 How to write text files with C++

If you're reading this tutorial, it's likely because you googled how to read and write text files with C++.  And it's probably a pretty lucky guess you're a beginner, so I'll try to explain as much as I can here to make it clear.

If you're thinking of getting into C++, hopefully this example will show you that it's not as complicated as commonly thought. C++ can be very difficult, but the performance advantages are worth the effort sometimes. Java and C# are definitely stealing marketshare from C++, but it still has it's place in the software development world, mainly in applications that require high performance. But that's for another article. Let's get started.

For this example, I'm using Bloodshed Dev C++, because it's simple, fast and free. You could just as easily use Visual C++ express, also free, but I feel that Dev C++ is far simpler, and better for learning the code.

Go to file->new and create a new project. Your options should look like this:

Start a new C++ project, and call it whatever you want. You can save the dev file wherever you feel neccessary. Go into options and choose a folder to put your executable:

Select Project->Project Options->(Build Options)

This will put your final executable in a folder you can easily get to when you decide to run it.

When you first create your project, you'll find the following code:
#include <cstdlib>
#include <iostream>

using namespace std;
 
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    system("PAUSE");
    return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

This code is pretty self explanatory, and I won't go into it here, because we're going to erase it anyway. Select all the code in the window and delete it. Replace it with this:

<------ start code ------->

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>

using namespace std;
int main () {
 
  ofstream myfile;
  myfile.open ("test.txt");
  myfile <<  "Hey this is my first written text file.\n";
  myfile.close();
  return 0;
}

<------ end code -------->

After you have entered this code, save the file, then press Ctrl+F9. This will compile your executable. Run it from the command prompt, wherever you set it to build to. In my case, it looks like this:

When you run the executable it generates test.txt. Everything you specified in your cout gets written to a file. But lets examine how that happened.

The following code is the start of your program:

int main () {

This is the starting point of your program. Wherever you see main() that is the method you use to start your program. By putting this in you are telling the compiler where to begin. "Int" is the return type, which I will talk about in future tutorials. "int" stands for integer, which is what your main function must return. For this example, you don't need to be concerned with that part, but in the future, you will create funtions which return a datatype, and it will become more important.

The following opens up an output file stream:

ofstream myfile;

What this does is open up a stream for file output. You can get more info about ofstream here. By opening up this stream, you are preparing the compiler to output data to a file. You create an object called "myfile" that you can use to perform the necessary file output functions.

myfile.open ("test.txt");

As you've probably guessed, this is how you open your file. You are using that same ofstream object to open a file you specify within the parentheses. In our case, we are instructing the myfile object to open test.txt.

myfile << "Hey this is my first written text file.\n";

This portion of the code does the actual writing. You are essentially "pushing" the data to the file object using the << operator. You can see above the line of text, and then followed by \n. At the end of the string we put \n to indicate a new line. This is what's known as a "escape character" and is used to create a new line. Play around with this line and see what you can do with it. You can use \n as many times as needed to format your output with the proper line breaks.

Finally, we need to close the file:

l

  myfile.close();
  return 0;

By calling the close method of myfile, we are closing the file we wrote to. While not required, you should always close your files on execution. If you are building an application, whether it's just one person using it or hundreds, you should always close the files used, for resource usage purposes. Too many files loaded into memory can be a bad thing. Note that we also return 0, as a "success flag" for the compiler. The program exits at this point.

When you run the executable, it will generate a text file, as you've specified. This concludes our lesson. You can use these same methods to read another file, filter it and build it another file. You can also build something that will filter the strings being parsed, and write strings with different patterns, or pretty much anything you can imagine.

So copy this code, and try it out. If you have any questions, or need general help, be sure to ask in our forums. I will gladly help others trying to learn who are stuck on something. Till then, enjoy!!

Tags: c, Programming