{"id":954,"date":"2007-10-27T13:31:43","date_gmt":"2007-10-27T18:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2007\/10\/27\/a-christmas-countdown-timer\/"},"modified":"2012-01-28T16:49:44","modified_gmt":"2012-01-28T21:49:44","slug":"a-christmas-countdown-timer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2007\/10\/27\/a-christmas-countdown-timer\/","title":{"rendered":"A Christmas Countdown Timer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, that&#8217;s right. A silly little program, really, but one I&#8217;ve <a href=\"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2003\/12\/09\/something-fun\/\">released (for free) before<\/a> &#8211; and now I&#8217;ve <a href=\"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/files\/cc\/setup.exe\" title=\"Christmas Countdown Timer Setup\">re-done it<\/a>, using .NET.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the lowdown:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The program runs in your system tray (sorry&#8230; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/oldnewthing\/archive\/2003\/09\/10\/54831.aspx\">taskbar notification area<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>Double-clicking on it shows you how many days are left until Christmas<\/li>\n<li>Right-clicking brings up a menu where you can choose to display a different screen with the countdown on it, get &#8220;about&#8221; information, or exit the program.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m a nice programmer, so I did not make this program add itself  to your start-up group. You have to start it on your own.<\/li>\n<li>The program does check for updates each time you open it &#8211; you can&#8217;t turn this off, but you don&#8217;t have to install updates if you don&#8217;t want to. It won&#8217;t install them without your permission.<\/li>\n<li>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/files\/cc\/ChristmasCountdown.zip\" title=\"Christmas Countdown Timer Source Code (ZIP)\">source code<\/a> is available for anyone who wants to see how it&#8217;s done.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The requirements are simple:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Windows 98 or higher<\/li>\n<li>.NET Framework 2.0 or greater<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Some screenshots:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/cc_icon_pic.png\" alt=\"Christmas Countdown icon\" \/><\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the icon there, the yellow and green balls. Yeah, I&#8217;m not good with icons, I know.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/cc_menu.png\" alt=\"Christmas Countdown menu\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Right-click on the icon and this is what you get. Simple, eh?<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/cc_window.png\" alt=\"Christmas Countdown window\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Clicking &#8220;Show Countdown&#8221; gets you this fun screen. The rest you can figure out on your own.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/files\/cc\/setup.exe\" title=\"Christmas Countdown Timer Setup\">Click here to download the Christmas Countdown Timer<\/a>. Enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, that&#8217;s right. A silly little program, really, hey, you might find it amusing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[30,32,389,29,31],"class_list":["post-954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun-stuff","tag-net","tag-christmas","tag-fun-stuff","tag-program","tag-visual-basic","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pimUj-fo","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":71,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2003\/12\/09\/something-fun\/","url_meta":{"origin":954,"position":0},"title":"Something Fun","author":"Keith Survell","date":"December 9, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Oh, something for y'all who like Christmas: My Christmas Countdown Utility. It's a small little program for Windows-based PCs that (as you would expect from the title) counts down the days until Christmas. It also has a built-in reminder that you can set, for simple \"alarm\" functionality. You can even\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;personal&quot;","block_context":{"text":"personal","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/personal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":272,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2004\/10\/07\/isg-report\/","url_meta":{"origin":954,"position":1},"title":"ISG Report","author":"Keith Survell","date":"October 7, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"\"According to news reports, the testimony of Charles Duelfer and the thousand-page Iraq Survey Group report released yesterday suggest that Saddam Hussein had no WMD stockpiles and had not built any since 1992, but that he intended to restart the weapons program following the elimination of UN sanctions.\"","rel":"","context":"In &quot;politics&quot;","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1188,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/07\/02\/windows-still-works-for-me\/","url_meta":{"origin":954,"position":2},"title":"Windows Still Works for Me","author":"Keith Survell","date":"July 2, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I ran across this story from Ernie the Attorney today about a lawyer who was having trouble with Windows and got some rather strange advice from a \"Windows zealot\" in a discussion group: The Windows zealot tells him that if he switches to a Mac just to avoid those problems\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;personal&quot;","block_context":{"text":"personal","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/personal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2008\/07\/start-menu-1-150x150.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":800,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2006\/10\/13\/johns-background-switcher\/","url_meta":{"origin":954,"position":3},"title":"John&#8217;s Background Switcher","author":"Keith Survell","date":"October 13, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The other day I stumbled across this great utility from John's Adventures called (appropriately enough) John's Background Switcher. Let me start by saying: this is a great program!","rel":"","context":"In &quot;tech&quot;","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4460,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2013\/10\/18\/windows-8-1-is-it-better\/","url_meta":{"origin":954,"position":4},"title":"Windows 8.1 is Here &#8211; Is it any Better?","author":"Keith Survell","date":"October 18, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Windows 8.1 was just released as a free update for anyone with Windows 8 - but the real question is: is it any good?","rel":"","context":"In &quot;My Opinion&quot;","block_context":{"text":"My Opinion","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/personal\/my-opinion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Windows 8.1","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2013\/10\/windows-8-1.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":603,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/08\/16\/line-counting\/","url_meta":{"origin":954,"position":5},"title":"Line Counting","author":"Keith Survell","date":"August 16, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"My own free program to count the number of lines of code (LOC) in your VB6 project.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;tech&quot;","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}