I have a non technical blog here:
http://www.nerdyentertainment.com

Set objNotes = CreateObject("Lotus.NotesSession")
Call objNotes.Initialize(strNotesPassword)
Set Maildb = objNotes.GetDatabase("", strLotusNotesDatabase)
If Not Maildb.IsOpen = True Then
  Call Maildb.Open
End If
Set MailDoc = Maildb.CreateDocument
Call MailDoc.ReplaceItemValue("Form", "Memo")
Call MailDoc.ReplaceItemValue("SendTo", arrSendTo)
Call MailDoc.ReplaceItemValue("BlindCopyTo", arrBlindCopyTo)
Call MailDoc.ReplaceItemValue("Subject", strSubject)
Set Body = MailDoc.CreateRichTextItem("Body")
Call Body.AppendText(strBodyText)
Call Body.AddNewLine(2)
Call Body.EmbedObject(1454, "", c:\attachment.doc", "Attachment")
MailDoc.SaveMessageOnSend = True
Call MailDoc.ReplaceItemValue("PostedDate", Now())
Call MailDoc.Send(False)

Function GetLocalIPConfig
  strResult = ""
  With CreateObject("Wscript.Shell").Exec("ipconfig").StdOut
    Do Until .AtEndOfStream
      strResult = strResult & .ReadLine
    Loop
  End With
  GetLocalIPConfig = strResult
End Function

Set objServiceManager = CreateObject(“com.sun.star.ServiceManager”)
Set objDesktop = objServiceManager.createInstance(“com.sun.star.frame.Desktop”)
Set objCalcDoc = objDesktop.loadComponentFromURL(“file:///C:/file.ods”, “_blank”, 0, Array())
Set objSheet = objCalcDoc.getSheets().getByIndex(0)
objSheet.getCellByPosition(0, 0).SetString(“Henrik Falk”)
objSheet.getCellByPosition(0, 0).charWeight = 150

If you want to open a new spreadsheet, use this code instead:
Set objCalcDoc = objDesktop.loadComponentFromURL(“private:factory/scalc”, “_blank”, 0, Array())

The following code sends a GET request to www.google.com

var url = "www.google.com";
var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
request.open("GET", url, false);
request.send(null);
textArea.value = request.responseText;

The false entry in the call to the open function means that this call isn’t asynchronous, that is, the script will pause until it gets a response from the server before continuing running. The null parameter in the send method doesn’t seem to be necessary, but it’s supposed to be there. responseText is the result as plain text returned by the server. If the response is valid XML, that will be stored in responseXML.

Not terribly exciting looking at the source code for the front page of Google though . Luckily Google uses GET for it’s searches, so we can easily modify the URL to this:

var url = "http://www.google.com/search?q=IBM";
var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
request.open("GET", url, false);
request.send(null);
textArea.value = request.responseText;

Or even:

var term = "IBM";
var url = "http://www.google.com/search?q=" + term;
var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
request.open("GET", url, false);
request.send(null);
textArea.value = request.responseText;

We will now get the search results for the search term IBM. Mind you it’s just the source code for the result page, it’s not very pretty, but the information is there.

If we want to use the POST method, things get a bit trickier since we can’t just modify the URL.

var param = "search?q=IBM";
var url = "http://www.google.com";
var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
request.open("POST", url, false);
request.setRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
request.setRequestHeader("Content-length", param.length);
request.setRequestHeader("Connection", "keep-alive");
request.send(param);

So, what’s new here? The first one is the param variable. It’s pretty much what would have been added after the URL had this been a GET request. Next we can see that we now call the open method with the POST parameter. Then we need to specify the HTTP headers that has to be in a POST request. Finally we can see that we are now sending our parameter to the send method instead of attaching it to the end of the URL.

I used all this to interface with a site that I didn’t control. Luckily, since I did it in an HTA, it worked. When I tried it as a website it wouldn’t work. I’m assuming that it’s because of the same origin policy in my browser. It’s not allowing me to load something from another site then the one the script is running in. I’m sure there’s a way around that, but so far my HTA is working fine anyway.

I have only used it to translate from 3 octets of bytes (the type starting with 1110), but the principle should stand.

Function UTF8ToUTF16(strUTF8)
  binUTF8 = HexToBin(strUTF8)
  if left(binUTF8, 1) = "0" then
    strResult = "0" & BinToHex(mid(binUTF8, 2, 7))
  elseif left(binUTF8, 3) = "110" then
    strResult = "0" & mid(binUTF8, 2, 7) & mid(binUTF8, 11, 6)
  elseif left(binUTF8, 4) = "1110" then
    strResult = mid(binUTF8, 5, 4) & mid(binUTF8, 11, 6) & mid(binUTF8, 19, 6)
  elseif left(binUTF8, 5) = "11110" then
    strResult = "000" & mid(binUTF8, 6, 3) & mid(binUTF8, 11, 6) & mid(binUTF8, 27, 6)
  end if
  UTF8ToUTF16 = BinToHex(strResult)
End Function

Here are the BinToHex and the HexToBin functions that it uses.

Function HexToBin(hexNumber)
redim arrHexNumber(len(hexNumber) - 1)
 for i=1 to len(hexNumber)
 arrHexNumber(i - 1) = mid(hexNumber, i, 1)
 next
 for each hexChar in arrHexNumber
 if hexChar = "0" then strResult = strResult & "0000"
 if hexChar = "1" then strResult = strResult & "0001"
 if hexChar = "2" then strResult = strResult & "0010"
 if hexChar = "3" then strResult = strResult & "0011"
 if hexChar = "4" then strResult = strResult & "0100"
 if hexChar = "5" then strResult = strResult & "0101"
 if hexChar = "6" then strResult = strResult & "0110"
 if hexChar = "7" then strResult = strResult & "0111"
 if hexChar = "8" then strResult = strResult & "1000"
 if hexChar = "9" then strResult = strResult & "1001"
 if hexChar = "A" then strResult = strResult & "1010"
 if hexChar = "B" then strResult = strResult & "1011"
 if hexChar = "C" then strResult = strResult & "1100"
 if hexChar = "D" then strResult = strResult & "1101"
 if hexChar = "E" then strResult = strResult & "1110"
 if hexChar = "F" then strResult = strResult & "1111"
 next
 HexToBin = strResult
End Function

Function BinToHex(binNumber)
redim arrBinNumber(len(binNumber) - 1)
 for i=1 to len(binNumber) step 4
 arrBinNumber(i - 1) = mid(binNumber, i, 4)
 next
 for each binChar in arrBinNumber
 if binChar = "0000" then strResult = strResult & "0"
 if binChar = "0001" then strResult = strResult & "1"
 if binChar = "0010" then strResult = strResult & "2"
 if binChar = "0011" then strResult = strResult & "3"
 if binChar = "0100" then strResult = strResult & "4"
 if binChar = "0101" then strResult = strResult & "5"
 if binChar = "0110" then strResult = strResult & "6"
 if binChar = "0111" then strResult = strResult & "7"
 if binChar = "1000" then strResult = strResult & "8"
 if binChar = "1001" then strResult = strResult & "9"
 if binChar = "1010" then strResult = strResult & "A"
 if binChar = "1011" then strResult = strResult & "B"
 if binChar = "1100" then strResult = strResult & "C"
 if binChar = "1101" then strResult = strResult & "D"
 if binChar = "1110" then strResult = strResult & "E"
 if binChar = "1111" then strResult = strResult & "F"
 next
 BinToHex = strResult
End Function

I like hexadecimal since it has a direct correlation to the binary numeral system.

Each number in the hexadecimal system represents four numbers in the binary system. This is because hexadecimal uses the radix 16, and binary the radix 2. And 2^4 = 16.

The usefulness of hex quickly becomes apparent when you are working with large binary numbers. If you want to translate 0101 to decimal, you have to find the value for each of the numbers individually and add them up.

In this case it isn’t very hard. 8*0 + 4*1 + 2*0 + 1*1 = 5. And in hexadecimal 5 is still 5.

Lets try a longer binary number, 1001 0101. Now it gets harder (more time consuming) to convert it to decimal.

128*1 + 64*0 + 32*0 + 16*1 + 8*0 + 4*1 + 2*0 + 1*1 = 149

This is when hexadecimal starts to shine. Remember that one hexadecimal number equals four binary numbers? That means that we can separate the binary numbers and translate them to hexadecimal in groups of four.

First we translate 0101, since we already know that’s 5 in decimal and hex.

Then we translate 1001 to decimal.
8*1 + 4*0 + 2*0 + 1*1 = 9. So in hexadecimal 1001 0101 is written 95.

Binary          1001 0101
Hexadecimal  9      5

This means that we never have to work with larger binary numbers then four bytes when translating to hex. Since the range of four bits in decimal is 0 to 15, this is something that comes naturally after a short time of working with them.

Does this mean that hex is easy to read? Of course not, but it’s easier to read then binary, and since there is a direct correlation between hex and binary, that’s what makes hex useful.

If you want to implement the OpenProcess Function in C#. We can see on MSDN that the C++ definition for the function is:

HANDLE WINAPI OpenProcess(
  __in  DWORD dwDesiredAccess,
  __in  BOOL bInheritHandle,
  __in  DWORD dwProcessId
);

In C# thats written:

[DllImport("kernel32.dll")]
  public static extern IntPtr OpenProcess(
  int dwDesiredAccess,
  bool bInheritHandle,
  int dwProcessId
);

To not get ahead or myself, this is the code I used to get the handle to the process.  The class Process resides in the namespace System.Diagnostics.

Process[] hProcess = Process.GetProcessesByName("calc");

This line of code returns an array of all the instances of the calculator running on your machine.

IntPtr hReadProcess = OpenProcess(0x0010, true, handle[0].Id);

This line of code opens the first instance of the calculator found, and assigns the handle to hReadProcess. 0×0010 is the process access right specified to open the process with. 0×0010 means PROCESS_VM_READ, and is needed in order to use the ReadProcessMemory function on the process.

On MSDN we can see that if the OpenProcess function succeeds, it return’s an open handle. That’s of course to be expected.

But if the function fails, it will return null, still not a problem, but we are referred to call GetLastError to get a more specific error message. GetLasError unfortunately doesn’t work in C#. Sure, it “works” but the CLR itself could very easily make it’s own calls and all of a sudden the last error message isn’t what you are after.

In order to fix this problem, all we need to do is add SetLastError=true to our DllImport statement. It should now look like this:

[DllImport("kernel32.dll",SetLastError=true)]
  public static extern IntPtr OpenProcess(
  int dwDesiredAccess,
  bool bInheritHandle,
  int dwProcessId
);

Now that this is done, you can call Marshal.GetLastWin32Error, that is found in the System.Runtime.InteropServices, which we need to use anyway because of DllImport.

Now simply use this line of code to get the last error message:

MessageBox.Show(Marshal.GetLastWin32Error().ToString());

Since I don’t want or have the need for a full version of a server operating system, I’m using a trial version of Windows Server 2003 that can be downloaded here.

Make sure that you download the 32-bit version, since Virtual PC emulates a Intel Pentium III. It’s said that it emulates the host CPU on the Windows versions, but I haven’t had any luck with that.

The drawback of downloading Windows 2003 is that you have to install it on your virtual hard drive yourself. If you on the other hand want to run Windows Server 2008, you can download it preinstalled on a virtual hard drive here. The evaluation period is initially 60 days, but can be reset 2 times using this tool. Just look under the tab called Delay Activation.

This is the first thing that you will see when you start Microsoft Virtual PC for the first time.

Microsoft Virtual PC

Click in the New… button, and you will get to a Wizard.

Choose Create a virtual machine.

This specifies what the virtual machine will be called and where the settings file will be located.

Since we called the vmc (Virtual Machine Configuration) Windows Server 2003, Virtual PC automatically chooses Windows 2003 default settings for the virtual machine.

Since the default RAM is just 256 MB, I’m changing that to 1024 since I have the RAM to spare. I wouldn’t recommend giving it less then 512 MB though.

Since this is the first time using Virtual PC, you probably don’t have a virtual hard disk, so lets create a new one.

The default size of a new vhd (Virtual Hard Drive) is 65536 MB (64 GB). I think that’s a bit much, so I’m changing that to 10240 MB. That’s enough for Windows 2003 even if you install things like Visual C# 2008 Express Edition.

After that you are finished creating a virtual machine, and you will see this.

Before clicking on Start, there are a few settings that should be changed.

The options are Not connected (no networking available), Local only (networking is enabled, but only between virtual machines), a physical network card on the host machine (makes the virtual machine connect directly to the specified network interface and behave like another physical machine on the network) and Shared networking (NAT) (the virtual machine connects to the network through the host computer). I like to choose NAT here, but if you don’t want to bother with networking, just choose Not connected, and enable Shared Folders, as shown below.

As you can see, this cannot be enabled until the virtual machine additions are installed, so I will get to that later on.

Now start the virtual machine. Since there isn’t an operating system installed yet, this is what you will see.

In order to solve that problem, click on CD, and choose Capture ISO Image…

Now simply choose the ISO file with Windows 2003, and restart the virtual machine.

Since the virtual machine now have the install CD set as it’s CD drive, the Windows 2003 installation will begin.

You get to install the operating system any way that you want to, I won’t be covering how to do that here.

Since you need to press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to log in to Windows 2003, there is a slight problem. Ctrl+Alt+Delete is designed to always go to the operating system. So in this case it will go to your physical machine, no matter if you have the virtual machine in focus or not. To solve that problem there is  an option in the menu that you can click on. As you can see, pressing Alt+Delete will also send a Ctrl+Alt+Delete to the virtual machine, so that you don’t have to click in the menu every time.

When Windows have booted, click on Action -> Install or Update Virtual Machine Additions. If you are having problems clicking on Action, because the guest operating system have stolen the mouse pointer, press Alt to get it back.

You will get a Wizard that is very easy to follow. After it’s done, accept the option to restart your system.

Now you can right click on the folder down in the lower left corner and click Share Folder.

You will get a window to choose which folder from the host operating system to share, and which drive letter to give it.

You will also notice that you don’t have to press the Alt key to get your mouse pointer back, it will now be released automatically when you move it out from the virtual machine window.

That’s how to get a virtual Windows 2003 machine set up, but this works with most operating system. I have even gotten it to work with Gentoo.