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  • What makes a great place to work

    - by Rob Farley
    Co-incidentally, I’ve been looking for office space for LobsterPot Solutions during the same few days that Luke Hayler ( @lukehayler ) has asked for my thoughts (okay, he ‘tagged’ me) on what makes a great place to work . He lists People and Environment, and I’m inclined to agree, but with a couple of other things too. I have three children. Two of them (both boys) are in school, but my daughter is only two. For the boys’ schools, we quickly realised that what they need most is a feeling of safety...(read more)

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  • SQL Community – stronger than ever

    - by Rob Farley
    I posted a few hours ago about a reflection of the Summit, but I wanted to write another one for this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Chris Yates. In January of this year, Adam Jorgensen and I joked around in a video that was used for the SQL Server 2012 launch. We were asked about SQLFamily, and we said how we were like brothers – how we could drive each other crazy (the look he gave me as I patted his stomach was priceless), but that we’d still look out for each other, just like in a real family. And this is really true. Last week at the PASS Summit, there was a lot going on. I was busy as always, as were many others. People told me their good news, their awful news, and some whinged to me about other people who were driving them crazy. But throughout this, people in the SQL Server community genuinely want the best for each other. I’m sure there are exceptions, but I don’t see much of this. Australians aren’t big on cheering for each other. Neither are the English. I think we see it as an American thing. It could be easy for me to consider that the SQL Community that I see at the PASS Summit is mainly there because it’s a primarily American organisation. But when you speak to people like sponsors, or people involved in several types of communities, you quickly hear that it’s not just about that – that PASS has something special. It goes beyond cheering, it’s a strong desire to see each other succeed. I see MVPs feel disappointed for those people who don’t get awarded. I see Summit speakers concerned for those who missed out on the chance to speak. I see chapter leaders excited about the opportunity to help other chapters. And throughout, I see a gentleness and love for people that you rarely see outside the church (and sadly, many churches don’t have it either). Chris points out that the M-W dictionary defined community as “a unified body of individuals”, and I feel like this is true of the SQL Server community. It goes deeper though. It’s not just unity – and we’re most definitely different to each other – it’s more than that. We all want to see each other grow. We all want to pull ourselves up, to serve each other, and to grow PASS into something more than it is today. In that other post of mine I wrote a bit about Paul White’s experience at his first Summit. His missus wrote to me on Facebook saying that she welled up over it. But that emotion was nothing about what I wrote – it was about the reaction that the SQL Community had had to Paul. Be proud of it, my SQL brothers and sisters, and never lose it.

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  • What makes a great place to work

    - by Rob Farley
    Co-incidentally, I’ve been looking for office space for LobsterPot Solutions during the same few days that Luke Hayler ( @lukehayler ) has asked for my thoughts (okay, he ‘tagged’ me) on what makes a great place to work . He lists People and Environment, and I’m inclined to agree, but with a couple of other things too. I have three children. Two of them (both boys) are in school, but my daughter is only two. For the boys’ schools, we quickly realised that what they need most is a feeling of safety...(read more)

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  • Disaster, or Migration?

    - by Rob Farley
    This post is in two parts – technical and personal. And I should point out that it’s prompted in part by this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Allen Kinsel. First, the technical: I’ve had a few conversations with people recently about migration – moving a SQL Server database from one box to another (sometimes, but not primarily, involving an upgrade). One question that tends to come up is that of downtime. Obviously there will be some period of time between the old server being available and the new one. The way that most people seem to think of migration is this: Build a new server. Stop people from using the old server. Take a backup of the old server Restore it on the new server. Reconfigure the client applications (or alternatively, configure the new server to use the same address as the old) Make the new server online. There are other things involved, such as testing, of course. But this is essentially the process that people tell me they’re planning to follow. The bit that I want to look at today (as you’ve probably guessed from my title) is the “backup and restore” section. If a SQL database is using the Simple Recovery Model, then the only restore option is the last database backup. This backup could be full or differential. The transaction log never gets backed up in the Simple Recovery Model. Instead, it truncates regularly to stay small. One that’s using the Full Recovery Model (or Bulk-Logged) won’t truncate its log – the log must be backed up regularly. This provides the benefit of having a lot more option available for restores. It’s a requirement for most systems of High Availability, because if you’re making sure that a spare box is up-and-running, ready to take over, then you have to be interested in the logs that are happening on the current box, rather than truncating them all the time. A High Availability system such as Mirroring, Replication or Log Shipping will initialise the spare machine by restoring a full database backup (and maybe a differential backup if available), and then any subsequent log backups. Once the secondary copy is close, transactions can be applied to keep the two in sync. The main aspect of any High Availability system is to have a redundant system that is ready to take over. So the similarity for migration should be obvious. If you need to move a database from one box to another, then introducing a High Availability mechanism can help. By turning on the Full Recovery Model and then taking a backup (so that the now-interesting logs have some context), logs start being kept, and are therefore available for getting the new box ready (even if it’s an upgraded version). When the migration is ready to occur, a failover can be done, letting the new server take over the responsibility of the old, just as if a disaster had happened. Except that this is a planned failover, not a disaster at all. There’s a fine line between a disaster and a migration. Failovers can be useful in patching, upgrading, maintenance, and more. Hopefully, even an unexpected disaster can be seen as just another failover, and there can be an opportunity there – perhaps to get some work done on the principal server to increase robustness. And if I’ve just set up a High Availability system for even the simplest of databases, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. :) So now the personal: It’s been an interesting time recently... June has been somewhat odd. A court case with which I was involved got resolved (through mediation). I can’t go into details, but my lawyers tell me that I’m allowed to say how I feel about it. The answer is ‘lousy’. I don’t regret pursuing it as long as I did – but in the end I had to make a decision regarding the commerciality of letting it continue, and I’m going to look forward to the days when the kind of money I spent on my lawyers is small change. Mind you, if I had a similar situation with an employer, I’d do the same again, but that doesn’t really stop me feeling frustrated about it. The following day I had to fly to country Victoria to see my grandmother, who wasn’t expected to last the weekend. She’s still around a week later as I write this, but her 92-year-old body has basically given up on her. She’s been a Christian all her life, and is looking forward to eternity. We’ll all miss her though, and it’s hard to see my family grieving. Then on Tuesday, I was driving back to the airport with my family to come home, when something really bizarre happened. We were travelling down the freeway, just pulled out to go past a truck (farm-truck sized, not a semi-trailer), when a car-sized mass of metal fell off it. It was something like an industrial air-conditioner, but from where I was sitting, it was just a mass of spinning metal, like something out of a movie (one friend described it as “holidays by Michael Bay”). Somehow, and I’m really don’t know how, the part of it nearest us bounced high enough to clear the car, and there wasn’t even a scratch. We pulled over the check, and I was just thanking God that we’d changed lanes when we had, and that we remained unharmed. I had all kinds of thoughts about what could’ve happened if we’d had something that size land on the windscreen... All this has drilled home that while I feel that I haven’t provided as well for the family as I could’ve done (like by pursuing an expensive legal case), I shouldn’t even consider that I have proper control over things. I get to live life, and make decisions based on what I feel is right at the time. But I’m not going to get everything right, and there will be things that feel like disasters, some which could’ve been in my control and some which are very much beyond my control. The case feels like something I could’ve pursued differently, a disaster that could’ve been avoided in some way. Gran dying is lousy of course. An accident on the freeway would have been awful. I need to recognise that the worst disasters are ones that I can’t affect, and that I need to look at things in context – perhaps seeing everything that happens as a migration instead. Life is never the same from one day to the next. Every event has a before and an after – sometimes it’s clearly positive, sometimes it’s not. I remember good events in my life (such as my wedding), and bad (such as the loss of my father when I was ten, or the back injury I had eight years ago). I’m not suggesting that I know how to view everything from the “God works all things for good” perspective, but I am trying to look at last week as a migration of sorts. Those things are behind me now, and the future is in God’s hands. Hopefully I’ve learned things, and will be able to live accordingly. I’ve come through this time now, and even though I’ll miss Gran, I’ll see her again one day, and the future is bright.

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  • Problem Installing Ubuntu 12.04 - [Errno 5]

    - by Rob Barker
    I'm trying to intall Ubuntu 12.04 to my brand new eBay purchased hard drive. Only got the drive today and already it's causing me problems. The seller is a proper proffesional company with 99.9% positive feedback, so it seems unlikely they would have sold me something rubbish. My old hard drive packed up last Tuesday and so i bought a new one to replace it. Because this was an entirely new drive i decided to install Ubuntu as there was no current operating system. My computer is an eMachines EM250 netbook. There's no disc drive so i am installing from a USB stick. The new operating system loads beautifully, and the desktop appears just as it should. When i click install i am taken to the installer which copies the files to about 35% and then displays this: [Errno 5] Input/output error This is often due to a faulty CD/DVD disk or drive, or a faulty hard disk. It may help to clean the CD/DVD, to burn the CD/DVD at a lower speed, to clean the CD/DVD drive lens (cleaning kits are often available from electronics suppliers), to check whether the hard disk is old and in need of replacement, or to move the system to a cooler environment. The hard drive can be heard constantly crackling. When i booted Ubuntu 12.04 from my old faulty hard drive as a test, i didn't even make it past the purple Ubuntu screen, so it can't be that bad. Any ideas? Message to the moderators. Please do not close this thread. I'm well aware there may be other threads on this, but i don't want it closing as the others do not provide the answer i am looking for. Thank you.

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  • Fixed-Function vs Shaders: Which for beginner?

    - by Rob Hays
    I'm currently going to college for computer science. Although I do plan on utilizing an existing engine at some point to create a small game, my aim right now is towards learning the fundamentals: namely, 3D programming. I've already done some research regarding the choice between DirectX and OpenGL, and the general sentiment that came out of that was that whether you choose OpenGL or DirectX as your training-wheels platform, a lot of the knowledge is transferrable to the other platform. Therefore, since OpenGL is supported by more systems (probably a silly reason to choose what to learn), I decided that I'm going to learn OpenGL first. After I made this decision to learn OpenGL, I did some more research and found out about a dichotomy that I was somewhere unaware of all this time: fixed-function OpenGL vs. modern programmable shader-based OpenGL. At first, I thought it was an obvious choice that I should choose to learn shader-based OpenGL since that's what's most commonly used in the industry today. However, I then stumbled upon the very popular Learning Modern 3D Graphics Programming by Jason L. McKesson, located here: http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/ I read through the introductory bits, and in the "About This Book" section, the author states: "First, much of what is learned with this approach must be inevitably abandoned when the user encounters a graphics problem that must be solved with programmability. Programmability wipes out almost all of the fixed function pipeline, so the knowledge does not easily transfer." yet at the same time also makes the case that fixed-functionality provides an easier, more immediate learning curve for beginners by stating: "It is generally considered easiest to teach neophyte graphics programmers using the fixed function pipeline." Naturally, you can see why I might be conflicted about which paradigm to learn: Do I spend a lot of time learning (and then later unlearning) the ways of fixed-functionality, or do I choose to start out with shaders? My primary concern is that modern programmable shaders somehow require the programmer to already understand the fixed-function pipeline, but I doubt that's the case. TL;DR == As an aspiring game graphics programmer, is it in my best interest to learn 3D programming through fixed-functionality or modern shader-based programming?

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  • How views are changing in future versions of SQL

    - by Rob Farley
    April is here, and this weekend, SQL v11.0 (previous known as Denali, now known as SQL Server 2012) reaches general availability. And so I thought I’d share some news about what’s coming next. I didn’t hear this at the MVP Summit earlier this year (where there was lots of NDA information given, but I didn’t go), so I think I’m free to share it. I’ve written before about CTEs being query-scoped views. Well, the actual story goes a bit further, and will continue to develop in future versions. A CTE is a like a “temporary temporary view”, scoped to a single query. Due to globally-scoped temporary objects using a two-hashes naming style, and session-scoped (or ‘local’) temporary objects a one-hash naming style, this query-scoped temporary object uses a cunning zero-hash naming style. We see this implied in Books Online in the CREATE TABLE page, but as we know, temporary views are not yet supported in the SQL Server. However, in a breakaway from ANSI-SQL, Microsoft is moving towards consistency with their naming. We know that a CTE is a “common table expression” – this is proving to be a more strategic than you may have appreciated. Within the Microsoft product group, the term “Table Expression” is far more widely used than just CTEs. Anything that can be used in a FROM clause is referred to as a Table Expression, so long as it doesn’t actually store data (which would make it a Table, rather than a Table Expression). You can see this is not just restricted to the product group by doing an internet search for how the term is used without ‘common’. In the past, Books Online has referred to a view as a “virtual table” (but notice that there is no SQL 2012 version of this page). However, it was generally decided that “virtual table” was a poor name because it wasn’t completely accurate, and it’s typically accepted that virtualisation and SQL is frowned upon. That page I linked to says “or stored query”, which is slightly better, but when the SQL 2012 version of that page is actually published, the line will be changed to read: “A view is a stored table expression (STE)”. This change will be the first of many. During the SQL 2012 R2 release, the keyword VIEW will become deprecated (this will be SQL v11 SP1.5). Three versions later, in SQL 14.5, you will need to be in compatibility mode 140 to allow “CREATE VIEW” to work. Also consistent with Microsoft’s deprecation policy, the execution of any query that refers to an object created as a view (rather than the new “CREATE STE”), will cause a Deprecation Event to fire. This will all be in preparation for the introduction of Single-Column Table Expressions (to be introduced in SQL 17.3 SP6) which will finally shut up those people waiting for a decent implementation of Inline Scalar Functions. And of course, CTEs are “Common” because the Table Expression definition needs to be repeated over and over throughout a stored procedure. ...or so I think I heard at some point. Oh, and congratulations to all the new MVPs on this April 1st. @rob_farley

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  • What is the best HTML specification to be used as of Q1 2011?

    - by Rob McKinnon
    While developing a web application, what is the best spec to use? HTML4.01 HTML5 XHTML trans XHTML1.1 I was taught to use XHTML1.0 strict in uni and to avoid applet/iframe/tables(except in forms). I noticed that some deprecated tags are available in HTML5. Is it safe to code in HTML5? If so should I use target='', and the aforementioned tags? I have noticed that there are many alternatives to choose from including canvas, object. I have no preference, although Iframe tags are being dispensed from sources like Facebook/Google/etc. What would be the best avenue to take for Spec as of now(Feb 2011)?

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  • SSMS hanging without error when connecting to SQL

    - by Rob Farley
    Scary day for me last Thursday. I had gone up to Brisbane, and was due to speak at the Queensland SQL User Group on Thursday night. Unfortunately, disaster struck about an hour beforehand. Nothing to do with the recent floods (although we were meeting in a different location because of them). It was actually down to the fact that I’d been fiddling with my machine to get Virtual Server running on Windows 7, and SQL had finally picked up a setting from then. I could run Management Studio, but it couldn’t connect at all. No error, it just seemed to hang. One of the things you have to do to get Virtual Server installed is to tweak the Group Policy settings. I’d used gpupdate /force to get Windows to pick up the new setting, which allowed me to get Virtual Server running properly, but at the time, SQL was still using the previous settings. Finally when in Brisbane, my machine picked up the new settings, and caused me pain. Dan Benediktson describes the situation. If the SQL client picks up the wrong value out of the GetOverlappedResult API (which is required for various changes in Windows 7 behaviour), then Virtual Server can be installed, but SQL Server won’t allow connections. Yay. Luckily, it’s easy enough to change back using the Group Policy editor (gpedit.msc). Then restarting the machine (again!, as gpupdate /force didn’t cut it either, because SQL had already picked up the value), and finally I could reconnect. On Thursday I simply borrowed another machine for my talk. Today, one of my guys had seen and remembered Dan’s post. Thanks, both of you.

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  • How do I make the jump from developing for Android to Windows Phone 7?

    - by Rob S.
    I'm planning on making the jump over from developing apps for Android to developing apps for Windows Phone 7 as well. For starters, I figured I would port over my simplest app. The code itself isn't much of a problem as the transition from Java to C# isn't that bad. If anything, this transition is actually easier than I expected. What is troublesome is switching SDKs. I've already compiled some basic Windows Phone 7 apps and ran through some tutorials but I'm still feeling a bit lost. For example, I'm not sure what the equivalent of a ScrollView on Android would be on Windows Phone 7. So does anyone have any advice or any resources they can offer me to help me make this transition? Additionally, any comments on the Windows Phone 7 app market (especially in comparison to the Android market) would also be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much in advance for your time.

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  • Script/tool to import series of snapshots, each being a new revision, into Subversion, populating source tree?

    - by Rob
    I've developed code locally and taken a fairly regular snapshot whenever I reach a significant point in development, e.g. a working build. So I have a long-ish list of about 40 folders, each folder being a snapshot e.g. in ascending date YYYYMMDD order, e.g.:- 20100523 20100614 20100721 20100722 20100809 20100901 20101001 20101003 20101104 20101119 20101203 20101218 20110102 I'm looking for a script to import each of these snapshots as a new subversion revision to the source tree. The end result being that the HEAD revision is the same as the last snapshot, and other revisions are as numbered. Some other requirements: that the HEAD revision is not cumulative of the previous snapshots, i.e., files that appeared in older snapshots but which don't appear in later ones (e.g. due to refactoring etc.) should not appear in the HEAD revision. meanwhile, there should be continuity between files that do persist between snapshots. Subversion should know that there are previous versions of these files and not treat them as brand new files within each revision. Some background about my aim: I need to formally revision control this work rather than keep local private snapshot copies. I plan to release this work as open source, so version controlling would be highly recommended I am evaluating some of the current popular version control systems (Subversion and GIT) BUT I definitely need a working solution in Subversion. I'm not looking to be persuaded to use one particular tool, I need a solution for each tool I am considering as I would also like a solution in GIT (I will post an answer separately for GIT so separate camps of folks who have expertise in GIT and Subversion will be able to give focused answers on one or the other). The same question but for GIT: Script/tool to import series of snapshots, each being a new edition, into GIT, populating source tree? An outline answer for Subversion in stackoverflow.com but not enough specifics about the script: what commands to use, code to check valid scenarios if necessary - i.e. a working script basically. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2203818/is-there-anyway-to-import-xcode-snapshots-into-a-new-svn-repository

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  • Browser testing - Ideas on how to tackle it efficiently

    - by Rob
    Browser testing, the bane of any web designers life! Are there any tools and/or ways in which I can efficiently test different browsers on both Mac and PC? I not only want to test different browsers but also different versions of each browser. My current setup is on a Mac running VirtualBox with Windows Vista installed. This allows me to test both Mac and PC but the complications arise when trying to test different versions of browsers. Any one have any ideas?

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  • 24 Hours of PASS – first reflections

    - by Rob Farley
    A few days after the end of 24HOP, I find myself reflecting on it. I’m still waiting on most of the information. I want to be able to discover things like where the countries represented on each of the sessions, and things like that. So far, I have the feedback scores and the numbers of attendees. The data was provided in a PDF, so while I wait for it to appear in a more flexible format, I’ve pushed the 24 attendee numbers into Excel. This chart shows the numbers by time. Remember that we started at midnight GMT, which was 10:30am in my part of the world and 8pm in New York. It’s probably no surprise that numbers drooped a bit at the start, stayed comparatively low, and then grew as the larger populations of the English-speaking world woke up. I remember last time 24HOP ran for 24 hours straight, there were quite a few sessions with less than 100 attendees. None this time though. We got close, but even when it was 4am in New York, 8am in London and 7pm in Sydney (which would have to be the worst slot for attracting people), we still had over 100 people tuning in. As expected numbers grew as the UK woke up, and even more so as the US did, with numbers peaking at 755 for the “3pm in New York” session on SQL Server Data Tools. Kendra Little almost reached those numbers too, and certainly contributed the biggest ‘spike’ on the chart with her session five hours earlier. Of all the sessions, Kendra had the highest proportion of ‘Excellent’s for the “Overall Evaluation of the session” question, and those of you who saw her probably won’t be surprised by that. Kendra had one of the best ranked sessions from the 24HOP event this time last year (narrowly missing out on being top 3), and she has produced a lot of good video content since then. The reports indicate that there were nearly 8.5 thousand attendees across the 24 sessions, averaging over 350 at each one. I’m looking forward to seeing how many different people that was, although I do know that Wil Sisney managed to attend every single one (if you did too, please let me know). Wil even moderated one of the sessions, which made his feat even greater. Thanks Wil. I also want to send massive thanks to Dave Dustin. Dave probably would have attended all of the sessions, if it weren’t for a power outage that forced him to take a break. He was also a moderator, and it was during this session that he earned special praise. Part way into the session he was moderating, the speaker lost connectivity and couldn’t get back for about fifteen minutes. That’s an incredibly long time when you’re in a live presentation. There were over 200 people tuned in at the time, and I’m sure Dave was as stressed as I was to have a speaker disappear. I started chasing down a phone number for the speaker, while Dave spoke to the audience. And he did brilliantly. He started answering questions, and kept doing that until the speaker came back. Bear in mind that Dave hadn’t expected to give a presentation on that topic (or any other), and was simply drawing on his SQL expertise to get him through. Also consider that this was between midnight at 1am in Dave’s part of the world (Auckland, NZ). I would’ve been expecting just to welcome people, monitor questions, probably read some out, and in general, help make things run smoothly. He went far beyond the call of duty, and if I had a medal to give him, he’d definitely be getting one. On the whole, I think this 24HOP was a success. We tried a different platform, and I think for the most part it was a popular move. We didn’t ask the question “Was this better than LiveMeeting?”, but we did get a number of people telling us that they thought the platform was very good. Some people have told me I get a chance to put my feet up now that this is over. As I’m also co-ordinating a tour of SQLSaturday events across the Australia/New Zealand region, I don’t quite get to take that much of a break (plus, there’s the little thing of squeezing in seven SQL 2012 exams over the next 2.5 weeks). But I am pleased to be reflecting on this event rather than anticipating it. There were a number of factors that could have gone badly, but on the whole I’m pleased about how it went. A massive thanks to everyone involved. If you’re reading this and thinking you wish you could’ve tuned in more, don’t worry – they were all recorded and you’ll be able to watch them on demand very soon. But as well as that, PASS has a stream of content produced by the Virtual Chapters, so you can keep learning from the comfort of your desk all year round. More info on them at sqlpass.org, of course.

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  • 3D terrain map with Hexagon Grids (XNA)

    - by Rob
    I'm working on a hobby project (I'm a web/backend developer by day) and I want to create a 3D Tile (terrain) engine. I'm using XNA, but I can use MonoGame, OpenGL, or straight DirectX, so the answer does not have to be XNA specific. I'm more looking for some high level advice on how to approach this problem. I know about creating height maps and such, there are thousands of references out there on the net for that, this is a bit more specific. I'm more concerned with is the approach to get a 3D hexagon tile grid out of my terrain (since the terrain, and all 3d objects, are basically triangles). The first approach I thought about is to basically draw the triangles on the screen in the following order (blue numbers) to give me the triangles for terrain (black triangles) and then make hexes out of the triangles (red hex). http://screencast.com/t/ebrH2g5V This approach seems complicated to me since i'm basically having to draw 4 different types of triangles. The next approach I thought of was to use the existing triangles like I did for a square grid and get my hexes from 6 triangles as follows http://screencast.com/t/w9b7qKzVJtb8 This seems like the easier approach to me since there are only 2 types of triangles (i would have to play with the heights and widths to get a "perfect" hexagon, but the idea is the same. So I'm looking for: 1) Any suggestions on which approach I should take, and why. 2) How would I translate mouse position to a hexagon grid position (especially when moving the camera around), for example in the second image if the mouse pointer were the green circle, how would I determine to highlight that hexagon and then translating that into grid coordinates (assuming it is 0,0)? 3) Any references, articles, books, etc - to get me going in the right direction. Note: I've done hex grid's and mouse-grid coordinate conversion before in 2d. looking for some pointers on how to do the same in 3d. The result I would like to achieve is something similar to the following: http :// www. youtube .com / watch?v=Ri92YkyC3fw (sorry about the youtube link, but it will only let me post 2 links in this post... same rep problem i mention below...) Thanks for any help! P.S. Sorry for not posting the images inline, I apparently don't have enough rep on this stack exchange site.

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  • How do I set PATH variables for all users on a server?

    - by Rob S.
    I just finished installing LaTeX for my company's Ubuntu server that we all SSH into to use. At the end of the install it says this: Add /usr/local/texlive/2010/texmf/doc/man to MANPATH, if not dynamically determined. Add /usr/local/texlive/2010/texmf/doc/info to INFOPATH. Most importantly, add /usr/local/texlive/2010/bin/x86_64-linux to your PATH for current and future sessions. So, my question is simply: How do I do this so that these variables are set for all users on the system? (And yes, I have sudo permissions). Thanks in advance to any and all responses I receive.

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  • T-SQL Tuesday #34: Help! I Need Somebody!

    - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)
    Welcome everyone to T-SQL Tuesday Episode 34!  When last we tuned in, Mike Fal (b|t) hosted Trick Shots.  These highlighted techniques or tricks that you figured out on your own which helped you understand SQL Server better. This month, I'm asking you to look back this past week, year, century, or hour...to a time when you COULDN'T figure it out.  When you were stuck on a SQL Server problem and you had to seek help. In the beginning... SQL Server has changed a lot since I started with it.  <Cranky Old Guy> Back in my day, Books Online was neither.  There were no blogs. Google was the third-place search site. There were perhaps two or three community forums where you could ask questions.  (Besides the Microsoft newsgroups...which you had to access with Usenet.  And endure the wrath of...Celko.)  Your "training" was reading a book, made from real dead trees, that you bought from your choice of brick-and-mortar bookstore. And except for your local user groups, there were no conferences, seminars, SQL Saturdays, or any online video hookups where you could interact with a person. You'd have to call Microsoft Support...on the phone...a LANDLINE phone.  And none of this "SQL Family" business!</Cranky Old Guy> Even now, with all these excellent resources available, it's still daunting for a beginner to seek help for SQL Server.  The product is roughly 1247.4523 times larger than it was 15 years ago, and it's simply impossible to know everything about it.*  So whether you are a beginner, or a seasoned pro of over a decade's experience, what do you do when you need help on SQL Server? That's so meta... In the spirit of offering help, here are some suggestions for your topic: Tell us about a person or SQL Server community who have been helpful to you.  It can be about a technical problem, or not, e.g. someone who volunteered for your local SQL Saturday.  Sing their praises!  Let the world know who they are! Do you have any tricks for using Books Online?  Do you use the locally installed product, or are you completely online with BOL/MSDN/Technet, and why? If you've been using SQL Server for over 10 years, how has your help-seeking changed? Are you using Twitter, StackOverflow, MSDN Forums, or another resource that didn't exist when you started? What made you switch? Do you spend more time helping others than seeking help? What motivates you to help, and how do you contribute? Structure your post along the lyrics to The Beatles song Help! Audio or video renditions are particularly welcome! Lyrics must include reference to SQL Server terminology or community, and performances must be in your voice or include you playing an instrument. These are just suggestions, you are free to write whatever you like.  Bonus points if you can incorporate ALL of these into a single post.  (Or you can do multiple posts, we're flexible like that.)  Help us help others by showing how others helped you! Legalese, Your Rights, Yada yada... If you would like to participate in T-SQL Tuesday please be sure to follow the rules below: Your blog post must be published between Tuesday, September 11, 2012 00:00:00 GMT and Wednesday, September 12, 2012 00:00:00 GMT. Include the T-SQL Tuesday logo (above) and hyperlink it back to this post. If you don’t see your post in trackbacks, add the link to the comments below. If you are on Twitter please tweet your blog using the #TSQL2sDay hashtag.  I can be contacted there as @sql_r, in case you have questions or problems with comments/trackback.  I'll have a follow-up post listing all the contributions as soon as I can. Thank you all for participating, and special thanks to Adam Machanic (b|t) for all his help and for continuing this series!

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  • Spatial data from shapefiles (for T-SQL Tuesday #006)

    - by Rob Farley
    I’m giving a presentation on May 12th at the Adelaide .Net User Group, around the topic of spatial data, and in particular, the visualization of said data. Given that it’s about one the larger types, this post should also count towards Michael Coles’ T-SQL Tuesday on BLOB data . I wrote recently about my experience with exploded data , but what I didn’t go on to talk about was how using a shapefile like this would translate into a scenario with a much larger number of shapes, such as all the postcode...(read more)

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  • Adwords: Is there a drawback to setting a really high max CPC to learn what works faster?

    - by Rob Sobers
    I'm toying with increasing my max CPC really high on all my keywords so ensure my ad gets shown in the top spot on page one in order to draw more clicks. I think this will be a good way to quickly figure out whether the ads I'm writing have a decent CTR and, more importantly, whether the landing pages I'm building are converting. Since I can set a max daily budget for my campaign, I won't risk breaking the bank. I can't think of any drawbacks, personally. Am I missing any?

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  • Oracle's Business Analytics Strategy Webcast

    - by Rob Reynolds
    Join Mark Hurd and Balaji Yelamanchili as they unveil the latest advances in Oracle’s strategy for placing analytics into the hands of every one of your decision-makers—so that they can see more, think smarter, and act faster. Learn about the latest developments in business intelligence technology and applications, advanced analytics, performance management applications, and engineered systems. You’ll find out how you can harness the exploding volumes of data being generated inside your organization—and beyond the firewall—to: Deliver real-time intelligence to your mobile workforce globally Forecast and plan at the speed of business Accelerate your financial close and reporting process Discover how Oracle business analytics can change the way you do business. Register today for this on demand event.

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  • Calling home, receiving calls and smartphone data from the US

    - by Rob Farley
    I got asked about calling home from the US, by someone going to the PASS Summit. I found myself thinking “there should be a blog post about this”... The easiest way to phone home is Skype - no question. Use WiFi, and if you’re calling someone who has Skype on their phone at the other end, it’s free. Even if they don’t, it’s still pretty good price-wise. The PASS Summit conference centre has good WiFI, as do the hotels, and plenty of other places (like Starbucks). But if you’re used to having data all the time, particularly when you’re walking from one place to another, then you’ll want a sim card. This also lets you receive calls more easily, not just solving your data problem. You’ll need to make sure your phone isn’t locked to your local network – get that sorted before you leave. It’s no trouble to drop by a T-mobile or AT&T store and getting a prepaid sim. You can’t get one from the airport, but if the PASS Summit is your first stop, there’s a T-mobile store on 6th in Seattle between Pine & Pike, so you can see it from the Sheraton hotel if that’s where you’re staying. AT&T isn’t far away either. But – there’s an extra step that you should be aware of. If you talk to one of these US telcos, you’ll probably (hopefully I’m wrong, but this is how it was for me recently) be told that their prepaid sims don’t work in smartphones. And they’re right – the APN gets detected and stops the data from working. But luckily, Apple (and others) have provided information about how to change the APN, which has been used by a company based in New Zealand to let you get your phone working. Basically, you send your phone browser to http://unlockit.co.nz and follow the prompts. But do this from a WiFi place somewhere, because you won’t have data access until after you’ve sorted this out... Oh, and if you get a prepaid sim with “unlimited data”, you will still need to get a Data Feature for it. And just for the record – this is WAY easier if you’re going to the UK. I dropped into a T-mobile shop there, and bought a prepaid sim card for five quid, which gave me 250MB data and some (but not much) call credit. In Australia it’s even easier, because you can buy data-enabled sim cards that work in smartphones from the airport when you arrive. I think having access to data really helps you feel at home in a different place. It means you can pull up maps, see what your friends are doing, and more. Hopefully this post helps, but feel free to post comments with extra information if you have it. @rob_farley

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  • JSR-107 Early Draft Released

    - by rob.misek
    After nearly 12 years the early draft of JSR-107 has been released. Brian Oliver, co-spec lead, details this update including information on the source, resourcing and the JCP 2.7 process. Check out Brian's update here. "Yesterday the JCP made the important step of posting the Early Draft specification and API for JSR107. [...]While an enormous amount of progress was made last year and early this year (by many people – not so much me) the JSR was somewhat delayed while the legals were resolved, especially with respect to ensuring clean and clear IP for Java itself, the eventual JCache Providers and the community.   Thankfully this stage is complete and we can move forward."

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  • Do you store mysql exports in your version control tool for reverting to in event of error?

    - by Rob
    We run an internal web server with in-house software to run a manufacturing line. When new product features are to be added, either or both of the following occur: changes to the in-house server software may be required to support these - these are for significant changes in functionality, being code drive. changes to the MySQL database for new entries for the part numbers, these are for smaller changes, configurations, changes to already existing values and parameters -- such changes don't require code changes. Ideally we'd want our changes to be here rather than in item 1. Item 1 is version controlled in Subversion, so previous revisions can be referred to for rolling back to in the event of problems introduced in the latest revision. But what about changes to the MySQL database? We have quality processes to ensure that such changes are error-free but there is always a chance that errors can pass through, e.g. mistake in data entry or faults with the code that uses the MySQL corrupting the database etc. We have a automated backup every 6 hours but what if we want more manual defined checkpoints in between these intervals, we could use the same backup system but I wondered if folks here used other methods to store previous states of databases, e.g. exporting the database as a plain text SQL dump -- at least with this method it would be possible to see diffs e.g. in Beyond Compare for trouble shooting. Thoughts?

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  • Too early to apply for post-graduation jobs?

    - by Rob Lourens
    I graduate in May 2012. I'm on an internship with one company right now that will probably make me an offer in August, but I will only have a couple weeks to take or leave it. I'm not sure whether I'll want to accept it- it will depend on the specifics. So I plan to apply for other jobs to see if I can get another offer, but would it be too early to be applying over the next few weeks when I wouldn't start until next May at least? I hate to turn down an offer having nothing else lined up. I'm a software engineer at one large software company and I would apply for jobs at other large software companies. I assume a smaller company would work on a much shorter hiring schedule, but maybe large companies wouldn't mind hiring 8-9 months in advance? I also hate to start applying any earlier than I have to- I know I'll only have more experience and be more employable with time.

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  • MacBook Pro (5) touchpad stops working after upgrading from Ubuntu 10.10 to Ubuntu 11.04

    - by Rob
    After upgrading from Ubuntu 10.10 to Ubuntu 11.04, my MacBook Pro's touchpad stopped working. It works fine on the login screen, but after logging in it stops working. (Answering my own question, in the hope that it saves someone else a bit of head scratching. I'm a new user, so couldn't answer in a separate post for the next few hours). After the upgrade, your Gnome desktop configuration may have gone awry. There are a few settings which enable or disable the touchpad in certain contexts which may need tweaking to get the touchpad working again. Here's how I got mine working again: Hit Alt-F2, and run 'gconf-editor' Navigate to desktop-gnome-peripherals Ensure that peripherals-touchpad:touchpad is enabled. Ensure that peripherals-bcm5974:disable_while_other_device_exists is disabled. 'bcm5974' is probably specific to my MacBook Pro's hardware, so you may need to search around for variable disable_while_other_device_exists under the entries listed under peripherals. HTH

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  • MERGE gives better OUTPUT options

    - by Rob Farley
    MERGE is very cool. There are a ton of useful things about it – mostly around the fact that you can implement a ton of change against a table all at once. This is great for data warehousing, handling changes made to relational databases by applications, all kinds of things. One of the more subtle things about MERGE is the power of the OUTPUT clause. Useful for logging.   If you’re not familiar with the OUTPUT clause, you really should be – it basically makes your DML (INSERT/DELETE/UPDATE/MERGE) statement return data back to you. This is a great way of returning identity values from INSERT commands (so much better than SCOPE_IDENTITY() or the older (and worse) @@IDENTITY, because you can get lots of rows back). You can even use it to grab default values that are set using non-deterministic functions like NEWID() – things you couldn’t normally get back without running another query (or with a trigger, I guess, but that’s not pretty). That inserted table I referenced – that’s part of the ‘behind-the-scenes’ work that goes on with all DML changes. When you insert data, this internal table called inserted gets populated with rows, and then used to inflict the appropriate inserts on the various structures that store data (HoBTs – the Heaps or B-Trees used to store data as tables and indexes). When deleting, the deleted table gets populated. Updates get a matching row in both tables (although this doesn’t mean that an update is a delete followed by an inserted, it’s just the way it’s handled with these tables). These tables can be referenced by the OUTPUT clause, which can show you the before and after for any DML statement. Useful stuff. MERGE is slightly different though. With MERGE, you get a mix of entries. Your MERGE statement might be doing some INSERTs, some UPDATEs and some DELETEs. One of the most common examples of MERGE is to perform an UPSERT command, where data is updated if it already exists, or inserted if it’s new. And in a single operation too. Here, you can see the usefulness of the deleted and inserted tables, which clearly reflect the type of operation (but then again, MERGE lets you use an extra column called $action to show this). (Don’t worry about the fact that I turned on IDENTITY_INSERT, that’s just so that I could insert the values) One of the things I love about MERGE is that it feels almost cursor-like – the UPDATE bit feels like “WHERE CURRENT OF …”, and the INSERT bit feels like a single-row insert. And it is – but into the inserted and deleted tables. The operations to maintain the HoBTs are still done using the whole set of changes, which is very cool. And $action – very convenient. But as cool as $action is, that’s not the point of my post. If it were, I hope you’d all be disappointed, as you can’t really go near the MERGE statement without learning about it. The subtle thing that I love about MERGE with OUTPUT is that you can hook into more than just inserted and deleted. Did you notice in my earlier query that my source table had a ‘src’ field, that wasn’t used in the insert? Normally, this would be somewhat pointless to include in my source query. But with MERGE, I can put that in the OUTPUT clause. This is useful stuff, particularly when you’re needing to audit the changes. Suppose your query involved consolidating data from a number of sources, but you didn’t need to insert that into the actual table, just into a table for audit. This is now very doable, either using the INTO clause of OUTPUT, or surrounding the whole MERGE statement in brackets (parentheses if you’re American) and using a regular INSERT statement. This is also doable if you’re using MERGE to just do INSERTs. In case you hadn’t realised, you can use MERGE in place of an INSERT statement. It’s just like the UPSERT-style statement we’ve just seen, except that we want nothing to match. That’s easy to do, we just use ON 1=2. This is obviously more convoluted than a straight INSERT. And it’s slightly more effort for the database engine too. But, if you want the extra audit capabilities, the ability to hook into the other source columns is definitely useful. Oh, and before people ask if you can also hook into the target table’s columns... Yes, of course. That’s what deleted and inserted give you.

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