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• Displaying Datamatrix in application error screen

  - by DaveNay

  Quite often we will get a report from a user in the field saying there was an error in our application. Frequently this leads to the typical round of "What was the error?" "I don't know, it was just an error." We of course log these faults to the log files, and we can even enable detailed debug logs, but this involves the end user changing a setting in the configuration file and then finding the correct files and then emailing them to us. As I'm sure you can all imagine, there are plenty of pitfalls and alligators in this methodology. Recently a couple of people have used their cell phone to email me a "screen capture" of the fault, and while this helps, we still have to scrutinize the image to find the exact fault, and if enabled, the stack trace. So this evening, I had the brilliant idea (IMHO) to encode the fault into a Datamatrix barcode image and then encourage users to send me a picture from their cell phone. I can then decode the datamatrix and get a parse-able error message! Our core technology is machine vision, so the decoding of the datamatrix image would be trivial, I just need to find a method of generating the actual image to display in the fault handler. Thoughts?

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• Best way to calculate unit deaths in browser game combat?

  - by MikeCruz13

  My browser game's combat system is written and mechanically functioning well. It's written in PHP and uses a SQL database. I'm happy with the unit balance in relation to one another. I am, however, a little worried about how I'm calculating unit deaths when one player attacks another because the deaths seem to pile up a little fast for my taste. For this system, a battle doesn't just trigger, calculate winner, and end. Instead, it is allowed to go for several rounds (say one round every 15 mins.) until one side passes a threshold of being too strong for the other player and allows players to send reinforcements between rounds. Each round, units pair up and attack each other. Essentially what I do is calculate the damage: AP = Attack Points HP = Hit Points Units AP * Quantity * Random Factors * other factors (such as attrition) I take that and divide by the defending unit's HP to find the number of casualties of defending units. So, for example (simplified to take out some factors), if I have: 500 attackers with 50 AP vs 1000 defenders with 100 HP = 250 deaths. I wonder if that last step could be handled better to reduce the deaths piling up. Some ideas: I just change all the units with more HP? I make sure to set the Attacking unit's AP to be a max of the defender's HP to make sure they only kill 1 unit. (is that fair if I have less huge units vs many small units?) I spread the damage around more by including the defending unit's quantity more? i.e. in that scenario some are dead and some are 50% damage. (How would I track this every round?) Other better mathematical approaches?

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• Displaying Datamatrix in application error screen

  - by DaveNay

  Quite often we will get a report from a user in the field saying there was an error in our application. Frequently this leads to the typical round of "What was the error?" "I don't know, it was just an error." We of course log these faults to the log files, and we can even enable detailed debug logs, but this involves the end user changing a setting in the configuration file and then finding the correct files and then emailing them to us. As I'm sure you can all imagine, there are plenty of pitfalls and alligators in this methodology. Recently a couple of people have used their cell phone to email me a "screen capture" of the fault, and while this helps, we still have to scrutinize the image to find the exact fault, and if enabled, the stack trace. So this evening, I had the brilliant idea (IMHO) to encode the fault into a Datamatrix barcode image and then encourage users to send me a picture from their cell phone. I can then decode the datamatrix and get a parse-able error message! Our core technology is machine vision, so the decoding of the datamatrix image would be trivial, I just need to find a method of generating the actual image to display in the fault handler. Thoughts?

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• My Obligatory IPad Post

  - by mark.wilcox

  I've had my IPad for about a week now. So I thought I'd write some thoughts down based on my initial experiences. Here are my initial take-aways: 1 - Netflix OnDemand - I'm a movie junkie. I'm now more apt to just start a movie as background sound for my workday (I telecommute - so except for the occasional bark from my dog, it's awfully quiet here if I don't have something going). 2 - The Email Client is really nice and I'm as fast or faster typing when I have the wireless keyboard engaged. Even with onscreen keyboard - I'm already close to 75% of desktop speed 3 - The battery life is incredible - I think this is the first case where a mobile device actually under-promised on battery 4 - It totally has killed the notion of using a normal PC for my wife and mother-in-law - neither of which had wanted an iPhone/iPod Touch or really any Apple device until they got to play with my iPad. The concept of - instant on, easy to hold and touch-based navigation has them hooked. Heck, it has me hooked. My ultimate goal is to be able to have it at least replace the need to take my netbook with me on the road. I haven't had a chance to complete my testing on that front yet - between work, my wife traveling (for a change) and now my wife home sick - I haven't had time to just play with it. But so far my only regret - that I haven't already bought two more for everyone else in my family who wants to use mine. Posted via email from Virtual Identity Dialogue

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• Which Language Next? Python? Ruby? [closed]

  - by Ryan Craig

  I am a beginning Webmaster (relatively), with 2+ years of php experience. I also have some java training and a bit of .net. My company is now close to redeveloping the website that I work on, which is coded primarily in php, but has some poorly-written .net in part as well (it's confusing and ill-planned, but I didn't make any of those decisions. Can anyone say action-oriented .net and JScript?). So, I'm trying to decide which language I should learn next to quickly develop a new site. I will probably just redevelop it at first in php because I'm very comfortable with it. However, I'd like to migrate in the next year to something newer and more forward-thinking. This being said, .net is out of the question a little bit. We need cheap developers who are fast and can get pages up quickly. In this part of the country, part-time .net developers are hard to find. So, we need something that will be pretty standard in the next few years, but we have some .net SOAP 1.1 APIs that we use on our actual service (separate from the corporate website), that we will need to integrate part of the site with. Developing with php and SOAP is much more difficult than doing the same thing. So, I may have to develop the API collaborative part in .net just to be easy, and then I'd like to use something else that is fast, flexible, forward thinking, and will be relatively standard and easy to find developers for. So, any ideas? Python and Django? Ruby on Rails? Another framework? Thanks for your thoughts. Sorry, I know this was long, but it's all very convoluted and confusing so I needed to be slightly long-winded.

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• Good design for class with similar constructors

  - by RustyTheBoyRobot

  I was reading this question and thought that good points were made, but most of the solutions involved renaming one of the methods. I am refactoring some poorly written code and I've run into this situation: public class Entity { public Entity(String uniqueIdentifier, boolean isSerialNumber) { if (isSerialNumber) { this.serialNumber = uniqueIdentifier; //Lookup other data } else { this.primaryKey = uniqueIdentifier; // Lookup other data with different query } } } The obvious design flaw is that someone needed two different ways to create the object, but couldn't overload the constructor since both identifiers were of the same type (String). Thus they added a flag to differentiate. So, my question is this: when this situation arises, what are good designs for differentiating between these two ways of instantiating an object? My First Thoughts You could create two different static methods to create your object. The method names could be different. This is weak because static methods don't get inherited. You could create different objects to force the types to be different (i.e., make a PrimaryKey class and a SerialNumber class). I like this because it seems to be a better design, but it also is a pain to refactor if serialNumber is a String everywhere else.

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• Twinview broken on upgrade to ubuntu 10.10

  - by mapkyca

  I have been on 9.10 for over a year on the grounds that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. However, I had a spare weekend and figured it was probably about time... I performed an upgrade to 10.4, and everything seemed to proceed smoothly, so I took the plunge and went for 10.10. Disaster. My twinview Nvidia display which had been working perfectly is now broken. On boot everything seems fine, but when X starts and the second monitor springs into life the primary winks out and switches off - almost as if its been put into an unsupported display mode. The system seems to think there's a second monitor - the nvidia logo is split across the two screens, but it can't seem to start. Things I've tried: Swapping the monitors (one is older than the other, and its definitely the port not the actual monitor) Rolling back to an old Xorg conf from prior to the upgrade Installing a non-beta driver direct from Nvidia (this seems to start both monitors but then apparently stops boot and causes the second display to 'wink'. Twinview seems non-functional, both displays are mirrors) Disabling EDID Disabling twinview, logging in and attempting to use the Nvidia config to re-detect the monitors (second monitor is falsely detected and won't go higher than 1024x768. Selecting 'apply' causes one screen to go blank and the other to display garbage) googling for about 5 hours looking for similar problems, none of the offered solutions seemed to work I'm at a loss, and it is looking very much like I'm going to have to go through a time consuming reinstall to downgrade back to the working 10.4. Any thoughts?

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• Randomly Freezes - How Can I Diagnose the Problem?

  - by j0rd4n

  At random times, Ubuntu 10.04 freezes, and I have to do a hard shutdown. It was upgraded from 9.10 which didn't freeze. First, is this is common problem with a quick answer, and if not, what can I do to diagnose it? I've tried checking application/kernel logs, but nothing gives me a clue as to what caused the problem. My guess, is that since the OS froze, no logs could be updated. Ideas? SOLUTION: Solved it. My particular problem was my graphics card (integrated Radeon 9000 series). netconsole revealed I was getting the error: "reserve failed for wait". After trial-and-error, I manually configured my video card and disabled hardware acceleration. Completely fixed the issue. Here is what I did: Manually Created xorg.conf Ubuntu automatically configures xorg.conf and doesn't use a file. To edit this file, you have to tell Ubuntu to explicitly create one and then edit it. Here are the steps: Restart system Hold Shift as GRUB boots Select root terminal in GRUB login menu Execute: X -config xorg.conf.new Copy: cp xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf Disable Hardware Acceleration The following is specific to my Radeon card, but I'm sure other cards have a similar setup. Edit xorg.conf Find "Device" section for graphics card Uncomment "NoAccel" option and set to "True" Save + reboot Hope that helps.

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• Multi Threading - How to split the tasks

  - by Motig

  if I have a game engine with the basic 'game engine' components, what is the best way to 'split' the tasks with a multi-threaded approach? Assuming I have the standard components of: Rendering Physics Scripts Networking And a quad-core, I see two ways of multi-threading: Option A ('Vertical'): Using this approach I can allow one core for each component of the engine; e.g. one core for the Rendering task, one for the Physics, etc. Advantages: I do not need to worry about thread-safety within each component I can take advantage of special optimizations provided for single-threaded access (e.g. DirectX offers a flag that can be set to tell it that you will only use single-threading) Option B ('Horizontal'): Using this approach, each task may be split up into 1 <= n <= numCores threads, and executed simultaneously, one after the other. Advantages: Allows for work-sharing, i.e. each thread can take over work still remaining as the others are still processing I can take advantage of libraries that are designed for multi-threading (i.e. ... DirectX) I think, in retrospect, I would pick Option B, but I wanted to hear you guys' thoughts on the matter.

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• Welcome to the Gamification Blog!

  - by erikanollwebb

  If you are here, you have probably been hearing about gamification and game mechanics, and wondering how it all fits into the enterprise space.  Although I've been leading some efforts in the Fusion Apps UX team on gamification for a while, I have left it to a couple of others to blog on it.  For example, check out the links below from Ultan Ó Broin if you haven't seen these already: #gamifyOracle: Oracle Applications Gamification Worldwide #UX Design Jam Oracle Applications UX Gamification Worldwide All Hands Day Gamification, Schamification: Reality Isn't Broken. Your User Experience Is I've been tweeting to #GamifyOracle for a while but I'll try to use this blog to put a little of my own thoughts on the matter together.  In the meantime, I spoke at the GSummit in June on the things we're working on and I'll be leading a workshop and speaking on Enterprise Gamification at the Enterprise Gamification Summit in September.  Oracle peeps, let me know if you are interested in attending, since we can get a group discount for the workshop/summit.  We're also planning to conduct some more research on gamification in the enterprise space at Oracle OpenWorld this October.  In the meantime, let me know if there are issues you are interested in and I'll try to put some things together here.  I'd love to know who all is working on gamification in Oracle--I know some of you but I'm sure there are others!

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• Recreating Doodle Jump in Canvas - Platforms spawning out of reach

  - by kushsolitary

  I have started to recreate Doodle Jump in HTML using Canvas. Here's my current progress. As you can see, if you play it for a few seconds, some platforms will be out of the player's reach. I don't know why is this happening. Here's the code which is responsible for the re-spawning of platforms. //Movement of player affected by gravity if(player.y > (height / 2) - (player.height / 2)) { player.y += player.vy; player.vy += gravity; } else { for(var i = 0; i < platforms.length; i++) { var p = platforms[i]; if(player.vy < 0) { p.y -= player.vy; player.vy += 0.08; } if(p.y > height) { position = 0; var h = p.y; platforms[i] = new Platform(); } if(player.vy >= 0) { player.y += player.vy; player.vy += gravity; } } } Also, here's the platform class. //Platform class function Platform(y) { this.image = new Image(); this.image.src = platformImg; this.width = 105; this.height = 25; this.x = Math.random() * (width - this.width); this.y = y || position; position += height / platformCount; //Function to draw it this.draw = function() { try { ctx.drawImage(this.image, this.x, this.y, this.width, this.height); } catch(e) {} }; } You can also see the whole code on the link I provided. Also, when a platform goes out of the view port, the jump animation becomes quirky. I am still trying to find out what's causing this but can't find any solution.

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• How exactly does app ranking work?

  - by qweasdzxc1

  So I've been in the app industry for around half a year and I still don't know how exactly ranking higher for your app will help increase downloads. That sounds like a question with an obvious answer but this is what's going through my mind so hear me out: Unless your app is ranked within the top 100, no one can see it in the featured categories. So even if my app jumped from 400th to 300th place, would there really even be a difference in downloads? And I'm saying 400th to 300th in ranking in my specific category. Indie developers like me don't even come close to ranking for the overall category. So far, the only usefulness of trying to get a higher rank is to get featured or something like that, but big companies have tons of money to throw on marketing...so the chances of any indie developer getting featured is rare. The only thing that I can see ranking being good for is to rank for your keywords so that when someone searches for that word, your app will hopefully appear in the top 10-25 results. Can anyone confirm my thoughts or add anything else that I might have missed out on? How exactly do users find your app if you're not in the top 100 app in your category?

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• Unity elements sometimes appear while full screen in Virtualbox - how to stop it?

  - by frumbert

  Launcher is great, and it helps me finds stuff. I have the latest release of 12. But when I'm full screen in VirtualBox running another operating system and I hit some key combination I haven't yet figured out, Unity suddenly grabs keyboard focus. It might be alt-tab, it might be left-control x. I have physically pulled both the windows key and FN key off my laptop because they get in the way, so it's probably not the windows key. You don't know the focus has been stolen because the full screen app (VirtualBox) is still full screen and the Unity element is in the background. But you're busy typing into a Unity box, not your foreground application. This is particularly annoying. In my screenshot (taken from a camera, because the built in screen capture program can't capture a screenshot containing the launcher...) the windows VM is the foreground application, but the "Run Command" entry box has come up and is capturing the keyboard: I would like a foreground full screen app to stay that way. Is there a way that I can keep Unity but only have it activate its elements (e.g. pop out with its search box) if I physically click a button, not type some random key combination that foreground applications can get confused about? Otherwise I can do without the launcher or other elements, because doing my actual work is more involved than just launching programs.

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• Intermittent freezing on a Macbook Pro 7,1

  - by LR0

  I recently installed Ubuntu 12.10 on my MacBook Pro 7, 1. I used to have 11.10 on it. I've encountered a problem were I can boot up and the login screen works flawlessly. When I attempt to log into my account I set up during install it would only show the default wallpaper and the mouse was frozen. In other words it was logging on but froze up. Is what it seems like. When I rebooted I attempted to log into the guest account. I was able to log in and it seemed everything worked so I tried to update everything figuring it may be the problem. After updating and restarting as prompted I tried to login to my account. It still froze up but this time showing "glitched up" (you can see the dock and status bar but they don't look like they should) and still freezes. This is all happening on the guest account to. I was unable to find a similar article on the Internet therefore I am asking; Any thoughts Ubuntu?

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• Windows Phone 8, I want you to be successful

  - by Sahil Malik

  SharePoint 2010 Training: more information I assure you, SharePointy posts are on their way – LOTS of them. Just aligning my cannons. But, here is something I need to get off my chest. Just think of this as thoughts of a fellow techie who wants the best for all of us. Consider this, There would have been no IE7, if there was no Firefox. There would be no Azure if there was no Amazon AWS. There would be no Windows Phone 7 if there was no iOS. And if there was no MacOS, you my dear friend would have to choose between Linux or Windows ME. See! Choice is good. Not only is it good for the consumer, it is good for us techies, us engineers. If there is no innovation, there is no new knowledge being created. No innovation devalues our minds – when there is no use for them. No innovation also means poorer experience for users. The tech industry is very different. Read full article ....

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• C++ program...overshoots? [migrated]

  - by Zdrok

  I'm decent at C++, but I may have missed some nuance that applies here. Or maybe I completely missed a giant concept, I have no idea. My program was instantly crashing ("blah.exe is not responding") about 1/5 times it was run (other times it ran completely fine) and I tracked the problem down to a constructor for a world class that was called once in the beginning of the main function. Here is the code (in the constructor) that causes the problem: int ii; for(ii=0;ii<=255;ii++) { cout<<"ent "<<ii<<endl; entity_list[ii]=NULL; } for(ii=0;ii<=255;ii++) { cout<<"sec "<<ii<<endl; sector_list[ii]=NULL; } entity_list[0] = new Entity(0,0); entity_list[0]->_world = this; Specifically the second for loop. The cout references are new for the sake of telling where it is having trouble. It would print the entire "ent 1" to "ent 255" and then "sec 1" to "sec 255" and then crash right after, as if it was going for a 257th run through of the second for loop. I set the second for loop to go until "ii<=254" which stopped all crashes. Does C++ code tend to "overshoot" for loops or something? What is causing it to crash at this specific loop seemingly at random? By the way, entity_list and sector_list point to classes called Entity and Sector, respectively, but they are not constructing anything so I didn't think it would be relevant. I also have a forward declaration for the Entity class in a header for this, but since none were being constructed I didn't think it was relevant either. EDIT: It was due to the new Entity line, I assumed wrongly that the fact that altering the for statement to 254 fixed the crashes meant that it had to be there. I still don't understand why the for loop is related, though.

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• Can I use a 302 redirect to serve up static content from an URL with escaped_fragment?

  - by Starfs

  We would like to serve up SEO-friendly Ajax-driven content. We are following this documentation. Has anyone ever tried to write a 302 redirect into the .htaccess file, that takes the ?_escaped_fragment= string and send that to a static page?, for example /snapshot/yourfilename/. How will Google react to this? I've gone through the documentation and it's not very clear. The below quote is from Google's documentation this is what I find. I'm not sure if they are saying that you can redirect the _escaped_fragment_ URL to a different static page, or if this is to redirect the hashtag URL to static content? Thoughts? From Google's site: Question: Can I use redirects to point the crawler at my static content? Redirects are okay to use, as long as they eventually get you to a page that's equivalent to what the user would see on the #! version of the page. This may be more convenient for some webmasters than serving up the content directly. If you choose this approach, please keep the following in mind: Compared to serving the content directly, using redirects will result in extra traffic because the crawler has to follow redirects to get the content. This will result in a somewhat higher number of fetches/second in crawl activity. Note that if you use a permanent (301) redirect, the url shown in our search results will typically be the target of the redirect, whereas if a temporary (302) redirect is used, we'll typically show the #! url in search results. Depending on how your site is set up, showing #! may produce a better user experience, because the user will be taken straight into the AJAX experience from the Google search results page. Clicking on a static page will take them to the static content, and they may experience avoidable extra page load time if the site later wants to switch them to the AJAX experience.

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• Dynamic Query Generation : suggestion for better approaches

  - by Gaurav Parmar

  I am currently designing a functionality in my Web Application where the verified user of the application can execute queries which he wishes to from the predefined set of queries with where clause varying as per user's choice. For example,Table ABC contains the following Template query called SecretReport "Select def as FOO, ghi as BAR from MNO where " SecretReport can have parameters XYZ, ILP. Again XYZ can have values as 1,2 and ILP can have 3,4 so if the user chooses ILP=3, he will get the result of the following query on his screen "Select def as FOO, ghi as BAR from MNO where ILP=3" Again the user is allowed permutations of XYZ / ILP My initial thought is that User will be shown a list of Report names and each report will have parameters and corresponding values. But this approach although technically simple does not appear intuitive. I would like to extend this functionality to a more generic level. Such that the user can choose a table and query based on his requirements. Of course we do not want the end user to take complete control of DB. But only tables and fields that are relevant to him. At present we are defining what is relevant in the code. But I want the Admin to take over this functionality such that he can decide what is relevant and expose the same to the user. On user's side it should be intuitive what is available to him and what queries he can form. Please share your thoughts what is the most user friendly way to provide this feature to the end user.

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• Algorithm for procedural city generation?

  - by Zove Games

  I am planning on making a (simple) procedural city generator using Java. I need ideas on whan algorithm to use for the layout, and the actual buildings. The city will mostly have skyscrapers, not really much complex stuff. For the layout I already have a simple algorithm implemented: Create a Map with java.awt.Point keys and Integer values. Fill it with all the points in the city's bounds with the value as -1 (unnassigned) Shuffle the map, and assign the 1st 10 of the keys IDs (from 1-10) Loop until all points have IDs: Loop though all points: Assign points next to an assigned point IDs of the point next to them, if 2 or more points border the point, then randomly choose which ID the point will get. You will end up with 10 random regions. Make roads bordering these regions. Fill the inside of each region with a randomly spaced and randomly rotated grid PROBLEM: This is not the fastest way to do it. What algorithm should I use for the layout. And what should I use to make each building's design? I don't even know how I'm going to do that yet (fractals maybe). I just need some ideas, not actual code.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for November 6, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  OAM/OVD JVM Tuning | @FusionSecExpert Vinay from the Oracle Fusion Middleware Architecture Group (the infamous A-Team) shares a process for analyzing and improving performance in Oracle Virtual Directory and Oracle Access Manager. Architects Matter: Making sense of the people who make sense of enterprise IT Why do architects matter? Oracle Enterprise Architect Eric Stephens suggests that you ask yourself that question the next time you take the elevator to the Oracle offices on the 45th floor of the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois (or any other skyscraper, for that matter). If you had to take the stairs to get to those offices, who would you blame? "You get the picture," he says. "Architecture is essential for any necessarily complex structure, be it a building or an enterprise." (Read the article...) SOA Galore: New Books for Technical Eyes Only Shake up up your technical skills with this trio of new technical books from community members covering SOA and BPM. Thought for the Day "It goes against the grain of modern education to teach students to program. What fun is there to making plans, acquiring discipline, organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self critical?" — Alan Perlis (April 1, 1922 – February 7, 1990) Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• View the Time & Date in Chrome When Hiding Your Taskbar

  - by Asian Angel

  Do you prefer keeping your Taskbar hidden but still need to keep watch on what time it is? Now you can keep track of the time without the Taskbar using the Date Today extension for Google Chrome. A Look at Date Today with Different Themes This extension does one thing and does it well…it provides you with an “active icon” clock that will let you view the time and date in two fashions. The first is by hovering your mouse over the “Toolbar Clock Button”… And the second is by clicking on the “Toolbar Clock Button” to view an enlarged version. Here you can see the extension in use with five different themes to get an idea of how it might look with the theme that you are currently using. It does stand out very nicely with brighter or darker colored themes. Conclusion While this extension is obviously not for everyone it will make a nice (and useful) addition to Chrome for those who prefer keeping their Taskbar hidden. Links Download the Date Today extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Set the Date and Time on SolarisView Browser History Based on Host & Date in ChromeQuick Tip: Set a Future Date for a Post in WordPressFuture Date a Post in Windows Live WriterSave Screen Space by Hiding the Bookmarks Toolbar in Safari for Windows TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Discovery Channel LIFE Theme (Win7) Increase the size of Taskbar Previews (Win 7) Scan your PC for nasties with Panda ActiveScan CleanMem – Memory Cleaner AceStock – The Personal Stock Monitor Add Multiple Tabs to Office Programs

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• An experiment: unlimited free trial

  - by Alex Davies

  The .NET Demon team have just implemented an experiment that is quite a break from Red Gate’s normal business model. Instead of the tool expiring after the trial period, it now continues to work, but with a new message that appears after the tool has saved you a certain amount of time. The rationale is that a user that stops using .NET Demon because the trial expired isn’t doing anyone any good. We’d much rather people continue using it forever, as long as everyone that finds it useful and can afford it still pays for it. Hopefully the message appearing is annoying enough to achieve that, but not for people to uninstall it. It’s true that many companies have tried it before with mixed results, but we have a secret weapon. The perfect nag message? The neat thing for .NET Demon is that we can easily measure exactly how much time .NET Demon has saved you, in terms of unnecessary project builds that Visual Studio would have done. When you press F5, the message shows you the time saved, and then makes you wait a shorter time before starting your application. Confronted with the truth about how amazing .NET Demon is, who can do anything but buy it? The real secret though, is that while you wait, .NET Demon gives you entertainment, in the form of a picture of a cute kitten. I’ve only had time to embed one kitten so far, but the eventual aim is for a random different kitten to appear each time. The psychological health benefits of a dose of kittens in the daily life of the developer are obvious. My only concern is that people will complain after paying for .NET Demon that the kittens are gone.

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• How to prioritize related game entity components?

  - by Paul Manta

  I want to make a game where you have to run over a bunch of zombies with your car. When moving around, the zombies have a few things to take into consideration: When there's no player around they might just roam about randomly. And even when some other component dictates a specific direction, they should wobble to the left and right randomly (like drunk people). This implies a small, random, deviation in their movement. They should avoid static obstacles. When they see they are headed towards a wall, they should reorient themselves. They should avoid the car. They should try to predict where the car will be based on its velocity and try to move out of the way. When they can, they should try to get near the player. All these types of decisions they have to do seem like they should be implemented in different components. But how should I manage them? How can I give different components different weights that reflect the importance of each decision (in a given situation)? I would need some other component that acts as a manager, but do you have any tips on how I should implement it? Or maybe there's a better solution?...

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• How To Figure Out Your PC’s Host Name From the Command Prompt

  - by The Geek

  If you’re doing any work with networking, you probably need to know the name of your computer. Rather than diving into Control Panel, there’s a really simple way to do this from the command prompt. Note: If you haven’t already, be sure to read our complete guide to networking Windows 7 with XP and Vista. To see the hostname… all you have to do is type hostname at the command prompt. Go figure, eh? The same thing works in Linux or OS X, though you can see that most of the time the hostname is part of the prompt anyway. Note: you can also change the hostname by simply typing “hostname <newhostname>”. Of course, the easiest way to see your computer name in Windows is to just hit the Win+Break key combination, which will pop up the System pane from Control Panel.   If you want to change it instead, you can always change your computer name easily through Control Panel. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips MySql: Give Root User Logon Permission From Any HostUse "Command Prompt Here" in Windows VistaKeyboard Ninja: Scrolling the Windows Command Prompt With Only the KeyboardVerify the Integrity of Windows Vista System FilesFind Path of Application Running on Solaris, Ubuntu, Suse or Redhat Linux TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon

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• Long 'Wait' Time for three php/CSS files. Is something blocking them?

  - by William Pitcher

  I have been speed optimizing a Wordpress site to little effect. There are three files CSS-related php files from the Wordpress theme that are delaying page loads on the site. One of the three files is basically one line of custom CSS from the custom CSS feature in the theme. You can see what I am talking about with this Pingdom speed test: The yellow is 'Wait'. There are no slow items in the cut-off portion of the image. The full results are here: Pingdom Results Page 1. Any thoughts on what might be causing this? I understand that I have blocking CSS or JS files, but I don't see anything that would be causing that long of a wait. When I ran the P3 Plugin Profiler, Wordpress and all plugins appeared fine -- it is the theme that is taking all the time. GTmetrix recommends avoiding dynamic queries. I assume all the ver=3.61 references are to the version of Wordpress (which I am using). I noticed that my Wordpress sites using other themes don't make this query (at least not over and over). 2. Is this typical coding practice? 3. How much negative impact do these query-strings have -- a little or a lot? I tried searching for similar questions here, please excuse me if I missed something. Sometimes, I know just enough to be dangerous.

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