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• Tips about how to spread Object Oriented practices

  - by Augusto

  I work for a medium company that has around 250 developers. Unfortunately, lots of them are stuck in a procedural way of thinking and some teams constantly deliver big Transactional Script applications, when in fact the application contains rich logic. They also fail to manage the design dependencies, and end up with services which depend on another large number of services (a clean example of Big Ball of Mud). My question is: Can you suggest how to spread this type of knowledge? I know that the surface of the problem is that these applications have a poor architecture and design. Another issue is that there are some developers who are against writing any kind of test. A few things I'm doing to change this (but I'm either failing or the change is too small are) Running presentations about design principles (SOLID, clean code, etc). Workshops about TDD and BDD. Coaching teams (this includes using sonar, findbugs, jdepend and other tools). IDE & Refactoring talks. A few things I'm thinking to do in the future (but I'm concern that they might not be good) Form a team of OO evangelists, who disseminate an OO way of thinking in differet teams (these people would need to change teams every few months). Running design review sessions, to criticise the design and suggest improvements (even if the improvements are not done because of time constraints, I think this might be useful) . Something I found with the teams I coach, is that as soon as I leave them, they revert back to the old practices. I know I don't spend a lot of time with them, usually just one month. So whatever I'm doing, it doesn't stick. I'm sorry this question is spattered with frustration, but the alterative to write this was to hit my head on the wall until I pass out.

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• Does unit testing lead to premature generalization (specifically in the context of C++)?

  - by Martin

  Preliminary notes I'll not go into the distinction of the different kinds of test there are, there are already a few questions on these sites regarding that. I'll take what's there and that says: unit testing in the sense of "testing the smallest isolatable unit of an application" from which this question actually derives The isolation problem What is the smallest isolatable unit of a program. Well, as I see it, it (highly?) depends on what language you are coding in. Micheal Feathers talks about the concept of a seam: [WEwLC, p31] A seam is a place where you can alter behavior in your program without editing in that place. And without going into the details, I understand a seam -- in the context of unit testing -- to be a place in a program where your "test" can interface with your "unit". Examples Unit test -- especially in C++ -- require from the code under test to add more seams that would be strictly called for for a given problem. Example: Adding a virtual interface where non-virtual implementation would have been sufficient Splitting -- generalizing(?) -- a (smallish) class further "just" to facilitate adding a test. Splitting a single-executable project into seemingly "independent" libs, "just" to facilitate compiling them independently for the tests. The question I'll try a few versions that hopefully ask about the same point: Is the way that Unit Tests require one to structure an application's code "only" beneficial for the unit tests or is it actually beneficial to the applications structure. Is the generalization code need to exhibit to be unit-testable useful for anything but the unit tests? Does adding unit tests force one to generalize unnecessarily? Is the shape unit tests force on code "always" also a good shape for the code in general as seen from the problem domain? I remember a rule of thumb that said don't generalize until you need to / until there's a second place that uses the code. With Unit Tests, there's always a second place that uses the code -- namely the unit test. So is this reason enough to generalize?

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• Very large log files, what should I do?

  - by Masroor

  (This question deals with a similar issue, but it talks about a rotated log file.) Today I got a system message regarding very low /var space. As usual I executed the commands in the line of sudo apt-get clean which improved the scenario only slightly. Then I deleted the rotated log files which again provided very little improvement. Upon examination I find that some log files in the /var/log has grown up to be very huge ones. To be specific, ls -lSh /var/log gives, total 28G -rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 14G Aug 23 21:56 kern.log -rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 14G Aug 23 21:56 syslog -rw-rw-r-- 1 root utmp 390K Aug 23 21:47 wtmp -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 287K Aug 23 21:42 dpkg.log -rw-rw-r-- 1 root utmp 287K Aug 23 20:43 lastlog As we can see, the first two are the offending ones. I am mildly surprised why such large files have not been rotated. So, what should I do? Simply delete these files and then reboot? Or go for some more prudent steps? I am using Ubuntu 14.04.

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• JRuby and JVM Languages at JavaOne!

  - by Yolande Poirier

  "My goal with my talks at JavaOne is to teach what is happening at the JVM level and below so people understand better where we are going" explains Charles Nutter, Jruby project lead. In this interview, Charles shared the JRuby features he presented at the JVM Language Summit. They include foreign function interface (FFI), IO layer, character transcoding, regular expressions, compilers, coroutines, and more.  At JavaOne, he will be presenting:  Going Native: Bringing FFI to the JVM The Java Native Runtime (JNR) is a high-speed foreign function interface (FFI) for calling native code from Java without ever writing a line of C. Based on the success of JNR, JDK Enhancement Proposal (JEP) 191 will bring FFI to OpenJDK as an internal API.  The Emerging Languages Bowl: The Big League Challenge In this panel discussion, these emerging languages are portrayed by their respective champions, who explain how they may help your everyday life as a Java developer. Script Bowl 2014: The Battle Rages On In this contest, languages that run on the JVM, represented by their respective language experts, battle for most popular language status by showing off their new features. Audience members will also vote on a language that should not return in 2015. Returning from 2013 are language gurus representing Clojure, Groovy, JRuby, and Scala.

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• Java Magazine: Java at Sea!

  - by Tori Wieldt

  The September/October issue of Java Magazine is now out, with several great Java stories, including: Java At Sea? Liquid Robotics charts a new course with expert help from Java pioneer James Gosling.?  ?Duke’s Choice AwardsMeet this year’s winners! (The awards will be presented at the JavaOne Sunday night reception at the Taylor Street Cafe.)Looking Ahead to Project LambdaJava Language Architect Brian Goetz on the importance of lambda expressions.JCP Q&A: Ben EvansThe London JUG representative talks about the JCP and the Java community.Java EE Connector Architecture 1.6Adam Bien on deep integration with connector services in a lean way.DataFX: Populate JavaFX Controls with Real-World DataTools to retrieve, parse, and render data in a variety of JavaFX controls. Fix ThisStephen Chin challenges your JavaFX skills. Java Magazine is a bi-monthly online publication. It includes technical articles on the Java language and platform; Java innovations and innovators; JUG and JCP news; Java events; links to online Java communities; and videos and multimedia demos. Subscriptions are free.

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• Mix10 is in history, Windows Phone 7 is here!

  MIX10was really a fantastic conference for Telerik! We had great talks, many customers stopped by our booth and we've got a lot of great feedback for our Silverlight Controls. Thank you for stopping by and sharing your opinion! So now, that the MIX is over, there is one question left: What Telerik will develop for theWindows Phone 7? We had this question on the booth over and over again and it is no doubt that the WP7 development is a hot topic now. All we can sayat this momentis that Yes, we are looking into this and we actually have some of our controls already partially working with WP7 internally :) You know that the Silverlight version for WP7 is Silverlight 3 and it has some very good additions over it in order to support the phone hardware - like webcam, mic, accelerometer, etc. If you missed the conference and the sessions- here is a list of videos thatwill get you started: Building Windows Phone Applications with Silverlight, Part 1 Mike Harsh Building Windows Phone Applications with Silverlight, Part 2 Peter Torr The good thing isthat our controls will needvery few tweaks in order to be *compiled* against the WP7 Silverlight runtime. But, the more interesting part is actually what are the scenarios that our controls will be used in. How different they will be from the desktop version of the SL? This is where we need your feedback - drop as a line and let us know what are your expectations in this area. Do you need something specific, a feature or a new control that you like to use, or maybe you have a specific scenario that you want to share. Nowthe ball is in your hands - write on the forums, send us a ticket, or just leave your comment on WP7 developmentbelow! Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• My 2012 Professional Development Goals

  - by kerry

  Once again I am going to declare some professional goals for my upcoming year. Convert my blog to Jekyll hosted on github – I am tired of wordpress, tired of spam, and would like to try something new.  I have already started on this.  Just need to finish it up. Launch my GWT / Google App Engine application – I am currently developing a GWT application to be deployed to Google App Engine. Do another presentation at the user group – At least a few lightning talks.  I have a few ideas. Attend a tech conference – Dev Nexus is the likely target Post more often – I did 10 posts last year, would like to maybe double that next year (including this one) Attend a user group meeting outside of Nashville JUG – A rollover from last year, I will probably be regularly attend the Interactive Developers meeting Study another language – I have been thinking about looking in to Dart or perhaps Go Launch an Android app – Another holdover from last year I am thinking of doing a small app having to do with managing the silent state of the phone

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• Basic is Best

  - by Eric A. Stephens

  Fellow foodies will recognize the recent movement towards "farm-to-table" restaurants. These venues attempt to simplify their menus and source ingredients as close to the source as possible. I had the opportunity to dine at such a restaurant the other evening. I was gushing about the appetizer to my server when she described the preparation for the item and then punctuated her comments with "basic is best". I reminded my fellow enterprise architect diners there was an architecture lesson in that statement. They rolled their eyes and chuckled. But they also knew I was right. I'm reminded of Frederick Brooks' book The Mythical Man Month and his latest The Design of Design. The former must read book talks about complexity. But he refrains from damning all complexity. The world we live in and enterprises we strive to transform with enterprise architecture are complicated organisms, much like the human body. But sometimes a simple solution is the best approach. Fewer applications (think: portfolio rationalization). Fewer components. Fewer lines of code. Whatever level of abstraction you are working at, less is more. I'm reminded of the enterprise architecture principle "Control Technical Diversity". At one firm I created pithy catch phrases for each principles. I named this one "Less is More". But perhaps another variation is what my server said the other night, "Basic is Best".

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• PASS Summit Preconference and Sessions

  - by Davide Mauri

  I’m very pleased to announce that I’ll be delivering a Pre-Conference at PASS Summit 2012. I’ll speak about Business Intelligence again (as I did in 2010) but this time I’ll focus only on Data Warehouse, since it’s big topic even alone. I’ll discuss not only what is a Data Warehouse, how it can be modeled and built, but also how it’s development can be approached using and Agile approach, bringing the experience I gathered in this field. Building the Agile Data Warehouse with SQL Server 2012 http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2012/Sessions/SessionDetails.aspx?sid=2821 I’m sure you’ll like it, especially if you’re starting to create a BI Solution and you’re wondering what is a Data Warehouse, if it is still useful nowadays that everyone talks about Self-Service BI and In-Memory databases, and what’s the correct path to follow in order to have a successful project up and running. Beside this Preconference, I’ll also deliver a regular session, this time related to database administration, monitoring and tuning: DMVs: Power in Your Hands http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2012/Sessions/SessionDetails.aspx?sid=3204 Here we’ll dive into the most useful DMVs, so that you’ll see how that can help in everyday management in order to discover, understand and optimze you SQL Server installation, from the server itself to the single query. See you there!!!!!

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• Robots &amp; Pencils Bring iOS Dev Camp/Dev School to Winnipeg

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  My buddy Paul Thorsteinson from Robots and Pencils has come up with an elaborate way to collect his Mac power adaptor that I keep forgetting to mail to him – he’s coming to town with Jonathan Rasmusson to run an iPhone Dev Camp and two-day Dev School here in Winnipeg! From the email he sent me: We are going to be bringing our successful iOS dev school out to the 'Peg in October as well has hosting a dev camp on the Friday night (comparable to a .net user group type deal).  If you know any peeps in Manitoba who are interested in these, please pass along!  .Net developers are welcome to come and heckle as well ;) Winnipeg iPhone Dev Camp October 26th Marlborough Hotel, 5:30pm Cost: $10 http://ios-dev-camp-winnipeg-eorg.eventbrite.com/ ^for devs of any level interested in meeting other devs hearing talks of all levels.  Food and networking Winnipeg iPhone Dev School October 27th, 28th, Marlborough Hotel Cost: $899 + GST http://academy.robotsandpencils.com/training ^For devs looking to get their feet wet in iOS dev Paul has spoken at Prairie Dev Con before and is vastly knowledgeable in mobile development. You can see his work in Spy vs Spy, Catch the Princess, World Explorer for Minecraft, Deco Windshield (yes they run their entire business on their iPad), Anthm, Own This World and too many other apps. If you’re into iOS development, looking to get in, or wanting to improve your skills, consider these great professional development opportunities! D

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• How does datomic handle "corrections"?

  - by blueberryfields

  tl;dr Rich Hickey describes datomic as a system which implicitly deals with timestamps associated with data storage from my experience, data is often imperfectly stored in systems, and on many occasions needs to retroactively be corrected (ie, often the question of "was a True on Tuesday at 12:00pm?" will have an incorrect answer stored in the database) This seems like a spot where the abstractions behind datomic might break - do they? If they don't, how does the system handle such corrections? Rich Hickey, in several of his talks, justifies the creation of datomic, and explains its benefits. His work, if I understand correctly, is motivated by core the insight that humans, when speaking about data and facts, implicitly associate some of the related context into their work(a date-time). By pushing the work required to manage the implicit date-time component of context into the database, he's created a system which is both much easier to understand, and much easier to program. This turns out to be relevant to most database programmers in practice - his work saves everyone a lot of time managing complex, hard to produce/debug/fix, time queries. However, especially in large databases, data is often damaged/incorrect (maybe it was not input correctly, maybe it eroded over time, etc...). While most database updates are insertions of new facts, and should indeed be treated that way, a non-trivial subset of the work required to manage time-queries has to do with retroactive updates. I have yet to see any documentation which explains how such corrections, or retroactive updates, are handled by datomic; from my experience, they are a non-trivial (and incredibly difficult to deal with) subset of time-related data manipulation that database programmers are faced with. Does datomic gracefully handle such updates? If so, how?

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• TechEd 2012: Windows Phone Exam Cram

  - by Tim Murphy

  Usually speakers take offence if you wear headphones in their talk.  For the exam cram session it was a requirement.  This was because it was a cubical walled room with an open top next to a study hall. While no-one was going to come out of this session ready to take a test, I am glad that I took the time to attend it.  There was a fair amount of material that you should know already if you have ever taken a certification test before.  This was packed around a mix of key concepts and some tidbits that marked where some of the pitfalls are for this particular test.  The biggest warning was that the test is based on Windows Phone 7.0 and not Mango meaning that you have to be careful that you don’t answer a question in the wrong context. I would suggest if you have a chance to take attend a free session grab it.  It is a good break from the other hard core talks and will get your mind into a mode for getting your next certification.  Good luck. del.icio.us Tags: TechEd,TechEd 2012,Windows Phone,Exam Cram,Certification

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• JVM Language Summit in July

  - by Tori Wieldt

  A reminder that the 2012 JVM Language Summit is happening July 30–August 1, 2012 in Santa Clara, CA. The JVM Language Summit is an open technical collaboration among language designers, compiler writers, tool builders, runtime engineers, and VM architects, sharing their experiences as creators of programming languages for the JVM, and of the JVM itself. Non-JVM developers are welcome to attend or speak on their runtime, VM, or language of choice. About 70 language and VM implementers attended last year—and over one third presented. What’s at the JVM Language Summit? Three days of technical presentations and conversations about programming languages and the JVM. Prepared talks by numerous visiting language experts, OpenJDK engineers, and other Java luminaries. Many opportunities to visit and network with your peers. Da Vinci Machine Project memorabilia. Dinner at a local restaurant, such as last year’s Faultline Brewing Company. A chance to help shape the future of programming languages on the JVM. Space is limited: This summit is organized around a single classroom-style room, to support direct communication between participants. To cover costs, there is a nominal conference fee of $100. Learn more.

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• What does my blog says about me?

  - by subodhnpushpak

  Somebody said that “a person is as good as he/she THINKS”. Recently, over conversation, one of my close “blog friend” remarked that a blog post revealed so much about the person who has written it; and though we never met physically / or even talked over phone… (we have only exchanged technical talks over chats and blogs); this friend of mine correctly predicted my personality and even my habits!! I also came across with this site http://www.typealyzer.com/?lang=en. Just put a blog address and it will predict the bloggers mindset!! Here is what I get when I put across my blog ..   very flattering… I must say. Why don’t you discover yours?? Do share the results with me.. BTW.. now a days I am working on Windows Phone 7 and am loving it. Have lots of gotchas to blog but simply no time (only 14 hrs a day )

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• Dependency Inversion Principle

  - by Chris Paine

  I have been studying also S.O.L.I.D. and watched this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huEEkx5P5Hs 01:45:30 into the video he talks about the Dependency Inversion Principle and I am scratching my head??? I had to simplify it(if possible) to get it through this thick scull of mine and here is what I came up with. Code on the marked My_modified_code my version, code marked Original DIP video version. Can I accomplish the same with the latter code? Thanks in advance. Original: namespace simple.main { class main { static void Main() { FirstClass FirstClass = new FirstClass(new OtherClass()); FirstClass.Method(); Console.ReadKey(); //tempClass temp = new OtherClass(); //temp.Method(); } } public class FirstClass { private tempClass _LastClass; public FirstClass(tempClass tempClass)//ctor { _LastClass = tempClass; } public void Method() { _LastClass.Method(); } } public abstract class tempClass{public abstract void Method();} public class LASTCLASS : tempClass { public override void Method() { Console.WriteLine("\nHello World!"); } } public class OtherClass : tempClass { public override void Method() { Console.WriteLine("\nOther World!"); } } } My_modified_code: namespace simple.main { class main { static void Main() { //FirstClass FirstClass = new FirstClass(new OtherClass()); //FirstClass.Method(); //Console.ReadKey(); tempClass temp = new OtherClass(); temp.Method(); } } //public class FirstClass //{ // private tempClass _LastClass; // public FirstClass(tempClass tempClass)//ctor // { // _LastClass = tempClass; // } // public void Method() // { // _LastClass.Method(); // } //} public abstract class tempClass{public abstract void Method();} public class LASTCLASS : tempClass { public override void Method() { Console.WriteLine("\nHello World!"); } } public class OtherClass : tempClass { public override void Method() { Console.WriteLine("\nOther World!"); } }

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• I am not the most logically-organized person. Do I have any chance at being a good 'low-level' programmer?

  - by user217902

  Background: I am entering college next year. I really enjoy making stuff and solving logical problems, so I'm thinking of majoring in compsci and working in software development. I hope to have the kind of job where I can work with implementing / improving algorithms and data structures on a regular basis.. as opposed to, say, a job that's purely concerned with mashing different libraries together, or 'finding the right APIs for the job'. (Hence the word 'low-level' in the title. No, I don't wish to write assembly all day.) Thing is, I've never been the most logically-sharp person. Thus far I have only worked on hobby projects, but I find that I make the silliest of errors ever so often, and it can take me ages to find it. Like anywhere between three hours to a day to locate a simple segfault, off-by-one error, or other logical mistake. (Of course, I do other things in the meantime, like browsing SO, reddit, and the like..) It's not like I'm 'new' to programming either; I first tried C++ maybe five years ago. My question is: is this normal? Should a programmer with any talent solve it in less time? Having read Spolsky's Smart and gets things done, where he talks about the large variance in programming speed, am I near the bottom of the curve, and therefore destined to work in companies that cannot afford to hire quality programmers? I'd like to think that conceptually I'm okay -- I can grasp algorithms and concepts pretty well, I do fine in math and science, although I probably drop signs in my equations more often than the next guy. Still, grokking concepts makes me happy, and is the reason why I want to work with algorithms. I'm hoping to hear from those of you with real-world programming experience. TL;DR: I make many careless mistakes, should I not consider programming as a career?

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• PASS Summit Preconference and Sessions

  - by Davide Mauri

  I’m very pleased to announce that I’ll be delivering a Pre-Conference at PASS Summit 2012. I’ll speak about Business Intelligence again (as I did in 2010) but this time I’ll focus only on Data Warehouse, since it’s big topic even alone. I’ll discuss not only what is a Data Warehouse, how it can be modeled and built, but also how it’s development can be approached using and Agile approach, bringing the experience I gathered in this field. Building the Agile Data Warehouse with SQL Server 2012 http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2012/Sessions/SessionDetails.aspx?sid=2821 I’m sure you’ll like it, especially if you’re starting to create a BI Solution and you’re wondering what is a Data Warehouse, if it is still useful nowadays that everyone talks about Self-Service BI and In-Memory databases, and what’s the correct path to follow in order to have a successful project up and running. Beside this Preconference, I’ll also deliver a regular session, this time related to database administration, monitoring and tuning: DMVs: Power in Your Hands http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2012/Sessions/SessionDetails.aspx?sid=3204 Here we’ll dive into the most useful DMVs, so that you’ll see how that can help in everyday management in order to discover, understand and optimze you SQL Server installation, from the server itself to the single query. See you there!!!!!

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• Should developers be involved in testing phases?

  - by LudoMC

  Hi, we are using a classical V-shaped development process. We then have requirements, architecture, design, implementation, integration tests, system tests and acceptance. Testers are preparing test cases during the first phases of the project. The issue is that, due to resources issues (*), test phases are too long and are often shortened due to time constraints (you know project managers... ;)). So my question is simple: should developers be involved in the tests phases and isn't it too 'dangerous'. I'm afraid it will give the project managers a false feeling of better quality as the work has been done but would the added man.days be of any value? I'm not really confident of developers doing tests (no offense here but we all know it's quite hard to break in a few clicks what you have made in severals days). Thanks for sharing your thoughts. (*) For obscure reasons, increasing the number of testers is not an option as of today. (Just upfront, it's not a duplicate of Should programmers help testers in designing tests? which talks about test preparation and not test execution, where we avoid the implication of developers)

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• Making efficeint voxel engines using "chunks"

  - by Wardy

  Concept I'm currently looking in to how voxel engines work with a view to possibly making one myself. I see a lot of stuff like this ... https://sites.google.com/site/letsmakeavoxelengine/home/chunks ... which talks about how to go about reducing the draw calls. What I can't seem to understand is how it actually saves draw call counts on the basis of the logic being something like this ... Without chunks foreach voxel in myvoxels DrawIfVisible() With Chunks foreach chunk in mychunks DrawIfVisible() which then does ... foreach voxel in myvoxels DrawIfVisible() So surely you saved nothing ?!?! You still make a draw call for each visible voxel do you not? A visible voxel needs a draw call in either scenario. The only real saving I can see is that the logic that evaluates a chunk will be able to determine if a large number of voxels are visible or not effectively saving a bit of "is this chunk visible" cpu time. But it's the draw calls that interest me ... The fewer of those, the faster the application. EDIT: In case it makes any difference I will probably be using XNA (DX not OpenGL) for my engine so don't consider my choice of example in the link above my choice of technology. But this question is such that I doubt it would matter.

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• Creating Ideal Customers with Modern Marketing

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  “Without that real-time perspective, it's just not possible to stay in step with what your customers want and need.” — Customer-Obsessed Marketing Is Your Next Competitive Edge Every business talks about focusing on the customer. But few actually deliver. Why? Because digital marketing technology can’t tell a compelling story. It lacks engaging dialogue with no connection beyond the transaction. It’s lost in translation because marketers don’t speak code. And it’s confusing to the customer because marketing and IT can’t connect process and data. Take a look at your digital marketing picture. From a distance it may look fine. But look up close. It’s fragmented and the dots are not connected. You need much higher resolution. Step back and see the big picture. Zoom in on the individual customer. But you’ll need Modern Marketing technology engineered with enterprise grade data management and proven cloud performance. Explore the people, processes, and technology of the Oracle Marketing Cloud. Create a culture of customer obsession. Simplify marketing across all channels to turn casual prospects into passionate advocates. Engage ideal customers with a meaningful experience. Personalize your brand narrative for each customer in every chapter of your story to increase engagement and revenue. Read the full article and watch the videos here

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• Advice on whether to use scripting, run time compile or something else

  - by Gaz83

  I work in the prodution area at my works and I design and create the software to run our automated test equipment. Everytime I get involved with a new machine I end up with a different and (hopefully) better design. Anyway I have come to the point where I feel I need to start standardization all the machines with the same program. I see a problem when it comes to applying updates as at the moment the test procedures are hard coded into the program at each station. I neeed to be able to update the core program without affecting the testing section. The way I see it that this will mean splitting the program into 2 sections. Main UI - This is the core that talks to everything on the machine such as cameras, sensors, printer etc and is a standalone application. Test Procedure - This is the steps that is executeted everytime the machine runs through a test. The main UI will load the test procedure and execute when ever a test is required. My question is what is the best approach to this in terms of having an application load a file and execute the code with in? Take into account that the code in the test procedure will need access to public methods on the UI/core system to communicate to sensors etc. I have heard about MS Roslyn and had a quick look, would this solve my issue?

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• "bug" in C++11 text by Stroustrup?

  - by Astara

  I found an apparent contradiction in the c++ text having to do with the result of the c_str() function operating on std:strings (in my copy, the definition and contradiction are on p1040). First it defines the c_str() function as something that produces a 'C-style' (zero-terminated) string, but later it talks about how a C++ c_str value can have embed a 'C'-style, end-of-string terminators (i.e. NUL's) embedded in the string (that is defined by being NUL terminated). Um... does anyone else feel that this is a 'stretching' of the definition of a C-string beyond it's definition? I.e. I think what it means, is that if you were to look at the length() function as applied to the string, it will show a different end of string than using the C-definition of a z-string -- one that can contain any character except NUL, and is terminated by NUL. I likely don't have to worry about it in my of my programs, but it seems like a subtle distinction that makes a C++ c_str, not really a 'C'-string. Am I misunderstanding this issue? Thanks!

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• Windows Azure: General Availability of Web Sites + Mobile Services, New AutoScale + Alerts Support, No Credit Card Needed for MSDN

  - by ScottGu

  This morning we released a major set of updates to Windows Azure.  These updates included: Web Sites: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Web Sites with SLA Mobile Services: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Mobile Services with SLA Auto-Scale: New automatic scaling support for Web Sites, Cloud Services and Virtual Machines Alerts/Notifications: New email alerting support for all Compute Services (Web Sites, Mobile Services, Cloud Services, and Virtual Machines) MSDN: No more credit card requirement for sign-up All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note: some are still in preview).  Below are more details about them. Web Sites: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Web Sites I’m incredibly excited to announce the General Availability release of Windows Azure Web Sites. The Windows Azure Web Sites service is perfect for hosting a web presence, building customer engagement solutions, and delivering business web apps.  Today’s General Availability release means we are taking off the “preview” tag from the Free and Standard (formerly called reserved) tiers of Windows Azure Web Sites.  This means we are providing: A 99.9% monthly SLA (Service Level Agreement) for the Standard tier Microsoft Support available on a 24x7 basis (with plans that range from developer plans to enterprise Premier support) The Free tier runs in a shared compute environment and supports up to 10 web sites. While the Free tier does not come with an SLA, it works great for rapid development and testing and enables you to quickly spike out ideas at no cost. The Standard tier, which was called “Reserved” during the preview, runs using dedicated per-customer VM instances for great performance, isolation and scalability, and enables you to host up to 500 different Web sites within them.  You can easily scale your Standard instances on-demand using the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can adjust VM instance sizes from a Small instance size (1 core, 1.75GB of RAM), up to a Medium instance size (2 core, 3.5GB of RAM), or Large instance (4 cores and 7 GB RAM).  You can choose to run between 1 and 10 Standard instances, enabling you to easily scale up your web backend to 40 cores of CPU and 70GB of RAM: Today’s release also includes general availability support for custom domain SSL certificate bindings for web sites running using the Standard tier. Customers will be able to utilize certificates they purchase for their custom domains and use either SNI or IP based SSL encryption. SNI encryption is available for all modern browsers and does not require an IP address.  SSL certificates can be used for individual sites or wild-card mapped across multiple sites (we charge extra for the use of a SSL cert – but the fee is per-cert and not per site which means you pay once for it regardless of how many sites you use it with).  Today’s release also includes the following new features: Auto-Scale support Today’s Windows Azure release adds preview support for Auto-Scaling web sites.  This enables you to setup automatic scale rules based on the activity of your instances – allowing you to automatically scale down (and save money) when they are below a CPU threshold you define, and automatically scale up quickly when traffic increases.  See below for more details. 64-bit and 32-bit mode support You can now choose to run your standard tier instances in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode (previously they only ran in 32-bit mode).  This enables you to address even more memory within individual web applications. Memory dumps Memory dumps can be very useful for diagnosing issues and debugging apps. Using a REST API, you can now get a memory dump of your sites, which you can then use for investigating issues in Visual Studio Debugger, WinDbg, and other tools. Scaling Sites Independently Prior to today’s release, all sites scaled up/down together whenever you scaled any site in a sub-region. So you may have had to keep your proof-of-concept or testing sites in a separate sub-region if you wanted to keep them in the Free tier. This will no longer be necessary.  Windows Azure Web Sites can now mix different tier levels in the same geographic sub-region. This allows you, for example, to selectively move some of your sites in the West US sub-region up to Standard tier when they require the features, scalability, and SLA of the Standard tier. Full pricing details on Windows Azure Web Sites can be found here.  Note that the “Shared Tier” of Windows Azure Web Sites remains in preview mode (and continues to have discounted preview pricing).  Mobile Services: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Mobile Services I’m incredibly excited to announce the General Availability release of Windows Azure Mobile Services.  Mobile Services is perfect for building scalable cloud back-ends for Windows 8.x, Windows Phone, Apple iOS, Android, and HTML/JavaScript applications.  Customers We’ve seen tremendous adoption of Windows Azure Mobile Services since we first previewed it last September, and more than 20,000 customers are now running mobile back-ends in production using it.  These customers range from startups like Yatterbox, to university students using Mobile Services to complete apps like Sly Fox in their spare time, to media giants like Verdens Gang finding new ways to deliver content, and telcos like TalkTalk Business delivering the up-to-the-minute information their customers require.  In today’s Build keynote, we demonstrated how TalkTalk Business is using Windows Azure Mobile Services to deliver service, outage and billing information to its customers, wherever they might be. Partners When we unveiled the source control and Custom API features I blogged about two weeks ago, we enabled a range of new scenarios, one of which is a more flexible way to work with third party services.  The following blogs, samples and tutorials from our partners cover great ways you can extend Mobile Services to help you build rich modern apps: New Relic allows developers to monitor and manage the end-to-end performance of iOS and Android applications connected to Mobile Services. SendGrid eliminates the complexity of sending email from Mobile Services, saving time and money, while providing reliable delivery to the inbox. Twilio provides a telephony infrastructure web service in the cloud that you can use with Mobile Services to integrate phone calls, text messages and IP voice communications into your mobile apps. Xamarin provides a Mobile Services add on to make it easy building cross-platform connected mobile aps. Pusher allows quickly and securely add scalable real-time messaging functionality to Mobile Services-based web and mobile apps. Visual Studio 2013 and Windows 8.1 This week during //build/ keynote, we demonstrated how Visual Studio 2013, Mobile Services and Windows 8.1 make building connected apps easier than ever. Developers building Windows 8 applications in Visual Studio can now connect them to Windows Azure Mobile Services by simply right clicking then choosing Add Connected Service. You can either create a new Mobile Service or choose existing Mobile Service in the Add Connected Service dialog. Once completed, Visual Studio adds a reference to Mobile Services SDK to your project and generates a Mobile Services client initialization snippet automatically. Add Push Notifications Push Notifications and Live Tiles are a key to building engaging experiences. Visual Studio 2013 and Mobile Services make it super easy to add push notifications to your Windows 8.1 app, by clicking Add a Push Notification item: The Add Push Notification wizard will then guide you through the registration with the Windows Store as well as connecting your app to a new or existing mobile service. Upon completion of the wizard, Visual Studio will configure your mobile service with the WNS credentials, as well as add sample logic to your client project and your mobile service that demonstrates how to send push notifications to your app. Server Explorer Integration In Visual Studio 2013 you can also now view your Mobile Services in the the Server Explorer. You can add tables, edit, and save server side scripts without ever leaving Visual Studio, as shown on the image below: Pricing With today’s general availability release we are announcing that we will be offering Mobile Services in three tiers – Free, Standard, and Premium.  Each tier is metered using a simple pricing model based on the # of API calls (bandwidth is included at no extra charge), and the Standard and Premium tiers are backed by 99.9% monthly SLAs.  You can elastically scale up or down the number of instances you have of each tier to increase the # of API requests your service can support – allowing you to efficiently scale as your business grows. The following table summarizes the new pricing model (full pricing details here):   You can find the full details of the new pricing model here. Build Conference Talks The //BUILD/ conference will be packed with sessions covering every aspect of developing connected applications with Mobile Services. The best part is that, even if you can’t be with us in San Francisco, every session is being streamed live. Be sure not to miss these talks: Mobile Services – Soup to Nuts — Josh Twist Building Cross-Platform Apps with Windows Azure Mobile Services — Chris Risner Connected Windows Phone Apps made Easy with Mobile Services — Yavor Georgiev Build Connected Windows 8.1 Apps with Mobile Services — Nick Harris Who’s that user? Identity in Mobile Apps — Dinesh Kulkarni Building REST Services with JavaScript — Nathan Totten Going Live and Beyond with Windows Azure Mobile Services — Kirill Gavrylyuk , Paul Batum Protips for Windows Azure Mobile Services — Chris Risner AutoScale: Dynamically scale up/down your app based on real-world usage One of the key benefits of Windows Azure is that you can dynamically scale your application in response to changing demand. In the past, though, you have had to either manually change the scale of your application, or use additional tooling (such as WASABi or MetricsHub) to automatically scale your application. Today, we’re announcing that AutoScale will be built-into Windows Azure directly.  With today’s release it is now enabled for Cloud Services, Virtual Machines and Web Sites (Mobile Services support will come soon). Auto-scale enables you to configure Windows Azure to automatically scale your application dynamically on your behalf (without any manual intervention) so you can achieve the ideal performance and cost balance. Once configured it will regularly adjust the number of instances running in response to the load in your application. Currently, we support two different load metrics: CPU percentage Storage queue depth (Cloud Services and Virtual Machines only) We’ll enable automatic scaling on even more scale metrics in future updates. When to use Auto-Scale The following are good criteria for services/apps that will benefit from the use of auto-scale: The service/app can scale horizontally (e.g. it can be duplicated to multiple instances) The service/app load changes over time If your app meets these criteria, then you should look to leverage auto-scale. How to Enable Auto-Scale To enable auto-scale, simply navigate to the Scale tab in the Windows Azure Management Portal for the app/service you wish to enable.  Within the scale tab turn the Auto-Scale setting on to either CPU or Queue (for Cloud Services and VMs) to enable Auto-Scale.  Then change the instance count and target CPU settings to configure the Auto-Scale ranges you want to maintain. The image below demonstrates how to enable Auto-Scale on a Windows Azure Web-Site.  I’ve configured the web-site so that it will run using between 1 and 5 VM instances.  The exact # used will depend on the aggregate CPU of the VMs using the 40-70% range I’ve configured below.  If the aggregate CPU goes above 70%, then Windows Azure will automatically add new VMs to the pool (up to the maximum of 5 instances I’ve configured it to use).  If the aggregate CPU drops below 40% then Windows Azure will automatically start shutting down VMs to save me money: Once you’ve turned auto-scale on, you can return to the Scale tab at any point and select Off to manually set the number of instances. Using the Auto-Scale Preview With today’s update you can now, in just a few minutes, have Windows Azure automatically adjust the number of instances you have running  in your apps to keep your service performant at an even better cost. Auto-scale is being released today as a preview feature, and will be free until General Availability. During preview, each subscription is limited to 10 separate auto-scale rules across all of the resources they have (Web sites, Cloud services or Virtual Machines). If you hit the 10 limit, you can disable auto-scale for any resource to enable it for another. Alerts and Notifications Starting today we are now providing the ability to configure threshold based alerts on monitoring metrics. This feature is available for compute services (cloud services, VM, websites and mobiles services). Alerts provide you the ability to get proactively notified of active or impending issues within your application.  You can define alert rules for: Virtual machine monitoring metrics that are collected from the host operating system (CPU percentage, network in/out, disk read bytes/sec and disk write bytes/sec) and on monitoring metrics from monitoring web endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. Cloud service monitoring metrics that are collected from the host operating system (same as VM), monitoring metrics from the guest VM (from performance counters within the VM) and on monitoring metrics from monitoring web endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. For Web Sites and Mobile Services, alerting rules can be configured on monitoring metrics from monitoring endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. Creating Alert Rules You can add an alert rule for a monitoring metric by navigating to the Setting -> Alerts tab in the Windows Azure Management Portal. Click on the Add Rule button to create an alert rule. Give the alert rule a name and optionally add a description. Then pick the service which you want to define the alert rule on: The next step in the alert creation wizard will then filter the monitoring metrics based on the service you selected:   Once created the rule will show up in your alerts list within the settings tab: The rule above is defined as “not activated” since it hasn’t tripped over the CPU threshold we set.  If the CPU on the above machine goes over the limit, though, I’ll get an email notifying me from an Windows Azure Alerts email address ([email protected]). And when I log into the portal and revisit the alerts tab I’ll see it highlighted in red.  Clicking it will then enable me to see what is causing it to fail, as well as view the history of when it has happened in the past. Alert Notifications With today’s initial preview you can now easily create alerting rules based on monitoring metrics and get notified on active or impending issues within your application that require attention. During preview, each subscription is limited to 10 alert rules across all of the services that support alert rules. No More Credit Card Requirement for MSDN Subscribers Earlier this month (during TechEd 2013), Windows Azure announced that MSDN users will get Windows Azure Credits every month that they can use for any Windows Azure services they want. You can read details about this in my previous Dev/Test blog post. Today we are making further updates to enable an easier Windows Azure signup for MSDN users. MSDN users will now not be required to provide payment information (e.g. no credit card) during sign-up, so long as they use the service within the included monetary credit for the billing period. For usage beyond the monetary credit, they can enable overages by providing the payment information and remove the spending limit. This enables a super easy, one page sign-up experience for MSDN users.  Simply sign-up for your Windows Azure trial using the same Microsoft ID that you use to manage your MSDN account, then complete the one page sign-up form below and you will be able to spend your free monthly MSDN credits (up to $150 each month) on any Windows Azure resource for dev/test:   This makes it trivially easy for every MDSN customer to start using Windows Azure today.  If you haven’t signed up yet, I definitely recommend checking it out. Summary Today’s release includes a ton of great features that enable you to build even better cloud solutions.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Prepping a conference

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  I have had the chance to talk at many conferences these past few years, and came up with a way to prepare them which works really well for me. Most importantly, it would make it quite easy to overcome an emergency (for example if my laptop would suddenly lose data). The whole code as well as the slides and other documents are in the cloud. I also use source control for my demos, so that I always have the latest and the greatest, but also a history of changes I made to my demos. Finally I have a system of code snippets which works great, and I often had very positive remarks from the audience regarding that. Putting everything in the cloud The one thing I used to be the most scared of was a sudden crash of my laptop, and being unable to restore in time for a conference. Most conferences ask speakers to send slides a few days (or weeks…) in advance, but let's face it, we all have last minute changes to our talks and I always come in the conference with updated slides that I pass to the management team. The answer to that dilemma used to be working off memory sticks, and that worked not bad. However last year I started putting all the documents relating to a conference in a DropBox folder, and that works great too. Obviously DropBox works only if you have connectivity, so if I for instance update slides while on an international flight, I cannot save to the cloud. The obvious answer to that is to backup everything on a memory stick… but I have to admit, I have been trusting my luck and working off my laptop HD and then synching everything to the cloud after landing. Of course on some US national flights you get WiFi on board, so in that case it is even simpler :) Usually after the conference is done, I remove the files from DropBox and copy them to their "final destination". They are backed up from there to BackBlaze, the great online backup service I am using routinely (I currently have about 90GB of data in BackBlaze). Outlining the presentations I like to have a written outline of my presentations written somewhere. I keep it simple, just write the various sections of the presentation with timing. I guess it is a remnant of the time when I was a private pilot, and using checklists for flight preparation. For example: Demo about designability 15' (0:37) Switch to Blend Open MainPage.xaml Create a DataTemplate ... Here I can immediately see during the presentation if I am taking too much time for my demo (0:37 is where I need to be when I am done with this section of the presentation, and 15' is the time that this particular section takes). I keep these sections reasonable, I don't detail every step of the preparation. Typically I have one such section for every 10-15 minutes of my talks. Yes, I am timing my presentations. I keep adjusting these numbers when I rehearse, and this really helps to feel more confident during the presentations. This is especially important for presentations that are long, like my MIX11 demo which clocked at 57 minutes (I had a lot of stuff to show…). Such presentations are risky, because if anything goes wrong, you will have to cut stuff, so the answer to that is: Rehearse, rehearse and when you're done rehearsing, rehearse a little more. I also have a "Preparation" section where I outline what I need to do before a presentation. For instance: Preparation Reboot in VHD Make sure MSN and Twitter are not running. Open VS10 and load demo Open Blend and load demo Run the WP7 emulator ... I typically start preparing my laptop an hour before the talk, starting everything I need to start and then putting my laptop to sleep. Saving and printing the outline, Timing Printing is a real problem because it is really hard to find a printer at most conference venues, and also quite hard in hotels. To solve that, I simply write everything in OneNote (synched to the cloud, now you start to know what I like ;) and then I print it to a PDF (I use CutePDFWriter) that I save to my Kindle. During the presentation, I read the outline off the Kindle (I mostly just need a quick check to see how I am timing). For timing during the presentation, I use the free tool ChronoGPS on my Windows Phone 7, but of course any phone these days has a clock/chrono application. In some conferences, they even have timers that the presenters can see, but they tend to count down and I prefer to count up… so I just use my own :) Source control for demos For demos, I create a separate folder and use Mercurial as source control. Mercurial has the huge advantage (over SVN or TFS) to work offline too, so I can commit while on a plane, and all the history is saved. Then when I have connectivity I push everything to the cloud (I am using the fantastic Trunksapp.com for my private repositories). Here too the obvious downside is the risk of losing my last changes if my laptop crashes before I can push to the cloud, and here too the obvious answer would be to work from a memory stick… though I have to admit I didn't do that lately (except when I was writing Silverlight 4 Unleashed, where I was really paranoid…) And code snippets? I am one of these presenters who hates to type in front of an audience. I can type really fast (writing two books has this advantage, it really teaches you to touch type and be fast at it) but in the context of an audience, on a stage where it is often damn cold (an issue I had a lot in past conferences, air conditioning can freeze your fingers and make it really hard to type), it doesn't work as well. I don't know for you, but I really dislike seeing a presentation where the speaker uses the backspace key more often than others ;) To solve that, I like to have my code ready in snippets, and drag them to the screen. Then I can spend time explaining each code snippet, while highlighting portions of the code (always highlight what you talk about, the audience often doesn't even see the cursor and doesn't know where you are on the screen!) Over the years I have used various solutions for code snippets, and now I have one which works really well… if you take a few precautions! I use the Visual Studio Toolbox. Preparing the code snippets You can store code snippets in the Toolbox for anything, XAML, C# etc. I arrange the snippets in the order in which I need them, which is a great way to remember what comes next in the presentation. I also separate them by topic, to make it easier to find them, for example when I switch to the slides and then back to the code. Remember that no matter how experienced you are, you will feel more nervous on stage than while you are preparing, so any way to make it easier for you is going to be beneficial to the audience. To store a code snippet, I do the following: Open the final demo that you want to show to the audience in Visual Studio. In your code, select a snippet of code that you want to explain in particular. Make sure that the Visual Studio Toolbox is open (menu View, Toolbox or Ctrl-Alt-X). Drag the selected snippet from the code window to the toolbox. (if needed) drag the snippet to the correct location (for example between two other code snippets so that you can access it as you speak through the demo). Right click on the snippet and select Rename Item from the context menu. Select a meaningful name. For me I use the following conventions: If it is a method, I use the method's name. If it is not a whole method, I use a descriptive name. If it is the content of a method (i.e. the body only, without the method's signature), I use "-> MethodName". This reminds me during the presentation that this is only the body, and that I need to insert that into an existing signature. This is the case, for instance, when I use Visual Studio to automatically generate the members of an interface’s implementation; then I only need to insert my snippet inside the generated method body. Saving the snippets This is the most important!! It happened to me a few times that VS10 lost its settings. When that happens, the snippets are lost too! Yeah that really sucks, especially (as it happened once) when this is the case about an hour before a talk… Stress and sweat follows, not good conditions to start a talk in front of an audience believe me. Thankfully, saving snippets is really easy with the following steps: Select the menu Tools, Import and Export Settings. Select Export selected environment settings and press Next. Uncheck All Settings. Then expand General Settings and select Toolbox (only!). Press Next. Select your source control folder and save under a meaningful name (for instance Snippets.vssettings). Commit to source control and push to the cloud. By the way, this also has the advantage of applying source control to the snippets file (which is an XML file), so you get history for free on that file! Reimporting the snippets If VS loses its settings and you need to reimport the snippets, this can be done super easily and very fast. Make sure that the Toolbox is empty. When you import snippets, they are merged with existing ones, they do not replace the content of the Toolbox. Unless merging is really what you want, make sure that your Toolbox is clean before you import, it is really easier. Select the menu Tools, Import and Export Settings. Select Import selected environment settings and press Next. Select No, just import new settings and press Next. Press Browse and select the Snippets.vssettings file. Press Finish. Et voila, all your snippets appear again in the Toolbox. Whew, the worst was averted and you can start your demo without sweating! (I had to do that once literally 5 minutes before the start of a demo, while my laptop was already hooked to the projector, and it went just fine). What about special tools? When using special tools (for example beta versions of tools you have an early access to), or a special configuration of your laptop, things can get tricky because you cannot really be sure that you will get a laptop with the same tools and the same configuration at the conference. To solve that, I use the following precautions: I make my demos from a Virtual Hard Disk. The great John Papa made a very easy-to-follow web page where he explains how to create a VHD and install Win7 to it. This gives you the full power of your laptop (as fast as booting from the metal). For me, I have a basic configuration that I saved on a USB harddrive (Win7 plus drivers, basic settings for desktop, folder options, taskbar etc) and Visual Studio 2010 SP1 on it. When preparing, I start by copying this "basis VHD" to my laptop. I install additional tools and configurations. I save the VHD back to the USB harddrive in a different folder. This would allow me to reinstall my demo environment quite fast, for example in case of harddrive failure. Replace the harddrive, copy the VHD to it, configure the BCD and you can start. Unfortunately this only works if the laptop itself still works. In the worst case of total failure, my security is to back all the installers up: The installers I use are synched on all my laptops and backed up to BackBlaze. If the worst happens and my laptop is absolutely broken, I can download the installer from BackBlaze and install on another laptop. This of course takes some time, and if that happens 5 minutes before a presentation, well… I don't have an answer to that, except of course crossing my fingers. Still, all that gives me additional security. Conclusion Remember folks, talking to an audience, large or small, will make you nervous. Just ask Scott Hanselman :) The goal here is to create the best possible conditions for you, and to create an environment where everything is saved and easy to restore, where everything is well known and provides you with additional confidence. The cooler you feel before the presentation (and during ;)), the better your presentation will be. Here too, the goal is to provide the best user experience you can have, which in turn will make it more enjoyable for your audience! Happy presenting :) Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Hexagonal Grid Coordinates To Pixel Coordinates

  - by CaptnCraig

  I am working with a hexagonal grid. I have chosen to use this coordinate system because it is quite elegant. This question talks about generating the coordinates themselves, and is quite useful. My issue now is in converting these coordinates to and from actual pixel coordinates. I am looking for a simple way to find the center of a hexagon with coordinates x,y,z. Assume (0,0) in pixel coordinates is at (0,0,0) in hex coords, and that each hexagon has an edge of length s. It seems to me like x,y, and z should each move my coordinate a certain distance along an axis, but they are interrelated in an odd way I can't quite wrap my head around it. Bonus points if you can go the other direction and convert any (x,y) point in pixel coordinates to the hex that point belongs in.

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