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• 2D Collision masks for handling slopes

  - by JiminyCricket

  I've been looking at the example at: http://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/tutorial/collision_2d_perpixel and am trying to figure out how to adjust the sprite once a collision has been detected. As David suggested at XNA 4.0 2D sidescroller variable terrain heightmap for walking/collision, I made a few sensor points (feet, sides, bottom center, etc.) and can easily detect when these points actually collide with non-transparent portions of a second texture (simple slope). I'm having trouble with the algorithm of how I would actually adjust the sprite position based on a collision. Say I detect a collision with the slope at the sprite's right foot. How can I scan the slope texture data to find the Y position to place the sprite's foot so it is no longer inside the slope? The way it is stored as a 1D array in the example is a bit confusing, should I try to store the data as a 2D array instead? For test purposes, I'm thinking of just using the slope texture alpha itself as a primitive and easy collision mask (no grass bits or anything besides a simple non-linear slope). Then, as in the example, I find the coordinates of any collisions between the slope texture and the sprite's sensors and mark these special sensor collisions as having occurred. Finally, in the case of moving up a slope, I would scan for the first transparent pixel above (in the texture's Ys at that X) the right foot collision point and set that as the new height of the sprite. I'm a little unclear also on when I should make these adjustments. Collisions are checked on every game.update() so would I quickly change the position of the sprite before the next update is called? I also noticed several people mention that it's best to separate collision checks horizontally and vertically, why is that exactly? Open to any suggestions if this is an inefficient or inaccurate way of handling this. I wish MSDN had provided an example of something like this, I didn't know it would be so much more complex than NES Mario style pure box platforming!

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• Transform coordinates from 3d to 2d without matrix or built in methods

  - by Thomas

  Not to long ago i started to create a small 3D engine in javascript to combine this with an html5 canvas. One of the issues I run into is how can you transform 3d to 2d coords. Since I cannot use matrices or built in transformation methods I need another way. I've tried implementing the next explanation + pseudo code: http://freespace.virgin.net/hugo.elias/routines/3d_to_2d.htm Unfortunately no luck there. I've replace all the input variables with data from my own camera and object classes. I have the following data: An object with a rotation, position vector and an array of 4 3d coords (its just a plane) a camera with a position and rotation vector the viewport - a square 600 x 600 surface. The example uses a zoom factor which I've set as 1 Most hits on google use either matrix calculations or don't implement camera rotation. Basic transformation should be like this: screen.x = x / z * zoom screen.y = y / z * zoom Can anyone point me in the right direction or explain to me howto achieve this? edit: Thanks for all your posts, I haven't been able to apply all this to my project yet but I hope to do this soon.

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• Visage

  - by Geertjan

  Raj, the Chennai JUG lead, together with others from that JUG, is interested in Visage, the JavaFX script language closely associated with Stephen Chin. He sent me the related lexer and parser and I started by having a look at them in the new version of ANTLRWorks being developed by Sam Harwell (who demonstrated it very effectively during JavaOne): Notice how the lexer and parser are shown in a tree structure, as well as in a cool syntax diagram. Next, I downloaded a bunch of JARs from here, so that packages such as from "com.sun.tools.mjavac" can be used, i.e., these are Visage-specific packages that aren't found anywhere except in the location below: http://code.google.com/p/visage/wiki/GettingStarted It turns out that there's also a Visage NetBeans plugin out there: http://code.google.com/p/visage/source/browse/?repo=netbeans-plugin Rather than recreating everything from scratch, i.e., generating ANTLR Java classes from the lexer and parser, I copied a lot of stuff from the site above and now a file Raj sent me looks as follows, i.e., basic syntax coloring is shown: For anyone wanting to seriously support Visage in NetBeans IDE, I recommend downloading the existing Visage NetBeans plugin above, rather than creating everything yourself from scratch, and then figuring out how to use that code in some way, i.e., add the JARs I pointed to above, and work on its build.xml file, which could be frustrating in the beginning, but there's no point in recreating everything if everything already exists.

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• Using Lerp to create a hovering effect for a GameObject

  - by OhMrBigshot

  I want to have a GameObject that has a "hovering" effect when the mouse is over it. What I'm having trouble with is actually having a color that gradually goes from one color to the next. I'm assuming Color.Lerp() is the best function for that, but I can't seem to get it working properly. Here's my CubeBehavior.cs's Update() function: private bool ReachedTop = false; private float t = 0f; private float final_t; private bool MouseOver = false; // Update is called once per frame void Update () { if (MouseOver) { t = Time.time % 1f; // using Time.time to get a value between 0 and 1 if (t >= 1f || t <= 0f) // If it reaches either 0 or 1... ReachedTop = ReachedTop ? false : true; if (ReachedTop) final_t = 1f - t; // Make it count backwards else final_t = t; print (final_t); // for debugging purposes renderer.material.color = Color.Lerp(Color.red, Color.green, final_t); } } void OnMouseEnter() { MouseOver = true; } void OnMouseExit() { renderer.material.color = Color.white; MouseOver = false; } Now, I've tried several approaches to making it reach 1 then count backwards till 0 including a multiplier that alternates between 1 and -1, but I just can't seem to get that effect. The value goes to 1 then resets at 0. Any ideas on how to do this?

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• VPN only connects once and then fails

  - by Toby Allen

  I have a VPN connection setup to my office from home, it works great except for one thing. Once I connect and then disconnect the next time I go to connect to the vpn it hangs on verifying your username and password. No matter how many times I try. Once I restart my router it works again. My router is a belkin, the router on the other end is a Draytek. Any ideas? Is there a cache somewhere that needs to be reset, a setting?

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• Wireless connection switches off IP address

  - by Sanjay Gupta

  I have a Lenovo laptop with windows XP and a wireless connection at home. The wireless connection works when initially I switch on the computer. but if I leave it for even 5 minutes, the wireless is gone. Then I have to shut it off and start computer all over again, waiting for 5 minutes. Even if the wireless speed is 48Mbps or better, it gives the message "Renewing IP address" and gets stuck there not moving to the next stage. Other laptop in the household works fine and can be left on. Why does this happen ? I suspect that IP address is the problem and somehow is not registered in all the necessary files.

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• GetContactList stops reporting collisions on welded bodies

  - by Henrique Jung

  I have some strange problem with my game which uses Box2D as physics engine and I'm out of ideas on what I can do to solve it. My game is a class assignment where I need to build a simple game where the main character moves in a 2D environment while square blocks comes from below him. Each time a collision occurs, that block is attached to the character using a weld joint, when three blocks of the same colors are together, they annihilate themselves(an effect similar to Bejeweled). I'm using a recursive function to iterate through all the attached blocks of a given block to see if there are enough blocks for them to be deleted. I'm using GetContactList function to iterate through the list of contacts to see which blocks are adjacent to each other. The results are quite disappointing, the blocks only get annihilated in few cases. After a lot of debugging, I found the issue, but I still don't know how to solve. My issue is: after some time, GetContactList STOPS returning contacts (return NULL) to blocks that were already attached for some time. I spent some time reading the Box2D manual as well as some tutorials and still didn't find any clue of what is happening. Below there's some simplified version of the code that I wrote. for(int a = 0; a < blocksList.size(); a++) { blocksList[a].BuildConnections(); } And on BuildConnections b2ContactEdge* edge = body->GetContactList(); while(edge != NULL) { if (long_check_to_see_if_there's_a_block_nearby) { // add itself to the list to be anihilated globalList.push_back(this); //if there's, call BuildConnections again on the adjacent block adjacentBody->GetUserData()->BuildConnections; } edge = edge->next; } I know that there's another issue related to circular inclusions, but I fairly sure that this problem isn't causing the problem with the collisions. You can download my entire code from this page if you'd like http://code.google.com/p/fellz/source/list

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• Is there any way to make cherokee server portable?

  - by Tom

  I develop on different machines. I use MAMP, I have it installed on my dropbox folder and created symbolic links to the applications folder. That way if I work one day on my desktop and make changes to let's say a database schema and next day I work from my laptop I won't have to do any db migration stuff the same applies for all the apache virtual hosts I have setup using MAMP. Everything is portable. I recently started using Cherokee server and I like it a lot. I would like to replace MAMP with Cherokee but first I need to be able to make it portable. I don't want to have to configure multiple virtual hosts, settings, etc., on multiple machines. Is there any way I can set up Cherokee to be as portable as MAMP? What if I want to run Cherokee from a thumbdrive?

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• Groovy Debugging

  - by Vijay Allen Raj

  Groovy Debugging - An Overview:ADF BC developers may express snippets of business logic (like the following) as embedded groovy expressions: default / calculated attribute valuesvalidation rules / conditionserror message tokensLOV input values (VO) This approach has the advantages that: Groovy has a compact, EL-like syntax for expressing simple logicADF has extended this syntax to provide useful built-insembedded Groovy expressions are customizableGroovy debugging support helps improve maintainability of business logic expressed in Groovy.Following is an example how groovy debugging works.Example:This example shows how a script expression validator can be created and the groovy script debugged. It shows Step over, breakpoint functionalities as well as syntax coloring.Let us create a ADFBC application based on Emp and Dept tables, and add a script expression validator based on the script:  if (Sal >= 5000){ //If EmpSal is greater than a property value set on the custom //properties on the root AM //raise a custom exception else raise a custom warning if (Sal >= source.DBTransaction.rootApplicationModule.propertiesMap.salHigh) { adf.error.raise("ExcGreaterThanApplicationLimit"); } else { adf.error.warn("WarnGreaterThan5000"); } } else if (EmpSal <= 1000) { adf.error.raise("ExcTooLow"); }return true;In the Emp.xml Flat editor, place breakpoints at various locations as shown below:Right click the appmodule and click Debug. Enter a value greater than 5000 and click next. You can see the debugging work as shown below:  The code can be also be stepped over and debugged.

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• Where does jQuery fit-in with frameworks like JavaScriptMVC, BackboneJS, SproutCore and Knockout?

  - by Prisoner ZERO

  I have been happily using JQuery for the last 2 years and have been quite sucessful creating some really cool functionality with it...so I am very comfortable with it. I also beleive the future of the web will continue on the current client-side path. However... The next challenge seems to be coming in the form of various controller frameworks: KnockoutJS, BackboneJS, SproutCore, JavaScriptMVC (the list goes on). Additonally, there are some great AMD Loader tools for use like RequireJS or LabJS etc. However, jQuery now has define and then capabilities baked-in. It's getting harder-and-harder to keep track of it all... And now, my task seems to be to evaluate/decide-on a strategic-direction for using some form of either an MVC or MVVM framework client-side...but I have so many questions. Where does JQuery fit-in with the various controller-frameworks mentioned above? Is JQuery used alongside each or do some of them have their own 'JQuery-styled version' baked-in? Are tools like RequireJS still needed if you implement one of the various controller-frameworks mentioned above? Does the define and then capabilities baked-into JQuery now supercede the AMD Loader mentioned above? Which one seems most modular? (see notes below) NOTES: One thing I don't want in any future-framework is the requirement of having to take-in vast amounts of functionality that I don't use. Meaning, I would rather use a framework that is truly modular. For example, to use jQuery UI you have to take-in a lot other core libraries that you might not actually use. I will be experimenting with each one, but some REAL feedback would be great. I've seen some 'similar' questions, but none have really answered the above skew. Thanks in advance!

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• Complimentary Refills

  - by onefloridacoder

  My son and I were out to dinner and right after we sat down, he combs the menu to locate the soda  selection.  Then he looks up at me and says “Looks like we get free refills here, sweet!”  While we were sitting there I was thinking where that statement came from and I remember one time where he was helping to figure out the tip and saw that were we charged for six sodas, but there were only four of us at the table.  I would say that’s when this started for eateries he’s not familiar with. I was talking a friend of mine this week and this thought came to me, why can’t we manage expectations like my son – find out before the order is placed.  Find out what’s expected first then use the other bits of guidance to move forward.  But how many times have we all paid way to much for something we thought was free on a project – me, plenty.  This quote is going up in my work space, next to one I picked up Corey Haines’ Software Craftsmanship talk at Open Agile Romania - “Work != Practice”.  So if anyone else has gotten burnt, maybe check the menu, it will be in the area where the customer will pick two from the list of “Price, Quality, or Speed”.  Refills will be listed just beneath that.

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• Include Binary Files in DEB package

  - by user22611

  I need to build a DEB package from mainly Node.js Javascript files, but it should include some binary files as well. They are listed inside debian/source/include-binaries. Otherwise I get the error message dpkg-source: error: unrepresentable changes to source The command in question is: bzr builddeb -- -us -uc After adding the file include-binaries, when running bzr builddeb -- -us -uc again, now I get a different error: It says dpkg-source: error: aborting due to unexpected upstream changes, see /tmp/mailadmin_0.0-1.diff.n6m5_6 I have no idea how to get rid of this. In the next line of output it tells me dpkg-source: info: you can integrate the local changes with dpkg-source --commit But if I run this command in the build area of my package, it gives me the unrepresentable changes to source error message again, even though debian/source/include-binaries is present in the build area as well. I am missing the way out of this... I tried deleting all files that are produced by the build process, still no success. Further details: The target directory is /opt/mailadmin. Since this directory is unusual, I listed it in the file debian/mailadmin.install (which contains one line:) opt/mailadmin opt/ The bzr builddeb process uses this file as expected.

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• How do I get a Laserjet M1212nf MFP working?

  - by Leandro

  I am trying to install a multifunctional printer Laserjet M1212nf MFP on Ubuntu 12.04. I downloaded and install the hplip indicated by the official web site. At the end of the installation I chose reboot the whole system and next I call hp-setup in the terminal (as normal user and then as root). After select in the dialog box my printer I got the following error: Searching... (bus=usb, search=(None), desc=0)<br> /Traceback (most recent call last):<br> File "/usr/share/hplip/ui4/setupdialog.py", line 1255, in NextButton_clicked<br> self.showAddPrinterPage()<br> File "/usr/share/hplip/ui4/setupdialog.py", line 690, in showAddPrinterPage<br> self.readwriteFaxInformation()<br> File "/usr/share/hplip/ui4/setupdialog.py", line 1079, in readwriteFaxInformation<br> self.fax_name_company = unicode(d.getStationName())<br> UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 20: ordinal not in range(128) I think at this stage the plugin should be downloaded, but it is not working. Any suggestion on how to solve this problem ? Edition: After running hp-toolbox I got the following error message : Unable to communicate with device (code=12): hp:/usb /HP_LaserJet_Professional_M1212nf_MFP?serial=000000000ST10HPQSI1c

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• What am I doing wrong in my config for MySql?

  - by Knight Hawk3

  When I load my my.conf with the config at the bottom Mysql fails to start and prints no errors. I am running Arch Linux (Updated) with the latest MySQL (5.5) and the latest nginx (Well latest in the repository, Not sure how to check. Only installed it today) I will give you any info you ask for. Thanks for helping! # The following options will be passed to all MySQL clients [client] #password = your_password port = 3306 socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock # Here follows entries for some specific programs # The MySQL server [mysqld] port = 3306 socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock skip-locking key_buffer = 16K max_allowed_packet = 1M table_cache = 4 sort_buffer_size = 64K read_buffer_size = 256K read_rnd_buffer_size = 256K net_buffer_length = 2K thread_stack = 64K # Don’t listen on a TCP/IP port at all. This can be a security enhancement, # if all processes that need to connect to mysqld run on the same host. # All interaction with mysqld must be made via Unix sockets or named pipes. # Note that using this option without enabling named pipes on Windows # (using the “enable-named-pipe” option) will render mysqld useless! # #skip-networking server-id = 1 # Uncomment the following if you want to log updates #log-bin=mysql-bin # Uncomment the following if you are NOT using BDB tables skip-bdb # Uncomment the following if you are using InnoDB tables #innodb_data_home_dir = /var/lib/mysql/ #innodb_data_file_path = ibdata1:10M:autoextend #innodb_log_group_home_dir = /var/lib/mysql/ #innodb_log_arch_dir = /var/lib/mysql/ # You can set .._buffer_pool_size up to 50 – 80 % # of RAM but beware of setting memory usage too high #innodb_buffer_pool_size = 16M #innodb_additional_mem_pool_size = 2M # Set .._log_file_size to 25 % of buffer pool size #innodb_log_file_size = 5M #innodb_log_buffer_size = 8M #innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 1 #innodb_lock_wait_timeout = 50 skip-innodb [mysqldump] quick max_allowed_packet = 16M [mysql] no-auto-rehash # Remove the next comment character if you are not familiar with SQL #safe-updates [isamchk] key_buffer = 1M sort_buffer_size = 1M [myisamchk] key_buffer = 1M sort_buffer_size = 1M [mysqlhotcopy] interactive-timeout So what is my silly error?

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• Is my JS/Jquery methodology good?

  - by absentx

  I always struggle with which of the stack sites is best to post "questions of theory" like this, but I think programmers is the best, if not, as usual a mod will move it etc... I am seeking critique on what has become my normal methodology of writing javascript. I have become heavily reliant on the Jquery library, but I think this has helped me learn the native language better also. Anyways, please critique the following style of JS coding...buried are a lot of questions of scope, if you could point out the strengths and weaknesses of this style I would appreciate it. var critique ={ start: function(){ globalness = 'GLOBAL-GLOBAL'; //available to all critique's methods var notglobalness = 'LOCAL-LOCAL';// only available to critiques start method //am I using the "method" teminology properly here?? $('#stuff').on('click','a.closer-target',function(){ $target = $(this); if($target.hasClass('active')){ $target.removeClass('active'); } else{ $target.addClass('active'); critique.madness($target); } }) console.log(notglobalness+': at least I am useful at home'); console.log('note here that: '+notglobalness+' is no longer available after this point, lets continue on:'); critique.madness(notglobalness); }, madness: function($e){ // do a bunch of awesomeness with $e //but continue to keep it seperate because you think its best to keep things isolated. //send to the next function when complete here console.log('here is globalness, which is still available from the start method of critique!! ' + globalness); console.log('lets see if the globalness carries on to a new var object!!'); console.log('the locally isolated variable of NOTGLOBALNESS is available here because it was passed to this method, lets show it:'+$e); carryOn.start(); } } //end critique var carryOn={ start: function(){ console.log('any chance critique.globalness will work here??? lets see: ' +globalness); console.log('it absolutely does'); } } $(document).ready(critique.start);

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• What is the correct and most efficient approach of streaming vertex data?

  - by Martijn Courteaux

  Usually, I do this in my current OpenGL ES project (for iOS): Initialization: Create two VBO's and one IndexBuffer (since I will use the same indices), same size. Create two VAO's and configure them, both bound to the same Index Buffer. Each frame: Choose a VBO/VAO couple. (Different from the previous frame, so I'm alternating.) Bind that VBO Upload new data using glBufferSubData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, ...). Bind the VAO Render my stuff using glDrawElements(GL_***, ...); Unbind the VAO However, someone told me to avoid uploading data (step 3) and render immediately the new data (step 5). I should avoid this, because the glDrawElements call will stall until the buffer is effectively uploaded to VRAM. So he suggested to draw all my geometry I uploaded the previous frame and upload in the current frame what will be drawn in the next frame. Thus, everything is rendered with the delay of one frame. Is this true or am I using the good approach to work with streaming vertex data? (I do know that the pipeline will stall the other way around. Ie: when you draw and immediately try to change the buffer data. But I'm not doing that, since I implemented double buffering.)

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• SQL – What is the latest Version of NuoDB? – A Quick Contest to Get Amazon Gift Cards

  - by Pinal Dave

  We had a great contest earlier last week - What ACID stands in the Database? – Contest to Win 24 Amazon Gift Cards and Joes 2 Pros 2012 Kit. It has received quite a few responses. Just like any other contest, not everyone was winner. The kind folks at NuoDB decided to give another chance to everyone who have not won in the last contest. This means if you have missed to take part in the earlier contest or if you have taken part and not won, you still have one more chance to win Amazon Gift Card. Here is the quick contest: You just have to go and download NuoDB. The first 10 people who will download the NuoDB will get 10 – USD 10 cards. Remaining everyone will be entered into a lucky draw of Amazon Gift cards of USD 50. Winners will be announced in next 24 hours. Bonus Round: If you have entered in the contest above, you can also enter to win latest Beginning SSRS Joes 2 Pros book. You just have to leave a comment over here with your experience about your experience with NuoDB and what is the latest version of the product. Here are few of the blog post I wrote earlier on that subject: Part 1 – Install NuoDB in 90 Seconds Part 2 – Manage NuoDB Installation Part 3 – Explore NuoDB Database Part 4 – Migrate from SQL Server to NuoDB Part 5 - NuoDB and Third Party Explorer – SQuirreL SQL Client, SQL Workbench/J and DbVisualizer Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• postfix/postdrop Issue with Solaris 10 (sparc) - permissions

  - by Zayne

  I am trying to get postfix (installed from blastwave) working on a Solaris 10 server, but only root is allowed to send mail. The problem appears to be permission related with postdrop. postdrop: warning: mail_queue_enter: create file maildrop/905318.27416: Permission denied I've checked that /var/opt/csw/spool/postfix/maildrop and /var/opt/csw/spool/postfix/public are both in the 'postdrop' group. main.cf contains setgid_group = postdrop. ppriv on postdrop as non-root user reports: postdrop[27336]: missing privilege "file_dac_write" (euid = 103, syscall = 5) needed at ufs_iaccess+0x110 I'm at a loss as to what to do next. I'm don't have much experience with Solaris; I use Linux daily. Any suggestions?

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• J2EE or .Net Framework [closed]

  - by Kevino

  I want to learn JAVA or C#... tell me the strength and weakness of each platforms J2EE and .Net Framework today in 2012 and which is safer for the future jobs wise? I tend to prefer Java because here (Montreal, Toronto) there is like 6 Java jobs for each C# jobs and some experienced programmers advised me to go with Java because they say JVM languages are winning in the cloud and the rise of Android can't do anything except help Java in the long run. Is that true today with the release of windows 8 soon and ios devices? On the other side 1 of these programmers told me that corporation love Asp.Net Mvc3 for intranet and web dev and that tomcat/apache java jsp adoption is slowing down compared to Asp.net and ruby on rails & html5 etc. He told me too since I have a good background in system admins & networking C# would be better for me because I'll be able to do more things in the microsoft world with powershell automation and creating my own apps for all the networking stuffs (windows server, dns,dhcp, active directory, sharepoint etc). But what if windows 8 flop java and android aren't safer in the long run? because he told me mono was a joke compared to Java/android or native objective-c on ios devices. (I plan to do a full time study of 10hr's / 15hr's a day for the next 9 months of either Java or C# that's why I ask this)

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• Five development tools I can't live without

  - by bconlon

  When applying to join Geeks with Blogs I had to specify the development tools I use every day. That got me thinking, it's taken a long time to whittle my tools of choice down to the selection I use, so it might be worth sharing. Before I begin, I appreciate we all have our preferred development tools, but these are the ones that work for me. Microsoft Visual Studio Microsoft Visual Studio has been my development tool of choice for more years than I care to remember. I first used this when it was Visual C++ 1.5 (hats off to those who started on 1.0) and by 2.2 it had everything I needed from a C++ IDE. Versions 4 and 5 followed and if I had to guess I would expect more Windows applications are written in VC++ 6 and VB6 than any other language. Then came the not so great versions Visual Studio .Net 2002 (7.0) and 2003 (7.1). If I'm honest I was still using v6. 2005 was better and 2008 was simply brilliant. Everything worked, the compiler was super fast and I was happy again...then came 2010...oh dear. 2010 is a big step backwards for me. It's not encouraging for my upcoming WPF exploits that 2010 is fronted in WPF technology, with the forever growing Find/Replace dialog, the issues with C++ intellisense, and the buggy debugger. That said it is still my tool of choice but I hope they sort the issue in SP1. I've tried other IDEs like Visual Age and Eclipse, but for me Visual Studio is the best. A really great tool. Liquid XML Studio XML development is a tricky business. The W3C standards are often difficult to get to the bottom of so it's great to have a graphical tool to help. I first used Liquid Technologies 5 or 6 years back when I needed to process XML data in C++. Their excellent XML Data Binding tool has an easy to use Wizard UI (as compared to Castor or JAXB command line tools) and allows you to generate code from an XML Schema. So instead of having to deal with untyped nodes like with a DOM parser, instead you get an Object Model providing a custom API in C++, C#, VB etc. More recently they developed a graphical XML IDE with XML Editor, XSLT, XQuery debugger and other XML tools. So now I can develop an XML Schema graphically, click a button to generate a Sample XML document, and click another button to run the Wizard to generate code including a Sample Application that will then load my Sample XML document into the generated object model. This is a very cool toolset. Note: XML Data Binding is nothing to do with WPF Data Binding, but I hope to cover both in more detail another time. .Net Reflector Note: I've just noticed that starting form the end of February 2011 this will no longer be a free tool !! .Net Reflector turns .Net byte code back into C# source code. But how can it work this magic? Well the clue is in the name, it uses reflection to inspect a compiled .Net assembly. The assembly is compiled to byte code, it doesn't get compiled to native machine code until its needed using a just-in-time (JIT) compiler. The byte code still has all of the information needed to see classes, variables. methods and properties, so reflector gathers this information and puts it in a handy tree. I have used .Net Reflector for years in order to understand what the .Net Framework is doing as it sometimes has undocumented, quirky features. This really has been invaluable in certain instances and I cannot praise enough kudos on the original developer Lutz Roeder. Smart Assembly In order to stop nosy geeks looking at our code using a tool like .Net Reflector, we need to obfuscate (mess up) the byte code. Smart Assembly is a tool that does this. Again I have used this for a long time. It is very quick and easy to use. Another excellent tool. Coincidentally, .Net Reflector and Smart Assembly are now both owned by Red Gate. Again kudos goes to the original developer Jean-Sebastien Lange. TortoiseSVN SVN (Apache Subversion) is a Source Control System developed as an open source project. TortoiseSVN is a graphical UI wrapper over SVN that hooks into Windows Explorer to enable files to be Updated, Committed, Merged etc. from the right click menu. This is an essential tool for keeping my hard work safe! Many years ago I used Microsoft Source Safe and I disliked CVS type systems. But TortoiseSVN is simply the best source control tool I have ever used. --- So there you have it, my top 5 development tools that I use (nearly) every day and have helped to make my working life a little easier. I'm sure there are other great tools that I wish I used but have never heard of, but if you have not used any of the above, I would suggest you check them out as they are all very, very cool products. #

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• Mobile and Social for Retail

  - by David Dorf

  I've got two speaking gigs in the next few weeks, so I thought I'd preview both here. First I'll be at eTail West on February 24th to talk about mobile. I'll be previewing a new study of how shoppers are using mobile phones. Here's a sneak peek at one of the slides: It should be no surprise that as more consumers adopt smartphones, more are finding ways to use them to help with shopping. Sometimes that's to find a store, download a coupon, or do price comparisons. I'll also be discussing the NRF Mobile Blueprint, and will walk through an example of mobile impacting the in-store experience. Retailers need to look upon mobile as the method of bringing the digital assets of e-commerce into the aisles to enhance shopping. On March 9th I'll be at NRF Innovate co-presenting with Jon Kubo of Wet Seal on social strategies. Jon is a retail innovation rock-star and I always learn something new from every conversation with him. Below is a another slide preview: I cheated a little on the top 10 most popular retailer pages by not including Victoria's Secret Pink. VC is already represented, so I didn't include them a second time. The most interesting statistic I found was that the average user spends 55 minutes on Facebook a day. Wow! I also decided to use the old "Like" and "Fan" icons just because I like them better (pun intended). Wet Seal has been collecting interesting statistics on liked products, so I hope Jon will share lots (I'm on a roll). Hope to see you at both events.

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• How AlphaBlend Blendstate works in XNA when accumulighting light into a RenderTarget?

  - by cubrman

  I am using a Deferred Rendering engine from Catalin Zima's tutorial: His lighting shader returns the color of the light in the rgb channels and the specular component in the alpha channel. Here is how light gets accumulated: Game.GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(LightRT); Game.GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Transparent); Game.GraphicsDevice.BlendState = BlendState.AlphaBlend; // Continuously draw 3d spheres with lighting pixel shader. ... Game.GraphicsDevice.BlendState = BlendState.Opaque; MSDN states that AlphaBlend field of the BlendState class uses the next formula for alphablending: (source × Blend.SourceAlpha) + (destination × Blend.InvSourceAlpha), where "source" is the color of the pixel returned by the shader and "destination" is the color of the pixel in the rendertarget. My question is why do my colors are accumulated correctly in the Light rendertarget even when the new pixels' alphas equal zero? As a quick sanity check I ran the following code in the light's pixel shader: float specularLight = 0; float4 light4 = attenuation * lightIntensity * float4(diffuseLight.rgb,specularLight); if (light4.a == 0) light4 = 0; return light4; This prevents lighting from getting accumulated and, subsequently, drawn on the screen. But when I do the following: float specularLight = 0; float4 light4 = attenuation * lightIntensity * float4(diffuseLight.rgb,specularLight); return light4; The light is accumulated and drawn exactly where it needs to be. What am I missing? According to the formula above: (source x 0) + (destination x 1) should equal destination, so the "LightRT" rendertarget must not change when I draw light spheres into it! It feels like the GPU is using the Additive blend instead: (source × Blend.One) + (destination × Blend.One)

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• Startup Disk Creator tool for Debian

  - by user61954

  I was trying to create a USB bootable in Debian to install my new system. I couldnt find any easy to use tool in Debian. I tried downloading the hybrid iso image from the Debian site and copied it to the USB using the dd command as said in Debian site. But it didnt boot. Next I used the Startup Disk Creator tool in Ubuntu and it worked like a charm. Is there any similar tool in Debian? I know that there is Unetbootin but its difficult to install

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• ASMLib

  - by wcoekaer

  Oracle ASMlib on Linux has been a topic of discussion a number of times since it was released way back when in 2004. There is a lot of confusion around it and certainly a lot of misinformation out there for no good reason. Let me try to give a bit of history around Oracle ASMLib. Oracle ASMLib was introduced at the time Oracle released Oracle Database 10g R1. 10gR1 introduced a very cool important new features called Oracle ASM (Automatic Storage Management). A very simplistic description would be that this is a very sophisticated volume manager for Oracle data. Give your devices directly to the ASM instance and we manage the storage for you, clustered, highly available, redundant, performance, etc, etc... We recommend using Oracle ASM for all database deployments, single instance or clustered (RAC). The ASM instance manages the storage and every Oracle server process opens and operates on the storage devices like it would open and operate on regular datafiles or raw devices. So by default since 10gR1 up to today, we do not interact differently with ASM managed block devices than we did before with a datafile being mapped to a raw device. All of this is without ASMLib, so ignore that one for now. Standard Oracle on any platform that we support (Linux, Windows, Solaris, AIX, ...) does it the exact same way. You start an ASM instance, it handles storage management, all the database instances use and open that storage and read/write from/to it. There are no extra pieces of software needed, including on Linux. ASM is fully functional and selfcontained without any other components. In order for the admin to provide a raw device to ASM or to the database, it has to have persistent device naming. If you booted up a server where a raw disk was named /dev/sdf and you give it to ASM (or even just creating a tablespace without asm on that device with datafile '/dev/sdf') and next time you boot up and that device is now /dev/sdg, you end up with an error. Just like you can't just change datafile names, you can't change device filenames without telling the database, or ASM. persistent device naming on Linux, especially back in those days ways to say it bluntly, a nightmare. In fact there were a number of issues (dating back to 2004) : Linux async IO wasn't pretty persistent device naming including permissions (had to be owned by oracle and the dba group) was very, very difficult to manage system resource usage in terms of open file descriptors So given the above, we tried to find a way to make this easier on the admins, in many ways, similar to why we started working on OCFS a few years earlier - how can we make life easier for the admins on Linux. A feature of Oracle ASM is the ability for third parties to write an extension using what's called ASMLib. It is possible for any third party OS or storage vendor to write a library using a specific Oracle defined interface that gets used by the ASM instance and by the database instance when available. This interface offered 2 components : Define an IO interface - allow any IO to the devices to go through ASMLib Define device discovery - implement an external way of discovering, labeling devices to provide to ASM and the Oracle database instance This is similar to a library that a number of companies have implemented over many years called libODM (Oracle Disk Manager). ODM was specified many years before we introduced ASM and allowed third party vendors to implement their own IO routines so that the database would use this library if installed and make use of the library open/read/write/close,.. routines instead of the standard OS interfaces. PolyServe back in the day used this to optimize their storage solution, Veritas used (and I believe still uses) this for their filesystem. It basically allowed, in particular, filesystem vendors to write libraries that could optimize access to their storage or filesystem.. so ASMLib was not something new, it was basically based on the same model. You have libodm for just database access, you have libasm for asm/database access. Since this library interface existed, we decided to do a reference implementation on Linux. We wrote an ASMLib for Linux that could be used on any Linux platform and other vendors could see how this worked and potentially implement their own solution. As I mentioned earlier, ASMLib and ODMLib are libraries for third party extensions. ASMLib for Linux, since it was a reference implementation implemented both interfaces, the storage discovery part and the IO part. There are 2 components : Oracle ASMLib - the userspace library with config tools (a shared object and some scripts) oracleasm.ko - a kernel module that implements the asm device for /dev/oracleasm/* The userspace library is a binary-only module since it links with and contains Oracle header files but is generic, we only have one asm library for the various Linux platforms. This library is opened by Oracle ASM and by Oracle database processes and this library interacts with the OS through the asm device (/dev/asm). It can install on Oracle Linux, on SuSE SLES, on Red Hat RHEL,.. The library itself doesn't actually care much about the OS version, the kernel module and device cares. The support tools are simple scripts that allow the admin to label devices and scan for disks and devices. This way you can say create an ASM disk label foo on, currently /dev/sdf... So if /dev/sdf disappears and next time is /dev/sdg, we just scan for the label foo and we discover it as /dev/sdg and life goes on without any worry. Also, when the database needs access to the device, we don't have to worry about file permissions or anything it will be taken care of. So it's a convenience thing. The kernel module oracleasm.ko is a Linux kernel module/device driver. It implements a device /dev/oracleasm/* and any and all IO goes through ASMLib - /dev/oracleasm. This kernel module is obviously a very specific Oracle related device driver but it was released under the GPL v2 so anyone could easily build it for their Linux distribution kernels. Advantages for using ASMLib : A good async IO interface for the database, the entire IO interface is based on an optimal ASYNC model for performance A single file descriptor per Oracle process, not one per device or datafile per process reducing # of open filehandles overhead Device scanning and labeling built-in so you do not have to worry about messing with udev or devlabel, permissions or the likes which can be very complex and error prone. Just like with OCFS and OCFS2, each kernel version (major or minor) has to get a new version of the device drivers. We started out building the oracleasm kernel module rpms for many distributions, SLES (in fact in the early days still even for this thing called United Linux) and RHEL. The driver didn't make sense to get pushed into upstream Linux because it's unique and specific to the Oracle database. As it takes a huge effort in terms of build infrastructure and QA and release management to build kernel modules for every architecture, every linux distribution and every major and minor version we worked with the vendors to get them to add this tiny kernel module to their infrastructure. (60k source code file). The folks at SuSE understood this was good for them and their customers and us and added it to SLES. So every build coming from SuSE for SLES contains the oracleasm.ko module. We weren't as successful with other vendors so for quite some time we continued to build it for RHEL and of course as we introduced Oracle Linux end of 2006 also for Oracle Linux. With Oracle Linux it became easy for us because we just added the code to our build system and as we churned out Oracle Linux kernels whether it was for a public release or for customers that needed a one off fix where they also used asmlib, we didn't have to do any extra work it was just all nicely integrated. With the introduction of Oracle Linux's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel and our interest in being able to exploit ASMLib more, we started working on a very exciting project called Data Integrity. Oracle (Martin Petersen in particular) worked for many years with the T10 standards committee and storage vendors and implemented Linux kernel support for DIF/DIX, data protection in the Linux kernel, note to those that wonder, yes it's all in mainline Linux and under the GPL. This basically gave us all the features in the Linux kernel to checksum a data block, send it to the storage adapter, which can then validate that block and checksum in firmware before it sends it over the wire to the storage array, which can then do another checksum and to the actual DISK which does a final validation before writing the block to the physical media. So what was missing was the ability for a userspace application (read: Oracle RDBMS) to write a block which then has a checksum and validation all the way down to the disk. application to disk. Because we have ASMLib we had an entry into the Linux kernel and Martin added support in ASMLib (kernel driver + userspace) for this functionality. Now, this is all based on relatively current Linux kernels, the oracleasm kernel module depends on the main kernel to have support for it so we can make use of it. Thanks to UEK and us having the ability to ship a more modern, current version of the Linux kernel we were able to introduce this feature into ASMLib for Linux from Oracle. This combined with the fact that we build the asm kernel module when we build every single UEK kernel allowed us to continue improving ASMLib and provide it to our customers. So today, we (Oracle) provide Oracle ASMLib for Oracle Linux and in particular on the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. We did the build/testing/delivery of ASMLib for RHEL until RHEL5 but since RHEL6 decided that it was too much effort for us to also maintain all the build and test environments for RHEL and we did not have the ability to use the latest kernel features to introduce the Data Integrity features and we didn't want to end up with multiple versions of asmlib as maintained by us. SuSE SLES still builds and comes with the oracleasm module and they do all the work and RHAT it certainly welcome to do the same. They don't have to rebuild the userspace library, it's really about the kernel module. And finally to re-iterate a few important things : Oracle ASM does not in any way require ASMLib to function completely. ASMlib is a small set of extensions, in particular to make device management easier but there are no extra features exposed through Oracle ASM with ASMLib enabled or disabled. Often customers confuse ASMLib with ASM. again, ASM exists on every Oracle supported OS and on every supported Linux OS, SLES, RHEL, OL withoutASMLib Oracle ASMLib userspace is available for OTN and the kernel module is shipped along with OL/UEK for every build and by SuSE for SLES for every of their builds ASMLib kernel module was built by us for RHEL4 and RHEL5 but we do not build it for RHEL6, nor for the OL6 RHCK kernel. Only for UEK ASMLib for Linux is/was a reference implementation for any third party vendor to be able to offer, if they want to, their own version for their own OS or storage ASMLib as provided by Oracle for Linux continues to be enhanced and evolve and for the kernel module we use UEK as the base OS kernel hope this helps.

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• There's A Virtual Developer Day in Your Future

  - by OTN ArchBeat

  What are Virtual Developer Days? You really should know this by now. OTN Virtual Developer Days are online events created specifically for developers and architects, with a focus on no-fluff technical presentations, hands-on labs, and expert Q&A to sharpen your technical skills and bring you up to speed on the latest information on Oracle products and practical best practices for their use. The best part about OTN Virtual Developer Days is that you don't have to pack a suitcase or stand in line at an airport waiting for someone pat you down. Instead, you stay where you are, flip open your laptop, and prepare your brain for a massive skills injection. In the next few weeks you'll have two such chances to ramp up your skills. On Tuesday November 5, 2013 Harnessing the Power of Oracle WebLogic and Oracle Coherence will guide you through tooling updates and best practices for developing applications with WebLogic and Coherence as target platforms. This two-track event covers app design and development (Track 1) and building, deploying, and managing applications (Track 2). Each track includes three presentations plus a hands-on lab. [9am-1pm PT / 12pm-4pm ET / 1pm-5pm BRT] Register now This event will also be available in EMEA on December 3, 2013 {9am-1pm GMT / 1pm-5pm GST / 2:30pm-6:30 PM IST] On Tuesday November 19, 2103 Oracle ADF Development: Web, Mobile, and Beyond offers four tracks covering everything from the basics to advance skills for for application development using Oracle ADF and Oracle ADF Mobile. There are three sessions in each track, followed by hands-on labs in which try out what you've learned. [9am-1pm PT / 12pm-4pm ET/ 1pm-5pm BRT] Register now This event will also be available in APAC on Thursday November 21, 2013 [10am-1:30pm IST (India) / 12:30pm-4pm SGT (Singapore) / 3:30pm-7pm AESDT] and in EMEA on Tuesday November 26, 2013 [9am-1pm GMT / 1pm-5pm GST/ 2:30pm-6:30pm IST] Registration for both events is absolutely free. So what are you waiting for?

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