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• Simplest way to render image over top of another with another image used as mask in OpenGL?

  - by Adam Naylor

  The effect I'm looking for is to have a single large background image that is always visible (at full alpha) and then show a second image (what I call a light map or specular map) that is partially shown over the top based on a third image (which is effectively a mask). The effect is similar to this effect except instead of simply darkening or lightening the background image using the third image it needs to mask the second without effecting the first at all. The third image is the only one that moves therefore hard baking the third images alpha into the second image isn't an option. If my explanation isn't clear I'll provide visual examples when I have more time. I'd prefer not to go down a shader route as I haven't taught myself this area yet so unless I have too I'd rather try to achieve this with simple alpha blending. Happy to use a shader approach. Cheers. Additional These third images are obviously light sources being cast onto the first image showing the specular information from the second image to simulate the light 'shining' off the objects in the first image. The solution I implement will need to allow two light sources to potentially overlap so my current thoughts are that the alpha values of the two images will need to be combined (Added?) to produce a final image which masks the second image? Don't worry about things like coloured lights. For this technique the lights are all considered white.

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• Are there any concrete examples of where a paralellizing compiler would provide a value-adding benefit?

  - by jamie

  Paul Graham argues that: It would be great if a startup could give us something of the old Moore's Law back, by writing software that could make a large number of CPUs look to the developer like one very fast CPU. ... The most ambitious is to try to do it automatically: to write a compiler that will parallelize our code for us. There's a name for this compiler, the sufficiently smart compiler, and it is a byword for impossibility. But is it really impossible? Can someone provide a concrete example where a paralellizing compiler would solve a pain point? Web-apps don't appear to be a problem: just run a bunch of Node processes. Real-time raytracing isn't a problem: the programmers are writing multi-threaded, SIMD assembly language quite happily (indeed, some might complain if we make it easier!). The holy grail is to be able to accelerate any program, be it MySQL, Garage Band, or Quicken. I'm looking for a middle ground: is there a real-world problem that you have experienced where a "smart-enough" compiler would have provided a real benefit, i.e that someone would pay for? A good answer is one where there is a process where the computer runs at 100% CPU on a single core for a painful period of time. That time might be 10 seconds, if the task is meant to be quick. It might be 500ms if the task is meant to be interactive. It might be 10 hours. Please describe such a problem. Really, that's all I'm looking for: candidate areas for further investigation. (Hence, raytracing is off the list because all the low-hanging fruit have been feasted upon.) I am not interested in why it cannot be done. There are a million people willing to point to the sound reasons why it cannot be done. Such answers are not useful.

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• Is there an excuse for short variable names?

  - by KChaloux

  This has become a large frustration with the codebase I'm currently working in; many of our variable names are short and undescriptive. I'm the only developer left on the project, and there isn't documentation as to what most of them do, so I have to spend extra time tracking down what they represent. For example, I was reading over some code that updates the definition of an optical surface. The variables set at the start were as follows: double dR, dCV, dK, dDin, dDout, dRin, dRout dR = Convert.ToDouble(_tblAsphere.Rows[0].ItemArray.GetValue(1)); dCV = convert.ToDouble(_tblAsphere.Rows[1].ItemArray.GetValue(1)); ... and so on Maybe it's just me, but it told me essentially nothing about what they represented, which made understanding the code further down difficult. All I knew was that it was a variable parsed out specific row from a specific table, somewhere. After some searching, I found out what they meant: dR = radius dCV = curvature dK = conic constant dDin = inner aperture dDout = outer aperture dRin = inner radius dRout = outer radius I renamed them to essentially what I have up there. It lengthens some lines, but I feel like that's a fair trade off. This kind of naming scheme is used throughout a lot of the code however. I'm not sure if it's an artifact from developers who learned by working with older systems, or if there's a deeper reason behind it. Is there a good reason to name variables this way, or am I justified in updating them to more descriptive names as I come across them?

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• (Abstract) Game engine design

  - by lukeluke

  I am writing a simple 2D game (for mobile platforms) for the first time. From an abstract point of view, i have the main player controlled by the human, the enemies, elments that will interact with the main player, other living elements that will be controlled by a simple AI (both enemies and non-enemies). The human player will be totally controlled by the player, the other actors will be controlled by AI. So i have a class CActor and a class CActorLogic to start with. I would define a CActor subclass CHero (the main player controlled with some input device). This class will probably implement some type of listener, in order to capture input events. The other players controlled by the AI will be probably a specific subclass of CActor (a subclass per-type, obviously). This seems to be reasonable. The CActor class should have a reference to a method of CActorLogic, that we will call something like CActorLogic::Advance() or similar. Actors should have a visual representation. I would introduce a CActorRepresentation class, with a method like Render() that will draw the actor (that is, the right frame of the right animation). Where to change the animation? Well, the actor logic method Advance() should take care of checking collisions and other things. I would like to discuss the design of a game engine (actors, entities, objects, messages, input handling, visualization of object states (that is, rendering, sound output and so on)) but not from a low level point of view, but from an high level point of view, like i have described above. My question is: is there any book/on line resource that will help me organize things (using an object oriented approach)? Thanks

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• How often is seq used in Haskell production code?

  - by Giorgio

  I have some experience writing small tools in Haskell and I find it very intuitive to use, especially for writing filters (using interact) that process their standard input and pipe it to standard output. Recently I tried to use one such filter on a file that was about 10 times larger than usual and I got a Stack space overflow error. After doing some reading (e.g. here and here) I have identified two guidelines to save stack space (experienced Haskellers, please correct me if I write something that is not correct): Avoid recursive function calls that are not tail-recursive (this is valid for all functional languages that support tail-call optimization). Introduce seq to force early evaluation of sub-expressions so that expressions do not grow to large before they are reduced (this is specific to Haskell, or at least to languages using lazy evaluation). After introducing five or six seq calls in my code my tool runs smoothly again (also on the larger data). However, I find the original code was a bit more readable. Since I am not an experienced Haskell programmer I wanted to ask if introducing seq in this way is a common practice, and how often one will normally see seq in Haskell production code. Or are there any techniques that allow to avoid using seq too often and still use little stack space?

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• Is there a better way to consume an ASP.NET Web API call in an MVC controller?

  - by davidisawesome

  In a new project I am creating for my work I am creating a fairly large ASP.NET Web API. The api will be in a separate visual studio solution that also contains all of my business logic and database interactions, Model classes as well. In the test application I am creating (which is asp.net mvc4), I want to be able to hit an api url I defined from the control and cast the return JSON to a Model class. The reason behind this is that I want to take advantage of strongly typing my views to a Model. This is all still in a proof of concept stage, so I have not done any performance testing on it, but I am curious if what I am doing is a good practice, or if I am crazy for even going down this route. Here is the code on the client controller: public class HomeController : Controller { protected string dashboardUrlBase = "http://localhost/webapi/api/StudentDashboard/"; public ActionResult Index() //This view is strongly typed against User { //testing against Joe Bob string adSAMName = "jBob"; WebClient client = new WebClient(); string url = dashboardUrlBase + "GetUserRecord?userName=" + adSAMName; //'User' is a Model class that I have defined. User result = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<User>(client.DownloadString(url)); return View(result); } . . . } If I choose to go this route another thing to note is I am loading several partial views in this page (as I will also do in subsequent pages). The partial views are loaded via an $.ajax call that hits this controller and does basically the same thing as the code above: Instantiate a new WebClient Define the Url to hit Deserialize the result and cast it to a Model Class. So it is possible (and likely) I could be performing the same actions 4-5 times for a single page. Is there a better method to do this that will: Let me keep strongly typed views. Do my work on the server rather than on the client (this is just a preference since I can write C# faster than I can write javascript).

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• Using EC2 instance as main development platform

  - by David

  My problem I am working as a consultant for various companies. Each company provides me with a laptop with their software on and I also have my own, where I have my development environment. I tend to buy a new laptop every second year and find myself spending lots of time configuring and installing software. I also spend a lot of time waiting for my laptop to process things. To solve all these issues, I am now considering using EC2 (running windows instances) as my main development platform and just access this from any PC I happen to be at. I calculated that running the Large instance (cheapest 64-bit) for 8 hours a day for a year costs me 960$ per year, which is acceptable. I imagine that when I approach the workplace each day, I will make a single tap on my phone to fire up the instance, so it is ready when I get to work. I should have different icons on my phone to fire up the various instance types. The same software should of course automatically be loaded on the various hardware (sometimes I would even need their instance with 68.4 GB of memory). Another advantage is that if I am having a specific problem with my instance, I could fire up another instance and have someone look into the problem and update the image. My question: Does anyone have experience with such a setup on EC2? What kind of problems do you foresee?

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• Which is a better practice - helper methods as instance or static?

  - by Ilian Pinzon

  This question is subjective but I was just curious how most programmers approach this. The sample below is in pseudo-C# but this should apply to Java, C++, and other OOP languages as well. Anyway, when writing helper methods in my classes, I tend to declare them as static and just pass the fields if the helper method needs them. For example, given the code below, I prefer to use Method Call #2. class Foo { Bar _bar; public void DoSomethingWithBar() { // Method Call #1. DoSomethingWithBarImpl(); // Method Call #2. DoSomethingWithBarImpl(_bar); } private void DoSomethingWithBarImpl() { _bar.DoSomething(); } private static void DoSomethingWithBarImpl(Bar bar) { bar.DoSomething(); } } My reason for doing this is that it makes it clear (to my eyes at least) that the helper method has a possible side-effect on other objects - even without reading its implementation. I find that I can quickly grok methods that use this practice and thus help me in debugging things. Which do you prefer to do in your own code and what are your reasons for doing so?

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• XNA 4.0 2D sidescroller variable terrain heightmap for walking/collision

  - by JiminyCricket

  I've been fooling around with moving on sloped tiles in XNA and it is semi-working but not completely satisfactory. I also have been thinking that having sets of predetermined slopes might not give me terrain that looks "organic" enough. There is also the problem of having to construct several different types of tile for each slope when they're chained together (only 45 degree tiles will chain perfectly as I understand it). I had thought of somehow scanning for connected chains of sloped tiles and treating it as a new large triangle, as I was having trouble with glitching at the edges where sloped tiles connect. But, this leads back to the problem of limiting the curvature of the terrain. So...what I'd like to do now is create a simple image or texture of the terrain of a level (or section of the level) and generate a simple heightmap (of the Y's for each X) for the terrain. The player's Y position would then just be updated based on their X position. Is there a simple way of doing this (or a better way of solving this problem)? The main problem I can see with this method is the case where there are areas above the ground that can be walked on. Maybe there is a way to just map all walkable ground areas? I've been looking at this helpful bit of code: http://thirdpartyninjas.com/blog/2010/07/28/sloped-platform-collision/ but need a way to generate the actual points/vectors.

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• Per-vertex animation with VBOs: Stream each frame or use index offset per frame?

  - by charstar

  Scenario Meshes are animated using either skeletons (skinned animation) or some form of morph targets (i.e. per-vertex key frames). However, in either case, the animations are known in full at load-time, that is, there is no physics, IK solving, or any other form of in-game pose solving. The number of character actions (animations) will be limited but rich (hand-animated). There may be multiple characters using a each mesh and its animations simultaneously in-game (they will be at different poses/keyframes at the same time). Assume color and texture coordinate buffers are static. Goal To leverage the richness of well vetted animation tools such as Blender to do the heavy lifting for a small but rich set of animations. I am aware of additive pose blending like that from Naughty Dog and similar techniques but I would prefer to expend a little RAM/VRAM to avoid implementing a thesis-ready pose solver. I would also like to avoid implementing a key-frame + interpolation curve solver (reinventing Blender vertex groups and IPOs). Current Considerations Much like a non-shader-powered pose solver, create a VBO for each character and copy vertex and normal data to each VBO on each frame (VBO in STREAMING). Create one VBO for each animation where each frame (interleaved vertex and normal data) is concatenated onto the VBO. Then each character simply has a buffer pointer offset based on its current animation frame (e.g. pointer offset = (numVertices+numNormals)*frameNumber). (VBO in STATIC) Known Trade-Offs In 1 above: Each VBO would be small but there would be many VBOs and therefore lots of buffer binding and vertex copying each frame. Both client and pipeline intensive. In 2 above: There would be few VBOs therefore insignificant buffer binding and no vertex data getting jammed down the pipe each frame, but each VBO would be quite large. Are there any pitfalls to number 2 (aside from finite memory)? Are there other methods that I am missing?

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• Is there ever a reason to do all an object's work in a constructor?

  - by Kane

  Let me preface this by saying this is not my code nor my coworkers' code. Years ago when our company was smaller, we had some projects we needed done that we did not have the capacity for, so they were outsourced. Now, I have nothing against outsourcing or contractors in general, but the codebase they produced is a mass of WTFs. That being said, it does (mostly) work, so I suppose it's in the top 10% of outsourced projects I've seen. As our company has grown, we've tried to take more of our development in house. This particular project landed in my lap so I've been going over it, cleaning it up, adding tests, etc etc. There's one pattern I see repeated a lot and it seems so mindblowingly awful that I wondered if maybe there is a reason and I just don't see it. The pattern is an object with no public methods or members, just a public constructor that does all the work of the object. For example, (the code is in Java, if that matters, but I hope this to be a more general question): public class Foo { private int bar; private String baz; public Foo(File f) { execute(f); } private void execute(File f) { // FTP the file to some hardcoded location, // or parse the file and commit to the database, or whatever } } If you're wondering, this type of code is often called in the following manner: for(File f : someListOfFiles) { new Foo(f); } Now, I was taught long ago that instantiated objects in a loop is generally a bad idea, and that constructors should do a minimum of work. Looking at this code it looks like it would be better to drop the constructor and make execute a public static method. I did ask the contractor why it was done this way, and the response I got was "We can change it if you want". Which was not really helpful. Anyway, is there ever a reason to do something like this, in any programming language, or is this just another submission to the Daily WTF?

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• Topeka Dot Net User Group (DNUG) Meeting &ndash; April 6, 2010

  - by Robz / Fervent Coder

  Topeka DNUG is free for anyone to attend! Mark your calendars now! SPEAKER: Troy Tuttle is a self-described pragmatic agilist, and Kanban practitioner, with more than a decade of experience in delivering software in the finance and health industries and as a consultant. He advocates teams improve their performance through pursuit of better practices like continuous integration and automated testing. Troy is the founder of the Kansas City Limited WIP Society and is a speaker at local area groups on team related topics. He currently works as a Project Lead Consultant with AdventureTech Group of Kansas City, KS. TOPIC: Why Kanban? Kanban is receiving a large amount of attention recently. What does it offer compared to other approaches? Answering that question may require you to hit the “reset” button on previously held biases and assumptions. Kanban blends Lean thought with ideas from first generation agile methodologies. To get started with Kanban, we will examine what steps are necessary to establish a transparent, work-limited, pull system. We will highlight the perils of allowing too much work-in-progress and how it affects development performance. Once established, Kanban teams need only a few metrics and tools to monitor their performance and improvement. WHERE: Federal Home Loan Bank Topeka on the Security Benefit Campus – Directions? WHEN: 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM on April 6th, 2010 REGISTER: http://topekadotnet.wufoo.com/forms/topeka-dnug-meeting-attendance/ ADDITIONAL INFO: As always, please sign in and out of FHLBank to help them with their accountability. Please park in the visitors section at the front of the building when you arrive. If  there are no spots in visitors you may park in the overflow lot at the far east end of the facility.  Lunch will be provided and we will have some great door prizes!

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• Take care to unhook Anonymous Delegates

  - by David Vallens

  Anonymous delegates are great, they elimiante the need for lots of small classes that just pass values around, however care needs to be taken when using them, as they are not automatically unhooked when the function you created them in returns. In fact after it returns there is no way to unhook them. Consider the following code.   using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Diagnostics; namespace ConsoleApplication1 { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { SimpleEventSource t = new SimpleEventSource(); t.FireEvent(); FunctionWithAnonymousDelegate(t); t.FireEvent(); } private static void FunctionWithAnonymousDelegate(SimpleEventSource t) { t.MyEvent += delegate(object sender, EventArgs args) { Debug.WriteLine("Anonymous delegate called"); }; t.FireEvent(); } } public class SimpleEventSource { public event EventHandler MyEvent; public void FireEvent() { if (MyEvent == null) { Debug.WriteLine("Attempting to fire event - but no ones listening"); } else { Debug.WriteLine("Firing event"); MyEvent(this, EventArgs.Empty); } } } } If you expected the anonymous delegates do die with the function that created it then you would expect the output Attempting to fire event - but no ones listeningFiring eventAnonymous delegate calledAttempting to fire event - but no ones listening However what you actually get is Attempting to fire event - but no ones listeningFiring eventAnonymous delegate calledFiring eventAnonymous delegate called In my example the issue is just slowing things down, but if your delegate modifies objects, then you could end up with dificult to diagnose bugs. A solution to this problem is to unhook the delegate within the function var myDelegate = delegate(){Console.WriteLine("I did it!");}; MyEvent += myDelegate; // .... later MyEvent -= myDelegate;

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• Desktop Fun: Snow Covered Trees Wallpaper Collection

  - by Asian Angel

  Trees can become beautiful works of natural art when snow accumulates on them and make you feel as if you have stepped into another world when walking through them. So grab your jacket, gloves, and snowboots for a journey through this frosty scenery with our Snow Covered Trees Wallpaper Collection. Note: Click on the picture to see the full-size image—these wallpapers vary in size so you may need to crop, stretch, or place them on a colored background in order to best match them to your screen’s resolution. For more wallpapers be certain to see our great collections in the Desktop Fun section. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy How to Combine Rescue Disks to Create the Ultimate Windows Repair Disk What is Camera Raw, and Why Would a Professional Prefer it to JPG? The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: The Basics How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 Arctic Theme for Windows 7 Gives Your Desktop an Icy Touch Install LibreOffice via PPA and Receive Auto-Updates in Ubuntu Creative Portraits Peek Inside the Guts of Modern Electronics Scenic Winter Lane Wallpaper to Create a Relaxing Mood Access Your Web Apps Directly Using the Context Menu in Chrome The Deep – Awesome Use of Metal Objects as Deep Sea Creatures [Video]

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• Why is Desktop Unity using the global application menu?

  - by Kazade

  It was announced in another question that the desktop version of Unity will keep the global menu by default. Here are the facts: The global menu was introduced into UNE to save vertical screen space because at Netbook resolutions the vertical space is limited. On a modern desktop with a high resolution, there is ample vertical space making this unnecessary On the announcement of UNE global menus, Mark Shuttleworth himself said the following: "There are outstanding questions about the usability of a panel-hosted menu on much larger screens, where the window and the menu could be very far apart." The benefits of a global menu don't seem to carry across to a high-resolution desktop and instead seem to bring draw backs (increased mouse travel, large distance between the menu and its associated window). The other worrying factor is that applications seem to be moving away from having a menu bar, and instead of innovating on this and defining new guidelines for moving away from the menu, we are giving it prime place right at the top of the desktop. If applications continue moving away from the desktop we will have an inconsistent experience concerning where to locate application related options/tools depending on which app you are using (e.g. Chrome). Finally, the current global menu bar implementation doesn't work for all apps, and doesn't even work for all apps in the default install. This means that the default desktop implementation will be inconsistent. So, there are a bunch of reasons why moving to a global menu is a bad idea, so we need some pretty convincing arguments for why it is a good idea. What are the reasons for the global menu implementation in the desktop version of Unity?

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• Algorithm to measure how "diffused" 5,000 pennies are in an economy?

  - by makerofthings7

  Please allow me to use this example/metaphor to describe an algorithm I need. Objects There are 5 thousand pennies. There are 50 cups. There is a tracking history (Passport "stamp" etc) that is associated with each penny as it moves between cups. Definition I'll define a "highly diffused" penny as one that passes through many cups. A "poorly diffused" penny is one that either passes back and forth between 2 cups Question How can I objectively measure the diffusion of a penny as: The number of moves the penny has gone through The number of cups the penny has been in A unit of time (day, week, month) Why am I doing this? I want to detect if a cup is hoarding pennies. Resistance from bad actors Since hoarding is bad, the "bad cup" may simply solicit a partner and simply move pennies between each other. This will reduce the amount of time a coin isn't in transit, and would skew hoarding detection. A solution might be to detect if a cup (or set of cups) are common "partners" with each other, though I'm not sure how to think though this problem. Broad applicability Any assistance would be helpful, since I would think that this algorithm is common to Economics The study of migration patterns of animals, citizens of a country Other natural occurring phenomena ... and probably exists as a term or concept I'm unfamiliar with.

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• How to write your unit tests to switch between NUnit and MSTest

  - by Justin Jones

  On my current project I found it useful to use both NUnit and MsTest for unit testing. When using ReSharper for running unit tests, it just simply works better with NUnit, and on large scale projects NUnit tends to run faster. We would have just simply used NUnit for everything, but MSTest gave us a few bonuses out of the box that were hard to pass up. Namely code coverage (without having to shell out thousands of extra dollars for the privilege) and integrated tests into the build process. I’m one of those guys who wants the build to fail if the unit tests don’t pass. If they don’t pass, there’s no point in sending that build on to QA. So making the build work with MsTest is easiest if you just create a unit test project in your solution. This adds the right references and project type Guids in the project file so that everything just automagically just works. Then (using NuGet of course) you add in NUnit. At the top of your test file, remove the using statements that refer to MsTest and replace it with the following: #if NUNIT using NUnit.Framework; #else using TestFixture = Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting.TestClassAttribute; using Test = Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting.TestMethodAttribute; using TestFixtureSetUp = Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting.TestInitializeAttribute; using SetUp = Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting.TestInitializeAttribute; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting; #endif Basically I’m taking the NUnit naming conventions, and redirecting them to MsTest. You can go the other way, of course. I only chose this direction because I had already written the tests as NUnit tests. NUnit and MsTest provide largely the same functionality with slightly differing class names. There’s few actual differences between then, and I have not run into them on this project so far. To run the tests as NUnit tests, simply open up the project properties tab and add the compiler directive NUNIT. Remove it, and you’re back in MsTest land.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for December 14, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  JMS Step 6 - How to Set Up an AQ JMS (Advanced Queueing JMS) for SOA Purposes | John-Brown Evans John Brown Evans' post continues the series of JMS articles that demonstrate how to use JMS queues in a SOA context. "This example leads you through the creation of an Oracle database Advanced Queue and the related WebLogic server objects in order to use AQ JMS in connection with a SOA composite," John explains. And if you missed the first 5 steps, don't worry – the post includes links. Cloud Deployment Models | B. R. Clouse Looking out for the cloud newbies... "As the cloud paradigm grows in depth and breadth, more readers are approaching the topic for the first time, or from a new perspective," says B. R. Clouse. "This blog is a basic review of cloud deployment models, to help orient newcomers and neophytes." Understanding the JSF Lifecycle and ADF Optimized Lifecycle | Steven Davelaar Would you call that a surprise ending? Oracle WebCenter & ADF Architecture Team (A-Team) member learned a lot more than he expected while creating a UKOUG presentation entitled "What you need to know about JSF to be succesful with ADF." Using Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c with Filer Snapshotting | Porus Homi Havewala This concise technical article includes a script for database backup using snapshots and cataloging in RMAN. Thought for the Day "A program which perfectly meets a lousy specification is a lousy program." — Cem Kaner Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• What do you do to make sure you take proper/enough breaks, while avoiding unwanted side-effects of break taking?

  - by blueberryfields

  preamble It seems to me that computer programmers are one of a select few groups of people who actually take pleasure from sitting in front of computers for long periods of time. Most people in other professions actively dislike their time at computers, and do their best to avoid it (so, I assume, they don't have problems taking breaks). At least for me, having external cues for taking breaks, and clear instructions on what to do with each break (stretch, go for a walk, close my eyes, look into a distance of preferably a few km and focus on faraway objects, etc...), is a must. So far, I've just been making up the breaks and tools to get them as I go along, based on what looks to be low-specificity information found on the net (generic stuff ala ergonomics advice for office staff). This has led to all sorts of side effects - loss of attention as I get distracted if I walk around, breaks in flow with alarm clocks interrupting my thoughts, and people around me assuming I'm low on work due to the frequency of my walking around compared to everyone else. /preamble tl;dr Taking breaks is important My internal break taking system doesn't work, and ad-hoc ones have unwanted side effects What do you do to make sure you take proper breaks? How do you avoid unwanted side-effects, such as getting distracted or interrupting flow or giving your co-workers the impression you're spending a lot of time goofing off?

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• Should I cache the data or hit the database?

  - by JD01

  I have not worked with any caching mechanisms and was wondering what my options are in the .net world for the following scenario. We basically have a a REST Service where the user passes an ID of a Category (think folder) and this category may have lots of sub categories and each of the sub categories could have 1000 of media containers (think file reference objects) which contain information about a file that may be on a NAS or SAN server (files are videos in this case). The relationship between these categories is stored in a database together with some permission rules and meta data about the sub categories. So from a UI perspective we have a lazy loaded tree control which is driven by the user by clicking on each sub folder (think of Windows explorer). Once they come to a URL of the video file, they then can watch the video. The number of users could grow into the 1000s and the sub categories and videos could be in the 10000s as the system grows. The question is should we carry on the way it is currently working where each request hits the database or should we think about caching the data? We are on using IIS 6/7 and Asp.net.

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• Ninject/DI: How to correctly pass initialisation data to injected type at runtime

  - by MrLane

  I have the following two classes: public class StoreService : IStoreService { private IEmailService _emailService; public StoreService(IEmailService emailService) { _emailService = emailService; } } public class EmailService : IEmailService { } Using Ninject I can set up bindings no problem to get it to inject a concrete implementation of IEmailService into the StoreService constructor. StoreService is actually injected into the code behind of an ASP.NET WebForm as so: [Ninject.Inject] public IStoreService StoreService { get; set; } But now I need to change EmailService to accept an object that contains SMTP related settings (that are pulled from the ApplicationSettings of the Web.config). So I changed EmailService to now look like this: public class EmailService : IEmailService { private SMTPSettings _smtpSettings; public void SetSMTPSettings(SMTPSettings smtpSettings) { _smtpSettings = smtpSettings; } } Setting SMTPSettings in this way also requires it to be passed into StoreService (via another public method). This has to be done in the Page_Load method in the WebForms code behind (I only have access to the Settings class in the UI layer). With manual/poor mans DI I could pass SMTPSettings directly into the constructor of EmailService and then inject EmailService into the StoreService constructor. With Ninject I don't have access to the instances of injected types outside of the objects they are injected to, so I have to set their data AFTER Ninject has already injected them via a separate public setter method. This to me seems wrong. How should I really be solving this scenario?

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• How to structure my GUI agnostic project?

  - by Nezreli

  I have a project which loads from database a XML file which defines a form for some user. XML is transformed into a collection of objects whose classes derive from single parent. Something like Control - EditControl - TextBox Control - ContainterControl - Panel Those classes are responsible for creation of GUI controls for three different enviroments: WinForms, DevExpress XtraReports and WebForms. All three frameworks share mostly the same control tree and have a common single parent (Windows.Forms.Control, XrControl and WebControl). So, how to do it? Solution a) Control class has abstract methods Control CreateWinControl(); XrControl CreateXtraControl(); WebControl CreateWebControl(); This could work but the project has to reference all three frameworks and the classes are going to be fat with methods which would support all three implementations. Solution b) Each framework implementation is done in separate projects and have the exact class tree like the Core project. All three implementations are connected using a interface to the Core class. This seems clean but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it. Does anyone have a simpler solution or a suggestion how should I approach this task?

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• Copy-and-Pasted Test Code: How Bad is This?

  - by joshin4colours

  My current job is mostly writing GUI test code for various applications that we work on. However, I find that I tend to copy and paste a lot of code within tests. The reason for this is that the areas I'm testing tend to be similar enough to need repetition but not quite similar enough to encapsulate code into methods or objects. I find that when I try to use classes or methods more extensively, tests become more cumbersome to maintain and sometimes outright difficult to write in the first place. Instead, I usually copy a big chunk of test code from one section and paste it to another, and make any minor changes I need. I don't use more structured ways of coding, such as using more OO-principles or functions. Do other coders feel this way when writing test code? Obviously I want to follow DRY and YAGNI principles, but I find that test code (automated test code for GUI testing anyway) can make these principles tough to follow. Or do I just need more coding practice and a better overall system of doing things? EDIT: The tool I'm using is SilkTest, which is in a proprietary language called 4Test. As well, these tests are mostly for Windows desktop applications, but I also have tested web apps using this setup as well.

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• Procedural content (settlement) generation

  - by instancedName

  I have, lets say, something like a homework or assignment to do. Roughly said I need to write an algorithm (pseudo code is not necessary, just in depth description) of procedure that would generate settlements, environment and a people to populate it with, as part of some larger world generation procedure. The genre of game is not specified, it could be any genre (rpg, strategy, colony simulation etc.) where interacting with large and extensive world is central to the game. Procedure should be called once per settlement. At the time of calling, world generation procedure makes geography, culture and history input available. Output should be map of the village and it's immediate area, and various potential additional information like myths, history, demographic facts etc. Bonus would be quest ant similar stuff, but that not really my focus at the moment. I will leave quality of the output for later when I actually dig little deeper into this topic. I am free to change parameters as long as I have strong explanation for doing so. Setting of the game is undetermined so I am free to use anything that I like the most. Ok, so my actual question is: Can anyone who has some experience in this field of game design recommend me some good literature, or point me in the direction where I should look/reed/study? I'm somewhat experienced game programmer, but I've never been into game design till now so any help will be great. I want to do this assignment as good as I can. As for deadline, it's not strictly set, but lets say I don't want it to take longer then few weeks, one month at worst case.

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• Building a template engine - starting point

  - by Anirudh

  We're building a Django-based project with a template component. This component will be separate from the project as such and can be Django/Python, Node, Java or whatever works. The template has to be rendered into HTML. The templates will contain references to objects with properties that are defined in the DB, say, a Bus. For eg, it could be something like [object type="vehicle" weight="heavy"] and it would have to pull a random object from the DB fulfilling the criteria : type="vehicle" weight="heavy" (bus/truck/jet) and then substitute that tag with an image, say, of a Bus. Also it would have to be able to handle some processing. Eg: What is [X type="integer" lte="10"] + [Y type="integer" lte="10"] [option X+Y correct_ans="true"] [option X-Y correct_ans="false"] [option X+y+1 correct_ans="false"] The engine would be expected to fill in a random integer value <= 10 for X and Y and show radioboxes for each of the options. Would also have to store the fact that the first option is the correct answer. Does it to make sense to write something from the scratch? Or is it better to use an existing templating system (like Django's own templating system) as a starting point? Any suggestions on how I can approach this?

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