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• Semantic Form Markup for Yes or No Questions - Or Should I Tell my Designers to Bugger Off?

  - by sholsinger

  I frequently receive mock-ups of HTML forms with the following prototype: Some long winded yes or no question?   (o) Yes   ( ) No The (o) and ( ) in this prototype represent radio buttons. My personal view is that if the question has only a true or false value then it should be a check box. That said, I have seen this sort of "layout" from almost every designer I've ever worked with. If I were not to question their decision, or question the client's decision, I'd probably mark it up like this: <p class="pseudo_label">Some long winded yes or no question?</p> <input type="radio" name="the_question" id="the_question_yes" value="1"> <label for="the_question_yes" class="after_radio">Yes</label> <input type="radio" name="the_question" id="the_question_no" value="0"> <label for="the_question_no" class="after_radio">No</label> I really don't want to do that. I want to push back and convince them that this should really be a check box and not two radio buttons. But my question is, if I can't convince them – you're welcome to help me try – how should I code that original design requirement such that it is semantic and at least understandable for screen reader users? If I were able to convince my tormentors to change their minds, I would likely code it in the following fashion: <label for="the_question">Some long winded yes or no question?</label> <input type="checkbox" name="the_question" id="the_question" value="1"> What do you think about this issue? Should I push back? Possibly more importantly is either way semantically correct?

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• EF4 Code First Control Unicode and Decimal Precision, Scale with Attributes

  - by Dane Morgridge

  There are several attributes available when using code first with the Entity Framework 4 CTP5 Code First option.  When working with strings you can use [MaxLength(length)] to control the length and [Required] will work on all properties.  But there are a few things missing. By default all string will be created using unicode so you will get nvarchar instead of varchar.  You can change this using the fluent API or you can create an attribute to make the change.  If you have a lot of properties, the attribute will be much easier and require less code. You will need to add two classes to your project to create the attribute itself: 1: public class UnicodeAttribute : Attribute 2: { 3: bool _isUnicode; 4:  5: public UnicodeAttribute(bool isUnicode) 6: { 7: _isUnicode = isUnicode; 8: } 9:  10: public bool IsUnicode { get { return _isUnicode; } } 11: } 12:  13: public class UnicodeAttributeConvention : AttributeConfigurationConvention<PropertyInfo, StringPropertyConfiguration, UnicodeAttribute> 14: { 15: public override void Apply(PropertyInfo memberInfo, StringPropertyConfiguration configuration, UnicodeAttribute attribute) 16: { 17: configuration.IsUnicode = attribute.IsUnicode; 18: } 19: } The UnicodeAttribue class gives you a [Unicode] attribute that you can use on your properties and the UnicodeAttributeConvention will tell EF how to handle the attribute. You will need to add a line to the OnModelCreating method inside your context for EF to recognize the attribute: 1: protected override void OnModelCreating(System.Data.Entity.ModelConfiguration.ModelBuilder modelBuilder) 2: { 3: modelBuilder.Conventions.Add(new UnicodeAttributeConvention()); 4: base.OnModelCreating(modelBuilder); 5: } Once you have this done, you can use the attribute in your classes to make sure that you get database types of varchar instead of nvarchar: 1: [Unicode(false)] 2: public string Name { get; set; }   Another option that is missing is the ability to set the precision and scale on a decimal.  By default decimals get created as (18,0).  If you need decimals to be something like (9,2) then you can once again use the fluent API or create a custom attribute.  As with the unicode attribute, you will need to add two classes to your project: 1: public class DecimalPrecisionAttribute : Attribute 2: { 3: int _precision; 4: private int _scale; 5:  6: public DecimalPrecisionAttribute(int precision, int scale) 7: { 8: _precision = precision; 9: _scale = scale; 10: } 11:  12: public int Precision { get { return _precision; } } 13: public int Scale { get { return _scale; } } 14: } 15:  16: public class DecimalPrecisionAttributeConvention : AttributeConfigurationConvention<PropertyInfo, DecimalPropertyConfiguration, DecimalPrecisionAttribute> 17: { 18: public override void Apply(PropertyInfo memberInfo, DecimalPropertyConfiguration configuration, DecimalPrecisionAttribute attribute) 19: { 20: configuration.Precision = Convert.ToByte(attribute.Precision); 21: configuration.Scale = Convert.ToByte(attribute.Scale); 22:  23: } 24: } Add your line to the OnModelCreating: 1: protected override void OnModelCreating(System.Data.Entity.ModelConfiguration.ModelBuilder modelBuilder) 2: { 3: modelBuilder.Conventions.Add(new UnicodeAttributeConvention()); 4: modelBuilder.Conventions.Add(new DecimalPrecisionAttributeConvention()); 5: base.OnModelCreating(modelBuilder); 6: } Now you can use the following on your properties: 1: [DecimalPrecision(9,2)] 2: public decimal Cost { get; set; } Both these options use the same concepts so if there are other attributes that you want to use, you can create them quite simply.  The key to it all is the PropertyConfiguration classes.   If there is a class for the datatype, then you should be able to write an attribute to set almost everything you need.  You could also create a single attribute to encapsulate all of the possible string combinations instead of having multiple attributes on each property. All in all, I am loving code first and having attributes to control database generation instead of using the fluent API is huge and saves me a great deal of time.

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• Why do some bad websites rank well?

  - by BradB

  Consider the following scenario: you are pitching SEO/Website Optimisation to a prospective client and you explain to them the importance of great copy and content, how acquiring links (ethically) can increase page rank, why the quality of the HTML build matters (H1, H2 tags, w3c validation etc), why keyword research is beneficial, you may drop in a few Google Webmaster Guideline or Matt Cutts references to back up your claims and rubbish the "back hat" approach as being no longer effective for good measure. Your advice is ethical and in the eyes of best practices, spot on. Then, the client points out to you some of their long established competitors on Google and you see these competitor websites ranking in the top spots (1 to 3) for medium to highly competitive search phrases that your client wants to compete for. These websites totally contradict your ethical approach and pretty much violate every best practice previously noted. They even out perform other "white hat" competitors who are in accordance with the above guidelines. I experienced this today. One of these well ranking websites had: About six microsites with more or less the same copy and a slightly varied layout Little or not textual content I would almost say duplicate content across the sites, but there was so little of it it could barely qualify for being duplicate All the content in Flash (with a music track that kicked in on each page load, not so much of an SEO issue - but it helps paint the picture) Keyword stuffing behind the Flash file with a bunch of black text on black background in the style of keyword 1 keyword 2,keyword1,keyword 2,keyword 2 keyword 3 and so on... The exact keyword stuffed combination present on every page of the website A bunch of clearly self made links from poor quality forums and directories with little or no Page Rank Links exchanged across the microsites How do you explain your way out of this when this hard evidence is sat in front of you undermining your great pitch?

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• My boss has a different idea of a website's UX [migrated]

  - by NicoJuicy

  Let me explain the situation. I started transforming a "old (.Net 2.0)" Application into a webapplication. Problem here is, that no-one here is really acquainted with the UX of a website (Simple, efficient). Eventhough, i still have to regard that the website can be tailored to a customer needs through parameters (yeah, i know :s ) For example: I wanted to have a layout similar to invoicemachine (= as simple as possible). -- He wants a Ribbon toolbar. Going to a supplier gives the list of supplier -- He wants to display the "Create Supplier" screen where you can use the wildcards in a certain textbox, to search for a specific Supplier and then give the list of the suppliers. Also, i need 4 search/filter mechanisms: people can search per field with wildmarks can filter the suppliers search a keyword through all the data of a supplier filter the "list Suppliers" page by the first letter of the name. LIST Suppliers | A | D | Z Adam Wrincle ADD |EDIT |Delete Damzel InDistress ADD |EDIT |Delete Zorro ADD |EDIT |Delete I can't seem to get through to him, that the UX of a website needs to be differently than a Windows Application. If he wants to bring all the logic of the windows app into a website, why letting me build a website then? Stick to the old solution. Am i mistaking so hard or how could i convince / show him that an online-solution is something different than the offline solution. He already "saw" online solutions of other applications to get an idea, but if i suggest something he won't listen (if it's GUI / UX related, that is).

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• How can I re-enable the typing break in 11.10?

  - by Hamish Downer

  I've just upgraded to beta 2 of Oneiric/11.10 and the typing break has gone. I've gone into the system settings and looked in "Keyboard Layout" and "Keyboard" and can't find anything. Has it just been dropped? Is there some hidden way to re-enable it? Update: Thought I'd write an update based on some stuff that has happened since this question (and the two answers) were written. Workrave has now been re-instated in oneiric-backports and for 12.04 (how to enable backports). It works fine, though if you want to put it in your systray then you need to allow it in there. The easy/lazy command line way to allow workrave into the notification area is to do something like: gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['all']" But read this question if you want a more detailed explanation about what you're doing here. Meanwhile the Gnome typing break has been split out into an app called DrWright, however it has not (at time of writing) been packaged for 11.10 (or later). And as mentioned in the other answer, another option is RSIBreak. It is a KDE app but works fine in Unity.

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• Build-time dependency resolving coming to Entity Framework. Now, how about those BI tools too?

  - by jamiet

  Three months ago I wrote a blog post entitled Some thoughts on Visual Studio database references and how they should be used for SQL Server BI where I shared some thoughts on a feature available to database developers in Visual Studio 2010 that I would love to see added to SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), Analysis Services (SSAS) and Reporting Services (SSRS). In there I said: Over the past few weeks I have been making heavy use of the Database tools in Visual Studio 2010 and one of the features that has most impressed me has been database references.   Database references allow you to have stored procedures in your database project that refer to objects (tables, views, stored procedures etc…) that exist in other database projects and hence when you build your database project it is able to resolve those references.   It occurred to me that similar functionality would be incredibly useful for SQL Server Integration Services(SSIS), Analysis Services (SSAS) & Reporting Services (SSRS) projects. After all reports, packages and data source views are rife with references to database objects – why shouldn’t we be able to have design-time dependency checking in our BI projects the same way that database and .Net developers do? In that blog post I shared links to three Connect submissions where I requested this feature be added to SSIS, SSAS & SSRS. In addition I also submitted a request that the feature be extended to .Net projects so that any reference to a database object in a .Net assembly can be resolved at build time. That Connect submission is at [Entity FX] Use database references to constrain the EDM and overnight it received this comment from Microsoft: We have been working on this feature for a while and and will be available soon This is really good news - it improves the Microsoft developer ecosystem by ensuring invalid references to database references get caught at build time (ideally as part of a Continuous integration build) rather than run time. [Hopefully it might nip this code-first nonsense in the bud too (Ooo...way to incite flame comments :) ) ]. If you want to see this feature in action then check out a video from Teched Europe last month entitled SQL Server Developer Tools Code-named "Juneau" where it is demo'd by Lance Delano and Tim Laverty.   The point of this blog post though is not just to draw attention to this forthcoming feature for .Net developers, it is to ask you to petition Microsoft to get this feature added to SSIS/SSAS/SSRS too. After all, we already know (from the video above) that the feature is coming to this new code-name Juneau development environment plus we also know that Juneau will be the development environment for SSIS/SSAS/SSRS as well - is it really much of a stretch to expect the BI tools to have access to this great feature too? I don't think so and if you agree with me then I urge you to vote and add a comment to the Connection submissions that are requesting this feature. They are at: [SSAS] Declare Object Dependancies [SSRS] Declare Object Dependancies [SSIS] Declare Object Dependancies (Update, Apparently someone at Microsoft has deemed it necassary to set this to private and I am not able to change it back even though I submitted it. You can still vote on the other two though.) Let's close that SQL Developer Gap!   @Jamiet    

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• Cellbi Silverlight Controls Giveaway (5 License to give away)

  - by mbcrump

  Cellbi recently updated their new Silverlight Controls to version 4 and to support Visual Studio 2010. I played with a couple of demos on their site and had to take a look. I headed over to their website and downloaded the controls. The first thing that I noticed was all of the special text effects and animations included. I emailed them asking if I could give away their controls in my January 2011 giveaway and they said yes. They also volunteered to give away 5 total license so the changes for you to win would increase.  I am very thankful they were willing to help the Silverlight community with this giveaway. So some quick rules below: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Win a FREE developer’s license of Cellbi Silverlight Controls! (5 License to give away) Random winner will be announced on February 1st, 2011! To be entered into the contest do the following things: Subscribe to my feed. Leave a comment below with a valid email account (I WILL NOT share this info with anyone.) Retweet the following : I just entered to win free #Silverlight controls from @mbcrump and @cellbi http://mcrump.me/cscfree ! Don’t change the URL because this will allow me to track the users that Tweet this page. Don’t forget to visit Cellbi because they made this possible. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Before we get started with the Silverlight Controls, here is a couple of links to bookmark: The What's new in this release page is here. You can also check out the live demos here. Don’t worry about the Samples/Help Documentation. That is installed to your local HDD during the installation process. Begin by downloading the trial version and running the program. After everything is installed then you will see the following screen: After it is installed, you may want to take a look at your Toolbox in Visual Studio 2010. After you add the controls from the “Choose Items” in Silverlight and you will see that you now have access to all of these controls. At this point, to use the controls it’s as simple as drag/drop onto your Silverlight container. It will create the proper Namespaces for you. It’s hard to show with a static screenshot just how powerful the controls actually are so I will refer you to the demo page to learn more about them. Since all of these are animations/effects it just doesn’t work with a static screenshot. It is worth noting that the Sfx pack really focuses on the following core effects: I will show you the best route to get started building a new project with them below. The best page to start is the sample browser which you can access by going to SvFx Launcher. In my case, I want to build a new Carousel. I simple navigate to the Carousel that I want to build and hit the “Cs” code at the top. This launches Visual Studio 2010 and now I can copy/paste the XAML into my project. That is all there is to it. Hopefully this post was helpful and don’t forget to leave a comment below in order to win a set of the controls!  Subscribe to my feed

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• New features in TFS Demo Setup 1.0.0.2

  - by Tarun Arora

  Release Notes – http://tfsdemosetup.codeplex.com/ | Download | Source Code | Report a Bug | Ideas Just pushed out the 2nd release of the TFS Demo setup on CodePlex, below a quick look at some of the new features/improvements in the tool… Details of the existing features can be found here. Feature 1 – Set up Work Items Queries as Team Favorites The task board looks cooler when the team favourite work item queries show up on the task board. The demo setup console application now has the ability to set up the work item queries as team favorites for you. If you want to see how you can add Team Favorites programmatically, refer to this blogpost here. Image 1 – Task board without Team Favorites Let’s see how the TFS Demo Setup application sets-up team favorites as part of the run… Open up the DemoDictionary.xml and you should be able to see the new node <TeamFavorites> this accepts multiple <TeamFavorite>. You simply need to specify the <Type> as Query and in the <Name> specify the name of the work item query that you would like added as a favorite. Image 2 – Highlighting the TeamFavorites block in DemoDictionary.xml So, when the demo set up application is run with the above config, work item queries “Blocked Tasks” and “Open Impediments” are added as team favorites. They then show up on the task board, as highlighted in the screen shot below. Image 3 – Team Favorites setup during the TFS demo setup app execution Feature 2 – Choose what you want to setup and exclude the rest I had a great feature request come in requesting the ability to exclude parts of the setup at the sole discretion of the executioner. To accommodate this, I have added an attribute with each block, the attribute “Run” accepts “true” or “false”. If you set the flag to true then at the time of execution that block would be considered for setup and if you set the flag to false, the block will be ignored during the setup. So, lets look at an example below… The attribute "Run” is set to true for TeamSettings, Team Favorites, TeamMembers and WorkItems. So, all of these would be setup as part of the demo setup application execution. Image 4 – New Attribute Run added to all blocks in DemoDictionary.xml If I did not want to recreate the team and did not want to add new work items but only wanted to add favorites and team members to the existing team “AgileChamps1” then I could simple run the application with below DemoDictionary.xml. Note – TeamSettings Run=”false” and WorkItems Run=”false”. Image 5 – TeamFavorites and TeamMembers set as true and others set to false Feature 3 – Usability Improvement If you try and assign a work item to a team member that does not exist then the application throws a nasty exception. This behaviour has now been changed, upon adding such a work item, the work items will be created and not assigned to any user. The work item id will be printed to the console making it simple for you to assign the work item manually. As you can see in the screen shot below, I am trying to assign the work item to a user “Tarun” and a user “v2” both are *not valid users in my team project collection* so the tool creates the work items and provides me the work item id and lets me know that since the user is invalid the work item could not be assigned to the user. Better user experience ae Image 6 – Behaviour if work item assigned to users are in valid users in team project That’s about it for the current release. I have some new features planned for the next release. Mean while if you have any ideas/comments please feel free to leave a comment. Stay tuned for more… Enjoy! Other posts on TFS Demo Setup can be found here.

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• Review&ndash;Build Android and iOS apps in Visual Studio with Nomad

  - by Bill Osuch

  Nomad is a Visual Studio extension that allows you build apps for both Android and iOS platforms in Visual Studio using HTML5. There is no need to switch between .Net, Java and Objective-C to target different platforms - write your code once in HTML5 and build for all common mobile platforms and tablets. You have access to the native hardware functions (such as camera and GPS) through the PhoneGap library, UI libraries such as jQuery mobile allow you to create an impressive UI with minimal work. Nomad is still in an early access beta stage, so the documentation is a bit sparse. In fact, the only documentation is a simple series of steps on how to install the plug-in, set up a project, build and deploy it. You're going to want to be a least a little familiar with the PhoneGap library and jQuery mobile to really tap into the power of this. The sample project included with the download shows you just how simple it is to create projects in Visual Studio. The sample solution comes with an index.html file containing the HTML5 code, the Cordova (PhoneGap) library, jQuery libraries, and a JQuery style sheet: The html file is pretty straightforward. If you haven't experimented with JQuery mobile before, some of the attributes (such as data-role) might be new to you, but some quick Googling will fill in everything you need to know. The first part of the file builds a simple (but attractive) list with some links in it: The second part of the file is where things get interesting and it taps into the PhoneGap library. For instance, it gets the geolocation position by calling position.coords.latitude and position.coords.longitude: ...and then displays it in a simple span: Building is pretty simple, at least for Android (I'm not an iOS developer so I didn't look at that feature) - just configure the display name, version number, and package ID. There's no need to specify Android version; Nomad supports 2.2 and later. Enter these bits of information, click the new "Build for Android" button (not the regular Visual Studio Build link...) and you get a dialog box saying that your code is being built by their cloud build service (so no building while away from a WiFi signal apparently). After a couple minutes you wind up with a .apk file that can be copied over to your device. Applications built with Nomad for Android currently use a temporary certificate, so you can test the app on your devices but you cannot publish them in the Google Play Store (yet). And I love the "success" dialog box: Since Nomad is still in Beta, no pricing plans have been announced yet, so I'll be curious to see if this becomes a cost-effective solution to mobile app development. If it is, I may even be tempted to spring for the $99 iOS membership fee! In the meantime, I plan to work on porting some of my apps over to it and seeing how they work. My only quibble at this time is the lack of a centralized documentation location - I'd like to at least see which (if any) features of JQuery and PhoneGap are limited or not supported. Also, some notes on targeting different Android screen sizes would be nice, but it's relatively easy to find jQuery examples out on the InterWebs. Oh well, trial and error! You can download the Nomad extension for Visual Studio by going to their web site: www.vsnomad.com. Technorati Tags: Android, Nomad

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• Better ways to have valuable data indexed, which is ignored currently

  - by Sam

  <a title="">.../a> Hi folks. It seems that my title tag which holds extremely valuable and describes contents on my simple design page is currently compeltely denied by search engines and not indexed at all!! Those descriptions should however be indexed as the describe valuable portions to an otherwise empty page with clean glossary (thats neat and organised to the eye of the viewer. So putting all that descriptive data into visible space would ruin the designish less is more fundamental... So, which alternatives to the title tag do I have, in order to put important contents that are relevant for both user as well as search engines? A <a name="">......</> B <p name="">......</> C <a alt="">.......</> D <p alt="">.......</> From the above list, arose my question: Which of the above is advisable alternative in order to get the valuable actual content indexed? Should it be in a a tag or p tag? Or are there even better tags for this which still keep layout clean? You suggestions are Much appreciated!

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• How to Create SharePoint List and Insert List Item programmatically from a Windows Forms Application.

  - by Michael M. Bangoy

  In this post I’m going to demonstrate how to create SharePoint List and also Insert Items on the List from a Windows Forms Application. 1. Open Visual Studio and create a new project. On the project template select Windows Form Application under C#. 2. In order to communicate with Sharepoint from a Windows Forms Application we need to add the 2 Sharepoint Client DLL located in c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\ISAPI.  3. Select the Microsoft.Sharepoint.Client.dll and Microsoft.Sharepoint.Client.Runtime.dll. (Your solution should look like the one below) 4. Open the Form1 in design view and from the Toolbox menu add a button on the form surface. Your form should look like the one below. 5. Double click the button to open the code view. Add Using statement to reference the Sharepoint Client Library then create method for the Create List. Your code should like the codes below. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Data; using System.Drawing; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Security; using System.Windows.Forms; using SP = Microsoft.SharePoint.Client; namespace ClientObjectModel {     public partial class Form1 : Form     {         // url of the Sharepoint site         const string _context = "urlofthesharepointsite";         public Form1()         {             InitializeComponent();         }         private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)         {                    }         private void cmdcreate_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             try             {                 // declare the ClientContext Object                 SP.ClientContext _clientcontext = new SP.ClientContext(_context);                 SP.Web _site = _clientcontext.Web;                 // declare a ListCreationInfo                 SP.ListCreationInformation _listcreationinfo = new SP.ListCreationInformation();                 // set the Title and the Template of the List to be created                 _listcreationinfo.Title = "NewListFromCOM";                 _listcreationinfo.TemplateType = (int)SP.ListTemplateType.GenericList;                 // Call the add method to the ListCreatedInfo                 SP.List _list = _site.Lists.Add(_listcreationinfo);                 // Add Description field to the List                 SP.Field _Description = _list.Fields.AddFieldAsXml(@"                                     <Field Type='Text'                                         DisplayName='Description'>                                     </Field>", true, SP.AddFieldOptions.AddToDefaultContentType);                 // declare the List item Creation object for creating List Item                 SP.ListItemCreationInformation _itemcreationinfo = new SP.ListItemCreationInformation();                 // call the additem method of the list to insert a new List Item                 SP.ListItem _item = _list.AddItem(_itemcreationinfo);                 _item["Title"] = "New Item from Client Object Model";                 _item["Description"] = "This item was added by a Windows Forms Application";                 // call the update method                 _item.Update();                 // execute the query of the clientcontext                 _clientcontext.ExecuteQuery();                 // dispose the clientcontext                 _clientcontext.Dispose();                 MessageBox.Show("List Creation Successfull");             }             catch(Exception ex)             {                 MessageBox.Show("Error creating list" + ex.ToString());             }          }     } } 6. Hit F5 to run the application. A message will be displayed on the screen if the operation is successful and also if it fails. 7. To make that the operation of our Windows Form Application has really created the List and Inserted an item on it. Let’s open our SharePoint site. Once the SharePoint is open click on the Site Actions then View All Site Content. 7. Click the List to open it and check if an Item is inserted. That’s it. Hope this helps.

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• Do you want to be an ALM Consultant?

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Northwest Cadence is looking for our next great consultant! At Northwest Cadence, we have created a work environment that emphasizes excellence, integrity, and out-of-the-box thinking.  Our customers have high expectations (rightfully so) and we wouldn’t have it any other way!   Northwest Cadence has some of the most exciting customers I have ever worked with and even though I have only been here just over a month I have already: Provided training/consulting for 3 government departments Created and taught courseware for delivering Scrum to teams within a high profile multinational company Started presenting Microsoft's ALM Engagement Program  So if you are interested in helping companies build better software more efficiently, then.. Enquire at [email protected] Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Consultant An ALM Consultant with a minimum of 8 years of relevant experience with Application Lifecycle Management, Visual Studio (including Visual Studio Team System) and software design is needed. Must provide thought leadership on best practices for enterprise architecture, understand the Microsoft technology solution stack, and have a thorough understanding of enterprise application integration. The ALM Practice Lead will play a central role in designing and implementing the overall ALM Practice strategy, including creating, updating, and delivering ALM courseware and consultancy engagements. This person will also provide project support, deliverables, and quality solutions on Visual Studio Team System that exceed client expectations. Engagements will vary and will involve providing expert training, consulting, mentoring, formulating technical strategies and policies and acting as a “trusted advisor” to customers and internal teams. Sound sense of business and technical strategy required. Strong interpersonal skills as well as solid strategic thinking are key. The ideal candidate will be capable of envisioning the solution based on the early client requirements, communicating the vision to both technical and business stakeholders, leading teams through implementation, as well as training, mentoring, and hands-on software development. The ideal candidate will demonstrate successful use of both agile and formal software development methods, enterprise application patterns, and effective leadership on prior projects. Job Requirements Minimum Education: Bachelor’s Degree (computer science, engineering, or math preferred). Locale / Travel: The Practice Lead position requires estimated 50% travel, most of which will be in the Continental US (a valid national Passport must be maintained).  This is a full time position and will be based in the Kirkland office. Preferred Education: Master’s Degree in Information Technology or Software Engineering; Premium Microsoft Certifications on .NET (MCSD) or MCPD or relevant experience; Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) or relevant experience. Minimum Experience and Skills: 7+ years experience with business information systems integration or custom business application design and development in a professional technology consulting, corporate MIS or software development environment. Essential Duties & Responsibilities: Provide training, consulting, and mentoring to organizations on topics that include Visual Studio Team System and ALM. Create content, including labs and demonstrations, to be delivered as training classes by Northwest Cadence employees. Lead development teams through the complete ALM and/or Visual Studio Team System solution. Be able to communicate in detail how a solution will integrate into the larger technical problem space for large, complex enterprises. Define technical solution requirements. Provide guidance to the customer and project team with respect to technical feasibility, complexity, and level of effort required to deliver a custom solution. Ensure that the solution is designed, developed and deployed in accordance with the agreed upon development work plan. Create and deliver weekly status reports of training and/or consulting progress. Engagement Responsibilities: · Provide a strong desire to provide thought leadership related to technology and to help grow the business. · Work effectively and professionally with employees at all levels of a customer’s organization. · Have strong verbal and written communication skills. · Have effective presentation, organizational and planning skills. · Have effective interpersonal skills and ability to work in a team environment. Enquire at [email protected]

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• Sales and Procurement Contracts 12.1.3++ Release Information

  - by LuciaC

  New functionality has been released for Sales and Procurement Contracts in a new patch: Contracts 12.1.3++: Patch 13877401: 12.1.3 Rollup for Oracle Contracts Core. The new functionality includes: APIs for Import of Contract Templates, Contract Expert rules, Questions and Constants: The three APIs are as follows: API for Templates, API for Rules, and API for Questions and Constants. These can be used to both create entities and update existing templates and rules. The APIs will display error and warning messages which can be processed and analyzed by the customer. Ability to Apply Multiple Templates to a Sourcing, Procurement or Sales Document: The buyer can select and add multiple templates to a quote,sales agreement document, sourcing or purchasing odcument.  All the clauses and deliverables from the new templates are synchronized with the document. The Contract Expert rules are from the original template. The buyer can also view the list of templates that are added to any sales or procurement document. Ability to Define Multi-Row Variables: You can create user defined manual variables that are tables containing one row per line or multiple rows. Contract Preview will print the variable values according to the layout defined for the variable. These variables are not available for Contract Expert Rules and Supplier. Enhancement to Suggested Sections for Clauses by Contract Expert: You can associate multiple default sections with a clause. A clause is associated with multiple values of any system variable and for each such value a section name is associated in Contracts Terms Library. When Contract Expert is run in the contract authoring flow, the clause is automatically placed in the associated section name. Plus many more new features. Read the following notes for details on all the new and changed functionality: Oracle Procurement Contracts Release Notes, Release 12.1.3++ (Doc ID 1467140.1) Oracle Sales Contracts Release Notes, Release 12.1.3++ (Doc ID 1467149.1) Oracle E-Business Suite Releases 12.1 and 12.2 Release Content Documents (Doc ID 1302189.1)

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• Are there any "best practices" on cross-device development?

  - by vstrien

  Developing for smartphones in the way the industry is currently doing is relatively new. Of course, there has been enterprise-level mobile development for several decades. The platforms have changed, however. Think of: from stylus-input to touch-input (different screen res, different control layout etc.) new ways of handling multi-tasking on mobile platforms (e.g. WP7's "tombstoning") The way these platforms work aren't totally new (iPhone has been around for quite awhile now for example), but at the moment when developing a functionally equal application for both desktop and smartphone it comes down to developing two applications from ground up. Especially with the birth of Windows Phone with the .NET-platform on board and using Silverlight as UI-language, it's becoming appealing to promote the re-use of (parts of the UI). Still, it's fairly obvious that the needs of an application on a smartphone (or tablet) are very different compared to the needs of a desktop application. An (almost) one-on-one conversion will therefore be impossible. My question: are there "best practices", pitfalls etc. documented about developing "cross-device" applications (for example, developing an app for both the desktop and the smartphone/tablet)? I've been looking at weblogs, scientific papers and more for a week or so, but what I've found so far is only about "migratory interfaces".

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• Ubuntu 12.04 OpenCL with Intel and Radeon?

  - by Steve

  I want to setup my Ubuntu 12.04 with OpenCL(Open Computing Language) support for i7 2600k and Radeon HD5870. My Monitor is connected to the integrated Graphics of the i7. Intel OpenCL SDK is installed and working. Iteration of avaliable OpenCL devices shows 2 entries for Intel. As recommended I installed AMD APP SDK 2.6 first and then the fglrx driver. I installed fglrx from Ubuntu repositories. This works fine till here. When I run aticonfig --inital -f and restart the system I get into trouble. Xorg starts only in low-graphics mode. cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log [ 21.201] X.Org X Server 1.12.2 Release Date: 2012-05-29 [ 21.201] X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0 [ 21.201] Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.24-29-xen x86_64 Ubuntu [ 21.201] Current Operating System: Linux chimera 3.2.0-24-generic #39-Ubuntu SMP Mon May 21 16:52:17 UTC 2012 x86_ [ 21.201] Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic root=UUID=c137757b-486b-4514-9dfe-00c97662 [ 21.201] Build Date: 05 June 2012 08:35:55AM [ 21.201] xorg-server 2:1.12.2+git20120605+server-1.12-branch.aaf48906-0ubuntu0ricotz~precise (For technical suppor [ 21.201] Current version of pixman: 0.26.0 [ 21.201] Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org to make sure that you have the latest version. [ 21.201] Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting, (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational, (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown. [ 21.201] (==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Fri Jun 8 14:22:36 2012 [ 21.247] (==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" [ 21.247] (==) Using system config directory "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d" [ 21.450] (==) ServerLayout "aticonfig Layout" [ 21.450] (**) |-->Screen "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" (0) [ 21.450] (**) | |-->Monitor "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0" [ 21.451] (**) | |-->Device "aticonfig-Device[0]-0" [ 21.451] (==) Automatically adding devices [ 21.451] (==) Automatically enabling devices [ 21.466] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic" does not exist. [ 21.466] Entry deleted from font path. [ 21.466] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/" does not exist. [ 21.466] Entry deleted from font path. [ 21.466] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/" does not exist. [ 21.466] Entry deleted from font path. [ 21.473] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi" does not exist. [ 21.473] Entry deleted from font path. [ 21.473] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi" does not exist. [ 21.473] Entry deleted from font path. [ 21.473] (WW) The directory "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType" does not exist. [ 21.473] Entry deleted from font path. [ 21.473] (==) FontPath set to: /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc, /usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1, built-ins [ 21.473] (==) ModulePath set to "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xorg/extra-modules,/usr/lib/xorg/extra-modules,/usr/lib [ 21.473] (II) The server relies on udev to provide the list of input devices. If no devices become available, reconfigure udev or disable AutoAddDevices. [ 21.473] (II) Loader magic: 0x7f0ad3b9ab00 [ 21.473] (II) Module ABI versions: [ 21.473] X.Org ANSI C Emulation: 0.4 [ 21.473] X.Org Video Driver: 12.0 [ 21.473] X.Org XInput driver : 16.0 [ 21.473] X.Org Server Extension : 6.0 [ 21.473] (--) PCI:*(0:0:2:0) 8086:0122:1458:d000 rev 9, Mem @ 0xfb800000/4194304, 0xe0000000/268435456, I/O @ 0x00 [ 21.473] (--) PCI: (0:1:0:0) 1002:6898:1787:2289 rev 0, Mem @ 0xd0000000/268435456, 0xfbdc0000/131072, I/O @ 0x000 [ 21.473] (II) Open ACPI successful (/var/run/acpid.socket) [ 21.473] (II) "extmod" will be loaded by default. [ 21.473] (II) "dbe" will be loaded by default. [ 21.473] (II) "glx" will be loaded. This was enabled by default and also specified in the config file. [ 21.473] (II) "record" will be loaded by default. [ 21.473] (II) "dri" will be loaded by default. [ 21.473] (II) "dri2" will be loaded by default. [ 21.473] (II) LoadModule: "glx" [ 21.732] (II) Loading /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xorg/extra-modules/extra-modules.dpkg-tmp/modules/extensions/libgl [ 21.934] (II) Module glx: vendor="Advanced Micro Devices, Inc." [ 21.934] compiled for 6.9.0, module version = 1.0.0 [ 21.934] (II) Loading extension GLX [ 21.934] (II) LoadModule: "extmod" [ 22.028] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/libextmod.so [ 22.041] (II) Module extmod: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 22.041] compiled for 1.12.2, module version = 1.0.0 [ 22.041] Module class: X.Org Server Extension [ 22.041] ABI class: X.Org Server Extension, version 6.0 [ 22.041] (II) Loading extension MIT-SCREEN-SAVER [ 22.041] (II) Loading extension XFree86-VidModeExtension [ 22.041] (II) Loading extension XFree86-DGA [ 22.041] (II) Loading extension DPMS [ 22.041] (II) Loading extension XVideo [ 22.041] (II) Loading extension XVideo-MotionCompensation [ 22.041] (II) Loading extension X-Resource [ 22.041] (II) LoadModule: "dbe" [ 22.041] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/libdbe.so [ 22.066] (II) Module dbe: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 22.066] compiled for 1.12.2, module version = 1.0.0 [ 22.066] Module class: X.Org Server Extension [ 22.066] ABI class: X.Org Server Extension, version 6.0 [ 22.066] (II) Loading extension DOUBLE-BUFFER [ 22.066] (II) LoadModule: "record" [ 22.066] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/librecord.so [ 22.077] (II) Module record: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 22.077] compiled for 1.12.2, module version = 1.13.0 [ 22.077] Module class: X.Org Server Extension [ 22.077] ABI class: X.Org Server Extension, version 6.0 [ 22.077] (II) Loading extension RECORD [ 22.077] (II) LoadModule: "dri" [ 22.077] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/libdri.so [ 22.082] (II) Module dri: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 22.082] compiled for 1.12.2, module version = 1.0.0 [ 22.082] ABI class: X.Org Server Extension, version 6.0 [ 22.082] (II) Loading extension XFree86-DRI [ 22.082] (II) LoadModule: "dri2" [ 22.082] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/libdri2.so [ 22.083] (II) Module dri2: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 22.083] compiled for 1.12.2, module version = 1.2.0 [ 22.083] ABI class: X.Org Server Extension, version 6.0 [ 22.083] (II) Loading extension DRI2 [ 22.083] (II) LoadModule: "fglrx" [ 22.083] (II) Loading /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xorg/extra-modules/extra-modules.dpkg-tmp/modules/drivers/fglrx_dr [ 22.399] (II) Module fglrx: vendor="FireGL - ATI Technologies Inc." [ 22.399] compiled for 1.4.99.906, module version = 8.96.4 [ 22.399] Module class: X.Org Video Driver [ 22.399] (II) Loading sub module "fglrxdrm" [ 22.399] (II) LoadModule: "fglrxdrm" [ 22.399] (II) Loading /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xorg/extra-modules/extra-modules.dpkg-tmp/modules/linux/libfglrxdr [ 22.445] (II) Module fglrxdrm: vendor="FireGL - ATI Technologies Inc." [ 22.445] compiled for 1.4.99.906, module version = 8.96.4 [ 22.445] (II) ATI Proprietary Linux Driver Version Identifier:8.96.4 [ 22.445] (II) ATI Proprietary Linux Driver Release Identifier: 8.96.7 [ 22.445] (II) ATI Proprietary Linux Driver Build Date: Mar 12 2012 13:06:50 [ 22.445] (++) using VT number 7 [ 22.445] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fglrx [ 23.043] (II) Loading PCS database from /etc/ati/amdpcsdb [ 23.082] (--) Chipset Supported AMD Graphics Processor (0x6898) found [ 23.107] (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@1:0:1) found [ 23.107] (II) fglrx: intel VGA device detected, load intel driver. [ 23.107] (II) LoadModule: "intel" [ 23.211] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/intel_drv.so [ 23.475] (II) Module intel: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 23.475] compiled for 1.12.2, module version = 2.19.0 [ 23.475] Module class: X.Org Video Driver [ 23.475] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 12.0 [ 23.476] ukiDynamicMajor: found major device number 249 [ 23.476] ukiDynamicMajor: found major device number 249 [ 23.476] ukiOpenByBusid: Searching for BusID PCI:1:0:0 [ 23.476] ukiOpenDevice: node name is /dev/ati/card0 [ 23.476] ukiOpenDevice: open result is 8, (OK) [ 23.476] ukiOpenByBusid: ukiOpenMinor returns 8 [ 23.476] ukiOpenByBusid: ukiGetBusid reports PCI:1:0:0 [ 23.540] (WW) PowerXpress feature is not supported [ 23.540] (EE) No devices detected. [ 23.540] (==) Matched intel as autoconfigured driver 0 [ 23.540] (==) Matched vesa as autoconfigured driver 1 [ 23.540] (==) Matched fbdev as autoconfigured driver 2 [ 23.540] (==) Assigned the driver to the xf86ConfigLayout [ 23.540] (II) LoadModule: "intel" [ 23.540] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/intel_drv.so [ 23.540] (II) Module intel: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 23.540] compiled for 1.12.2, module version = 2.19.0 [ 23.540] Module class: X.Org Video Driver [ 23.540] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 12.0 [ 23.540] (II) UnloadModule: "intel" [ 23.540] (II) Unloading intel [ 23.540] (II) Failed to load module "intel" (already loaded, 32522) [ 23.540] (II) LoadModule: "vesa" [ 23.583] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/vesa_drv.so [ 23.620] (II) Module vesa: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 23.620] compiled for 1.12.2, module version = 2.3.1 [ 23.620] Module class: X.Org Video Driver [ 23.620] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 12.0 [ 23.620] (II) LoadModule: "fbdev" [ 23.620] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/fbdev_drv.so [ 23.661] (II) Module fbdev: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 23.661] compiled for 1.12.2, module version = 0.4.2 [ 23.661] Module class: X.Org Video Driver [ 23.661] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 12.0 [ 23.661] (II) ATI Proprietary Linux Driver Version Identifier:8.96.4 [ 23.661] (II) ATI Proprietary Linux Driver Release Identifier: 8.96.7 [ 23.661] (II) ATI Proprietary Linux Driver Build Date: Mar 12 2012 13:06:50 [ 23.661] (II) intel: Driver for Intel Integrated Graphics Chipsets: i810, i810-dc100, i810e, i815, i830M, 845G, 854, 852GM/855GM, 865G, 915G, E7221 (i915), 915GM, 945G, 945GM, 945GME, Pineview GM, Pineview G, 965G, G35, 965Q, 946GZ, 965GM, 965GME/GLE, G33, Q35, Q33, GM45, 4 Series, G45/G43, Q45/Q43, G41, B43, B43, Clarkdale, Arrandale, Sandybridge Desktop (GT1), Sandybridge Desktop (GT2), Sandybridge Desktop (GT2+), Sandybridge Mobile (GT1), Sandybridge Mobile (GT2), Sandybridge Mobile (GT2+), Sandybridge Server, Ivybridge Mobile (GT1), Ivybridge Mobile (GT2), Ivybridge Desktop (GT1), Ivybridge Desktop (GT2), Ivybridge Server, Ivybridge Server (GT2) [ 23.661] (II) VESA: driver for VESA chipsets: vesa [ 23.661] (II) FBDEV: driver for framebuffer: fbdev [ 23.661] (++) using VT number 7 [ 23.661] (WW) xf86OpenConsole: setpgid failed: Operation not permitted [ 23.661] (WW) xf86OpenConsole: setsid failed: Operation not permitted [ 23.661] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fglrx [ 23.661] (II) Loading PCS database from /etc/ati/amdpcsdb [ 23.661] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for vesa [ 23.661] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fbdev [ 23.661] (EE) No devices detected. [ 23.661] Fatal server error: [ 23.661] no screens found [ 23.661] Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support at http://wiki.x.org for help. [ 23.661] Please also check the log file at "/var/log/Xorg.0.log" for additional information. [ 23.661] xorg.conf: cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "aticonfig Layout" Screen 0 "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0 EndSection Section "Module" Load "glx" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor" Option "DPMS" "true" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]-0" Driver "fglrx" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" Device "aticonfig-Device[0]-0" Monitor "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Viewport 0 0 Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection Is there a way to get the Radeon to work in a hybrid configuration or to use the Radeon as an OpenCL only device?

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• Model View Control Issue: Null Pointer Initialization Question

  - by David Dimalanta

  Good morning again. This is David. Please, I need an urgent help regarding control model view where I making a code that uniquely separating into groups: An Activity Java Class to Display the Interface A View and Function Java Class for Drawing Cards and Display it on the Activity Class The problem is that the result returns a Null Pointer Exception. I have initialize for the ID for Text View and Image View. Under this class "draw_deck.java". Please help me. Here's my code for draw_deck.java: package com.bodapps.inbetween.model; import android.content.Context; import android.view.View; import android.widget.ImageView; import android.widget.TextView; import com.bodapps.inbetween.R; public class draw_deck extends View { public TextView count_label; public ImageView draw_card; private int count; public draw_deck(Context context) { super(context); // TODO Auto-generated constructor stub //I have initialized two widgets for ID. I still don't get it why I got forced closed by Null Pointer Exception thing. draw_card = (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.IV_Draw_Card); count_label = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.Text_View_Count_Card); } public void draw(int s, int c, String strSuit, String strValue, Pile pile, Context context) { //super(context); //Just printing the card drawn from pile int suit, value = 1; draw_card = (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.IV_Draw_Card); count_label = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.Text_View_Count_Card); Card card; if(!pile.isEmpty()) //Setting it to IF statement displays the card one by one. { card = pile.drawFromPile(); //Need to check first if card is null. if (card != null) { //draws an extra if (card != null) { //Get suit of card to print out. suit = card.getSuit(); switch (suit) { case CardInfo.DIAMOND: strSuit = "DIAMOND"; s=0; break; case CardInfo.HEART: strSuit = "HEART"; s=1; break; case CardInfo.SPADE: strSuit = "SPADE"; s=2; break; case CardInfo.CLUB: strSuit = "CLUB"; s=3; break; } //Get value of card to print out. value = card.getValue(); switch (value) { case CardInfo.ACE: strValue = "ACE"; c=0; break; case CardInfo.TWO: c=1; break; case CardInfo.THREE: strValue = "THREE"; c=2; break; case CardInfo.FOUR: strValue = "FOUR"; c=3; break; case CardInfo.FIVE: strValue = "FIVE"; c=4; break; case CardInfo.SIX: strValue = "SIX"; c=4; break; case CardInfo.SEVEN: strValue = "SEVEN"; c=4; break; case CardInfo.EIGHT: strValue = "EIGHT"; c=4; break; case CardInfo.NINE: strValue = "NINE"; c=4; break; case CardInfo.TEN: strValue = "TEN"; c=4; break; case CardInfo.JACK: strValue = "JACK"; c=4; break; case CardInfo.QUEEN: strValue = "QUEEN"; c=4; break; case CardInfo.KING: strValue = "KING"; c=4; break; } } } }// //Below two lines of code, this is where issued the Null Pointer Exception. draw_card.setImageResource(deck[s][c]); count_label.setText(new StringBuilder(strValue).append(" of ").append(strSuit).append(String.valueOf(" " + count++)).toString()); } //Choice of Suits in a Deck public Integer[][] deck = { //Array Group 1 is [0][0] (No. of Cards: 4 - DIAMOND) { R.drawable.card_dummy_1, R.drawable.card_dummy_2, R.drawable.card_dummy_4, R.drawable.card_dummy_5, R.drawable.card_dummy_3 }, //Array Group 2 is [1][0] (No. of Cards: 4 - HEART) { R.drawable.card_dummy_1, R.drawable.card_dummy_2, R.drawable.card_dummy_4, R.drawable.card_dummy_5, R.drawable.card_dummy_3 }, //Array Group 3 is [2][0] (No. of Cards: 4 - SPADE) { R.drawable.card_dummy_1, R.drawable.card_dummy_2, R.drawable.card_dummy_4, R.drawable.card_dummy_5, R.drawable.card_dummy_3 }, //Array Group 4 is [3][0] (No. of Cards: 4 - CLUB) { R.drawable.card_dummy_1, R.drawable.card_dummy_2, R.drawable.card_dummy_4, R.drawable.card_dummy_5, R.drawable.card_dummy_3 }, }; } And this one of the activity class, Player_Mode_2.java: package com.bodapps.inbetween; import java.util.Random; import android.app.Activity; import android.app.Dialog; import android.content.Context; import android.os.Bundle; import android.view.View; import android.view.View.OnClickListener; import android.widget.Button; import android.widget.EditText; import android.widget.ImageView; import android.widget.TextView; import android.widget.Toast; import com.bodapps.inbetween.model.Card; import com.bodapps.inbetween.model.Pile; import com.bodapps.inbetween.model.draw_deck; /* * * Public class for Two-Player mode. * */ public class Player_Mode_2 extends Activity { //Image Views private ImageView draw_card; private ImageView player_1; private ImageView player_2; private ImageView icon; //Buttons private Button set_deck; //Edit Texts private EditText enter_no_of_decks; //text Views private TextView count_label; //Integer Data Types private int no_of_cards, count; private int card_multiplier; //Contexts final Context context = this; //Pile Model public Pile pile; //Card Model public Card card; //create View @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.play_2_player_mode); //-----[ Search for Views ]----- //Initialize for Image View draw_card = (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.IV_Draw_Card); player_1 = (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.IV_Player_1_Card); player_2 = (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.IV_Player_2_Card); //Initialize for Text view or Label count_label = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.Text_View_Count_Card); //-----[ Adding Values ]----- //Integer Values count = 0; no_of_cards = 0; //-----[ Adding Dialog ]----- //Initializing Dialog final Dialog deck_dialog = new Dialog(context); deck_dialog.setContentView(R.layout.dialog); deck_dialog.setTitle("Deck Dialog"); //-----[ Initializing Views for Dialog's Contents ]----- //Initialize for Edit Text enter_no_of_decks = (EditText) deck_dialog.findViewById(R.id.Edit_Text_Set_Number_of_Decks); //Initialize for Button set_deck = (Button) deck_dialog.findViewById(R.id.Button_Deck); //-----[ Setting onClickListener() ]----- //Set Event Listener for Image view draw_card.setOnClickListener(new Draw_Card_Model()); //Set Event Listener for Setting the Deck set_deck.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() { public void onClick(View v) { if(card_multiplier <= 8) { //Use "Integer.parseInt()" method to instantly convert from String to int value. card_multiplier = Integer.parseInt(enter_no_of_decks.getText().toString()); //Shuffling cards... pile = new Pile(card_multiplier); //Multiply no. of decks //Dismiss or close the dialog. deck_dialog.dismiss(); } else { Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "Please choose a number from 1 to 8.", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); } } }); //Show dialog. deck_dialog.show(); } //Shuffling the Array public void Shuffle_Cards(Integer[][] Shuffle_Deck) { Random random = new Random(); for(int i = Shuffle_Deck[no_of_cards].length - 1; i >=0; i--) { int Index = random.nextInt(i + 1); //Simple Swapping Integer swap = Shuffle_Deck[card_multiplier-1][Index]; Shuffle_Deck[card_multiplier-1][Index] = Shuffle_Deck[card_multiplier-1][i]; Shuffle_Deck[card_multiplier-1][i] = swap; } } //Private Class for Random Card Draw private class Draw_Card_Model implements OnClickListener { public void onClick(View v) { //Just printing the card drawn from pile int suit = 0, value = 0; String strSuit = "", strValue = ""; draw_deck draw = new draw_deck(context); //This line is where issued the Null Pointer Exception. if (count == card_multiplier*52) { // A message shows up when all cards are draw out. Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "All cards have been used up.", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); draw_card.setEnabled(false); } else { draw.draw(suit, value, strSuit, strValue, pile, context); count_label.setText(count); //This is where I got force closed error, although "int count" have initialized the number. This was supposed to accept in the setText() method. count++; } } } } Take note that the issues on Null Pointer Exception is the Image View and the Edit Text. I got to test it. Thanks. If you have any info about my question, let me know it frankly.

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• Day 5 - Tada! My Game Menu Screen Graphics

  - by dapostolov

  So, tonight I took some time to mash up some graphics for my game menu screen. My artistic talent sucks...but here goes nothing...voila, my menu screen!! The Menu Screen The screen above is displaying 4 sprites, even though it looks like maybe 7... I guess one of the first things for me to test in the future is ... is it more memory efficient (and better frame rate) to draw one big background image OR tp paint the screen black, and place each sprite in set locations? To display the 4 sprites above, I borrowed my code from yesterday ... I know, tacky, but...I wanted to see it, feel it. Do you feel it? FEEL IT! (homer voice & shakes fist) Note: the menu items won't scale properly as it stands with this code, well pretty much they do nothing except look pretty... Paint.Net & Google Fun So how did I create that image above? Well, to create the background and 3 menu items I used Paint.Net. Basically, I scoured Google images for: a stone doorway, a stone pillar, an old book, a wizards hat, and...that's it pretty much it! I'll let you type in those searches and see if you can locate the images I used. I know, bad developer...but I figured since I modified the images considerably it doesn't count...well for a personal project it shouldn't count...*shrug* Anyhow, I extracted each key assest I wanted from each image and applied lots of matting, blurring, color changes, glow effects and such. Then, using my vivid imagination I placed / composed each of the layered assets into the mashed up the "scene" above. Pretty cool, eh? Hey, did you know, the cool mist effect is actually a fire rendition in Paint.net? I set it to black & white with opacity set next to nothing. I'm also very proud of the yellow "light" in the stone doorway. I drew that in and then applied gausian blur to it to give it the effect of light creeping out around the door and into the room...heheh. So did I achieve the dark, mysterious ritual as I stated in my design doc? I think I had a great stab at it! Maybe down the road I can get a real artist to crank out some quality graphics for the game... =) So, What's Next? Well, I don't have that animated brazier yet...however, I thought it would be even cooler if I can get that door pulsing that yellow light and it would be extremely cool to have the smoke / mist moving across the screen! Make the creative ideas stop!! (clutches head) haha! I'm having great fun working on this project =) I recommend others giving something like this a try, it's really fulfilling. OK. Tomorrow... I think I'm going to start creating some game / menu objects as per the design doc, maybe even get a custom mouse cursor up on the screen and handle a couple of mouse events, and lastly, maybe a feature to toggle a framerate display... D.

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• Semantic Form Markup for Yes or No Questions

  - by sholsinger

  I frequently receive mock-ups of HTML forms with the following prototype: Some long winded yes or no question?   (o) Yes   ( ) No The (o) and ( ) in this prototype represent radio buttons. My personal view is that if the question has only a true or false value then it should be a check box. That said, I have seen this sort of "layout" from almost every designer I've ever worked with. If I were not to question their decision, or question the client's decision, I'd probably mark it up like this: <p class="pseudo_label">Some long winded yes or no question?</p> <input type="radio" name="the_question" id="the_question_yes" value="1"> <label for="the_question_yes" class="after_radio">Yes</label> <input type="radio" name="the_question" id="the_question_no" value="0"> <label for="the_question_no" class="after_radio">No</label> I really don't want to do that. I want to push back and convince them that this should really be a check box and not two radio buttons. But my question is, if I can't convince them – you're welcome to help me try – how should I code that original design requirement such that it is semantic and at least understandable for screen reader users? If I were able to convince my tormentors to change their minds, I would likely code it in the following fashion: <label for="the_question">Some long winded yes or no question?</label> <input type="checkbox" name="the_question" id="the_question" value="1"> What do you think about this issue? Should I push back? Possibly more importantly is either way semantically correct? UPDATE: I have posted a related question on the UI SE per your suggestions. You can find it here: http://ui.stackexchange.com/q/3335/3493

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• Screen problems on 11.10 using VGA compatible controller 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller

  - by MorrisseyJ

  I am having problems with my display. The problem manifests as lots of screen artefacts, which seem to be worse in Unity than in Gnome 3, are worse after i have used suspend and are intolerable if i set myself up on a dual monitor. Specific issues include: icons disappearing, lines occurring all over the screen, the backgrounds of certain windows going another colour and window borders disappearing or being filled with text from other parts of the screen. The most annoying problem is lines of text disappearing from a host of word processing programmes (libreoffice, gedit, bluefish etc), as i type. In most circumstances the screen problem can be temporarily fixed (so that i can see the screen clearly) by either scrolling the text off the screen and then scrolling it back onto the screen, or highlighting the offending area of the desktop, by clicking and dragging. Errors on parts of the screen that don't seem to redraw (window borders (off the universal menu) or the screen area outside of a LO document, in print layout view, for example) can't seem to be fixed in a session. I am running 11.10, 64 bit on my Thinkpad x121e Display information is: description: VGA compatible controller product: 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 2 bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0 version: 09 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom configuration: driver=i915 latency=0 resources: irq:42 memory:d0000000-d03fffff memory:c0000000-cfffffff ioport:4000(size=64) There appear to be a few problems with the Intel graphics and Ubuntu but i am not sure if they are all the same. If anyone knows if this is a known bug it'd be great to know, otherwise i'll file a report. Should anyone know of a fix i would greatly appreciate hearing about it. Let me know if you need any more information. Thanks

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• double screen in ubuntu 12.04?

  - by johan

  I am using ubuntu 12.04 and my video card is ATI Radeon 5000. I cannot use double screen (extended version). I get this error The selected configuration for displays could not be applied requested position/size for CRTC 148 is outside the allowed limit: position=(1280, 0), size=(1280, 768), maximum=(1440, 1440) I tried all display settings but it does not work. Some outputs from the system settings: root@ubuntu:~# lshw -C display *-display description: VGA compatible controller product: Madison [Radeon HD 5000M Series] vendor: Hynix Semiconductor (Hyundai Electronics) physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0 version: 00 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom configuration: driver=fglrx_pci latency=0 resources: irq:46 memory:e0000000-efffffff memory:f0020000-f003ffff ioport:d000(size=256) memory:f0000000-f001ffff root@ubuntu:~# aticonfig --initial Uninitialised file found, configuring. Using /etc/X11/xorg.conf Saving back-up to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.original-0 root@ubuntu:~# cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "aticonfig Layout" Screen 0 "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0 EndSection Section "Module" Load "glx" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor" Option "DPMS" "true" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]-0" Driver "fglrx" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Default Screen" DefaultDepth 24 EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" Device "aticonfig-Device[0]-0" Monitor "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Viewport 0 0 Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection I would appreciate any suggestions how to solve the problem. Thank you

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• Filtering List Data with a jQuery-searchFilter Plugin

  - by Rick Strahl

  When dealing with list based data on HTML forms, filtering that data down based on a search text expression is an extremely useful feature. We’re used to search boxes on just about anything these days and HTML forms should be no different. In this post I’ll describe how you can easily filter a list down to just the elements that match text typed into a search box. It’s a pretty simple task and it’s super easy to do, but I get a surprising number of comments from developers I work with who are surprised how easy it is to hook up this sort of behavior, that I thought it’s worth a blog post. But Angular does that out of the Box, right? These days it seems everybody is raving about Angular and the rich SPA features it provides. One of the cool features of Angular is the ability to do drop dead simple filters where you can specify a filter expression as part of a looping construct and automatically have that filter applied so that only items that match the filter show. I think Angular has single handedly elevated search filters to first rate, front-row status because it’s so easy. I love using Angular myself, but Angular is not a generic solution to problems like this. For one thing, using Angular requires you to render the list data with Angular – if you have data that is server rendered or static, then Angular doesn’t work. Not all applications are client side rendered SPAs – not by a long shot, and nor do all applications need to become SPAs. Long story short, it’s pretty easy to achieve text filtering effects using jQuery (or plain JavaScript for that matter) with just a little bit of work. Let’s take a look at an example. Why Filter? Client side filtering is a very useful tool that can make it drastically easier to sift through data displayed in client side lists. In my applications I like to display scrollable lists that contain a reasonably large amount of data, rather than the classic paging style displays which tend to be painful to use. So I often display 50 or so items per ‘page’ and it’s extremely useful to be able to filter this list down. Here’s an example in my Time Trakker application where I can quickly glance at various common views of my time entries. I can see Recent Entries, Unbilled Entries, Open Entries etc and filter those down by individual customers and so forth. Each of these lists results tends to be a few pages worth of scrollable content. The following screen shot shows a filtered view of Recent Entries that match the search keyword of CellPage: As you can see in this animated GIF, the filter is applied as you type, displaying only entries that match the text anywhere inside of the text of each of the list items. This is an immediately useful feature for just about any list display and adds significant value. A few lines of jQuery The good news is that this is trivially simple using jQuery. To get an idea what this looks like, here’s the relevant page layout showing only the search box and the list layout:<div id="divItemWrapper"> <div class="time-entry"> <div class="time-entry-right"> May 11, 2014 - 7:20pm<br /> <span style='color:steelblue'>0h:40min</span><br /> <a id="btnDeleteButton" href="#" class="hoverbutton" data-id="16825"> <img src="images/remove.gif" /> </a> </div> <div class="punchedoutimg"></div> <b><a href='/TimeTrakkerWeb/punchout/16825'>Project Housekeeping</a></b><br /> <small><i>Sawgrass</i></small> </div> ... more items here </div> So we have a searchbox txtSearchPage and a bunch of DIV elements with a .time-entry CSS class attached that makes up the list of items displayed. To hook up the search filter with jQuery is merely a matter of a few lines of jQuery code hooked to the .keyup() event handler: <script type="text/javascript"> $("#txtSearchPage").keyup(function() { var search = $(this).val(); $(".time-entry").show(); if (search) $(".time-entry").not(":contains(" + search + ")").hide(); }); </script> The idea here is pretty simple: You capture the keystroke in the search box and capture the search text. Using that search text you first make all items visible and then hide all the items that don’t match. Since DOM changes are applied after a method finishes execution in JavaScript, the show and hide operations are effectively batched up and so the view changes only to the final list rather than flashing the whole list and then removing items on a slow machine. You get the desired effect of the list showing the items in question. Case Insensitive Filtering But there is one problem with the solution above: The jQuery :contains filter is case sensitive, so your search text has to match expressions explicitly which is a bit cumbersome when typing. In the screen capture above I actually cheated – I used a custom filter that provides case insensitive contains behavior. jQuery makes it really easy to create custom query filters, and so I created one called containsNoCase. Here’s the implementation of this custom filter:$.expr[":"].containsNoCase = function(el, i, m) { var search = m[3]; if (!search) return false; return new RegExp(search, "i").test($(el).text()); }; This filter can be added anywhere where page level JavaScript runs – in page script or a seperately loaded .js file.  The filter basically extends jQuery with a : expression. Filters get passed a tokenized array that contains the expression. In this case the m[3] contains the search text from inside of the brackets. A filter basically looks at the active element that is passed in and then can return true or false to determine whether the item should be matched. Here I check a regular expression that looks for the search text in the element’s text. So the code for the filter now changes to:$(".time-entry").not(":containsNoCase(" + search + ")").hide(); And voila – you now have a case insensitive search.You can play around with another simpler example using this Plunkr:http://plnkr.co/edit/hDprZ3IlC6uzwFJtgHJh?p=preview Wrapping it up in a jQuery Plug-in To make this even easier to use and so that you can more easily remember how to use this search type filter, we can wrap this logic into a small jQuery plug-in:(function($, undefined) { $.expr[":"].containsNoCase = function(el, i, m) { var search = m[3]; if (!search) return false; return new RegExp(search, "i").test($(el).text()); }; $.fn.searchFilter = function(options) { var opt = $.extend({ // target selector targetSelector: "", // number of characters before search is applied charCount: 1 }, options); return this.each(function() { var $el = $(this); $el.keyup(function() { var search = $(this).val(); var $target = $(opt.targetSelector); $target.show(); if (search && search.length >= opt.charCount) $target.not(":containsNoCase(" + search + ")").hide(); }); }); }; })(jQuery); To use this plug-in now becomes a one liner:$("#txtSearchPagePlugin").searchFilter({ targetSelector: ".time-entry", charCount: 2}) You attach the .searchFilter() plug-in to the text box you are searching and specify a targetSelector that is to be filtered. Optionally you can specify a character count at which the filter kicks in since it’s kind of useless to filter at a single character typically. Summary This is s a very easy solution to a cool user interface feature your users will thank you for. Search filtering is a simple but highly effective user interface feature, and as you’ve seen in this post it’s very simple to create this behavior with just a few lines of jQuery code. While all the cool kids are doing Angular these days, jQuery is still useful in many applications that don’t embrace the ‘everything generated in JavaScript’ paradigm. I hope this jQuery plug-in or just the raw jQuery will be useful to some of you… Resources Example on Plunker© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in jQuery  HTML5  JavaScript   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Antenna Aligner Part 7: Connecting the dots

  - by Chris George

  The app is basically ready, so I eagerly started to sort out creating the application entry in iTunes Connect. It's mostly intuitive actually, although I did have to create yet another icon for iTunes sized 512x512 pixels, damn lucky I did the original graphics as vector! It took me longer to write the application description than anything else, I'm so not a tech author! I didn't like the way you have to 'make up' an SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) number. I have to do some googling to find out that it really doesn't matter what it is! It should be more obvious what to do from the actual website itself. That aside, the rest of it was actually fairly straightforward. As well as the details of the application, iPhone and iPad screenshots were also required. This posed somewhat of a problem. The iPhone ones were easy (as I have one!), but I do not (yet) own an iPad . So I thought I'd leave the iPad screenshots out for now. Once the application details were sorted, I moved onto the rights and pricing. At the start of the project I had made the decision that I wouldn't charge any more than the lowest amount £0.59. I believe there is a market for this, but as my first foray into app development I didn't want to take the mick. I did realise, however, that I had built my app with a developer certificate and provisioning profile. This was fairly quickly corrected, and again Nomad made this very easy to switch over to the distribution certificate and provisioning profile. With a sense of excitement I cracked open iTunes connect and clicked the upload button ... ...slight snag... . when the Nomad project was started, Apple allowed uploads of these binaries via iTunes Connect. But this is no longer possible, the only upload path is via the Application Loader available from the Apple Developer program. This itself has one limitation, it only runs on a mac! D'OH!!!  Actually my language was somewhat more colourful when this fact came to light. After picking my laptop up off the floor and putting it back together... ok only joking, but I did nearly throw it out of frustration!... I started to consider the options; I briefly entertained the idea of buying a cheap mac from ebay... no, that defeats the whole object of what I'm doing, plus my wife wouldn't be impressed there are some guys out there in the interweb who will upload your app for a small fee...but I don't really like the idea of giving some faceless email address my apple developer login details, as well as my app binary! find some willing friend with a mac who would kindly let me use it... obviously this is the only sensible option. In the meantime, I informed the Nomad team about this slight 'issue' and they are currently investigating possible solutions...

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• New R Interface to Oracle Data Mining Available for Download

  - by charlie.berger

    The R Interface to Oracle Data Mining ( R-ODM) allows R users to access the power of Oracle Data Mining's in-database functions using the familiar R syntax. R-ODM provides a powerful environment for prototyping data analysis and data mining methodologies. R-ODM is especially useful for: Quick prototyping of vertical or domain-based applications where the Oracle Database supports the application Scripting of "production" data mining methodologies Customizing graphics of ODM data mining results (examples: classification, regression, anomaly detection) The R-ODM interface allows R users to mine data using Oracle Data Mining from the R programming environment. It consists of a set of function wrappers written in source R language that pass data and parameters from the R environment to the Oracle RDBMS enterprise edition as standard user PL/SQL queries via an ODBC interface. The R-ODM interface code is a thin layer of logic and SQL that calls through an ODBC interface. R-ODM does not use or expose any Oracle product code as it is completely an external interface and not part of any Oracle product. R-ODM is similar to the example scripts (e.g., the PL/SQL demo code) that illustrates the use of Oracle Data Mining, for example, how to create Data Mining models, pass arguments, retrieve results etc. R-ODM is packaged as a standard R source package and is distributed freely as part of the R environment's Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN). For information about the R environment, R packages and CRAN, see www.r-project.org. R-ODM is particularly intended for data analysts and statisticians familiar with R but not necessarily familiar with the Oracle database environment or PL/SQL. It is a convenient environment to rapidly experiment and prototype Data Mining models and applications. Data Mining models prototyped in the R environment can easily be deployed in their final form in the database environment, just like any other standard Oracle Data Mining model. What is R? R is a system for statistical computation and graphics. It consists of a language plus a run-time environment with graphics, a debugger, access to certain system functions, and the ability to run programs stored in script files. The design of R has been heavily influenced by two existing languages: Becker, Chambers & Wilks' S and Sussman's Scheme. Whereas the resulting language is very similar in appearance to S, the underlying implementation and semantics are derived from Scheme. R was initially written by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the Department of Statistics of the University of Auckland in Auckland, New Zealand. Since mid-1997 there has been a core group (the "R Core Team") who can modify the R source code archive. Besides this core group many R users have contributed application code as represented in the near 1,500 publicly-available packages in the CRAN archive (which has shown exponential growth since 2001; R News Volume 8/2, October 2008). Today the R community is a vibrant and growing group of dozens of thousands of users worldwide. It is free software distributed under a GNU-style copyleft, and an official part of the GNU project ("GNU S"). Resources: R website / CRAN R-ODM

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• Detecting Units on a Grid

  - by hammythepig

  I am making a little turn based strategy game in pygame, that uses a grid system as the main map to hold all the characters and the map layout. (Similar to Fire Emblem, or Advance Wars) I am trying to determine a way to quickly and efficiently (i.e. without too much of a slow down) check if there are any characters within a given range of the currently selected character. So to illustrate: O = currently selected character X = squares within range Range of 1: X X O X X Range of 2: X X X X X X O X X X X X X Range of 3: X X X X X X X X X X X X O X X X X X X X X X X X X Now I have to tell the user who is in range, and I have to let the user choose who to attack if there are multiple enemies in range. If I have a 5x5 grid, filled with " " for empty and numbers for the characters: [ ][ ][ ][ ][4] [ ][1][ ][ ][ ] [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ] [ ][ ][2][3][ ] [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ] Depending on which character the user selects, I would like to show the user which other characters are in range. So if they all had a range of 3: 1 can hit 2 2 can hit 1 or 3 3 can hit 2 4 cannot hit anyone. So, How do I quickly and/or efficiently run though my grid and tell the user where the enemies are? PS- As a bonus, if someone could give an answer that could also work for a minimum distance type range, I would give them a pat on the back and a high five, should they ever travel to Canada and we ever meet in life. For example: Range of 3 to 5: (- is out of range) X X X X X X X X X X X X - X X X X X X - - - X X X X X X - - O - - X X X X X X - - - X X X X X X - X X X X X X X X X X X X

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• Open source adventures with... wait for it... Microsoft

  - by Jeff

  Last week, Microsoft announced that it was going to open source the rest of the ASP.NET MVC Web stack. The core MVC framework has been open source for a long time now, but the other pieces around it are also now out in the wild. Not only that, but it's not what I call "big bang" open source, where you release the source with each version. No, they're actually committing in real time to a public repository. They're also taking contributions where it makes sense. If that weren't exciting enough, CodePlex, which used to be a part of the team I was on, has been re-org'd to a different part of the company where it is getting the love and attention (and apparently money) that it deserves. For a period of several months, I lobbied to get a PM gig with that product, but got nowhere. A year and a half later, I'm happy to see it finally treated right. In any case, I found a bug in Razor, the rendering engine, before the beta came out. I informally sent the bug info to some people, but it wasn't fixed for the beta. Now, with the project being developed in the open, I was able to submit the issue, and went back and forth with the developer who wrote the code (I met him once at a meet up in Bellevue, I think), and he committed a fix. I tried it a day later, and the bug was gone. There's a lot to learn from all of this. That open source software is surprisingly efficient and often of high quality is one part of it. For me the win is that it demonstrates how open and collaborative processes, as light as possible, lead to better software. In other words, even if this were a project being developed internally, at a bank or something, getting stakeholders involved early and giving people the ability to respond leads to awesomeness. While there is always a place for big thinking, experience has shown time and time again that trying to figure everything out up front takes too long, and rarely meets expectations. This is a lesson that probably half of Microsoft has yet to learn, including the team I was on before I split. It's the reason that team still hasn't shipped anything to general availability. But I've seen what an open and iterative development style can do for teams, at Microsoft and other places that I've worked. When you can have a conversation with people, and take ideas and turn them into code quickly, you're winning. So why don't people like winning? I think there are a lot of reasons, and they can generally be categorized into fear, skepticism and bad experiences. I can't give the Web stack teams enough credit. Not only did they dream big, but they changed a culture that often seems immovable and hopelessly stuck. This is a very public example of this culture change, but it's starting to happen at every scale in Microsoft. It's really interesting to see in a company that has been written off as dead the last decade.

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