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  • Bullet Physics - Casting a ray straight down from a rigid body (first person camera)

    - by Hydrocity
    I've implemented a first person camera using Bullet--it's a rigid body with a capsule shape. I've only been using Bullet for a few days and physics engines are new to me. I use btRigidBody::setLinearVelocity() to move it and it collides perfectly with the world. The only problem is the Y-value moves freely, which I temporarily solved by setting the Y-value of the translation vector to zero before the body is moved. This works for all cases except when falling from a height. When the body drops off a tall object, you can still glide around since the translate vector's Y-value is being set to zero, until you stop moving and fall to the ground (the velocity is only set when moving). So to solve this I would like to try casting a ray down from the body to determine the Y-value of the world, and checking the difference between that value and the Y-value of the camera body, and disable or slow down movement if the difference is large enough. I'm a bit stuck on simply casting a ray and determining the Y-value of the world where it struck. I've implemented this callback: struct AllRayResultCallback : public btCollisionWorld::RayResultCallback{ AllRayResultCallback(const btVector3& rayFromWorld, const btVector3& rayToWorld) : m_rayFromWorld(rayFromWorld), m_rayToWorld(rayToWorld), m_closestHitFraction(1.0){} btVector3 m_rayFromWorld; btVector3 m_rayToWorld; btVector3 m_hitNormalWorld; btVector3 m_hitPointWorld; float m_closestHitFraction; virtual btScalar addSingleResult(btCollisionWorld::LocalRayResult& rayResult, bool normalInWorldSpace) { if(rayResult.m_hitFraction < m_closestHitFraction) m_closestHitFraction = rayResult.m_hitFraction; m_collisionObject = rayResult.m_collisionObject; if(normalInWorldSpace){ m_hitNormalWorld = rayResult.m_hitNormalLocal; } else{ m_hitNormalWorld = m_collisionObject->getWorldTransform().getBasis() * rayResult.m_hitNormalLocal; } m_hitPointWorld.setInterpolate3(m_rayFromWorld, m_rayToWorld, m_closestHitFraction); return 1.0f; } }; And in the movement function, I have this code: btVector3 from(pos.x, pos.y + 1000, pos.z); // pos is the camera's rigid body position btVector3 to(pos.x, 0, pos.z); // not sure if 0 is correct for Y AllRayResultCallback callback(from, to); Base::getSingletonPtr()->m_btWorld->rayTest(from, to, callback); So I have the callback.m_hitPointWorld vector, which seems to just show the position of the camera each frame. I've searched Google for examples of casting rays, as well as the Bullet documentation, and it's been hard to just find an example. An example is really all I need. Or perhaps there is some method in Bullet to keep the rigid body on the ground? I'm using Ogre3D as a rendering engine, and casting a ray down is quite straightforward with that, however I want to keep all the ray casting within Bullet for simplicity. Could anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks.

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  • REL ME tag - trying to figure it out

    - by nekdo
    Regarding http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1229920 to scrolled down section ''Examples'' to the point ''1.'' to the second code line which is: <a rel="me" href="https://plus.google.com/105240469625818678725/"> <img src="//www.google.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-16.png"></a> On the page says that I have to add this line to the Contact Me page of own website in order to get Google Profile button. Exact code which one should be copy and pasted I am able to get here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/profilebutton/ Questions: 1). As you can see on the second URL, to make Google Profile button I need to use "author" tag and not "me" tag. But the first URL which I showed (the line in this message above) shows that I have to use "me" tag and even without this: width="32" height="32". I am already aware that I have to type (second URL) my own Google Profile URL. So do I just MANUALLY ( ! ) change this: <a rel="author" href="https://profiles.google.com/109412257237874861202"> <img src="http://www.google.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-32.png" width="32" height="32"></a> to this (note: two changes done): <a rel="me" href="https://profiles.google.com/109412257237874861202"> <img src="http://www.google.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-32.png"></a> Is this correct? I assume that plus.google.com is the same as profiles.google.com (both is URL of Google Profile). 2). If I was wrong with my first question then the second answer probably won't be even useful but still: Where exactly should I paste the code: <a rel="me" href="https://profiles.google.com/109412257237874861202"> <img src="http://www.google.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-32.png"></a> inside Author Page of own website? I think it doesn't matter where. Also: will this icon be for sure enough or do I also have to make such anchor text with rel me in a ''shape'' of text (for word sentence such as ''Look At My Google Profile'')? Or is just icon really enough? 3). In the same section (''1.'') of the same page (link [first one] provided above) it says that I need to use first author tag to link to Author/Contact Me page of own website in order to later use Me tag. But I think in the explanation is little mistake. Shouldn't be instead of: <a rel="author" href="http://www.cnet.com/profile/iamjaygreene/">Jay Greene</a> this: <a rel="author" href="http://www.cnet.com/profile/iamjaygreene.html">Jay Greene</a> ?

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  • Drawing lots of tiles with OpenGL, the modern way

    - by Nic
    I'm working on a small tile/sprite-based PC game with a team of people, and we're running into performance issues. The last time I used OpenGL was around 2004, so I've been teaching myself how to use the core profile, and I'm finding myself a little confused. I need to draw in the neighborhood of 250-750 48x48 tiles to the screen every frame, as well as maybe around 50 sprites. The tiles only change when a new level is loaded, and the sprites are changing all the time. Some of the tiles are made up of four 24x24 pieces, and most (but not all) of the sprites are the same size as the tiles. A lot of the tiles and sprites use alpha blending. Right now I'm doing all of this in immediate mode, which I know is a bad idea. All the same, when one of our team members tries to run it, he gets very bad frame rates (~20-30 fps), and it's much worse when there are more tiles, especially when a lot of those tiles are the kind that are cut into pieces. This all makes me think that the problem is the number of draw calls being made. I've thought of a few possible solutions to this, but I wanted to run them by some people who know what they're talking about so I don't waste my time on something stupid: TILES: When a level is loaded, draw all the tiles once into a frame buffer attached to a big honking texture, and just draw a big rectangle with that texture on it every frame. Put all the tiles into a static vertex buffer when the level is loaded, and draw them that way. I don't know if there's a way to draw objects with different textures with a single call to glDrawElements, or if this is even something I'd want to do. Maybe just put all the tiles into a big giant texture and use funny texture coordinates in the VBO? SPRITES: Draw each sprite with a separate call to glDrawElements. Use a dynamic VBO somehow. Same texture question as number 2 above. Point sprites? This is probably silly. Are any of these ideas sensible? Is there a good implementation somewhere I could look over?

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  • Pro SharePoint 2010 Business Intelligence Solutions

    - by Sahil Malik
    Ad:: SharePoint 2007 Training in .NET 3.5 technologies (more information). Oh yeah baby, it’s out finally! This book is what I wanted to write for so long now, but never really got a chance to. For SharePoint 2007, I authored the SharePoint section of “Smart BI Solutions with SQL Server 2008” for MS Press. But never really got the time, to author a full book that this topic deserved. Until SharePoint 2010, we actually have a full book on this topic. So first things first, I didn’t actually write it. My role was limited to the overall concept, the outline, the layout, completion of it, code samples, identifying what we need in here, vouching for technical accuracy, identifying authors etc. The real work was done by Srini (5 chapters), and Steve (1 chapter). So credit given where it is due. But, with that said, this is a pretty good book. It has always been a challenge to find the superman that knows both, data ware housing concepts, and SharePoint concepts. The data ware housing concepts include basic stuff you need to know to work in the BI area such as cubes, MDX queries, etc. So chapter 1 covers that – and if you’re a hardcore DBA, feel free to skip Chapter 1. Then beyond that, we take every single SharePoint 2010 BI topic, and slice and dice it in detail. The topics we deal with are - Visio Services Reporting services Business Connectivity Services Excel Services PerformancePoint Services And in covering each of these topics, we ensure that a general layout was followed for each topic, to ensure completeness of content. We make sure we cover Setup related issues and advice Point and click usage Code usage, i.e. extensibility using visual studio and a walkthrough of the administration side of things, including powershell. (Yes, I insisted on that in being there in every chapter). Writing a book is always a lot of work, so we hope you find it useful. And it should go very well with the other book I just reviewed, which is Microsoft ADO.NET 4, step by step. Comment on the article ....

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  • Cloud Computing: Start with the problem

    - by BuckWoody
    At one point in my life I would build my own computing system for home use. I wanted a particular video card, a certain set of drives, and a lot of memory. Not only could I not find those things in a vendor’s pre-built computer, but those were more expensive – by a lot. As time moved on and the computing industry matured, I actually find that I can buy a vendor’s system as cheaply – and in some cases far more cheaply – than I can build it myself.   This paradigm holds true for almost any product, even clothing and furniture. And it’s also held true for software… Mostly. If you need an office productivity package, you simply buy one or use open-sourced software for that. There’s really no need to write your own Word Processor – it’s kind of been done a thousand times over. Even if you need a full system for customer relationship management or other needs, you simply buy one. But there is no “cloud solution in a box”.  Sure, if you’re after “Software as a Service” – type solutions, like being able to process video (Windows Azure Media Services) or running a Pig or Hive job in Hadoop (Hadoop on Windows Azure) you can simply use one of those, or if you just want to deploy a Virtual Machine (Windows Azure Virtual Machines) you can get that, but if you’re looking for a solution to a problem your organization has, you may need to mix Software, Infrastructure, and perhaps even Platforms (such as Windows Azure Computing) to solve the issue. It’s all about starting from the problem-end first. We’ve become so accustomed to looking for a box of software that will solve the problem, that we often start with the solution and try to fit it to the problem, rather than the other way around.  When I talk with my fellow architects at other companies, one of the hardest things to get them to do is to ignore the technology for a moment and describe what the issues are. It’s interesting to monitor the conversation and watch how many times we deviate from the problem into the solution. So, in your work today, try a little experiment: watch how many times you go after a problem by starting with the solution. Tomorrow, make a conscious effort to reverse that. You might be surprised at the results.

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  • How exactly is Google Webmaster Tools measuring "Site Performance"?

    - by Rémi
    I've been working for two months now on improving our response time (mainly server side) on a new forum (a brand new product on a technical point of view) we've launched in Germany a few month ago and I'm a lot surprised by the results I get. I monitor our response time using Apache logs and our own implementation of Boomerang beacon. Using my stats, I can see that our new product responds in about 680 ms where our old product was responding in about 1050 ms. On the other side, Google Webmaster Tool tells us that our pages have an average reponse time of about 1500 ms today where it was 700 three months ago with our old product. I've figured that GWT was taking client side metrics into account so I've added some measures on our Boomerang beacon and everything looks just fine. I've also ran some random pages on ySlow and Google's Page Speed and everything looks better than it was before. We event have a 82% on Google's Page Speed tool which is quite cool for a site with some ads in it :) Lately, we have signed a deal with Akamai to use two of their products : CDN for our static files (we were using another CDN before but it wasn't very effective) and RMA to improve Networks routes. We have also introduced a new agressive cache mecanism to ensure that most of the pages served to crawlers are cached by our memcache grid. After checking my metrics, it seems that this changes have improved from 650ms to about 500ms, which is good (still not great but it is definitly an improvement). But webmaster tools continues to report an increasing average response time where we see it decreasing in the same time. Have you ever had the same kind of wierd behavior on your sites while doing performance improvements ? Do you have any idea how to monitor the same thing Google does with Site Performance in Google Webmaster Tools so that we could improve our site and constantly check if it is what Google wants ? Edit 2011/07/26 : Thanks for your answers guys ! Nevertheless, I was not precise enough. The main issue we have is not with the Site Performance page but with the Crawl Stats one for now. We probably found an issue on our side with some very slow pages (around 3000 ms !!) and we are trying to fix them. I'll keep you posted as soon I'll have some infos. Thanks again !

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  • Lubuntu wireless issue with Broadcom chipset

    - by Variant Web Solutions
    I'm a web dev that just started a new venture in buying wiped laptops in bulk and selling them at a low cost to lower income families that want a laptop that will simply preform and not become virus ridden and require constant maintenance, so naturally I opted for a linux distro and after some research, lubuntu was my top pick. I'm not a stranger to linux as all of my servers for my web dev business are linux, but I am however new to L/Ubuntu and I'm having some issues with both wifi (broadcom chipsets) on the 20 or so dells that I have right now, D800's, D810's and E5400's. Not sure if you can point me in a solid direction, I've scoured (and implemented) the suggestions on ask ubuntu and still coming up short. On one of the e5400's ( though they all seem to suffer the same errors) I got the following: [code]dell-latitude-e5400@dell-Latitude-E5400:~$ iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. eth0 no wireless extensions. dell-latitude-e5400@dell-Latitude-E5400:~$ lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 07) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07) 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02) 00:1a.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02) 00:1a.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 02) 00:1a.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02) 00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 02) 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02) 00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02) 00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02) 00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 92) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M LPC Interface Controller (rev 02) 00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801IBM/IEM (ICH9M/ICH9M-E) 2 port SATA Controller [IDE mode] (rev 02) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02) 00:1f.5 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801IBM/IEM (ICH9M/ICH9M-E) 2 port SATA Controller [IDE mode] (rev 02) 02:01.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev ba) 02:01.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 04) 02:01.2 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 21) 09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5761e Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev 10) dell-latitude-e5400@dell-Latitude-E5400:~$ rfkill Usage: rfkill [options] command Options: --version show version (0.5-1ubuntu1 (Ubuntu)) Commands: help event list [IDENTIFIER] block IDENTIFIER unblock IDENTIFIER where IDENTIFIER is the index no. of an rfkill switch or one of: all wifi wlan bluetooth uwb ultrawideband wimax wwan gps fm nfc dell-latitude-e5400@dell-Latitude-E5400:~$ [/code]

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  • Configuring keyboard input to eliminate unused diacritics

    - by David Cesarino
    I'd like to change the way diacritics work under Xubuntu. My problem My native language is pt-BR and my notebook has an american keyboard. Thus, I use ' and " followed by keys like u and c to achieve things like ú, ç and ü. It all works well. However, in the case of apostrophes and quotes, that creates a problem when I use ' followed by: letters that won't accept the acute accent ( ´ , ACUTE ACCENT -- 0x00B4) at all, like t; and letters that won't accept the acute in pt-BR, like r. In 1, ' with t does absolutely nothing. In 2, ' with r creates r (LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITH ACUTE -- 0x0155), which is used, afaik, for some eastern european languages like slovak. It isn't used in portuguese, just like ?, s, z, ?, ?, ?, n and all consonants (portuguese do not take diacritics in consonants). Question That said, is there a way to better support the portuguese-brazilian language using an american keyboard? It is very common here --- I actually prefer the american keyboard to our own, known as “ABNT”. Desired solution I'd like to deactivate unused diacritics, so case 2 would behave just like case 1. Additionally, if possible, I'd like case 1 to behave like it does under Windows. As an example, typing ' followed by t should write 't (acute followed by T) instead of doing nothing. About 2, in my humble opinion, doing nothing is counterproductive. I realize the behavior is reasonable according to logic ("there isn't t-acute, so please tell the computer to typeset apostrophe --- ', SPACE --- instead of acute). But from a human, practical point of view, I think it makes more sense (to me, at least). Additional comments I believe this also applies to spanish, french, italian and other western european latin languages. On the console (Ctrl+Alt+F?), case 1 is not a problem. I don't need to press space as apostrophes are automatically added. However, there, I'm unable to access cedilla (ç). Two completely different behaviors. If it's just a matter of customizing text config files (possibly creating a custom layout or whatever), I'd be glad to share my efforts. I just need guide on the "howto" part. Somehow Google only points me to the "enough" people (those who cope with the situation and think that it works "well enough"). And since I have definitely migrated to Linux/Xubuntu after years, I'd like to leave just as I like it (and I'm sure others as well). For example, if there is some kind of scripting or definition to tell the computer to do what I described, so be it.

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  • Minimizing Dependencies For GUIs

    - by tuba09
    I've been working on a project, and have been charged with designing the projects GUI front-end. I'm coding in Java and using the Swing toolkit. Usability-wise, the GUI front-end follows all of Nielsen's heuristics. Users can easily get to where they want to go through the click of a button / JComboBox. Essentially, in Swing terms, what happens is their actions drive the creation/deletion of custom panels. The GUI is coming along fine for the most part. However, I have to admit to being utterly dismayed at the tight web of dependencies my code is being smothered in. The main problem that I've encountered, that I haven't been able to fix as of yet, is how to keep a reference to the panels/buttons being changed. I'll give an example: Say there's a button A Say there's a panel B displaying picture C Say there's another picture D (not currently being displayed by panel B) When user clicks A, panel B should remove picture C and display picture D My question is, what's the best way of keeping track of panel B? Since I need a global point of access to panel B, my solution has so far been to just shoehorn it into a static variable, and access it through a series of static getters and setters. And this static variable is usually stored in the reference's original class. I.e. UserPanel has a static variable that stores a reference to itself. Is there an easy, tried-and-true way of dealing with these kinds of situations? Like my GUI works fine, but it is not modular and/or robust at all. To add to this, the dreaded 'cyclical dependencies' issue that's shunned by so many programmers is out here in full effect. I'm fairly new to development and just want to make sure that my code will be fairly extensible and won't cause much of a headache to the next person that decides to get a try at it. I know there's loads of books out there that probably have a nice elegant solution to this, but unfortunately I just don't have the time to leisure read right now. I need something that's quick and dirty. Thanks in advance

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  • What do you do when practical problems get in the way of practical goals?

    - by P.Brian.Mackey
    UPDATE Source control is good to use. Sometimes, real world issues make it impractical to use. For example: If the team is not used to using source control, training problems can arise If a team member directly modifies code on the server, various issues can arise. Merge problems, lack of history, etc Let's say there's a project that is way out of sync. The physical files on the server differ in unknown ways over ~100 files. Merging would take not only a great knowledge of the project, but is also well beyond the ability to complete in the given time. Other projects are falling out of sync. Developers continue to have a distrust of source control and therefore compound the issue by not using source control. Developers argue that using source control is wasteful because merging is error prone and difficult. This is a difficult point to argue, because when source control is being so badly mis-used and source control continually bypassed, it is error prone indeed. Therefore, the evidence "speaks for itself" in their view. Developers argue that directly modifying source control saves time. This is also difficult to argue. Because the merge required to synchronize the code to start with is time consuming, across ~10 projects. Permanent files are often stored in the same directory as the web project. So publishing (full publish) erases these files that are not in source control. This also drives distrust for source control. Because "publishing breaks the project". Fixing this (moving stored files out of the solution subfolders) takes a great deal of time and debugging as these locations are not set in web.config and often exist across multiple code points. So, the culture persists itself. Bad practice begets more bad practice. Bad solutions drive new hacks to "fix" much deeper, much more time consuming problems. Servers, hard drive space are extremly difficult to come by. Yet, user expectations are rising. What can be done in this situation?

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  • Oracle JDeveloper 11gR2 Cookbook book review

    - by Chris Muir
    I recently received a free copy of Oracle JDeveloper 11gR2 Cookbook published by Packt Publishing for review. Readers of technical cookbooks would know this genre of text includes problems that developers will hit and the prescribed solutions, in this case for Oracle's Application Development Framework (ADF).  Books like this excel themselves on excellent coverage, a logical progress of solutions through out the book, and providing a readable narrative around the numerous steps and code. This book progresses well through ADF application assembly, ADF Business Components, the view layer, security, deployment and tuning.  Each recipe had a clear introduction and I especially enjoyed the "There's more" follow up sections for some recipes that leads the reader onto related ideas and issues the reader really needs to be aware of. Also worthy of comment having worked with ADF for over 5 years, there certainly was recipes and solutions I hadn't encountered before, this book gets bonus points for that. As a reviewer what negatives can I give this text? The book has cast it's net too wide by trying to cover "everything from design and construction, to deployment, testing, debugging and optimization."  ADF is such a large and sophistication technology, this book with 100 recipes barely scrapes the surface.  Don't expect all your ADF problems to be solved here. In turn there is inconsistency in the level of problems and solutions.  I felt at the beginning the book was pitching itself at advanced problems to solve (that's great for me), but then it introduces topics like building a static View Object or train.  These topics in my opinion are fairly simple and are covered by the Oracle documentation just as well, they shouldn't have been included here.  In conclusion, ADF beginners will find this book worthwhile as it will open your eyes to the wider problems and solutions required for ADF, and experts for just the fact they can point junior programmers at the book for certain problems and say "get on with it". Is there scope for more ADF tombs like this?  Yes!  I'd love to see a cookbook specializing on ADF Business Components (hint hint to budding authors).

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  • Sometimes keyboard & touchpad work... sometimes not

    - by Voyagerfan5761
    When I first ran Ubuntu from CD on this Dell Inspiron 2650, it worked for about ten to fifteen minutes, then it hung (I was probably trying to do too much at once from a Live CD). The next time, my mouse and keyboard didn't work. I rebooted three times and finally got them working. I then installed Ubuntu alongside Windows XP. After installing, selecting the OS in GRUB worked, but my touchpad and keyboard were again not working. I rebooted, and they worked. (I fortunately had a USB mouse with which to reboot.) Booting Ubuntu and then rebooting to enable my keyboard and touchpad has become a routine ever since. Often several reboots are required; at one point I had to reboot over a dozen times in a row before getting a session where everything worked properly. (My installation has been in place for about three days a week now.) I've looked around for a device manager equivalent to no avail. Sometimes the hardware is properly detected, and sometimes it's not. Once or twice I've had the keyboard detected properly but the touchpad not. Plugging in my wireless card also sometimes requires a plug, unplug, and plug again to get it working. So is there some solution? I'm without an Internet connection at home, and this "laptop" is really a wall wart on my desk, so suggestions for packages may take a while to test. Xorg logs I captured two three four sample Xorg logs: one from a startup where the devices worked; one from when they didn't; one from a session where Ubuntu thought my touchpad was a normal mouse; and one from a session where my keyboard worked but the touchpad didn't. See this gist. Updated 2010-12-15 01:50 UTC with Xorg.0.log.keyboardonly file illustrating the case where the keyboard worked but not the touchpad. Updated 2011-01-11 04:10 UTC with Xorg.0.log.touchpadregmouse to illustrate a case where the touchpad was detected as a regular mouse (no "Touchpad" tab in mouse prefs).

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  • Impressions from VMworld - Clearing up Misconceptions

    - by Monica Kumar
    Gorgeous sunny weather…none of the usual summer fog…the Oracle Virtualization team has been busy at VMworld in San Francisco this week. From the time exhibits opened on Sunday, our booth staff was fully engaged with visitors. It was great to meet with customers and prospects, and there were many…most with promises to meet again in October at Oracle OpenWorld 2012. Interests and questions ran the gamut - from implementation details to consolidating applications to how does Oracle VM enable rapid application deployment to Oracle support and licensing. All good stuff! Some inquiries are poignant and really help us get at the customer pain points. Some are just based on misconceptions. We’d like to address a couple of common misconceptions that we heard: 1) Rapid deployment of enterprise applications is great but I don’t do this all the time. So why bother? While production applications don’t get updated or upgraded as often, development and QA staging environments are much more dynamic. Also, in today’s Cloud based computing environments, end users expect an entire solution, along with the virtual machine, to be provisioned instantly, on-demand, as and when they need to scale. Whether it’s adding a new feature to meet customer demands or updating applications to meet business/service compliance, these environments undergo change frequently. The ability to rapidly stand up an entire application stack with all the components such as database tier, mid-tier, OS, and applications tightly integrated, can offer significant value. Hand patching, installation of the OS, application and configurations to ensure the entire stack works well together can take days and weeks. Oracle VM Templates provide a much faster path to standing up a development, QA or production stack in a matter of hours or minutes. I see lots of eyes light up as we get to this point of the conversation. 2) Oracle Software licensing on VMware vSphere In the world of multi-vendor IT stacks, understanding license boundaries and terms and conditions for each product in the stack can be challenging.  Oracle’s licensing, though, is straightforward.  Oracle software is licensed per physical processor in the server or cluster where the Oracle software is installed and/or running.  The use of third party virtualization technologies such as VMware is not allowed as a means to change the way Oracle software is licensed.  Exceptions are spelled out in the licensing document labeled “Hard Partitioning". Here are some fun pictures! Visitors to our booth told us they loved the Oracle SUV courtesy shuttles that are helping attendees get to/from hotels. Also spotted were several taxicabs sporting an Oracle banner! Stay tuned for more highlights across desktop and server virtualization as we wrap up our participation at VMworld.

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  • Parallel MSBuild FTW - Build faster in parallel

    - by deadlydog
    Hey everyone, I just discovered this great post yesterday that shows how to have msbuild build projects in parallel Basically all you need to do is pass the switches “/m:[NumOfCPUsToUse] /p:BuildInParallel=true” into MSBuild. Example to use 4 cores/processes (If you just pass in “/m” it will use all CPU cores): MSBuild /m:4 /p:BuildInParallel=true "C:\dev\Client.sln" Obviously this trick will only be useful on PCs with multi-core CPUs (which we should all have by now) and solutions with multiple projects; So there’s no point using it for solutions that only contain one project.  Also, testing shows that using multiple processes does not speed up Team Foundation Database deployments either in case you’re curious Also, I found that if I didn’t explicitly use “/p:BuildInParallel=true” I would get many build errors (even though the MSDN documentation says that it is true by default). The poster boasts compile time improvements up to 59%, but the performance boost you see will vary depending on the solution and its project dependencies.  I tested with building a solution at my office, and here are my results (runs are in seconds): # of Processes 1st Run 2nd Run 3rd Run Avg Performance 1 192 195 200 195.67 100% 2 155 156 156 155.67 79.56% 4 146 149 146 147.00 75.13% 8 136 136 138 136.67 69.85%   So I updated all of our build scripts to build using 2 cores (~20% speed boost), since that gives us the biggest bang for our buck on our solution without bogging down a machine, and developers may sometimes compile more than 1 solution at a time.  I’ve put the any-PC-safe batch script code at the bottom of this post. The poster also has a follow-up post showing how to add a button and keyboard shortcut to the Visual Studio IDE to have VS build in parallel as well (so you don’t have to use a build script); if you do this make sure you use the .Net 4.0 MSBuild, not the 3.5 one that he shows in the screenshot.  While this did work for me, I found it left an MSBuild.exe process always hanging around afterwards for some reason, so watch out (batch file doesn’t have this problem though).  Also, you do get build output, but it may not be the same that you’re used to, and it doesn’t say “Build succeeded” in the status bar when completed, so I chose to not make this my default Visual Studio build option, but you may still want to. Happy building! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- :: Calculate how many Processes to use to do the build. SET NumberOfProcessesToUseForBuild=1  SET BuildInParallel=false if %NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS% GTR 2 (                 SET NumberOfProcessesToUseForBuild=2                 SET BuildInParallel=true ) MSBuild /maxcpucount:%NumberOfProcessesToUseForBuild% /p:BuildInParallel=%BuildInParallel% "C:\dev\Client.sln"

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  • The Solution

    - by Patrick Liekhus
    So I recently attended a class about time management as well as read the book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey.  Both have been instrumental in helping me get my priorities aligned as well as keep me focused. The reason I bring this up is that it gave me a great idea for a small application with which to create a great technical stack solution that would be easy to demo and explain.  Therefore, the project from this point forward with be the Liekhus.TimeTracker application which will bring some the time management skills that I have acquired into a technical implementation.  The idea is rather simple, but leverages some of the basic principles of Covey along with some of the worksheets that I garnered from class.  The basics are as such: 1) a plan is a must have and 2) write it down!  A plan not written down is just an idea.  How many times have you had an idea that didn’t materialize?  Exactly.  Hence why I am writing it all down now! The worksheet consists of a few simple columns that I will outline below as well as some modifications that I made according to the Covey habits.  The worksheet looks like the following: Status Issue Area CQ Notes P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   The idea is really simple and straightforward; you write down all your tasks and keep track of them along the way.  The status stands for (P)ending, (F)inished or (L)ater.  You write a quick title for the issue and select the CQ (Covey Quadrant) with which the issue occurs.  The notes section is for things that happen while you are working through the issue.  And last, but not least, is the Area column that I added as a way to identify the Role or Area of your life that this task falls within based upon Covey’s teachings. The second part of this application is a simple phone log that allows you to track your phone conversations throughout the day.  All of this is currently done on a sheet of paper, but being involved in technology, I want it to have bells and whistles.  Therefore, this is my simple idea for a project that will allow me to test my theories about coding and implementations.  Stay tuned as the next session will be flushing out the concept and coming up with user stories to begin the SCRUM process. Thanks

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  • What are the drawbacks of sending XML to browsers and let them apply XSLT?

    - by MainMa
    Context Working as a freelance developer, I often made websites completely based on XSLT. In other words, on every request, an XML file is generated, containing everything we need to know about the page content: the name of the user currently logged in, the top menu entries, if this menu is dynamic/configurable, the text to display in a specific area of the page, etc. Then XSL process (caches, etc.) it to HTML/XHTML page to send to the browser. It has a good point to make it easier to create small-scale websites, especially with PHP. It is a sort of template engine, but which I prefer to other template engines because it's much more powerful than most of template engines, and because I know it better and like it. It is also possible, when need, to give an access to raw XML data on demand for an automated access, without the need to create separate APIs. Of course, it will fail completely on any medium-scale or large-scale website, since, even with good caching techniques, XSL still degrades overall website performance and requires more CPU serverside. Question Modern browsers have the ability to take an XML file and to transform it with an associated XSL file declared in XML like <?xml-stylesheet href="demo.xslt" type="text/xsl"?>. Firefox 3 can do it. Internet Explorer 8 can do it too. It means that it is possible to migrate XSL processing from the server to the client side for 50% of users (according on browser statistics on several websites where I may want to implement this). It means that those 50% of users will receive only the XML file at each request, thus reducing their and server's bandwidth (XML file being much shorter than its processed HTML analog), and reducing server's CPU usage. What are the drawbacks of this technique? I thought about several ones, but it doesn't apply in this situation: Difficult implementation and the need to choose, based on the browser request, when to send raw XML and when to transform it to HTML instead. Obviously, the system will not be much more difficult then the actual one. The only change to make is to add XSL file link to every XML, and to add a browser check. More IO and bandwidth usage, since the XSLT file will be downloaded by the browsers, instead of being cached by the server. I don't think it will be a problem, since XSLT file will be cached by the browsers (like images, or CSS, or JavaScript files are cached actually). Possibly some problems on client side, like maybe problems when saving a page in some browsers. Difficulty to debug code: it is impossible to obtain an HTML source the browser is actually using, since the only displayed source is the downloaded XML. On the other hand, I rarely go look at HTML code on client side, and in most cases, it is unusable directly (whitespace being removed).

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  • Pay in the future should make you think in the present

    - by BuckWoody
    Distributed Computing - and more importantly “-as-a-Service” models of computing have a different cost model. This is something that sounds obvious on the surface but it’s often forgotten during the design and coding phase of a project. In on-premises computing, we’re used to purchasing a server and all of the hardware infrastructure and software licenses needed not only for one project, but several. This is an up-front or “sunk” cost that we consume by running code the organization needs to perform its function. Using a direct connection over wires you’ve already paid for, we don’t often have to think about bandwidth, hits on the data store or the amount of compute we use - we just know more is better. In a pay-as-you-go model, however, each of these architecture decisions has a potential cost impact. The amount of data you store, the number of times you access it, and the amount you send back all come with a charge. The offset is that you don’t buy anything at all up-front, so that sunk cost is freed up. And financial professionals know that money now is worth more than money later. Saving that up-front cost allows you to invest it in other things. It’s not just that you’re using things that now cost money - it’s that the design itself in distributed computing has a cost impact. That can be a really good thing, such as when you dynamically add capacity for paying customers. If you can tie back the cost of a series of clicks to what a user will pay to do so, you can set a profit margin that is easy to track. Here’s a case in point: Assume you are using a large instance in Windows Azure to compute some data that you retrieve from a SQL Azure database. If you don’t monitor the path of the application, you may not know what you are really using. Since you’re paying by the size of the instance, it’s best to maximize it all the time. Recently I evaluated just this situation, and found that downsizing the instance and adding another one where needed, adding a caching function to the application, moving part of the data into Windows Azure tables not only increased the speed of the application, but reduced the cost and more closely tied the cost to the profit. The key is this: from the very outset - the design - make sure you include metrics to measure for the cost/performance (sometimes these are the same) for your application. Windows Azure opens up awesome new ways of doing things, so make sure you study distributed systems architecture before you try and force in the application design you have on premises into your new application structure.

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  • Simple collision detection in Unity 2D

    - by N1ghtshade3
    I realise other posts exist with this topic yet none have gone into enough detail for me. I am attempting to create a 2D game in Unity using C# as my scripting language. Basically I have two objects, player and bomb. Both were created simply by dragging the respective PNG to the stage. I have set up touch controls to move player left and right; gravity of any kind is not needed as I only require it to move x units when I tap either the left or right side of the screen. This movement is stored in a script called playerController.cs and works just fine. I also have a variable health = 3 for player, which is stored in healthScript.cs. I am now at a point where I am stuck. I would like it so that when player collides with bomb, health decreases by one and the bomb object is destroyed. So what I tried doing is using a new script called playerPhysics.cs, I added the following: void OnCollisionEnter2D(Collision2D coll){ if(coll.gameObject.name=="bomb") GameObject.Destroy("bomb"); healthScript.health -= 1; } While I'm fairly sure I don't know the proper way to reference a variable in another script and that's why the health didn't decrease when I collided, bomb never disappeared from the stage so I'm thinking there's also a problem with my collision. Initially, I had simply attached playerPhysics.cs to player. After searching around though, it appeared as though player also needed a rigidBody attached to it, so I did that. Still no luck. I tried using a circleCollider (player is a circle), using a rigidBody2D, and using all manner of colliders on one and/or both of the objects. If you could please explain what colliders (if any) should be attached to which objects and whether I need to change my script(s), that would be much more helpful than pointing me to one of the generic documentation examples I've already read. Also, if it would be simple to fix the health thing not working that would be an added bonus but not exactly the focus of this question. Bear in mind that this game is 2D; I'm not sure if that changes anything. Thanks!

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  • Reporting on common code smells : A POC

    - by Dave Ballantyne
    Over the past few blog entries, I’ve been looking at parsing TSQL scripts in a variety of ways for a variety of tasks.  In my last entry ‘How to prevent ‘Select *’ : The elegant way’, I looked at parsing SQL to report upon uses of SELECT *.  The obvious question leading on from this is, “Great, what about other code smells ?”  Well, using the language service parser to do that was turning out to be a bit of a hard job,  sure I was getting tokens but no real context.  I wasn't even being told when an end of statement had been reached. One of the other parsing options available from Microsoft is exposed in the assembly ‘Microsoft.SqlServer.TransactSql.ScriptDom’,  this is ,I believe, installed with the client development tools with SQLServer.  It is much more feature rich than the original parser I had used and breaks a TSQL script into intuitive classes for analysis. So, what sort of smells can I now find using it ?  Well, for an opening gambit quite a nice little list. Use of NOLOCK Set of READ UNCOMMITTED Use of SELECT * Insert without column references Explicit datatype conversion on Sargs Cross server selects Non use of two-part naming convention Table and Query hint usage Changes in set options Use of single line comments Use of ordinal column positions in ORDER BY clause Now, lets not argue the point that “It depends” as smells on some of these, but as an academic exercise it is quite interesting.  The code is available from this link :https://www.dropbox.com/s/rfk32sou4fzl2cw/TSQLDomTest.zip  All the usual disclaimers apply to this code, I cannot be held responsible for anything ranging from mild annoyance through to universe destruction due to the use of this code or examples. The zip file contains a powershell script and my test cases.  The assembly used requires .Net 4 to run, which means that you will need powershell 3 ( though im running through PowerGUI and all works ok ) .  The code searches for all .sql files in the folder hierarchy for the workingpath,  you can override this if you want by simply changing the $Folder variable, and processes each in turn for the smells.  Feedback is not great at the moment, all it does is output to an xml file (Smells.xml) the offset position and a description of the smell found. Right now, I am interested in your feedback.  What do you think ?  Is this (or should it be) more than an academic exercise ?  Can tooling such as this be used as some form of code quality measure ?  Does it Work ? Do you have a case listed above which is not being reported ? Do you have a case that you would love to be reported ? Let me know , please mailto: [email protected]. Thanks

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  • Unable to Mount an external hard drive (NTFS)

    - by Mediterran81
    Ubuntu 11.10. When I plug my external Drive Western Digital MyPassport (500Go NTFS) I named WD. I get the following error: Unable to mount WD Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 1: helper failed with: mount: according to mtab, /dev/sdb1 is already mounted on /media/WD mount failed I have no problem with the internal NTFS partitions that auto-mounts on startup (ntfs-config does that). If I plug the WD before I boot Ubuntu, upon login, it's recognized and I can access without no problem. But if I remove it using (Safely remove) and then replug it, I get the error above. Here is my fstab: # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0 #Entry for /dev/sda5 : UUID=24540d0f-5803-493c-ace9-e3b3c0cedb26 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1 #Entry for /dev/sda3 : UUID=E4C43F7EC43F51D2 /media/OS ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0 #Entry for /dev/sda2 : UUID=6A0070F10070C61B /media/RECOVERY ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0 #Entry for /dev/sdb1 : UUID=EA6854D268549F5F /media/WD ntfs-3g defaults,nosuid,nodev,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0 #Entry for /dev/sda6 : UUID=ed077c52-c50e-406c-9120-9cb6f86ec204 none swap sw 0 0 Here is my mtab /dev/sda5 / ext4 rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0 0 0 proc /proc proc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0 sysfs /sys sysfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0 fusectl /sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw 0 0 none /sys/kernel/debug debugfs rw 0 0 none /sys/kernel/security securityfs rw 0 0 udev /dev devtmpfs rw,mode=0755 0 0 devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620 0 0 tmpfs /run tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755 0 0 none /run/lock tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880 0 0 none /run/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev 0 0 /dev/sda3 /media/OS fuseblk rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0 /dev/sda2 /media/RECOVERY fuseblk rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0 /dev/sdb1 /media/WD fuseblk rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0 binfmt_misc /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0 gvfs-fuse-daemon /home/hanine/.gvfs fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon rw,nosuid,nodev,user=hanine 0 0 Appearently it cannot be mounted because upon login, it finds that it is already mounted. Some sort of conflict. Does anyone have a clue on how to solve this. Thanks.

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  • Setting up port forwarding for 7000 appliance VM in VirtualBox

    - by uejio
    I've been using the 7000 appliance VM for a lot of testing lately and relied on others to set up the networking for the VM for me, but finally, I decided to take the dive and do it myself.  After some experimenting, I came up with a very brief number of steps to do this all using the VirtualBox CLI instead of the GUI. First download the VM image and unpack it somewhere.  I put it in /var/tmp. Then, set your VBOX_USER_HOME to some place with lots of disk space and import the VM: export VBOX_USER_HOME=/var/tmp/MyVirtualBoxVBoxManage import /var/tmp/simulator/vbox-2011.1.0.0.1.1.8/Sun\ ZFS\ Storage\ 7000.ovf (go get a cup of tea...) Then, set up port forwarding of the VM appliance BUI and shell:First set up port as NAT:VBoxManage modifyvm Sun_ZFS_Storage_7000 --nic1 nat Then set up rules for port forwarding (pick some unused port numbers):VBoxManage modifyvm Sun_ZFS_Storage_7000 --natpf1 "guestssh,tcp,,4622,,22"VBoxManage modifyvm Sun_ZFS_Storage_7000 --natpf1 "guestbui,tcp,,46215,,215" Verify the settings using:VBoxManage showvminfo Sun_ZFS_Storage_7000 | grep -i nic Start the appliance:$ VBoxHeadless --startvm Sun_ZFS_Storage_7000 & Connect to it using your favorite RDP client.  I use a Sun Ray, so I use the Sun Ray Windows Connector client: $ /opt/SUNWuttsc/bin/uttsc -g 800x600 -P <portnumber> <your-hostname> & The portnumber is displayed in the output of the --startvm command.(This did not work after I updated to VirtualBox 4.1.12, so maybe at this point, you need to use the VirtualBox GUI.) It takes a while to first bring up the VM, so please be patient. The longest time is in loading the smf service descriptions, but fortunately, that only needs to be done the first time the VM boots.  There is also a delay in just booting the appliance, so give it some time. Be sure to set the NIC rule on only one port and not all ports otherwise there will be a conflict in ports and it won't work. After going through the initial configuration screen, you can connect to it using ssh or your browser: ssh -p 45022 root@<your-host-name> https://<your-host-name>:45215 BTW, for the initial configuration, I only had to set the hostname and password.  The rest of the defaults were set by VirtualBox and seemed to work fine.

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  • NDepend 4.0 Released

    - by Anthony Trudeau
    Last week version 4.0 of NDepend was released.  NDepend is a Visual Studio add-in designed for intense code analysis with the goal of high quality code.  A month ago I wrapped up my evaluation of the previous version of NDepend. The new version contains many minor changes, several bug fixes, and adds about 50 new code rules.  The version also adds support for Visual Studio 11, .NET Framework 4.5, and SilverLight 5.0.  But, the biggest change was the shift from CQL to CQLinq. Introducing CQLinq The latest version replaces the CQL rules language with CQLinq (CQL is still an option although the editor is buried).  As you might guess CQLinq is a flavor of Linq designed specifically for the code rules. The best way to illustrate the differences is with an example.  I used the following CQL example in Part 3 of my review: WARN IF Count > 0 IN SELECT TYPES WHERE IsInterface AND !NameLike “I” This same query looks like this when implemented in CQLinq: warnif count > 0 from t in Types where t.IsInterface == true && !t.NameLike(“I”) select t I like the syntax and it is a natural fit, but I found writing the queries frustrating in the Queries and Rules Edit window.  The Queries and Rules Edit window replaces the CQL Query Edit window.  The new editor has the same style of Intellisense as the previous editor.  However, it has a few annoyances.  The error indicator is a red block.  It has the tendency of obscuring your cursor.  Additionally, writing CQLing queries is like writing plain old Linq queries, so the fact that the editor uses Enter to select from Intellisense instead of Tab is jarring.  These issues can be an obstacle to writing queries quickly.CQLinq makes it possible to write rules that weren't possible before.  Additionally, a JustMyCode domain is now possible making it easy to eliminate generated code from the analysis.Should you Buy? I recommend NDepend overall.  It has some rough points for me that I have detailed in my earlier evaluation (starting here).  But, it’s definitely worth the money.  The bigger question is: should I pay for the upgrade to 4.0?  At this point I’m on the fence, but I would go for it if you need support for Visual Studio 2011, .NET Framework 4.5, or Silverlight 5.0; or if you need one of the many rules that weren't possible before CQLinq. Disclaimer: Patrick Smacchia contacted me about reviewing NDepend. I received a free license in return for sharing my experiences and talking about the capabilities of the add-in on this site. There is no expectation of a positive review elicited from the author of NDepend. Resources: NDepend Release Notes

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  • My Automated NuGet Workflow

    - by Wes McClure
    When we develop libraries (whether internal or public), it helps to have a rapid ability to make changes and test them in a consuming application. Building Setup the library with automatic versioning and a nuspec Setup library assembly version to auto increment build and revision AssemblyInfo –> [assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.*")] This autoincrements build and revision based on time of build Major & Minor Major should be changed when you have breaking changes Minor should be changed once you have a solid new release During development I don’t increment these Create a nuspec, version this with the code nuspec - set version to <version>$version$</version> This uses the assembly’s version, which is auto-incrementing Make changes to code Run automated build (ruby/rake) run “rake nuget” nuget task builds nuget package and copies it to a local nuget feed I use an environment variable to point at this so I can change it on a machine level! The nuget command below assumes a nuspec is checked in called Library.nuspec next to the csproj file $projectSolution = 'src\\Library.sln' $nugetFeedPath = ENV["NuGetDevFeed"] msbuild :build => [:clean] do |msb| msb.properties :configuration => :Release msb.targets :Build msb.solution = $projectSolution end task :nuget => [:build] do sh "nuget pack src\\Library\\Library.csproj /OutputDirectory " + $nugetFeedPath end Setup the local nuget feed as a nuget package source (this is only required once per machine) Go to the consuming project Update the package Update-Package Library or Install-Package TLDR change library code run “rake nuget” run “Update-Package library” in the consuming application build/test! If you manually execute any of this process, especially copying files, you will find it a burden to develop the library and will find yourself dreading it, and even worse, making changes downstream instead of updating the shared library for everyone’s sake. Publishing Once you have a set of changes that you want to release, consider versioning and possibly increment the minor version if needed. Pick the package out of your local feed, and copy it to a public / shared feed! I have a script to do this where I can drop the package on a batch file Replace apikey with your nuget feed's apikey Take out the confirm(s) if you don't want them @ECHO off echo Upload %1? set /P anykey="Hit enter to continue " nuget push %1 apikey set /P anykey="Done " Note: helps to prune all the unnecessary versions during testing from your local feed once you are done and ready to publish TLDR consider version number run command to copy to public feed

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  • Blender to 3ds max to cal3d format

    - by Kaliber64
    There are quite a few questions on cal3d but they are old and don't apply anymore. In Blender(must be 2.49a for python script to work!!!): I have a scene with 7 meshes, 1 armature, 10 bones. I tried going to one mesh to simplify it but doesn't change anything. I found a small blend file that was used for cal3d and it exported just fine. So I tried to copy it's setup with no success. EDIT*8/13/2012 In the last week here is what I have found so far. I made the mesh in the newest blender(2.62?) and exported it to import it in the old one(2.49a). Did an animation in the old one because importing new blend files to old blenders, its just said it would lose keyframe data and all was good. And then you get the last problem of it not exporting meshes. BUT I found that meshes made in the old one export regardless. I can't find any that won't export. So if I used the old blender to remake my model I could get it to export :) At this point I found a modified release of cal3d (because the most core model variable would not initiate as I made a really small test subject in old blender instead of remaking my big one which took 4 hours.) which fixes the morph objects and adds what cal3d left off with. Under their license they have to release the modification but it has no documentation so I have to figure it out on my own. Its mostly the same. But with this lib it came with a 3ds max exporter. My question now is how do I transfer armature and mesh information from blender to 3ds max in order to export into cal3d format. Every time I try the models are see through and small and there are no bones. The formats I have tried to import are .3ds .obj(mesh only) and COLLADA. In all of them the mesh is invisible and no bones. It says the default texture is on so I should be able to see it. All the vertices are present I found a vertex highlighter so I can see those. If any of this is confusing let me know so I can clear it up. Its late .<=sleep.

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  • SQL: empty string vs NULL value

    - by Jacek Prucia
    I know this subject is a bit controversial and there are a lot of various articles/opinions floating around the internet. Unfortunatelly, most of them assume the person doesn't know what the difference between NULL and empty string is. So they tell stories about surprising results with joins/aggregates and generally do a bit more advanced SQL lessons. By doing this, they absolutely miss the whole point and are therefore useless for me. So hopefully this question and all answers will move subject a bit forward. Let's suppose I have a table with personal information (name, birth, etc) where one of the columns is an email address with varchar type. We assume that for some reason some people might not want to provide an email address. When inserting such data (without email) into the table, there are two available choices: set cell to NULL or set it to empty string (''). Let's assume that I'm aware of all the technical implications of choosing one solution over another and I can create correct SQL queries for either scenario. The problem is even when both values differ on the technical level, they are exactly the same on logical level. After looking at NULL and '' I came to a single conclusion: I don't know email address of the guy. Also no matter how hard i tried, I was not able to sent an e-mail using either NULL or empty string, so apparently most SMTP servers out there agree with my logic. So i tend to use NULL where i don't know the value and consider empty string a bad thing. After some intense discussions with colleagues i came with two questions: am I right in assuming that using empty string for an unknown value is causing a database to "lie" about the facts? To be more precise: using SQL's idea of what is value and what is not, I might come to conclusion: we have e-mail address, just by finding out it is not null. But then later on, when trying to send e-mail I'll come to contradictory conclusion: no, we don't have e-mail address, that @!#$ Database must have been lying! Is there any logical scenario in which an empty string '' could be such a good carrier of important information (besides value and no value), which would be troublesome/inefficient to store by any other way (like additional column). I've seen many posts claiming that sometimes it's good to use empty string along with real values and NULLs, but so far haven't seen a scenario that would be logical (in terms of SQL/DB design). P.S. Some people will be tempted to answer, that it is just a matter of personal taste. I don't agree. To me it is a design decision with important consequences. So i'd like to see answers where opion about this is backed by some logical and/or technical reasons.

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