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  • Name one good reason for immediately failing on a SMTP 4xx code

    - by Avery Payne
    I'm really curious about this. The question (highlighed in bold): Can someone name ONE GOOD REASON to have their email server permanently set up to auto-fail/immediate-fail on 4xx codes? Because frankly, it sounds like "their" setups are broken out-of-the-box. SMTP is not Instant Messaging. Stop treating it like IRC or Jabber or MSN or insert-IM-technology-here. I don't know what possesses people to have the "IMMEDIATE DELIVERY OR FAIL" mentality with SMTP setups, but they need to stop doing that. It just plain breaks things. Every two or three years, I stumble into this. Someone, somewhere, has decided in their infinite wisdom that 4xx codes are immediate failures, and suddenly its OMGWTFBBQ THE INTARNETZ ARE BORKEN, HALP SKY IS FALLING instead of "oh, it'll re-attempt delivery in about 30 minutes". It amazes me how it suddenly becomes "my" problem that a message won't go through, because someone else misconfigured "their" SMTP service. IF there is a legitimate reason for having your server permanently set up in this manner, then the first good answer will get the check. IF there is no good reason (and I suspect there isn't), then the first good-sounding-if-still-logically-flawed answer will get the check.

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  • RemoteApp shows no certificate available but RD Session host finds it fine

    - by Scott Chamberlain
    I am trying to set up remote app for a internal domain. I have a Root CA that is trusted my all of the end computers, that cert has signed a wildcard cert I am trying to use for the server. I added the pfx of the wildcard cert to the local machine personal store. From there I can use it fine for signing the RD Session Host session. However when I try to set up the signature for Remote App the certificate does not show up. What do I need to do to get my certificate to be available for for use? UPDATE: The Certificate was generated through the following commands: makecert -pe -n "CN=*.vw.local" -a sha1 -sky signature -ic VetWebCA.cer -iv VetWebCA.pvk -sv VetWebComputerWildcard.pvk VetWebComputerWildcard.cer pvk2pfx -pvk VetWebComputerWildcard.pvk -spc VetWebComputerWildcard.cer -pfx VetWebComputerWildcard.pfx The resultant pfx was added to the machine local store via mmc. Oddly, going in to Powershell if I add the -CodeSigningCert flag to find the wildcard certificate it is excluded from the serch results for Get-Childitem in my Cert:\Local Machine\My path, but if I don't include it it is there.

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  • NGINX Remove index.php /index.php/something/more/ to /something/more

    - by Gaston
    I'm trying to clean urls in NGINX using framework DooPHP. This = - http://example.com/index.php/something/more/ To This = - http://example.com/something/more/ I want to remove (clean url) the "index.php" from the url if someone try to enter in the first form. Like a permanent redirect. How to do this config on NGINX? Thanks. [Update: Actual nginx config] server { listen 80; server_name vip.example.com; rewrite ^/(.*) https://vip.example.com/$1 permanent; } server { listen 443; server_name vip.example.com; error_page 404 /vip.example.com/404.html; error_page 403 /vip.example.com/403.html; error_page 401 /vip.example.com/401.html; location /vip.example.com { root /sites/errors; } ssl on; ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/config/server.csr; ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/config/server.sky; if (!-e $request_filename){ rewrite /.* /index.php; } location / { auth_basic "example Team Access"; auth_basic_user_file config/htpasswd; root /sites/vip.example.com; index index.php; } location ~ \.php$ { fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /sites/vip.example.com$fastcgi_script_name; include fastcgi_params; fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_script_name; } }

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  • NFS-shared file-system is locking up

    - by fredden
    Our NFS-shared file-system is locking up. Please feel free to ask any questions you feel relevant. :) At the time, there are a lot of processes in "disk sleep" state, and the load averages on our machines sky-rocket. The machines are responsive on SSH, but our the majority of our websites (apache+mod_php) just hang, as does our email system (exim+dovecot). Any websites which don't require write access to the file-system continue to operate. The load averages continue to rise until some kind of time-out is reached, but for at least 10-15 minutes. I've seen load averages over 800, yet the machines are still responsive for actions which don't require writing to the shared file-system. I've been investigating a variety of options, which have all turned out to be red-herrings: nagios, proftpd, bind, cron tasks. I'm seeing these messages in the file server's system log: Jul 30 09:37:17 fs0 kernel: [1810036.560046] statd: server localhost not responding, timed out Jul 30 09:37:17 fs0 kernel: [1810036.560053] nsm_mon_unmon: rpc failed, status=-5 Jul 30 09:37:17 fs0 kernel: [1810036.560064] lockd: cannot monitor node2 Jul 30 09:38:22 fs0 kernel: [1810101.384027] statd: server localhost not responding, timed out Jul 30 09:38:22 fs0 kernel: [1810101.384033] nsm_mon_unmon: rpc failed, status=-5 Jul 30 09:38:22 fs0 kernel: [1810101.384044] lockd: cannot monitor node0 Software involved: VMWare, Debian lenny (64bit), ancient Red Hat (32 bit) (version 7 I believe), Debian etch (32bit) NFS, apache2+mod_php, exim, dovecot, bind, amanda, proftpd, nagios, cacti, drbd, heartbeat, keepalived, LVS, cron, ssmtp, NIS, svn, puppet, memcache, mysql, postgres Joomla!, Magento, Typo3, Midgard, Symfony, custom php apps

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  • Games consoles won't connect through the TP-Link TL-WA500G Access Point

    - by Manfred Wolff
    I hope that someone can help me. I have several Laptops and other devices, all using my Wireless Router (Sky Digital Netgear) To extend the range to the back of the house, I purchased a TP-Link TL-WA500G Range extender. configured just as a pure repeater, it picks up the signal from the Netgear Router. The Netgear Router does the DHCP, handing out the IP addresses. This all works a treat with several different laptops and my iPone4S, but when my son tries to use his XBox360, Sony Playstation3 or the Nintendo Wii those devices fail to acquire an IP address. They just sit their waiting for the IP config. This also happens with my wife's HTC desire ONE Android phone. My son says that, when his HTC Desire C won't get an IP address, he just unplugs the AP briefly - the phone will connect and he puts the AP back on. Once he is connected to the Router, the AP won't disturb function. The Games Consoles don't seem to work like that. They stop working, when the AP is reconnected. I had my son try to configure permanent IP addresses, and he said that did not work either, though I have to confirm that, as I did not see that for myself. Has anybody seen this before? I have searched the Net and have not found any similar problems anywhere. I wonder if there is setting somewhere that would fix this. Many thanks for anyone reading this and trying to help. M

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  • How to securely connect to multiple different LDAPS servers (Debian)

    - by Pickle
    I'm trying to connect to multiple different LDAPS servers. A lot of the documentation I've seen recommends setting TLS_REQCERT never, but that strikes me as horribly unsecure to not verify the certificate. So I've set that to demand. All the documentation I've seen says I need to update ldap.conf with a TLS_CACERT directive pointing to a .pem file. I've got that .pem file set up with the certificate from LDAP Server #1, and ldaps connections are happening fine. I've now got to communicate securely with another LDAP server in another branch of my organization, that uses a different certificate. I've seen no documentation on how to do this, except 1 page that says I can simply put multiple (not chained) certificates in the same .pem file. I've done this and everything is working hunky dorey. However, when I told a colleague what I did, he sounded like the sky was falling - putting 2 non-chained certificates into one .pem file is apparently the worst thing since ... ever. Is there a more acceptable way to do this? Or is this the only accepted way?

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  • Add UIView and UILabel to UICollectionViewCell. Then Segue based on clicked cell index

    - by JetSet
    I am new to collection views in Objective-C. Can anyone tell me why I can't see my UILabel embedded in the transparent UIView and the best way to resolve. I want to also segue from the cell to several various UIViewControllers based on the selected index cell. I am using GitHub project https://github.com/mayuur/MJParallaxCollectionView Overall, in MJRootViewController.m I wanted to add a UIView with a transparency and a UILabel with details of the cell from a array. MJCollectionViewCell.h // MJCollectionViewCell.h // RCCPeakableImageSample // // Created by Mayur on 4/1/14. // Copyright (c) 2014 RCCBox. All rights reserved. // #import <UIKit/UIKit.h> #define IMAGE_HEIGHT 200 #define IMAGE_OFFSET_SPEED 25 @interface MJCollectionViewCell : UICollectionViewCell /* image used in the cell which will be having the parallax effect */ @property (nonatomic, strong, readwrite) UIImage *image; /* Image will always animate according to the imageOffset provided. Higher the value means higher offset for the image */ @property (nonatomic, assign, readwrite) CGPoint imageOffset; //@property (nonatomic,readwrite) UILabel *textLabel; @property (weak, nonatomic) IBOutlet UILabel *textLabel; @property (nonatomic,readwrite) NSString *text; @property(nonatomic,readwrite) CGFloat x,y,width,height; @property (nonatomic,readwrite) NSInteger lineSpacing; @property (nonatomic, strong) IBOutlet UIView* overlayView; @end MJCollectionViewCell.m // // MJCollectionViewCell.m // RCCPeakableImageSample // // Created by Mayur on 4/1/14. // Copyright (c) 2014 RCCBox. All rights reserved. // #import "MJCollectionViewCell.h" @interface MJCollectionViewCell() @property (nonatomic, strong, readwrite) UIImageView *MJImageView; @end @implementation MJCollectionViewCell - (instancetype)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame { self = [super initWithFrame:frame]; if (self) [self setupImageView]; return self; } - (id)initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)aDecoder { self = [super initWithCoder:aDecoder]; if (self) [self setupImageView]; return self; } /* // Only override drawRect: if you perform custom drawing. // An empty implementation adversely affects performance during animation. - (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect { // Drawing code } */ #pragma mark - Setup Method - (void)setupImageView { // Clip subviews self.clipsToBounds = YES; // Add image subview self.MJImageView = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(self.bounds.origin.x, self.bounds.origin.y, self.bounds.size.width, IMAGE_HEIGHT)]; self.MJImageView.backgroundColor = [UIColor redColor]; self.MJImageView.contentMode = UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFill; self.MJImageView.clipsToBounds = NO; [self addSubview:self.MJImageView]; } # pragma mark - Setters - (void)setImage:(UIImage *)image { // Store image self.MJImageView.image = image; // Update padding [self setImageOffset:self.imageOffset]; } - (void)setImageOffset:(CGPoint)imageOffset { // Store padding value _imageOffset = imageOffset; // Grow image view CGRect frame = self.MJImageView.bounds; CGRect offsetFrame = CGRectOffset(frame, _imageOffset.x, _imageOffset.y); self.MJImageView.frame = offsetFrame; } - (void)setText:(NSString *)text{ _text=text; if (!self.textLabel) { CGFloat realH=self.height*2/3-self.lineSpacing; CGFloat latoA=realH/3; // self.textLabel=[[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(10,latoA/2, self.width-20, realH)]; self.textLabel.layer.anchorPoint=CGPointMake(.5, .5); self.textLabel.font=[UIFont fontWithName:@"HelveticaNeue-ultralight" size:38]; self.textLabel.numberOfLines=3; self.textLabel.textColor=[UIColor whiteColor]; self.textLabel.shadowColor=[UIColor blackColor]; self.textLabel.shadowOffset=CGSizeMake(1, 1); self.textLabel.transform=CGAffineTransformMakeRotation(-(asin(latoA/(sqrt(self.width*self.width+latoA*latoA))))); [self addSubview:self.textLabel]; } self.textLabel.text=text; } @end MJViewController.h // // MJViewController.h // ParallaxImages // // Created by Mayur on 4/1/14. // Copyright (c) 2014 sky. All rights reserved. // #import <UIKit/UIKit.h> @interface MJRootViewController : UIViewController{ NSInteger choosed; } @end MJViewController.m // // MJViewController.m // ParallaxImages // // Created by Mayur on 4/1/14. // Copyright (c) 2014 sky. All rights reserved. // #import "MJRootViewController.h" #import "MJCollectionViewCell.h" @interface MJRootViewController () <UICollectionViewDataSource, UICollectionViewDelegate, UIScrollViewDelegate> @property (weak, nonatomic) IBOutlet UICollectionView *parallaxCollectionView; @property (nonatomic, strong) NSMutableArray* images; @end @implementation MJRootViewController - (void)viewDidLoad { [super viewDidLoad]; // Do any additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib. //self.navigationController.navigationBarHidden=YES; // Fill image array with images NSUInteger index; for (index = 0; index < 14; ++index) { // Setup image name NSString *name = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"image%03ld.jpg", (unsigned long)index]; if(!self.images) self.images = [NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity:0]; [self.images addObject:name]; } [self.parallaxCollectionView reloadData]; } - (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning { [super didReceiveMemoryWarning]; // Dispose of any resources that can be recreated. } #pragma mark - UICollectionViewDatasource Methods - (NSInteger)collectionView:(UICollectionView *)collectionView numberOfItemsInSection:(NSInteger)section { return self.images.count; } - (UICollectionViewCell *)collectionView:(UICollectionView *)collectionView cellForItemAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { MJCollectionViewCell* cell = [collectionView dequeueReusableCellWithReuseIdentifier:@"MJCell" forIndexPath:indexPath]; //get image name and assign NSString* imageName = [self.images objectAtIndex:indexPath.item]; cell.image = [UIImage imageNamed:imageName]; //set offset accordingly CGFloat yOffset = ((self.parallaxCollectionView.contentOffset.y - cell.frame.origin.y) / IMAGE_HEIGHT) * IMAGE_OFFSET_SPEED; cell.imageOffset = CGPointMake(0.0f, yOffset); NSString *text; NSInteger index=choosed>=0 ? choosed : indexPath.row%5; switch (index) { case 0: text=@"I am the home cell..."; break; case 1: text=@"I am next..."; break; case 2: text=@"Cell 3..."; break; case 3: text=@"Cell 4..."; break; case 4: text=@"The last cell"; break; default: break; } cell.text=text; cell.overlayView.backgroundColor = [UIColor colorWithWhite:0.0f alpha:0.4f]; //cell.textLabel.text = @"Label showing"; cell.textLabel.font = [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:22.0f]; cell.textLabel.textColor = [UIColor whiteColor]; //This is another attempt to display the label by using tags. //UILabel* label = (UILabel*)[cell viewWithTag:1]; //label.text = @"Label works"; return cell; } #pragma mark - UIScrollViewdelegate methods - (void)scrollViewDidScroll:(UIScrollView *)scrollView { for(MJCollectionViewCell *view in self.parallaxCollectionView.visibleCells) { CGFloat yOffset = ((self.parallaxCollectionView.contentOffset.y - view.frame.origin.y) / IMAGE_HEIGHT) * IMAGE_OFFSET_SPEED; view.imageOffset = CGPointMake(0.0f, yOffset); } } @end

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  • Displaying JSON in your Browser

    - by Rick Strahl
    Do you work with AJAX requests a lot and need to quickly check URLs for JSON results? Then you probably know that it’s a fairly big hassle to examine JSON results directly in the browser. Yes, you can use FireBug or Fiddler which work pretty well for actual AJAX requests, but if you just fire off a URL for quick testing in the browser you usually get hit by the Save As dialog and the download manager, followed by having to open the saved document in a text editor in FireFox. Enter JSONView which allows you to simply display JSON results directly in the browser. For example, imagine I have a URL like this: http://localhost/westwindwebtoolkitweb/RestService.ashx?Method=ReturnObject&format=json&Name1=Rick&Name2=John&date=12/30/2010 typed directly into the browser and that that returns a complex JSON object. With JSONView the result looks like this: No fuss, no muss. It just works. Here the result is an array of Person objects that contain additional address child objects displayed right in the browser. JSONView basically adds content type checking for application/json results and when it finds a JSON result takes over the rendering and formats the display in the browser. Note that it re-formats the raw JSON as well for a nicer display view along with collapsible regions for objects. You can still use View Source to see the raw JSON string returned. For me this is a huge time-saver. As I work with AJAX result data using GET and REST style URLs quite a bit it’s a big timesaver. To quickly and easily display JSON is a key feature in my development day and JSONView for all its simplicity fits that bill for me. If you’re doing AJAX development and you often review URL based JSON results do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of JSONView. Other Browsers JSONView works only with FireFox – what about other browsers? Chrome Chrome actually displays raw JSON responses as plain text without any plug-ins. There’s no plug-in or configuration needed, it just works, although you won’t get any fancy formatting. [updated from comments] There’s also a port of JSONView available for Chrome from here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chklaanhfefbnpoihckbnefhakgolnmc It looks like it works just about the same as the JSONView plug-in for FireFox. Thanks for all that pointed this out… Internet Explorer Internet Explorer probably has the worst response to JSON encoded content: It displays an error page as it apparently tries to render JSON as XML: Yeah that seems real smart – rendering JSON as an XML document. WTF? To get at the actual JSON output, you can use View Source. To get IE to display JSON directly as text you can add a Mime type mapping in the registry:   Create a new application/json key in: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\ContentType\application/json Add a string value of CLSID with a value of {25336920-03F9-11cf-8FD0-00AA00686F13} Add a DWORD value of Encoding with a value of 80000 I can’t take credit for this tip – found it here first on Sky Sander’s Blog. Note that the CLSID can be used for just about any type of text data you want to display as plain text in the IE. It’s the in-place display mechanism and it should work for most text content. For example it might also be useful for looking at CSS and JS files inside of the browser instead of downloading those documents as well. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET  AJAX  

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  • Autoscaling in a modern world&hellip;. Part 4

    - by Steve Loethen
    Now that I have the rules and services XML files in the cloud, it is time to sever the bounds of earth and live totally in the cloud.  I have to host the Autoscaling object in Azure as well, point it to the rules, tell it the management certs and get out of the way. A couple of questions.  Where to host?  The most obvious place to me was a worker role.  A simple, single purpose worker role, doing nothing but watching my app.  Here are the steps I used. 1) Created a project.  Separate project from my web site.  I wanted to be able to run the web in the cloud and the autoscaler local for debugging purposes.  Seemed like the easiest way.  2) Add the Wasabi block to the project. 3) Configure the settings.  I used the same settings used for the console app.  It points to the same web role, uses the same rules file.  4) Make sure the certification needed to manage the role is added to the cert store in the sky (“LocalMachine” and “My” are default locations). I ran the worker role in the local fabric.  It worked.  I then published to the cloud, and verified it worked again.  Here is what my code looked like. public override bool OnStart() { Trace.WriteLine("Set Default Connection Limit", "Information"); // Set the maximum number of concurrent connections ServicePointManager.DefaultConnectionLimit = 12; Trace.WriteLine("Set up configuration change code", "Information"); // set up config CloudStorageAccount.SetConfigurationSettingPublisher((configName, configSetter) => configSetter(RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue(configName))); Trace.WriteLine("Get current diagnostic configuration", "Information"); // Get current diagnostic configuration DiagnosticMonitorConfiguration dmc = DiagnosticMonitor.GetDefaultInitialConfiguration(); Trace.WriteLine("Set Diagnostic Buffer Size", "Information"); // Set Diagnostic Buffer size dmc.Logs.BufferQuotaInMB = 4; Trace.WriteLine("Set log transfer period", "Information"); // Set log transfer period dmc.Logs.ScheduledTransferPeriod = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1); Trace.WriteLine("Set log verbosity", "Information"); // Set log filter to verbose dmc.Logs.ScheduledTransferLogLevelFilter = LogLevel.Verbose; Trace.WriteLine("Start the diagnostic monitor", "Information"); // Start the diagnostic monitor DiagnosticMonitor.Start("Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString", dmc); Trace.WriteLine("Get the current Autoscaler from the EntLib Container", "Information"); // Get the current Autoscaler from the EntLib Container scaler = EnterpriseLibraryContainer.Current.GetInstance<Autoscaler>(); Trace.WriteLine("Start the autoscaler", "Information"); // Start the autoscaler scaler.Start(); Trace.WriteLine("call the base class OnStart", "Information"); // call the base class OnStart return base.OnStart(); } public override void OnStop() { Trace.WriteLine("Stop the Autoscaler", "Information"); // Stop the Autoscaler scaler.Stop(); } I did have to turn on some basic logging for wasabi, which will cover in the next post.  This let me figure out that I hadn’t done the certificate step.

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  • Are Chief Digital Officers the Result of CMO/CIO Refusal to Change?

    - by Mike Stiles
    Apparently CDO no longer just stands for “Collateralized Debt Obligations.”  It stands for Chief Digital Officer. And they’re the ones who are supposed to answer the bat signal CEO’s are throwing into the sky, swoop in and POW! drive the transition of the enterprise to integrated digital systems. So imagine being a CMO or a CIO at such an enterprise and realizing it’s been determined that you are not the answer that’s needed. In fact, IntelligentHQ author Ashley Friedlein points out the very rise of the CDO is an admission of C-Suite failure to become savvy enough, quickly enough in modern technology. Is that fair? Despite the repeated drumbeat that CMO’s and CIO’s must enter a new era of cooperation and collaboration to enact the social-enabled enterprise, the verdict seems to be that if it’s happening at all, it’s not happening fast enough. Therefore, someone else is needed with the authority to make things happen. So who is this relatively new beast? Gartner VP David Willis says, “The Chief Digital Officer plays in the place where the enterprise meets the customer, where the revenue is generated, and the mission accomplished.” In other words, where the rubber meets the road. They aren’t just another “C” heading up a unit. They’re the CEO’s personal SWAT team, able to call the shots necessary across all units to affect what has become job one…customer experience. And what are the CMO’s and CIO’s doing while this is going on? Playing corporate games. Accenture reports 38% of CMOs say IT deliberately keeps them out of the loop, with 35% saying marketing’s needs aren’t a very high priority. 31% of CIOs say marketers don’t understand tech and regularly go around them for solutions. Fun! Meanwhile the CEO feels the need to bring in a parental figure to pull it all together. Gartner thinks 25% of all orgs will have a CDO by 2015 as CMO’s and particularly CIO’s (Peter Hinssen points out many CDO’s are coming “from anywhere but IT”) let the opportunity to be the agent of change their company needs slip away. Perhaps most interestingly, these CDO’s seem to be entering the picture already on the fast track. One consultancy counted 7 instances of a CDO moving into the CEO role, which, as this Wired article points out, is pretty astounding since nobody ever heard of the job a few years ago. And vendors are quickly figuring out that this is the person they need to be talking to inside the brand. The position isn’t without its critics. Forrester’s Martin Gill says the reaction from executives at some traditional companies to someone being brought in to be in charge of digital might be to wash their own hands of responsibility for all things digital – a risky maneuver given the pervasiveness of digital in business. They might not even be called Chief Digital Officers. They might be the Chief Customer Officer, Chief Experience Officer, etc. You can call them Twinkletoes if you want to, but essentially anyone who has the mandate direct from the CEO to enact modern technology changes not currently being championed by the CMO or CIO can be regarded as “boss.” @mikestiles @oraclesocialPhoto: freedigitalphotos.net

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  • Screen Aspect Ratio

    - by Bill Evjen
    Jeffrey Dean, Pixar Aspect Ratio is very important to home video. What is aspect ratio – the ratio from the height to the width 2.35:1 The image is 2.35 times wide as it is high Pixar uses this for half of our movies This is called a widescreen image When modified to fit your television screen They cut this to fit the box of your screen When a comparison is made huge chunks of picture is missing It is harder to find what is going on when these pieces are missing The whole is greater than the pieces themselves. If you are missing pieces – you are missing the movie The soul and the mood is in the film shots. Cutting it to fit a screen, you are losing 30% of the movie Why different aspect ratios? Film before the 1950s 1.33:1 Academy Standard There were all aspects of images though. There was no standard. Thomas Edison developed projecting images onto a wall/screen He didn’t patent it as he saw no value in it. Then 1.37:1 came about to add a strip of sound This is the same size as a 35mm film Around 1952 – TV comes along NTSC Television followed the Academy Standard (4x3) Once TV came out, movie theater attendance plummets So Film brought forth color to combat this. Also early 3D Also Widescreen was brought forth. Cinema-Scope Studios at the time made movies bigger and bigger There was a Napoleon movie that was actually 4x1 … really wide. 1.85:1 Academy Flat 2.35:1 Anamorphic Scope (aka Panavision/Cinemascope) Almost all movies are made in these two aspect ratios Pixar has done half in one and half in the other Why choose one over the other? Artist choice It is part of the story the director wants to tell Can we preserve the story outside of the theaters? TVs before 1998 – they were very square Now TVs are very wide Historical options Toy Story released as it was and people cut it in a way that wasn’t liked by the studio Pan and Scan is another option Cut and then scan left or right depending on where the action is Frame Height Pixar can go back and animate more picture to account for the bottom/top bars. You end up with more sky and more ground The characters seem to get lost in the picture You lose what the director original intended Re-staging For animated movies, you can move characters around – restage the scene. It is a new completely different version of the film This is the best possible option that Pixar came up with They have stopped doing this really as the demand as pretty much dropped off Why not 1.33 today? There has been an evolution of taste and demands. VHS is a linear item The focus is about portability and not about quality Most was pan and scan and the quality was so bad – but people didn’t notice DVD was introduced in 1996 You could have more content – two versions of the film You could have the widescreen version and the 1.33 version People realized that they are seeing more of the movie with the widescreen High Def Televisions (16x9 monitors) This was introduced in 2005 Blu-ray Disc was introduced in 2006 This is all widescreen You cannot find a square TV anymore TVs are roughly 1.85:1 aspect ratio There is a change in demand Users are used to black bars and are used to widescreen Users are educated now What’s next for in-flight entertainment? High Def IFE Personal Electronic Devices 3D inflight

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  • LINQ to SQL : Too much CPU Usage: What happens when there are multiple users.

    - by soldieraman
    I am using LINQ to SQL and seeing my CPU Usage sky rocketting. See below screenshot. I have three questions What can I do to reduce this CPU Usage. I have done profiling and basically removed everything. Will making every LINQ to SQL statement into a compiled query help? I also find that even with compiled queries simple statements like ByID() can take 3 milliseconds on a server with 3.25GB RAM 3.17GHz - this will just become slower on a less powerful computer. Or will the compiled query get faster the more it is used? The CPU Usage (on the local server goes to 12-15%) for a single user will this multiply with the number of users accessing the server - when the application is put on a live server. i.e. 2 users at a time will mean 15*2 = 30% CPU Usage. If this is the case is my application limited to maximum 4-5 users at a time then. Or doesnt LINQ to SQL .net share some CPU usage.

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  • Rotate UIViewController to counteract changes in UIInterfaceOrientation

    - by Peter Hajas
    Hi there, I've been searching a lot on this, and can't find anything to help me. I have a UIViewController contained within another UIViewController. When the parent UIViewController rotates, say from Portrait to LandscapeLeft, I want to make it look as though the child didn't rotate. That is to say. I want the child to have the same orientation to the sky regardless of the parent's orientation. If it has a UIButton that's upright in Portrait, I want the right-side of the button to be "up" in UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft. Is this possible? Currently, I'm doing really gross stuff like this: -(void) rotate:(UIInterfaceOrientation)fromOrientation: toOr:(UIInterfaceOrientation)toOrientation { if(((fromOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait) && (toOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight)) || ((fromOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortraitUpsideDown) && (toOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft))) { } if(((fromOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight) && (toOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortraitUpsideDown)) || ((fromOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft) && (toOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait))) { } if(((fromOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait) && (toOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft)) || ((fromOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortraitUpsideDown) && (toOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight))) { } if(((fromOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft) && (toOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortraitUpsideDown)) || ((fromOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight) && (toOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait))) { } if(((fromOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait) && (toOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortraitUpsideDown)) || ((fromOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortraitUpsideDown) && (toOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait))) { } if(((fromOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft) && (toOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight)) || ((fromOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight) && (toOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft))) { } } which seems like a perfectly good waste of code. Furthermore, I was planning on using CGAffineTransform (like cited here: http://www.crystalminds.nl/?p=1102) but I'm confused about whether I should change the view's dimensions to match what they will be after the rotation. The big nightmare here is that you have to keep track of a global "orientation" variable. If you don't, the illusion is lost and the ViewController is rotated into whatever. I could really use some help on this, thanks!

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  • text not wrapping around some floated images, wraps in IE & FF but not chrome, safari

    - by Hartley
    This is unlike anything I've read about and I've been totally scratching my head for the last few hours trying to figure out what's going on. I have a hand-coded site @ hartbro.com Part of the site is a blog, in which I include pictures. Here's the HTML code around one of the images that's causing trouble. <a href="blogcontent/090811.jpg" class="img"> <img src="blogcontent/090811.jpg" alt="Downed trees" width="25%" class="floatright" /></a> The storm left as quickly as it came. The sky cleared up and we were glad that the oppressive heat had let up. What I've noticed is that, on some of the blog entries that include more than one image, the 2nd image isn't really floating like its supposed to be, with the text wrapping around it. I figure its got to be some sort of conflict with some CSS that I have that's causing the problem but I just can't figure out what it is. I don't understand how it works in FF & IE but not Chrome or Safari?? Here's all of the relevant CSS, let me know if you need anything else. Thanks in advance. img{ margin:10px; } img.floatleft{ float:left; } img.floatright{ float:right; } edit: here's an screen-shot of what's happening.

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  • Word characteristics tags

    - by theBlinker
    I want to do a riddle AI chatbot for my AI class. So i figgured the input to the chatbot would be : Something like : "It is blue, and it is up, but it is not the ceiling" Translation : <Object X> <blue> <up> <!ceiling> </Object X> (Answer : sky?) So Input is a set of characteristics (existing \ not existing in the object), output is a matched, most likely object. The domain will be limited to a number of objects, i could input all attributes myself, but i was thinking : How could I programatically build a database of characteristics for a word? Is there such a database available? How could i tag a word, how could i programatically find all it's attributes? I was thinking on crawling wikipedia, or some forum, but i can't see it build any reliable word tag database. Any ideas on how i could achieve such a thing? Any ideas on some literature on the subject? Thank you

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  • Are there any configurable parameters to the gpsd?

    - by danatel
    I use the gpsd daemon with my application. Sometimes, the gpsd ceases to work with no apparent reason (clean sky). Even the gpsmon monitor shows no fix. Are there any parameters which must be set? Or is it a hardware problem? I am surprissed that many satellites are visible but the "Stat" bitmap does not contain the bit 7 - ephemeris data available. Should i somewhat pre-configure my position to allow for correct ephemeris data? Here is my gpsmon screen: 127.0.0.1:2947:/dev/ttyS3 SiRF binary> ^[[4~ -¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦ X ¦¦¦¦¦¦ Y ¦¦¦¦¦¦ Z ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦ North ¦¦¦¦ East ¦¦¦¦¦ Alt ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¬ -Pos: 3949260 1166016 4856299 m 49.89411° 16.44920° 1379 m - -Vel: 0.0 0.0 0.0 m/s 0.0 0.0 0.0 climb m/s- -Week+TOW:1578+224837.06 Day: 2 14:27:17.06 Heading: 0.0° 0.0 speed m/s- -Skew: -13.025817 TZ: -7200 HDOP: 0.0 M1:00 M2: 00 - -Fix: 0 = - L¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦ Packet type 2 (0x02) ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦- -¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¬-¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¬ -Ch PRN Az El Stat C/N ? A --Version: - - 0 2 243 19 003f 40.4 -L¦¦¦¦¦¦¦ Packet Type 6 (0x06) ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦- - 1 10 249 68 003f 43.0 --¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¬ - 2 13 90 30 003f 40.9 --SVs: 0 Drift: 96506 Bias: 135976716 - - 3 7 66 67 003f 39.8 --Estimated GPS Time: 224837059 - - 4 5 295 49 003d 39.7 -L¦¦¦¦¦¦¦ Packet type 7 (0x07) ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦- - 5 8 210 69 003f 41.0 --¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¬ - 6 23 96 5 002d 28.0 --Max: 167.570Lat: 132.129Time: 0.075 MS: 02 - - 7 6 43 3 002d 23.1 -L¦¦¦¦¦¦¦ Packet type 9 (0x09) ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦- - 8 28 163 16 003f 39.8 --¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¬ - 9 0 0 0 0000 0.0 --SVs: 11 = 8 10 7 5 13 2 28 23 3 6 4 - -10 3 55 4 002d 24.7 -L¦¦¦¦¦¦¦ Packet type 13 (0x0D) ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦- -11 0 0 0 0000 0.0 --¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¬ L¦¦¦ Packet Type 4 (0x04) ¦¦¦--DGPS source: 1 (SBAS) Corrections: 12 - L¦¦¦¦¦¦¦ Packet type 27 (0x1B) ¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦-q

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  • .Net long-running scheduled code execution

    - by Prof Plum
    I am working on a couple of projects now where I really wish there was some sort of component that I could specify a time and date, and then execute some sort of method. DateTime date = new DateTime(x,x,x,x,x,x); ScheduledMethod sMethod = new ScheduledMethod(date, [method delegate of some sort]); \\at the specified date, sMethod invokes [method delegate of some sort] I know that I can do this with Windows Workflow Foundation as a long running process, which is good for certain things, but are there any alternatives? Workflow is not exactly straight forward with the details, and it would be nice to be able to deploy something more simple for light weight tasks. An example would be a method that checks a network folder once a day and deletes any files that are more than 30 days old. I realize that this may be pie in the sky dreaming, but this would be extremely useful for automating certain mundane maintinence tasks (scheduled sql operations, file system cleansing, routine email sending, etc.). It does not necessarily have to be .Net, but that is where I am coming from. Any ideas?

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  • Posting a form using Ajax

    - by hopes
    Hi everyone, do u have an idea of how to send my radio button name for myAjaxPostrequest.send(parameters); can parameters be like this: var answername=document.getElementById('option1').name; var parameters=answername; ? this code is for using ajax to post a form and my php page needs the name of the radiobutton clicked I tried this code and it works as I want except for inserting in the database. It means parameters is the problem what I want to insert is the number located between brakects of the radiobutton name. I could do it when I post form without Ajax but now I can't send the name of the radiobutton any clue about what I can send as parameter for function myAjaxPostrequest.send(parameters);? <form id="Question1" method="post"> <br /> <P> The sky color is.. </P><img border="0" src="images/wonder.png" width="94" height="134"/><br /><br /><br /> <input type="radio" id="option1" name="answer[1]" value="correct!" onclick="submitFormWithAjax();"/> blue <br /> <input type="radio" id="option1" name="answer[1]" value="false!" onclick="submitFormWithAjax();"/> red <br /> <input type="radio" id="option1" name="answer[1]" value="false!" onclick="submitFormWithAjax();"/> green <br /> <input type="radio" id="option1" name="answer[1]" value="false!" onclick="submitFormWithAjax();"/> white <br /> <br /> </Form>

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  • 6 Interesting Facts About NASA’s Mars Rover ‘Curiosity’

    - by Gopinath
    Humans quest for exploring the surrounding planets to see whether we can live there or not is taking new shape today. NASA’s Mars probing robot, Curiosity, blasted off today on its 9 months journey to reach Mars and explore it for the possibilities of life there. Scientist says that Curiosity is one most advanced rover ever launched to probe life on other planets. Here is the launch video and some analysis by a news reporter Lets look at the 6 interesting facts about the mission 1. It’s as big as a car Curiosity is the biggest ever rover ever launched by NASA to probe life on outer planets. It’s as big as a car and almost double the size of its predecessor rover Spirit. The length of Curiosity is around 9 feet 10 inches(3 meters), width is 9 feet 1 inch (2.8 meters) and height is 7 feet (2.1 meters). 2. Powered by Plutonium – Lasts 24×7 for 23 months The earlier missions of NASA to explore Mars are powered by Solar power and that hindered capabilities of the rovers to move around when the Sun is hiding. Due to dependency of Sun the earlier rovers were not able to traverse the places where there is no Sun light. Curiosity on the other hand is equipped with a radioisotope power system that generates electricity from the heat emitted by plutonium’s radioactive decay. The plutonium weighs around 10 pounds and can generate power required for operating the rover close to 23 weeks. The best part of the new power system is, Curiosity can roam around in darkness, light and all year around. 3. Rocket powered backpack for a science fiction style landing The Curiosity is so heavy that NASA could not use parachute and balloons to air-drop the rover on the surface of Mars like it’s previous missions. They are trying out a new science fiction style air-dropping mechanism that is similar to sky crane heavy-lift helicopter. The landing of the rover begins first with entry into the Mars atmosphere protected by a heat shield. At about 6 miles to the surface, the heat shield is jettisoned and a parachute is deployed to glide the rover smoothly. When the rover touches 3 miles above the surface, the parachute is jettisoned and the eight motors rocket backpack is used for a smooth and impact free landing as shown in the image. Here is an animation created by NASA on the landing sequence. If you are interested in getting more detailed information about the landing process check this landing sequence picture available on NASA website 4. Equipped with Star Wars style laser gun Hollywood movie directors and novelist always imagined aliens coming to earth with spaceships full of laser guns and blasting the objects which comes on their way. With Curiosity the equations are going to change. It has a powerful laser gun equipped in one of it’s arms to beam laser on rocks to vaporize them. This is not part of any assault mission Curiosity is expected to carry out, the laser gun is will be used to carry out experiments to detect life and understand nature. 5. Most sophisticated laboratory powered by 10 instruments Around 10 state of art instruments are part of Curiosity rover and the these 10 instruments form a most advanced rover based lab ever built by NASA. There are instruments to cut through rocks to examine them and other instruments will search for organic compounds. Mounted cameras can study targets from a distance, arm mounted instruments can study the targets they touch. Microscopic lens attached to the arm can see and magnify tiny objects as tiny as 12.5 micro meters. 6. Rover Carrying 1.24 million names etched on silicon Early June 2009 NASA launched a campaign called “Send Your Name to Mars” and around 1.24 million people registered their names through NASA’s website. All those 1.24 million names are etched on Silicon chips mounted onto Curiosity’s deck. If you had registered your name in the campaign may be your name is going to reach Mars soon. Curiosity On Web If you wish to follow the mission here are few links to help you NASA’s Curiosity Web Page Follow Curiosity on Facebook Follow @MarsCuriosity on Twitter Artistic Gallery Image of Mars Rover Curiosity A printable sheet of Curiosity Mission [pdf] Images credit: NASA This article titled,6 Interesting Facts About NASA’s Mars Rover ‘Curiosity’, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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  • Rob Blackwell on interoperability and Azure

    - by Eric Nelson
    At QCon in March we had a sample Azure application implemented in both Java and Ruby to demonstrate that the Windows Azure Platform is not just about .NET. The following is an interesting interview with Rob Blackwell, the R&D director of the partner who implemented the application. UK Interoperability Team Interviews Rob Blackwell, R&D Director at Active Web Solutions. Is Microsoft taking interoperability seriously? Yes. In the past, I think Microsoft has, quite rightly come in for criticism, but architects and developers should look at this again. The Interoperability Bridges site (http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/ ) shows a wide range of projects that allow interoperability from Java, Ruby and PHP for example. The Windows Azure platform has been architected with interoperable APIs in mind. It's straightforward to access the various storage facilities from just about any language or platform. Azure compute is capable of running more than just C# applications! Why is interoperability important to you? My company provides consultancy and bespoke development services. We're a Microsoft Gold Partner, but we live in the real world where companies have a mix of technologies provided by a variety of vendors. When developing an enterprise software solution, you rarely have a completely blank canvas. We often see integration scenarios where we need to exchange data with legacy systems. It's not unusual to see modern Silverlight applications being built on top of Java or Mainframe based back ends. Could you give us some examples of where interoperability has been important for your projects? We developed an innovative Sea Safety system for the RNLI Lifeboats here in the UK. Commercial Fishing is one of the most dangerous professions and we helped developed the MOB Guardian System which uses satellite technology and man overboard devices to raise the alarm when a fisherman gets into trouble. The solution is implemented in .NET running on Windows, but without interoperable standards, it would have been impossible to communicate with the satellite gateway technology. For more information, please see the case study: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000005892 More recently, we were asked to build a web site to accompany the QCon 2010 conference in London to help demonstrate and promote interoperability. We built the site using Java and Restlet and hosted it in Windows Azure Compute. The site accepts feedback from visitors and all the data is stored in Windows Azure Storage. We also ported the application to Ruby on Rails for demonstration purposes. Visitors to the stand were surprised that this was even possible. Why should Java developers be interested in Windows Azure? Windows Azure Storage consists of Blobs, Queues and Tables. The storage is scalable, durable, secure and cost-effective. Using the WindowsAzure4j library, it's easy to use, and takes just a few lines of code. If you are writing an application with large data storage requirements, or you want an offsite backup, it makes a lot of sense. Running Java applications in Azure Compute is straightforward with tools like the Tomcat Solution Accelerator (http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/winazuretomcat )and AzureRunMe (http://azurerunme.codeplex.com/ ). The Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus can also be used to connect heterogeneous systems running on different networks and in different data centres. How can The Service Bus be considered an interoperability solution? I think that the Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus is one of Microsoft’s best kept secrets. Think of it as “a globally scalable application plumbing kit in the sky”. If you have used Enterprise Service Buses before, you’ll be familiar with the concept. Applications can connect to the service bus to securely exchange data – these can be point to point or multicast links. With the AppFabric Service Bus, the applications can exist anywhere that has access to the Internet and the connections can traverse firewalls. This makes it easy to extend or scale your application or reach out to other networks and technologies. For example, let’s say you have a SQL Server database running on premises and you want to expose the data to a Java application running in the cloud. You could set up a point to point Service Bus connection and use JDBC. Traditionally this would have been difficult or impossible without punching holes in firewalls and compromising security. Rob Blackwell is R&D Director at Active Web Solutions, www.aws.net , a Microsoft Gold Partner specialising in leading edge software solutions. He is an occasional writer and conference speaker and blogs at www.robblackwell.org.uk Related Links: UK Azure Online Community – join today. UK Windows Azure Site Start working with Windows Azure

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  • HTG Explains: Why is Printer Ink So Expensive?

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Printer ink is expensive, more expensive per drop than fine champagne or even human blood. If you haven’t gone paperless, you’ll notice that you’re paying a lot for new ink cartridges — more than seems reasonable. Purchasing the cheapest inkjet printer and buying official ink cartridge replacements is the most expensive thing you can do. There are ways to save money on ink if you must continue to print documents. Cheap Printers, Expensive Ink Ink jet printers are often very cheap. That’s because they’re sold at cost, or even at a loss — the manufacturer either makes no profit from the printer itself or loses money. The manufacturer will make most of its money from the printer cartridges you buy later. Even if the company does make a bit of money from each printer sold, it makes a much larger profit margin on ink. Rather than selling you a printer that may be rather expensive, they want to sell you a cheap printer and make money on an ongoing basis by providing expensive printer ink. It’s been compared to the razor model — sell a razor cheaply and mark up the razor blades. Rather than making a one-time profit on the razor, you’ll make continuing profit as the customer keeps buying razor blade replacements — or ink, in this case. Many printer manufacturers go out of their way to make it difficult for you to use unofficial ink cartridges, building microchips into their official ink cartridges. If you use an unofficial cartridge or refill an official cartridge, the printer may refuse to use it. Lexmark once argued in court that unofficial microchips that enable third-party ink cartridges would violate their copyright and Lexmark has argued that creating an unofficial microchip to bypass this restriction on third-party ink would violate Lexmark’s copyright and be illegal under the US DMCA. Luckily, they lost this argument. What Printer Companies Say Printer companies have put forth their own arguments in the past, attempting to justify the high cost of official ink cartridges and microchips that block any competition. In a Computer World story from 2010, HP argued that they spend a billion dollars each year on “ink research and development.” They point out that printer ink “must be formulated to withstand heating to 300 degrees, vaporization, and being squirted at 30 miles per hour, at a rate of 36,000 drops per second, through a nozzle one third the size of a human hair. After all that it must dry almost instantly on the paper.” They also argue that printers have become more efficient and use less ink to print, while third-party cartridges are less reliable. Companies that use microchips in their ink cartridges argue that only the microchip has the ability to enforce an expiration date, preventing consumers from using old ink cartridges. There’s something to all these arguments, sure — but they don’t seem to justify the sky-high cost of printer ink or the restriction on using third-party or refilled cartridges. Saving Money on Printing Ultimately, the price of something is what people are willing to pay and printer companies have found that most consumers are willing to pay this much for ink cartridge replacements. Try not to fall for it: Don’t buy the cheapest inkjet printer. Consider your needs when buying a printer and do some research. You’ll save more money in the long run. Consider these basic tips to save money on printing: Buy Refilled Cartridges: Refilled cartridges from third parties are generally much cheaper. Printer companies warn us away from these, but they often work very well. Refill Your Own Cartridges: You can get do-it-yourself kits for refilling your own printer ink cartridges, but this can be messy. Your printer may refuse to accept a refilled cartridge if the cartridge contains a microchip. Switch to a Laser Printer: Laser printers use toner, not ink cartridges. If you print a lot of black and white documents, a laser printer can be cheaper. Buy XL Cartridges: If you are buying official printer ink cartridges, spend more money each time. The cheapest ink cartridges won’t contain much ink at all, while larger “XL” ink cartridges will contain much more ink for only a bit more money. It’s often cheaper to buy in bulk. Avoid Printers With Tri-Color Ink Cartridges: If you’re printing color documents, you’ll want to get a printer that uses separate ink cartridges for all its colors. For example, let’s say your printer has a “Color” cartridge that contains blue, green, and red ink. If you print a lot of blue documents and use up all your blue ink, the Color cartridge will refuse to function — now all you can do is throw away your cartridge and buy a new one, even if the green and red ink chambers are full. If you had a printer with separate color cartridges, you’d just have to replace the blue cartridge. If you’ll be buying official ink cartridges, be sure to compare the cost of cartridges when buying a printer. The cheapest printer may be more expensive in the long run. Of course, you’ll save the most money if you stop printing entirely and go paperless, keeping digital copies of your documents instead of paper ones. Image Credit: Cliva Darra on Flickr     

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  • Red Gate does Byte Night 2012

    - by red(at)work
    On the 5th of October 2012, a team of nine plucky Red Gaters braved the howling wind and the driving rain to sleep outside. No tents or mattresses were allowed – all we took for protection were sleeping bags, groundsheets, plastic sacks and Colin’s enormous fishing umbrella (a godsend in umbrella-y disguise). Why would we do such a thing? For Byte Night, an annual tech sector sleepout in support of Action for Children, who tackle the causes as well as the consequences of youth homelessness. Byte Night encourages technology professionals to do for one night a year what thousands of young people have to do every night – sleep rough.  We signed up for Byte Night in the warm, heady midst of the British summer, thinking it couldn’t possibly be all that bad. Even on the night itself – before the rain began to fall, sat in the comfort and warmth of a company canteen, drinking wine and eating chill and preparing to win the pub quiz – we were excited and optimistic about the night that lay ahead of us. All of that changed as soon as we stepped out into one of the worst rainstorms of the year. Brian, the team’s birthday boy, describes it best: Picture the scene: it’s 3 am on a Friday. I’m lying outside, fully clothed in a sleeping bag, wearing a raincoat, trussed up inside a large plastic pocket, on a ground sheet beneath a giant umbrella, wedged so tightly between two of my colleagues that I can’t move my arms. I’m wide awake, staring up at the grey sky beyond the edge of the umbrella; a limp, flickering white glow hints at a moon somewhere behind the drifting clouds. I haven’t slept since we first moved outside at 11 pm. Outside. Did I mention we were outside? I’m hung over. I need the loo. But there is no way on earth that I’m getting out of this sleeping bag. It’s cold. It’s raining. Not just raining, but chucking it down. It’s been doing this non-stop since 10pm. The rain sounds like a hyperactive drummer on the fishing umbrella, and the noise is loud and relentless. Puddles of water are forming all over the groundsheet, and, despite being ensconced inside the plastic pouch, I am wet. The fishing umbrella is protecting me from the worst of the driving rain, but not all of me is under it, and five hours of rain is no match for it. Everything is wet. My left side has become horribly damp. My trainers, which I placed next to my sleeping bag, are now completely soaked through. Mmm. That’ll be fun in the morning. My head is next to Colin’s head on one side, and a multi-pack of McCoy’s cheddar and onion crisps on the other. Don’t ask about the tub of hummus. That’s somewhere down by my ankles, abandoned to the night. Jess, who is lying next to me, rolls over onto her side. A mini waterfall cascades from her rain-pouch onto my face. Bah. I continue to stare into the heavens, willing the dawn to hurry up. Something lands on my face. It’s a mosquito. Great. Midnight, when this still seemed like fun – when we opened some champagne and my colleagues presented me with a caterpillar birthday cake, when everyone was drunk and jolly and full of stoic resolve – feels like a long time ago. Did I mention that today is my birthday? The remains of the caterpillar cake endure the same fate as the hummus, left out in the rain like a metaphor for sadness. It’s getting colder. I can see my breath. Silence has descended on the group, apart from the rustle of plastic. And the rain, obviously. Someone snores, and I envy whoever it is the sweet escape of sleep. I try to wriggle a bit further down inside my sleeping bag, but it doesn’t want to be wriggled into. Only 3 hours till dawn. 180 minutes. I begin to count them off, one at a time.  All nine of us got to go home in the morning, but thousands of children across the UK don’t have that luxury. If you’d like to sponsor the Red Gate Byte Night team, our JustGiving page can be found here.   Chris, before the outside bit actually happened. More photos from Byte Night Cambridge 2012 can be found here.

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  • Querying Visual Studio project files using T-SQL and Powershell

    - by jamiet
    Earlier today I had a need to get some information out of a Visual Studio project file and in this blog post I’m going to share a couple of ways of going about that because I’m pretty sure I won’t be the only person that ever wants to do this. The specific problem I was trying to solve was finding out how many objects in my database project (i.e. in my .dbproj file) had any warnings suppressed but the techniques discussed below will work pretty well for any Visual Studio project file because every such file is simply an XML document, hence it can be queried by anything that can query XML documents. Ever heard the phrase “when all you’ve got is hammer everything looks like a nail”? Well that’s me with querying stuff – if I can write SQL then I’m writing SQL. Here’s a little noddy database project I put together for demo purposes: Two views and a stored procedure, nothing fancy. I suppressed warnings for [View1] & [Procedure1] and hence the pertinent part my project file looks like this:   <ItemGroup>    <Build Include="Schema Objects\Schemas\dbo\Views\View1.view.sql">      <SubType>Code</SubType>      <SuppressWarnings>4151,3276</SuppressWarnings>    </Build>    <Build Include="Schema Objects\Schemas\dbo\Views\View2.view.sql">      <SubType>Code</SubType>    </Build>    <Build Include="Schema Objects\Schemas\dbo\Programmability\Stored Procedures\Procedure1.proc.sql">      <SubType>Code</SubType>      <SuppressWarnings>4151</SuppressWarnings>    </Build>  </ItemGroup>  <ItemGroup> Note the <SuppressWarnings> elements – those are the bits of information that I am after. With a lot of help from folks on the SQL Server XML forum  I came up with the following query that nailed what I was after. It reads the contents of the .dbproj file into a variable of type XML and then shreds it using T-SQL’s XML data type methods: DECLARE @xml XML; SELECT @xml = CAST(pkgblob.BulkColumn AS XML) FROM   OPENROWSET(BULK 'C:\temp\QueryingProjectFileDemo\QueryingProjectFileDemo.dbproj' -- <-Change this path!                    ,single_blob) AS pkgblob                    ;WITH XMLNAMESPACES( 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003' AS ns) SELECT  REVERSE(SUBSTRING(REVERSE(ObjectPath),0,CHARINDEX('\',REVERSE(ObjectPath)))) AS [ObjectName]        ,[SuppressedWarnings] FROM   (        SELECT  build.query('.') AS [_node]        ,       build.value('ns:SuppressWarnings[1]','nvarchar(100)') AS [SuppressedWarnings]        ,       build.value('@Include','nvarchar(1000)') AS [ObjectPath]        FROM    @xml.nodes('//ns:Build[ns:SuppressWarnings]') AS R(build)        )q And here’s the output: And that’s it – an easy way of discovering which warnings have been suppressed and for which objects in your database projects. I won’t bother going over the code as it is fairly self-explanatory – peruse it at your leisure.   Once I had the SQL above I figured I’d share it around a little in case it was ever useful to anyone else; hence I’m writing this blog post and I also posted it on the Visual Studio Database Development Tools forum at FYI: Discover which objects have had warnings suppressed. Luckily Kevin Goode saw the thread and he posted a different solution to the same problem, one that uses Powershell. The advantage of Kevin’s Powershell approach is that it is easy to analyse many .dbproj files at the same time. Below is Kevin’s code which I have tweaked ever so slightly so that it produces the same results as my SQL script (I just want any object that had had a warning suppressed whereas Kevin was querying specifically for warning 4151):   cd 'C:\Temp\QueryingProjectFileDemo\' cls $projects = ls -r -i *.dbproj Foreach($project in $projects) { $xml = new-object System.Xml.XmlDocument $xml.set_PreserveWhiteSpace( $true ) $xml.Load($project) #$xpath = @{Start="/e:Project/e:ItemGroup/e:Build[e:SuppressWarnings=4151]/@Include"} #$xpath = @{Start="/e:Project/e:ItemGroup/e:Build[contains(e:SuppressWarnings,'4151')]/@Include"} $xpath = @{Start="/e:Project/e:ItemGroup/e:Build[e:SuppressWarnings]/@Include"} $ns = @{ e = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" } $xml | Select-Xml -XPath $xpath.Start -Namespace $ns |Select -Expand Node | Select -expand Value } and here’s the output: Nice reusable Powershell and SQL scripts – not bad for an evening’s work. Thank you to Kevin for allowing me to share his code. Don’t forget that these techniques can easily be adapted to query any Visual Studio project file, they’re only XML documents after all! Doubtless many people out there already have code for doing this but nonetheless here is another offering to the great script library in the sky. Have fun! @Jamiet

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  • Great event : Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Launch @ Microsoft TechEd Blore

    - by sathya
    Great event : Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Launch @ Microsoft TechEd Blore   I was really excited on attending the day 1 of Microsoft TechEd 2010 in Bangalore. This is the first Teched that am attending. The event was really fun filled with lot of knowledge sharing sessions and lots of goodies and gifts by the partners Initially the Event Started by Murthy's Session. He explained about the Developers relating to the 5 elements of nature (Pancha Boothaas) 1. Fire - Passion 2. Wave (Water) - Catch the right wave which we need to apply. 3. Earth - Connections and lots of opportunities around the world 4. Air -  Its whatever we breathe. Developers.. Without them nothing is possible. they are like the air 5. Sky - Cloud based applications   Next the Keynote and the announcement of Visual Studio by SomaSegar. List of things that he delivered his speech on : 1. Announcement of Visual Studio 2010 2. Announcement of .NET 4.0 3. Announcement of Silverlight later this week 4. What is the current Trend? Microsoft has done a research with many developers across the globe and have got the following feedback from the users. Get Lost (interrupted) - When we do some work and somebody is calling or interrepting by someother way we lose track of what we were doing and we need to do from the start Falling Behind- Technology gets updated  phenomenally over a period of time and developers always have a scenario like they are not in the state of the art technology and they always have a doubt whether they are staying updated. Lack of Collobaration - When a Manager asks a person what the team members have done and some might be done and some might not be and finally all are into a state like we dont know where we are. So they have addressed these 3 points in the VS 2010 by the following features : Get Lost - Some cool features which could overcome this. We have some Graphical interface. which could show what we have done and where we are. Some Zoom features in the code level. Falling Behind - Everything is based on .NET language base. 2010 has been built in such a way that if developers know the native language that's enough for building good applications. Lack of Collobaration - Some Dashboard Features which would show where exactly the project is. And a graphical user interface is shown on clicking which it directly drills down even to the code level. 5. An overview on all new features in VS 2010. 6. Some good demos of new features in VS 2010 by Polita and one more girl. Some of the new features included : 1. Team Explorer 2. Zoom in Code 3. Ribbon Development 4. Development in Single Platform for Windows Phone, XBox, Zune, Azure, Web Based and Windows based applications 5. Sequence Diagram Generation directly from code 6. Dashboards to show project status 7. Javascript and JQuery intellisense 8. Native support for JQuery 9. Packaging feature while deploying. 10. Generation of different versions of web.config like Web.Config.Production, Web.Config.Staging, etc. 11. IntelliTrace - Eliminating the "Not Reproducible" statement. 12. Automated User Interface Testing. At last in the closing of the day we had a great event called Demo Extravaganza, where lot of cool projects that were launched by Microsoft and also the projects that are under research were also shown. I got a lot of info about Bing today. BING really rocks!!! It has the following : 1. Visual Search 2. Product based search. For each product different menu filters were provided to make an advanced search 3. BING Maps was awesome!! It zoomed in to the street level and we can assume that we are the persons who are walking or running on the road and we can see the real objects like buildings moving by our side. 4. PhotoSynth was used in BING to show up all the images taken around the globe in a 3D format. 5. Formula - If we give some formula it automatically gives the value for the variable or derivation of expression Also some info about some kool touch apps which does an authentication and computation of Teched Attendee's Points that they have scored and the sessions attended. One guy won an XBOX in lucky draw as a gift. There were lot of Partner Stalls like Accenture,Intel,Citrix,MicroFocus,Telerik,infragistics,Sapient etc. Some Offers were provided for us like 50% off on Certifications, 1 free Elearning Course, etc. Stay tuned!! Wil update you on other events too..

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  • Package Manager Console For More Than Managing Packages

    - by Steve Michelotti
    Like most developers, I prefer to not have to pick up the mouse if I don’t have to. I use the Executor launcher for almost everything so it’s extremely rare for me to ever click the “Start” button in Windows. I also use shortcuts keys when I can so I don’t have to pick up the mouse. By now most people know that the Package Manager Console that comes with NuGet is PowerShell embedded inside of Visual Studio. It is based on its PowerConsole predecessor which was the first (that I’m aware of) to embed PowerShell inside of Visual Studio and give access to the Visual Studio automation DTE object. It does this through an inherent $dte variable that is automatically available and ready for use. This variable is also available inside of the NuGet Package Manager console. Adding a new class file to a Visual Studio project is one of those mundane tasks that should be easier. First I have to pick up the mouse. Then I have to right-click where I want it file to go and select “Add –> New Item…” or “Add –> Class…”   If you know the Ctrl+Shift+A shortcut, then you can avoid the mouse for adding a new item but you have to manually assign a shortcut for adding a new class. At this point it pops up a dialog just so I can enter the name of the class I want. Since this is one of the most common tasks developers do, I figure there has to be an easier way and a way that avoids picking up the mouse and popping up dialogs. This is where your embedded PowerShell prompt in Visual Studio comes in. The first thing you should do is to assign a keyboard shortcut so that you can get a PowerShell prompt (i.e., the Package Manager console) quickly without ever picking up the mouse. I assign “Ctrl+P, Ctrl+M” because “P + M” stands for “Package Manager” so it is easy to remember:   At this point I can type this command to add a new class: PM> $dte.ItemOperations.AddNewItem("Code\Class", "Foo.cs") which will result in the class being added: At this point I’ve satisfied my original goal of not having to pick up a mouse and not having the “Add New Item” dialog pop up. However, having to remember that $dte method call is not very user-friendly at all. The best thing to do is to make this a re-usable function that always loads when Visual Studio starts up. There is a $profile variable that you can use to figure out where that location is for your machine: PM> $profile C:\Users\steve.michelotti\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\NuGet_profile.ps1 If the NuGet_profile.ps1 file does not already exist, you can just create it yourself and place it in the directory. Now you can put a function inside like this: 1: function addClass($className) 2: { 3: if ($className.EndsWith(".cs") -eq $false) { 4: $className = $className + ".cs" 5: } 6: 7: $dte.ItemOperations.AddNewItem("Code\Class", $className) 8: } Since it’s in the NuGet_profile.ps1 file, this function will automatically always be available for me after starting Visual Studio. Now I can simply do this: PM> addClass Foo At this point, we have a *very* nice developer experience. All I did to add a new class was: “Ctrl-P, Ctrl-M”, then “addClass Foo”. No mouse, no pop up dialogs, no complex commands to remember. In fact, PowerShell gives you auto-completion as well. If I type “addc” followed by [TAB], then intellisense pops up: You can see my custom function appear in intellisense above. Now I can type the next letter “c” and [TAB] to auto-complete the command. And if that’s still too many key strokes for you, then you can create your own PowerShell custom alias for your function like this: PM> Set-Alias addc addClass PM> addc Foo While all this is very useful, I did run into some issues which prompted me to make even further customization. This command will add the new class file to the current active directory. Depending on your context, this may not be what you want. For example, by convention all view model objects go in the “Models” folder in an MVC project. So if the current document is in the Controllers folder, it will add your class to that folder which is not what you want. You want it to always add it to the “Models” folder if you are adding a new model in an MVC project. For this situation, I added a new function called “addModel” which looks like this: 1: function addModel($className) 2: { 3: if ($className.EndsWith(".cs") -eq $false) { 4: $className = $className + ".cs" 5: } 6: 7: $modelsDir = $dte.ActiveSolutionProjects[0].UniqueName.Replace(".csproj", "") + "\Models" 8: $dte.Windows.Item([EnvDTE.Constants]::vsWindowKindSolutionExplorer).Activate() 9: $dte.ActiveWindow.Object.GetItem($modelsDir).Select([EnvDTE.vsUISelectionType]::vsUISelectionTypeSelect) 10: $dte.ItemOperations.AddNewItem("Code\Class", $className) 11: } First I figure out the path to the Models directory on line #7. Then I activate the Solution Explorer window on line #8. Then I make sure the Models directory is selected so that my context is correct when I add the new class and it will be added to the Models directory as desired. These are just a couple of examples for things you can do with the PowerShell prompt that you have available in the Package Manager console. As developers we spend so much time in Visual Studio, why would you not customize it so that you can work in whatever way you want to work?! The next time you’re not happy about the way Visual Studio makes you do a particular task – automate it! The sky is the limit.

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