Search Results

Search found 11396 results on 456 pages for 'simply denis'.

Page 171/456 | < Previous Page | 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178  | Next Page >

  • Alternatives to a leveling system

    - by Bane
    I'm currently designing a rough prototype of a mecha fighting game. These are the basics I came up with: Multiplayer (matchmaking for up to 10 people, for now) Browser based (HTML5) 2D (<canvas>) Persistent (as in, players have accounts and don't have to use a new mech each time they start a match) Players earn money upon destroying another mech, which is used to buy parts (guns, armor, boosters, etc) Simplicity (both of the game itself, and of the development of said game) No "leveling" (as in, players don't get awarded with XP) The last part is bothering me. At first, I wanted to have players gain experience points (XP) when destroying other mechs, but gaining two things at once (money and XP) seemed to be in conflict with my last point, which is simplicity. If I were to have a leveling system, that would require additional development. But, the biggest problem is that I simply couldn't fit it anywhere! Adding levels would require adding meaning to these levels, and most of the things that I hoped to achieve could already be achieved with the money mechanic I introduced. So I decided to drop leveling off completely. That, in turn, removed a fairly popular and robust mean of progression in games from my game (not that I would use it well anyway). Is there another way of progression in games, aside from leveling and XP points, that wouldn't get rendered redundant by my money mechanic, would be somehow meaningful (even on a symbolic level), and wouldn't be in conflict with my last point, which is simplicity?

    Read the article

  • Suggestions for a CMS markup language for PHP

    - by Yanick Rochon
    As a learning experience, and as project, I am attempting to write a CMS module for ZF2. One of the functionality I would like to have is the possibility of adding dynamic contents in the pages by calling PHP functions in the view scripts. However, I do not want to give the users freedom in writing PHP code directly inside the page content, but rather implement custom view helpers (or widgets) to handle logic. For example: calling partial, partialLoop, url, etc. specifying arguments and all. I liked the idea of extending Markdown but this would get complicated when trying to add custom CSS class to elements, etc. Then I had the idea of simply doing a preg_replace on some patterns. For example, the string : ### partialLoop:['partials/display.phtml',[{id:'p1',price:4.99},{id:'p2',price:12.34}]] ### would be replaced by <?php echo $this->partialLoop('partials/display.phtml', array(array('id'=>'p1','price'=>4.99),array('id'=>'p2','price'=>12.34))) ?> Obviously, there would be some caching done so the page content is not rendered everytime. Does this sound good? If not, what would be a good way of doing this? Or is there a project already being developed for doing this? (I'd like to avoid heavy third party libs and something fairly or fully compatible with ZF2 would be nice.) Thanks.

    Read the article

  • Turn off Windows Defender on your builds

    - by george_v_reilly
    I've spent some time this evening profiling a Python application on Windows, trying to find out why it was so much slower than on Mac or Linux. The application is an in-house build tool which reads a number of config files, then writes some output files. Using the RunSnakeRun Python profile viewer on Windows, two things immediately leapt out at me: we were running os.stat a lot and file.close was really expensive. A quick test convinced me that we were stat-ing the same files over and over. It was a combination of explicit checks and implicit code, like os.walk calling os.path.isdir. I wrote a little cache that memoizes the results, which brought the cost of the os.stats down from 1.5 seconds to 0.6. Figuring out why closing files was so expensive was harder. I was writing 77 files, totaling just over 1MB, and it was taking 3.5 seconds. It turned out that it wasn't the UTF-8 codec or newline translation. It was simply that closing those files took far longer than it should have. I decided to try a different profiler, hoping to learn more. I downloaded the Windows Performance Toolkit. I recorded a couple of traces of my application running, then I looked at them in the Windows Performance Analyzer, whereupon I saw that in each case, the CPU spike of my app was followed by a CPU spike in MsMpEng.exe. What's MsMpEng.exe? It's Microsoft's antimalware engine, at the heart of Windows Defender. I added my build tree to the list of excluded locations, and my runtime halved. The 3.5 seconds of file closing dropped to 60 milliseconds, a 98% reduction. The moral of this story is: don't let your virus checker run on your builds.

    Read the article

  • Database Schema Usage

    - by CrazyHorse
    I have a question regarding the appropriate use of SQL Server database schemas and was hoping that some database gurus might be able to offer some guidance around best practice. Just to give a bit of background, my team has recently shrunk to 2 people and we have just been merged with another 6 person team. My team had set up a SQL Server environment running off a desktop backing up to another desktop (and nightly to the network), whilst the new team has a formal SQL Server environment, running on a dedicated server, with backups and maintenance all handled by a dedicated team. So far it's good news for my team. Now to the query. My team designed all our tables to belong to a 3-letter schema name (e.g. User = USR, General = GEN, Account = ACC) which broadly speaking relate to specific applications, although there is a lot of overlap. My new team has come from an Access background and have implemented their tables within dbo with a 3-letter perfix followed by "_tbl" so the examples above would be dbo.USR_tblTableName, dbo.GEN_tblTableName and dbo.ACC_tblTableName. Further to this, neither my old team nor my new team has gone live with their SQL Servers yet (we're both coincidentally migrating away from Access environments) and the new team have said they're willing to consider adopting our approach if we can explain how this would be beneficial. We are not anticipating handling table updates at schema level, as we will be using application-level logins. Also, with regards to the unwieldiness of the 7-character prefix, I'm not overly concerned myself as we're using LINQ almost exclusively so the tables can simply be renamed in the DMBL (although I know that presents some challenges when we update the DBML). So therefore, given that both teams need to be aligned with one another, can anyone offer any convincing arguments either way?

    Read the article

  • Is my use case diagram correct?

    - by Dummy Derp
    NOTE: I am self studying UML so I have nobody to verify my diagrams and hence I am posting here, so please bear with me. This is the problem I got from some PDF available on Google that simply had the following problem statement: Problem Statement: A library contains books and journals. The task is to develop a computer system for borrowing books. In order to borrow a book the borrower must be a member of the library. There is a limit on the number of books that can be borrowed by each member of the library. The library may have several copies of a given book. It is possible to reserve a book. Some books are for short term loans only. Other books may be borrowed for 3 weeks. Users can extend the loans. 1. Draw a use case diagram for a library. 2. Give a use case description for two use cases: • Borrow copy of book • Extend loan Diagram: Use case description: 1. Borrow a copy of the book: If the person wishes to borrow a book from Derpville Public Library, he/she must be a member of the library in which case they will be allowed to issue a certain number of books. If the person is not a member, the book will not be issued to them for taking away, rather they will have to sit and read in the library. 2. Extending loan: Some books will be lent for 3 weeks while others will be lent for more than 3 weeks in which case the person borrowing has to come to the library and get the date extended. There is a limit on how much the user can extend the date of a particular book.

    Read the article

  • How to set acpi=off for installation?

    - by Johan Helgø
    I'm trying to install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 64bit from a USB created in Windows using the recommended software from pendrivelinux. The USB is tested on two laptops and works fine. The install does not work on my desktop PC, it either hangs with lots of text on the screen, or it just gives me a screen with garbled colors. Right now it hangs on "[3.925311] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...", but it hangs on different spots every time I try. I know that acpi=off will fix this. On older versions, there used to be a pink screen with the icon of a keyboard, at that screen I could press ESC, and I would then get a long list of languages, I could choose English, and then I would get options for setting acpi=off, then install without any problems. This new install menu does not have those options. The (now black and white) "Installer boot menu"'s advanced options is blank. There simply are no advanced options. If I go to help, then press F6, I get to a help screen describing the different boot parameters. I see examples of writing "Install acpi=off" However, writing "install acpi=off" it gives an error saying "could not find kernel image: install". How can I install Ubuntu 12.04 with acpi=off? (Oh, btw, nothing happens if I press F6 in the "Installer boot menu")

    Read the article

  • Remote Data connection in iphone app

    - by Tariq- iPHONE Programmer
    Hello, i am working with Social Networking iphone app which require remote data connection. So i hired a php developer in order to provide me RESTful services. But when i start working with him, he arguing me that he will not make stored procedures and web services. Instead of he suggested me to pass query as a parameter. Suppose If I have to call Search service, he told me to send POST request with 3 parameters: Query="select * from users", username=abd and password = 123 And i thing there is no such architecture in order to use remote data. Then he is saying it is possible through socket programming. And I am 100% sure this is not an appropriate way to access remote data. This is simply illogical. Thousands of iphone application using REST/SOAP services to make remote data connection He just declined me to provide RESTful services. Please its my heartily advice to all developers that post your own views over here. So that I can show to that developers that these are the views from all developers worldwide.

    Read the article

  • What are my options for sharing music between Windows & Ubuntu on the same network?

    - by jgbelacqua
    We have a few Windows(XP & 7) and Ubuntu machines in the house sharing a wireless connection, and want to share music between them. If possible, I would like to be able to serve music from both Windows and Ubuntu (but it doesn't have to be the same time). I don't know much about sharing folders or streaming, but I'm guessing both would be options (that is, using a local client to access a shared song or a local client to access a shared stream). I want to be able to share the music between the systems as simply as possible. Bonus points (but not requirements) for cross-platform -- same application on both Windows and Ubuntu? available on startup (via daemon or autostart or whatnot) open source More info: All systems have dynamic addresses (DHCP) supplied from the ISP-supplied wireless router. There are several Gigabytes of music on one Windows XP box and one Ubuntu 10.10 The music is not well-sorted (I'm thinking this might have an impact on UI usability). Only has to be available internally (private address space behind the wireless router) bandwidth is not a problem We don't have (legitimate) admin access to the wireless router

    Read the article

  • Alert for Forms customers running Oracle Forms 10g

    - by Grant Ronald
    Doesn’t time fly!  While you might have been happily running your Forms 10g applications for about 5 years or so now, the end of premier support is creeping up and you need to start planning for a move to Oracle Forms 11g. The premier support end date in December 31st 2011 and this is documented in Note: 1290974.1 available from MOS. So how much of an impact is this going to be?  Maybe not as much as you think.  While Forms 11g is based on WebLogic Server (WLS),10g was based  on OC4J.  That in itself doesn’t impact Forms much.  In most case it will simply be a recompile of your Forms source files and redeploy on WLS 11g. The Forms builder is the same in 11g as in 10g although its currently not available as a separate download from the main middleware bundle.  You can also look at a WLS Basic license option which means you shouldn’t have to shell out on upgrading to a WLS Suite license option. So what’s the proof in this being a relatively straightforward upgrade?  Well, we’ve had a big uptake of Forms 11g already (which has itself been out for over 2 years).  Read about BT Expedite’s upgrade where “The upgrade of Forms from Oracle Forms 10g to Oracle Forms 11g was relatively simple and on the whole, was just a recompilation”.  Or AMEC where “This has been one of the easiest Forms conversions we’ve ever done and it was a simple recompile in all cases” So if you are on 10g (or even earlier versions) I’d strongly consider starting your planning for an upgrade to 11g now. As always, if you have any questions about this you can post on the OTN forums.

    Read the article

  • New Enhancements for InnoDB Memcached

    - by Calvin Sun
    In MySQL 5.6, we continued our development on InnoDB Memcached and completed a few widely desirable features that make InnoDB Memcached a competitive feature in more scenario. Notablely, they are 1) Support multiple table mapping 2) Added background thread to auto-commit long running transactions 3) Enhancement in binlog performance  Let’s go over each of these features one by one. And in the last section, we will go over a couple of internally performed performance tests. Support multiple table mapping In our earlier release, all InnoDB Memcached operations are mapped to a single InnoDB table. In the real life, user might want to use this InnoDB Memcached features on different tables. Thus being able to support access to different table at run time, and having different mapping for different connections becomes a very desirable feature. And in this GA release, we allow user just be able to do both. We will discuss the key concepts and key steps in using this feature. 1) "mapping name" in the "get" and "set" command In order to allow InnoDB Memcached map to a new table, the user (DBA) would still require to "pre-register" table(s) in InnoDB Memcached “containers” table (there is security consideration for this requirement). If you would like to know about “containers” table, please refer to my earlier blogs in blogs.innodb.com. Once registered, the InnoDB Memcached will then be able to look for such table when they are referred. Each of such registered table will have a unique "registration name" (or mapping_name) corresponding to the “name” field in the “containers” table.. To access these tables, user will include such "registration name" in their get or set commands, in the form of "get @@new_mapping_name.key", prefix "@@" is required for signaling a mapped table change. The key and the "mapping name" are separated by a configurable delimiter, by default, it is ".". So the syntax is: get [@@mapping_name.]key_name set [@@mapping_name.]key_name  or  get @@mapping_name set @@mapping_name Here is an example: Let's set up three tables in the "containers" table: The first is a map to InnoDB table "test/demo_test" table with mapping name "setup_1" INSERT INTO containers VALUES ("setup_1", "test", "demo_test", "c1", "c2", "c3", "c4", "c5", "PRIMARY");  Similarly, we set up table mappings for table "test/new_demo" with name "setup_2" and that to table "mydatabase/my_demo" with name "setup_3": INSERT INTO containers VALUES ("setup_2", "test", "new_demo", "c1", "c2", "c3", "c4", "c5", "secondary_index_x"); INSERT INTO containers VALUES ("setup_3", "my_database", "my_demo", "c1", "c2", "c3", "c4", "c5", "idx"); To switch to table "my_database/my_demo", and get the value corresponding to “key_a”, user will do: get @@setup_3.key_a (this will also output the value that corresponding to key "key_a" or simply get @@setup_3 Once this is done, this connection will switch to "my_database/my_demo" table until another table mapping switch is requested. so it can continue issue regular command like: get key_b  set key_c 0 0 7 These DMLs will all be directed to "my_database/my_demo" table. And this also implies that different connections can have different bindings (to different table). 2) Delimiter: For the delimiter "." that separates the "mapping name" and key value, we also added a configure option in the "config_options" system table with name of "table_map_delimiter": INSERT INTO config_options VALUES("table_map_delimiter", "."); So if user wants to change to a different delimiter, they can change it in the config_option table. 3) Default mapping: Once we have multiple table mapping, there should be always a "default" map setting. For this, we decided if there exists a mapping name of "default", then this will be chosen as default mapping. Otherwise, the first row of the containers table will chosen as default setting. Please note, user tables can be repeated in the "containers" table (for example, user wants to access different columns of the table in different settings), as long as they are using different mapping/configure names in the first column, which is enforced by a unique index. 4) bind command In addition, we also extend the protocol and added a bind command, its usage is fairly straightforward. To switch to "setup_3" mapping above, you simply issue: bind setup_3 This will switch this connection's InnoDB table to "my_database/my_demo" In summary, with this feature, you now can direct access to difference tables with difference session. And even a single connection, you can query into difference tables. Background thread to auto-commit long running transactions This is a feature related to the “batch” concept we discussed in earlier blogs. This “batch” feature allows us batch the read and write operations, and commit them only after certain calls. The “batch” size is controlled by the configure parameter “daemon_memcached_w_batch_size” and “daemon_memcached_r_batch_size”. This could significantly boost performance. However, it also comes with some disadvantages, for example, you will not be able to view “uncommitted” operations from SQL end unless you set transaction isolation level to read_uncommitted, and in addition, this will held certain row locks for extend period of time that might reduce the concurrency. To deal with this, we introduce a background thread that “auto-commits” the transaction if they are idle for certain amount of time (default is 5 seconds). The background thread will wake up every second and loop through every “connections” opened by Memcached, and check for idle transactions. And if such transaction is idle longer than certain limit and not being used, it will commit such transactions. This limit is configurable by change “innodb_api_bk_commit_interval”. Its default value is 5 seconds, and minimum is 1 second, and maximum is 1073741824 seconds. With the help of such background thread, you will not need to worry about long running uncommitted transactions when set daemon_memcached_w_batch_size and daemon_memcached_r_batch_size to a large number. This also reduces the number of locks that could be held due to long running transactions, and thus further increase the concurrency. Enhancement in binlog performance As you might all know, binlog operation is not done by InnoDB storage engine, rather it is handled in the MySQL layer. In order to support binlog operation through InnoDB Memcached, we would have to artificially create some MySQL constructs in order to access binlog handler APIs. In previous lab release, for simplicity consideration, we open and destroy these MySQL constructs (such as THD) for each operations. This required us to set the “batch” size always to 1 when binlog is on, no matter what “daemon_memcached_w_batch_size” and “daemon_memcached_r_batch_size” are configured to. This put a big restriction on our capability to scale, and also there are quite a bit overhead in creating destroying such constructs that bogs the performance down. With this release, we made necessary change that would keep MySQL constructs as long as they are valid for a particular connection. So there will not be repeated and redundant open and close (table) calls. And now even with binlog option is enabled (with innodb_api_enable_binlog,), we still can batch the transactions with daemon_memcached_w_batch_size and daemon_memcached_r_batch_size, thus scale the write/read performance. Although there are still overheads that makes InnoDB Memcached cannot perform as fast as when binlog is turned off. It is much better off comparing to previous release. And we are continuing optimize the solution is this area to improve the performance as much as possible. Performance Study: Amerandra of our System QA team have conducted some performance studies on queries through our InnoDB Memcached connection and plain SQL end. And it shows some interesting results. The test is conducted on a “Linux 2.6.32-300.7.1.el6uek.x86_64 ix86 (64)” machine with 16 GB Memory, Intel Xeon 2.0 GHz CPU X86_64 2 CPUs- 4 Core Each, 2 RAID DISKS (1027 GB,733.9GB). Results are described in following tables: Table 1: Performance comparison on Set operations Connections 5.6.7-RC-Memcached-plugin ( TPS / Qps) with memcached-threads=8*** 5.6.7-RC* X faster Set (QPS) Set** 8 30,000 5,600 5.36 32 59,000 13,000 4.54 128 68,000 8,000 8.50 512 63,000 6.800 9.23 * mysql-5.6.7-rc-linux2.6-x86_64 ** The “set” operation when implemented in InnoDB Memcached involves a couple of DMLs: it first query the table to see whether the “key” exists, if it does not, the new key/value pair will be inserted. If it does exist, the “value” field of matching row (by key) will be updated. So when used in above query, it is a precompiled store procedure, and query will just execute such procedures. *** added “–daemon_memcached_option=-t8” (default is 4 threads) So we can see with this “set” query, InnoDB Memcached can run 4.5 to 9 time faster than MySQL server. Table 2: Performance comparison on Get operations Connections 5.6.7-RC-Memcached-plugin ( TPS / Qps) with memcached-threads=8 5.6.7-RC* X faster Get (QPS) Get 8 42,000 27,000 1.56 32 101,000 55.000 1.83 128 117,000 52,000 2.25 512 109,000 52,000 2.10 With the “get” query (or the select query), memcached performs 1.5 to 2 times faster than normal SQL. Summary: In summary, we added several much-desired features to InnoDB Memcached in this release, allowing user to operate on different tables with this Memcached interface. We also now provide a background commit thread to commit long running idle transactions, thus allow user to configure large batch write/read without worrying about large number of rows held or not being able to see (uncommit) data. We also greatly enhanced the performance when Binlog is enabled. We will continue making efforts in both performance enhancement and functionality areas to make InnoDB Memcached a good demo case for our InnoDB APIs. Jimmy Yang, September 29, 2012

    Read the article

  • How to improve batching performance

    - by user4241
    Hello, I am developing a sprite based 2D game for mobile platform(s) and I'm using OpenGL (well, actually Irrlicht) to render graphics. First I implemented sprite rendering in a simple way: every game object is rendered as a quad with its own GPU draw call, meaning that if I had 200 game objects, I made 200 draw calls per frame. Of course this was a bad choice and my game was completely CPU bound because there is a little CPU overhead assosiacted in every GPU draw call. GPU stayed idle most of the time. Now, I thought I could improve performance by collecting objects into large batches and rendering these batches with only a few draw calls. I implemented batching (so that every game object sharing the same texture is rendered in same batch) and thought that my problems are gone... only to find out that my frame rate was even lower than before. Why? Well, I have 200 (or more) game objects, and they are updated 60 times per second. Every frame I have to recalculate new position (translation and rotation) for vertices in CPU (GPU on mobile platforms does not support instancing so I can't do it there), and doing this calculation 48000 per second (200*60*4 since every sprite has 4 vertices) simply seems to be too slow. What I could do to improve performance? All game objects are moving/rotating (almost) every frame so I really have to recalculate vertex positions. Only optimization that I could think of is a look-up table for rotations so that I wouldn't have to calculate them. Would point sprites help? Any nasty hacks? Anything else? Thanks.

    Read the article

  • 2D non-tile based map editor

    - by Jonesy
    I am currently developing a relatively simple 2D, topdown oriented adventure game for the iPhone and was wondering what would be the easiest way to create the maps for my game. I figured I would need some kind of visual editor that would give me immediate feedback and would allow me to place all objects in the world exactly where I want them. I could then load the saved representation of the world I create in the editor in my game. So, I am looking for a simple map editor that allows me to do this. All the objects in my game are simply textured rectangles build up from two triangles. All I need to be able to do is position different rectangles/objects in the map, and give them a texture. I am using texture atlases, so it would be useful to be able to assign portions of textures to the objects. I then need to be able to extract all the objects from the saved representation of my maps, together with the name/identifier of the texture(atlas) they use, and the area of the texture atlas. I have looked at some tile-based map editors like Tiled and Ogmo, but they don't seem to be able to do what I want. Any suggestions? EDIT: a more concrete example: something like the GameMaker level editor, but then with added export functionality in a handy format.

    Read the article

  • Programmer friendly non-voxel art styles?

    - by Overv
    Like many other programmers I've always wanted to make a game, but simply lack the skills to do any production quality graphics. I am however sure that I want to do the models and textures myself, because I need a lot of different objects and I am sure I wouldn't be able to find good matching models on 3D sites. That means I'll have to pick an art style that is "simple", programmer friendly. An extreme example of this is of course Minecraft, but I don't want to go that basic. I'm absolutely against creating a voxel game. What kind of art styles are out there that are relatively simple, i.e. things made out of basic shapes and textures, but are still good enough to form a believable and detailed world? An example of what I mean is wind waker. The objects are formed of relatively simples shapes, but still provide enough detail to create a nice, living world. The environment my game is set in is a city environment. What I'm really asking for here are good examples of "simple" art styles applied in practice, so I can choose one that fits my skills.

    Read the article

  • Web developing- Strange happenings

    - by Jason
    As I'm teaching myself PHP and MySQL during break, I'm experimenting coding in a Ubuntu virtual machine where Apache, MySQL and PHP have been installed and configured to a shared folder. I'm not a big fan of Kompozer because the source code layout is a PIA, so I've started checking out gPHPEdit. However, since using it, I've come across two issues: when I edit the .html and .php files, sometimes the file extension will change to .html~ and .php~, becoming invisible to the browser. The only solution is to switch to Windows, right click and rename the file extension. In Ubuntu Firefox, when I click on my prpject's Submit button for in a practice form, a dialog box pops up asking what Firefox should do with the .php file, rather than simply displaying it in the browser. When I do this in Windows Chrome & Firefox, it goes right to the response page. I'm not sure if this behavior is limited to gPHPEdit/Kompozer, but I've never noticed this happening in Dreamweaver. Any solutions? EDIT The behavior in Point 1 occurs both when Dreamweaver is open in Windows accessing the same files and when it is not. I changed the extension filename of welcome.php, added a comment in gPHPEdit, and the file changed to welcome.php~ upon saving.

    Read the article

  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for November 30, 2012

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Oracle SOA Database Adapter Polling in a Cluster: A Handy Logical Delete Pattern | Carlo Arteaga "Using the SOA database adapter usually becomes easier when the adapter is simply viewed and treated as a gateway between the Oracle SOA composite world and the database world," says Carlo Arteaga. "When viewing the adapter in this light one should come to understand that the adapter is not the ultimate all-in-one solution for database access and database logic needs." OIM 11g : Multi-thread approach for writing custom scheduled job | Saravanan V S Saravanan shares insight and expertise relevant to "designing and developing an OIM schedule job that uses multi threaded approach for updating data in OIM using APIs." When Premature Optimization Isn't | Dustin Marx "Perhaps the most common situations in which I have seen developers make bad decisions under the pretense of 'avoiding premature optimization' is making bad architecture or design choices," says Dustin Marx. Protecting Intranet and Extranet Applications with a Single OAM 11g Deployment | Brian Eidelman Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team member Brian Eideleman's post, part of the Oracle Access Manager Academy series, explores issues and soluions around setting up a single OAM deployment to protect both intranet and extranet apps. Thought for the Day "Never make a technical decision based upon the politics of the situation, and never make a political decision based upon technical issues." — Geoffrey James Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

    Read the article

  • Google bots are severely affecting site performance

    - by Lynn
    I have an aggregate site on a linux server that pulls in feeds from a universe of about 2,000 blogs. It's in Wordpress 3.4.2 and I have a cron job that is staggered to run five times an hour on another server to pull in the stories and then publish them to the front page of this site. This is so I didn't put too much pressure all on one server. However, the Google bots, which visit a few times every hour bring the server to its knees in the morning and evenings when there is an increase in traffic on the site. The bots have something like 30,000 links to follow at this point. How do I throttle the bots to simply grab the new stories off the front page and stop there? EDIT- Details of my server configuration: The way we have this set up is the server that handles all the publishing is an unmanaged instance via AWS. It mounts the NFS server and connects to the RDS to update content, etc. You get to this publishing instance via a plugin that detects the wp-admin link and then redirects you into there. The front end app server also mounts the NFS and requests data from the RDS. It is the only one that has the WP Super Cache on it.... The OS is Ubuntu on the App server and the NFS runs CentOs. The front end is Nginx and the publishing server is Apache.

    Read the article

  • Cloud Computing and Data Utilization

    - by Ahsan Alam
    Someone recently asked me “is cloud computing going to change the way we perceive data?”. My first instinct was “off course”; but I restrained myself and thought for a moment. Then my answer was “no”. Why do I feel that way? Technology and business have evolved quite a bit in the past few decades; however, the need to effectively view and utilize data hasn't changed. It is not uncommon to see many organization to rely on multiple database management systems (DBMS). Applications and systems are often built to utilize information from all these data sources, and effectively present them to users. In addition to multiple DBMS, corporations are also housing their systems across numerous data centers. In fact, systems and data can reside anywhere around the world with the advent of globalization. Cloud based systems have simply provided us a different place to maintain our data, nothing more. Hosting costs, security and accessibility are different issues; however, the way we utilize and view these data remains the same.

    Read the article

  • Cluster Nodes as RAID Drives

    - by BuckWoody
    I'm unable to sleep tonight so I thought I would push this post out VERY early. When you don't sleep your mind takes interesting turns, which can be a good thing. I was watching a briefing today by a couple of friends as they were talking about various ways to arrange a Windows Server Cluster for SQL Server. I often see an "active" node of a cluster with a "passive" node backing it up. That means one node is working and accepting transactions, and the other is not doing any work but simply "standing by" waiting for the first to fail over. The configuration in the demonstration I saw was a bit different. In this example, there were three nodes that were actively working, and a fourth standing by for all three. I've put configurations like this one into place before, but as I was looking at their architecture diagram, it looked familar - it looked like a RAID drive setup! And that's not a bad way to think about your cluster arrangements. The same concerns you might think about for a particular RAID configuration provides a good way to think about protecting your systems in general. So even if you're not staying awake all night thinking about SQL Server clusters, take this post as an opportunity for "lateral thinking" - a way of combining in your mind the concepts from one piece of knowledge to another. You might find a new way of making your technical environment a little better. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

    Read the article

  • #mvvmlight V4 update for Win8 RTM

    - by Laurent Bugnion
    With Windows 8 RTM out of the doors (at least for some of us), it was also time to create an update to MVVM Light. I selected the V4 RTM to do this (V4.0.23).This RTM version was released a few weeks ago with no much bells and whistles because I was just too busy to write much about it. Now after some vacation, I will resume blogging on all my favorite topics including of course MVVM Light. Upgrade Upgrading the installations should not require an ununistall, so try to simply run the MSI downloaded from the Download section at http://mvvmlight.codeplex.com/. Should you encounter any issue, try to uninstall the old version first following the steps at http://galasoft.ch/mvvm/cleaning/. Upgrading current apps from Win8 RP to Win8 RTM I didn’t recompile the assemblies of MVVM Light, so if you had a version running with V4.0.23 on Windows 8 RP, you should be able to use the same DLLs on Windows 8 RTM. If you were using earlier versions however, I would recommend doing an upgrade. I noticed a warning regarding the signing certificate. It is due to the PFX key which appears to be outdated after the upgrade to Windows 8 RTM. I solved this warning by replacing the old PFX key with a new one I copied from a new project. The warning did not cause the build to fail though. About MVVM Light V4 RTM The RTM is finalizing quite a lot of issues. The change log is available at http://galasoft.ch/mvvm/installing/changes/. There are some issues that are either still open or that popped up since then, and I am working on V4.1 to be released in the next few weeks. In addition to that, I have plans to support Windows Phone 8 (when it comes) and have a nice list of ideas for V5 with a few new components. Thanks again for your continuous support of MVVM Light! Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

    Read the article

  • Back up a single table in SQL Server

    - by BuckWoody
    SQL Server doesn’t have an easy way to take a table backup, so I often use the bcp (Bulk Copy Program) to accomplish the same goal. I’ve mentioned this before, and someone told me when they tried it they couldn’t restore the table – ah the dangers of telling people half the information! I should have mentioned that you need to have a “format file” ready if the table does not exist at the destination. In my case I already had the table, in this person’s case they did not. The format file can be used to rebuild that table structure before the data is bcp’d in, and you can read more about it here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms191516.aspx There’s another way to back up a table, and that’s to create a Filegroup and place the table there. Then you can take a Filegroup backup to back up a single table. Of course, there are other methods of moving a single table’s data in an out, including SQL Server Integration Services and even the older Data Transformation Services, or simply by using hte SQLCMD or PowerShell utilities to run a query and just save the output to a file. In fact, these days I’m using a PowerShell script to build INSERT statements from that query. That could also easily be modified to create the table structure (or modify one if needed) quite easily. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

    Read the article

  • conky stopped displaying after daul monitors setup -- works when I detect monitors

    - by synaptik
    I just recently installed Ubuntu 12.04 on a clean install. I previously was using 11.10. I am also using a new laptop with a Dell docking-station and two external monitors. When I try to use the .conkyrc file that I used previously, my conky display simply doesn't show up anywhere. However, after I went to System Settings Displays and made some slight change that caused the monitors to refresh, then conky appeared as it should. Here is my .conkyrc file: background yes use_xft yes xftfont DejaVu Sans Mono:size=8 xftalpha 0.8 out_to_console no update_interval 2.0 total_run_times 0 draw_shades no short_units yes # Create own window instead of using desktop (required in nautilus) own_window yes # If own_window is yes, you may use type normal, desktop or override own_window_type override # Use pseudo transparency with own_window? own_window_transparent yes double_buffer yes default_color f0e68c color1 white color2 AD0303 alignment bottom_left gap_x 2 gap_y 30 no_buffers yes use_spacer right pad_percents 3 xftfont Terminus:size=10 TEXT $stippled_hr cpu1: ${color1}${cpu cpu1}% ${color} cpu2: ${color1}${cpu cpu2}% ${color} load: ${color1}$loadavg ${color} hot proc: ${color1}${top cpu 1}% - ${top name 1}${color} $stippled_hr big proc: ${color1}${top_mem mem_res 1} - ${top_mem name 1}${color} memory: ${color1}$mem/$memmax $memperc%${color} $stippled_hr disk: ${color1}${fs_used /}/${fs_size /}${color} swap: ${color1}${swap}/${swapmax}${color} ${diskiograph_read 15,120 color1 0077ff 750} ${diskiograph_write 15,120 color1 0077ff 750} $stippled_hr download: ${color1}${downspeed wlan0} /s${color} ${downspeedgraph eth0 20,120 104E8B 0077ff} upload: ${color1}${upspeed wlan0} /s${color} ${upspeedgraph eth0 20,120 104E8B 0077ff} How can I fix it so that I don't have to tamper with the Displays settings in order for conky to show up?

    Read the article

  • A Closable jQuery Plug-in

    - by Rick Strahl
    In my client side development I deal a lot with content that pops over the main page. Be it data entry ‘windows’ or dialogs or simple pop up notes. In most cases this behavior goes with draggable windows, but sometimes it’s also useful to have closable behavior on static page content that the user can choose to hide or otherwise make invisible or fade out. Here’s a small jQuery plug-in that provides .closable() behavior to most elements by using either an image that is provided or – more appropriately by using a CSS class to define the picture box layout. /* * * Closable * * Makes selected DOM elements closable by making them * invisible when close icon is clicked * * Version 1.01 * @requires jQuery v1.3 or later * * Copyright (c) 2007-2010 Rick Strahl * http://www.west-wind.com/ * * Licensed under the MIT license: * http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php Support CSS: .closebox { position: absolute; right: 4px; top: 4px; background-image: url(images/close.gif); background-repeat: no-repeat; width: 14px; height: 14px; cursor: pointer; opacity: 0.60; filter: alpha(opacity="80"); } .closebox:hover { opacity: 0.95; filter: alpha(opacity="100"); } Options: * handle Element to place closebox into (like say a header). Use if main element and closebox container are two different elements. * closeHandler Function called when the close box is clicked. Return true to close the box return false to keep it visible. * cssClass The CSS class to apply to the close box DIV or IMG tag. * imageUrl Allows you to specify an explicit IMG url that displays the close icon. If used bypasses CSS image styling. * fadeOut Optional provide fadeOut speed. Default no fade out occurs */ (function ($) { $.fn.closable = function (options) { var opt = { handle: null, closeHandler: null, cssClass: "closebox", imageUrl: null, fadeOut: null }; $.extend(opt, options); return this.each(function (i) { var el = $(this); var pos = el.css("position"); if (!pos || pos == "static") el.css("position", "relative"); var h = opt.handle ? $(opt.handle).css({ position: "relative" }) : el; var div = opt.imageUrl ? $("<img>").attr("src", opt.imageUrl).css("cursor", "pointer") : $("<div>"); div.addClass(opt.cssClass) .click(function (e) { if (opt.closeHandler) if (!opt.closeHandler.call(this, e)) return; if (opt.fadeOut) $(el).fadeOut(opt.fadeOut); else $(el).hide(); }); if (opt.imageUrl) div.css("background-image", "none"); h.append(div); }); } })(jQuery); The plugin can be applied against any selector that is a container (typically a div tag). The close image or close box is provided typically by way of a CssClass - .closebox by default – which supplies the image as part of the CSS styling. The default styling for the box looks something like this: .closebox { position: absolute; right: 4px; top: 4px; background-image: url(images/close.gif); background-repeat: no-repeat; width: 14px; height: 14px; cursor: pointer; opacity: 0.60; filter: alpha(opacity="80"); } .closebox:hover { opacity: 0.95; filter: alpha(opacity="100"); } Alternately you can also supply an image URL which overrides the background image in the style sheet. I use this plug-in mostly on pop up windows that can be closed, but it’s also quite handy for remove/delete behavior in list displays like this: you can find this sample here to look to play along: http://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebToolkit/Samples/Ajax/AmazonBooks/BooksAdmin.aspx For closable windows it’s nice to have something reusable because in my client framework there are lots of different kinds of windows that can be created: Draggables, Modal Dialogs, HoverPanels etc. and they all use the client .closable plug-in to provide the closable operation in the same way with a few options. Plug-ins are great for this sort of thing because they can also be aggregated and so different components can pick and choose the behavior they want. The window here is a draggable, that’s closable and has shadow behavior and the server control can simply generate the appropriate plug-ins to apply to the main <div> tag: $().ready(function() { $('#ctl00_MainContent_panEditBook') .closable({ handle: $('#divEditBook_Header') }) .draggable({ dragDelay: 100, handle: '#divEditBook_Header' }) .shadow({ opacity: 0.25, offset: 6 }); }) The window is using the default .closebox style and has its handle set to the header bar (Book Information). The window is just closable to go away so no event handler is applied. Actually I cheated – the actual page’s .closable is a bit more ugly in the sample as it uses an image from a resources file: .closable({ imageUrl: '/WestWindWebToolkit/Samples/WebResource.axd?d=TooLongAndNastyToPrint', handle: $('#divEditBook_Header')}) so you can see how to apply a custom image, which in this case is generated by the server control wrapping the client DragPanel. More interesting maybe is to apply the .closable behavior to list scenarios. For example, each of the individual items in the list display also are .closable using this plug-in. Rather than having to define each item with Html for an image, event handler and link, when the client template is rendered the closable behavior is attached to the list. Here I’m using client-templating and the code that this is done with looks like this: function loadBooks() { showProgress(); // Clear the content $("#divBookListWrapper").empty(); var filter = $("#" + scriptVars.lstFiltersId).val(); Proxy.GetBooks(filter, function(books) { $(books).each(function(i) { updateBook(this); showProgress(true); }); }, onPageError); } function updateBook(book,highlight) { // try to retrieve the single item in the list by tag attribute id var item = $(".bookitem[tag=" +book.Pk +"]"); // grab and evaluate the template var html = parseTemplate(template, book); var newItem = $(html) .attr("tag", book.Pk.toString()) .click(function() { var pk = $(this).attr("tag"); editBook(this, parseInt(pk)); }) .closable({ closeHandler: function(e) { removeBook(this, e); }, imageUrl: "../../images/remove.gif" }); if (item.length > 0) item.after(newItem).remove(); else newItem.appendTo($("#divBookListWrapper")); if (highlight) { newItem .addClass("pulse") .effect("bounce", { distance: 15, times: 3 }, 400); setTimeout(function() { newItem.removeClass("pulse"); }, 1200); } } Here the closable behavior is applied to each of the items along with an event handler, which is nice and easy compared to having to embed the right HTML and click handling into each item in the list individually via markup. Ideally though (and these posts make me realize this often a little late) I probably should set up a custom cssClass to handle the rendering – maybe a CSS class called .removebox that only changes the image from the default box image. This example also hooks up an event handler that is fired in response to the close. In the list I need to know when the remove button is clicked so I can fire of a service call to the server to actually remove the item from the database. The handler code can also return false; to indicate that the window should not be closed optionally. Returning true will close the window. You can find more information about the .closable class behavior and options here: .closable Documentation Plug-ins make Server Control JavaScript much easier I find this plug-in immensely useful especial as part of server control code, because it simplifies the code that has to be generated server side tremendously. This is true of plug-ins in general which make it so much easier to create simple server code that only generates plug-in options, rather than full blocks of JavaScript code.  For example, here’s the relevant code from the DragPanel server control which generates the .closable() behavior: if (this.Closable && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(DragHandleID) ) { string imageUrl = this.CloseBoxImage; if (imageUrl == "WebResource" ) imageUrl = ScriptProxy.GetWebResourceUrl(this, this.GetType(), ControlResources.CLOSE_ICON_RESOURCE); StringBuilder closableOptions = new StringBuilder("imageUrl: '" + imageUrl + "'"); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.DragHandleID)) closableOptions.Append(",handle: $('#" + this.DragHandleID + "')"); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.ClientDialogHandler)) closableOptions.Append(",handler: " + this.ClientDialogHandler); if (this.FadeOnClose) closableOptions.Append(",fadeOut: 'slow'"); startupScript.Append(@" .closable({ " + closableOptions + "})"); } The same sort of block is then used for .draggable and .shadow which simply sets options. Compared to the code I used to have in pre-jQuery versions of my JavaScript toolkit this is a walk in the park. In those days there was a bunch of JS generation which was ugly to say the least. I know a lot of folks frown on using server controls, especially the UI is client centric as the example is. However, I do feel that server controls can greatly simplify the process of getting the right behavior attached more easily and with the help of IntelliSense. Often the script markup is easier is especially if you are dealing with complex, multiple plug-in associations that often express more easily with property values on a control. Regardless of whether server controls are your thing or not this plug-in can be useful in many scenarios. Even in simple client-only scenarios using a plug-in with a few simple parameters is nicer and more consistent than creating the HTML markup over and over again. I hope some of you find this even a small bit as useful as I have. Related Links Download jquery.closable West Wind Web Toolkit jQuery Plug-ins © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in jQuery   ASP.NET  JavaScript  

    Read the article

  • Entity component system -> handling components that depend on one another

    - by jtedit
    I really like the idea of an entity component system and feel it has great flexibility, but have a question. How should dependent components be handled? I'm not talking about how components should communicate with other components they depend on, I have that sorted, but rather how to ensure components are present. For example, an entity cannot have a "velocity" component if it doesn't have a "position" component, in the same way it cant have an "acceleration" component if it doesn't have a "velocity" component. My first idea was every component class overrides an "onAddedToEntity(Entity ent)" function. Then in that function it checks that prerequisite components are also added to the entity, eg: struct EntCompVelocity() : public EntityComponent{ //member variables here void onAddedToEntity(Entity ent){ if(!ent.hasComponent(EntCompPosition::Id)){ ent.addComponent(new EntCompPosition()); } } } This has the nice property that if the acceleration component adds the velocity component, the velocity component will itself add the position component to the entity so dependency "trees" will sort themselves out. However my concern is if I do this components will silently be added with default values and, in the example of adding position, many entities will appear at the origin. Another idea was to simple have the "Entity.addComponent();" function return false if the component's prerequisite components aren't already on the entity, this would force you to manually add the position component and set its value before adding the velocity component. Finally I could simply not ensure a components prerequisite components are added, the "UpdatePosition" system only deals with entities with both a position and velocity component, so therefore adding a velocity component without having a position component wont be a problem (it wont cause crashes due to null pointer/etc), but it does mean entities will carry useless unused data if you add components but not their prerequisite components. Does anyone have experience with this problem and/or any of these methods to solve it? How did you solve the problem?

    Read the article

  • Resolution independence - resize on the fly or ship all sizes?

    - by RecursiveCall
    My game relies heavily on textures of various sizes with some being full-screen. The game is targeted for multiple resolutions. I found that resizing textures (downsizing) works quite well for this game’s art type (it’s not Pixel Art or anything like that). I asked my artist to ensure that all textures at the edges of the screen to be created in such a way that they can safely “overflow” off screen; this means that aspect ratio is not an issue. So with no aspect ratio issues, I figured that I would simply ask my artist to create assets in very high resolution, and then resize them down to the appropriate screen resolution. The question is, when and how do I do that? Do I pre-resize everything to common resolutions in Photoshop and package all assets in the final product (increasing the size download that the user has to deal with) and then select the appropriate asset based on the detected resolution? Or do I ship with the largest set of Textures, detect the resolution on load, set a render target and draw all downsized assets to it and use that? Or for the latter, do I use some sort of a CPU-sided algorithm to resize on game load?

    Read the article

  • IoT? Time for Enterprise Architecture

    - by OTN ArchBeat
    Of course you've been listening to the latest OTN ArchBeat Podcast on the challenges and opportunities in the Internet of Things. If so, you'll also be interested in ZDNet blogger Joe McKendricks' recent post, Will the 'Internet of Things' make CIOs' jobs harder?. In that post McKendrick offers this important bit of advice that will certainly have architects saying "I told you so." Enterprises need to develop architectural approaches to the management of data. Meaning the development of repeatable processes to source, ingest, transform and store information. For years, IT managers simply bought more hardware and addressed data with on-off integration projects. Now it's time for enterprise architecture. IoT is an important new phase in the evolution of enterprise IT. Challenging? You bet! But meeting any such challenge requires big, broad thinking and planning. In that context Enterprise Architecture has always been important. But as IoT gains traction and speed, enterprise architecture should be top of mind for all concerned.

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178  | Next Page >