special folders - Page 342

Center Pictures and Other Objects in Office 2007 & 2010

- by Matthew Guay

Sometimes it can be difficult to center a picture in a document just by dragging it dragging it around. Today we show you how to center pictures, images, and other objects perfectly in Word and PowerPoint. Note: For this tutorial we’re using Office 2010, but the steps are nearly identical in 2007. Centering a Picture in Word First let’s insert a picture into our document. Click the Insert tab, and then click Picture. Once you select the picture you want, it will be added to your document. Usually, pictures are added wherever your curser was in the document, so in a blank document it will be added at the top left. Also notice Picture Tools show up in the Ribbon after inserting an image. Note: The following menu items are available in Picture Tools Format tab which is displayed when you select the object or image you’re working with. How do we align the picture just like we want? Click Position to get some quick placement options, including centered in the middle of the document or on the top. However, for more advanced placement, we can use the Align tool. If Word isn’t maximized, you may only see the icon without the “Align” label. Notice the tools were grayed out in the menu by default. To be able to change the Alignment, we need to first change the text wrap settings. Click the Wrap Text button, and any option other than “In Line with Text”. Your choice will depend on the document you’re writing, just choose the option that works best in the document. Now, select the Align tools again. You can now position your image precisely with these options. Align Center will position your picture in the center of the page widthwise. Align Middle will put the picture in the middle of the page height-wise. This works the same with textboxes. Simply click the Align button in the Format tab, and you can center it in the page. And if you’d like to align several objects together, simply select them all, click Group, and then select Group from the menu. Now, in the align tools, you can center the whole group on your page for a heading, or whatever you want to use the pictures for. These steps also work the same with Office 2007. Center objects in PowerPoint This works similar in PowerPoint, except that pictures are automatically set for square wrapping automatically, so you don’t have to change anything. Simply insert the picture or other object of your choice, click Align, and choose the option you want. Additionally, if one object is already aligned like you want, drag another object near it and you will see a Smart Guide to help you align or center the second object with the first. This only works with shapes in PowerPoint 2010 beta, but will work with pictures, textboxes, and media in the final release this summer. Conclusion These are good methods for centering images and objects in Word and PowerPoint. From designing perfect headers to emphasizing your message in a PowerPoint presentation, this is something we’ve found useful and hope you will too. Since we’re talking about Office here, it’s worth mentioning that Microsoft has announced the Technology Guarantee Program for Office 2010. Essentially what this means is, if you purchase a version of Office 2007 between March 5th and September 30th of this year, when Office 2010 is released you’ll be able to upgrade to it for free! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add or Remove Apps from the Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 SuiteAdd More Functions To Office 2007 By Installing Add-InsCustomize Your Welcome Picture Choices in Windows VistaEasily Rotate Pictures In Word 2007Add Effects To Your Pictures in Word 2007 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Discover New Bundled Feeds in Google Reader Play Music in Chrome by Simply Dragging a File 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam Easily Sync Files & Folders with Friends & Family Amazon Free Kindle for PC Download Stretch popurls.com with a Stylish Script (Firefox)

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Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and things I wish were more intuitive

- by pjohnson

I've started using Windows Workflow Foundation, and so far ran into a few things that aren't incredibly obvious. Microsoft did a good job of providing a ton of samples, which is handy because you need them to get anywhere with WF. The docs are thin, so I've been bouncing between samples and downloadable labs to figure out how to implement various activities in a workflow. Code separation or not? You can create a workflow and activity in Visual Studio with or without code separation, i.e. just a .cs "Component" style object with a Designer.cs file, or a .xoml XML markup file with code behind (beside?) it. Absence any obvious advantage to one or the other, I used code separation for workflows and any complex custom activities, and without code separation for custom activities that just inherit from the Activity class and thus don't have anything special in the designer. So far, so good. Workflow Activity Library project type - What's the point of this separate project type? So far I don't see much advantage to keeping your custom activities in a separate project. I prefer to have as few projects as needed (and no fewer). The Designer's Toolbox window seems to find your custom activities just fine no matter where they are, and the debugging experience doesn't seem to be any different. Designer Properties - This is about the designer, and not specific to WF, but nevertheless something that's hindered me a lot more in WF than in Windows Forms or elsewhere. The Properties window does a good job of showing you property values when you hover the mouse over the values. But they don't do the same to find out what a control's type is. So maybe if I named all my activities "x1" and "x2" instead of helpful self-documenting names like "listenForStatusUpdate", then I could easily see enough of the type to determine what it is, but any names longer than those and all I get of the type is "System.Workflow.Act" or "System.Workflow.Compone". Even hitting the dropdown doesn't expand any wider, like the debugger quick watch "smart tag" popups do when you scroll through members. The only way I've found around this in VS 2008 is to widen the Properties dialog, losing precious designer real estate, then shrink it back down when you're done to see what you were doing. Really? WF Designer - This is about the designer, and I believe is specific to WF. I should be able to edit the XML in a .xoml file, or drag and drop using the designer. With WPF (at least in VS 2010 Ultimate), these are side by side, and changes to one instantly update the other. With WF, I have to right-click on the .xoml file, choose Open With, and pick XML Editor to edit the text. It looks like this is one way where WF didn't get the same attention WPF got during .NET Fx 3.0 development. Service - In the WF world, this is simply a class that talks to the workflow about things outside the workflow, not to be confused with how the term "service" is used in every other context I've seen in the Windows and .NET world, i.e. an executable that waits for events or requests from a client and services them (Windows service, web service, WCF service, etc.). ListenActivity - Such a great concept, yet so unintuitive. It seems you need at least two branches (EventDrivenActivity instances), one for your positive condition and one for a timeout. The positive condition has a HandleExternalEventActivity, and the timeout has a DelayActivity followed by however you want to handle the delay, e.g. a ThrowActivity. The timeout is simple enough; wiring up the HandleExternalEventActivity is where things get fun. You need to create a service (see above), and an interface for that service (this seems more complex than should be necessary--why not have activities just wire to a service directly?). And you need to create a custom EventArgs class that inherits from ExternalDataEventArgs--you can't create an ExternalDataEventArgs event handler directly, even if you don't need to add any more information to the event args, despite ExternalDataEventArgs not being marked as an abstract class, nor a compiler error nor warning nor any other indication that you're doing something wrong, until you run it and find that it always times out and get to check every place mentioned here to see why. Your interface and service need an event that consumes your custom EventArgs class, and a method to fire that event. You need to call that method from somewhere. Then you get to hope that you did everything just right, or that you can step through code in the debugger before your Delay timeout expires. Yes, it's as much fun as it sounds. TransactionScopeActivity - I had the bright idea of putting one in as a placeholder, then filling in the database updates later. That caused this error: The workflow hosting environment does not have a persistence service as required by an operation on the workflow instance "[GUID]". ...which is about as helpful as "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" and even more fun to debug. Google led me to this Microsoft Forums hit, and from there I figured out it didn't like that the activity had no children. Again, a Validator on TransactionScopeActivity would have pointed this out to me at design time, rather than handing me a nearly useless error at runtime. Easily enough, I disabled the activity and that fixed it. I still see huge potential in my work where WF could make things easier and more flexible, but there are some seriously rough edges at the moment. Maybe I'm just spoiled by how much easier and more intuitive development elsewhere in the .NET Framework is.

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Online Password Security Tactics

- by BuckWoody

Recently two more large databases were attacked and compromised, one at the popular Gawker Media sites and the other at McDonald’s. Every time this kind of thing happens (which is FAR too often) it should remind the technical professional to ensure that they secure their systems correctly. If you write software that stores passwords, it should be heavily encrypted, and not human-readable in any storage. I advocate a different store for the login and password, so that if one is compromised, the other is not. I also advocate that you set a bit flag when a user changes their password, and send out a reminder to change passwords if that bit isn’t changed every three or six months. But this post is about the *other* side – what to do to secure your own passwords, especially those you use online, either in a cloud service or at a provider. While you’re not in control of these breaches, there are some things you can do to help protect yourself. Most of these are obvious, but they contain a few little twists that make the process easier. Use Complex Passwords This is easily stated, and probably one of the most un-heeded piece of advice. There are three main concepts here: · Don’t use a dictionary-based word · Use mixed case · Use punctuation, special characters and so on So this: password Isn’t nearly as safe as this: P@ssw03d Of course, this only helps if the site that stores your password encrypts it. Gawker does, so theoretically if you had the second password you’re in better shape, at least, than the first. Dictionary words are quickly broken, regardless of the encryption, so the more unusual characters you use, and the farther away from the dictionary words you get, the better. Of course, this doesn’t help, not even a little, if the site stores the passwords in clear text, or the key to their encryption is broken. In that case… Use a Different Password at Every Site What? I have hundreds of sites! Are you kidding me? Nope – I’m not. If you use the same password at every site, when a site gets attacked, the attacker will store your name and password value for attacks at other sites. So the only safe thing to do is to use different names or passwords (or both) at each site. Of course, most sites use your e-mail as a username, so you’re kind of hosed there. So even though you have hundreds of sites you visit, you need to have at least a different password at each site. But it’s easier than you think – if you use an algorithm. What I’m describing is to pick a “root” password, and then modify that based on the site or purpose. That way, if the site is compromised, you can still use that root password for the other sites. Let’s take that second password: P@ssw03d And now you can append, prepend or intersperse that password with other characters to make it unique to the site. That way you can easily remember the root password, but make it unique to the site. For instance, perhaps you read a lot of information on Gawker – how about these: P@ssw03dRead ReadP@ssw03d PR@esasdw03d If you have lots of sites, tracking even this can be difficult, so I recommend you use password software such as Password Safe or some other tool to have a secure database of your passwords at each site. DO NOT store this on the web. DO NOT use an Office document (Microsoft or otherwise) that is “encrypted” – the encryption office automation packages use is very trivial, and easily broken. A quick web search for tools to do that should show you how bad a choice this is. Change Your Password on a Schedule I know. It’s a real pain. And it doesn’t seem worth it…until your account gets hacked. A quick note here – whenever a site gets hacked (and I find out about it) I change the password at that site immediately (or quit doing business with them) and then change the root password on every site, as quickly as I can. If you follow the tip above, it’s not as hard. Just add another number, year, month, day, something like that into the mix. It’s not unlike making a Primary Key in an RDBMS. P@ssw03dRead10242010 Change the site, and then update your password database. I do this about once a month, on the first or last day, during staff meetings. (J) If you have other tips, post them here. We can all learn from each other on this.

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Normal maps red in OpenGL?

- by KaiserJohaan

I am using Assimp to import 3d models, and FreeImage to parse textures. The problem I am having is that the normal maps are actually red rather than blue when I try to render them as normal diffuse textures. http://i42.tinypic.com/289ing3.png When I open the images in a image-viewing program they do indeed show up as blue. Heres when I create the texture; OpenGLTexture::OpenGLTexture(const std::vector<uint8_t>& textureData, uint32_t textureWidth, uint32_t textureHeight, TextureType textureType, Logger& logger) : mLogger(logger), mTextureID(gNextTextureID++), mTextureType(textureType) { glGenTextures(1, &mTexture); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, mTexture); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGBA, textureWidth, textureHeight, 0, glTextureFormat, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, &textureData[0]); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); glGenerateMipmap(GL_TEXTURE_2D); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); } Here is my fragment shader. You can see I just commented out the normal-map parsing and treated the normal map texture as the diffuse texture to display it and illustrate the problem. As for the rest of the code it interacts as expected with the diffuse textures so I dont see a obvious problem there. "#version 330 \n \ \n \ layout(std140) uniform; \n \ \n \ const int MAX_LIGHTS = 8; \n \ \n \ struct Light \n \ { \n \ vec4 mLightColor; \n \ vec4 mLightPosition; \n \ vec4 mLightDirection; \n \ \n \ int mLightType; \n \ float mLightIntensity; \n \ float mLightRadius; \n \ float mMaxDistance; \n \ }; \n \ \n \ uniform UnifLighting \n \ { \n \ vec4 mGamma; \n \ vec3 mViewDirection; \n \ int mNumLights; \n \ \n \ Light mLights[MAX_LIGHTS]; \n \ } Lighting; \n \ \n \ uniform UnifMaterial \n \ { \n \ vec4 mDiffuseColor; \n \ vec4 mAmbientColor; \n \ vec4 mSpecularColor; \n \ vec4 mEmissiveColor; \n \ \n \ bool mHasDiffuseTexture; \n \ bool mHasNormalTexture; \n \ bool mLightingEnabled; \n \ float mSpecularShininess; \n \ } Material; \n \ \n \ uniform sampler2D unifDiffuseTexture; \n \ uniform sampler2D unifNormalTexture; \n \ \n \ in vec3 frag_position; \n \ in vec3 frag_normal; \n \ in vec2 frag_texcoord; \n \ in vec3 frag_tangent; \n \ in vec3 frag_bitangent; \n \ \n \ out vec4 finalColor; " " \n \ \n \ void CalcGaussianSpecular(in vec3 dirToLight, in vec3 normal, out float gaussianTerm) \n \ { \n \ vec3 viewDirection = normalize(Lighting.mViewDirection); \n \ vec3 halfAngle = normalize(dirToLight + viewDirection); \n \ \n \ float angleNormalHalf = acos(dot(halfAngle, normalize(normal))); \n \ float exponent = angleNormalHalf / Material.mSpecularShininess; \n \ exponent = -(exponent * exponent); \n \ \n \ gaussianTerm = exp(exponent); \n \ } \n \ \n \ vec4 CalculateLighting(in Light light, in vec4 diffuseTexture, in vec3 normal) \n \ { \n \ if (light.mLightType == 1) // point light \n \ { \n \ vec3 positionDiff = light.mLightPosition.xyz - frag_position; \n \ float dist = max(length(positionDiff) - light.mLightRadius, 0); \n \ \n \ float attenuation = 1 / ((dist/light.mLightRadius + 1) * (dist/light.mLightRadius + 1)); \n \ attenuation = max((attenuation - light.mMaxDistance) / (1 - light.mMaxDistance), 0); \n \ \n \ vec3 dirToLight = normalize(positionDiff); \n \ float angleNormal = clamp(dot(normalize(normal), dirToLight), 0, 1); \n \ \n \ float gaussianTerm = 0.0; \n \ if (angleNormal > 0.0) \n \ CalcGaussianSpecular(dirToLight, normal, gaussianTerm); \n \ \n \ return diffuseTexture * (attenuation * angleNormal * Material.mDiffuseColor * light.mLightIntensity * light.mLightColor) + \n \ (attenuation * gaussianTerm * Material.mSpecularColor * light.mLightIntensity * light.mLightColor); \n \ } \n \ else if (light.mLightType == 2) // directional light \n \ { \n \ vec3 dirToLight = normalize(light.mLightDirection.xyz); \n \ float angleNormal = clamp(dot(normalize(normal), dirToLight), 0, 1); \n \ \n \ float gaussianTerm = 0.0; \n \ if (angleNormal > 0.0) \n \ CalcGaussianSpecular(dirToLight, normal, gaussianTerm); \n \ \n \ return diffuseTexture * (angleNormal * Material.mDiffuseColor * light.mLightIntensity * light.mLightColor) + \n \ (gaussianTerm * Material.mSpecularColor * light.mLightIntensity * light.mLightColor); \n \ } \n \ else if (light.mLightType == 4) // ambient light \n \ return diffuseTexture * Material.mAmbientColor * light.mLightIntensity * light.mLightColor; \n \ else \n \ return vec4(0.0); \n \ } \n \ \n \ void main() \n \ { \n \ vec4 diffuseTexture = vec4(1.0); \n \ if (Material.mHasDiffuseTexture) \n \ diffuseTexture = texture(unifDiffuseTexture, frag_texcoord); \n \ \n \ vec3 normal = frag_normal; \n \ if (Material.mHasNormalTexture) \n \ { \n \ diffuseTexture = vec4(normalize(texture(unifNormalTexture, frag_texcoord).xyz * 2.0 - 1.0), 1.0); \n \ // vec3 normalTangentSpace = normalize(texture(unifNormalTexture, frag_texcoord).xyz * 2.0 - 1.0); \n \ //mat3 tangentToWorldSpace = mat3(normalize(frag_tangent), normalize(frag_bitangent), normalize(frag_normal)); \n \ \n \ // normal = tangentToWorldSpace * normalTangentSpace; \n \ } \n \ \n \ if (Material.mLightingEnabled) \n \ { \n \ vec4 accumLighting = vec4(0.0); \n \ \n \ for (int lightIndex = 0; lightIndex < Lighting.mNumLights; lightIndex++) \n \ accumLighting += Material.mEmissiveColor * diffuseTexture + \n \ CalculateLighting(Lighting.mLights[lightIndex], diffuseTexture, normal); \n \ \n \ finalColor = pow(accumLighting, Lighting.mGamma); \n \ } \n \ else { \n \ finalColor = pow(diffuseTexture, Lighting.mGamma); \n \ } \n \ } \n"; Why is this? does normal-map textures need some sort of special treatment in opengl?

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Welcome to Jackstown

- by fatherjack

I live in a small town, the population count isn't that great but let me introduce you to some of the population. We'll start with Martin the Doc, he fixes up anything that gets poorly, so much so that he could be classed as the doctor, the vet and even the garage mechanic. He's got a reputation that he can fix anything and that hasn't been proved wrong yet. He's great friends with Brian (who gets called "Brains") the teacher who seems to have a sound understanding of any topic you care to pass his way. If he isn't sure he tells you and then goes to find out and comes back with a full answer real quick. Its good to have that sort of research capability close at hand. Brains is also great at encouraging anyone who needs a bit of support to get them up to speed and working on their jobs. Steve sees Brains regularly, that's because he is the librarian, he keeps all sorts of reading material and nowadays there's even video to watch about any topic you like. Steve keeps scouring all sorts of places to get the content that's needed and he keeps it in good order so that what ever is needed can be found quickly. He also has to make sure that old stuff gets marked as probably out of date so that anyone reading it wont get mislead. Over the road from him is Greg, he's the town crier. We don't have a newspaper here so Greg keeps us all informed of what's going on "out of town" - what new stuff we might make use of and what wont work in a small place like this. If we are interested he goes ahead and gets people in to demonstrate their products and tell us about the details. Greg is pretty good at getting us discounts too. Now Greg's brother Ian works for the mayors office in the "waste management department" nowadays its all about the recycling but he still has to make sure that the stuff that cant be used any more gets disposed of properly. It depends on the type of waste he's dealing with that decides how it need to be treated and he has to know a lot about the different methods and when to use which ones. There are two people that keep the peace in town, Brent is the detective, investigating wrong doings and applying justice where necessary and Bart is the diplomat who smooths things over when any people have a dispute or disagreement. Brent is meticulous in his investigations and fair in the way he handles any situation he finds. Discretion is his byword. There's a rumour that Bart used to work for the United Nations but what ever his history there is no denying his ability to get apparently irreconcilable parties working together to their combined benefit. Someone who works closely with Bart is Brad, he is the translator in town. He has several languages that he can converse in but he can also explain things from someone's point of view or and make it understandable to someone else. To keep things on the straight and narrow from a legal perspective is Ben the solicitor, making sure we all abide by the rules.Two people who make for an interesting evening's conversation if you get them together are Aaron and Grant, Aaron is the local planning inspector and Grant is an inventor of some reputation. Anything being constructed around here needs Aarons agreement. He's quite flexible in his rules though; if you can justify what you want to do with solid logic but he wont stand for any development going on without his inclusion. That gets a demolition notice and there's no argument. Grant as I mentioned is the inventor in town, if something can be improved or created then Grant is your man. He mainly works on his own but isnt averse to getting specific advice and assistance from specialist from out of town if they can help him finish his creations.There aren't too many people left for you to meet in the town, there's Rob, he's an ex professional sportsman. He played Hockey, Football, Cricket, you name it. He was in his element as goal keeper / wicket keeper and that shows in his personal life. He just goes about his business and people often don't even know that he's helped them. Really low profile, doesn't get any glory but saves people from lots of problems, even disasters on occasion. There goes Neil, he's a bit of an odd person, some people say he's gifted with special clairvoyant powers, personally I think he's got his ear to the ground and knows where to find out the important news as soon as its made public. Anyone getting a visit from Neil is best off to follow his advice though, he's usually spot on and you wont be caught by surprise if you follow his recommendations – wherever it comes from.Poor old Andrew is the last person to introduce you to. Andrew doesn't show himself too often but when he does it seems that people find a reason to blame him for their problems, whether he had anything to do with their predicament or not. In all honesty, without fail, and to his great credit, he takes it in good grace and never retaliates or gets annoyed when he's out and about. It pays off too as its very often the case that those who were blaming him recently suddenly find they need his help and they readily forget the issues pretty rapidly.And then there's me, what do I do in town? Well, I'm just a DBA with a lot of hats. (Jackstown Pop. 1)

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SQLCMD Mode: give it one more chance

- by Maria Zakourdaev

- Click on me. Choose me. - asked one forgotten feature when some bored DBA was purposelessly wondering through the Management Studio menu at the end of her long and busy working day. - Why would I use you? I have heard of no one who does. What are you for? - perplexedly wondered aged and wise DBA. At least that DBA thought she was aged and wise though each day tried to prove to her that she wasn't. - I know you. You are quite lazy. Why would you do additional clicks to move from window to window? From Tool to tool ? This is irritating, isn't it? I can run windows system commands, sql statements and much more from the same script, from the same query window! - I have all my tools that I‘m used to, I have Management Studio, Cmd, Powershell. They can do anything for me. I don’t need additional tools. - I promise you, you will like me. – the thing continued to whine . - All right, show me. – she gave up. It’s always this way, she thought sadly, - easier to agree than to explain why you don’t want. - Enable me and then think about anything that you always couldn’t do through the management studio and had to use other tools. - Ok. Google for me the list of greatest features of SQL SERVER 2012. - Well... I’m not sure... Think about something else. - Ok, here is something easy for you. I want to check if file folder exists or if file is there. Though, I can easily do this using xp_cmdshell … - This is easy for me. – rejoiced the feature. By the way, having the items of the menu talking to you usually means you should stop working and go home. Or drink coffee. Or both. Well, aged and wise dba wasn’t thinking about the weirdness of the situation at that moment. - After enabling me, – said unfairly forgotten feature (it was thinking of itself in such manner) – after enabling me you can use all command line commands in the same management studio query window by adding two exclamation marks !! at the beginning of the script line to denote that you want to use cmd command: -Just keep in mind that when using this feature, you are actually running the commands ON YOUR computer and not on SQL server that query window is connected to. This is main difference from using xp_cmdshell which is executing commands on sql server itself. Bottomline, use UNC path instead of local path. - Look, there are much more than that. - The SQLCMD feature was getting exited.- You can get IP of your servers, create, rename and drop folders. You can see the contents of any file anywhere and even start different tools from the same query window: Not so aged and wise DBA was getting interested: - I also want to run different scripts on different servers without changing connection of the query window. - Sure, sure! Another great feature that CMDmode is providing us with and giving more power to querying. Use “:” to use additional features, like :connect that allows you to change connection: - Now imagine, you have one script where you have all your changes, like creating staging table on the DWH staging server, adding fact table to DWH itself and updating stored procedures in the server where reporting database is located. - Now, give me more challenges! - Script out a list of stored procedures into the text files. - You can do it easily by using command :out which will write the query results into the specified text file. The output can be the code of the stored procedure or any data. Actually this is the same as changing the query output into the file instead of the grid. - Now, take all of the scripts and run all of them, one by one, on the different server. - Easily - Come on... I’m sure that you can not... -Why not? Naturally, I can do it using :r commant which is opening a script and executing it. Look, I can also use :setvar command to define an environment variable in SQLCMD mode. Just note that you have to leave the empty string between :r commands, otherwise it’s not working although I have no idea why. - Wow.- She was really impressed. - Ok, I’ll go to try all those… -Wait, wait! I know how to google the SQL SERVER features for you! This example will open chrome explorer with search results for the “SQL server 2012 top features” ( change the path to suit your PC): “Well, this can be probably useful stuff, maybe this feature is really unfairly forgotten”, thought the DBA while going through the dark empty parking lot to her lonely car. “As someone really wise once said: “It is what we think we know that keeps us from learning. Learn, unlearn and relearn”.

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How to Play PC Games on Your TV

- by Chris Hoffman

No need to wait for Valve’s Steam Machines — connect your Windows gaming PC to your TV and use powerful PC graphics in the living room today. It’s easy — you don’t need any unusual hardware or special software. This is ideal if you’re already a PC gamer who wants to play your games on a larger screen. It’s also convenient if you want to play multiplayer PC games with controllers in your living rom. HDMI Cables and Controllers You’ll need an HDMI cable to connect your PC to your television. This requires a TV with HDMI-in, a PC with HDMI-out, and an HDMI cable. Modern TVs and PCs have had HDMI built in for years, so you should already be good to go. If you don’t have a spare HDMI cable lying around, you may have to buy one or repurpose one of your existing HDMI cables. Just don’t buy the expensive HDMI cables — even a cheap HDMI cable will work just as well as a more expensive one. Plug one end of the HDMI cable into the HDMI-out port on your PC and one end into the HDMI-In port on your TV. Switch your TV’s input to the appropriate HDMI port and you’ll see your PC’s desktop appear on your TV. Your TV becomes just another external monitor. If you have your TV and PC far away from each other in different rooms, this won’t work. If you have a reasonably powerful laptop, you can just plug that into your TV — or you can unplug your desktop PC and hook it up next to your TV. Now you’ll just need an input device. You probably don’t want to sit directly in front of your TV with a wired keyboard and mouse! A wireless keyboard and wireless mouse can be convenient and may be ideal for some games. However, you’ll probably want a game controller like console players use. Better yet, get multiple game controllers so you can play local-multiplayer PC games with other people. The Xbox 360 controller is the ideal controller for PC gaming. Windows supports these controllers natively, and many PC games are designed specifically for these controllers. Note that Xbox One controllers aren’t yet supported on Windows because Microsoft hasn’t released drivers for them. Yes, you could use a third-party controller or go through the process of pairing a PlayStation controller with your PC using unofficial tools, but it’s better to get an Xbox 360 controller. Just plug one or more Xbox controllers into your PC’s USB ports and they’ll work without any setup required. While many PC games to support controllers, bear in mind that some games require a keyboard and mouse. A TV-Optimized Interface Use Steam’s Big Picture interface to more easily browse and launch games. This interface was designed for using on a television with controllers and even has an integrated web browser you can use with your controller. It will be used on the Valve’s Steam Machine consoles as the default TV interface. You can use a mouse with it too, of course. There’s also nothing stopping you from just using your Windows desktop with a mouse and keyboard — aside from how inconvenient it will be. To launch Big Picture Mode, open Steam and click the Big Picture button at the top-right corner of your screen. You can also press the glowing Xbox logo button in the middle of an Xbox 360 Controller to launch the Big Picture interface if Steam is open. Another Option: In-Home Streaming If you want to leave your PC in one room of your home and play PC games on a TV in a different room, you can consider using local streaming to stream games over your home network from your gaming PC to your television. Bear in mind that the game won’t be as smooth and responsive as it would if you were sitting in front of your PC. You’ll also need a modern router with fast wireless network speeds to keep up with the game streaming. Steam’s built-in In-Home Streaming feature is now available to everyone. You could plug a laptop with less-powerful graphics hardware into your TV and use it to stream games from your powerful desktop gaming rig. You could also use an older desktop PC you have lying around. To stream a game, log into Steam on your gaming PC and log into Steam with the same account on another computer on your home network. You’ll be able to view the library of installed games on your other PC and start streaming them. NVIDIA also has their own GameStream solution that allows you to stream games from a PC with powerful NVIDIA graphics hardware. However, you’ll need an NVIDIA Shield handheld gaming console to do this. At the moment, NVIDIA’s game streaming solution can only stream to the NVIDIA Shield. However, the NVIDIA Shield device can be connected to your TV so you can play that streaming game on your TV. Valve’s Steam Machines are supposed to bring PC gaming to the living room and they’ll do it using HDMI cables, a custom Steam controller, the Big Picture interface, and in-home streaming for compatibility with Windows games. You can do all of this yourself today — you’ll just need an Xbox 360 controller instead of the not-yet-released Steam controller. Image Credit: Marco Arment on Flickr, William Hook on Flickr, Lewis Dowling on Flickr

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The clock hands of the buffer cache

- by Tony Davis

Over a leisurely beer at our local pub, the Waggon and Horses, Phil Factor was holding forth on the esoteric, but strangely poetic, language of SQL Server internals, riddled as it is with 'sleeping threads', 'stolen pages', and 'memory sweeps'. Generally, I remain immune to any twinge of interest in the bowels of SQL Server, reasoning that there are certain things that I don't and shouldn't need to know about SQL Server in order to use it successfully. Suddenly, however, my attention was grabbed by his mention of the 'clock hands of the buffer cache'. Back at the office, I succumbed to a moment of weakness and opened up Google. He wasn't lying. SQL Server maintains various memory buffers, or caches. For example, the plan cache stores recently-used execution plans. The data cache in the buffer pool stores frequently-used pages, ensuring that they may be read from memory rather than via expensive physical disk reads. These memory stores are classic LRU (Least Recently Updated) buffers, meaning that, for example, the least frequently used pages in the data cache become candidates for eviction (after first writing the page to disk if it has changed since being read into the cache). SQL Server clearly needs some mechanism to track which pages are candidates for being cleared out of a given cache, when it is getting too large, and it is this mechanism that is somewhat more labyrinthine than I previously imagined. Each page that is loaded into the cache has a counter, a miniature "wristwatch", which records how recently it was last used. This wristwatch gets reset to "present time", each time a page gets updated and then as the page 'ages' it clicks down towards zero, at which point the page can be removed from the cache. But what is SQL Server is suffering memory pressure and urgently needs to free up more space than is represented by zero-counter pages (or plans etc.)? This is where our 'clock hands' come in. Each cache has associated with it a "memory clock". Like most conventional clocks, it has two hands; one "external" clock hand, and one "internal". Slava Oks is very particular in stressing that these names have "nothing to do with the equivalent types of memory pressure". He's right, but the names do, in that peculiar Microsoft tradition, seem designed to confuse. The hands do relate to memory pressure; the cache "eviction policy" is determined by both global and local memory pressures on SQL Server. The "external" clock hand responds to global memory pressure, in other words pressure on SQL Server to reduce the size of its memory caches as a whole. Global memory pressure – which just to confuse things further seems sometimes to be referred to as physical memory pressure – can be either external (from the OS) or internal (from the process itself, e.g. due to limited virtual address space). The internal clock hand responds to local memory pressure, in other words the need to reduce the size of a single, specific cache. So, for example, if a particular cache, such as the plan cache, reaches a defined "pressure limit" the internal clock hand will start to turn and a memory sweep will be performed on that cache in order to remove plans from the memory store. During each sweep of the hands, the usage counter on the cache entry is reduced in value, effectively moving its "last used" time to further in the past (in effect, setting back the wrist watch on the page a couple of hours) and increasing the likelihood that it can be aged out of the cache. There is even a special Dynamic Management View, sys.dm_os_memory_cache_clock_hands, which allows you to interrogate the passage of the clock hands. Frequently turning hands equates to excessive memory pressure, which will lead to performance problems. Two hours later, I emerged from this rather frightening journey into the heart of SQL Server memory management, fascinated but still unsure if I'd learned anything that I'd put to any practical use. However, I certainly began to agree that there is something almost Tolkeinian in the language of the deep recesses of SQL Server. Cheers, Tony.

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Problems with opening CHM Help files from Network or Internet

- by Rick Strahl

As a publisher of a Help Creation tool called Html Help Help Builder, I’ve seen a lot of problems with help files that won't properly display actual topic content and displays an error message for topics instead. Here’s the scenario: You go ahead and happily build your fancy, schmanzy Help File for your application and deploy it to your customer. Or alternately you've created a help file and you let your customers download them off the Internet directly or in a zip file. The customer downloads the file, opens the zip file and copies the help file contained in the zip file to disk. She then opens the help file and finds the following unfortunate result: The help file comes up with all topics in the tree on the left, but a Navigation to the WebPage was cancelled or Operation Aborted error in the Help Viewer's content window whenever you try to open a topic. The CHM file obviously opened since the topic list is there, but the Help Viewer refuses to display the content. Looks like a broken help file, right? But it's not - it's merely a Windows security 'feature' that tries to be overly helpful in protecting you. The reason this happens is because files downloaded off the Internet - including ZIP files and CHM files contained in those zip files - are marked as as coming from the Internet and so can potentially be malicious, so do not get browsing rights on the local machine – they can’t access local Web content, which is exactly what help topics are. If you look at the URL of a help topic you see something like this: mk:@MSITStore:C:\wwapps\wwIPStuff\wwipstuff.chm::/indexpage.htm which points at a special Microsoft Url Moniker that in turn points the CHM file and a relative path within that HTML help file. Try pasting a URL like this into Internet Explorer and you'll see the help topic pop up in your browser (along with a warning most likely). Although the URL looks weird this still equates to a call to the local computer zone, the same as if you had navigated to a local file in IE which by default is not allowed. Unfortunately, unlike Internet Explorer where you have the option of clicking a security toolbar, the CHM viewer simply refuses to load the page and you get an error page as shown above. How to Fix This - Unblock the Help File There's a workaround that lets you explicitly 'unblock' a CHM help file. To do this: Open Windows Explorer Find your CHM file Right click and select Properties Click the Unblock button on the General tab Here's what the dialog looks like: Clicking the Unblock button basically, tells Windows that you approve this Help File and allows topics to be viewed. Is this insecure? Not unless you're running a really old Version of Windows (XP pre-SP1). In recent versions of Windows Internet Explorer pops up various security dialogs or fires script errors when potentially malicious operations are accessed (like loading Active Controls), so it's relatively safe to run local content in the CHM viewer. Since most help files don't contain script or only load script that runs pure JavaScript access web resources this works fine without issues. How to avoid this Problem As an application developer there's a simple solution around this problem: Always install your Help Files with an Installer. The above security warning pop up because Windows can't validate the source of the CHM file. However, if the help file is installed as part of an installation the installation and all files associated with that installation including the help file are trusted. A fully installed Help File of an application works just fine because it is trusted by Windows. Summary It's annoying as all hell that this sort of obtrusive marking is necessary, but it's admittedly a necessary evil because of Microsoft's use of the insecure Internet Explorer engine that drives the CHM Html Engine's topic viewer. Because help files are viewing local content and script is allowed to execute in CHM files there's potential for malicious code hiding in CHM files and the above precautions are supposed to avoid any issues. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012 Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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Architect Day: Boston - Agenda Update

- by Bob Rhubart

Here's the latest information on the session schedule and content for Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Boston, MA on September 12, 2012. Registration is open, but seating is limited. When: September 12, 2012 8:30am – 5:00pm Where: Boston Marriott Burlington One Burlington Mall Road Burlington, MA 01803 Register now Agenda Time Session Title Room 8:30 am - 9:00 am Registration and Continental Breakfast Salon E Foyer 9:00 am - 9:15 am Welcome and Opening Comments | Bob Rhubart Salon E 9:15 am - 10:00 am Engineered Systems: Oracle's Vision for the Future | Ralf Dossmann Oracle's Exadata and Exalogic are impressive products in their own right. But working in combination they deliver unparalleled transaction processing performance with up to a 30x increase over existing legacy systems, with the lowest cost of ownership over a 3 or 5 year basis than any other hardware. In this session you'll learn how to leverage Oracle's Engineered Systems within your enterprise to deliver record-breaking performance at the lowest TCO. Salon E 10:00 am - 10:30 am Securing Public and Private Clouds | Anton Nielsen Long before the term "Cloud Computing" existed, Oracle technologies supported and promoted the concept. Centralized data with remote users has been at the core of these technologies for decades. The public cloud, and extending private clouds to the internet, though, has added security challenges never imagined decades ago. This presentation will examine a real life security breach and introduce architecture, technologies and policies to secure public and private clouds. Salon E 10:30 am - 10:45 am Break 10:45 am - 11:30 am Breakout Sessions (pick one) Cloud Computing - Making IT Simple | Scott Mattoon The road to Cloud Computing is not without a few bumps. This session will help to smooth out your journey by tackling some of the potential complications. We'll examine whether standardization is a prerequisite for the Cloud. We'll look at why refactoring isn't just for application code. We'll check out deployable entities and their simplification via higher levels of abstraction. And we'll close out the session with a look at engineered systems and modular clouds. Salon E Innovations in Grid Computing with Oracle Coherence | Rob Misek Learn how Coherence can increase the availability, scalability and performance of your existing applications with its advanced low-latency data-grid technologies. Also hear some interesting industry-specific use cases that customers had implemented and how Oracle is integrating Coherence into its Enterprise Java stack. Salon C 11:30 am - 12:15 pm Breakout Sessions (pick one) Enterprise Strategy for Cloud Security | Dave Chappelle Security is high on the list of concerns for many organizations as they evaluate their cloud computing options. This session will examine security in the context of the various forms of cloud computing. We'll consider technical and non-technical aspects of security, and discuss several strategies for cloud computing, from both the consumer and producer perspectives. Salon E Oracle Enterprise Manager | Avi Huber Much more than a DB management tool, Oracle Enterprise Manager provides management and monitoring coverage for the entire Oracle stack, and beyond. This session will concentrate on the middleware management functionality in OEM, starting with Real User Experience monitoring, through AppServer management, and into deep-dive Java diagnostics. We’ll discuss Business Driven Application Management (BDAM) and the benefits of top-down monitoring. Lastly, we’ll demonstrate how to trace a specific user experience problem, through a multitier SOA application, to its root cause, deep in the JVM. Salon C 12:15 pm - 1:15 pm Lunch Salon E Foyer 1:15 pm - 2:00 pm Panel Discussion - Q&A with session speakers Salon E 2:00 pm - 2:45 pm Breakout Sessions (pick one) Oracle Cloud Reference Architecture | Anbu Krishnaswamy Cloud initiatives are beginning to dominate enterprise IT roadmaps. Successful adoption of Cloud and the subsequent governance challenges warrant a Cloud reference architecture that is applied consistently across the enterprise. This presentation will answer the important questions: What exactly is a Cloud, why you need it, what changes it will bring to the enterprise, and what are the key capabilities of a Cloud infrastructure are - using Oracle's Cloud Reference Architecture, which is part of the IT Strategies from Oracle (ITSO) Cloud Enterprise Technology Strategy (ETS). Salon E 21st Century SOA | Peter Belknap Service Oriented Architecture has evolved from concept to reality in the last decade. The right methodology coupled with mature SOA technologies has helped customers demonstrate success in both innovation and ROI. In this session you will learn how Oracle SOA Suite's orchestration, virtualization, and governance capabilities provide the infrastructure to run mission critical business and system applications. And we'll take a special look at the convergence of SOA & BPM using Oracle's Unified technology stack. Salon C 2:45 pm - 3:00 pm Break 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm Roundtable Discussion Salon E 4:00 pm - 4:15 pm Closing Comments & Readouts from Roundtables Salon E 4:15 pm - 5:00 pm Networking / Reception Salon E Foyer Note: Session schedule and content subject to change.

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IndyTechFest Recap

- by Johnm

The sun had yet to raise above the horizon on Saturday, May 22nd and I was traveling toward the location of the 2010 IndyTechFest. In my freshly awaken, and pre-coffee, state I reflected on the months that preceded this day and how quickly they slipped away. The big day had finally come and the morning dew glistened with a unique brightness that morning. What is this all about? For those who are unfamiliar with IndyTechFest, it is a regional conference held in Indianapolis and hosted by the Indianapolis .NET Developers Association (IndyNDA) and the Indianapolis Professional Association for SQL Server (IndyPASS). The event presents multiple tracks and sessions covering subjects such as Business Intelligence, Database Administration, .NET Development, SharePoint Development, Windows Mobile Development as well as non-Microsoft topics such as Lean and MongoDB. This year's event was the third hosting of IndyTechFest. No man is an island No event such as IndyTechFest is executed by a single person. My fellow co-founders, with their highly complementary skill sets and philanthropy make the process very enjoyable. Our amazing volunteers and their aid were indispensible. The generous financial support of our sponsors that made the event and fabulous prizes possible. The spectacular line up of speakers who came from near and far to donate their time and knowledge. Our beloved attendees who sacrificed the first sunny Saturday in weeks to expand their skill sets and network with their peers. We are deeply appreciative. Challenges in preparation With the preparation of any event comes challenges. It is these challenges that makes the process of planning an event so interesting. This year's largest challenge was the location of the event. In the past two years IndyTechFest was held at the Gene B. Glick Junior Achievement Center in Indianapolis. This facility has been the hub of the Indy technical community for many years. As the big day drew near, the facility's availability came into question due to some recent changes that had occurred with those who operated the facility. We began our search for an alternative option. Thankfully, the Marriott Indianapolis East was available, was very spacious and willing to work within the range of our budget. Within days of our event, the decision to move proved to be wise since the prior location had begun renovations to the interior. Whew! Always trust your gut. Every day it's getting better At the ending of each year, we huddle together, review the evaluations and identify an area in which the event could improve. This year's big opportunity for improvement resided in the prize give-away portion at the end of the day. In the 2008 event, admittedly, this portion was rather chaotic, rushed and disorganized. This year, we broke the drawing into two sections, of which each attendee received two tickets. The first ticket was a drawing for the mountain of books that were given away. The second ticket was a drawing for the big prizes, the 2 Xboxes, 3 laptops and iPad. We peppered the ticket drawings with gift card raffles and tossing t-shirts into the audience. If at first you don't succeed, try and try again Each year of IndyTechFest, we have offered a means for ad-hoc sessions or discussion groups to pop-up. To our disappointment it was something that never quite took off. We have always believed that this unique type of session was valuable and wanted to figure out a way to make it work for this year. A special thanks to Alan Stevens, who took on and facilitated the "open space" track and made it an official success. Share with your tweety When the attendee badges were designed we decided to place an emphasis on the attendee's Twitter account as well as the events hash-tag (#IndyTechFest) to encourage some real-time buzz during the day. At the host table we displayed a Twitter feed for all to enjoy. It was quite successful and encouraging use of social media. My badge was missing my Twitter account since it was recently changed. For those who care to follow my rather sparse tweets, my address is @johnnydata. Man, this is one long blog post! All in all it was a very successful event. It is always great to see new faces and meet old friends. The planning for the 2011 IndyTechFest will kick off very soon. We have more capacity for future growth and a truck full of great ideas. Stay tuned!

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Why is my Ubuntu system not using the correct kernel?

- by Brooks Moses

We're having a bit of confusion on a Ubuntu remote system -- /boot/grub/menu.lst suggests the system should boot into kernel 2.6.35-30-generic, but it is actually running kernel 2.6.32-27-generic. Where should I look to start figuring out why this is happening and how to fix it? Specifically, /boot/grub/menu.lst has default 0 and the first entry is title Ubuntu 10.10, kernel 2.6.35-30-generic uuid 67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-30-generic root=UUID=67717ee3-cbf9-45d2- ae97-820256f4c4fd ro quiet splash initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-30-generic Further, I've confirmed that /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-30-generic and /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-30-generic exist and have appropriate permissions. Meanwhile, uname -a returns: $ uname -a Linux cuda2 2.6.32-27-generic #49-Ubuntu SMP Thu Dec 2 00:51:09 UTC 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux Edit: I've also tried re-running update-grub, and rebooting; no luck. Here's the full menu.lst, as requested by a commenter: # menu.lst - See: grub(8), info grub, update-grub(8) # grub-install(8), grub-floppy(8), # grub-md5-crypt, /usr/share/doc/grub # and /usr/share/doc/grub-legacy-doc/. ## default num # Set the default entry to the entry number NUM. Numbering starts from 0, and # the entry number 0 is the default if the command is not used. # # You can specify 'saved' instead of a number. In this case, the default entry # is the entry saved with the command 'savedefault'. # WARNING: If you are using dmraid do not use 'savedefault' or your # array will desync and will not let you boot your system. default 0 ## timeout sec # Set a timeout, in SEC seconds, before automatically booting the default entry # (normally the first entry defined). timeout 3 ## hiddenmenu # Hides the menu by default (press ESC to see the menu) hiddenmenu # Pretty colours #color cyan/blue white/blue ## password ['--md5'] passwd # If used in the first section of a menu file, disable all interactive editing # control (menu entry editor and command-line) and entries protected by the # command 'lock' # e.g. password topsecret # password --md5 $1$gLhU0/$aW78kHK1QfV3P2b2znUoe/ # password topsecret # # examples # # title Windows 95/98/NT/2000 # root (hd0,0) # makeactive # chainloader +1 # # title Linux # root (hd0,1) # kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 ro # # # Put static boot stanzas before and/or after AUTOMAGIC KERNEL LIST ### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST ## lines between the AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST markers will be modified ## by the debian update-grub script except for the default options below ## DO NOT UNCOMMENT THEM, Just edit them to your needs ## ## Start Default Options ## ## default kernel options ## default kernel options for automagic boot options ## If you want special options for specific kernels use kopt_x_y_z ## where x.y.z is kernel version. Minor versions can be omitted. ## e.g. kopt=root=/dev/hda1 ro ## kopt_2_6_8=root=/dev/hdc1 ro ## kopt_2_6_8_2_686=root=/dev/hdc2 ro # kopt=root=UUID=67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd ro ## default grub root device ## e.g. groot=(hd0,0) # groot=67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd ## should update-grub create alternative automagic boot options ## e.g. alternative=true ## alternative=false # alternative=true ## should update-grub lock alternative automagic boot options ## e.g. lockalternative=true ## lockalternative=false # lockalternative=false ## additional options to use with the default boot option, but not with the ## alternatives ## e.g. defoptions=vga=791 resume=/dev/hda5 # defoptions=quiet splash ## should update-grub lock old automagic boot options ## e.g. lockold=false ## lockold=true # lockold=false ## Xen hypervisor options to use with the default Xen boot option # xenhopt= ## Xen Linux kernel options to use with the default Xen boot option # xenkopt=console=tty0 ## altoption boot targets option ## multiple altoptions lines are allowed ## e.g. altoptions=(extra menu suffix) extra boot options ## altoptions=(recovery) single # altoptions=(recovery mode) single ## controls how many kernels should be put into the menu.lst ## only counts the first occurence of a kernel, not the ## alternative kernel options ## e.g. howmany=all ## howmany=7 # howmany=all ## specify if running in Xen domU or have grub detect automatically ## update-grub will ignore non-xen kernels when running in domU and vice versa ## e.g. indomU=detect ## indomU=true ## indomU=false # indomU=detect ## should update-grub create memtest86 boot option ## e.g. memtest86=true ## memtest86=false # memtest86=true ## should update-grub adjust the value of the default booted system ## can be true or false # updatedefaultentry=false ## should update-grub add savedefault to the default options ## can be true or false # savedefault=false ## ## End Default Options ## title Ubuntu 10.10, kernel 2.6.35-30-generic uuid 67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-30-generic root=UUID=67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd ro quiet splash initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-30-generic title Ubuntu 10.10, kernel 2.6.35-30-generic (recovery mode) uuid 67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-30-generic root=UUID=67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd ro single initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-30-generic title Ubuntu 10.10, kernel 2.6.32-32-server uuid 67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-32-server root=UUID=67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd ro quiet splash initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-32-server title Ubuntu 10.10, kernel 2.6.32-32-server (recovery mode) uuid 67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-32-server root=UUID=67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd ro single initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-32-server title Ubuntu 10.10, kernel 2.6.32-27-generic uuid 67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-27-generic root=UUID=67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd ro quiet splash initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-27-generic title Ubuntu 10.10, kernel 2.6.32-27-generic (recovery mode) uuid 67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-27-generic root=UUID=67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd ro single initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-27-generic title Chainload into GRUB 2 root 67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd kernel /boot/grub/core.img title Ubuntu 10.10, memtest86+ uuid 67717ee3-cbf9-45d2-ae97-820256f4c4fd kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin ### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST To add complication and joy to my life, this is a desktop machine in a remote datacenter; we don't have either local access or serial-console access. Suggestions?

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Rip and Convert DVD’s to an ISO Image

- by Mysticgeek

If you own a lot of DVD’s, you might want to convert them to an ISO image for backup and easily playing them on your media center. Today we take a look at ripping your discs using DVDFab, then using ImgBurn to create an ISO image of the ripped DVD files. Rip DVD with DVDFab6 DVDFab will remove copy protection and rip the DVD files for free. Other components in the suite require you to purchase a license after the 30 day trial, but you’ll still be able to rip DVD’s after the trial. Install DVDFab by accepting the defaults (link below)…a system restart is required to complete the install process. The first time you run it, a welcome screen is displayed. If you don’t want to see it again check the box Do not show again, then Start DVDFab. Pop the DVD in your drive and click Next. Now select your region and check Do not show again, then OK. It will then open the DVD and begin to scan it. Under DVD to DVD you can select either Full Disc or Main Movie depending on what you want to rip. If you want to burn the DVD to a disc after it’s created select the Full Disc option. Now click the Start button to begin the ripping process. After the ripping process has completed, you’ll get a message telling you it’s waiting for you to put in a blank DVD. Since we aren’t burning the disc, just cancel the message. Click Finish and close out of DVDFab or just minimize it if you’re going to keep using it to rip another DVD. By default the temporary directory is in My Documents \ DVDFab \ Temp…however you can change it in settings. If you go to the Temp directory you’ll see the DVD files listed there… Convert Files to ISO with ImgBurn Now that we have the files ripped from the DVD, we need to convert them to an ISO image using ImgBurn (link below). Open it up and from the main menu click on Create image file from files/folders. Click on the folder icon to browse to the location of the ripped DVD files. Browse to the DVDFab temp directory and the VIDEO_TS folder for the source and click Ok. Then choose a destination directory, give the ISO a name, and click Save. In this case we ripped the Unbreakable DVD, so named it that. So now in ImgBurn you have the source being the ripped DVD files, and the destination for the ISO…then click the Build button. If you don’t create a volume label, ImgBurn is kind enough to create on for you. If everything looks correct, click Ok. Now wait while ImgBurn goes through the process of converting the ripped DVD files to an ISO image. The process has successfully completed. The ISO image of the DVD will be in the output directory you selected earlier. Now you can burn the ISO image to a blank DVD or store it on an external hard drive for safe keeping. When you’re done, you’ll probably want to go into the temp DVDFab folder and delete the VOB and other files in the Video_TS folder as they will take up a lot of space on your hard drive. Conclusion Although this method requires two programs to make an ISO out of a DVD, it’s extremely quick. When burning DVD’s of various lengths, it took less than 30 minutes to get the final ISO. Now, you’ll have your DVD movies backed up in case something were to happen to the discs and are no longer playable. If you use Windows Media Center to watch your movies, check out our article on how to automatically mount and view ISO files in Windows 7 Media Center. With DVDFab, you get a 30 day fully functional trial for all of its features. You’ll still be able rip DVD’s even after the 30 day trial has ended. The more we’ve been using DVDFab, the more impressed we are with its capabilities, so after the 30 day trial you should consider purchasing a license. We will have a full review of the of it to share with you soon. Download DVDFab Download ImgBurn Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Rip DVDs with VLCCalculate with Qalculate on LinuxConvert a Row to a Column in Excel the Easy WayEnjoy Quick & Easy Unit Conversion with Convert for WindowsConvert Older Excel Documents to Excel 2007 Format TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Beware Hover Kitties Test Drive Mobile Phones Online With TryPhone Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, 3/23/10 New Stinger from McAfee Helps Remove ‘FakeAlert’ Threats Google Apps Marketplace: Tools & Services For Google Apps Users Get News Quick and Precise With Newser

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Global Perspective: Oracle AppAdvantage Does its Stage Debut in the UK

- by Tanu Sood

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Global Perspective is a monthly series that brings experiences, business needs and real-world use cases from regions across the globe. This month’s feature is a follow-up from last month’s Global Perspective note from a well known ACE Director based in EMEA. My first contribution to this blog was before Oracle Open World and I was quite excited about where this initiative would take me in my understanding of the value of Oracle Fusion Middleware. Rimi Bewtra from the Oracle AppAdvantage team came as promised to the Oracle ACE Director briefings and explained what this initiative was all about and I then asked the directors to take part in the new survey. The story was really well received and then at the SOA advisory board that many of these ACE Directors already take part in there was a further discussion on how this initiative will help customers understand the benefits of adoption. A few days later Rick Beers launched the program at a lunch of invited customer executives which included one from Pella who talked about their projects (a quick recap on that here). I wasn’t able to stay for the whole event but what really interested me was that these executives who understood the technology but where looking for how they could use them to drive their businesses. Lots of ideas were bubbling up in my head about how we can use this in user groups to help our members, and the timing was fantastic as just three weeks later we had UKOUG_Apps13, our flagship Applications conference in the UK. We had independently working with Oracle marketing in the UK on an initiative called Apps Transformation to help our members look beyond just the application they use today. We have had a Fusion community page but felt the options open are now much wider than Fusion Applications, there are acquired applications, social, mobility and of course the underlying technology, Oracle Fusion Middleware. I was really pleased to be allowed to give the Oracle AppAdvantage story as a session in our conference and we are planning a special Apps Transformation event in March where I hope the Oracle AppAdvantage team will take part and we will have the results of the survey to discuss. But, life also came full circle for me. In my first post, I talked about Andrew Sutherland and his original theory that Oracle Fusion Middleware adoption had technical drivers. Well, Andrew was a speaker at our event and he gave a potted, tech-talk free update on Oracle Open World. Andrew talked about the Prevailing Technology Winds, and what is driving this today and he talked about that in the past it was the move from simply automating processes (ERP etc), through the altering of those processes (SOA) and onto consolidation. The next drivers are around the need to predict, both faster and more accurately; how to better exploit the information that we have available. He went on to talk about The Nexus of Forces: Social, Mobile, Cloud and Information – harnessing these forces of change with Oracle technology. Gartner really likes this concept and if you want to know more you can get their paper here. All this has made me think, and I hope it will make you too. Technology can help us drive our businesses better and understanding your needs can be the first step on your journey, which was the theme of our event in the UK. I spoke to a number of the delegates and I hope to share some of their stories in later posts. If you have a story to share, the survey is at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/P335DD3 About the Author: Debra Lilley, Fujitsu Fusion Champion, UKOUG Board Member, Fusion User Experience Advocate and ACE Director. Debra has 18 years experience with Oracle Applications, with E Business Suite since 9.4.1, moving to Business Intelligence Team Leader and then Oracle Alliance Director. She has spoken at over 100 conferences worldwide and posts at debrasoraclethoughts Editor’s Note: Debra has kindly agreed to share her musings and experience in a monthly column on the Fusion Middleware blog so do stay tuned…

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Java EE at JavaOne - A Few Picks from a Very Rich Line-up

- by Janice J. Heiss

A rich and diverse set of sessions cast a spotlight on Java EE at this year’s JavaOne, ranging from the popular Web Framework Smackdown, to Java EE 6 and Spring, to sessions exploring Java EE 7, and one on the implications of HTML5. Some of the world’s best EE architects and developers will be sharing their insight and expertise. If only I could be at ten places at once!BOF4149 - Web Framework Smackdown 2012 Markus Eisele - Principal IT Architect, msg systems ag Graeme Rocher - Senior Staff Engineer, VMware James Ward - Developer Evangelist, Heroku Ed Burns - Consulting Member of Technical Staff, Oracle Santiago Pericasgeertsen - Software Engineer, Oracle* Monday, Oct 1, 8:30 PM - 9:15 PM - Parc 55 - Cyril Magnin II/III Much has changed since the first Web framework smackdown, at JavaOne 2005. Or has it? The 2012 edition of this popular panel discussion surveys the current landscape of Web UI frameworks for the Java platform. The 2005 edition featured JSF, Webwork, Struts, Tapestry, and Wicket. The 2012 edition features representatives of the current crop of frameworks, with a special emphasis on frameworks that leverage HTML5 and thin-server architecture. Java Champion Markus Eisele leads the lively discussion with panelists James Ward (Play), Graeme Rocher (Grails), Edward Burns (JSF) and Santiago Pericasgeertsen (Avatar).CON6430 - Java EE and Spring Framework Panel Discussion Richard Hightower - Developer, InfoQ Bert Ertman - Fellow, Luminis Gordon Dickens - Technical Architect, IT101, Inc. Chris Beams - Senior Technical Staff, VMware Arun Gupta - Technology Evangelist, Oracle* Tuesday, Oct 2, 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM - Parc 55 - Cyril Magnin II/III In the age of Java EE 6 and Spring 3, enterprise Java developers have many architectural choices, including Java EE 6 and Spring, but which one is right for your project? Many of us have heard the debate and seen the flame wars—it’s a topic with passionate community members, and it’s a vibrant debate. If you are looking for some level-headed discussion, grounded in real experience, by developers who have tried both, then come join this discussion. InfoQ’s Java editors moderate the discussion, and they are joined by independent consultants and representatives from both Java EE and VMWare/SpringSource.BOF4213 - Meet the Java EE 7 Specification Leads Linda Demichiel - Consulting Member of Technical Staff, Oracle Bill Shannon - Architect, Oracle* Tuesday, Oct 2, 5:30 PM - 6:15 PM – Parc 55 - Cyril Magnin II/III This is your chance to meet face-to-face with the engineers who are developing the next version of the Java EE platform. In this session, the specification leads for the leading technologies that are part of the Java EE 7 platform discuss new and upcoming features and answer your questions. Come prepared with your questions, your feedback, and your suggestions for new features in Java EE 7 and beyond.CON10656 - JavaEE.Next(): Java EE 7, 8, and Beyond Ian Robinson - IBM Distinguished Engineer, IBM Mark Little - JBoss CTO, NA Scott Ferguson - Developer, Caucho Technology Cameron Purdy - VP Development, Oracle*Wednesday, Oct 3, 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM - Parc 55 - Cyril Magnin II/IIIIn this session, hear from a distinguished panel of industry and open source luminaries regarding where they believe the Java EE community is headed, starting with Java EE 7. The focus of Java EE 7 and 8 is mostly on the cloud, specifically aiming to bring platform as a service (PaaS) providers and application developers together so that portable applications can be deployed on any cloud infrastructure and reap all its benefits in terms of scalability, elasticity, multitenancy, and so on. Most importantly, Java EE will leverage the modularization work in the underlying Java SE platform. Java EE will, of course, also update itself for trends such as HTML5, caching, NoSQL, ployglot programming, map/reduce, JSON, REST, and improvements to existing core APIs.CON7001 - HTML5 WebSocket and Java Danny Coward - Java, Oracle*Wednesday, Oct 3, 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM - Parc 55 - Cyril Magnin IThe family of HTML5 technologies has pushed the pendulum away from rich client technologies and toward ever-more-capable Web clients running on today’s browsers. In particular, WebSocket brings new opportunities for efficient peer-to-peer communication, providing the basis for a new generation of interactive and “live” Web applications. This session examines the efforts under way to support WebSocket in the Java programming model, from its base-level integration in the Java Servlet and Java EE containers to a new, easy-to-use API and toolset that are destined to become part of the standard Java platform.

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Modifying Service URLs with LINQ to Twitter

- by Joe Mayo

It’s funny that two posts so close together speak about flexibility with the LINQ to Twitter provider. There are certain things you know from experience on when to make software more flexible and when to save time. This is another one of those times when I got lucky and made the right choice up front. I’m talking about the ability to switch URLs. It only makes sense that Twitter should begin versioning their API as it matures. In fact, most of the entire API has moved to the v1 URL at “https://api.twitter.com/1/”, except for search and trends. Recently, Twitter introduced the available and local trends, but hung them off the new v1, and left the rest of the trends API on the old URL. To implement this, I muscled my way into the expression tree during CreateRequestProcessor to figure out which trend I was dealing with; perhaps not elegant, but the code is in the right place and that’s what factories are for. Anyway, the point is that I wouldn’t have to do this kind of stuff (as much fun as it is), if Twitter would have more consistency. Having went to Chirp last week and seeing the evolution of the API, it looks like my wish is coming true. …now if they would just get their stuff together on the mess they made with geo-location and places… but again, that’s all transparent if your using LINQ to Twitter because I pulled all of that together in a consistent way so that you don’t have to. Normally, when Twitter makes a change, code breaks and I have to scramble to get the fixes in-place. This time, in the case of a URL change, the adjustment is easy and no-one has to wait for me. Essentially, all you need to do is change the URL passed to the TwitterContext constructor. Here’s an example of instantiating a TwitterContext now: using (var twitterCtx = new TwitterContext(auth, "https://api.twitter.com/1/", "https://search.twitter.com/")) The third parameter constructor is the SearchUrl, which is used for Search and Trend APIs. You probably know what’s coming next; another constructor, but with the SearchUrl parameter set to the new URL as follows: using (var twitterCtx = new TwitterContext(auth, "https://api.twitter.com/1/", "https://api.twitter.com/1/")) One consequence of setting the URL this way is that you set the URL for both Trends and Search. Since Search is still using the old URL, this is going to break for Search queries. You could always instantiate a special TwitterContext instance for Search queries, with the old URL set. Alternatively, you can use the TwitterContext’s SearchUrl property. Here’s an example: twitterCtx.SearchUrl = "https://api.twitter.com/1/"; var trends = (from trend in twitterCtx.Trends where trend.Type == TrendType.Daily && trend.Date == DateTime.Now.AddDays(-2).Date select trend) .ToList(); Notice how I set the SearchUrl property just-in-time for the query. This allows you to target the URL for each specific query. Whichever way you prefer to configure the URL, it’s your choice. So, now you know how to set the URL to be used for Trend queries and how to prevent whacking your Search queries. I’ll be updating the Trend API to use same URL as all other APIs soon, so the only API left to use the SearchUrl will be Search, but for the short term, it’s Trends and Search. Until I make this change, you’ll have a viable work-around by setting the URL yourself, as explained above. These were the Search and Trend URLs, but you might be curious about the second parameter of the TwitterContext constructor; that’s the URL for all other APIs (the BaseUrl), except for Trend and Search. Similarly, you can use the TwitterContext’s BaseUrl property to set the BaseUrl. Setting the BaseUrl can be useful when communicating with other services. In addition to Twitter changing URLs, the Twitter API has been adopted by other companies, such as Identi.ca, Tumblr, and WordPress. This capability lets you use LINQ to Twitter with any of these services. This is a testament to the success of the Twitter API and it’s popularity. No doubt we’ll have hills and valleys to traverse as the Twitter API matures, but hopefully there will be enough flexibility in LINQ to Twitter to make these changes as transparent as possible for you. @JoeMayo

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Adding a Network Loopback Adapter to Windows 8

- by Greg Low

I have to say that I continue to be frustrated with finding out how to do things in Windows 8. Here's another one and it's recorded so it might help someone else. I've also documented what I tried so that if anyone from the product group ever reads this, they'll understand how I searched for it and might try to make it easier.I wanted to add a network loopback adapter, to have a fixed IP address to work with when using an "internal" network with Hyper-V. (The fact that I even need to do this is also painful. I don't know why Hyper-V can't make it easy to work with host system folders, etc. as easily as I can with VirtualPC, VirtualBox, etc. but that's a topic for another day).In the end, what I needed was a known IP address on the same network that my guest OS was using, via the internal network (which allows connectivity from the host OS to/from guest OS's).I started by looking in the network adapters areas but there is no "add" functionality there. Realising that this was likely to be another unexpected challenge, I resorted to searching for info on doing this. I found KB article 2777200 entitled "Installing the Microsoft Loopback Adapter in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012". Aha, I thought that's what I'd need. It describes the symptom as "You are trying to install the Microsoft Loopback Adapter, but are unable to find it." and that certainly sounded like me. There's a certain irony in documenting that something's hard to find instead of making it easier to find. Anyway, you'd hope that in that article, they'd then provide a step by step example of how to do it, but what they supply is this: The Microsoft Loopback Adapter was renamed in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. The new name is "Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter". When using the Add Hardware Wizard to manually add a network adapter, choose Manufacturer "Microsoft" and choose network adapter "Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter".The trick with this of course is finding the "Add Hardware Wizard". In Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound, there are options to "Add a device" and for "Device Manager". I tried the "Add a device" wizard (seemed logical to me) but after that wizard tries it's best, it just tells you that there isn't any hardware that it thinks it needs to install. It offers a link for when you can't find what you're looking for, but that leads to a generic help page that tells you how to do things like turning on your printer.In Device Manager, I checked the options in the program menus, and nothing useful was present. I even tried right-clicking "Network adapters", hoping that would lead to an option to add one, also to no avail.So back to the search engine I went, to try to find out where the "Add Hardware Wizard" is. Turns out I was in the right place in Device Manager, but I needed to right-click the computer's name, and choose "Add Legacy Hardware". No doubt that hasn't changed location lately but it's a while since I needed to add one so I'd forgotten. Regardless, I'm left wondering why it couldn't be in the menu as well.Anyway, for a step by step list, you need to do the following:1. From Control Panel, select "Device Manager" under the "Devices and Printers" section of the "Hardware and Sound" tab.2. Right-click the name of the computer at the top of the tree, and choose "Add Legacy Hardware".3. In the "Welcome to the Add Hardware Wizard" window, click Next.4. In the "The wizard can help you install other hardware" window, choose "Install the hardware that I manually select from a list" option and click Next.5. In the "The wizard did not find any new hardware on your computer" window, click Next.6. In the "From the list below, select the type of hardware you are installing" window, select "Network Adapters" from the list, and click Next.7. In the "Select Network Adapter" window, from the Manufacturer list, choose Microsoft, then in the Network Adapter window, choose "Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter", then click Next.8. In the "The wizard is ready to install your hardware" window, click Next.9. In the "Completing the Add Hardware Wizard" window, click Finish.Then you need to continue to set the IP address, etc.10. Back in Control Panel, select the "Network and Internet" tab, click "View Network Status and Tasks".11. In the "View your basic network information and set up connections" window, click "Change adapter settings".12. Right-click the new adapter that has been added (find it in the list by checking the device name of "Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter"), and click Properties.

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A Gentle Introduction to NuGet

- by Joe Mayo

Not too long ago, Microsoft released, NuGet, an automated package manager for Visual Studio. NuGet makes it easy to download and install assemblies, and their references, into a Visual Studio project. These assemblies, which I loosely refer to as packages, are often open source, and include projects such as LINQ to Twitter. In this post, I'll explain how to get started in using NuGet with your projects to include: installng NuGet, installing/uninstalling LINQ to Twitter via console command, and installing/uninstalling LINQ to Twitter via graphical reference menu. Installing NuGet The first step you'll need to take is to install NuGet. Visit the NuGet site, at http://nuget.org/, click on the Install NuGet button, and download the NuGet.Tools.vsix installation file, shown below. Each browser is different (i.e. FireFox, Chrome, IE, etc), so you might see options to run right away, save to a location, or access to the file through the browser's download manager. Regardless of how you receive the NuGet installer, execute the downloaded NuGet.Tools.vsix to install Nuget into visual Studio. The NuGet Footprint When you open visual Studio, observe that there is a new menu option on the Tools menu, titled Library Package Manager; This is where you use NuGet. There are two menu options, from the Library Package Manager Menu that you can use: Package Manager Console and Package Manager Settings. I won't discuss Package Manager Settings in this post, except to give you a general idea that, as one of a set of capabilities, it manages the path to the NuGet server, which is already set for you. Another menu, added by the NuGet installer, is Add Library Package Reference, found by opening the context menu for either a Solution Explorer project or a project's References folder or via the Project menu. I'll discuss how to use this later in the post. The following discussion is concerned with the other menu option, Package Manager Console, which allows you to manage NuGet packages. Gettng a NuGet Package Selecting Tools -> Library Package Manager -> Package Manager Console opens the Package Manager Console. As you can see, below, the Package Manager Console is text-based and you'll need to type in commands to work with packages. In this post, I'll explain how to use the Package Manager Console to install LINQ to Twitter, but there are many more commands, explained in the NuGet Package Manager Console Commands documentation. To install LINQ to Twitter, open your current project where you want LINQ to Twitter installed, and type the following at the PM> prompt: Install-Package linqtotwitter If all works well, you'll receive a confirmation message, similar to the following, after a brief pause: Successfully installed 'linqtotwitter 2.0.20'. Successfully added 'linqtotwitter 2.0.20' to NuGetInstall. Also, observe that a reference to the LinqToTwitter.dll assembly was added to your current project. Uninstalling a NuGet Package I won't be so bold as to assume that you would only want to use LINQ to Twitter because there are other Twitter libraries available; I recommend Twitterizer if you don't care for LINQ to Twitter. So, you might want to use the following command at the PM> prompt to remove LINQ to Twitter from your project: Uninstall-Package linqtotwitter After a brief pause, you'll see a confirmation message similar to the following: Successfully removed 'linqtotwitter 2.0.20' from NuGetInstall. Also, observe that the LinqToTwitter.dll assembly no longer appears in your project references list. Sometimes using the Package Manager Console is required for more sophisticated scenarios. However, LINQ to Twitter doesn't have any dependencies and is a very simple install, so you can use another method of installing graphically, which I'll show you next. Graphical Installations As explained earlier, clicking Add Library Package Reference, from the context menu for either a Solution Explorer project or a project's References folder or via the Project menu opens the Add Library Package Reference window. This window will allow you to add a reference a NuGet package in your project. To the left of the window are a few accordian folders to help you find packages that are either on-line or already installed. Just like the previous section, I'll assume you are installing LINQ to Twitter for the first time, so you would select the Online folder and click All. After waiting for package descriptions to download, you'll notice that there are too many to scroll through in a short period of time, over 900 as I write this. Therefore, use the search box located at the top right corner of the window and type LINQ to Twitter as I've done in the previous figure. You'll see LINQ to Twitter appear in the list. Click the Install button on the LINQ to Twitter entry. If the installation was successful, you'll see a message box display and disappear quickly (or maybe not if your machine is very fast or you blink at that moment). Then you'll see a reference to the LinqToTwitter.dll assembly in your project's references list. Note: While running this demo, I ran into an issue where VS had created a file lock on an installation folder without releasing it, causing an error with "packagename already exists. Skipping..." and then an error describing that it couldn't write to a destination folder. I resolved the problem by closing and reopening VS. If you open the Add a Library Package Reference window again, you'll see LINQ to Twitter listed in the Recent packages folder. Summary You can install NuGet via the on-line home page with a click of a button. Nuget provides two ways to work with packages, via console or graphical window. While the graphical window is easiest, the console window is more powerful. You can now quickly add project references to many available packages via the NuGet service. Joe

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Sort Data in Windows Phone using Collection View Source

- by psheriff

When you write a Windows Phone application you will most likely consume data from a web service somewhere. If that service returns data to you in a sort order that you do not want, you have an easy alternative to sort the data without writing any C# or VB code. You use the built-in CollectionViewSource object in XAML to perform the sorting for you. This assumes that you can get the data into a collection that implements the IEnumerable or IList interfaces.For this example, I will be using a simple Product class with two properties, and a list of Product objects using the Generic List class. Try this out by creating a Product class as shown in the following code:public class Product { public Product(int id, string name) { ProductId = id; ProductName = name; } public int ProductId { get; set; } public string ProductName { get; set; }}Create a collection class that initializes a property called DataCollection with some sample data as shown in the code below:public class Products : List<Product>{ public Products() { InitCollection(); } public List<Product> DataCollection { get; set; } List<Product> InitCollection() { DataCollection = new List<Product>(); DataCollection.Add(new Product(3, "PDSA .NET Productivity Framework")); DataCollection.Add(new Product(1, "Haystack Code Generator for .NET")); DataCollection.Add(new Product(2, "Fundamentals of .NET eBook")); return DataCollection; }}Notice that the data added to the collection is not in any particular order. Create a Windows Phone page and add two XML namespaces to the Page.xmlns:scm="clr-namespace:System.ComponentModel;assembly=System.Windows"xmlns:local="clr-namespace:WPSortData"The 'local' namespace is an alias to the name of the project that you created (in this case WPSortData). The 'scm' namespace references the System.Windows.dll and is needed for the SortDescription class that you will use for sorting the data. Create a phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources section in your Windows Phone page that looks like the following:<phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources> <local:Products x:Key="products" /> <CollectionViewSource x:Key="prodCollection" Source="{Binding Source={StaticResource products}, Path=DataCollection}"> <CollectionViewSource.SortDescriptions> <scm:SortDescription PropertyName="ProductName" Direction="Ascending" /> </CollectionViewSource.SortDescriptions> </CollectionViewSource></phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources>The first line of code in the resources section creates an instance of your Products class. The constructor of the Products class calls the InitCollection method which creates three Product objects and adds them to the DataCollection property of the Products class. Once the Products object is instantiated you now add a CollectionViewSource object in XAML using the Products object as the source of the data to this collection. A CollectionViewSource has a SortDescriptions collection that allows you to specify a set of SortDescription objects. Each object can set a PropertyName and a Direction property. As you see in the above code you set the PropertyName equal to the ProductName property of the Product object and tell it to sort in an Ascending direction.All you have to do now is to create a ListBox control and set its ItemsSource property to the CollectionViewSource object. The ListBox displays the data in sorted order by ProductName and you did not have to write any LINQ queries or write other code to sort the data!<ListBox ItemsSource="{Binding Source={StaticResource prodCollection}}" DisplayMemberPath="ProductName" />SummaryIn this blog post you learned that you can sort any data without having to change the source code of where the data comes from. Simply feed the data into a CollectionViewSource in XAML and set some sort descriptions in XAML and the rest is done for you! This comes in very handy when you are consuming data from a source where the data is given to you and you do not have control over the sorting.NOTE: You can download this article and many samples like the one shown in this blog entry at my website. http://www.pdsa.com/downloads. Select “Tips and Tricks”, then “Sort Data in Windows Phone using Collection View Source” from the drop down list.Good Luck with your Coding,Paul Sheriff** SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY BLOG READERS **We frequently offer a FREE gift for readers of my blog. Visit http://www.pdsa.com/Event/Blog for your FREE gift!

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Introducing jLight – Talking to the DOM using Silverlight and jQuery.

- by Timmy Kokke

Introduction With the recent news about Silverlight on the Windows Phone and all the great Out-Of-Browser features in the upcoming Silverlight 4 you almost forget Silverlight is a browser plugin. It most often runs in a web browser and often as a control. In many cases you need to communicate with the browser to get information about textboxes, events or details about the browser itself. To do this you can use JavaScript from Silverlight. Although Silverlight works the same on every browser, JavaScript does not and it won’t be long before problems arise. To overcome differences in browser I like to use jQuery. The only downside of doing this is that there’s a lot more code needed that you would normally use when you write jQuery in JavaScript. Lately, I had to catch changes is the browser scrollbar and act to the new position. I also had to move the scrollbar when the user dragged around in the Silverlight application. With jQuery it was peanuts to get and set the right attributes, but I found that I had to write a lot of code on Silverlight side. With a few refactoring I had a separated out the plumbing into a new class and could call only a few methods on that to get the same thing done. The idea for jLight was born. jLight vs. jQuery The main purpose of jLight is to take the ease of use of jQuery and bring it into Silverlight for handling DOM interaction. For example, to change the text color of a DIV to red, in jQuery you would write: jQuery("div").css("color","red"); In jLight the same thing looks like so: jQuery.Select("div").Css("color","red"); Another example. To change the offset in of the last SPAN you could write this in jQuery : jQuery("span:last").offset({left : 10, top : 100}); In jLight this would do the same: jQuery.Select("span:last").Offset(new {left = 10, top = 100 }); Callbacks Nothing too special so far. To get the same thing done using the “normal” HtmlPage.Window.Eval, it wouldn’t require too much effort. But to wire up a handler for events from the browser it’s a whole different story. Normally you need to register ScriptMembers, ScriptableTypes or write some code in JavaScript. jLight takes care of the plumbing and provide you with an simple interface in the same way jQuery would. If you would like to handle the scroll event of the BODY of your html page, you’ll have to bind the event using jQuery and have a function call back to a registered function in Silverlight. In the example below I assume there’s a method “SomeMethod” and it is registered as a ScriptableObject as “RegisteredFromSilverlight” from Silverlight. jQuery("body:first").scroll(function() { var sl = document.getElementbyId("SilverlightControl"); sl.content.RegisteredFromSilverlight.SomeMethod($(this)); }); Using jLight in Silverlight the code would be even simpler. The registration of RegisteredFromSilverlight as ScriptableObject can be omitted. Besides that, you don’t have to write any JavaScript or evaluate strings with JavaScript. jQuery.Select("body:first").scroll(SomeMethod); Lambdas Using a lambda in Silverlight can make it even simpler. Each is the jQuery equivalent of foreach in C#. It calls a function for every element found by jQuery. In this example all INPUT elements of the text type are selected. The FromObject method is used to create a jQueryObject from an object containing a ScriptObject. The Val method from jQuery is used to get the value of the INPUT elements. jQuery.Select("input:text").Each((element, index) => { textBox1.Text += jQueryObject.FromObject(element).Val(); return null; }); Ajax One thing jQuery is often used for is making Ajax calls. Making calls to services to external services can be done from Silverlight, but as easy as using jQuery. As an example I would like to show how jLight does this. Below is the entire code behind. It searches my name on twitter and shows the result. This example can be found in the source of the project. The GetJson method passes a Silverlight JsonValue to a callback. This callback instantiates Twit objects and adds them to a ListBox called TwitList. public partial class DemoPage2 : UserControl { public DemoPage2() { InitializeComponent(); jQuery.Load(); } private void CallButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { jQuery.GetJson("http://search.twitter.com/search.json?lang=en&q=sorskoot", Done); } private void Done(JsonValue arg) { var tweets = new List<Twit>(); foreach (JsonObject result in arg["results"]) { tweets.Add(new Twit() { Text = (string)result["text"], Image = (string)result["profile_image_url"], User = (string)result["from_user"] } ); } TwitList.ItemsSource = tweets; } } public class Twit { public string User { get; set; } public string Image { get; set; } public string Text { get; set; } } Conclusion Although jLight is still in development it can be used already.There isn’t much documentation yet, but if you know jQuery jLight isn’t very hard to use. If you would like to try it, please let me know what you think and report any problems you run in to. jLight can be found at: http://jlight.codeplex.com

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InnoDB Compression Improvements in MySQL 5.6

- by Inaam Rana

MySQL 5.6 comes with significant improvements for the compression support inside InnoDB. The enhancements that we'll talk about in this piece are also a good example of community contributions. The work on these was conceived, implemented and contributed by the engineers at Facebook. Before we plunge into the details let us familiarize ourselves with some of the key concepts surrounding InnoDB compression. In InnoDB compressed pages are fixed size. Supported sizes are 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16K. The compressed page size is specified at table creation time. InnoDB uses zlib for compression. InnoDB buffer pool will attempt to cache compressed pages like normal pages. However, whenever a page is actively used by a transaction, we'll always have the uncompressed version of the page as well i.e.: we can have a page in the buffer pool in compressed only form or in a state where we have both the compressed page and uncompressed version but we'll never have a page in uncompressed only form. On-disk we'll always only have the compressed page. When both compressed and uncompressed images are present in the buffer pool they are always kept in sync i.e.: changes are applied to both atomically. Recompression happens when changes are made to the compressed data. In order to minimize recompressions InnoDB maintains a modification log within a compressed page. This is the extra space available in the page after compression and it is used to log modifications to the compressed data thus avoiding recompressions. DELETE (and ROLLBACK of DELETE) and purge can be performed without recompressing the page. This is because the delete-mark bit and the system fields DB_TRX_ID and DB_ROLL_PTR are stored in uncompressed format on the compressed page. A record can be purged by shuffling entries in the compressed page directory. This can also be useful for updates of indexed columns, because UPDATE of a key is mapped to INSERT+DELETE+purge. A compression failure happens when we attempt to recompress a page and it does not fit in the fixed size. In such case, we first try to reorganize the page and attempt to recompress and if that fails as well then we split the page into two and recompress both pages. Now lets talk about the three major improvements that we made in MySQL 5.6.Logging of Compressed Page Images:InnoDB used to log entire compressed data on the page to the redo logs when recompression happens. This was an extra safety measure to guard against the rare case where an attempt is made to do recovery using a different zlib version from the one that was used before the crash. Because recovery is a page level operation in InnoDB we have to be sure that all recompress attempts must succeed without causing a btree page split. However, writing entire compressed data images to the redo log files not only makes the operation heavy duty but can also adversely affect flushing activity. This happens because redo space is used in a circular fashion and when we generate much more than normal redo we fill up the space much more quickly and in order to reuse the redo space we have to flush the corresponding dirty pages from the buffer pool.Starting with MySQL 5.6 a new global configuration parameter innodb_log_compressed_pages. The default value is true which is same as the current behavior. If you are sure that you are not going to attempt to recover from a crash using a different version of zlib then you should set this parameter to false. This is a dynamic parameter.Compression Level:You can now set the compression level that zlib should choose to compress the data. The global parameter is innodb_compression_level - the default value is 6 (the zlib default) and allowed values are 1 to 9. Again the parameter is dynamic i.e.: you can change it on the fly.Dynamic Padding to Reduce Compression Failures:Compression failures are expensive in terms of CPU. We go through the hoops of recompress, failure, reorganize, recompress, failure and finally page split. At the same time, how often we encounter compression failure depends largely on the compressibility of the data. In MySQL 5.6, courtesy of Facebook engineers, we have an adaptive algorithm based on per-index statistics that we gather about compression operations. The idea is that if a certain index/table is experiencing too many compression failures then we should try to pack the 16K uncompressed version of the page less densely i.e.: we let some space in the 16K page go unused in an attempt that the recompression won't end up in a failure. In other words, we dynamically keep adding 'pad' to the 16K page till we get compression failures within an agreeable range. It works the other way as well, that is we'll keep removing the pad if failure rate is fairly low. To tune the padding effort two configuration variables are exposed. innodb_compression_failure_threshold_pct: default 5, range 0 - 100,dynamic, implies the percentage of compress ops to fail before we start using to padding. Value 0 has a special meaning of disabling the padding. innodb_compression_pad_pct_max: default 50, range 0 - 75, dynamic, the maximum percentage of uncompressed data page that can be reserved as pad.

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Simple Project Templates

- by Geertjan

The NetBeans sources include a module named "simple.project.templates": In the module sources, Tim Boudreau turns out to be the author of the code, so I asked him what it was all about, and if he could provide some usage code. His response, from approximately this time last year because it's been sitting in my inbox for a while, is below. Sure - though I think the javadoc in it is fairly complete. I wrote it because I needed to create a bunch of project templates for Javacard, and all of the ways that is usually done were grotesque and complicated. I figured we already have the ability to create files from templates, and we already have the ability to do substitutions in templates, so why not have a single file that defines the project as a list of file templates to create (with substitutions in the names) and some definitions of what should be in project properties. You can also add files to the project programmatically if you want.Basically, a template for an entire project is a .properties file. Any line which doesn't have the prefix 'pp.' or 'pvp.' is treated as the definition of one file which should be created in the new project. Any such line where the key ends in * means that file should be opened once the new project is created. So, for example, in the nodejs module, the definition looks like: {{projectName}}.js*=Templates/javascript/HelloWorld.js .npmignore=node_hidden_templates/npmignore So, the first line means: - Create a file with the same name as the project, using the HelloWorld template - I.e. the left side of the line is the relative path of the file to create, and the right side is the path in the system filesystem for the template to use - If the template is not one you normally want users to see, just register it in the system filesystem somewhere other than Templates/ (but remember to set the attribute that marks it as a template) - Include that file in the set of files which should be opened in the editor once the new project is created. To actually create a project, first you just create a new ProjectCreator: ProjectCreator gen = new ProjectCreator( parentFolderOfNewProject ); Now, if you want to programmatically generate any files, in addition to those defined in the template, you can: gen.add (new FileCreator("nbproject", "project.xml", false) { public DataObject create (FileObject project, Map<String,String> substitutions) throws IOException { ... } }); Then pass the FileObject for the project template (the properties file) to the ProjectCreator's createProject method (hmm, maybe it should be the string path to the project template instead, to save the caller trouble looking up the FileObject for the template). That method looks like this: public final GeneratedProject createProject(final ProgressHandle handle, final String name, final FileObject template, final Map<String, String> substitutions) throws IOException { The name parameter should be the directory name for the new project; the map is the strings you gathered in the wizard which should be used for substitutions. createProject should be called on a background thread (i.e. use a ProgressInstantiatingIterator for the wizard iterator and just pass in the ProgressHandle you are given). The return value is a GeneratedProject object, which is just a holder for the created project directory and the set of DataObjects which should be opened when the wizard finishes. I'd love to see simple.project.templates moved out of the javacard cluster, as it is really useful and much simpler than any of the stuff currently done for generating projects. It would also be possible to do much richer tools for creating projects in apisupport - i.e. choose (or create in the wizard) the templates you want to use, generate a skeleton wizard with a UI for all the properties you'd like to substitute, etc. Here is a partial project template from Javacard - for example usage, see org.netbeans.modules.javacard.wizard.ProjectWizardIterator in javacard.project (or the much simpler one in contrib/nodejs). #This properties file describes what to create when a project template is#instantiated. The keys are paths on disk relative to the project root. #The values are paths to the templates to use for those files in the system#filesystem. Any string inside {{ and }}'s will be substituted using properties#gathered in the template wizard.#Special key prefixes are # pp. - indicates an entry for nbproject/project.properties# pvp. - indicates an entry for nbproject/private/private.properties #File templates, in format [path-in-project=path-to-template]META-INF/javacard.xml=org-netbeans-modules-javacard/templates/javacard.xmlMETA-INF/MANIFEST.MF=org-netbeans-modules-javacard/templates/EAP_MANIFEST.MF APPLET-INF/applet.xml=org-netbeans-modules-javacard/templates/applet.xmlscripts/{{classnamelowercase}}.scr=org-netbeans-modules-javacard/templates/test.scrsrc/{{packagepath}}/{{classname}}.java*=Templates/javacard/ExtendedApplet.java nbproject/deployment.xml=org-netbeans-modules-javacard/templates/deployment.xml#project.properties contentspp.display.name={{projectname}}pp.platform.active={{activeplatform}} pp.active.device={{activedevice}}pp.includes=**pp.excludes= I will be using the above info in an upcoming blog entry and provide step by step instructions showing how to use them. However, anyone else out there should have enough info from the above to get started yourself!

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SSIS: Building SQL databases on-the-fly using concatenated SQL scripts

- by DrJohn

Over the years I have developed many techniques which help automate the whole SQL Server build process. In my current process, where I need to build entire OLAP data marts on-the-fly, I make regular use of a simple but very effective mechanism to concatenate all the SQL Scripts together from my SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio) projects. This proves invaluable because in two clicks I can redeploy an entire SQL Server database with all tables, views, stored procedures etc. Indeed, I can also use the concatenated SQL scripts with SSIS to build SQL Server databases on-the-fly. You may be surprised to learn that I often redeploy the database several times per day, or even several times per hour, during the development process. This is because the deployment errors are logged and you can quickly see where SQL Scripts have object dependency errors. For example, after changing a table structure you may have forgotten to change any related views. The deployment log immediately points out all the objects which failed to build so you can fix and redeploy the database very quickly. The alternative approach (i.e. doing changes in the database directly using the SSMS UI) would require you to check all dependent objects before making changes. The chances are that you will miss something and wonder why your app returns the wrong data – a common problem caused by changing a table without re-creating dependent views. Using SQL Projects in SSMS A great many developers fail to make use of SQL Projects in SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio). To me they are invaluable way of organizing your SQL Scripts. The screenshot below shows a typical SSMS solution made up of several projects – one project for tables, another for views etc. The key point is that the projects naturally fall into the right order in file system because of the project name. The number in the folder or file name ensures that the projects the SQL scripts are concatenated together in the order that they need to be executed. Hence the script filenames start with 100, 110 etc. Concatenating SQL Scripts To concatenate the SQL Scripts together into one file, I use notepad.exe to create a simple batch file (see example screenshot) which uses the TYPE command to write the content of the SQL Script files into a combined file. As the SQL Scripts are in several folders, I simply use several TYPE command multiple times and append the output together. If you are unfamiliar with batch files, you may not know that the angled bracket (>) means write output of the program into a file. Two angled brackets (>>) means append output of this program into a file. So the command-line DIR > filelist.txt would write the content of the DIR command into a file called filelist.txt. In the example shown above, the concatenated file is called SB_DDS.sql If, like me you place the concatenated file under source code control, then the source code control system will change the file's attribute to "read-only" which in turn would cause the TYPE command to fail. The ATTRIB command can be used to remove the read-only flag. Using SQLCmd to execute the concatenated file Now that the SQL Scripts are all in one big file, we can execute the script against a database using SQLCmd using another batch file as shown below: SQLCmd has numerous options, but the script shown above simply executes the SS_DDS.sql file against the SB_DDS_DB database on the local machine and logs the errors to a file called SB_DDS.log. So after executing the batch file you can simply check the error log to see if your database built without a hitch. If you have errors, then simply fix the source files, re-create the concatenated file and re-run the SQLCmd to rebuild the database. This two click operation allows you to quickly identify and fix errors in your entire database definition.Using SSIS to execute the concatenated file To execute the concatenated SQL script using SSIS, you simply drop an Execute SQL task into your package and set the database connection as normal and then select File Connection as the SQLSourceType (as shown below). Create a file connection to your concatenated SQL script and you are ready to go. Tips and TricksAdd a new-line at end of every fileThe most common problem encountered with this approach is that the GO statement on the last line of one file is placed on the same line as the comment at the top of the next file by the TYPE command. The easy fix to this is to ensure all your files have a new-line at the end.Remove all USE database statementsThe SQLCmd identifies which database the script should be run against. So you should remove all USE database commands from your scripts - otherwise you may get unintentional side effects!!Do the Create Database separatelyIf you are using SSIS to create the database as well as create the objects and populate the database, then invoke the CREATE DATABASE command against the master database using a separate package before calling the package that executes the concatenated SQL script.

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Caveat utilitor - Can I run two versions of Microsoft Project side-by-side?

- by Martin Hinshelwood

A number of out customers have asked if there are any problems in installing and running multiple versions of Microsoft Project on a single client. Although this is a case of Caveat utilitor (Let the user beware), as long as the user understands and accepts the issues that can occur then they can do this. Although Microsoft provide the ability to leave old versions of Office products (except Outlook) on your client when you are installing a new version of the product they certainly do not endorse doing so. Figure: For Project you can choose to keep the old stuff That being the case I would have preferred that they put a “(NOT RECOMMENDED)” after the options to impart that knowledge to the rest of us, but they did not. The default and recommended behaviour is for the newer version installer to remove the older versions. Of course this does not apply in the revers. There are no forward compatibility packs for Office. There are a number of negative behaviours (or bugs) that can occur in this configuration: There is only one MS Project In Windows a file extension can only be associated with a single program. In this case, MPP files can be associated with only one version of winproj.exe. The executables are in different folders so if a user double-clicks a Project file on the desktop, file explorer, or Outlook email, Windows will launch the winproj.exe associated with MPP and then load the MPP file. There are problems associated with this situation and in some cases workarounds. The user double-clicks on a Project 2010 file, Project 2007 launches but is unable to open the file because it is a newer version. The workaround is for the user to launch Project 2010 from the Start menu then open the file. If the file is attached to an email they will need to first drag the file to the desktop. All your linked MS Project files need to be of the same version There are a number of problems that occur when people use on Microsoft’s Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technology. The three common uses of OLE are: for inserted projects where a Master project contains sub-projects and each sub-project resides in its own MPP file shared resource pools where multiple MPP files share a common resource pool kept in a single MPP file cross-project links where a task or milestone in one MPP file has a predecessor/successor relationship with a task or milestone in a different MPP file What I’ve seen happen before is that if you are running in a version of Project that is not associated with the MPP extension and then try and activate an OLE link then Project tries to launch the other version of Project. Things start getting very confused since different MPP files are being controlled by different versions of Project running at the same time. I haven’t tried this in awhile so I can’t give you exact symptoms but I suspect that if Project 2010 is involved the symptoms will be different then in a Project 2003/2007 scenario. I’ve noticed that Project 2010 gives different error messages for the exact same problem when it occurs in Project 2003 or 2007. -Anonymous The recommendation would be either not to use this feature if you have to have multiple versions of Project installed or to use only a single version of Project. You may get unexpected negative behaviours if you are using shared resource pools or resource pools even when you are not running multiple versions as I have found that they can get broken very easily. If you need these thing then it is probably best to use Project Server as it was created to solve many of these specific issues. Note: I would not even allow multiple people to access a network copy of a Project file because of the way Windows locks files in write mode. This can cause write-locks that get so bad a server restart is required I’ve seen user’s files get write-locked to the point where the only resolution is to reboot the server. Changing the default version to run for an extension So what if you want to change the default association from Project 2007 to Project 2010? Figure: “Control Panel | Folder Options | Change the file associated with a file extension” Windows normally only lists the last version installed for a particular extension. You can select a specific version by selecting the program you want to change and clicking “Change program… | Browse…” and then selecting the .exe you want to use on the file system. Figure: You will need to select the exact version of “winproj.exe” that you want to run Conclusion Although it is possible to run multiple versions of Project on one system in the main it does not really make sense.

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Reflections from the Young Prisms

- by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team

By Karen Shamban The Young Prisms began their musical journey in San Francisco, and it's here they return to bring their unique sound to the Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival. We asked them to tell us their thoughts on music, performing, and what they like in an audience. Here's what they had to say: Q. What do you like best about performing in front of a live audience?A. There are a lot of things to love about playing in front of people. The best part is definitely the nights when the energy the audience brings shows through. Although it always differs from city to city and person to person, when you play to a full house and people are really getting into it, it's like no other feeling.Q. How do you use technology in creating and delivering your music?A. Well, we actually use a lot more electronic components than people realize. Pretty much every string instrument played either live or on recording has been filtered through numerous electronic effects. Matt uses somewhere around 12 or 14 every time we play live. Giovanni has six. Most of our writing and demoing is done with drum sequencers and samplers too, so it's safe to say we use technology to our advantage in the writing process. Live is a bit different, since we keep it to the basics with guitars and acoustic drums. We also tend to use projections when we play live, so technology helps us do that fairly easily as well.Q. Do you prefer smaller, intimate venues or larger, louder ones? Why?A. Couldn’t say we have a real preference in venue size. I mean, its always great to get to play through a massive killer sound system, but small venues when packed full are equally as special if not more so, because of the intimacy of it. Some of my favorite shows I've seen as an audience member/ fan have been at the smaller venues in San Francisco.Q. What about your fans surprises you?A. Sometimes the older guys are a surprise. We've played shows where there are more older guys in their 40s and 50s, who come and stare and take notes at our effects pedals. Then there are kids our age or in their 20s. Sometimes it's surprising to think that the older guys relate to what we're doing more than our peers and friends in our age group.Q. What about your live act surprises your fans?A. I think people are often surprised by how shy we can be. It feels like people expect us to be really rowdy and throw things and make really loud noises and get really aggressive on stage because some of the sounds we use can have an abrasive element to them. People expect Matt to have some kind of Kurt Cobain attitude, which he doesn’t at all. So it seems it surprises people to see musicians playing loud and noisy songs in their early and mid 20s being fairly tame and calm on stage.Q. There are going to be a lot of technical people (you could call them geeks) in the Oracle crowd -- what are they going to love about your performance?A. Hopefully most of them are pedal nerds like we are and like the previously mentioned “older dude crowd.” Besides that I hope they’d be into the projections and group of songs we're going to play for them.Q. What's new and different in the music you're making today, versus a year or two ago?A. I'd say there is more focus on the songwriting now and less of the noise today than last year. I think it's pretty evident on the new record compared to the last two. On the first two records we made as YP, we had another guitar player and songwriter who no longer plays with us. So the process in which we develop songs is different as well.Q. Have you been on tour recently? If so, what do you like about touring, and what do you dislike?A. Touring is amazing. Some people might tell you different if they've been doing it for what they'd call too long, but for us it's really a great chance to play for people who care about the music we're making and also to see and explore the world. Getting to visit so many different cities and explore so many different cultures is amazing. Of course we love getting into cultural foods too. Stefanie is a fashion geek so getting to go to New York as often as we do as well as getting to play in London and Paris is always especially fun for her.Q. Ever think about playing another kind of music? If so, what, and why?A. Never really thought about wanting to do anything drastically different. I think the style of music we play has a lot to do with the stuff we have been listening to both growing up and now. It wasn’t really a conscious decision to make sure it was a certain sound, so I'm not sure we've ever thought about doing a way different genre or whatever like electronic music or country. Although there have been times we've had conversations where we discuss possibly doing quiet sets or using the string synth sounds.Q. What are the top three things people should know about your music?A1. We like noise.A2. We use ambience and atmosphere as much as as we can.A3. Yes, the vocals are supposed to be mixed in with the guitars. Get more info: Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival Young Prisms

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