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• Edit ePub eBooks with Your Favorite HTML Editor

  - by Matthew Guay

  ePub eBooks are increasingly popular today, but often they’ve been made by converting other file formats. Here’s how you can edit ePub books to remove irregularities and make them better for reading on your devices. ePub’s are actually a zip file containing images, XHTML files with your text, and more with the .epub extension. You can make them better by editing the XHTML files directly.  Code gurus can edit the code directly, but even if you’ve never edited HTML, you can still quickly make changes with a WYSIWYG editor. Extract the Files from your ePub eBook As mentioned before, ePub files are actually renamed zip files.  So first let’s get all of the files in your ePub eBook accessible.  Find an eBook you want to edit and then change the file extension to .zip. If you don’t see the file extensions, click Organize in the menu bar and select Folder and search options. Select the View tab, and then uncheck the box beside Hide extensions for known file types.  Click Ok, and then change the file type as above. Windows will warn you about changing the file type; click Yes to proceed. Now you can browse the files of the ePub file.  Notice that it contains mostly HTML or XHTML files and images.  Click Extract all files to save them all in a folder so you can easily edit them. Alternately, you can open the ePub file directly in your favorite file archival program such as 7-zip.  Browse to the location of your ePub file, double-click it, and it’ll automatically open even if you don’t change the file extension to zip.  Now you can extract the folder, or extract individual files as before.   Edit Your eBook in KompoZer The actual ebook contents are stored in HTML or XHTML files.  These may be stored on the top folder of you ePub file’s directory, or they may be stored in \OEBPS\text in the file. To change the contents of your eBook, you’ll want to edit these files.  Often there may be separate files for each chapter, so you may have to use trial and error to find the one you need to edit.  You could edit them by hand in Windows using Notepad if you don’t have an HTML editor installed. A better option would be to use an HTML editor.  Here we’ll use the free KompoZer program to edit the files just like we’d edit a document in Word. Download KompoZer (link below), and unzip the files.  Then open the new folder and launch kompozer.exe; you don’t even need to install it.  In fact, you could even store KompoZer on a flash drive so you could edit HTML files from any computer. In KompoZer, open the HTML or XHTML file from your eBook that you want to edit. Now you can edit the file just like you would edit a document in Word.  Remove extra and unneeded text, make titles stand out, correct misspellings … anything you want!  This is especially helpful if your ePub file was created by converting a PDF as these often have many small errors. Or, if you’d rather edit the code itself, select the Source tab and edit as you wish. When you’re done making the changes, make sure to save the file in the same location with the same file name. Recreate Your Edited ePub eBook Once you’ve made all the changes you wanted, it’s time to turn this folder of files back into ePub.  Make sure you change the name of the folder if it still has the same name as the original ePub or zip file so you don’t mix them up or have trouble with overwriting the old files. Zip the folder using Windows Explorer or your favorite archival utility.  If you are using another archival program, make sure to compress it as a zip folder; other compression methods will render the ePub unreadable by your eReader app. Now change the file extension again, this time back to .epub. Now you can read your eBook with your changes in your favorite reader program or app on your mobile device. Conclusion Whether you need to remove an odd, misplaced character or need to do fine editing, using an HTML editor is a great way to make your ePub eBooks look just like you want.  Also, with an editor like KompoZer it’s not even difficult. Download KompoZer Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Change the Default Editor From Nano on Ubuntu LinuxConvert a PDF eBook to ePub Format for Your iPad, iPhone, or eReaderRead Mobi eBooks on Kindle for PCEdit Your Firefox Bookmarks Easier with Flat Bookmark EditorChange the Default Editor for Batch Files in Vista 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 HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server XPS file format & XPS Viewer Explained Microsoft Office Web Apps Guide Know if Someone Accessed Your Facebook Account Shop for Music with Windows Media Player 12 Access Free Documentaries at BBC Documentaries Rent Cameras In Bulk At CameraRenter

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• A frequently updated mixed bag blog OR several seldom updated niche sites?

  - by Melanie

  Background I am a member of the website HubPages where I have about a hundred articles (and I'm always writing more.) Anyway, HubPages revenue model is 40% ad-share for them and 60% ad share for users. While the userbase there is really friendly, the site is REALLY slow, buggy and there is a ton of content on HubPages that is copied from other sources. Upon flagging these articles it takes a ton of time for mods to remove it and it's just generally dragging down my stuff. Furthermore, HubPages was hit really hard by Google's Panda Update: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1B3GGLL_enUS426US426&tbm=nws&q=google+panda& Aside from the temporary problems I would deal with when removing content from HubPages and putting it on my own domain (duplicate content, etc) I have another problem. Which would be the best for my articles? I have tons of articles in a wide variety of niches and would like to do what would help them perform the best. I'm not a huge niche writer and have received wide criticism from the HubPages community for my articles not performing as well as they could because I don't use enough keywords within the text of my articles. I prefer to write more naturally in a way that would appeal to an audience instead of keyword stuff. Anyway, this is aside the point. My Question After removing my articles from HubPages, should I put them on one domain or spread them across multiple domains grouped sort of by topic. For example: a-bunch-of-articles.com OR travel-articles.com and financial-articles.com and knitting-articles.com (I know those domains aren't available, but it's just kind of an example.) Here are the pros and cons of each: a mixed bag site like a-bunch-of-articles.com may not perform as well because of its mixed-bag nature a mixed bag site would be updated far more frequently than several niche sites... some niche sites may be updated so infrequently that a year could pass before one sees a new article a mixed bag site would be like putting all my eggs is one basket, where having several niche sites would spread out my portfolio, so to speak. a mixed bag site would be cheaper, $14 (two year registration) to start out with and hosting and I'm good to go. a mixed bag site wouldn't allow me to easily target keywords, but then again isn't HubPages pretty much a mixed bag site?

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• Make a Drive Image Using an Ubuntu Live CD

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  Cloning a hard drive is useful, but what if you have to make several copies, or you just want to make a complete backup of a hard drive? Drive images let you put everything, and we mean everything, from your hard drive in one big file. With an Ubuntu Live CD, this is a simple process – the versatile tool dd can do this for us right out of the box. We’ve used dd to clone a hard drive before. Making a drive image is very similar, except instead of copying data from one hard drive to another, we copy from a hard drive to a file. Drive images are more flexible, as you can do what you please with the data once you’ve pulled it off the source drive. Your drive image is going to be a big file, depending on the size of your source drive – dd will copy every bit of it, even if there’s only one tiny file stored on the whole hard drive. So, to start, make sure you have a device connected to your computer that will be large enough to hold the drive image. Some ideas for places to store the drive image, and how to connect to them in an Ubuntu Live CD, can be found at this previous Live CD article. In this article, we’re going to make an image of a 1GB drive, and store it on another hard drive in the same PC. Note: always be cautious when using dd, as it’s very easy to completely wipe out a drive, as we will show later in this article. Creating a Drive Image Boot up into the Ubuntu Live CD environment. Since we’re going to store the drive image on a local hard drive, we first have to mount it. Click on Places and then the location that you want to store the image on – in our case, a 136GB internal drive. Open a terminal window (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and navigate to the newly mounted drive. All mounted drives should be in /media, so we’ll use the command cd /media and then type the first few letters of our difficult-to-type drive, press tab to auto-complete the name, and switch to that directory. If you wish to place the drive image in a specific folder, then navigate to it now. We’ll just place our drive image in the root of our mounted drive. The next step is to determine the identifier for the drive you want to make an image of. In the terminal window, type in the command sudo fdisk -l Our 1GB drive is /dev/sda, so we make a note of that. Now we’ll use dd to make the image. The invocation is sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=./OldHD.img This means that we want to copy from the input file (“if”) /dev/sda (our source drive) to the output file (“of”) OldHD.img, which is located in the current working directory (that’s the “.” portion of the “of” string). It takes some time, but our image has been created…Let’s test to make sure it works. Drive Image Testing: Wiping the Drive Another interesting thing that dd can do is totally wipe out the data on a drive (a process we’ve covered before). The command for that is sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda This takes some random data as input, and outputs it to our drive, /dev/sda. If we examine the drive now using sudo fdisk –l, we can see that the drive is, indeed, wiped. Drive Image Testing: Restoring the Drive Image We can restore our drive image with a call to dd that’s very similar to how we created the image. The only difference is that the image is going to be out input file, and the drive now our output file. The exact invocation is sudo dd if=./OldHD.img of=/dev/sda It takes a while, but when it’s finished, we can confirm with sudo fdisk –l that our drive is back to the way it used to be! Conclusion There are a lots of reasons to create a drive image, with backup being the most obvious. Fortunately, with dd creating a drive image only takes one line in a terminal window – if you’ve got an Ubuntu Live CD handy! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Reset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CDCreate a Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive the Easy WayHow to Browse Without a Trace with an Ubuntu Live CDWipe, Delete, and Securely Destroy Your Hard Drive’s Data the Easy WayClone a Hard Drive Using an Ubuntu Live CD 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 HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Microsoft Office Web Apps Guide Know if Someone Accessed Your Facebook Account Shop for Music with Windows Media Player 12 Access Free Documentaries at BBC Documentaries Rent Cameras In Bulk At CameraRenter Download Songs From MySpace

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• Agile Testing Days 2012 – Day 1 – The birth of the #unicorn…

  - by Chris George

  Still riding the high from the tutorial day, I arrived at the conference venue eager to get cracking with the days talks. The opening Keynote was “Disciplined Agile Delivery: The Foundation for Scaling Agile” presented by Scott Ambler. The general ideas behind the methodology such as not re-inventing the wheel, and being goal driven, not prescriptive in how you work certainly struck chords with how we are trying to work in my team. Scott made some interesting observations about how scrum is quite prescriptive and is this really agile? I agreed with quite a few of his points on how what works for one team may not work for another. How a team works should be driven by context and reflection, not process and prescription. However was somewhat dubious about some of the statistics he rolled out towards the end. However, out of this keynote was born something that was to transcend this one presentation. During the talk, Scott mentioned on more than one occasion “In the real world”, and at one point made reference to people living in the land of unicorns and rainbows. The challenge was then laid down on twitter for all speakers to include a unicorn in their presentations… and for the most part this happened! It became an identity for this years conference, and I’m sure something that any attendee will always associate with Agile Testing Days 2012! Following this keynote, I attended “Going agile with Automated GUI Testing – Some personal insights” by Jan Zdunek from codecentric on the vendor track. My speciality is test automation, and in particular GUI testing, so this drew me to this talk more than the others. Thankfully, it was made clear from the very start that this was not peddling any particular product (even though it was on the vendor track), and Jan faithfully stuck to that. Most of the content was not new to me, but it was really comforting to hear someone else with very similar experiences to my own. In particular, things like how GUI testing is hard and is not a silver bullet; how record & replay is NOT a good thing to do (which drew a somewhat inflammatory tweet from an automation company when I tweeted that!). Something that I have started hearing around the place, and has certainly been murmuring at work is to push more of the automation coding onto the developers. After all they are the coding experts. I agree with this to a degree, but I personally enjoy coding and find it very rewarding doing so, therefore I’d be reluctant to give it up. I think there are some better alternatives such as pairing with a developer. Lastly, Jan mentioned, almost in passing, that we should consider virtualisation for gui testing for covering configuration combinations. On my project we’ve been running our win32/.NET GUI tests in cloud virtualisation for a couple of years now… I really should write about that! After lunch the second keynote of the day was by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory,”Myths about Agile Testing, De-Bunked”. It started off well… with the two ladies donning Medusa style head bands whilst they disbanding several myths about agile testing! I got the impression that it was perhaps not as slick as they would have liked, but then Janet was suffering with a very sore throat so kept losing her voice. Nevertheless, the presentation was captivating, and they debunked several myths such as : “Testing is dead”, “Testers must write code”, “Agile teams always deliver faster”. I didn’t take many notes for this because it was being recorded, but unfortunately the recordings have not been posted yet so I’ll write more about this when they are. The TestLab was held during a somewhat free for all time during most of the afternoon. It looked intriguing and proved to be one of the surprising experiences of the conference for me. Run by James Lyndsay and Bart Knaack, it consisted of a number of ‘stations’ that offered different testing problems. I opted for testing a mathematical drawing app call Geogebra, the task being to pair up and exploratory test it. After an allotted time, we discussed issues we’d found and decided if we wanted to continue ‘playing’ to which we all agreed! It was fun! The last track talk of the day was “Developers Exploratory Testing – Raising the bar” by Sigge Birgisson. One of the teams at Red Gate have tried Dev or Team exploratory testing a couple of times, and I was really interested to go to the presentation that prompted that. I was not disappointed! Sigge gave a first class presentation, and not only explained what DET was all about, but also how to go about implementing it. Little tips like calling it a ‘workshop’ rather than ‘testing’ I can really see working! Monday evening saw the presentation of the award for the Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Person go to a much deserved Lisa Crispin. The evening was great, with acrobatics, magic and music. My Takeaway Triple from Day 1:  Some of the cool stuff that was suggested in the GUI Testing talk, we are already doing. I should write about that! Testing is not dead! Perhaps testing will become more of a skill than a specific role, but it is certainly not dead. Team/Developer exploratory testing… seems like a no-brainer assuming you have a team who is willing.  Day 2 – Coming soon…

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• How can I respond to mouse events in AS3?

  - by Gabriel Meono

  Background: Trying to make a simple "drop the ball" game. The code is located inside the first frame of the timeline. Nothing more is on the stage. Issue: Using QuickBox2D I made a simple If statement that drops and object acording the Mouse-x position: if (MouseEvent.CLICK) { sim.addCircle({x:mouseX, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); I imported the MouseEvent library: import flash.events.MouseEvent; Nothing happens if I click, no output errors either. See it in action: http://gabrielmeono.com/download/Lucky_Hit_Alpha.swf http://gabrielmeono.com/download/Lucky_Hit_Alpha.fla Full Code: [SWF(width = 350, height = 600, frameRate = 60)] import com.actionsnippet.qbox.*; import flash.events.MouseEvent; var sim:QuickBox2D = new QuickBox2D(this); sim.createStageWalls(); //var ball:sim.addCircle({x:mouseX, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); // // make a heavy circle sim.addCircle({x:3, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); sim.addCircle({x:2, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); sim.addCircle({x:4, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); sim.addCircle({x:5, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); sim.addCircle({x:6, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); // create a few platforms sim.addBox({x:3, y:2, width:4, height:0.2, density:0, angle:0.1}); // make 26 dominoes for (var i:int = 0; i<7; i++){ //End sim.addCircle({x:1 + i * 1.5, y:16, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:2 + i * 1.5, y:15, radius:0.1, density:0}); //Mid end sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 2, y:14, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 2, y:13, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 2, y:12, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 2, y:11, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 2, y:10, radius:0.1, density:0}); //Middle Start sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 1.5, y:09, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:1 + i * 1.5, y:08, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 1.5, y:07, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:1 + i * 1.5, y:06, radius:0.1, density:0}); } if (MouseEvent.CLICK) { sim.addCircle({x:mouseX, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); sim.start(); /*sim.mouseDrag();*/ }

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• Debugging OWB generated SAP ABAP code executed through RFC

  - by Anil Menon

  Within OWB if you need to execute ABAP code using RFC you will have to use the SAP Function Module RFC_ABAP_INSTALL_AND_RUN. This function module is specified during the creation of the SAP source location. Usually in a Production environment a copy of this function module is used due to security restrictions. When you execute the mapping by using this Function Module you can’t see the actual ABAP code that is passed on to the SAP system. In case you want to take a look at the code that will be executed on the SAP system you need to use a custom Function Module in SAP. The easiest way to do this is to make a copy of the Function Module RFC_ABAP_INSTALL_AND_RUN and call it say Z_TEST_FM. Then edit the code of the Function Module in SAP as below FUNCTION Z_TEST_FM . DATA: BEGIN OF listobj OCCURS 20. INCLUDE STRUCTURE abaplist. DATA: END OF listobj. DATA: begin_of_line(72). DATA: line_end_char(1). DATA: line_length type I. DATA: lin(72). loop at program. append program-line to WRITES. endloop. ENDFUNCTION. Within OWB edit the SAP Location and use Z_TEST_FM as the “Execution Function Module” instead of  RFC_ABAP_INSTALL_AND_RUN. Then register this location. The Mapping you want to debug will have to be deployed. After deployment you can right click the mapping and click on “Start”.   After clicking start the “Input Parameters” screen will be displayed. You can make changes here if you need to. Check that the parameter BACKGROUND is set to “TRUE”. After Clicking “OK” the log for the execution will be displayed. The execution of Mappings will always fail when you use the above function module. Clicking on the icon “I” (information) the ABAP code will be displayed.   The ABAP code displayed is the code that is passed through the Function Module. You can also find the code by going through the log files on the server which hosts the OWB repository. The logs will be located under <OWB_HOME>/owb/log. Patch #12951045 is recommended while using the SAP Connector with OWB 11.2.0.2. For recommended patches for other releases please check with Oracle Support at http://support.oracle.com

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• Make Your Coworker’s Day in Ubuntu

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  It can be difficult to express your appreciation for your coworkers in person – what if they take it the wrong way, or think you’re fishing for a compliment of your own? If you use Ubuntu in your office, here’s a quick way to show your appreciation while avoiding the social pitfalls of face-to-face communication. Make sure their computer is locked An unlocked computer is a vulnerable computer. Vulnerable to malware sure, but much more vulnerable to the local office prankster, who thinks it’s hilarious to make a screenshot of your desktop, change your background to that screenshot, then hide all of your desktop icons. These incidents have taught us that you should lock your computer when taking a break. Hopefully your coworker has learned the same lesson, and pressed Ctrl+Alt+L before stepping out for a coffee. Leave a carefully worded message Now is your opportunity to leave your message of appreciation on your coworker’s computer. Click on the Leave Message button and type away! Click on Save. Wait, possibly in the shadows If you sit near your coworker, then wait for them to return. If you sit farther away, then try to listen for their footsteps. Eventually they will return to their computer and enter their password to unlock it. Observe smile Once they return to their desktop, they will be greeted with the message you left. Look to see if they appreciated the message, and if so, feel free to take credit. If they look annoyed, or press the Cancel button, continue on with your day like nothing happened. You may also try to slip into a conversation that you saw Jerry tinkering with their computer earlier. Conclusion Leaving your coworkers a nice message is easy and can brighten up their dull afternoon. We’re pretty sure that this method can only be used for good and not evil, but if you have any other suggestions of messages to leave, let us know in the comments! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Make Ubuntu Automatically Save Changes to Your SessionAdding extra Repositories on UbuntuInstall IceWM on Ubuntu LinuxInstall Blackbox on Ubuntu LinuxMake Firefox Display Large Images Full Size 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 Optimize your computer the Microsoft way Stormpulse provides slick, real time weather data Geek Parents – Did you try Parental Controls in Windows 7? Change DNS servers on the fly with DNS Jumper Live PDF Searches PDF Files and Ebooks Converting Mp4 to Mp3 Easily

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• Alert visualization recipe: Get out your blender, drop in some sp_send_dbmail, Google Charts API, add your favorite colors and sprinkle with html. Blend till it’s smooth and looks pretty enough to taste.

  - by Maria Zakourdaev

    I really like database monitoring. My email inbox have a constant flow of different types of alerts coming from our production servers with all kinds of information, sometimes more useful and sometimes less useful. Usually database alerts look really simple, it’s usually a plain text email saying “Prod1 Database data file on Server X is 80% used. You’d better grow it manually before some query triggers the AutoGrowth process”. Imagine you could have received email like the one below.  In addition to the alert description it could have also included the the database file growth chart over the past 6 months. Wouldn’t it give you much more information whether the data growth is natural or extreme? That’s truly what data visualization is for. Believe it or not, I have sent the graph below from SQL Server stored procedure without buying any additional data monitoring/visualization tool.   Would you like to visualize your database alerts like I do? Then like myself, you’d love the Google Charts. All you need to know is a little HTML and have a mail profile configured on your SQL Server instance regardless of the SQL Server version. First of all, I hope you know that the sp_send_dbmail procedure has a great parameter @body_format = ‘HTML’, which allows us to send rich and colorful messages instead of boring black and white ones. All that we need is to dynamically create HTML code. This is how, for instance, you can create a table and populate it with some data: DECLARE @html varchar(max) SET @html = '<html>' + '<H3><font id="Text" style='color: Green;'>Top Databases: </H3>' + '<table border="1" bordercolor="#3300FF" style='background-color:#DDF8CC' width='70%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='3'>' + '<tr><font color="Green"><th>Database Name</th><th>Size</th><th>Physical Name</th></tr>' + CAST( (SELECT TOP 10                             td = name,'',                             td = size * 8/1024 ,'',                             td = physical_name              FROM sys.master_files               ORDER BY size DESC             FOR XML PATH ('tr'),TYPE ) AS VARCHAR(MAX)) + '</table>' EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail @recipients = '[email protected]', @subject ='Top databases', @body = @html, @body_format = 'HTML' This is the result:   If you want to add more visualization effects, you can use Google Charts Tools https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/interactive/docs/index which is a free and rich library of data visualization charts, they’re also easy to populate and embed. There are two versions of the Google Charts Image based charts: https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/image/docs/gallery/chart_gall This is an old version, it’s officially deprecated although it will be up for a next few years or so. I really enjoy using this one because it can be viewed within the email body. For mobile devices you need to change the “Load remote images” property in your email application configuration.           Charts based on JavaScript classes: https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery This API is newer, with rich and highly interactive charts, and it’s much more easier to understand and configure. The only downside of it is that they cannot be viewed within the email body. Outlook, Gmail and many other email clients, as part of their security policy, do not run any JavaScript that’s placed within the email body. However, you can still enjoy this API by sending the report as an email attachment. Here is an example of the old version of Google Charts API, sending the same top databases report as in the previous example but instead of a simple table, this script is using a pie chart right from  the T-SQL code DECLARE @html  varchar(8000) DECLARE @Series  varchar(800),@Labels  varchar(8000),@Legend  varchar(8000);     SET @Series = ''; SET @Labels = ''; SET @Legend = ''; SELECT TOP 5 @Series = @Series + CAST(size * 8/1024 as varchar) + ',',                         @Labels = @Labels +CAST(size * 8/1024 as varchar) + 'MB'+'|',                         @Legend = @Legend + name + '|' FROM sys.master_files ORDER BY size DESC SELECT @Series = SUBSTRING(@Series,1,LEN(@Series)-1),         @Labels = SUBSTRING(@Labels,1,LEN(@Labels)-1),         @Legend = SUBSTRING(@Legend,1,LEN(@Legend)-1) SET @html =   '<H3><font color="Green"> '+@@ServerName+' top 5 databases : </H3>'+    '<br>'+    '<img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?'+    'chf=bg,s,DDF8CC&'+    'cht=p&'+    'chs=400x200&'+    'chco=3072F3|7777CC|FF9900|FF0000|4A8C26&'+    'chd=t:'+@Series+'&'+    'chl='+@Labels+'&'+    'chma=0,0,0,0&'+    'chdl='+@Legend+'&'+    'chdlp=b"'+    'alt="'+@@ServerName+' top 5 databases" />'              EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail @recipients = '[email protected]',                             @subject = 'Top databases',                             @body = @html,                             @body_format = 'HTML' This is what you get. Isn’t it great? Chart parameters reference: chf     Gradient fill  bg - backgroud ; s- solid cht     chart type  ( p - pie) chs        chart size width/height chco    series colors chd        chart data string        1,2,3,2 chl        pir chart labels        a|b|c|d chma    chart margins chdl    chart legend            a|b|c|d chdlp    chart legend text        b - bottom of chart   Line graph implementation is also really easy and powerful DECLARE @html varchar(max) DECLARE @Series varchar(max) DECLARE @HourList varchar(max) SET @Series = ''; SET @HourList = ''; SELECT @HourList = @HourList + SUBSTRING(CONVERT(varchar(13),last_execution_time,121), 12,2)  + '|' ,              @Series = @Series + CAST( COUNT(1) as varchar) + ',' FROM sys.dm_exec_query_stats s     CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(plan_handle) t WHERE last_execution_time > = getdate()-1 GROUP BY CONVERT(varchar(13),last_execution_time,121) ORDER BY CONVERT(varchar(13),last_execution_time,121) SET @Series = SUBSTRING(@Series,1,LEN(@Series)-1) SET @html = '<img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?'+ 'chco=CA3D05,87CEEB&'+ 'chd=t:'+@Series+'&'+ 'chds=1,350&'+ 'chdl= Proc executions from cache&'+ 'chf=bg,s,1F1D1D|c,lg,0,363433,1.0,2E2B2A,0.0&'+ 'chg=25.0,25.0,3,2&'+ 'chls=3|3&'+ 'chm=d,CA3D05,0,-1,12,0|d,FFFFFF,0,-1,8,0|d,87CEEB,1,-1,12,0|d,FFFFFF,1,-1,8,0&'+ 'chs=600x450&'+ 'cht=lc&'+ 'chts=FFFFFF,14&'+ 'chtt=Executions for from' +(SELECT CONVERT(varchar(16),min(last_execution_time),121)          FROM sys.dm_exec_query_stats          WHERE last_execution_time > = getdate()-1) +' till '+ +(SELECT CONVERT(varchar(16),max(last_execution_time),121)     FROM sys.dm_exec_query_stats) + '&'+ 'chxp=1,50.0|4,50.0&'+ 'chxs=0,FFFFFF,12,0|1,FFFFFF,12,0|2,FFFFFF,12,0|3,FFFFFF,12,0|4,FFFFFF,14,0&'+ 'chxt=y,y,x,x,x&'+ 'chxl=0:|1|350|1:|N|2:|'+@HourList+'3:|Hour&'+ 'chma=55,120,0,0" alt="" />' EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail @recipients = '[email protected]', @subject ='Daily number of executions', @body = @html, @body_format = 'HTML' Chart parameters reference: chco    series colors chd        series data chds    scale format chdl    chart legend chf        background fills chg        grid line chls    line style chm        line fill chs        chart size cht        chart type chts    chart style chtt    chart title chxp    axis label positions chxs    axis label styles chxt    axis tick mark styles chxl    axis labels chma    chart margins If you don’t mind to get your charts as an email attachment, you can enjoy the Java based Google Charts which are even easier to configure, and have much more advanced graphics. In the example below, the sp_send_email procedure uses the parameter @query which will be executed at the time that sp_send_dbemail is executed and the HTML result of this execution will be attached to the email. DECLARE @html varchar(max),@query varchar(max) DECLARE @SeriesDBusers  varchar(800);     SET @SeriesDBusers = ''; SELECT @SeriesDBusers = @SeriesDBusers +  ' ["'+DB_NAME(r.database_id) +'", ' +cast(count(1) as varchar)+'],' FROM sys.dm_exec_requests r GROUP BY DB_NAME(database_id) ORDER BY count(1) desc; SET @SeriesDBusers = SUBSTRING(@SeriesDBusers,1,LEN(@SeriesDBusers)-1) SET @query = ' PRINT '' <html>   <head>     <script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>     <script type="text/javascript">       google.load("visualization", "1", {packages:["corechart"]});        google.setOnLoadCallback(drawChart);       function drawChart() {                      var data = google.visualization.arrayToDataTable([                        ["Database Name", "Active users"],                        '+@SeriesDBusers+'                      ]);                        var options = {                        title: "Active users",                        pieSliceText: "value"                      };                        var chart = new google.visualization.PieChart(document.getElementById("chart_div"));                      chart.draw(data, options);       };     </script>   </head>   <body>     <table>     <tr><td>         <div id="chart_div" style='width: 800px; height: 300px;'></div>         </td></tr>     </table>   </body> </html> ''' EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail    @recipients = '[email protected]',    @subject ='Active users',    @body = @html,    @body_format = 'HTML',    @query = @Query,     @attach_query_result_as_file = 1,     @query_attachment_filename = 'Results.htm' After opening the email attachment in the browser you are getting this kind of report: In fact, the above is not only for database alerts. It can be used for applicative reports if you need high levels of customization that you cannot achieve using standard methods like SSRS. If you need more information on how to customize the charts, you can try the following: Image Based Charts wizard https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/image/docs/chart_wizard  Live Image Charts Playground https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/image/docs/chart_playground Image Based Charts Parameters List https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/image/docs/chart_params Java Script Charts Playground https://code.google.com/apis/ajax/playground/?type=visualization Use the above examples as a starting point for your procedures and I’d be more than happy to hear of your implementations of the above techniques. Yours, Maria

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• How many people will be with you during 24HOP?

  - by Rob Farley

  In less than a week, SQLPASS hosts another 24 Hours of PASS event, this time with an array of 24 female speakers (in honour of this month being Women’s History Month). Interestingly, the committee has had a few people ask if there are rules about how the event can be viewed, such as “How many people from any one organisation can watch it?” or “Does it matter if a few people are crowded around the same screen?” From a licensing and marketing perspective, there is value in knowing how many people are watching the event, but there are no restrictions about how the thing is viewed. In fact – if you’re planning to watch any of these events, I want to suggest an idea: Book a meeting room in your office with a projector, and watch 24HOP in there. If you’re planning to have it streaming in the background while you work, obviously this makes life a bit trickier. But if you’re planning to treat it as a training event (a 2-day conference if you like) and block out a bit of time for it (as well you should – there’s going to be some great stuff in there), then why not do it in a way that makes it so that other people can see that you’re watching it, and potentially join you. When an event like this runs, we can see how many different ‘people’ are attending each LiveMeeting session. What we can’t tell is how many actual people there are represented. Jessica Moss spoke to the Adelaide SQL Server User Group a few weeks ago via LiveMeeting, and LiveMeeting told us there were less than a dozen people attending. Really there were at least three times that number, because all the people in the room with me weren’t included. I’d love to imagine that every LiveMeeting attendee represented a crowd in a room, watching a shared screen. So there’s my challenge – don’t let your LiveMeeting session represent just you. Find a way of involving other people. At the very least, you’ll be able to discuss it with them afterwards. Now stick a comment on this post to let me know how many people are going to be joining you. :) If you’re not registered for the event yet, get yourself over to the SQLPASS site and make it happen.

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• JavaFX Dialogs, Anyone?

  - by HecklerMark

  A common question about JavaFX, especially for those coming from a Swing background, is "How do I do Dialogs?" The reason this is a question at all is that, currently, there is no baked-in capability to do dialog boxes within a pure JavaFX 2.x application. But come on...you wouldn't be reading about this at all if you weren't a resourceful programmer. You have ways of making things happen.  :-) I ran across a decent patch of code recently that handles many of the dialog chores for you. Pros and cons follow, but pointing your browser to this link on Github (appropriately named JavaFXDialog) will get you off to a good start. Here are some screen shots the original code author, Anton Smirnov, provided: Nothing fancy, just clean and functional. Now, about those pros and cons. From my perspective, here's the bottom line: Pros Already developed. Time required to implement is limited to downloading and decompressing the file, doing a bit of reading, and writing a few lines of code to try things out. Easy. Most of the work is done, and the interface is pretty simple. Open source. If you want to make changes - and I'm already thinking along those lines, so you may as well admit you will, too - you can do it. Cons Documentation. What you see on the Wiki page is the extent of it. Lack of activity. As of the date this article was published, the code hasn't been updated in several months...so the project is a bit stale. To be fair, the cons listed above won't cause anyone to lose sleep. After all, you don't expect constant revisions against something that works well enough for most purposes, and if your needs exceed what is there, it's easy to mod the code yourself or "roll your own" if you prefer. The lack of documentation isn't a show-stopper either due to the limited functionality and complexity of the code. Wrapping It Up If you need a quick, drop-in dialog capability for your JavaFX 2.x app, give it a try and see what you think. And if you're already using something you like, please share it as well! I'd love to hear from you, take a look at what you pass along, and maybe do a "dialog shoot-out" article in the future. So..what works for you?  :-) All the best, Mark

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• BOX2D and AS3: Mouse Event not working

  - by Gabriel Meono

  Background: Trying to make a simple "drop the ball" game. The code is located inside the first frame of the timeline. Nothing more is on the stage. Issue: Using QuickBox2D I made a simple If statement that drops and object acording the Mouse-x position: if (MouseEvent.CLICK) { sim.addCircle({x:mouseX, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); I imported the MouseEvent library: import flash.events.MouseEvent; Nothing happens if I click, no output errors either. See it in action: http://gabrielmeono.com/download/Lucky_Hit_Alpha.swf http://gabrielmeono.com/download/Lucky_Hit_Alpha.fla Full Code: [SWF(width = 350, height = 600, frameRate = 60)] import com.actionsnippet.qbox.*; import flash.events.MouseEvent; var sim:QuickBox2D = new QuickBox2D(this); sim.createStageWalls(); //var ball:sim.addCircle({x:mouseX, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); // // make a heavy circle sim.addCircle({x:3, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); sim.addCircle({x:2, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); sim.addCircle({x:4, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); sim.addCircle({x:5, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); sim.addCircle({x:6, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); // create a few platforms sim.addBox({x:3, y:2, width:4, height:0.2, density:0, angle:0.1}); // make 26 dominoes for (var i:int = 0; i<7; i++){ //End sim.addCircle({x:1 + i * 1.5, y:16, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:2 + i * 1.5, y:15, radius:0.1, density:0}); //Mid end sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 2, y:14, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 2, y:13, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 2, y:12, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 2, y:11, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 2, y:10, radius:0.1, density:0}); //Middle Start sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 1.5, y:09, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:1 + i * 1.5, y:08, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 1.5, y:07, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:1 + i * 1.5, y:06, radius:0.1, density:0}); } if (MouseEvent.CLICK) { sim.addCircle({x:mouseX, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); sim.start(); /*sim.mouseDrag();*/ }

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• Data Modeling Resources

  - by Dejan Sarka

  You can find many different data modeling resources. It is impossible to list all of them. I selected only the most valuable ones for me, and, of course, the ones I contributed to. Books Chris J. Date: An Introduction to Database Systems – IMO a “must” to understand the relational model correctly. Terry Halpin, Tony Morgan: Information Modeling and Relational Databases – meet the object-role modeling leaders. Chris J. Date, Nikos Lorentzos and Hugh Darwen: Time and Relational Theory, Second Edition: Temporal Databases in the Relational Model and SQL – all theory needed to manage temporal data. Louis Davidson, Jessica M. Moss: Pro SQL Server 2012 Relational Database Design and Implementation – the best SQL Server focused data modeling book I know by two of my friends. Dejan Sarka, et al.: MCITP Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-441): Designing Database Solutions by Using Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 – SQL Server 2005 data modeling training kit. Most of the text is still valid for SQL Server 2008, 2008 R2, 2012 and 2014. Itzik Ben-Gan, Lubor Kollar, Dejan Sarka, Steve Kass: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008 T-SQL Querying – Steve wrote a chapter with mathematical background, and I added a chapter with theoretical introduction to the relational model. Itzik Ben-Gan, Dejan Sarka, Roger Wolter, Greg Low, Ed Katibah, Isaac Kunen: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008 T-SQL Programming – I added three chapters with theoretical introduction and practical solutions for the user-defined data types, dynamic schema and temporal data. Dejan Sarka, Matija Lah, Grega Jerkic: Training Kit (Exam 70-463): Implementing a Data Warehouse with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 – my first two chapters are about data warehouse design and implementation. Courses Data Modeling Essentials – I wrote a 3-day course for SolidQ. If you are interested in this course, which I could also deliver in a shorter seminar way, you can contact your closes SolidQ subsidiary, or, of course, me directly on addresses [email protected] or [email protected]. This course could also complement the existing courseware portfolio of training providers, which are welcome to contact me as well. Logical and Physical Modeling for Analytical Applications – online course I wrote for Pluralsight. Working with Temporal data in SQL Server – my latest Pluralsight course, where besides theory and implementation I introduce many original ways how to optimize temporal queries. Forthcoming presentations SQL Bits 12, July 17th – 19th, Telford, UK – I have a full-day pre-conference seminar Advanced Data Modeling Topics there.

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• Computer Visionaries 2014 Kinect Hackathon

  - by T

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tburger/archive/2014/08/08/computer-visionaries-2014-kinect-hackathon.aspxA big thank you to Computer Vision Dallas and Microsoft for putting together the Computer Visionaries 2014 Kinect Hackathon that took place July 18th and 19th 2014.  Our team had a great time and learned a lot from the Kinect MVP's and Microsoft team.  The Dallas Entrepreneur Center was a fantastic venue. In total, 114 people showed up to form 15 teams. Burger ITS & Friends team members with Ben Lower:  Shawn Weisfeld, Teresa Burger, Robert Burger, Harold Pulcher, Taylor Woolley, Cori Drew (not pictured), and Katlyn Drew (not pictured) We arrived Friday after a long day of work/driving.  Originally, our idea was to make a learning game for kids.  It was intended to be multi-simultaneous players dragging and dropping tiles into a canvas area for kids around 5 years old. We quickly learned that we were limited to two simultaneous players. After working on the game for the rest of the evening and into the next morning we decided that a fast multi-player game with hand gestures was not going to happen without going beyond what was provided with the API. If we were going to have something to show, it was time to switch gears. The next idea on the table was the Photo Anywhere Kiosk. The user can use voice and hand gestures to pick a place they would like to be.  After the user says a place (or anything they want) and then the word "search", the app uses Bing to display a bunch of images for him/her to choose from. With the use of hand gesture (grab and slide to move back and forth and push/pull to select an image) the user can get the perfect image to pose with. I couldn't get a snippet with the hand but when a the app is in use, a hand shows up to cue the user to use their hand to control it's movement. Once they chose an image, we use the Kinect background removal feature to super impose the user on that image. When they are in the perfect position, they say "save" to save the image. Currently, the image is saved in the images folder on the users account but there are many possibilities such as emailing it, posting to social media, etc.. The competition was great and we were honored to be recognized for third place. Other related posts: http://jasongfox.com/computer-visionaries-2014-incredible-success/ A couple of us are continuing to work on the kid's game and are going to make it a Windows 8 multi-player game without Kinect functionality. Stay tuned for more updates.

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• Web application / Domain model integration using JSON capable DTOs [on hold]

  - by g-makulik

  I'm a bit confused about architectural choices for the web-applications/java/python world. For c/c++ world the available (open source) choices to implement web applications is pretty limited to zero, involving java or python the choices explode to a,- hard to sort out -, mess of available 'frameworks' and application approaches. I want to sort out a clean MVC model, where the M stands for a fully blown (POCO, POJO driven) domain model (according M.Fowler's EAA pattern) using a mature OO language (Java,C++) for implementation. The background is: I have a system with certain hardware components (that introduce system immanent active behavior) and a configuration database for system meta and HW-components configuration data (these are even usually self contained, since the HW-components are capable to persist their configuration data anyway). For realization of the configuration/status data exchange protocol with the HW-components we have chosen the Google Protobuf format, which works well for the directly wired communication with these components. This protocol is already used successfully with a Java based GUI application via TCP/IP connection to the main system controlling HW-component. This application has some drawbacks and design flaws for historical reasons. Now we want to develop an abstract model (domain model) for configuration and monitoring those HW-components, that represents a more use case oriented view to the overall system behavior. I have the feeling that a plain Java class model would fit best for this (c++ implementation seems to have too much implementation/integration overhead with viable language-bridge interfaces). Google Protobuf message definitions could still serve well to describe DTO objects used to interact with a domain model API. But integrating Google Protobuf messages client side for e.g. data binding in the current view doesn't seem to be a good choice. I'm thinking about some extra serialization features, e.g. for JSON based data exchange with the views/controllers. Most lightweight solutions seem to involve a python based presentation layer using JSON based data transfer (I'm at least not sure to be fully informed about this). Is there some lightweight (applicable for a limited ARM Linux platform) framework available, supporting such architecture to realize a web-application? UPDATE: According to my recent research and comments of colleagues I've noticed that using Java (and some JVM) might not be the preferable choice for integration with python on a limited linux system as we have (running on ARM9 with hard to discuss memory and MCU costs), but C/C++ modules would do well for this (since this forms the native interface to python extensions, doesn't it?). I can imagine to provide a domain model from an appropriate C/C++ API (though I still think it's more efforts and higher skill requirements for the involved developers to do with these languages). Still I'm searching for a good approach that supports such architecture. I'll appreciate any pointers!

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• Chunking a List - .NET vs Python

  - by Abhijeet Patel

  Chunking a List As I mentioned last time, I'm knee deep in python these days. I come from a statically typed background so it's definitely a mental adjustment. List comprehensions is BIG in Python and having worked with a few of them I can see why. Let's say we need to chunk a list into sublists of a specified size. Here is how we'd do it in C#  static class Extensions   {       public static IEnumerable<List<T>> Chunk<T>(this List<T> l, int chunkSize)       {           if (chunkSize <0)           {               throw new ArgumentException("chunkSize cannot be negative", "chunkSize");           }           for (int i = 0; i < l.Count; i += chunkSize)           {               yield return new List<T>(l.Skip(i).Take(chunkSize));           }       }    }    static void Main(string[] args)  {           var l = new List<string> { "a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f","g" };             foreach (var list in l.Chunk(7))           {               string str = list.Aggregate((s1, s2) => s1 + "," + s2);               Console.WriteLine(str);           }   }   A little wordy but still pretty concise thanks to LINQ.We skip the iteration number plus chunkSize elements and yield out a new List of chunkSize elements on each iteration. The python implementation is a bit more terse. def chunkIterable(iter, chunkSize):      '''Chunks an iterable         object into a list of the specified chunkSize     '''        assert hasattr(iter, "__iter__"), "iter is not an iterable"      for i in xrange(0, len(iter), chunkSize):          yield iter[i:i + chunkSize]    if __name__ == '__main__':      l = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f']      generator = chunkIterable(l,2)      try:          while(1):              print generator.next()      except StopIteration:          pass   xrange generates elements in the specified range taking in a seed and returning a generator. which can be used in a for loop(much like using a C# iterator in a foreach loop) Since chunkIterable has a yield statement, it turns this method into a generator as well. iter[i:i + chunkSize] essentially slices the list based on the current iteration index and chunksize and creates a new list that we yield out to the caller one at a time. A generator much like an iterator is a state machine and each subsequent call to it remembers the state at which the last call left off and resumes execution from that point. The caveat to keep in mind is that since variables are not explicitly typed we need to ensure that the object passed in is iterable using hasattr(iter, "__iter__").This way we can perform chunking on any object which is an "iterable", very similar to accepting an IEnumerable in the .NET land

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• Make the Firefox Awesome Bar Semi-Transparent Like Google Chrome

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like to make the Firefox Awesome Bar drop-down menu semi-transparent like in Google Chrome?  Here’s a quick trick that can make your Firefox Awesome Bar a bit more awesome. When you type an address or search query into the address bar in Google Chrome, the drop-down list of history and search suggestions that appears is slightly transparent.  Nothing extreme, but it adds a nice touch. Firefox’s Awesome bar, on the other hand, is fully opaque by default. We can change that with a simple change.  Exit Firefox, then open your Firefox profile folder by entering the following in the address bar in Explorer or in the Run command: %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ Open the default folder, and then open the Chrome folder in it. Now, open the userChrome.css file in an editor such as Notepad.  If you do not have a userChrome.css file, open the userChrome-example.css file instead. Now, add the following to the end of the file: #PopupAutoCompleteRichResult[type="autocomplete-richlistbox"]{    opacity: 0.9 !important;} You can change the opacity value, but 0.9 seemed the closest to Chrome’s transparency while keeping the text readable. Save the file as userChrome.css in that same folder.  If you’re editing with Notepad, make sure to select to save as All Files so the file won’t be saved with a .txt extension. Open Firefox, and now your Awesome Bar’s drop-down list will be transparent.  Actually, it may look even more awesome than Google Chrome’s address bar! Conclusion With this simple trick, you can make your Firefox Awesome bar a bit more awesome.  With tweaks like this, it’s no wonder Firefox is still so popular. Special thanks to Daniel Spiewak for the tip! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Stupid Geek Tricks: Compare Your Browser’s Memory Usage with Google ChromeHow to Make Google Chrome Your Default BrowserEnable Vista Black Style Theme for Google Chrome in XPMake your Gnome Terminal Background (mostly)Transparent on UbuntuStop YouTube Videos from Automatically Playing in Chrome 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 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Use ILovePDF To Split and Merge PDF Files TimeToMeet is a Simple Online Meeting Planning Tool Easily Create More Bookmark Toolbars in Firefox Filevo is a Cool File Hosting & Sharing Site Get a free copy of WinUtilities Pro 2010 World Cup Schedule

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• Gene Hunt Says:

  - by BizTalk Visionary

  "She's as nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot"   "He's got fingers in more pies than a leper on a cookery course" "You so much as belch out of line and I'll have your scrotum on a barbed wire plate" "Let's go play slappyface" "your surrounded by armed barstewards" “Right, get out and find this murdering scum right now!” [pause] “Scratch that, we start 9am sharp tomorrow, it's beer-o-clock.” "So then Cartwright, you're such a good Detective.... Go and Detect me a packet of Garibaldies" "You're not the one who is going to have to knit himself a new arsehole after 25 years of aggressive male love in prison" “A dream for me is Diana Dors and a bottle of chip fat." “A dream for me is Diana Dors and a bottle of chip fat." “They reckon you've got concussion - but personally, I couldn't give a tart's furry cup if half your brains are falling out. Don't ever waltz into my kingdom playing king of the jungle.” “You great... soft... sissy... girlie... nancy... french... bender... Man-United supporting POOF!!” “Drugs eh? What's the point. They make you forget, make you talk funny, make you see things that aren't there. My old grandma got all of that for free when she had a stroke.” “He's Dead! It's quite serious!” “Fanny in the flat...Nice Work” “SoopaDoopa” “Tits in a Jumper!” “Drop your weapons! You are surrounded by armed bastards!” “It's 1973, almost dinnertime. I'm 'avin 'oops!” “Trust the Gene Genie!” “I wanna hump Britt Ekland...What're we gonna do...!” “Was that 'E' and you don't know the rest?! or you going 'Eeee, I Dunno'” “Good Girl! Prostate probe and no jelly. “ “Give over, it's nothing like Spain!” “I'll come over your houses and stamp on all your toys!” “The Wizard will sort it out. It's cos of the wonderful things he does” “Cartwright can jump up and down on his knackers!” “It's not a windup love, he really thinks like this!” “Women! You can't say two words to them” “I was thinking, maybe, a Berni Inn!” “If I wanted a bollocking for drinking too much...!” “Shhhh...hear that...that's the sound of this case being closed! “Chicken!? In a basket!?” “Seems a large quantity of cocaine...” “You probably thought he kept his cock in his keks!” “The tail-end of Rays demotion speech!” “Stephen Warren is gay!?” “You're a smart boy, use your initiative!” “Don't be such a Jessie!” “I find the idea of a bird brushing her teeth...!” “Never been tempted to the Magic talcum powder?” “Make sure she's got nice tits!” “You're more likely to find an ostrich with a plum up it's arse!” “Drink this lot under the table and have a pint on the way home!” “Never be a female Prime Minister!” “Pub? Pub! pub!.....Pub!” “Thou shalt not suck off rent boys!” “The number for the special clinic is on the notice board!” “If me uncle had tits, would he be me auntie!” “Got your vicars in a twist!” “We Done?!” “Your mates got balls...If they were any bigger he'd need a wheelbarrow!” “The Ending - from 'I want to go home' to the end music.”

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• F# &ndash; Immutable List vs a Mutable Collection in Arrays

  - by MarkPearl

  Another day gone by looking into F#. Today I thought I would ramble on about lists and arrays in F#. Coming from a C# background I barely ever use arrays now days in my C# code – why you may ask – because I find lists generally handle most of the business scenario’s that I come across. So it has been an interesting experience with me keep bumping into Array’s & Lists in F# and I wondered why the frequency of coming across arrays was so much more in this language than in C#. Take for instance the code I stumbled across today. let rng = new Random() let shuffle (array : 'a array) = let n = array.Length for x in 1..n do let i = n-x let j = rng.Next(i+1) let tmp = array.[i] array.[i] <- array.[j] array.[j] <- tmp array   Quite simply its purpose is to “shuffle” an array of items. So I thought, why does it have the “a’ array'” explicitly declared? What if I changed it to a list? Well… as I was about to find out there are some subtle differences between array’s & lists in F# that do not exist in C#. Namely, mutability. A list in F# is an ordered, immutable series of elements of the same type, while an array is a fixed-size zero based, mutable collection of consecutive data elements that are all of the same type. For me the keyword is immutable vs mutable collection. That’s why I could not simply swap the ‘a array with ‘a list in my function header because then later on in the code the syntax would not be valid where I “swap” item positions. i.e. array.[i] <- array.[j] would be invalid because if it was a list, it would be immutable and so couldn’t change by its very definition.. So where does that leave me? It’s to early days to say. I don’t know what the balance will be in future code – will I typically always use lists or arrays or even have a balance, but time will tell.

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• Archbeat Link-O-Rama Top 10 Facebook Faves - June 23-29, 2013

  - by Bob Rhubart

  2,947 people now follow OTN ArchBeat on Facebook. Here are the Top 10 items shared on that page for June 23-29, 2013. Podcast Show Notes: DevOps, Cloud, and Role Creep After some confusion (my bad) all three CORRECT parts of this podcast are now available. The panelists for this discussion are all Oracle ACE Directors: Ron Batra, Basheer Khan, and Cary Millsap. SOA Suite 11g Developers Cookbook Published | Antony Reynolds "The book focuses on areas that we felt we had neglected in the Developers Guide, says co-author Antony Reynolds. "There is more about Java integration and OSB, both of which we see a lot of questions about when working with customers." Using Oracle TimesTen With Oracle BI Applications (Part 2) | Peter Scott Peter Scott follows up an earlier post with a look at some of the OBIA structures and a discussion of some of the features of TimesTen. Linux-Containers — Part 1: Overview | Lenz Grimmer OTN Garage blogger Lenz Grimmer kicks off a series and expands your mind with deep detail on Linux Containers Slides from my ODTUG Kscope13 Presentation | Zeeshan Baig Oracle ACE Zeeshan Baig shares the slides from his KScope13 presentation, "Build Your Business Services Using ADF Task Flows." Fun with Enterprise Manager | Rene van Wijk Oracle ACE Rene van Wijk shares some background and some tuning and other tech tips for working with Oracle Enterprise Manager. Using VirtualBox to test drive Windows Blue | The Fat Bloke The Fat Bloke shares a tech tip for those interested in giving Windows Blue a try on Virtual Box. Podcast Show Notes: The Fusion Middleware A-Team and the Chronicles of Architecture In this three-part series Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team members Jennifer Briscoe, Clifford Musante, Mikael Ottosson, and Pardha Reddy talk about the origins and mission of the FMW A-Team and about the great technical content you'll find on the recently launched Oracle A-Team blog. Part one is now available. 5 Best Practices - Laying the Foundation for WebCenter Projects | John Brunswick Oracle WebCenter expert John Brunswick shares best practices that "enable the creation of portal solutions with minimal resource overhead, while offering the greatest flexibility for progressive elaboration." Oracle Magazine - July/Aug 2013 The digital edition of the July/August edition of Oracle Magazine is now available. This issue includes my architect community column, "The CX Factor." which features insight from community members on "why and how CX has become a significant factor in enterprise IT." h

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• How to Buy an SD Card: Speed Classes, Sizes, and Capacities Explained

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Memory cards are used in digital cameras, music players, smartphones, tablets, and even laptops. But not all SD cards are created equal — there are different speed classes, physical sizes, and capacities to consider. Different devices require different types of SD cards. Here are the differences you’ll need to keep in mind when picking out the right SD card for your device. Speed Class In a nutshell, not all SD cards offer the same speeds. This matters for some tasks more than it matters for others. For example, if you’re a professional photographer taking photos in rapid succession on a DSLR camera saving them in high-resolution RAW format, you’ll want a fast SD card so your camera can save them as fast as possible. A fast SD card is also important if you want to record high-resolution video and save it directly to the SD card. If you’re just taking a few photos on a typical consumer camera or you’re just using an SD card to store some media files on your smartphone, the speed isn’t as important. Manufacturers use “speed classes” to measure an SD card’s speed. The SD Association that defines the SD card standard doesn’t actually define the exact speeds associated with these classes, but they do provide guidelines. There are four different speed classes — 10, 8, 4, and 2. 10 is the fastest, while 2 is the slowest. Class 2 is suitable for standard definition video recording, while classes 4 and 6 are suitable for high-definition video recording. Class 10 is suitable for “full HD video recording” and “HD still consecutive recording.” There are also two Ultra High Speed (UHS) speed classes, but they’re more expensive and are designed for professional use. UHS cards are designed for devices that support UHS. Here are the associated logos, in order from slowest to fastest:       You’ll probably be okay with a class 4 or 6 card for typical use in a digital camera, smartphone, or tablet. Class 10 cards are ideal if you’re shooting high-resolution videos or RAW photos. Class 2 cards are a bit on the slow side these days, so you may want to avoid them for all but the cheapest digital cameras. Even a cheap smartphone can record HD video, after all. An SD card’s speed class is identified on the SD card itself. You’ll also see the speed class on the online store listing or on the card’s packaging when purchasing it. For example, in the below photo, the middle SD card is speed class 4, while the two other cards are speed class 6. If you see no speed class symbol, you have a class 0 SD card. These cards were designed and produced before the speed class rating system was introduced. They may be slower than even a class 2 card. Physical Size Different devices use different sizes of SD cards. You’ll find standard-size CD cards, miniSD cards, and microSD cards. Standard SD cards are the largest, although they’re still very small. They measure 32x24x2.1 mm and weigh just two grams. Most consumer digital cameras for sale today still use standard SD cards. They have the standard “cut corner”  design. miniSD cards are smaller than standard SD cards, measuring 21.5x20x1.4 mm and weighing about 0.8 grams. This is the least common size today. miniSD cards were designed to be especially small for mobile phones, but we now have a smaller size. microSD cards are the smallest size of SD card, measuring 15x11x1 mm and weighing just 0.25 grams. These cards are used in most cell phones and smartphones that support SD cards. They’re also used in many other devices, such as tablets. SD cards will only fit into marching slots. You can’t plug a microSD card into a standard SD card slot — it won’t fit. However, you can purchase an adapter that allows you to plug a smaller SD card into a larger SD card’s form and fit it into the appropriate slot. Capacity Like USB flash drives, hard drives, solid-state drives, and other storage media, different SD cards can have different amounts of storage. But the differences between SD card capacities don’t stop there. Standard SDSC (SD) cards are 1 MB to 2 GB in size, or perhaps 4 GB in size — although 4 GB is non-standard. The SDHC standard was created later, and allows cards 2 GB to 32 GB in size. SDXC is a more recent standard that allows cards 32 GB to 2 TB in size. You’ll need a device that supports SDHC or SDXC cards to use them. At this point, the vast majority of devices should support SDHC. In fact, the SD cards you have are probably SDHC cards. SDXC is newer and less common. When buying an SD card, you’ll need to buy the right speed class, size, and capacity for your needs. Be sure to check what your device supports and consider what speed and capacity you’ll actually need. Image Credit: Ryosuke SEKIDO on Flickr, Clive Darra on Flickr, Steven Depolo on Flickr

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• Using MVP, how to create a view from another view, linked with the same model object

  - by Dinaiz

  Background We use the Model-View-Presenter design pattern along with the abstract factory pattern and the "signal/slot" pattern in our application, to fullfill 2 main requirements Enhance testability (very lightweight GUI, every action can be simulated in unit tests) Make the "view" totally independant from the rest, so we can change the actual view implementation, without changing anything else In order to do so our code is divided in 4 layers : Core : which holds the model Presenter : which manages interactions between the view interfaces (see bellow) and the core View Interfaces : they define the signals and slots for a View, but not the implementation Views : the actual implementation of the views When the presenter creates or deals with views, it uses an abstract factory and only knows about the view interfaces. It does the signal/slot binding between views interfaces. It doesn't care about the actual implementation. In the "views" layer, we have a concrete factory which deals with implementations. The signal/slot mechanism is implemented using a custom framework built upon boost::function. Really, what we have is something like that : http://martinfowler.com/eaaDev/PassiveScreen.html Everything works fine. The problem However, there's a problem I don't know how to solve. Let's take for example a very simple drag and drop example. I have two ContainersViews (ContainerView1, ContainerView2). ContainerView1 has an ItemView1. I drag the ItemView1 from ContainerView1 to ContainerView2. ContainerView2 must create an ItemView2, of a different type, but which "points" to the same model object as ItemView1. So the ContainerView2 gets a callback called for the drop action with ItemView1 as a parameter. It calls ContainerPresenterB passing it ItemViewB In this case we are only dealing with views. In MVP-PV, views aren't supposed to know anything about the presenter nor the model, right ? How can I create the ItemView2 from the ItemView1, not knowing which model object is ItemView1 representing ? I thought about adding an "itemId" to every view, this id being the id of the core object the view represents. So in pseudo code, ContainerPresenter2 would do something like itemView2=abstractWidgetFactory.createItemView2(); this.add(itemView2,itemView1.getCoreObjectId()) I don't get too much into details. That just work. The problem I have here is that those itemIds are just like pointers. And pointers can be dangling. Imagine that by mistake, I delete itemView1, and this deletes coreObject1. The itemView2 will have a coreObjectId which represents an invalid coreObject. Isn't there a more elegant and "bulletproof" solution ? Even though I never did ObjectiveC or macOSX programming, I couldn't help but notice that our framework is very similar to Cocoa framework. How do they deal with this kind of problem ? Couldn't find more in-depth information about that on google. If someone could shed some light on this. I hope this question isn't too confusing ...

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• XNA Notes 005

  - by George Clingerman

  Another week and another crazy amount of activity going on in the XNA community. I’m fairly certain I missed over half of it. In fact, if I am missing things, make sure to email me and I’ll try and make sure I catch it next week! ([email protected]). Also, if you’ve got any advice, things you like/don’t like about the way these XNA Notes are going let me know. I always appreciate feedback (currently spammers are leaving me the nicest comments so you guys have work to do!) Without further ado, here’s this week’s notes! Time Critical XNA News The XNA Team Blob reminds us that February 7th is the last day to submit XNA 3.1 games to peer review! http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/01/31/7-days-left-to-submit-xna-gs-3-1-games-on-app-hub.aspx XNA MVPS Chris Williams kicks off the marketing campaign for our book http://geekswithblogs.net/cwilliams/archive/2011/01/28/143680.aspx Catalin Zima posts the comparison cheat sheet for why Angry Birds is different than Chickens Can’t Fly http://www.amusedsloth.com/2011/02/comparison-cheat-sheet-for-chickens-cant-fly-and-angry-birds/ Jim Perry congratulates the developers selected by Game Developer Magazine for Best Xbox LIVE Indie Games of 2010 http://machxgames.com/blog/?p=24 @NemoKrad posts his XNAKUUG talks for all to enjoy http://twitter.com/NemoKrad/statuses/33142362502864896 http://xna-uk.net/blogs/randomchaos/archive/2011/02/03/xblig-uk-2011-january-amp-february-talk.aspx George  (that’s me!) preps for his XNA talk coming up on the 8th http://twitter.com/clingermangw/statuses/32669550554124288 http://www.portlandsilverlight.net/Meetings/Details/15 XNA Developers FireFly posts the last tutorial in his XNA Tower Defense tutorial series http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/26442/451460.aspx#451460 http://xnatd.blogspot.com/2011/01/tutorial-14-polishing-game.html @fredericmy posts the main difference when porting a game from Windows Phone 7 to Xbox 360 http://fairyengine.blogspot.com/2011/01/main-differences-when-porting-game-from.html @ElementCy creates a pretty rad video of a MineCraft type terrain created using XNA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Waw1f7wnl9I Andrew Russel gets the first XNA badge on gamedev.stackexchange http://twitter.com/_AndrewRussell/statuses/32322877004972032 http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/badges?tab=tags And his funding for ExEn has passed $7000 only $3000 to go http://twitter.com/_AndrewRussell/statuses/33042412804771840 Subodh Pushpak blogs about his Windows Phone 7 XNA talk http://geekswithblogs.net/subodhnpushpak/archive/2011/02/01/windows-phone-7-silverlight--xna-development-talk.aspx Slyprid releases the latest version of Transmute and needs more people to test http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/32452488418299904 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/ SpynDoctorGames celebrates the 1 year anniversary of Your Doodles Are Bugged! Congrats! http://twitter.com/SpynDoctorGames/statuses/32511689068908544 Noogy (creator of Dust the Elysian Tail) prepares his conversion to XNA 4.0 http://twitter.com/NoogyTweet/statuses/32522008449253376 @philippedasilva posts about the Indiefreaks Game Framework v0.2.0.0 Input management system http://twitter.com/philippedasilva/statuses/32763393957957632 http://indiefreaks.com/2011/02/02/behind-smart-input-system-feature/ Mommy’s Best Games debates what to do about High Scores with their new update http://mommysbest.blogspot.com/2011/02/high-score-shake-up.html @BinaryTweedDeej want to know if there’s anything the community needs to make XNA games for the PC. Give him some feedback! http://twitter.com/BinaryTweedDeej/status/32895453863354368 @mikebmcl promises to write us all a book (I can’t wait to read it!) http://twitter.com/mikebmcl/statuses/33206499102687233 @werezompire is going to live, LIVE, thanks to all the generosity and support from the community! http://twitter.com/werezompire/statuses/32840147644977153 Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG) Making money in Xbox 360 indie game development. Is it possible? http://www.bitmob.com/articles/making-money-in-xbox-360-indie-game-development-is-it-possible @AlejandroDaJ posts some thoughts abut the bitmob article http://twitter.com/AlejandroDaJ/statuses/31068552165330944 http://www.apathyworks.com/blog/view.php?id=00215 Kobun gets my respect as an XBLIG champion. I’m not sure who Kobun is, but if you’ve every read through the comment sections any time Kotaku writes about XBLIGs you’ll see a lot of confusion, disinformation in there. Kobun has been waging a secret war battling that lack of knowledge and he does it well. Also he’s running a pretty kick ass site for Xbox LIVE Indie Game reviews http://xboxindies.teamkobun.com/ @radiangames releases his last Xbox LIVE Indie Game...for now http://bit.ly/gMK6lE Playing Avaglide with the Kinect controller http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqAYbHww53o http://www.joystiq.com/2011/01/30/kinect-hacks-take-to-the-skies-with-avaglide/ Luke Schneider of Radiangames interviewed in Edge magazine http://www.next-gen.biz/features/radiangames-venture Digital Quarters posts thoughts on why XBLIG’s online requirement kills certain genres http://digitalquarters.blogspot.com/2011/02/thoughts-why-xbligs-online-requirement.html Mommy’s Best Games shares the news that several XBLIGs were featured in the March 2011 issue of Famitsu 360 http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/33455/451487.aspx#451487 NaviFairy continues with his Indie-Game-A-Day http://gaygamer.net/2011/02/indie_game_a_day_epic_dungeon.html http://gaygamer.net/2011/02/indie_game_a_day_break_limit_r.html and more every day...that’s kind of the point! Keep your eye on this series! VVGTV continues with it’s awesome reviews/promotions for XBLIGs http://vvgtv.com/ http://vvgtv.com/2011/02/03/iredia-atrams-secret-xblig-review-2/ http://vvgtv.com/2011/02/02/poopocalypse-coming-soon-to-xblig/ ….and even more, you get the point. Magicka is an Indie Game doing really well on Steam AND it’s made using XNA http://www.magickagame.com/ http://twitter.com/Magickagame/statuses/32712762580799488 GameMarx reviews Antipole http://www.gamemarx.com/reviews/73/antipole-is-vvvvvvery-good.aspx Armless Octopus review Alpha Squad http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/28/xbox-indie-review-alpha-squad/ An interesting article about Kodu that Jim Perry found http://twitter.com/MachXGames/statuses/32848044105924608 http://www.develop-online.net/news/36915/10-year-old-Jordan-makes-games-The-UK-needs-more-like-her XNA Game Development Sgt. Conker posts about the Natur beta, a new book and whether you can make money with XBLIG http://www.sgtconker.com/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/a-new-book-on-the-block-and-a-new-natur-beta/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/making-money-in-xbox-360-indie-game-development-is-it-possible/ Tips for setting up SVN http://bit.ly/fKxgFh @bsimser found tons of royalty free music and soundfx for your XNA Games http://twitter.com/bsimser/statuses/31426632933711872 Post on the new features in the next Sunburn Editor http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/fivesidedbarrel/archive/2011/01/28/new-editor-features-prefabs-components-and-more.aspx @jasons_novaleaf posts source code for light pre-pass optimizations for #xna http://twitter.com/jasons_novaleaf/statuses/33348855403642880 http://jcoluna.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/xna-4-0-light-pre-pass-optimization-round-one/ I’ve been learning about doing an A.I. for turn based games and this article was a great resource. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1535/designing_ai_algorithms_for_.php?print=1

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• The 2010 Life Insurance Conference - Washington, DC

  - by [email protected]

  How ironic to be in Washington, DC on April 15 - TAX DAY! Fortunately, I avoided IRS offices and attended the much more enjoyable 2010 Life Insurance Conference, presented by LIMRA, LOMA SOA and ACLI. This year's conference offered a variety of tracks focused on the Life Industry including Distribution/Marketing Marketing, Administration, Actuarial/Product Development, Regulatory, Reinsurance and Strategic Management. President and CEO of the ACLI, Frank Keating, opened the event by moderating a session titled "Executive Viewpoint on new Opportunities." Guest speakers included Ted Mathas, President and CEO of NY Life, and John Walters, President and CEO of Hartford Life. Both speakers were insightful as they shared the challenges and opportunities each company faces and the key role life insurance companies play in our society and the global economy. There were several key themes that were reiterated in multiple sessions throughout the conference - the economy is on the rebound, optimism is growing, consumer spending is up and an uptick in employment is likely to follow. The threat of a double dip recession has seemed to passed. Good news for our industry, and welcomed by all in attendance. Of special interest to me, given my background, was some research shared by both The Nolan Group and Novarica in separate sessions. Both firms indicate that policy administration upgrades/replacement projects remain a top priority in 2010. Carriers continue to invest in modern technology. Modern ultra-configurable systems enable carriers to switch from a waterfall to an agile project methodology, which often entails a "culture change" within an organization. Other themes heard throughout the two-day event: Virtually all sessions focused on People, Process and Technology! Product innovation, agility and speed to market are as important as ever. Social Networks and Twitter are becoming more popular ways of communicating with both field and dispersed staff. Several sessions focused on the application, new business and underwriting process. Companies continue looking for ways to increase market agility, accelerate speed to market, address cost issues and improve service levels across the process. They recognize the need to ease the way to do business with both producers and consumers. Author and economic futurist Jeff Thredgold presented an entertaining, informative and humorous general session on Wednesday afternoon that focused on the US and global economies, financial markets and retirement outlook. Thredgold did not disappoint anyone with his message! The Thursday morning general session was keynoted by Therese Vaughan (CEO - NAIC) and Thomas Crawford (President of C2 Group). Both speakers gave a poignant view of the recent financial crisis and discussed "Putting the Pieces Back Together." Therese spoke of the recent financial turmoil and likely changes to regulations to the financial services sector. Tom's topics focused on economic recovery and the political environment in Washington, and how that impacts our industry. Next year's event will be April 11-13, 2011 in Las Vegas. Roger A.Soppe, CLU, LUTCF, is the Senior Director of Insurance Strategy, Oracle Insurance.

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• July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 24 (sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats)

  - by Tamarick Hill

  The sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats Dynamic Management Function returns information about the IO, locking, and access methods for the indexes that you currently have on your SQL Server Instance. This function takes four input parameters which are (1) database_id, (2) object_id, (3) index_id, and (4) partition_number. Let’s have a look at the results from this function against our AdventureWorks2012 database. This function returns a ton of columns, so not only will I not attempt to describe each of the columns, I wont even attempt to display all of them here. My query below will give you a subset of the columns returned from this function. SELECT database_id, object_id, index_id, partition_number, leaf_insert_count, leaf_delete_count, leaf_update_count, leaf_ghost_count, nonleaf_insert_count, nonleaf_delete_count, nonleaf_update_count, range_scan_count, forwarded_fetch_count, row_lock_count, row_lock_wait_count, page_lock_count, page_lock_wait_count, Index_lock_promotion_attempt_count, index_lock_promotion_count, page_compression_attempt_count, page_compression_success_count FROM sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats(db_id('AdventureWorks2012'), NULL, NULL, NULL) The first four columns in the result set represent the values that we passed in as our input parameters. If you use NULL’s as I did, then you will see results for every index on your system. I specified a database_id so my result set only shows those records pertaining to my AdventureWorks2012 database. The next columns in the result set provide you with information on how may inserts, deletes, or updates that have taken place on your leaf and nonleaf index levels. The nonleaf levels would refer to the intermediate and root index levels. In the middle of these you see a leaf_ghost_count column, which represents the number of records that have been logically deleted and marked as “ghosted”  and are waiting on the background ghost cleanup process to physically remove them. The range_scan_count column represents the number of range or table scans that have been performed against an index. The forwarded_fetch_count column represents the number of rows that were returned from a forwarding row pointer. The row_lock_count and row_lock_wait_count represent the number of row locks that have been requested for an index and the number of times SQL has had to wait on a row lock respectively. The page_lock_count and page_lock_wait_count represent the number of page locks that have been requested for an index and the number of times SQL has had to wait on a page lock respectively. The index_lock_promotion_attempt_count represents the number of times the database engine has attempted to promote a lock to the index level. The index_lock_promotion_count column displays how many times that index lock promotion was successful. Lastly the page_compression_attempt_count and page_compression_success_count represents how many times a page was attempted to be compressed and how many times the attempt was successful. As you can see there is a ton of information returned from this DMV. The DMV we reviewed on yesterday (sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats) provided you with good information on when and how indexes have been used, but this DMF takes an even deeper dive into these statistics. If you are interested in performing a very detailed analysis on the operational stats of your indexes, this is not only a good place to start, but more than likely the best place. For more information on this Dynamic Management Function, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174281.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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• Make Chrome’s New Tab Page More Useful and Artistic

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you tired of the default New Tab Page in Google Chrome and want something more useful and artistic? Then join us as we look at the Incredible StartPage extension. Before Here is the default “New Tab Page” in our Chrome Browser…it looks rather plain and boring. How about something better? Incredible StartPage in Action This is what our “New Tab Page” looked like after installing the extension. As you can see there is a “Note Section”, “Closed Tabs Section”, “All Bookmarks Section”, and a “Bookmarks Toolbar (links only) Section”. Note: Clicking on links in Incredible StartPage will open them in the current tab. If you want you can easily modify how Incredible StartPage looks using the “Options” in the upper right corner. After only a couple of minutes our “New Tab Page” was looking nice…new background color, image, and altered note. A very useful feature of the “Note Section” is that you can add your notes to an e-mail by clicking on the “Post to Gmail Link” just below the note. Note: Special “Chrome Pages” (i.e. Extensions) will not open from the “Closed Tabs Section”. When you click on “Post to Gmail” a new tab will be opened with your notes pre-pasted into the main letter body. All that is left for you to do is select the appropriate e-mail address(es) and to make any desired modifications to the “Subject & Letter”. Going back to the “New Tab Page” you can trade bookmarks back and forth between the “All Bookmarks Section” and the “Bookmarks Toolbar Section”. Simply drag-and-drop as desired…but keep in mind that any changes made here will also be reflected in your “Bookmarks Toolbar & Other Bookmarks”. There is our bookmark freshly traded over to the “Bookmarks Toolbar Section”…looking very nice. Conclusion If you are tired of the default “New Tab Page” in Google Chrome then the Incredible StartPage extension will make for a refreshing change. Links Download the Incredible StartPage extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Turn Chrome’s New Tab Page into a Google Tasks PageAccess Google Chrome’s Special Pages the Easy WayReplace Google Chrome’s New Tab Page with Speed DialRegistry Hack to Set Internet Explorer Start PageMake iGoogle Your Startup Page in Microsoft Outlook 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 Get Better Windows Search With UltraSearch Scan News With NY Times Article Skimmer SpeedyFox Claims to Speed up your Firefox Beware Hover Kitties Test Drive Mobile Phones Online With TryPhone Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, 3/23/10

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