geeks with blogs - Page 61

Observations From The Corner of a Starbucks

- by Chris Williams

I’ve spent the last 3 days sitting in a Starbucks for 4-8 hours at a time. As a result, I’ve observed a lot of interesting behavior and people (most of whom were uninteresting themselves.) One of the things I’ve noticed is that most people don’t sit down. They come in, get their drink and go. The ones that do sit down, stay much longer than it takes to consume their drink. The drink is just an incidental purchase. Certainly not the reason they are here. Most of the people who sit also have laptops. Probably around 75%. Only a few have kids (with them) but the ones that do, have very small kids. Toddlers or younger. Of all the “campers” only a small percentage are wearing headphone, presumably because A) external noise doesn’t bother them or B) they aren’t working on anything important. My buddy George falls into category A, but he grew up in a house full of people. Silence freaks him out far more than noise. My brother and I, on the other hand, were both only children and don’t handle noisy distractions well. He needs it quiet (like a tomb) and I need music. Go figure… I can listen to Britney Spears mixed with Apoptygma Berzerk and Anthrax and crank out 30 pages, but if your toddler is banging his spoon on the table, you’re getting a dirty look… unless I have music, then all is right with the world. Anyway, enough about me. Most of the people who come in as a group are smiling when they enter. Half as many are smiling when they leave. People who come in alone typically aren’t smiling at all. The average age, over the last three days seems to be early 30s… with a couple of senior citizens and teenagers at either end of the curve. The teenagers almost never stay. They have better stuff to do on a nice day. The senior citizens are split nearly evenly between campers and in&outs. Most of the non-solo campers have 1 person with a laptop, while the other reads the paper or a book. Some campers bring multiple laptops… but only really look at one of them. This Starbucks has a drive through. The line is almost never more than 2-3 cars long but apparently a lot of the in&out people would rather come in and stand in line behind (up to) 5 people. The music in here sucks. My musical tastes can best be described as eclectic to bad, but I can still get work done (see above.) I find the music in this particular Starbucks to be discordant and jarring. At this Starbucks, the coffee lingo is apparently something that is meant to occur between employees only. The nice lady at the counter can handle orders in plain English and translate them to Baristaspeak (Baristese?) quite efficiently. If you order in Baristaspeak however, she will look confused and repeat your order back to you in plain English to confirm you actually meant what you said. Then she will say it in Baristaspeak to the lady making your drink. Nobody in this Starbucks (other than the Baristas) makes eye-contact… at least not with me. Of course that may be indicative of a separate issue. ;)

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ISO Mount for Windown 7 and/or Server 2008

- by Eric Johnson

Apparently it's hard to locate a free ISO mapper these days. Like most people I've use Microsoft's Virtual CD ROM to mount ISO images on XP and server 2003 machines. This will not work in Windows 7 and Server 2008 machines. Therefore, I recommend people try out magic ISO instead. It's freeware and can be downloaded from the following URL. http://www.magiciso.com/tutorials/miso-magicdisc-history.htm

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FAT Volume and CE

- by Kate Moss' Open Space

Whenever we format a disk volume, it is a good idea to name the label so it will be easier to categorize. To label a volume, we can use LABEL command or UI depends on your preference. Windows CE does provide FAT driver and support various format (FAT12, FAT16,FAT32, ExFAT and TFAT - transaction-safe FAT) and many feature to let you scan and even defrag the volume but not labeling. At any time you format a volume in CE and then mount it on PC, the label is always empty! Of course, you can always label the volume on PC, even it is formatted in CE. So looks like CE does not care about the volume label at all, neither report the label to OS nor changing the label on FAT.So how can we set the volume label in CE? To Answer this question, we need to know how does FAT stores the volume label. Here are some on-line resources are handy for parsing FAT. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table http://www.pjrc.com/tech/8051/ide/fat32.html http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/firmware/fatgen.mspx You can refer to PUBLIC\COMMON\OAK\DRIVERS\FSD\FATUTIL\MAIN\bootsec.h and dosbpb.h or the above links for the fields we discuss here. The first sector of a FAT Volume (it is not necessary to be the first sector of a disk.) is a FAT boot sector and BPB (BIOS Parameter Block). And at offset 43, bgbsVolumeLabel (or bsVolumeLabel on FAT16) is for storing the volume lable, but note in the spec also indicates "FAT file system drivers should make sure that they update this field when the volume label file in the root directory has its name changed or created.". So we can't just simply update the bgbsVolumeLabel but also need to create a volume lable file in root directory. The volume lable file is not a real file but just a file entry in root directory with zero file lenth and a very special file attribute, ATTR_VOLUME_ID. (defined in public\common\oak\drivers\fsd\fatutil\MAIN\fatutilp.h) Locating and accessing bootsector is quite straight forward, as long as we know the starting sector of a FAT volume, that's it. But where is the root directory? The layout of a typical FAT is like this Boot sector (Volume ID in the figure) followed by Reserved Sectors (1 on FAT12/16 and 32 on FAT32), then FAT chain table(s) (can be 1 or 2), after that is the root directory (FAT12/16 and not shows in the figure) then begining of the File and Directories. In FAT12/16, the root directory is placed right after FAT so it is not hard to caculate the offset in the volume. But in FAT32, this rule is no longer true: the first cluster of the root directory is determined by BGBPB_RootDirStrtClus (or offset 44 in boot sector). Although this field is usually 0x00000002 (it is how CE initial the root directory after formating a volume. Note we should never assume it is always true) which means the first cluster contains data but not like the root directory is contiguous in FAT12/16, it is just like a regular file can be fragmented. So we need to access the root directory (of FAT32) hopping one cluster to another by traversing FAT table. Let's trace the code now. Although the source of FAT driver is not available in CE Shared Source program, but the formatter, Fatutil.dll, is available in public\common\oak\drivers\fsd\fatutil\MAIN\formatdisk.cpp. Be aware the public code only provides formatter for FAT12/16/32 for ExFAT it is still not available. FormatVolumeInternal is the main worker function. With the knowledge here, you should be able the trace the code easily. But I would like to discuss the following code pieces dwReservedSectors = (fo.dwFatVersion == 32) ? 32 : 1; dwRootEntries = (fo.dwFatVersion == 32) ? 0 : fo.dwRootEntries; Note the dwReservedSectors is 32 in FAT32 and 1 in FAT12/16. Root Entries is another different mentioned in previous paragraph, 0 for FAT32 (dynamic allocated) and fixed size (usually 512, defined in DEFAULT_ROOT_ENTRIES in public\common\sdk\inc\fatutil.h) And then here memset(pBootSec->bsVolumeLabel, 0x20, sizeof(pBootSec->bsVolumeLabel)); It sets the Volume Label as empty string. Now let's carry on to the next section - write the root directory. if (fo.dwFatVersion == 32) { if (!(fo.dwFlags & FATUTIL_FORMAT_TFAT)) { dwRootSectors = dwSectorsPerCluster; } else { DIRENTRY dirEntry; DWORD offset; int iVolumeNo; memset(pbBlock, 0, pdi->di_bytes_per_sect); memset(&dirEntry, 0, sizeof(DIRENTRY)); dirEntry.de_attr = ATTR_VOLUME_ID; // the first one is volume label memcpy(dirEntry.de_name, "TFAT ", sizeof (dirEntry.de_name)); memcpy(pbBlock, &dirEntry, sizeof(dirEntry)); ... // Skip the next step of zeroing out clusters dwCurrentSec += dwSectorsPerCluster; dwRootSectors = 0; } } // Each new root directory sector needs to be zeroed. memset(pbBlock, 0, cbSizeBlk); iRootSec=0; while ( iRootSec < dwRootSectors) { Basically, the code zero out the each entry in root directory depends on dwRootSectors. In FAT12/16, the dwRootSectors is calculated as the sectors we need for the root entries (512 for most of the case) and in FAT32 it just zero out the one cluster. Please note that, if it is a TFAT volume, it initialize the root directory with special volume label entries for some special purpose. Despite to its unusual initialization process for TFAT, it does provide a example for how to create a volume entry. With some minor modification, we can assign the volume label in FAT formatter and also remember to sync the volume label with bsVolumeLabel or bgbsVolumeLabel in boot sector.

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CDN on Hosted Service in Windows Azure

- by Shaun

Yesterday I told Wang Tao, an annoying colleague sitting beside me, about how to make the static content enable the CDN in his website which had just been published on Windows Azure. The approach would be Move the static content, the images, CSS files, etc. into the blob storage. Enable the CDN on his storage account. Change the URL of those static files to the CDN URL. I think these are the very common steps when using CDN. But this morning I found that the new Windows Azure SDK 1.4 and new Windows Azure Developer Portal had just been published announced at the Windows Azure Blog. One of the new features in this release is about the CDN, which means we can enabled the CDN not only for a storage account, but a hosted service as well. Within this new feature the steps I mentioned above would be turned simpler a lot. Enable CDN for Hosted Service To enable the CDN for a hosted service we just need to log on the Windows Azure Developer Portal. Under the “Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN” item we will find a new menu on the left hand side said “CDN”, where we can manage the CDN for storage account and hosted service. As we can see the hosted services and storage accounts are all listed in my subscriptions. To enable a CDN for a hosted service is veru simple, just select a hosted service and click the New Endpoint button on top. In this dialog we can select the subscription and the storage account, or the hosted service we want the CDN to be enabled. If we selected the hosted service, like I did in the image above, the “Source URL for the CDN endpoint” will be shown automatically. This means the windows azure platform will make all contents under the “/cdn” folder as CDN enabled. But we cannot change the value at the moment. The following 3 checkboxes next to the URL are: Enable CDN: Enable or disable the CDN. HTTPS: If we need to use HTTPS connections check it. Query String: If we are caching content from a hosted service and we are using query strings to specify the content to be retrieved, check it. Just click the “Create” button to let the windows azure create the CDN for our hosted service. The CDN would be available within 60 minutes as Microsoft mentioned. My experience is that about 15 minutes the CDN could be used and we can find the CDN URL in the portal as well. Put the Content in CDN in Hosted Service Let’s create a simple windows azure project in Visual Studio with a MVC 2 Web Role. When we created the CDN mentioned above the source URL of CDN endpoint would be under the “/cdn” folder. So in the Visual Studio we create a folder under the website named “cdn” and put some static files there. Then all these files would be cached by CDN if we use the CDN endpoint. The CDN of the hosted service can cache some kind of “dynamic” result with the Query String feature enabled. We create a controller named CdnController and a GetNumber action in it. The routed URL of this controller would be /Cdn/GetNumber which can be CDN-ed as well since the URL said it’s under the “/cdn” folder. In the GetNumber action we just put a number value which specified by parameter into the view model, then the URL could be like /Cdn/GetNumber?number=2. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Web; 5: using System.Web.Mvc; 6: 7: namespace MvcWebRole1.Controllers 8: { 9: public class CdnController : Controller 10: { 11: // 12: // GET: /Cdn/ 13: 14: public ActionResult GetNumber(int number) 15: { 16: return View(number); 17: } 18: 19: } 20: } And we add a view to display the number which is super simple. 1: <%@ Page Title="" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<int>" %> 2: 3: <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="TitleContent" runat="server"> 4: GetNumber 5: </asp:Content> 6: 7: <asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server"> 8: 9: <h2>The number is: <% 1: : Model.ToString() %></h2> 10: 11: </asp:Content> Since this action is under the CdnController the URL would be under the “/cdn” folder which means it can be CDN-ed. And since we checked the “Query String” the content of this dynamic page will be cached by its query string. So if I use the CDN URL, http://az25311.vo.msecnd.net/GetNumber?number=2, the CDN will firstly check if there’s any content cached with the key “GetNumber?number=2”. If yes then the CDN will return the content directly; otherwise it will connect to the hosted service, http://aurora-sys.cloudapp.net/Cdn/GetNumber?number=2, and then send the result back to the browser and cached in CDN. But to be notice that the query string are treated as string when used by the key of CDN element. This means the URLs below would be cached in 2 elements in CDN: http://az25311.vo.msecnd.net/GetNumber?number=2&page=1 http://az25311.vo.msecnd.net/GetNumber?page=1&number=2 The final step is to upload the project onto azure. Test the Hosted Service CDN After published the project on azure, we can use the CDN in the website. The CDN endpoint we had created is az25311.vo.msecnd.net so all files under the “/cdn” folder can be requested with it. Let’s have a try on the sample.htm and c_great_wall.jpg static files. Also we can request the dynamic page GetNumber with the query string with the CDN endpoint. And if we refresh this page it will be shown very quickly since the content comes from the CDN without MCV server side process. We style of this page was missing. This is because the CSS file was not includes in the “/cdn” folder so the page cannot retrieve the CSS file from the CDN URL. Summary In this post I introduced the new feature in Windows Azure CDN with the release of Windows Azure SDK 1.4 and new Developer Portal. With the CDN of the Hosted Service we can just put the static resources under a “/cdn” folder so that the CDN can cache them automatically and no need to put then into the blob storage. Also it support caching the dynamic content with the Query String feature. So that we can cache some parts of the web page by using the UserController and CDN. For example we can cache the log on user control in the master page so that the log on part will be loaded super-fast. There are some other new features within this release you can find here. And for more detailed information about the Windows Azure CDN please have a look here as well. Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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10 PowerShell One Liners

- by BizTalk Visionary

Here are a few one-liners that use NetCmdlets. Some of these I've blogged about before, some are new. Let me know if you have questions, which ones you find useful, or how you altered these to suit your own needs. Send email to a list of recipient addresses: import-csv users.csv | % { send-email -to $_.email -from [email protected] -subject "Important Email" –message "Hello World!" -server 10.0.1.1 } Show the access control list for a specific Exchange folder: get-imap -server $mymailserver -cred $mycred -folder INBOX.RESUMES –acl Add look and read permissions on an Exchange folder, for a list of accounts pulled from a CSV file: import-csv users.csv | % { set-imap -server -acluser $_.username $mymailserver -cred $mycred -folder INBOX.RESUMES –acl “lr” } Sync system time with an Internet time server: get-time -server clock.psu.edu –set To remotely sync the time on a set of computers: import-csv computers.csv | % { Invoke-Command -computerName $_.computer -cred $mycred -scriptblock { get-time -server clock.psu.edu –set } } Delete all emails from an Exchange folder that match a certain criteria. For example, delete all emails from [email protected]: get-imap -server $mailserver –cred $mycred | ? {$_.FromEmail -eq [email protected]} | %{ set-imap -server $mailserver –cred $mycred-message $_.Id -delete } Update Twitter status from PowerShell: get-http –url "http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml" –cred $mycred -variablename status -variablevalue "Tweeting with NetCmdlets!" A test-path that works over FTP, FTPS (SSL), and SFTP (SSH) connections: get-ftp -server $remoteserver –cred $mycred -path /remote/path/to/checkfor* Don't forget the *. Also, to use SSL or SSH just add an –ssl or –ssh parameter. List disabled user accounts in Active Directory (or any other LDAP server): get-ldap -server $ad -cred $mycred -dn dc=yourdc -searchscope wholesubtree -search "(&(objectclass=user)(objectclass=person)(company=*)(userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2))" List Active Directory groups and their members: get-ldap -server testman -cred $mycred -dn dc=NS2 -searchscope wholesubtree -search "(&(objectclass=group)(cn=*admin*))" | select ResultDN, member Display the last initialization time (e.g. last reboot time) of all discoverable SNMP agents on a network: import-csv computers.csv | % { get-snmp -agent $_.computer -oid sysUpTime.0 | %{([datetime]::Now).AddSeconds(-($_.OIDValue/100))} } Not mentioned here: data conversion (Yenc, QP, UUencoding, MD5, SHA1, base64, etc), DNS, News Groups (NNTP/UseNet), POP mail, RSS feeds, Amazon S3, Syslog, TFTP, TraceRoute, SNMP Traps, UDP, WebDAV, whois, Rexec/Rshell/Telnet, Zip files, sending IMs (Jabber/GoogleTalk/XMPP), sending text messages and pages, ping, and more. Original Source: Lance's Textbox

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Microsoft Press Deal of the Day - 4/April/2012 - Accessing Data with Microsoft® .NET Framework 4

- by TATWORTH

The Microsoft Press half price deal of the day at http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780735627390.do is the training material for the MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-516) "Accessing Data with Microsoft® .NET Framework 4""EXAM PREP GUIDE Ace your preparation for the skills measured by MCTS Exam 70-516—and on the job—with this official Microsoft study guide. Work at your own pace through a series of lessons and reviews that fully cover each exam objective. Then, reinforce and apply what you’ve learned through real-world case scenarios and practice exercises. Maximize your performance on the exam by mastering the skills and experience measured by these objectives: Modeling dataManaging connections and contextQuerying dataManipulating dataDeveloping and deploying reliable applications"

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IronRuby rocks at IronRuby-rocks.com

- by Eric Nelson

My colleague Edd (who wrote two great guest posts for me on IronRuby) just pointed me at a new site ironruby-rocks.com. It is early days for the site but I felt it was worth some additional exposure even at this early stage. Posts are nice and varied right now – from working with Microsoft Office to working with SQL Server. I wish the site the very best of luck. Related Links: 5 Steps to getting started with IronRuby Mini Book Review of IronRuby Unleashed by Shay Friedman Guest Post: Using IronRuby and .NET to produce the ‘Hello World of WPF’ Getting PhP and Ruby working on Windows Azure and SQL Azure Guest Post: What's IronRuby, and how do I put it on Rails?

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Geek Quiz

- by Tom Hines

70% Geek

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Handling Trailing Delimiters in HL7 Messages

- by Thomas Canter

Applies to: BizTalk Server 2006 with the HL7 1.3 Accelerator Outline of the problem Trailing Delimiters are empty values at the end of an object in a HL7 ER7 formatted message. Examples: Empty Field NTE|P| NTE|P|| Empty component ORC|1|725^ Empty Subcomponent ORC|1|||||27& Empty repeat OBR|1||||||||027~ Trailing delimiters indicate the following object exists and is empty, which is quite different from null, null is an explicit value indicated by a pair of double quotes -> "". The BizTalk HL7 Accelerator by default does not allow trailing delimiters. There are three methods to allow trailing delimiters. NOTE: All Schemas always allow trailing delimiters in the MSH Segment Using party identifiers MSH3.1 – Receive/inbound processing, using this value as a party allows you to configure the system to allow inbound trailing delimiters. MSH5.1 – Send/outbound processing, using this value as a party allows you to configure the system to allow outbound trailing delimiters. Generally, if you allow inbound trailing delimiters, unless you are willing to programmatically remove all trailing delimiters, then you need to configure the send to allow trailing delimiters. Add the appropriate parties to the BizTalk Parties list from these two fields in your message stream. Open the BizTalk HL7 Configuration tool and for each party check the "Allow trailing delimiters (separators)" check box on the Validation tab. Disadvantage – Each MSH3.1 and MSH5.1 value must be represented in the parties list and configured. Advantage – granular control over system behavior for each inbound/outbound system. Using instance properties of a pipeline used in a send port or receive location. Open the BizTalk Server Administration console locate the send port or receive location that contains the BTAHL72XReceivePipeline or BTAHL72XSendPipeline pipeline. Open the properties To the right of the pipeline selected locate the […] ellipses button In the property list, locate the "TrailingDelimiterAllowed" property and set it to True. Advantage – All messages through a particular Send Port or Receive Location will allow trailing delimiters. Disadvantage – Must configure each Send Port or Receive Location. No granular control over which remote parties will send or receive messages with trailing delimiters. Using a custom pipeline that uses a pre-configured BTA HL7 Pipeline component. Use Visual Studio to construct a custom receive and send pipeline using the appropriate assembler or dissasembler. Set the component property to "TrailingDelimitersAllowed" to True Compile and deploy the custom pipeline Use the custom pipeline instead of the standard pipeline for all HL7 message processing Advantage – All messages using the custom pipeline will automatically allow trailing delimiters. Disadvantage – Requires custom coding and development to create and deploy the custom pipeline. No granular control over which remote parties will send or receive messages with trailing delimiters. What does a Trailing Delimiter do to the XML Schema? Allowing trailing delimiters does not have the impact often expected in the actual XML Schema.The Schema reproduces the message with no data loss.Thus, the message when represented in XML must contain the extra fields, in order to reproduce the outbound message.Thus, a trialing delimiter results in an empty XML field.Trailing Delmiters are not stripped from the inbound message. Example:<PID_21>44172</PID_21><PID_21>9257</PID_21> -> the original maximum number of repeats<PID_21></PID_21> -> The empty repeated field Allowing trailing delimiters not remove the trailing delimiters from the message, it simply suppresses the check that will cause the message to fail parse with trailing delimiters. When can you not fix the problem by enabling trailing delimiters Each object in a message must have a location in the target BTAHL7 schema for its content to reside.If you have more objects in the message than are contained at that location, then enabling trailing delimiters will not resolve the problem. The schema must be extended to accommodate the empty message content.Examples: Extra Field NTE|P||||Only 4 fields in NTE Segment, the 4th field exists, but is empty. Extra component PID|1|1523|47^^^^^^^Only 5 components in a CX data type, the 5th component exists, but is empty Extra subcomponent ORC|1|||||27&&Only 2 subcomponents in a CQ data type, the 3rd subcomponent is empty, but exists. Extra Repeat PID|1||||||||||||||||||||4419~5217~Only 2 repeats allowed for the field "Mother's identifier", the repeat is empty, but exists. In each of these cases, you must locate the failing object and extend the type to allow an additional object of that type. FieldAdd a field of ST to the end of the segment with a suitable name in the segments_nnn.xsd Component Create a new Custom CX data type (i.e. CX_XtraComp) in the datatypes_nnn.xsd and add a new component to the custom CX data type. Update the field in the segments_nnn.xsd file to use the custom data type instead of the standard datatype. Subcomponent Create a new Custom CQ data type that accepts an additional TS value at the end of the data type. Create a custom TQ data type that uses the new custom CQ data type as the first subcomponent. Modify the ORC segment to use the new CQ data type at ORC.7 instead of the standard CQ data type. RepeatModify the Field definition for PID.21 in the segments_nnn.xsd to allow more repeats in the field.

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jQuery Datatable in MVC … extended.

- by Steve Clements

There are a million plugins for jQuery and when a web forms developer like myself works in MVC making use of them is par-for-the-course! MVC is the way now, web forms are but a memory!! Grids / tables are my focus at the moment. I don’t want to get in to righting reems of css and html, but it’s not acceptable to simply dump a table on the screen, functionality like sorting, paging, fixed header and perhaps filtering are expected behaviour. What isn’t always required though is the massive functionality like editing etc you get with many grid plugins out there. You potentially spend a long time getting everything hooked together when you just don’t need it. That is where the jQuery DataTable plugin comes in. It doesn’t have editing “out of the box” (you can add other plugins as you require to achieve such functionality). What it does though is very nicely format a table (and integrate with jQuery UI) without needing to hook up and Async actions etc. Take a look here… http://www.datatables.net I did in the first instance start looking at the Telerik MVC grid control – I’m a fan of Telerik controls and if you are developing an in-house of open source app you get the MVC stuff for free…nice! Their grid however is far more than I require. Note: Using Telerik MVC controls with your own jQuery and jQuery UI does come with some hurdles, mainly to do with the order in which all your jQuery is executing – I won’t cover that here though – mainly because I don’t have a clear answer on the best way to solve it! One nice thing about the dataTable above is how easy it is to extend http://www.datatables.net/examples/plug-ins/plugin_api.html and there are some nifty examples on the site already… I however have a requirement that wasn’t on the site … I need a grid at the bottom of the page that will size automatically to the bottom of the page and be scrollable if required within its own space i.e. everything above the grid didn’t scroll as well. Now a CSS master may have a great solution to this … I’m not that master and so didn’t! The content above the grid can vary so any kind of fixed positioning is out. So I wrote a little extension for the DataTable, hooked that up to the document.ready event and window.resize event. Initialising my dataTable ( s )… $(document).ready(function () { var dTable = $(".tdata").dataTable({ "bPaginate": false, "bLengthChange": false, "bFilter": true, "bSort": true, "bInfo": false, "bAutoWidth": true, "sScrollY": "400px" }); My extension to the API to give me the resizing…. // ********************************************************************** // jQuery dataTable API extension to resize grid and adjust column sizes // $.fn.dataTableExt.oApi.fnSetHeightToBottom = function (oSettings) { var id = oSettings.nTable.id; var dt = $("#" + id); var top = dt.position().top; var winHeight = $(document).height(); var remain = (winHeight - top) - 83; dt.parent().attr("style", "overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: auto; height: " + remain + "px;"); this.fnAdjustColumnSizing(); } This is very much is debug mode, so pretty verbose at the moment – I’ll tidy that up later! You can see the last call is a call to an existing method, as the columns are fixed and that normally involves so CSS voodoo, a call to adjust those sizes is required. Just above is the style that the dataTable gives the grid wrapper div, I got that from some firebug action and stick in my new height. The –83 is to give me the space at the bottom i require for fixed footer! Finally I hook that up to the load and window resize. I’m actually using jQuery UI tabs as well, so I’ve got that in the open event of the tabs. $(document).ready(function () { var oTable; $("#tabs").tabs({ "show": function (event, ui) { oTable = $('div.dataTables_scrollBody>table.tdata', ui.panel).dataTable(); if (oTable.length > 0) { oTable.fnSetHeightToBottom(); } } }); $(window).bind("resize", function () { oTable.fnSetHeightToBottom(); }); }); And that all there is too it. Testament to the wonders of jQuery and the immense community surrounding it – to which I am extremely grateful. I’ve also hooked up some custom column filtering on the grid – pretty normal stuff though – you can get what you need for that from their website. I do hide the out of the box filter input as I wanted column specific, you need filtering turned on when initialising to get it to work and that input come with it! Tip: fnFilter is the method you want. With column index as a param – I used data tags to simply that one.

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Welcome!

- by ConfusedComputers

Here are some useful links if you have any computer problems, they concentrate on computer repairs in kidderminster and they have a wealth of knowledge that they use to assist people with computer issues. So if your confused about computers then here is some useful resources that could help you get over your computer problems. They have a designated confused computer knowledge base that has hundred of pages of information about all kinds of computer problems so hit them up and see what they can do for you!

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Silverlight Cream for January 26, 2011 -- #1036

- by Dave Campbell

In this all-submittal Issue: XamlNinja, Kevin Dockx, Steve Wortham, Andrea Boschin, Mick Norman, Colin Eberhardt, and Rudi Grobler(-2-, -3-, -4-, -5-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Getting an invalid cross-thread exception in Silverlight?" Kevin Dockx WP7: "WP7 Contrib – the last messenger" XamlNinja ISO: "How many files are too many files for isolated storage?" Mick Norman Shoutouts: Telerik announced a free WP7 Webinars series that you probably don't want to miss: Join Us for the Special Free Windows Phone 7 Webinars Series. Guest lecturers - Shawn Wildermuth and Mark Arteaga From SilverlightCream.com: WP7 Contrib – the last messenger XamlNinja has a great post up extending Laurent's IMessenger to deal with a tricky issue of trying to fire a message from one VM to another even if the 2nd VM isn't alive yet... oh, and this is in WP7Contrib, so go grab it! Getting an invalid cross-thread exception in Silverlight? Kevin Dockx has a solution to a problem we've all had... the 'invalid cross-thread exception' ... and the solution is even for those of us trying to do this in a VM... cool and easy solution, Kevin! Mastering Storyboards One Mistake at a Time Steve Wortham is back with a tutorial with a great title :) ... check out the progression from one success to another in this picture/title viewer ... don't miss the very end where he has the control rolled up into a CaptionedImageHyperlink, and a link to download it! Windows Phone 7 - Part #2: Your First Application Andrea Boschin has part 2 of his SilverlightShow WP7 series up. Lots of good intro material here on the manifest file and app.xaml ... he even gets into the ApplicationBar, phone orientation, and the Metro theme. How many files are too many files for isolated storage? Mick Norman alerted me to his blog early this morning, and this is his latest post... interesting tests of how many files are too many for ISO on your WP7... and I have to admit... he's stuffing a boatload of them out there in these tests! ... great info Mick! and thanks for the links. A Navigator Control For Visiblox Time Series Charts Colin Eberhardt's latest post is about creating an interactive navigator for large time series datasets in Visiblox charts.... check the images at the top of the post, and it'll be obvious :) ... very cool stuff. MVVM Frameworks with WP7 support Rudi Grobler has been very busy and if you check the dates, these posts are all in a day or two! This first highlights two contenders for MVVM on WP7: Caliburn and MVVMLight... both well-supported... quick intro to each followed by good links out to the author's sites Reading barcodes from your WP7 device Rudi Grobler also has a cool post up on reading barcodes with your WP7... he's using the ZXing Barcode Scanning Library, and makes quick work of the job. Taking Sterling for a Test-Drive Rudi Grobler has a quick intro to Sterlink, Jeremy Likness' ISO database for Silverlight up... quickly taking care of writing and reading back data. SQLite on WP7 After his discussion of Sterling, Rudi Grobler is now demonstrating the use of SQLite that has been ported to WP7. Check out his demo code... looks pretty easy to use. Hacking the WP7 Camera (The basics) Rudi Grobler's latest post is on getting direct access to the camera on WP7... be sure to do all the downloads and check out the external links he has. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 Windows Phone MIX10

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NET Math Libraries

- by JoshReuben

NET Mathematical Libraries .NET Builder for Matlab The MathWorks Inc. - http://www.mathworks.com/products/netbuilder/ MATLAB Builder NE generates MATLAB based .NET and COM components royalty-free deployment creates the components by encrypting MATLAB functions and generating either a .NET or COM wrapper around them. .NET/Link for Mathematica www.wolfram.com a product that 2-way integrates Mathematica and Microsoft's .NET platform call .NET from Mathematica - use arbitrary .NET types directly from the Mathematica language. use and control the Mathematica kernel from a .NET program. turns Mathematica into a scripting shell to leverage the computational services of Mathematica. write custom front ends for Mathematica or use Mathematica as a computational engine for another program comes with full source code. Leverages MathLink - a Wolfram Research's protocol for sending data and commands back and forth between Mathematica and other programs. .NET/Link abstracts the low-level details of the MathLink C API. Extreme Optimization http://www.extremeoptimization.com/ a collection of general-purpose mathematical and statistical classes built for the.NET framework. It combines a math library, a vector and matrix library, and a statistics library in one package. download the trial of version 4.0 to try it out. Multi-core ready - Full support for Task Parallel Library features including cancellation. Broad base of algorithms covering a wide range of numerical techniques, including: linear algebra (BLAS and LAPACK routines), numerical analysis (integration and differentiation), equation solvers. Mathematics leverages parallelism using .NET 4.0's Task Parallel Library. Basic math: Complex numbers, 'special functions' like Gamma and Bessel functions, numerical differentiation. Solving equations: Solve equations in one variable, or solve systems of linear or nonlinear equations. Curve fitting: Linear and nonlinear curve fitting, cubic splines, polynomials, orthogonal polynomials. Optimization: find the minimum or maximum of a function in one or more variables, linear programming and mixed integer programming. Numerical integration: Compute integrals over finite or infinite intervals, over 2D and higher dimensional regions. Integrate systems of ordinary differential equations (ODE's). Fast Fourier Transforms: 1D and 2D FFT's using managed or fast native code (32 and 64 bit) BigInteger, BigRational, and BigFloat: Perform operations with arbitrary precision. Vector and Matrix Library Real and complex vectors and matrices. Single and double precision for elements. Structured matrix types: including triangular, symmetrical and band matrices. Sparse matrices. Matrix factorizations: LU decomposition, QR decomposition, singular value decomposition, Cholesky decomposition, eigenvalue decomposition. Portability and performance: Calculations can be done in 100% managed code, or in hand-optimized processor-specific native code (32 and 64 bit). Statistics Data manipulation: Sort and filter data, process missing values, remove outliers, etc. Supports .NET data binding. Statistical Models: Simple, multiple, nonlinear, logistic, Poisson regression. Generalized Linear Models. One and two-way ANOVA. Hypothesis Tests: 12 14 hypothesis tests, including the z-test, t-test, F-test, runs test, and more advanced tests, such as the Anderson-Darling test for normality, one and two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, and Levene's test for homogeneity of variances. Multivariate Statistics: K-means cluster analysis, hierarchical cluster analysis, principal component analysis (PCA), multivariate probability distributions. Statistical Distributions: 25 29 continuous and discrete statistical distributions, including uniform, Poisson, normal, lognormal, Weibull and Gumbel (extreme value) distributions. Random numbers: Random variates from any distribution, 4 high-quality random number generators, low discrepancy sequences, shufflers. New in version 4.0 (November, 2010) Support for .NET Framework Version 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 TPL Parallellized – multicore ready sparse linear program solver - can solve problems with more than 1 million variables. Mixed integer linear programming using a branch and bound algorithm. special functions: hypergeometric, Riemann zeta, elliptic integrals, Frensel functions, Dawson's integral. Full set of window functions for FFT's. Product Price Update subscription Single Developer License $999 $399 Team License (3 developers) $1999 $799 Department License (8 developers) $3999 $1599 Site License (Unlimited developers in one physical location) $7999 $3199 NMath http://www.centerspace.net .NET math and statistics libraries matrix and vector classes random number generators Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs) numerical integration linear programming linear regression curve and surface fitting optimization hypothesis tests analysis of variance (ANOVA) probability distributions principal component analysis cluster analysis built on the Intel Math Kernel Library (MKL), which contains highly-optimized, extensively-threaded versions of BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra Subroutines) and LAPACK (Linear Algebra PACKage). Product Price Update subscription Single Developer License $1295 $388 Team License (5 developers) $5180 $1554 DotNumerics http://www.dotnumerics.com/NumericalLibraries/Default.aspx free DotNumerics is a website dedicated to numerical computing for .NET that includes a C# Numerical Library for .NET containing algorithms for Linear Algebra, Differential Equations and Optimization problems. The Linear Algebra library includes CSLapack, CSBlas and CSEispack, ports from Fortran to C# of LAPACK, BLAS and EISPACK, respectively. Linear Algebra (CSLapack, CSBlas and CSEispack). Systems of linear equations, eigenvalue problems, least-squares solutions of linear systems and singular value problems. Differential Equations. Initial-value problem for nonstiff and stiff ordinary differential equations ODEs (explicit Runge-Kutta, implicit Runge-Kutta, Gear's BDF and Adams-Moulton). Optimization. Unconstrained and bounded constrained optimization of multivariate functions (L-BFGS-B, Truncated Newton and Simplex methods). Math.NET Numerics http://numerics.mathdotnet.com/ free an open source numerical library - includes special functions, linear algebra, probability models, random numbers, interpolation, integral transforms. A merger of dnAnalytics with Math.NET Iridium in addition to a purely managed implementation will also support native hardware optimization. constants & special functions complex type support real and complex, dense and sparse linear algebra (with LU, QR, eigenvalues, ... decompositions) non-uniform probability distributions, multivariate distributions, sample generation alternative uniform random number generators descriptive statistics, including order statistics various interpolation methods, including barycentric approaches and splines numerical function integration (quadrature) routines integral transforms, like fourier transform (FFT) with arbitrary lengths support, and hartley spectral-space aware sequence manipulation (signal processing) combinatorics, polynomials, quaternions, basic number theory. parallelized where appropriate, to leverage multi-core and multi-processor systems fully managed or (if available) using native libraries (Intel MKL, ACMS, CUDA, FFTW) provides a native facade for F# developers

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Connecting to SQL database using SQLCMD

- by kaleidoscope

As we all know, there are a number of ways you can connect to your SQL Azure Database. One of the quick options is to try to connect to SQL server is SQLCMD. To start the SQLCMD utility and connect to a named instance of SQL Server Open a Command Prompt window, and type sqlcmd -S myServer\instanceName. Replace myServer\instanceName with the name of the computer and the instance of SQL Server that you want to connect to. Press ENTER. The sqlcmd prompt (1>) indicates that you are connected to the specified instance of SQL Server. SQL Management Studio offers the facility to use SQLCMD from within SQL scripts by using SQLCMD Mode. How to: Enable SQLCMD mode in the Transact-SQL Editor (About how to start the editor, see How to: Start the Transact-SQL Editor.) To toggle SQLCMD mode from the Data menu 1. Open the query in the Transact-SQL editor. 2. On the Data menu, point to Transact-SQL Editor, and click SQLCMD Mode. To toggle SQLCMD mode from the toolbar 1. Open the query in the Transact-SQL editor. 2. On the Transact-SQL Editor toolbar, click SQLCMD Mode. To toggle SQLCMD mode from the shortcut menu 1. Open the query in the Transact-SQL editor. 2. Right-click anywhere in the editor window, and then click SQLCMD Mode. For more information follow below link http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms170207.aspx Geeta, G

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Silverlight Cream for December 28, 2010 -- #1017

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: Davide Zordan, Alex Golesh, Michael S. Scherotter, Andrej Tozon, Alex Knight, Jeff Blankenburg(-2-), Jeremy Likness, and Laurent Bugnion. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "My “What’s new in Silverlight 4 demo” app" Andrej Tozon WP7: "Taking a screenshot from within a Silverlight #WP7 application" Laurent Bugnion Expression Blend: "PathListBox: getting started" Alex Knight Shoutouts: If you haven't seen this SurfCube app demo on YouTube yet... check it out now: SurfCube V1.0 Windows Phone 7 Browser Want to get a free WP7 class from Shawn Wildermuth? Check this out: Webinar: Writing your first Windows Phone 7 Application Koen Zwikstra announed the next preview of his great tool: Silverlight Spy Preview 2 From SilverlightCream.com: Using the Multi-Touch Behavior in a Windows Phone 7 Multi-Page application Davide Zordan has a post up responding to questions he receives about multi-touch on WP7 in applications spanning more than one page. Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 Quick Tip: Fix missing icons while using DatePicker/TimePicker controls Alex Golesh discusses the use of the DatePicker control from the WP7 toolkit and found an unpleasant surprise associated with the Done/Cancel icons in the ApplicationBar, and has a solution for us. Updated SMF Thumbnail Scrubbing Sample Code Michael S. Scherotter has a post up about an update he's done to Silverlight 4 of code that allows thumbnail views of a video while 'scrubbing' ... don't know what that is? read the post :) My “What’s new in Silverlight 4 demo” app Andrej Tozon admits he's a little behind with this post, but as he points out, it might be a good time to review Silverlight 4 features, on the eve of 5. PathListBox: getting started One half the Knight team -- Alex Knight this time, has the first post of a series on the PathListBox up ... some real Expression Blend goodness. What I Learned in WP7 – Issue #9 Two more from Jeff Blankenburg today, in his number 9, he starts off demonstrating passing data between pages when navigating and fnishes up with some excellent info for submitting apps to the marketplace. What I Learned in WP7 – #Issue 10 Jeff Blankenburg's number 10 elaborates on the query string data he discussed in number 9. Using Sterling in Windows Phone 7 Applications Who better than the author?? Jeremy Likness has an end-to-end WP7/Sterling app up on his blog... begin with downloading Sterling, discuss what's needed to support Tombstoning, even custom serialization. Taking a screenshot from within a Silverlight #WP7 application Laurent Bugnion has a post up describing something people have been looking for: getting a screenshot of a WP7 application's page. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 Windows Phone MIX10

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Dutch for once: op zoek naar een nieuwe uitdaging!

- by Dennis Vroegop

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/dvroegop/archive/2013/10/11/dutch-for-once-op-zoek-naar-een-nieuwe-uitdaging.aspxI apologize to my non-dutch speaking readers: this post is about me looking for a new job and since I am based in the Netherlands I will do this in Dutch… Next time I will be technical (and thus in English) again! Het leuke van interim zijn is dat een klus een keer afloopt. Ik heb heel bewust gekozen voor het leven als freelancer: ik wil graag heel veel verschillende mensen en organisaties leren kennen. Dit werk is daar bij uitstek geschikt voor! Immers: bij iedere klus breng ik niet alleen nieuwe ideeën en kennis maar ik leer zelf ook iedere keer ontzettend veel. Die kennis kan ik dan weer gebruiken bij een vervolgklus en op die manier verspreid ik die kennis onder de bedrijven in Nederland. En er is niets leukers dan zien dat wat ik meebreng een organisatie naar een ander niveau brengt! Iedere keer een ander bedrijf zoeken houdt in dat ik iedere keer weg moet gaan bij een organisatie. Het lastige daarvan is het juiste moment te vinden. Van buitenaf gezien is dat lastig in te schatten: wanneer kan ik niets vernieuwends meer bijdragen en is het tijd om verder te gaan? Wanneer is het tijd om te zeggen dat de organisatie alles weet wat ik ze kan bijbrengen? In mijn huidige klus is dat moment nu aangebroken. In de afgelopen elf maanden heb ik dit bedrijf zien veranderen van een kleine maar enthousiaste groep ontwikkelaars naar een professionele organisatie met ruim twee keer zo veel ontwikkelaars. Dat veranderingsproces is erg leerzaam geweest en ik ben dan ook erg blij dat ik die verandering heb kunnen en mogen begeleiden. Van drie teams met ieder vijf of zes ontwikkelaars naar zes teams met zeven tot acht ontwikkelaars per team groeien betekent dat je je ontwikkelproces heel anders moet insteken. Ook houdt dat in dat je je teams anders moet indelen, dat de organisatie zelf anders gemodelleerd moet worden en dat mensen anders met elkaar om moeten gaan. Om dat voor elkaar te krijgen is er door iedereen heel hard gewerkt, is er een aantal fouten gemaakt, is heel veel van die fouten geleerd en is uiteindelijk een vrijwel nieuw bedrijf ontstaan. Het is tijd om dit bedrijf te verlaten. Ik ben benieuwd waar ik hierna terecht kom: ik ben aan het rondkijken naar mogelijkheden. Ik weet wèl: het bedrijf waar ik naar op zoek ben, is een bedrijf dat openstaat voor veranderingen. Veranderingen, maar dan wel met het oog voor het individu; mensen staan immers centraal in de software ontwikkeling! Ik heb er in ieder geval weer zin in!

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Silverlight Cream for March 29, 2010 -- #824

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: smartyP(-2-), Al Pascual, Mike Taulty, Shawn Burke(-2-), Vikram Pendse, Tomasz Janczuk, Lee, and Alexey Zakharov. Shoutouts: Jeff Weber announced New Silverlight Game “Snow Spill” by Nick Avery of Liserd Arts Games John Papa summarized links to all the Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Sessions from MIX 10 Tim Heuer has a post up about OData and the MIX10 feed: MIX10: Yet another way to view video content sessions using their OData feed From SilverlightCream.com: Creating a Windows Phone 7 Metro Style Pivot Application [Part 1] smartyP has a two-part video tutorial up on creating a WP7 pivot navigation app using Expression Blend. He's also looking for feedback. Creating a Windows Phone 7 Metro Style Pivot Application [Part 2] In part 2, smartyP adds gestures to his navigation. He also has some good external links listed. Al Pascual: My First Windows Phone 7 Application Al Pascual extends the MIX10 keynote WP7 sample by adding the ability to send tweets ... with all the code. Silverlight 4 RC and the “silent installation” Mike Taulty discusses and demonstrates installing an OOB app without having to visit a webpage to get it. In other words, pass it around on a USB drive, send it in email, etc. iPhone SDK vs Windows Phone 7 Series SDK Challenge, Part 1: Hello World! Shawn Burke has a 2-part series up comparing iPhone and WP7 development looking at how easy it is to code and lines of code produced by the tools. This first post is the classic Hello World. Check out the comments as well. iPhone SDK vs. Windows Phone 7 Series SDK Challenge, Part 2: MoveMe Shawn Burke's part 2 is comparing the classic iPhone 'MoveMe' app... again, check out all the comments. Silverlight 4 : Indic Support in Silverlight Vikram Pendse demonstrates using the Microsoft Indic Language Input tool. He has some screen shots and discussion about fonts in Silverlight. Comparison of HTTP polling duplex and net.tcp performance in Silverlight 4 RC Tomasz Janczuk is checking out Silverlight4 RC and has a comparison up of the performance of the three mechanisms for asynch data push for the server to the client/. Summary rows in Datagrid with multiple groups Lee revisted a post that displayed Summary/Totals in the group header to also support multiple groups now. Silverlight Commands Hacks: Passing EventArgs as CommandParameter to DelegateCommand triggered by EventTrigger Alexey Zakharov suggests a workaround 'InvokeDelegateCommandAction' to keep Blend from ignoring event args. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 Windows Phone MIX10

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Twitter User/Search Feature Header Support in LINQ to Twitter

- by Joe Mayo

LINQ to Twitter’s goal is to support the entire Twitter API. So, if you see a new feature pop-up, it will be in-queue for inclusion. The same holds for the new X-Feature… response headers for User/Search requests. However, you don’t have to wait for a special property on the TwitterContext to access these headers, you can just use them via the TwitterContext.ResponseHeaders collection. The following code demonstrates how to access the new X-Feature… headers with LINQ to Twitter: var user = (from usr in twitterCtx.User where usr.Type == UserType.Search && usr.Query == "Joe Mayo" select usr) .FirstOrDefault(); Console.WriteLine( "X-FeatureRateLimit-Limit: {0}\n" + "X-FeatureRateLimit-Remaining: {1}\n" + "X-FeatureRateLimit-Reset: {2}\n" + "X-FeatureRateLimit-Class: {3}\n", twitterCtx.ResponseHeaders["X-FeatureRateLimit-Limit"], twitterCtx.ResponseHeaders["X-FeatureRateLimit-Remaining"], twitterCtx.ResponseHeaders["X-FeatureRateLimit-Reset"], twitterCtx.ResponseHeaders["X-FeatureRateLimit-Class"]); The query above is from the User entity, whose type is Search; allowing you to search for the Twitter user whose name is specified by the Query parameter filter. After materializing the query, with FirstOrDefault, twitterCtx will hold all of the headers, including X-Feature… that Twitter returned. Running the code above will display results similar to the following: X-FeatureRateLimit-Limit: 60 X-FeatureRateLimit-Remaining: 59 X-FeatureRateLimit-Reset: 1271452177 X-FeatureRateLimit-Class: namesearch In addition to getting the X-Feature… headers a capability you might have noticed is that the TwitterContext.ResponseHeaders collection will contain any HTTP that Twitter sends back to a query. Therefore, you’ll be able to access new Twitter headers anytime in the future with LINQ to Twitter. @JoeMayo

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Mocking the Unmockable: Using Microsoft Moles with Gallio

- by Thomas Weller

Usual opensource mocking frameworks (like e.g. Moq or Rhino.Mocks) can mock only interfaces and virtual methods. In contrary to that, Microsoft’s Moles framework can ‘mock’ virtually anything, in that it uses runtime instrumentation to inject callbacks in the method MSIL bodies of the moled methods. Therefore, it is possible to detour any .NET method, including non-virtual/static methods in sealed types. This can be extremely helpful when dealing e.g. with code that calls into the .NET framework, some third-party or legacy stuff etc… Some useful collected resources (links to website, documentation material and some videos) can be found in my toolbox on Delicious under this link: http://delicious.com/thomasweller/toolbox+moles A Gallio extension for Moles Originally, Moles is a part of Microsoft’s Pex framework and thus integrates best with Visual Studio Unit Tests (MSTest). However, the Moles sample download contains some additional assemblies to also support other unit test frameworks. They provide a Moled attribute to ease the usage of mole types with the respective framework (there are extensions for NUnit, xUnit.net and MbUnit v2 included with the samples). As there is no such extension for the Gallio platform, I did the few required lines myself – the resulting Gallio.Moles.dll is included with the sample download. With this little assembly in place, it is possible to use Moles with Gallio like that: [Test, Moled] public void SomeTest() { ... What you can do with it Moles can be very helpful, if you need to ‘mock’ something other than a virtual or interface-implementing method. This might be the case when dealing with some third-party component, legacy code, or if you want to ‘mock’ the .NET framework itself. Generally, you need to announce each moled type that you want to use in a test with the MoledType attribute on assembly level. For example: [assembly: MoledType(typeof(System.IO.File))] Below are some typical use cases for Moles. For a more detailed overview (incl. naming conventions and an instruction on how to create the required moles assemblies), please refer to the reference material above. Detouring the .NET framework Imagine that you want to test a method similar to the one below, which internally calls some framework method: public void ReadFileContent(string fileName) { this.FileContent = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(fileName); } Using a mole, you would replace the call to the File.ReadAllText(string) method with a runtime delegate like so: [Test, Moled] [Description("This 'mocks' the System.IO.File class with a custom delegate.")] public void ReadFileContentWithMoles() { // arrange ('mock' the FileSystem with a delegate) System.IO.Moles.MFile.ReadAllTextString = (fname => fname == FileName ? FileContent : "WrongFileName"); // act var testTarget = new TestTarget.TestTarget(); testTarget.ReadFileContent(FileName); // assert Assert.AreEqual(FileContent, testTarget.FileContent); } Detouring static methods and/or classes A static method like the below… public static string StaticMethod(int x, int y) { return string.Format("{0}{1}", x, y); } … can be ‘mocked’ with the following: [Test, Moled] public void StaticMethodWithMoles() { MStaticClass.StaticMethodInt32Int32 = ((x, y) => "uups"); var result = StaticClass.StaticMethod(1, 2); Assert.AreEqual("uups", result); } Detouring constructors You can do this delegate thing even with a class’ constructor. The syntax for this is not all too intuitive, because you have to setup the internal state of the mole, but generally it works like a charm. For example, to replace this c’tor… public class ClassWithCtor { public int Value { get; private set; } public ClassWithCtor(int someValue) { this.Value = someValue; } } … you would do the following: [Test, Moled] public void ConstructorTestWithMoles() { MClassWithCtor.ConstructorInt32 = ((@class, @value) => new MClassWithCtor(@class) {ValueGet = () => 99}); var classWithCtor = new ClassWithCtor(3); Assert.AreEqual(99, classWithCtor.Value); } Detouring abstract base classes You can also use this approach to ‘mock’ abstract base classes of a class that you call in your test. Assumed that you have something like that: public abstract class AbstractBaseClass { public virtual string SaySomething() { return "Hello from base."; } } public class ChildClass : AbstractBaseClass { public override string SaySomething() { return string.Format( "Hello from child. Base says: '{0}'", base.SaySomething()); } } Then you would set up the child’s underlying base class like this: [Test, Moled] public void AbstractBaseClassTestWithMoles() { ChildClass child = new ChildClass(); new MAbstractBaseClass(child) { SaySomething = () => "Leave me alone!" } .InstanceBehavior = MoleBehaviors.Fallthrough; var hello = child.SaySomething(); Assert.AreEqual("Hello from child. Base says: 'Leave me alone!'", hello); } Setting the moles behavior to a value of MoleBehaviors.Fallthrough causes the ‘original’ method to be called if a respective delegate is not provided explicitly – here it causes the ChildClass’ override of the SaySomething() method to be called. There are some more possible scenarios, where the Moles framework could be of much help (e.g. it’s also possible to detour interface implementations like IEnumerable<T> and such…). One other possibility that comes to my mind (because I’m currently dealing with that), is to replace calls from repository classes to the ADO.NET Entity Framework O/R mapper with delegates to isolate the repository classes from the underlying database, which otherwise would not be possible… Usage Since Moles relies on runtime instrumentation, mole types must be run under the Pex profiler. This only works from inside Visual Studio if you write your tests with MSTest (Visual Studio Unit Test). While other unit test frameworks generally can be used with Moles, they require the respective tests to be run via command line, executed through the moles.runner.exe tool. A typical test execution would be similar to this: moles.runner.exe <mytests.dll> /runner:<myframework.console.exe> /args:/<myargs> So, the moled test can be run through tools like NCover or a scripting tool like MSBuild (which makes them easy to run in a Continuous Integration environment), but they are somewhat unhandy to run in the usual TDD workflow (which I described in some detail here). To make this a bit more fluent, I wrote a ReSharper live template to generate the respective command line for the test (it is also included in the sample download – moled_cmd.xml). - This is just a quick-and-dirty ‘solution’. Maybe it makes sense to write an extra Gallio adapter plugin (similar to the many others that are already provided) and include it with the Gallio download package, if there’s sufficient demand for it. As of now, the only way to run tests with the Moles framework from within Visual Studio is by using them with MSTest. From the command line, anything with a managed console runner can be used (provided that the appropriate extension is in place)… A typical Gallio/Moles command line (as generated by the mentioned R#-template) looks like that: "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Moles\bin\moles.runner.exe" /runner:"%ProgramFiles%\Gallio\bin\Gallio.Echo.exe" "Gallio.Moles.Demo.dll" /args:/r:IsolatedAppDomain /args:/filter:"ExactType:TestFixture and Member:ReadFileContentWithMoles" -- Note: When using the command line with Echo (Gallio’s console runner), be sure to always include the IsolatedAppDomain option, otherwise the tests won’t use the instrumentation callbacks! -- License issues As I already said, the free mocking frameworks can mock only interfaces and virtual methods. if you want to mock other things, you need the Typemock Isolator tool for that, which comes with license costs (Although these ‘costs’ are ridiculously low compared to the value that such a tool can bring to a software project, spending money often is a considerable gateway hurdle in real life...). The Moles framework also is not totally free, but comes with the same license conditions as the (closely related) Pex framework: It is free for academic/non-commercial use only, to use it in a ‘real’ software project requires an MSDN Subscription (from VS2010pro on). The demo solution The sample solution (VS 2008) can be downloaded from here. It contains the Gallio.Moles.dll which provides the here described Moled attribute, the above mentioned R#-template (moled_cmd.xml) and a test fixture containing the above described use case scenarios. To run it, you need the Gallio framework (download) and Microsoft Moles (download) being installed in the default locations. Happy testing…

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Finding a person in the forest

- by PointsToShare

© 2011 By: Dov Trietsch. All rights reserved finding a person in the forest or Limiting the AD result in SharePoint People Picker There are times when we need to limit the SharePoint audience of certain farms or servers or site collections to a particular audience. One of my experiences involved limiting access to US citizens, another to a particular location. Now, most of us – your humble servant included – are not Active Directory experts – but we must be able to handle the “audience restrictions” as required. So here is how it’s done in a nutshell. Important note. Not all could be done in PowerShell (at least not yet)! There are no Windows PowerShell commands to configure People Picker. The stsadm command is: stsadm -o setproperty -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomquery -pv ADQuery –url http://somethingOrOther Note the long-hyphenated property name. Now to filling the ADQuery. LDAP Query in a nutshell Syntax LDAP is no older than SQL and an LDAP query is actually a query against the LDAP Database. LDAP attributes are the equivalent of Database columns, so why do we have to learn a new query language? Beats me! But we must, so here it is. The syntax of an LDAP query string is made of individual statements with relational operators including: = Equal <= Lower than or equal >= Greater than or equal… and memberOf – a group membership. ! Not * Wildcard Equal and memberOf are the most commonly used. Checking for absence uses the ! – not and the * - wildcard Example: (SN=Grant) All whose last name – SurName – is Grant Example: (!(SN=Grant)) All except Grant Example: (!(SN=*)) all where there is no SurName i.e SurName is absent (probably Rappers). Example: (CN=MyGroup) Common Name is MyGroup. Example: (GN=J*) all the Given Names that start with J (JJ, Jane, Jon, John, etc.) The cryptic SN, CN, GN, etc. are attributes and more about them later All the queries are enclosed in parentheses (Query). Complex queries are comprised of sets that are in AND or OR conditions. AND is denoted by the ampersand (&) and the OR is denoted by the vertical pipe (|). The general syntax is that of the Prefix polish notation where the operand precedes the variables. E.g +ab is the sum of a and b. In an LDAP query (&(A)(B)) will garner the objects for which both A and B are true. In an LDAP query (&(A)(B)(C)) will garner the objects for which A, B and C are true. There’s no limit to the number of conditions. In an LDAP query (|(A)(B)) will garner the objects for which either A or B are true. In an LDAP query (|(A)(B)(C)) will garner the objects for which at least one of A, B and C is true. There’s no limit to the number of conditions. More complex queries have both types of conditions and the parentheses determine the order of operations. Attributes Now let’s get into the SN, CN, GN, and other attributes of the query SN – is the SurName (last name) GN – is the Given Name (first name) CN – is the Common Name, usually GN followed by SN OU – is an Organization Unit such as division, department etc. DC – is a Domain Content in the AD forest l – lower case ‘L’ stands for location. Jerusalem anybody? Or Katmandu. UPN – User Principal Name, is usually the first part of an email address. By nature it is unique in the forest. Most systems set the UPN to be the first initial followed by the SN of the person involved. Some limit the total to 8 characters. If we have many ‘jsmith’ we have to somehow distinguish them from each other. DN – is the distinguished name – a name unique to AD forest in which it lives. Usually it’s a CN with some domain or group distinguishers. DN is important in conjunction with the memberOf relation. Groups have stricter requirement. Each group has to have a unique name - its CN and it has to be unique regardless of its place. See more below. All of the attributes are case insensitive. CN, cn, Cn, and cN are identical. objectCategory is an element that requires special consideration. AD contains many different object like computers, printers, and of course people and groups. In the queries below, we’re limiting our search to people (person). Putting it altogether Let’s get a list of all the Johns in the SPAdmin group of the Jerusalem that local domain. (&(objectCategory=person)(memberOf=cn=SPAdmin,ou=Jerusalem,dc=local)) The memberOf=cn=SPAdmin uses the cn (Common Name) of the SPAdmin group. This is how the memberOf relation is used. ‘SPAdmin’ is actually the DN of the group. Also the memberOf relation does not allow wild cards (*) in the group name. Also, you are limited to at most one ‘OU’ entry. Let’s add Marvin Minsky to the search above. |(&(objectCategory=person)(memberOf=cn=SPAdmin,ou=Jerusalem,dc=local))(CN=Marvin Minsky) Here I added the or pipeline at the beginning of the query and put the CN requirement for Minsky at the end. Note that if Marvin was already in the prior result, he’s not going to be listed twice. One last note: You may see a dryer but more complete list of attributes rules and examples in: http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=5667 And finally (thus negating the claim that my previous note was last), to the best of my knowledge there are 3 more ways to limit the audience. One is to use the peoplepicker-searchadcustomfilter property using the same ADQuery. This works only in SP1 and above. The second is to limit the search to users within this particular site collection – the property name is peoplepicker-onlysearchwithinsitecollection and the value is yes (-pv yes) And the third is –pn peoplepicker-serviceaccountdirectorypaths –pv “OU=ou1,DC=dc1…..” Again you are limited to at most one ‘OU’ phrase – no OU=ou1,OU=ou2… And now the real end. The main property discussed in this sprawling and seemingly endless monogram – peoplepicker-searchadcustomquery - is the most general way of getting the job done. Here are a few examples of command lines that worked and some that didn’t. Can you see why? C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsa dm -o setproperty -url http://somethingOrOther -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomfi lter -pv (Title=David) Operation completed successfully. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsa dm -o setproperty -url http://somethingOrOther -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomfi lter -pv (!Title=David) Operation completed successfully. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsa dm -o setproperty -url http://somethingOrOther -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomfi lter -pv (OU=OURealName,OU=OUMid,OU=OUTop,DC=TopDC,DC=MidDC,DC=BottomDC) Command line error. Too many OUs C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsa dm -o setproperty -url http://somethingOrOther -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomfi lter -pv (OU=OURealName) Operation completed successfully. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsa dm -o setproperty -url http://somethingOrOther -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomfi lter -pv (DC=TopDC,DC=MidDC,DC=BottomDC) Operation completed successfully. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsa dm -o setproperty -url http://somethingOrOther -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomfi lter -pv (OU=OURealName,DC=TopDC,DC=MidDC,DC=BottomDC) Operation completed successfully. That’s all folks!

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Building a Mafia…TechFest Style

- by David Hoerster

It’s been a few months since I last blogged (not that I blog much to begin with), but things have been busy. We all have a lot going on in our lives, but I’ve had one item that has taken up a surprising amount of time – Pittsburgh TechFest 2012. After the event, I went through some minutes of the first meetings for TechFest, and I started to think about how it all came together. I think what inspired me the most about TechFest was how people from various technical communities were able to come together and build and promote a common event. As a result, I wanted to blog about this to show that people from different communities can work together to build something that benefits all communities. (Hopefully I've got all my facts straight.) TechFest started as an idea Eric Kepes and myself had when we were planning our next Pittsburgh Code Camp, probably in the summer of 2011. Our Spring 2011 Code Camp was a little different because we had a great infusion of some folks from the Pittsburgh Agile group (especially with a few speakers from LeanDog). The line-up was great, but we felt our audience wasn’t as broad as it should have been. We thought it would be great to somehow attract other user groups around town and have a big, polyglot conference. We started contacting leaders from Pittsburgh’s various user groups. Eric and I split up the ones that we knew about, and we just started making contacts. Most of the people we started contacting never heard of us, nor we them. But we all had one thing in common – we ran user groups who’s primary goal is educating our members to make them better at what they do. Amazingly, and I say this because I wasn’t sure what to expect, we started getting some interest from the various leaders. One leader, Greg Akins, is, in my opinion, Pittsburgh’s poster boy for the polyglot programmer. He’s helped us in the past with .NET Code Camps, is a Java developer (and leader in Pittsburgh’s Java User Group), works with Ruby and I’m sure a handful of other languages. He helped make some e-introductions to other user group leaders, and the whole thing just started to snowball. Once we realized we had enough interest with the user group leaders, we decided to not have a Fall Code Camp and instead focus on this new entity. Flash-forward to October of 2011. I set up a meeting, with the help of Jeremy Jarrell (Pittsburgh Agile leader) to hold a meeting with the leaders of many of Pittsburgh technical user groups. We had representatives from 12 technical user groups (Python, JavaScript, Clojure, Ruby, PittAgile, jQuery, PHP, Perl, SQL, .NET, Java and PowerShell) – 14 people. We likened it to a scene from a Godfather movie where the heads of all the families come together to make some deal. As a result, the name “TechFest Mafia” was born and kind of stuck. Over the next 7 months or so, we had our starts and stops. There were moments where I thought this event would not happen either because we wouldn’t have the right mix of topics (was I off there!), or enough people register (OK, I was wrong there, too!) or find an appropriate venue (hmm…wrong there, too) or find enough sponsors to help support the event (wow…not doing so well). Overall, everything fell into place with a lot of hard work from Eric, Jen, Greg, Jeremy, Sean, Nicholas, Gina and probably a few others that I’m forgetting. We also had a bit of luck, too. But in the end, the passion that we had to put together an event that was really about making ourselves better at what we do really paid off. I’ve never been more excited about a project coming together than I have been with Pittsburgh TechFest 2012. From the moment the first person arrived at the event to the final minutes of my closing remarks (where I almost lost my voice – I ended up being diagnosed with bronchitis the next day!), it was an awesome event. I’m glad to have been part of bringing something like this to Pittsburgh…and I’m looking forward to Pittsburgh TechFest 2013. See you there!

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That Escalated Quickly

- by Jesse Taber

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2014/05/17/that-escalated-quickly.aspxI have been working remotely out of my home for over 4 years now. All of my coworkers during that time have also worked remotely. Lots of folks have written about the challenges inherent in facilitating communication on remote teams and strategies for overcoming them. A popular theme around this topic is the notion of “escalating communication”. In this context “escalating” means taking a conversation from one mode of communication to a different, higher fidelity mode of communication. Here are the five modes of communication I use at work in order of increasing fidelity: Email – This is the “lowest fidelity” mode of communication that I use. I usually only check it a few times a day (and I’m trying to check it even less frequently than that) and I only keep items in my inbox if they represent an item I need to take action on that I haven’t tracked anywhere else. Forums / Message boards – Being a developer, I’ve gotten into the habit of having other people look over my code before it becomes part of the product I’m working on. These code reviews often happen in “real time” via screen sharing, but I also always have someone else give all of the changes another look using pull requests. A pull request takes my code and lets someone else see the changes I’ve made side-by-side with the existing code so they can see if I did anything dumb. Pull requests can facilitate a conversation about the code changes in an online-forum like style. Some teams I’ve worked on also liked using tools like Trello or Google Groups to have on-going conversations about a topic or task that was being worked on. Chat & Instant Messaging - Chat and instant messaging are the real workhorses for communication on the remote teams I’ve been a part of. I know some teams that are co-located that also use it pretty extensively for quick messages that don’t warrant walking across the office to talk with someone but reqire more immediacy than an e-mail. For the purposes of this post I think it’s important to note that the terms “chat” and “instant messaging” might insinuate that the conversation is happening in real time, but that’s not always true. Modern chat and IM applications maintain a searchable history so people can easily see what might have been discussed while they were away from their computers. Voice, Video and Screen sharing – Everyone’s got a camera and microphone on their computers now, and there are an abundance of services that will let you use them to talk to other people who have cameras and microphones on their computers. I’m including screen sharing here as well because, in my experience, these discussions typically involve one or more people showing the other participants something that’s happening on their screen. Obviously, this mode of communication is much higher-fidelity than any of the ones listed above. Scheduled meetings are typically conducted using this mode of communication. In Person – No matter how great communication tools become, there’s no substitute for meeting with someone face-to-face. However, opportunities for this kind of communcation are few and far between when you work on a remote team. When a conversation gets escalated that usually means it moves up one or more positions on this list. A lot of people advocate jumping to #4 sooner than later. Like them, I used to believe that, if it was possible, organizing a call with voice and video was automatically better than any kind of text-based communication could be. Lately, however, I’m becoming less convinced that escalating is always the right move. Working Asynchronously Last year I attended a talk at our local code camp given by Drew Miller. Drew works at GitHub and was talking about how they use GitHub internally. Many of the folks at GitHub work remotely, so communication was one of the main themes in Drew’s talk. During the talk Drew used the phrase, “asynchronous communication” to describe their use of chat and pull request comments. That phrase stuck in my head because I hadn’t heard it before but I think it perfectly describes the way in which remote teams often need to communicate. You don’t always know when your co-workers are at their computers or what hours (if any) they are working that day. In order to work this way you need to assume that the person you’re talking to might not respond right away. You can’t always afford to wait until everyone required is online and available to join a voice call, so you need to use text-based, persistent forms of communication so that people can receive and respond to messages when they are available. Going back to my list from the beginning of this post for a second, I characterize items #1-3 as being “asynchronous” modes of communication while we could call items #4 and #5 “synchronous”. When communication gets escalated it’s almost always moving from an asynchronous mode of communication to a synchronous one. Now, to the point of this post: I’ve become increasingly reluctant to escalate from asynchronous to synchronous communication for two primary reasons: 1 – You can often find a higher fidelity way to convey your message without holding a synchronous conversation 2 - Asynchronous modes of communication are (usually) persistent and searchable. You Don’t Have to Broadcast Live Let’s start with the first reason I’ve listed. A lot of times you feel like you need to escalate to synchronous communication because you’re having difficulty describing something that you’re seeing in words. You want to provide the people you’re conversing with some audio-visual aids to help them understand the point that you’re trying to make and you think that getting on Skype and sharing your screen with them is the best way to do that. Firing up a screen sharing session does work well, but you can usually accomplish the same thing in an asynchronous manner. For example, you could take a screenshot and annotate it with some text and drawings to illustrate what it is you’re seeing. If a screenshot won’t work, taking a short screen recording while your narrate over it and posting the video to your forum or chat system along with a text-based description of what’s in the recording that can be searched for later can be a great way to effectively communicate with your team asynchronously. I Said What?!? Now for the second reason I listed: most asynchronous modes of communication provide a transcript of what was said and what decisions might have been made during the conversation. There have been many occasions where I’ve used the search feature of my team’s chat application to find a conversation that happened several weeks or months ago to remember what was decided. Unfortunately, I think the benefits associated with the persistence of communicating asynchronously often get overlooked when people decide to escalate to a in-person meeting or voice/video call. I’m becoming much more reluctant to suggest a voice or video call if I suspect that it might lead to codifying some kind of design decision because everyone involved is going to hang up the call and immediately forget what was decided. I recognize that you can record and archive these types of interactions, but without being able to search them the recordings aren’t terribly useful. When and How To Escalate I don’t mean to imply that communicating via voice/video or in person is never a good idea. I probably jump on a Skype call with a co-worker at least once a day to quickly hash something out or show them a bit of code that I’m working on. Also, meeting in person periodically is really important for remote teams. There’s no way around the fact that sometimes it’s easier to jump on a call and show someone my screen so they can see what I’m seeing. So when is it right to escalate? I think the simplest way to answer that is when the communication starts to feel painful. Everyone’s tolerance for that pain is different, but I think you need to let it hurt a little bit before jumping to synchronous communication. When you do escalate from asynchronous to synchronous communication, there are a couple of things you can do to maximize the effectiveness of the communication: Takes notes – This is huge and yet I’ve found that a lot of teams don’t do this. If you’re holding a meeting with > 2 people you should have someone taking notes. Taking notes while participating in a meeting can be difficult but there are a few strategies to deal with this challenge that probably deserve a short post of their own. After the meeting, make sure the notes are posted to a place where all concerned parties (including those that might not have attended the meeting) can review and search them. Persist decisions made ASAP – If any decisions were made during the meeting, persist those decisions to a searchable medium as soon as possible following the conversation. All the teams I’ve worked on used a web-based system for tracking the on-going work and a backlog of work to be done in the future. I always try to make sure that all of the cards/stories/tasks/whatever in these systems always reflect the latest decisions that were made as the work was being planned and executed. If held a quick call with your team lead and decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to build real-time validation into that new UI you were working on, go and codify that decision in the story associated with that work immediately after you hang up. Even better, write it up in the story while you are both still on the phone. That way when the folks from your QA team pick up the story to test a few days later they’ll know why the real-time validation isn’t there without having to invoke yet another conversation about the work. Communicating Well is Hard At this point you might be thinking that communicating asynchronously is more difficult than having a live conversation. You’re right: it is more difficult. In order to communicate effectively this way you need to very carefully think about the message that you’re trying to convey and craft it in a way that’s easy for your audience to understand. This is almost always harder than just talking through a problem in real time with someone; this is why escalating communication is such a popular idea. Why wouldn’t we want to do the thing that’s easier? Easier isn’t always better. If you and your team can get in the habit of communicating effectively in an asynchronous manner you’ll find that, over time, all of your communications get less painful because you don’t need to re-iterate previously made points over and over again. If you communicate right the first time, you often don’t need to rehash old conversations because you can go back and find the decisions that were made laid out in plain language. You’ll also find that you get better at doing things like writing useful comments in your code, creating written documentation about how the feature that you just built works, or persuading your team to do things in a certain way.

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Windows Azure Use Case: Infrastructure Limits

- by BuckWoody

This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx Description: Physical hardware components take up room, use electricity, create heat and therefore need cooling, and require wiring and special storage units. all of these requirements cost money to rent at a data-center or to build out at a local facility. In some cases, this can be a catalyst for evaluating options to remove this infrastructure requirement entirely by moving to a distributed computing environment. Implementation: There are three main options for moving to a distributed computing environment. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) The first option is simply to virtualize the current hardware and move the VM’s to a provider. You can do this with Microsoft’s Hyper-V product or other software, build the systems and host them locally on fewer physical machines. This is a good option for canned-applications (where you have to type setup.exe) but not as useful for custom applications, as you still have to license and patch those servers, and there are hard limits on the VM sizes. Software as a Service (SaaS) If there is already software available that does what you need, it may make sense to simply purchase not only the software license but the use of it on the vendor’s servers. Microsoft’s Exchange Online is an example of simply using an offering from a vendor on their servers. If you do not need a great deal of customization, have no interest in owning or extending the source code, and need to implement a solution quickly, this is a good choice. Platform as a Service (PaaS) If you do need to write software for your environment, your next choice is a Platform as a Service such as Windows Azure. In this case you no longer manager physical or even virtual servers. You start at the code and data level of control and responsibility, and your focus is more on the design and maintenance of the application itself. In this case you own the source code and can extend or change it as you see fit. An interesting side-benefit to using Windows Azure as a PaaS is that the Application Fabric component allows a hybrid approach, which gives you a basis to allow on-premise applications to leverage distributed computing paradigms. No one solution fits every situation. It’s common to see organizations pick a mixture of on-premise, IaaS, SaaS and PaaS components. In fact, that’s a great advantage to this form of computing - choice. References: 5 Enterprise steps for adopting a Platform as a Service: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/davidmcg/archive/2010/12/02/5-enterprise-steps-for-adopting-a-platform-as-a-service.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0 Application Patterns for the Cloud: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kashif/archive/2010/08/07/application-patterns-for-the-cloud.aspx

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Silverlight Cream for March 10, 2010 - 2 -- #811

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: AfricanGeek, Phil Middlemiss, Damon Payne, David Anson, Jesse Liberty, Jeremy Likness, Jobi Joy(-2-), Fredrik Normén, Bobby Diaz, and Mike Taulty(-2-). Shoutouts: Shawn Wildermuth blogged that they posted My "What's New in Silverlight 3" Video from 0reDev Last Fall Shawn Wildermuth also has a post up for his loyal followers: Where to See Me At MIX10 Jonas Follesø has presentation materials up as well: MVVM presentation from NDC2009 on Vimeo Adam Kinney updated his Favorite Tool and Library Downloads for Silverlight From SilverlightCream.com: Styling Silverlight ListBox with Blend 3 In his latest Video Tutorial, AfricanGeek is animating the ListBox control by way of Expression Blend 3. Animating the Silverlight Opacity Mask Phil Middlemiss has written a Behavior that lets you turn a FrameworkElement into an opacity mask for it's parent container... check out his tutorial and grab the code. AddRange for ObservableCollection in Silverlight 3 Damon Payne has a post up discussing the problem with large amounts of data in an ObservableCollection, and how using AddRange is a performance booster. Easily rotate the axis labels of a Silverlight/WPF Toolkit chart David Anson blogged a solution to rotating the axis labels of a Silverlight and WPF chart. Persisting the Configuration (Updated) Jesse Liberty has a good discussion on the continuation of his HyperVideo Platform talking about what all he is needing from the database in the form of configuration information... including the relationships. Animations and View Models: IAnimationDelegate Check out Jeremy Likness' IAnimationDelegate that lets your ViewModel fire and respond to animations without having to know all about them. Button Style - Silverlight Jobi Joy converted a WPF control template into Silverlight... and you'll want to download the XAML he's got for this :) A Simple Accordion banner using ListBox Jobi Joy also has an Image Accordian created in Expression Blend... and it's a 'drop this XAML in your User Control' kinda thing... again, go grab the XAML :) WCF RIA Services Silverlight Business Application – Using ASP.NET SiteMap for Navigation Fredrik Normén has a code-laden post up on RIA Services and the ASP.NET SiteMap. He is using the Silverlight Business app template that comes with WCF RIA Services. A Simple, Selectable Silverlight TextBlock (sort of)... Bobby Diaz shares with us his solution for a Text control that can be copied from in the same manner 'normal' web controls can be. He also includes a link to another post on the same topic. Silverlight 4 Beta Networking. Part 11 - WCF and TCP Mike Taulty has another pair of video tutorials up in his Networking series. This one is on WCF over TCP Silverlight 4 Beta Networking. Part 12 - WCF and Polling HTTP Mike Taulty's 12th networking video tutorial is on WCF with HTTP polling duplex. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 MIX10

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Initial Review - Mastering Unreal Technology I: Introduction to Level Design with Unreal Engine 3

- by Matt Christian

Recently I purchased 3 large volumes on using the Unreal 3 Engine to create levels and custom games. This past weekend I cracked the spine of the first and started reading. Here are my early impressions (I'm ~250 pages into it, with appendices it's about 900). Pros Interestingly, the book starts with an overview of the Unreal engines leading up to Unreal 3 (including Gears of War) and follows with some discussion on planning a mod and what goes into the game development process. This is nice for an intro to the book and is much preferred rather than a simple chapter detailing what is on the included CD, how to install and setup UnrealEd, etc... While the chapter on Unreal history and planning can be considered 'fluff', it's much less 'fluffy' than most books provide. I need to mention one thing here that is pretty crucial in the way I'm going to continue reviewing this book. Most technical books like this are used as a shelf reference; as a thick volume you use for looking up techniques every now and again. Even so, I prefer reading from cover to cover, including chapters I may already be knowledgable on (I'm sure this is typical for most people). If there was a chapter on installing UnrealEd (the previously mentioned 'fluff'), I would probably force myself to read it, even though I've installed the game and engine multiple times on different systems. Chapter 3 is where we really get to the introduction piece of UnrealEd, creating your first basic level. This large chapter details creating two small rooms, adding static meshes, adding lighting, creating and adding particle emitters, creating a door that animates with Unreal Matinee and Kismet, static meshes with physics, and other little additions to make your level look less beginner. This really is a chapter that overviews the entire rest of the book, as each chapter following details the creation and intermediate usages of Static Meshes, Materials, Lighting, etc... One other very nice part to this book is the way the tutorials are setup. Each tutorial builds off the previous and all are step-by-step. If you haven't completed one yet, you can find all the starting files on the CD that comes with the book. Cons While the description of the overview chapter (Chapter 3) is fresh in your mind, let me start the cons by saying this chapter is setup extremely confusing for the noob. At one point, you end up creating a door mesh and setting it up as a InteropMesh so that it is ready to be animated, only to switch to particles and spend a good portion of time working on a different piece of the level. Yes, this is actually how I develop my levels (jumping back and forth), though it's very odd for a book to jump out of sequence. The next item might be a positive or a negative depending on your skill level with UnrealEd. Most of the introduction to the editor layout is found in one of the Appendices instead of before Chapter 3. For new readers, this might lead to confusion as Appendix A would typically be read between Chapter 2 and 3. However, this is a positive for those with some experience in UnrealEd as they don't have to force themselves through a 'learn every editor button' chapter. I'm listing this in the Cons section as the book is 'Introduction to...' and is probably going to be directed toward a lot of very beginner developers. Finally, there's a lack of general description to a lot of the underlying engine and what each piece in UnrealEd is or does. Sometimes you'll be performing Tutorial after Tutorial with barely a paragraph in between describing ANY of what you've just done. Tutorial 1.1 Step 6 says to press Button X, so you do. But why? This is in part a problem with the structure of the tutorials rather than the content of the book. Since the tutorials are so focused on a step-by-step (or procedural) description of a process, you learn the process and not why you're doing that. For example, you might learn how to size a material to a surface, but will only learn what buttons to press and not what each one does. This becomes extremely apparent in the chapter on Static Meshes as most of the chapter is spent in 3D Studio Max. Since there are books on 3DSM and modelling, the book really only tells you the steps and says to go grab a book on modelling if you're really interested in 3DSM. Again, I've learned the process to develop my own meshes in 3DSM, but I don't know the why behind the steps. Conclusion So far the book is very good though I would have a hard time recommending it to a complete beginner. I would suggest anyone looking at this book (obviously including the other 2, more advanced volumes) to pick up a copy of UDK or Unreal 3 (available online or via download services such as Steam) and watch some online tutorials and play with it first. You'll find plenty of online videos available that were created by the authors and may suit as a better introduction to the editor.

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