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  • Oracle Social Network and the Flying Monkey Smart Target

    - by kellsey.ruppel
    Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. I teased this before OpenWorld, and for those of you who didn’t make it to the show or didn’t come by the Office Hours to take the Oracle Social Network Technical Tour Noel (@noelportugal) ran, I give you the Flying Monkey Smart Target. In brief, Noel built a target, about two feet tall, which when struck, played monkey sounds and posted a comment to an Oracle Social Network Conversation, all controlled by a Raspberry Pi. He also connected a Dropcam to record the winner just prior to the strike. I’m not sure how it all works, but maybe Noel can post the technical specifics. Here’s Noel describing the Challenge, the Target and a few other tidbit in an interview with Friend of the ‘Lab, Bob Rhubart (@brhubart). The monkey target bits are 2:12-2:54 if you’re into brevity, but watch the whole thing. Here are some screen grabs from the Oracle Social Network Conversation, including the Conversation itself, where you can see all the strikes documented, the picture captured, and the annotation capabilities: #gallery-1 { margin: auto;? } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; }    That’s Diego in one shot, looking very focused, and Ernst in the other, who kindly annotated himself, two of the development team members. You might have seen them in the Oracle Social Network Hands-On Lab during the show. There’s a trend here. Not by accident, fun stuff like this has becoming our calling card, e.g. the Kscope 12 WebCenter Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots. Not only are these entertaining demonstrations, but they showcase what’s possible with RESTful APIs and get developers noodling on how easy it is to connect real objects to cloud services to fix pain points. I spoke to some great folks from the City of Atlanta about extending the concepts of the flying monkey target to physical asset monitoring. Just take an internet-connected camera with REST APIs like the Dropcam, wire it up to Oracle Social Netwok, and you can hack together a monitoring device for a datacenter or a warehouse. Sure, it’s easier said than done, but we’re a lot closer to that reality than we were even two years ago. Another noteworthy bit from Noel’s interview, beginning at 2:55, is the evolution of social developer. Speaking of, make sure to check out the Oracle Social Developer Community. Look for more on the social developer in the coming months. Noel has become quite the Raspberry Pi evangelist, and why not, it’s a great tool, a low-power Linux machine, cheap ($35!) and highly extensible, perfect for makers and students alike. He attended a meetup on Saturday before OpenWorld, and during the show, I heard him evangelizing the Pi and its capabilities to many people. There is some fantastic innovation forming in that ecosystem, much of it with Java. The OTN gang raffled off five Pis, and I expect to see lots of great stuff in the very near future. Stay tuned this week for posts on all our Challenge entrants. There’s some great innovation you won’t want to miss. Find the comments. Update: I forgot to mention that Noel used Twilio, one of his favorite services, during the show to send out Challenge updates and information to all the contestants.

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  • Lifting vehicles (and spawners) using InterActors, strange collisions causing flying vehicles

    - by Gareth Jones
    Making a VCTF map with the Unreal Tournament 3 Editor, and thus have vehicles in it. Currently I have 2 walkways next to each other (Big enough for a vehicle). One of them (A InterActor) drops down, and a grate covers the hole until the vehicle respawns. Once its respawned the InterActor Walkway lifts the vehicle up (and the grate pulls back). However what I'm finding is that the vehicle seems to collide with something when it gets near the top. (Looks something like this: ----_ where _ is the moving InterActor and - is a walkway) I created a new map to test this, and found it seems the front of the scorpion collides with the walkway in front of it, however I don't know why, it physically (in terms of how it looks in game) does not touch the walkway in front of it, but its actions look like it has. Im using InterActors, and a vehicle spawner, looking like so How do I stop this from happening? Right now everything is perfect, except the vehicle keeps flying away every time its lifted up, likes it been forced in between the "lift" and another object!

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  • Node.js Adventure - When Node Flying in Wind

    - by Shaun
    In the first post of this series I mentioned some popular modules in the community, such as underscore, async, etc.. I also listed a module named “Wind (zh-CN)”, which is created by one of my friend, Jeff Zhao (zh-CN). Now I would like to use a separated post to introduce this module since I feel it brings a new async programming style in not only Node.js but JavaScript world. If you know or heard about the new feature in C# 5.0 called “async and await”, or you learnt F#, you will find the “Wind” brings the similar async programming experience in JavaScript. By using “Wind”, we can write async code that looks like the sync code. The callbacks, async stats and exceptions will be handled by “Wind” automatically and transparently.   What’s the Problem: Dense “Callback” Phobia Let’s firstly back to my second post in this series. As I mentioned in that post, when we wanted to read some records from SQL Server we need to open the database connection, and then execute the query. In Node.js all IO operation are designed as async callback pattern which means when the operation was done, it will invoke a function which was taken from the last parameter. For example the database connection opening code would be like this. 1: sql.open(connectionString, function(error, conn) { 2: if(error) { 3: // some error handling code 4: } 5: else { 6: // connection opened successfully 7: } 8: }); And then if we need to query the database the code would be like this. It nested in the previous function. 1: sql.open(connectionString, function(error, conn) { 2: if(error) { 3: // some error handling code 4: } 5: else { 6: // connection opened successfully 7: conn.queryRaw(command, function(error, results) { 8: if(error) { 9: // failed to execute this command 10: } 11: else { 12: // records retrieved successfully 13: } 14: }; 15: } 16: }); Assuming if we need to copy some data from this database to another then we need to open another connection and execute the command within the function under the query function. 1: sql.open(connectionString, function(error, conn) { 2: if(error) { 3: // some error handling code 4: } 5: else { 6: // connection opened successfully 7: conn.queryRaw(command, function(error, results) { 8: if(error) { 9: // failed to execute this command 10: } 11: else { 12: // records retrieved successfully 13: target.open(targetConnectionString, function(error, t_conn) { 14: if(error) { 15: // connect failed 16: } 17: else { 18: t_conn.queryRaw(copy_command, function(error, results) { 19: if(error) { 20: // copy failed 21: } 22: else { 23: // and then, what do you want to do now... 24: } 25: }; 26: } 27: }; 28: } 29: }; 30: } 31: }); This is just an example. In the real project the logic would be more complicated. This means our application might be messed up and the business process will be fragged by many callback functions. I would like call this “Dense Callback Phobia”. This might be a challenge how to make code straightforward and easy to read, something like below. 1: try 2: { 3: // open source connection 4: var s_conn = sqlConnect(s_connectionString); 5: // retrieve data 6: var results = sqlExecuteCommand(s_conn, s_command); 7: 8: // open target connection 9: var t_conn = sqlConnect(t_connectionString); 10: // prepare the copy command 11: var t_command = getCopyCommand(results); 12: // execute the copy command 13: sqlExecuteCommand(s_conn, t_command); 14: } 15: catch (ex) 16: { 17: // error handling 18: }   What’s the Problem: Sync-styled Async Programming Similar as the previous problem, the callback-styled async programming model makes the upcoming operation as a part of the current operation, and mixed with the error handling code. So it’s very hard to understand what on earth this code will do. And since Node.js utilizes non-blocking IO mode, we cannot invoke those operations one by one, as they will be executed concurrently. For example, in this post when I tried to copy the records from Windows Azure SQL Database (a.k.a. WASD) to Windows Azure Table Storage, if I just insert the data into table storage one by one and then print the “Finished” message, I will see the message shown before the data had been copied. This is because all operations were executed at the same time. In order to make the copy operation and print operation executed synchronously I introduced a module named “async” and the code was changed as below. 1: async.forEach(results.rows, 2: function (row, callback) { 3: var resource = { 4: "PartitionKey": row[1], 5: "RowKey": row[0], 6: "Value": row[2] 7: }; 8: client.insertEntity(tableName, resource, function (error) { 9: if (error) { 10: callback(error); 11: } 12: else { 13: console.log("entity inserted."); 14: callback(null); 15: } 16: }); 17: }, 18: function (error) { 19: if (error) { 20: error["target"] = "insertEntity"; 21: res.send(500, error); 22: } 23: else { 24: console.log("all done."); 25: res.send(200, "Done!"); 26: } 27: }); It ensured that the “Finished” message will be printed when all table entities had been inserted. But it cannot promise that the records will be inserted in sequence. It might be another challenge to make the code looks like in sync-style? 1: try 2: { 3: forEach(row in rows) { 4: var entity = { /* ... */ }; 5: tableClient.insert(tableName, entity); 6: } 7:  8: console.log("Finished"); 9: } 10: catch (ex) { 11: console.log(ex); 12: }   How “Wind” Helps “Wind” is a JavaScript library which provides the control flow with plain JavaScript for asynchronous programming (and more) without additional pre-compiling steps. It’s available in NPM so that we can install it through “npm install wind”. Now let’s create a very simple Node.js application as the example. This application will take some website URLs from the command arguments and tried to retrieve the body length and print them in console. Then at the end print “Finish”. I’m going to use “request” module to make the HTTP call simple so I also need to install by the command “npm install request”. The code would be like this. 1: var request = require("request"); 2:  3: // get the urls from arguments, the first two arguments are `node.exe` and `fetch.js` 4: var args = process.argv.splice(2); 5:  6: // main function 7: var main = function() { 8: for(var i = 0; i < args.length; i++) { 9: // get the url 10: var url = args[i]; 11: // send the http request and try to get the response and body 12: request(url, function(error, response, body) { 13: if(!error && response.statusCode == 200) { 14: // log the url and the body length 15: console.log( 16: "%s: %d.", 17: response.request.uri.href, 18: body.length); 19: } 20: else { 21: // log error 22: console.log(error); 23: } 24: }); 25: } 26: 27: // finished 28: console.log("Finished"); 29: }; 30:  31: // execute the main function 32: main(); Let’s execute this application. (I made them in multi-lines for better reading.) 1: node fetch.js 2: "http://www.igt.com/us-en.aspx" 3: "http://www.igt.com/us-en/games.aspx" 4: "http://www.igt.com/us-en/cabinets.aspx" 5: "http://www.igt.com/us-en/systems.aspx" 6: "http://www.igt.com/us-en/interactive.aspx" 7: "http://www.igt.com/us-en/social-gaming.aspx" 8: "http://www.igt.com/support.aspx" Below is the output. As you can see the finish message was printed at the beginning, and the pages’ length retrieved in a different order than we specified. This is because in this code the request command, console logging command are executed asynchronously and concurrently. Now let’s introduce “Wind” to make them executed in order, which means it will request the websites one by one, and print the message at the end.   First of all we need to import the “Wind” package and make sure the there’s only one global variant named “Wind”, and ensure it’s “Wind” instead of “wind”. 1: var Wind = require("wind");   Next, we need to tell “Wind” which code will be executed asynchronously so that “Wind” can control the execution process. In this case the “request” operation executed asynchronously so we will create a “Task” by using a build-in helps function in “Wind” named Wind.Async.Task.create. 1: var requestBodyLengthAsync = function(url) { 2: return Wind.Async.Task.create(function(t) { 3: request(url, function(error, response, body) { 4: if(error || response.statusCode != 200) { 5: t.complete("failure", error); 6: } 7: else { 8: var data = 9: { 10: uri: response.request.uri.href, 11: length: body.length 12: }; 13: t.complete("success", data); 14: } 15: }); 16: }); 17: }; The code above created a “Task” from the original request calling code. In “Wind” a “Task” means an operation will be finished in some time in the future. A “Task” can be started by invoke its start() method, but no one knows when it actually will be finished. The Wind.Async.Task.create helped us to create a task. The only parameter is a function where we can put the actual operation in, and then notify the task object it’s finished successfully or failed by using the complete() method. In the code above I invoked the request method. If it retrieved the response successfully I set the status of this task as “success” with the URL and body length. If it failed I set this task as “failure” and pass the error out.   Next, we will change the main() function. In “Wind” if we want a function can be controlled by Wind we need to mark it as “async”. This should be done by using the code below. 1: var main = eval(Wind.compile("async", function() { 2: })); When the application is running, Wind will detect “eval(Wind.compile(“async”, function” and generate an anonymous code from the body of this original function. Then the application will run the anonymous code instead of the original one. In our example the main function will be like this. 1: var main = eval(Wind.compile("async", function() { 2: for(var i = 0; i < args.length; i++) { 3: try 4: { 5: var result = $await(requestBodyLengthAsync(args[i])); 6: console.log( 7: "%s: %d.", 8: result.uri, 9: result.length); 10: } 11: catch (ex) { 12: console.log(ex); 13: } 14: } 15: 16: console.log("Finished"); 17: })); As you can see, when I tried to request the URL I use a new command named “$await”. It tells Wind, the operation next to $await will be executed asynchronously, and the main thread should be paused until it finished (or failed). So in this case, my application will be pause when the first response was received, and then print its body length, then try the next one. At the end, print the finish message.   Finally, execute the main function. The full code would be like this. 1: var request = require("request"); 2: var Wind = require("wind"); 3:  4: var args = process.argv.splice(2); 5:  6: var requestBodyLengthAsync = function(url) { 7: return Wind.Async.Task.create(function(t) { 8: request(url, function(error, response, body) { 9: if(error || response.statusCode != 200) { 10: t.complete("failure", error); 11: } 12: else { 13: var data = 14: { 15: uri: response.request.uri.href, 16: length: body.length 17: }; 18: t.complete("success", data); 19: } 20: }); 21: }); 22: }; 23:  24: var main = eval(Wind.compile("async", function() { 25: for(var i = 0; i < args.length; i++) { 26: try 27: { 28: var result = $await(requestBodyLengthAsync(args[i])); 29: console.log( 30: "%s: %d.", 31: result.uri, 32: result.length); 33: } 34: catch (ex) { 35: console.log(ex); 36: } 37: } 38: 39: console.log("Finished"); 40: })); 41:  42: main().start();   Run our new application. At the beginning we will see the compiled and generated code by Wind. Then we can see the pages were requested one by one, and at the end the finish message was printed. Below is the code Wind generated for us. As you can see the original code, the output code were shown. 1: // Original: 2: function () { 3: for(var i = 0; i < args.length; i++) { 4: try 5: { 6: var result = $await(requestBodyLengthAsync(args[i])); 7: console.log( 8: "%s: %d.", 9: result.uri, 10: result.length); 11: } 12: catch (ex) { 13: console.log(ex); 14: } 15: } 16: 17: console.log("Finished"); 18: } 19:  20: // Compiled: 21: /* async << function () { */ (function () { 22: var _builder_$0 = Wind.builders["async"]; 23: return _builder_$0.Start(this, 24: _builder_$0.Combine( 25: _builder_$0.Delay(function () { 26: /* var i = 0; */ var i = 0; 27: /* for ( */ return _builder_$0.For(function () { 28: /* ; i < args.length */ return i < args.length; 29: }, function () { 30: /* ; i ++) { */ i ++; 31: }, 32: /* try { */ _builder_$0.Try( 33: _builder_$0.Delay(function () { 34: /* var result = $await(requestBodyLengthAsync(args[i])); */ return _builder_$0.Bind(requestBodyLengthAsync(args[i]), function (result) { 35: /* console.log("%s: %d.", result.uri, result.length); */ console.log("%s: %d.", result.uri, result.length); 36: return _builder_$0.Normal(); 37: }); 38: }), 39: /* } catch (ex) { */ function (ex) { 40: /* console.log(ex); */ console.log(ex); 41: return _builder_$0.Normal(); 42: /* } */ }, 43: null 44: ) 45: /* } */ ); 46: }), 47: _builder_$0.Delay(function () { 48: /* console.log("Finished"); */ console.log("Finished"); 49: return _builder_$0.Normal(); 50: }) 51: ) 52: ); 53: /* } */ })   How Wind Works Someone may raise a big concern when you find I utilized “eval” in my code. Someone may assume that Wind utilizes “eval” to execute some code dynamically while “eval” is very low performance. But I would say, Wind does NOT use “eval” to run the code. It only use “eval” as a flag to know which code should be compiled at runtime. When the code was firstly been executed, Wind will check and find “eval(Wind.compile(“async”, function”. So that it knows this function should be compiled. Then it utilized parse-js to analyze the inner JavaScript and generated the anonymous code in memory. Then it rewrite the original code so that when the application was running it will use the anonymous one instead of the original one. Since the code generation was done at the beginning of the application was started, in the future no matter how long our application runs and how many times the async function was invoked, it will use the generated code, no need to generate again. So there’s no significant performance hurt when using Wind.   Wind in My Previous Demo Let’s adopt Wind into one of my previous demonstration and to see how it helps us to make our code simple, straightforward and easy to read and understand. In this post when I implemented the functionality that copied the records from my WASD to table storage, the logic would be like this. 1, Open database connection. 2, Execute a query to select all records from the table. 3, Recreate the table in Windows Azure table storage. 4, Create entities from each of the records retrieved previously, and then insert them into table storage. 5, Finally, show message as the HTTP response. But as the image below, since there are so many callbacks and async operations, it’s very hard to understand my logic from the code. Now let’s use Wind to rewrite our code. First of all, of course, we need the Wind package. Then we need to include the package files into project and mark them as “Copy always”. Add the Wind package into the source code. Pay attention to the variant name, you must use “Wind” instead of “wind”. 1: var express = require("express"); 2: var async = require("async"); 3: var sql = require("node-sqlserver"); 4: var azure = require("azure"); 5: var Wind = require("wind"); Now we need to create some async functions by using Wind. All async functions should be wrapped so that it can be controlled by Wind which are open database, retrieve records, recreate table (delete and create) and insert entity in table. Below are these new functions. All of them are created by using Wind.Async.Task.create. 1: sql.openAsync = function (connectionString) { 2: return Wind.Async.Task.create(function (t) { 3: sql.open(connectionString, function (error, conn) { 4: if (error) { 5: t.complete("failure", error); 6: } 7: else { 8: t.complete("success", conn); 9: } 10: }); 11: }); 12: }; 13:  14: sql.queryAsync = function (conn, query) { 15: return Wind.Async.Task.create(function (t) { 16: conn.queryRaw(query, function (error, results) { 17: if (error) { 18: t.complete("failure", error); 19: } 20: else { 21: t.complete("success", results); 22: } 23: }); 24: }); 25: }; 26:  27: azure.recreateTableAsync = function (tableName) { 28: return Wind.Async.Task.create(function (t) { 29: client.deleteTable(tableName, function (error, successful, response) { 30: console.log("delete table finished"); 31: client.createTableIfNotExists(tableName, function (error, successful, response) { 32: console.log("create table finished"); 33: if (error) { 34: t.complete("failure", error); 35: } 36: else { 37: t.complete("success", null); 38: } 39: }); 40: }); 41: }); 42: }; 43:  44: azure.insertEntityAsync = function (tableName, entity) { 45: return Wind.Async.Task.create(function (t) { 46: client.insertEntity(tableName, entity, function (error, entity, response) { 47: if (error) { 48: t.complete("failure", error); 49: } 50: else { 51: t.complete("success", null); 52: } 53: }); 54: }); 55: }; Then in order to use these functions we will create a new function which contains all steps for data copying. 1: var copyRecords = eval(Wind.compile("async", function (req, res) { 2: try { 3: } 4: catch (ex) { 5: console.log(ex); 6: res.send(500, "Internal error."); 7: } 8: })); Let’s execute steps one by one with the “$await” keyword introduced by Wind so that it will be invoked in sequence. First is to open the database connection. 1: var copyRecords = eval(Wind.compile("async", function (req, res) { 2: try { 3: // connect to the windows azure sql database 4: var conn = $await(sql.openAsync(connectionString)); 5: console.log("connection opened"); 6: } 7: catch (ex) { 8: console.log(ex); 9: res.send(500, "Internal error."); 10: } 11: })); Then retrieve all records from the database connection. 1: var copyRecords = eval(Wind.compile("async", function (req, res) { 2: try { 3: // connect to the windows azure sql database 4: var conn = $await(sql.openAsync(connectionString)); 5: console.log("connection opened"); 6: // retrieve all records from database 7: var results = $await(sql.queryAsync(conn, "SELECT * FROM [Resource]")); 8: console.log("records selected. count = %d", results.rows.length); 9: } 10: catch (ex) { 11: console.log(ex); 12: res.send(500, "Internal error."); 13: } 14: })); After recreated the table, we need to create the entities and insert them into table storage. 1: var copyRecords = eval(Wind.compile("async", function (req, res) { 2: try { 3: // connect to the windows azure sql database 4: var conn = $await(sql.openAsync(connectionString)); 5: console.log("connection opened"); 6: // retrieve all records from database 7: var results = $await(sql.queryAsync(conn, "SELECT * FROM [Resource]")); 8: console.log("records selected. count = %d", results.rows.length); 9: if (results.rows.length > 0) { 10: // recreate the table 11: $await(azure.recreateTableAsync(tableName)); 12: console.log("table created"); 13: // insert records in table storage one by one 14: for (var i = 0; i < results.rows.length; i++) { 15: var entity = { 16: "PartitionKey": results.rows[i][1], 17: "RowKey": results.rows[i][0], 18: "Value": results.rows[i][2] 19: }; 20: $await(azure.insertEntityAsync(tableName, entity)); 21: console.log("entity inserted"); 22: } 23: } 24: } 25: catch (ex) { 26: console.log(ex); 27: res.send(500, "Internal error."); 28: } 29: })); Finally, send response back to the browser. 1: var copyRecords = eval(Wind.compile("async", function (req, res) { 2: try { 3: // connect to the windows azure sql database 4: var conn = $await(sql.openAsync(connectionString)); 5: console.log("connection opened"); 6: // retrieve all records from database 7: var results = $await(sql.queryAsync(conn, "SELECT * FROM [Resource]")); 8: console.log("records selected. count = %d", results.rows.length); 9: if (results.rows.length > 0) { 10: // recreate the table 11: $await(azure.recreateTableAsync(tableName)); 12: console.log("table created"); 13: // insert records in table storage one by one 14: for (var i = 0; i < results.rows.length; i++) { 15: var entity = { 16: "PartitionKey": results.rows[i][1], 17: "RowKey": results.rows[i][0], 18: "Value": results.rows[i][2] 19: }; 20: $await(azure.insertEntityAsync(tableName, entity)); 21: console.log("entity inserted"); 22: } 23: // send response 24: console.log("all done"); 25: res.send(200, "All done!"); 26: } 27: } 28: catch (ex) { 29: console.log(ex); 30: res.send(500, "Internal error."); 31: } 32: })); If we compared with the previous code we will find now it became more readable and much easy to understand. It’s very easy to know what this function does even though without any comments. When user go to URL “/was/copyRecords” we will execute the function above. The code would be like this. 1: app.get("/was/copyRecords", function (req, res) { 2: copyRecords(req, res).start(); 3: }); And below is the logs printed in local compute emulator console. As we can see the functions executed one by one and then finally the response back to me browser.   Scaffold Functions in Wind Wind provides not only the async flow control and compile functions, but many scaffold methods as well. We can build our async code more easily by using them. I’m going to introduce some basic scaffold functions here. In the code above I created some functions which wrapped from the original async function such as open database, create table, etc.. All of them are very similar, created a task by using Wind.Async.Task.create, return error or result object through Task.complete function. In fact, Wind provides some functions for us to create task object from the original async functions. If the original async function only has a callback parameter, we can use Wind.Async.Binding.fromCallback method to get the task object directly. For example the code below returned the task object which wrapped the file exist check function. 1: var Wind = require("wind"); 2: var fs = require("fs"); 3:  4: fs.existsAsync = Wind.Async.Binding.fromCallback(fs.exists); In Node.js a very popular async function pattern is that, the first parameter in the callback function represent the error object, and the other parameters is the return values. In this case we can use another build-in function in Wind named Wind.Async.Binding.fromStandard. For example, the open database function can be created from the code below. 1: sql.openAsync = Wind.Async.Binding.fromStandard(sql.open); 2:  3: /* 4: sql.openAsync = function (connectionString) { 5: return Wind.Async.Task.create(function (t) { 6: sql.open(connectionString, function (error, conn) { 7: if (error) { 8: t.complete("failure", error); 9: } 10: else { 11: t.complete("success", conn); 12: } 13: }); 14: }); 15: }; 16: */ When I was testing the scaffold functions under Wind.Async.Binding I found for some functions, such as the Azure SDK insert entity function, cannot be processed correctly. So I personally suggest writing the wrapped method manually.   Another scaffold method in Wind is the parallel tasks coordination. In this example, the steps of open database, retrieve records and recreated table should be invoked one by one, but it can be executed in parallel when copying data from database to table storage. In Wind there’s a scaffold function named Task.whenAll which can be used here. Task.whenAll accepts a list of tasks and creates a new task. It will be returned only when all tasks had been completed, or any errors occurred. For example in the code below I used the Task.whenAll to make all copy operation executed at the same time. 1: var copyRecordsInParallel = eval(Wind.compile("async", function (req, res) { 2: try { 3: // connect to the windows azure sql database 4: var conn = $await(sql.openAsync(connectionString)); 5: console.log("connection opened"); 6: // retrieve all records from database 7: var results = $await(sql.queryAsync(conn, "SELECT * FROM [Resource]")); 8: console.log("records selected. count = %d", results.rows.length); 9: if (results.rows.length > 0) { 10: // recreate the table 11: $await(azure.recreateTableAsync(tableName)); 12: console.log("table created"); 13: // insert records in table storage in parallal 14: var tasks = new Array(results.rows.length); 15: for (var i = 0; i < results.rows.length; i++) { 16: var entity = { 17: "PartitionKey": results.rows[i][1], 18: "RowKey": results.rows[i][0], 19: "Value": results.rows[i][2] 20: }; 21: tasks[i] = azure.insertEntityAsync(tableName, entity); 22: } 23: $await(Wind.Async.Task.whenAll(tasks)); 24: // send response 25: console.log("all done"); 26: res.send(200, "All done!"); 27: } 28: } 29: catch (ex) { 30: console.log(ex); 31: res.send(500, "Internal error."); 32: } 33: })); 34:  35: app.get("/was/copyRecordsInParallel", function (req, res) { 36: copyRecordsInParallel(req, res).start(); 37: });   Besides the task creation and coordination, Wind supports the cancellation solution so that we can send the cancellation signal to the tasks. It also includes exception solution which means any exceptions will be reported to the caller function.   Summary In this post I introduced a Node.js module named Wind, which created by my friend Jeff Zhao. As you can see, different from other async library and framework, adopted the idea from F# and C#, Wind utilizes runtime code generation technology to make it more easily to write async, callback-based functions in a sync-style way. By using Wind there will be almost no callback, and the code will be very easy to understand. Currently Wind is still under developed and improved. There might be some problems but the author, Jeff, should be very happy and enthusiastic to learn your problems, feedback, suggestion and comments. You can contact Jeff by - Email: [email protected] - Group: https://groups.google.com/d/forum/windjs - GitHub: https://github.com/JeffreyZhao/wind/issues   Source code can be download here.   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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  • Taking a Flying Leap

    - by Lance Shaw
    Yesterday, I went skydiving with three of my children.  It was thrilling, scary, invigorating and exciting. While there is obvious risk involved, the reward and feeling of success was well worth it. You might already be wondering what skydiving would have to with WebCenter, so let me explain. Implementing a skydiving program and becoming an instructor does not happen overnight.  It does not happen with the purchase of the needed technology. Not one of us would go out, buy a parachute, the harnesses, helmet and all the gear and be able to convince anyone that we are now ready to be a skydiving instructor. The fact is that obtaining the technology is merely a small piece of the overall process and so is the case with managing content in your company. You don't just buy the right software (Oracle WebCenter Content) and go to your boss and declare information management success. There is planning, research and effort that goes into deploying software of any kind and especially when it is as mission-critical to the success of your business as Enterprise Content Management. To become a certified skydiving instructor takes at least 3 years of commitment and often longer. In the United States, candidates must complete over 500 solo jumps of their own over a minimum of 36 months and then must complete additional rigorous training under observation.  When you consider the amount of time and effort involved, it's not unlike getting a college degree and anyone that has trusted their lives to one of these instructors will no doubt appreciate their dedication to the curriculum.  Implementing an ECM system won't take that long, but it certainly requires commitment, analysis and consideration. But guess what?  Humans are involved and that means that mistakes can happen and that rules change.  This struck me while reading an excellent post on darkreading.com by Glenn S. Phillips entitled "Mission Impossible: 4 Reasons Compliance is Impossible".  His over-arching point was that with information management and security, environments change and people are involved meaning the work is never done.  He stated that you can never claim your compliance efforts are complete because of the following reasons. People are involved.  And lets face it, some are more trustworthy than others. Change is Constant. There is always some new technology coming along that is disruptive. Consumer grade cloud file sharing and sync tools come to mind here. Compliance is interpreted, not defined.  Laws and the judges that read them are always on the move. Technology is a tool, not a complete solution. There is no magic pill. The skydiving analogy holds true here as well.  Ultimately, a single person packs your parachute.  For obvious reasons, you prefer that this person be trustworthy but there are no absolute guarantees of a 100% error-free scenario.  Weather and wind conditions are never a constant and the best-laid plans for a great day of skydiving are easily disrupted by forces outside of your control.  Rules and regulations vary by location and may be updated at any time and as I mentioned early on, even the best technology on its own will only get you started. The good news is that, like skydiving, with the right technology, the right planning, the right team and a proper understanding of the rules and regulations that govern your industry, your ECM deployment can be a great success.  Failure to plan for any of the 4 factors that Glenn outlined in his article will certainly put your deployment and maybe even your company at risk, so consider them carefully. As a final aside, for those of you who consider skydiving an incredibly dangerous and risky pastime, consider this comparative statistic.  In 2012, the U.S. Parachute Association recorded 19 fatal skydiving accidents in the U.S. out of roughly 3.1 million jumps.  That’s 0.006 fatalities per 1,000 jumps. By comparison, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that there were 34,080 deaths due to car accidents in 2012.  Based on the percentages, one could argue that it is safer to jump out of a plane than to drive to the airport where the skydiving will take place. While the way you manage, secure, classify, control, retain and dispose of company files may not carry as much risk as driving or skydiving, it certainly carries risk for the organization when not planned and deployed appropriately.  Consider all the factors involved in your organization as you make your content management plans.  For additional areas of consideration, be sure to download our free whitepaper on the topic entitled "The Top 10 Criteria for Choosing an ECM System" which is available for download here.

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  • WPF "flying" combobox

    - by JerryVienna
    Hello, is it possible to create a combobox in wpf from code, which I could position wherever I want on the window? In my case, I basically want to create something like a Autocomplete for DataGrid rows,... Thanks!

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  • visual studio 2005 problem with windows flying open

    - by Kevin
    I'm going through the problem of setting up a new computer and I'm having a problem with VS 2005. Whenever I start debugging all the windows (properties, watch, errorlist, stack, ...) pop up all over the place undocked. At this point I've tried docking them and closing them. When I stop debugging more windows pop up all undocked. This keeps happening over and over and over... I've tried closing and docking them but they keep popping out. Wasn't sure how to google this and my patience has grown thin with this whole process of moving to a new comp. Sincerely, Frustrated

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  • How to render Asian characters in a PDF using xhtmlrenderer

    - by Mark Derricutt
    I was wondering what steps were needed to render Asian characters using the java based xhtmlrenderer (flying saucer) library? I am wanting to render the following: <html> <body>????????</body> </html> Without any font settings being added to the HTML this renders fine in normal browsers, but I can't find anyway to render this to PDF using the iTextRenderer portion of xhtmlrenderer. After following various threads on the mailing list, I see lots of posts talking about adding .TTF files from the c:\windows\fonts directory, and I have modified the examples to run on linux ( https://gist.github.com/643173745182c9becc57 ), which shows me various fonts being displayed, but I don't see any Asian glyffs. Does anyone have any decent pointers, or clean solutions to this problem? Or am I looking at the wrong problem with a really simple solution elsewhere?

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  • Unity3D problem. Bullets fall down instead of flying like they should

    - by user2342080
    I used this tutorial as a reference. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L8eaoyZ0Go My problem is that whenever I play the game, EVERYTHING works but the bullets. It just falls down instead of flying forward. This is the flash version of the game: http://v1k.me/swf/ Can some one help me out? Should I upload the project? This is my "Shoot.js": public var bulletPrefab : Transform; public var bulletSpeed : float = 20; function Update() { if(Input.GetMouseButton(0)) { if(bulletPrefab || bulletSpeed) { var bulletCreate = Instantiate(bulletPrefab, GameObject.Find("SpawnPoint").transform.position, Quaternion.identity); bulletCreate.rigidbody.AddForce(transform.forward * bulletSpeed); } } }

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  • Unreal 3 Editor (Unreal Tournament 3) Lifting vehicles (and spawners) using InterActors, strange collisions causing flying vehicles

    - by Gareth Jones
    Making a VCTF map with the Unreal Tournament 3 Editor, and thus have vehicles in it. Currently I have 2 walkways next to each other (Big enough for a vehicle). One of them (A InterActor) drops down, and a grate covers the hole until the vehicle respawns. Once its respawned the InterActor Walkway lifts the vehicle up (and the grate pulls back). However what I'm finding is that the vehicle seems to collide with something when it gets near the top. (Looks something like this: ----_ where _ is the moving InterActor and - is a walkway) I created a new map to test this, and found it seems the front of the scorpion collides with the walkway in front of it, however I don't know why, it physically (in terms of how it looks in game) does not touch the walkway in front of it, but its actions look like it has. Im using InterActors, and a vehicle spawner, looking like so How do I stop this from happening? Right now everything is perfect, except the vehicle keeps flying away every time its lifted up, likes it been forced in between the "lift" and another object!

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  • What's the meaning of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” phrase on Python?

    - by Zignd
    I just started studying Python using the Python 3.2 Tutorial and on the introduction is written: By the way, the language is named after the BBC show “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and has nothing to do with reptiles. Making references to Monty Python skits in documentation is not only allowed, it is encouraged! But I have to say that I did not understood this part: “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”, I'm Brazilian and even Google Translator don't know how to answer it. Can someone explain me this phrase?

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  • jQuery UI problem: why do the elements go flying around the screen?

    - by George Edison
    Yes, I know the title sounds a little suspicious. I will try to explain this the best I can... The code below is supposed to have the blue div slide down beside the red div. The first time you hit the Show the div button, it works. Also, the Hide the div works. Then when I click to show the div again, it appears to the right of where it is supposed to be! Why is this?!? Note: You can find a live example of the code here <html> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <head> <title>Demo</title> <style type='text/css'> #red { background-color: red; width: 200px; height: 150px; position: absolute; } #blue { background-color: blue; width: 150px; height: 200px; position: absolute; display: none; } #tester_1 { top: 300px; left: 300px; position: absolute; } #tester_2 { top: 350px; left: 300px; position: absolute; } </style> </head> <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.js"></script> <script type='text/javascript'> function Show() { $('#blue').position({ of: $('#red'), my: 'left top', at: 'right top'}).slideDown(); } function Hide() { $('#blue').hide(); } </script> <body> <div id='red'></div> <div id='blue'></div> <button id='tester_1' onclick='Show()'>Show the <kbd>div</kbd></button> <button id='tester_2' onclick='Hide()'>Hide the <kbd>div</kbd></button> </body> </html>

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  • Why is (Ogg) Vorbis not automatically supported by Windows?

    - by flying sheep
    Vorbis was never threatened by MPEG LA, so it is undoubtedly completely patent free. (MPEG LA never misses a chance to spread patent FUD) Windows supports mp3, so it isn’t because they want to push their crappy wma. The GPL allows distribution alongside commercial products, and Even if they fear to ship GPL software, they can still load it automatically, like they do with XviD So why can’t a windows customer not simply drop a ogg vorbis file into his/her music library and listen to it via WMP? PS: To counter misconceptions: They already download the GPL’d XviD codec on demand, so they already have 99% of what it takes to do the same with Vorbis. It would take me about 5 minutes to do this, if I were familiar with the WMP code base and directshow filter system. PSS: I was told to ask this here rather than on stackoverflow, so i do.

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  • Oracle Virtualization Friday Spotlight - November 8, 2013

    - by Monica Kumar
    Hands-on Private Cloud Simulator In One Hour Submitted by: Doan Nguyen, Senior Principal Product Marketing Director My aeronautics instructor used to say, "you can’t appreciate flying until you take flight." To clarify, this is not about gearing up in a flying squirrel suit and hopping off a cliff (topic for another blog!) but rather about flying an airplane. The idea is to get hands-on with the controls at the cockpit and experience flight before you actually fly a real plane. After the initial 40 hours of flight time, the concept sank in and it really made sense.This concept is what inspired our technical experts to put together the hands-on lab for a private cloud deployment and management self-service model. Yes, we are comparing the lab to a flight simulator! Let’s look at the parallels: To get trained to fly, starting in the simulator gets you off the ground quicker. There is no need to have a real plane to begin with. In a hands-on lab, there is no need for a real server, with networking and real storage installed. All you need is your laptop The simulator is pre-configured, pre-flight check done. Similarly, in a hands-on lab, Oracle VM and Oracle Enterprise Manager are pre-configured and assembled using Oracle VM VirtualBox as the container. Software installations are not needed. After time spent training at the controls, you can really appreciate the practical experience of flying. Along the same lines, the hands-on lab is a guided learning path, without the encumbrances of hardware, software installation, so you can learn about cloud deployment and management.  However, unlike the simulator training, your time investment with the lab is only about an hour and not 40 hours! This hands-on lab takes you through private cloud deployment and management using Oracle VM and  Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c in an Infrastructure as a service IaaS model. You will first configure the IaaS cloud as the cloud administrator and then deploy guest virtual machines (VMs) as a self-service user. Then you are ready to take flight into the cloud! Why not step into the cockpit now!

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  • Gnuplot, yerrorbar, text as x axis

    - by The Flying Dutchman
    I have the following data: t4.8k 1.84 1.86 1.83 t5.8k 1.82 1.84 1.8 t7.10k 1.79 1.8 1.77 t8.8k 1.8 1.84 1.76 I need to plot this in GNU plot using yerror bars. Column1 - dataset name. This is the xaxis scale. Column2 - Y-Mean Column3 - Y-Max Column4 - Y-Min Here is the plotting code that I use: plot "chameleonConfidence.dat" using xtic(1):2:4:3 title "Ratio of Time Taken" with yerrorbars But this gives me the following error Warning: empty x range [4.94066e-324:4.94066e-324], adjusting to [4.94066e-324:4.94066e-324] "chameleonConfidence.gplot", line 15: x_min should not equal x_max! Can someone help me with this?

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  • Up in the Air: Team Oracle Play-by-Play

    - by Aaron Lazenby
    Yesterday, I had the amazing opportunity to fly along with Sean D. Tucker and Team Oracle. Leaving from the San Carols airport, we did a 30 minute flight over the Pacific just south of the coastal town of Half Moon Bay. In that half hour, I rode through a massive 4G loop, survived a crushing hammerhead, and took control of the plane to perform a basic wing over (you can learn what the heck I'm talking about by visiting this website). I have lots of great video, but it's going to take me some time to make sense of it. For now, here's my Twitter-based play-by-play of yesterday's events. Many thanks to Sean D. Tucker and the whole crew (Ben and Ian, especially) for this great opportunity to fly with Team Oracle.Live tweets from @OracleProfitI will be spending the afternoon in a stunt plane, upside down above the San Francisco bay. http://bit.ly/cwkrkIAt the San Carlos airport. More than slightly freaked out. Shaking hands diminish texting ability. Slightly reassuring. http://yfrog.com/1qt61nj There go the doors to the photo plane... #teamoracle http://yfrog.com/58ywljSean D Tucker assures me: "The sky is a great place to be." Helpful, but I'm still nervous. #teamoracle"You get a parachute. He gets a harness." How was this decision made? #teamoracleThe plane with @radu43 has returned. I'm up next...Couldn't help myself...drank a soda before flying. Mistake? We'll see... #teamoracleAdvice of the day "If you pull with two hands, you improve the chances of the chute deploying on the first try." Lovely. #teamoracleI feel so strange. But I flew a high performance airplane. And did an aerobatics move. Wild. #teamoracle"Flying ten feet off he ground, upside-down at 250 miles per hour isn't exciting to me." Sean D. Tucker #teamoracle"What is exciting to me is flying that perfect pattern, just like I imagined it in my head." Sean D. Tucker #teamoracle"You're going to sleep well tonight. You just carried four times your body weight." #teamoracle #gforce Just watched the #teamoracle plane take off for its flight home. I'm waiting for Caltrain. #undignifiedanticlimaxEnough with the #teamoracle. Check http://blogs.oracle.com/profit for the video. Coming soon! 

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  • Trying to develop a game with android for cracking glasses in different dimensions

    - by user46514
    I am trying to develop a game in android where I will have to punch a hole to get through the glass but not shatter the glass completely. The glass will show up in different forms of polygons and when a hole is created by a projectile, the rest of the polygon will still remain intact.Only a polygonal opening will get created at the point of impact with the projectile. I am new at game design in android but I was thinking that I would create a random polygon shape to show in the path and then at the point where the projectile hits it, I could create a glass polygon to create a splinter effect. The rest of the part of the glass that is randomly created at the point of impact, I could further splinter it into polygons flying at different angle. since I also need to capture the bits of glasses flying off and falling down with gravity. Is my solution the best efficient one at performance of threads or is there a better solution for this glass breaking effect. Thanks Dhiren

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  • How to give parallax backgrounds more depth

    - by user28015
    I have 3 tiled images of some sort of galaxy/space in the background of a 2D Game: The first one has an alpha of 100%, the second an alpha of 80% and the last one has an alpha of 60%. I scroll the the one in the background slower than the other ones of course. classic parallax. In the foreground I have some particles flying towards the player to simulate some dust / stars flying by. (I know that stars don't fly by, but I think we all have seen this in a lot of games). But I can't quite achieve the depth effect I am looking for. I want it to look "deeper". I did read something about using blending modes for the backgrounds, but that would require to render them as objects right? So the question is: What is a good technique to do a scrolling parallax background in GameMaker?

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  • Felix Baumgartner Skydives from the Edge of Space [Video]

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Yesterday Felix Baumgartner broke the record for highest skydive by leaping out of a capsule 128,100 feet above the Earth. Check out his jump in the following videos. After flying to an altitude of 39,045 meters (128,100 feet) in a helium-filled balloon, Felix Baumgartner completed a record breaking jump for the ages from the edge of space, exactly 65 years after Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier flying in an experimental rocket-powered airplane. Felix reached a maximum of speed of 1,342.8 km/h (833mph) through the near vacuum of the stratosphere before being slowed by the atmosphere later during his 4:20 minute long freefall. The 43-year-old Austrian skydiving expert also broke two other world records (highest freefall, highest manned balloon flight), leaving the one for the longest freefall to project mentor Col. Joe Kittinger. The above video is a 2 minute highlight reel of the ascent and jump; check out the full 15 minute descent video here. For an in-depth look at the technology used to keep Baumgartner safe during his record setting journey, hit up the link below. The Tech Behind Felix Baumgartner’s Stratospheric Skydive [ExtremeTech] HTG Explains: What is the Windows Page File and Should You Disable It? How To Get a Better Wireless Signal and Reduce Wireless Network Interference How To Troubleshoot Internet Connection Problems

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  • Google Loon–A network of balloons to provide internet to everyone

    - by Gopinath
    Google once just a super powerful search engine provider and now they are venturing in to a lot of interesting non software projects like self driving cars, glasses that beam information right on to your eye balls, high speed internet services @ 1 Giga bytes per second. A recent addition to this innovative list is Google Loon – a network of flying balloons that provide internet access to remote parts of the world where it is not feasible for many governments/corporate to provider internet services. Google says there are several billions of people around the world who don’t have access to internet and Google Loon aim is to provide internet facilities to all these people. A pilot project is started couple of days ago by launching 30 balloons into stratosphere from New Zealand. These balloons fly 20 Kilometers above earth(much higher than where aero planes fly) and they beam internet to homes having Loon receiver wirelessly. Checkout the embedded introductory video on Google Loon What is in it for Google? Why is Google getting into these type of projects and what is in it for them? Google is the gateway to web and majority of people find information on web using Google Services/Software. So providing internet facilities to more people means, more people using Google services and it in turn contributes to their revenue growth. Google is not a charity, they do all these projects to earn money just like every other corporate. The best part is while earning money they are touching lives of billions of people in a positive way. Just imagine everyone in the world connected and have ability to take informed decisions irrespective of whether they live in developed countries or underprivileged parts of the world! Wow that will be a beautiful day. Further reading Google Loon website Google unveils its Project Loon Wi-Fi balloons – in pictures Google flies Internet balloons in stratosphere for a “network in the sky” How Google Will Use High-Flying Balloons to Deliver Internet to the Hinterlands Good discussion on Google Loon at Hacker News community

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  • Desktop Fun: Dragons Wallpaper Collection Series 2

    - by Asian Angel
    Whether they are flying through the sky, hunting for food, or defending their lairs dragons are truly inspirational creatures that easily stir our imaginations. Let your desktop take flight with the second in our series of Dragons Wallpaper collections. What Is the Purpose of the “Do Not Cover This Hole” Hole on Hard Drives? How To Log Into The Desktop, Add a Start Menu, and Disable Hot Corners in Windows 8 HTG Explains: Why You Shouldn’t Use a Task Killer On Android

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