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How to penetrate the QA industry after layoffs, next steps...

- by Erik

Briefly, my background is in manual black box testing of websites and applications within the Agile/waterfall context. Over the past four years I was a member of two web development firms' small QA teams dedicated to testing the deployment of websites for national/international non profits, governmental organizations, and for profit business, to name a few: -Brookings Institution -Senate -Tyco Electronics -Blue Cross/Blue Shield -National Geographic -Discover Channel I have a very strong understanding of the: -SDLC -STLC of bugs and website deployment/development -Use Case & Test Case development In March of this year, my last firm downsized and lost my job as a QA tester. I have been networking and doing a very detailed job search, but have had a very difficult time getting my next job within the QA industry, even with my background as a manual black box QA tester in the website development context. My direct question to all of you: What are some ways I can be more competitive and get hired? Options that could get me competitive: Should I go back to school and learn some more 'hard' skills in website development and client side technologies, e.g.: -HTML -CSS -JavaScript Learn programming: -PHP -C# -Ruby -SQL -Python -Perl -?? Get Certified as a QA Tester, there are a countless numbers of programs to become a Certified Tester. Most, if not all jobs, being advertised now require Automated Testing experience, in: -QTP -Loadrunner -Selenium -ETC. Should I learn, Automated testing skills, via a paid course, or teach myself? --Learn scripting languages to understand the automated testing process better? Become a Certified "Project Management Professional" (PMP) to prove to hiring managers that I 'get' the project development life cycle? At the end of the day I need to be competitive and get hired as a QA tester and want to build upon my skills within the QA web development field. How should I do this, without reinventing the wheel? Any help in this regard would be fabulous. Thanks! .erik

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To have a long life with the battery it has to be separated from the Laptop after each use

- by laptopo1 dsad

To have a long life with the battery it has to be separated from the Laptop after each use Developing a Laptop and concern about it's battery life Don't be concerned follow this advice how to deal with your Laptop battery. A fresh power supply of your Laptop can be purchased in a very low charge condition, and must be fully charged before use. A different battery pack needs to be fully charged and fully discharged or cycled as much as five times to condition them into performing at full capacity. And also refer your manual instructions of one's Laptop for charging instructions. Inspiron 15z battery Tips: Unplug battery after use: To have a long life with the battery it has to be separated from the Laptop after each use. Clean battery contacts often: Clean your battery's metal contacts once in a month with a cloth moistened with rubbing alcohol. This prevents the transfer of power out of your battery additional efficient. Turn off the WiFi and Bluetooth, in any other case being used: Usually, we activate our WiFi or Bluetooth for whatever reason and tend to forget to Off it, that could spark a huge relieve your battery, Shut off right after the usage. Dell XPS L501x battery Dim notebook screen: When you're with your Laptop in Daytime, you will need for full brightness. But also in case of Night, just dim the screen reducing brightness, which will consume more charge once the brightness might be more and also It's essential on your eyes to determine lesser brighten screen inside nights. Dell Inspiron 17R battery Have hardly any Background programs: Letting more programs to own behind the screen could consume more Dell Inspiron N4010 battery charge hence have very few without background programs are Better. Make use of the Hard disk drive more than CD/DVD drive: Making use of disc drive instead your CD/DVD drive could consume less battery power. Latitude E5400 Battery

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Why does Ubuntu reset brightness settings at the loading screen?

- by leugim

Since I first installed Ubuntu 11.10, I noticed that volume and screen brightness get reset every time Ubuntu starts. Why is this so? And what ways are there to keep brightness and volume levels after rebooting? I have found some scripts that change the screen-brightness at login. But this is not a good solution since login is slower because it seems to wait until the screen brightness is at the level specified by the script. After entering the password I see the screen brightness go down gradually. Only after this is complete (~1 or 2 seconds) does the background disappear and Unity come up. The screenbrightness is not remembered but instead redefined at login. So it gets remembered for the first part of the boot, then set to MAX and then again re-set to normal value by the script. My boot process is as follows: desired brightness: 2 (13,33%) / Max brightness: 15 (100%) Bios / brightness: OK GRUB (violet background color, white text) / brightness: OK Ubuntu loading screen with the dots / brightness: MAX (win7 loads with OK-brightness) User Login / brightness: MAX Unity starts / brightness: OK It seems to be more like a temporary patch than a actual solution. I'm looking for solutions that set the desired brightness permanently and consistently throughout the whole boot-process After updating to 12.04 the behavior is the same. I tried setpci -s 02:00.0 F4.B=XX The value of F4.B is always '0' regardless of what value I try to set it to (tried 0, ff, f, 5, etc) The solution in this answer does not have any noticeable effect: Desktop doesn't remember brightness settings after a reboot The variables at /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/ get changed if I use Fn+UP and Fn+DOWN Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

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Inside Red Gate - Introduction

- by Simon Cooper

I work for Red Gate Software, a software company based in Cambridge, UK. In this series of posts, I'll be discussing how we develop software at Red Gate, and what we get up to, all from a dev's perspective. Before I start the series proper, in this post I'll give you a brief background to what I have done and continue to do as part of my job. The initial few posts will be giving an overview of how the development sections of the company work. There is much more to a software company than writing the products, but as I'm a developer my experience is biased towards that, and so that is what this series will concentrate on. My background Red Gate was founded in 1999 by Neil Davidson & Simon Galbraith, who continue to be joint CEOs. I joined in September 2007, and immediately set to work writing a new Check for Updates client and server (CfU), as part of a team of 2. That was finished at the end of 2007. I then joined the SQL Compare team. The first large project I worked on was updating SQL Compare for SQL Server 2008, resulting in SQL Compare 7, followed by a UI redesign in SQL Compare 8. By the end of this project in early 2009 I had become the 'go-to' guy for the SQL Compare Engine (I'll explain what that means in a later post), which is used by most of the other tools in the SQL Tools division in one way or another. After that, we decided to expand into Oracle, and I wrote the prototype for what became the engine of Schema Compare for Oracle (SCO). In the latter half of 2009 a full project was started, resulting in the release of SCO v1 in early 2010. Near the end of 2010 I moved to the .NET division, where I joined the team working on SmartAssembly. That's what I continue to work on today. The posts in this series will cover my experience in software development at Red Gate, within the SQL Tools and .NET divisions. Hopefully, you'll find this series an interesting look at what exactly goes into producing the software at Red Gate.

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C#.NET vs VB.NET, Which language is better?

Features I cannot say any language good or bad as long as it's compiler can produce MSIL can run under .NET CLR. If someone says C# has more futures, you can understand that those new features are of C# compiler but not .NET, because if C# has a specific future then CLR cannot understand them. So the new features of C# will have to convert to the code understood by CLR eventually. that means the new features are developed for C# compiler basically to facilitates the developer to write their code in better way. so that means no difference in feature list between C# and VB.NET if you think in CLR perspective. Ease of writing Code I feel writing code in C# is easy, because my background is C and C++, Java, syntaxes very are similar. I assume most developers feel the same. Readability But some people say VB.NET code most readable for the members who are from non technical background, because keywords are generally in English rather special charectors. No of Projects in Market I assume 80 percent of market uses C# in their .NET development. for example in my company many projects are there .nET and all are using C#. Productivity & Experience though the feature list is same, generally developers wants to write code in their familiar languages. because it increase the productivity. Hope this helps to choose the language which suits for you. span.fullpost {display:none;}

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Embedded linux Development learning

- by user1797375

I come from a windows background and i am proficient with the .net platform. For work, i need to bring up a custom embedded system platform. We have bought the pandaboard ES as the test platform. The application is to stream images over the wifi. If you think about it, we are building something similar to a netgear router - the only difference being when you log into the device it serves images. Because my background is in windows i am not quite sure how to start off with embedded linux development. in reading through various sites i have come to the conclusion that going to linux as development host is the best option. Can some one point to me in the right direction regarding the set up. I have a windows machine that will be used for development purposes. I can either do a virtual box or setup a partition for linux. But the finer details are what throwing me off..what i need to know is 1) once i install linux what other software do I need - Code blocks, 2) what about toolchain 3) How to debug - through serial port ? 4) Is there a way to send the image built directly to the CF card? Thanks

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Manager keeps changing requirement specification after every demo.

- by Jungle Hunter

Background of my working environment My manager has no background or understanding of computers or software whatsoever. It is highly likely he hasn't seen code in any form (not even from a physical distance of 10 feet or less) in his life. There is no one who understands the complexity of what I am asked to implement. To the point that if I semi-hardcode no one would know. On Joel's test we score an unbelievable score 0. The problems The manager and at times other "senior" keep changing the requirement specification. Changes which, if good engineering be done and not patchy "fixes", require change in the underlying design. There is absolutely no one who looks at code (probably because no one knows how to, or even if it should be done) which means no one will ever be able to: Appreciate the complexity of the problem or the elegance of the solution. Suggest improvement to the approach. Appreciate the quality of the code. Point out where the code can be improved. A lot of jargon is used which makes sense grammatically but fails to make any sense any other way. Doesn't feel, behave or work like a software company. The question What should be done? Especially regarding there being no one who would point out improvements in my code. Update To answer HLGEM's (and possibly others) question about what I've done to try and fix it. I offered to set up Redmine and introduce source control to everyone. I said I would recommend distributed (git or mercurial) but will also talk about centralized ones and let the team decide. Response was that things are being done and will be done within weeks. Haven't seen that nor am I aware if other parts of the company use it.

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Multithreading in Windows Phone 7 emulator: A bug

- by Laurent Bugnion

Multithreading is supported in Windows Phone 7 Silverlight applications, however the emulator has a bug (which I discovered and was confirmed to me by the dev lead of the emulator team): If you attempt to start a background thread in the MainPage constructor, the thread never starts. The reason is a problem with the emulator UI thread which doesn’t leave any time to the background thread to start. Thankfully there is a workaround (see code below). Also, the bug should be corrected in a future release, so it’s not a big deal, even though it is really confusing when you try to understand why the *%&^$£% thread is not &$%&%$£ starting (that was me in the plane the other day ;) This code does not work: public partial class MainPage : PhoneApplicationPage { public MainPage() { InitializeComponent(); SupportedOrientations = SupportedPageOrientation.Portrait | SupportedPageOrientation.Landscape; var counter = 0; ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(o => { while (true) { Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() => { textBlockListTitle.Text = (counter++).ToString(); }); } }); } } This code does work: public MainPage() { InitializeComponent(); SupportedOrientations = SupportedPageOrientation.Portrait | SupportedPageOrientation.Landscape; var counter = 0; ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(o => { while (true) { Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() => { textBlockListTitle.Text = (counter++).ToString(); }); // NOTICE THIS LINE!!! Thread.Sleep(0); } }); } Note that even if the thread is started in a later event (for example Click of a Button), the behavior without the Thread.Sleep(0) is not good in the emulator. As of now, i would recommend always sleeping when starting a new thread. Happy coding: Laurent Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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Not use CSS definitions for one <FORM>

- by Svisstack

I have template from themeforest and i dont want edit css from this template, because i don't have time for it. But i want integrate paypal buttons to my webpage, problem is paypal button use tag for selection payment option. I have overloaded style for tag and this not look like should. How to not use CSS for this element. I dont want use and if i don't must then i dont want edit this CSS;-) This css look wired, i must edit her to solve this problem? What is best solution for this? /*//// - Forms - ////*/ form { margin-bottom:20px; } body.ie7 form, body.ie8 { margin-bottom:40px; } form p { margin-bottom:15px; } form label { float:left; width:140px; margin-top:5px; } form input, form textarea, form select { padding:10px 5px; background:#fff url(../img/bg-input.gif) repeat-x top; border:1px solid #D9D9D9; width:448px; border-radius:3px; -moz-border-radius:3px; -webkit-border-radius:3px; } form input.small { width:35px; } html, body, div, span, object, iframe, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre, abbr, address, cite, code, del, dfn, em, img, ins, kbd, q, samp, small, strong, sub, sup, var, b, i, dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li, fieldset, form, label, legend, table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td, article, aside, figure, footer, header, hgroup, menu, nav, section, menu, time, mark, audio, video { margin:0; padding:0; border:0; outline:0; font-size:100%; vertical-align:baseline; background:transparent; } Can anyone help me?

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null pointers vs. Null Object Pattern

- by GlenH7

Attribution: This grew out of a related P.SE question My background is in C / C++, but I have worked a fair amount in Java and am currently coding C#. Because of my C background, checking passed and returned pointers is second-hand, but I acknowledge it biases my point of view. I recently saw mention of the Null Object Pattern where the idea is than an object is always returned. Normal case returns the expected, populated object and the error case returns empty object instead of a null pointer. The premise being that the calling function will always have some sort of object to access and therefore avoid null access memory violations. So what are the pros / cons of a null check versus using the Null Object Pattern? I can see cleaner calling code with the NOP, but I can also see where it would create hidden failures that don't otherwise get raised. I would rather have my application fail hard (aka an exception) while I'm developing it than have a silent mistake escape into the wild. Can't the Null Object Pattern have similar problems as not performing a null check? Many of the objects I have worked with hold objects or containers of their own. It seems like I would have to have a special case to guarantee all of the main object's containers had empty objects of their own. Seems like this could get ugly with multiple layers of nesting.

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Desktop Fun: Need for Speed Wallpaper Collection

- by Asian Angel

Are you a passionate fan of the Need for Speed series or racing games in general? Then start your engines, turn up the radio, and get ready to race with our Need for Speed Wallpaper collection. Note: Click on the picture to see the full-size image—these wallpapers vary in size so you may need to crop, stretch, or place them on a colored background in order to best match them to your screen’s resolution. Note: At 6236*2268 pixels this last wallpaper will need to be decreased in size before being placed on an appropriately sized white background matching your monitor’s resolution. For more wallpapers be certain to see our great collections in the Desktop Fun section. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Get the Complete Android Guide eBook for Only 99 Cents [Update: Expired] Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 7: Design and Typography How to Choose What to Back Up on Your Linux Home Server How To Harmonize Your Dual-Boot Setup for Windows and Ubuntu Hang in There Scrat! – Ice Age Wallpaper How Do You Know When You’ve Passed Geek and Headed to Nerd? On The Tip – A Lamborghini Theme for Chrome and Iron What if Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner were Human? [Video] Peaceful Winter Cabin Wallpaper Store Tabs for Later Viewing in Opera with Tab Vault

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ASP.NET: Using conditionals in data binding expressions

- by DigiMortal

ASP.NET 2.0 has no support for using conditionals in data binding expressions but it will change in ASP.NET 4.0. In this posting I will show you how to implement Iif() function for ASP.NET 2.0 and how ASP.NET 4.0 solves this problem smoothly without any code. Problem Let’s say we have simple repeater. <asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="itemsList"> <HeaderTemplate> <table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"> </HeaderTemplate> <ItemTemplate> <tr> <td align="right"><%# Container.ItemIndex + 1 %>.</td> <td><%# Eval("Title") %></td> </tr> </ItemTemplate> <FooterTemplate> </table> </FooterTemplate> </asp:Repeater> Repeater is bound to data when form loads. protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { var items = new[] { new { Id = 1, Title = "Headline 1" }, new { Id = 2, Title = "Headline 2" }, new { Id = 2, Title = "Headline 3" }, new { Id = 2, Title = "Headline 4" }, new { Id = 2, Title = "Headline 5" } }; itemsList.DataSource = items; itemsList.DataBind(); } We need to format even and odd rows differently. Let’s say we want even rows to be with whitesmoke background and odd rows with white background. Just like shown on screenshot on right. Our first thought is to use some simple expression to avoid writing custom methods. We cannot use construct like this <%# Container.ItemIndex % 2==0 ? "white" : "whitesmoke" %> because all we get are template compilation errors. ASP.NET 2.0: Iif() method For ASP.NET 2.0 pages and controls we can create Iif() method and call it from our templates. This is out Iif() method. protected object Iif(bool condition, object trueResult, object falseResult) { return condition ? trueResult : falseResult; } And here you can see how to use it. <asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="itemsList"> <HeaderTemplate> <table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"> </HeaderTemplate> <ItemTemplate> <tr style='background-color:' <%# Iif(Container.ItemIndex % 2==0 ? "white" : "whitesmoke") %>'> <td align="right"> <%# Container.ItemIndex + 1 %>.</td> <td> <%# Eval("Title") %></td> </tr> </ItemTemplate> <FooterTemplate> </table> </FooterTemplate> </asp:Repeater> This method does not care about types because it works with all objects (and value-types). I had to define this method in code-behind file of my user control because using this method as extension method made it undetectable for ASP.NET template engine. ASP.NET 4.0: Conditionals are supported In ASP.NET 4.0 we will write … hmm … we will write nothing special. Here is solution. <asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="itemsList"> <HeaderTemplate> <table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"> </HeaderTemplate> <ItemTemplate> <tr style='background-color:' <%# Container.ItemIndex % 2==0 ? "white" : "whitesmoke" %>'> <td align="right"> <%# Container.ItemIndex + 1 %>.</td> <td> <%# Eval("Title") %></td> </tr> </ItemTemplate> <FooterTemplate> </table> </FooterTemplate> </asp:Repeater> Yes, it works well. :)

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How do I get google to see keywords on a one page web application site?

- by David

I'm going to have to link to the web site to explain this, http://www.diagram.ly, it's a free service, so I hope this doesn't break advertising rules. Basically, it's a one page web application, I don't want to create a web site for it. Some background text loads and if JavaScript is enabled, the web application itself then loads. The problem is that Google only seems to be picking up the title of the page and the text on the footer, so the site only appear on Google search for very limited text (based on the title and meta description mostly). I was hoping that search engines would pick up on the background text and index that. The text is factual, not keyword stuffed. Yahoo seems to pick up the text, just not Google. Does anyone have any experience of how Google would view such a site and where I could put the text for a better result? Edit I should mention that Google Webmaster Tools lists the site keywords as "Component, diagramly, feed, mxgraph, share and twitter". Basically the footer and little else.

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How do you prefer to handle image spriting in your web projects?

- by Macy Abbey

It seems like these days it is pretty much mandatory for web applications to sprite images if they want many images on their site AND a fast load time. (Spriting is the process of combining all images referenced from a style sheet into one/few image(s) with each reference containing a different background position.) I was wondering what method of implementing sprites you all prefer in your web applications, given that we are referring to non-dynamic images which are included/designed by the programming team and not images which are dynamically uploaded by a third party. 1. Add new images to an existing sprite by hand, create new css reference by hand. 2. Generate a sprite server-side from your css files which all reference single images set to be background images of an html element that is the same size of the image you are spriting once per build and update all css references programmatically. 3. Use a sprite generating program to generate a sprite image for you once per release and hand insert the new css class / image into your project. 4. Other methods? I prefer two as it requires very little hand-coding and image editing.

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Center Page Content Horizontally using Div with CSS

- by Aamir Hasan

Center your website content to create equal sized Space from the left and right using css. Horizontally centered by setting its right and left margin widths to "auto". This is the preferred way to accomplish horizontal centering with CSS. Create a warpper div which will hold your content div and then give it a margin:auto attribute which will bring your warpper div into center of page.<html><head><title>Center Page Content Horizontally and Vertically using Div with CSS </title> <style type="text/css">body{background-color:#eaeaea;} #wrapper {width: 777px;margin:auto} #content{background-color:#00FF00;min-height:400px;} </style> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div id="wrapper"> <div id="wrapper"> <div id="content"> Welcome to Studentacad.com </div> </div> </form> </body></html>

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Database Schema Usage

- by CrazyHorse

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

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XNA Masking Mayhem

- by TropicalFlesh

I'd like to start by mentioning that I'm just an amateur programmer of the past 2 years with no formal training and know very little about maximizing the potential of graphics hardware. I can write shaders and manipulate a multi-layered drawing environment, but I've basically stuck to minimalist pixel shaders. I'm working on putting dynamic point light shadows in my 2d sidescroller, and have had it working to a reasonable degree. Just chucking it in without working on serious optimizations outside of basic culling, I can get 50 lights or so onscreen at once and still hover around 100 fps. The only issue is that I'm on a very high end machine and would like to target the game at as many platforms I can, low and high end. The way I'm doing shadows involves a lot of masking before I can finally draw the light to my light layer. Basically, my technique to achieveing such shadows is as follows. See pics in this album http://imgur.com/a/m2fWw#0 The dark gray represents the background tiles, the light gray represents the foreground tiles, and the yellow represents the shadow-emitting foreground tile. I'll draw the light using a radial gradient and a color of choice I'll then exclude light from the mask by drawing some geometry extending through the tile from my point light. I actually don't mask the light yet at this point, but I'm just illustrating the technique in this image Finally, I'll re-include the foreground layer in my mask, as I only want shadows to collect on the background layer and finally multiply the light with it's mask to the light layer My question is simple - How can I go about reducing the amount of render target switches I need to do to achieve the following: a. Draw mask to exclude shadows from the foreground to it's own target once per frame b. For each light that emits shadows, -Begin light mask as full white -Render shadow geometry as transparent with an opaque blendmode to eliminate shadowed areas from the mask -Render foreground mask back over the light mask to reintroduce light to the foreground c. Multiply light texture with it's individual mask to the main light layer.

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How to create a "retro" pixel shader for transformed 2D sprites that maintains pixel fidelity?

- by David Gouveia

The image below shows two sprites rendered with point sampling on top of a background: The left skull has no rotation/scaling applied to it, so every pixel matches perfectly with the background. The right skull is rotated/scaled, and this results in larger pixels that are no longer axis aligned. How could I develop a pixel shader that would render the transformed sprite on the right with axis aligned pixels of the same size as the rest of the scene? This might be related to how sprite scaling was implemented in old games such as Monkey Island, because that's the effect I'm trying to achieve, but with rotation added. Edit As per kaoD's suggestions, I tried to address the problem as a post-process. The easiest approach was to render to a separate render target first (downsampled to match the desired pixel size) and then upscale it when rendering a second time. It did address my requirements above. First I tried doing it Linear -> Point and the result was this: There's no distortion but the result looks blurred and it loses most of the highlights colors. In my opinion it breaks the retro look I needed. The second time I tried Point -> Point and the result was this: Despite the distortion, I think that might be good enough for my needs, although it does look better as a still image than in motion. To demonstrate, here's a video of the effect, although YouTube filtered the pixels out of it: http://youtu.be/hqokk58KFmI However, I'll leave the question open for a few more days in case someone comes up with a better sampling solution that maintains the crisp look while decreasing the amount of distortion when moving.

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How can I roll back xserver-xorg-core and xserver-common?

- by Ville Sundberg

A recent update to Xorg broke my desktop, which now looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/PbBxh.jpg In short, the desktop background is not updating on the secondary display. (And if there is no secondary display, the primary display background stops updating.) Looking into the history, I found that this happened right after upgrading two packages: xserver-xorg-core xserver-common These were upgraded to 1.9.0-0ubuntu7.3. I'd like to downgrade these packages. How do I do that? I've checked that both have another version in the maverick repo: xserver-xorg-core: Installed: 2:1.9.0-0ubuntu7.3 Candidate: 2:1.9.0-0ubuntu7.3 Version table: *** 2:1.9.0-0ubuntu7.3 0 500 http://fi.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-updates/main amd64 Packages 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status 2:1.9.0-0ubuntu7 0 500 http://fi.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/main amd64 Packages However, apt won't let me downgrade them: ville@fluxx ~ % sudo apt-get install xserver-common=2:1.9.0-0ubuntu7 xserver-xorg-core=2:1.9.0-0ubuntu7 The following packages have unmet dependencies: xserver-xorg-core : Depends: xserver-xorg but it is not going to be installed E: Broken packages And this is the reason: ville@fluxx ~ % sudo apt-get install xserver-common=2:1.9.0-0ubuntu7 xserver-xorg-core=2:1.9.0-0ubuntu7 xserver-xorg-core The following packages have unmet dependencies: xserver-xorg-core : Depends: xserver-common (>= 2:1.9.0-0ubuntu7.3) but 2:1.9.0-0ubuntu7 is to be installed E: Broken packages Am I out of options here?

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.NET Demon 1.0 Released

- by theo.spears

Today we're officially releasing version 1.0 of .NET Demon, the Visual Studio Extension Alex Davies and I have been working on for the last 6 months. There have been beta versions available for a while, but we have now released the first "official" version and made it available to purchase. If you haven't yet tried the tool, it's all about reducing the time between when you write a line of code and when you are able to try it out so you don't have to wait: Continuous compilation We use spare CPU cycles on your machine to compile your code in the background when you make changes, so assemblies are up to date whenever you want to run them. Some clever logic means we only recompile code which may have been affected by your changes. Continuous save .NET Demon can perform background saving, so you don't lose any work in case of crashes or power failures, and are less likely to forget to commit changed files. Continuous testing (Experimental) The testing tool in .NET Demon watches which code you change in your solution, and automatically reruns tests which are impacted, so you learn about any breaking changes as quickly as possible. It also gives you inline test coverage information inside Visual Studio. Continuous testing is still experimental - it will work fine in many cases, but we know it's not yet perfect. Releasing version 1.0 doesn't mean we're pausing development or pushing out improvements. We will still be regularly providing new versions with improved functionality and fixes for any bugs people come across. Visit the .NET Demon product page to download

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What is a technique for 2D ray-box intersection that is suitable for old console hardware?

- by DJCouchyCouch

I'm working on a Sega Genesis homebrew game (it has a 7mhz 68000 CPU). I'm looking for a way to find the intersection between a particle sprite and a background tile. Particles are represented as a point with a movement vector. Background tiles are 8 x 8 pixels, with an (X,Y) position that is always located at a multiple of 8. So, really, I need to find the intersection point for a ray-box collision; I need to find out where along the edge of the tile the ray/particle hits. I have these two hard constraints: I'm working with pixel locations (integers). Floating point is too expensive. It doesn't have to be super exact, just close enough. Multiplications, divisions, dot products, et cetera, are incredibly expensive and are to be avoided. So I'm looking for an efficient algorithm that would fit those constraints. Any ideas? I'm writing it in C, so that would work, but assembly should be good as well.

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Xmonad Xsession

- by AntLord

My user level: noob-ish, so please bear with me I'm running 12.04 LTS. I have installed and, to some extent, configured xmonad 0.10 The "automagically" created xsession for it works fine as it is, but when I login it won't run a startup script I've created and "call from" /usr/share/xsessions/xmonad.desktop, if that's right. I've read pretty much all I could find about .xinitrc and .xsession, I tried that and it somehow messed up the other "sessions", if I'm explaining myself correctly. Had to $unity --reset to have the "main session" working again. Anyway, my question is, how do I autostart xmobar and set a desktop background after login into xmonad's default Xsession? I tried this script, start-xmonad: #!/bin/bash # #I only used one of the following each time I tried, none worked #Also, do I really need the '&'? I know what they're for, but... nitrogen --restore & feh --bg-scale ~/Pictures/picture.png & #Then I want xmobar to start, again do I need the '&'? I know it's for it to run #in the background, but I tried removing the '&' and xmonad still launched xmobar & #Finally, the only thing that seems to work in this script exec xmonad Yes, I made sure I did chomd +x ~/start-xmonad The xmonad.desktop is [Desktop Entry] Name=XMonad Encoding=UTF-8 Comment=Lightweight tiling window manager Exec=/home/myusername/start-xmonad Icon=custom_xmonad_badge.png Type=XSession So, this didn't work, now I'm here. Please help :s thanks

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Glitch-free cross-fades in HTML5

- by Alexander Gladysh

In my HTML5 canvas game, I need to cross-fade two sprites which have some glow around them. (Glow is backed into sprites.) Initially, the first sprite is visible. During the cross-fade the first sprite should vanish, and be replaced with the second one. How exactly the cross-fade is done — does not matter, as long as it is smooth and there are no visual glitches. I've tried two techniques: During the cross-fade I simultaneously interpolate alpha of the first sprite from 1.0 to 0.0, and alpha of the second sprite — from 0.0 to 1.0. With this technique I can see background in the middle of the cross-fade. That's because both sprites are semi-transparent most of the time. During the cross-fade I first interpolate alpha of the second sprite from 0.0 to 1.0 (first sprite alpha is at 1.0), and then interpolate alpha of the first sprite from 1.0 to 0.0. With this technique background is not seen, but the glow around sprites flashes during the cross-fide — when both sprites are near the full visibility. In non-HTML5 game I'd use shaders to do cross-fade separately in RGB and alpha channels. Is there a trick to do the cross-fade I need in HTML5 without visual glitches?

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Site failing randomly - could it be Cloudflare or something weird in the JS?

- by James

I've been working on a simple site that uses javascript to fade through some fullscreen background images as well as some other simple animations. I've tested the site on Chrome, Safari, FF and Opera on OSX, IE8+ on Win7 and Chrome & FF on Ubuntu and everything looks as I'd expect it to. However, I've had reports of the site failing to load (stops at the stage where the background fades up) on Safari and Chrome on OSX and Win. I can't replicate this on any setup so I'm finding it impossible to troubleshoot. Google's instant preview shows the site fine as does most of the options at browsershots.org so I'm really scratching my head. I'm running the site's traffic through Cloudflare and I'm wondering whether anyone can see (or knows from other sites) why Cloudflare might be mangling the JS or causing a problem somehow (I don't get any errors in the JS error console). Of course, if you can replicate the problem on your machine and can suggest an area to look at that would be amazing but I'm hoping that, like me, you don't see any problem with the site! Here's the site: http://www.bighornrevelstoke.com Thanks, James

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What is causing these visual artifacts on my OpenGL sprites?

- by Amplify91

What could be the cause of the defects in my characters sprite? I am using OpenGL ES 2.0. I draw my sprites in a sprite batch that uses UV coordinates from one large texture atlas. If you look around the character' edges, you'll see two noticeable problems: The invisible alpha background is not invisible, but shows a strange static-like background. There are unwanted streaks where the character nears the edge of the frame (but only in some frames of the animation, this happened to be one of them). Any idea what could be causing these? I will provide related code if asked for, but I'll try to avoid just dumping the entire project and expecting someone to look through it all. EDIT: Here's a bit of code: This is how I generate my UV coordinates: private float[] createFrameUV(int frameWidth, int frameHeight, int x, int y){ float[] uv = new float[4]; if(numberOfFrames>1){ float width = (float)frameWidth / (float)mBitmap.getWidth(); float height = (float)frameHeight / (float)mBitmap.getHeight(); float u = (float)x / (float)mBitmap.getWidth(); float v = (float)y / (float)mBitmap.getHeight(); uv[0] = u; uv[1] = v; uv[2] = u + width; uv[3] = v + height; }else{ uv[0] = 0f; uv[1] = 0f; uv[2] = 1f; uv[3] = 1f; } return uv; } These are some OpenGL settings: GLES20.glTexParameterf(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GLES20.GL_LINEAR); GLES20.glTexParameterf(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GLES20.GL_LINEAR); GLES20.glTexParameterf(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GLES20.GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); GLES20.glTexParameterf(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GLES20.GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE);

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