dot notation - Page 124

Test and Report Add-on Compatibility in Firefox

- by Asian Angel

Now that the new version of Firefox is out you probably have a favorite extension or two that has not updated yet. You can get that extension working again, test it, and report back to Mozilla on how well it does with the Add-on Compatibility Reporter extension. Before For our example we chose a great extension that unfortunately has not been updated yet. As you can see here Firefox is refusing to let the extension install. After As soon as you install Add-on Compatibility Reporter you will be presented with an information page on how the extension works and what you can do with it. You should definitely take a moment to read this as it is very helpful. After trying our non-compatible extension again we were able to proceed with the install process. Notice at the bottom that “compatibility checking” has been overridden. Success! As soon as we restarted our browser it was easy to see the “non-compatible icon” in the “Add-ons Manager Window”…but the extension did install though (terrific!). Clicking on the extension’s entry will reveal a new button in the lower right corner. Using the “Compatibility Drop-Down Menu” you can report if the extension is working as well as before or if it is actually having problems. The extension that we used for our example had no problems whatsoever so good news there. Whichever option you choose you will be presented with a small “Report Window” with information about the extension, your browser’s version number, and your operating system. Click “Submit Report” to send it on its’ way. You will see a confirmation message letting you know that your report was successfully submitted. While the extension itself has not been altered in any form at least you have it working again and have helped verify whether it still works well or not. Notice the “notation” present now in place of the “Compatibility Button” that lets you know that you have already taken care of that particular extension. Looking great… Conclusion If you have a favorite extension that you miss using in the newest release of Firefox then this is definitely an extension to add to your browser. Not only will your extension start working again but you can let Mozilla know how well it is working and (hopefully) help get the extension updated. Links Download the Add-on Compatibility Reporter extension (Mozilla Add-ons) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate Available, Here’s How to Fix Your Incompatible ExtensionsUsing Windows 7 or Vista Compatibility ModeMysticgeek Blog: Generate A System Health Report In VistaCheck Extension Compatibility for Upcoming Firefox ReleasesMake Safari Stop Crashing Every 20 Seconds on Windows Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet How to Find Your Mac Address Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text

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Big Data – Operational Databases Supporting Big Data – Key-Value Pair Databases and Document Databases – Day 13 of 21

- by Pinal Dave

In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the Relational Database and NoSQL database in the Big Data Story. In this article we will understand the role of Key-Value Pair Databases and Document Databases Supporting Big Data Story. Now we will see a few of the examples of the operational databases. Relational Databases (Yesterday’s post) NoSQL Databases (Yesterday’s post) Key-Value Pair Databases (This post) Document Databases (This post) Columnar Databases (Tomorrow’s post) Graph Databases (Tomorrow’s post) Spatial Databases (Tomorrow’s post) Key Value Pair Databases Key Value Pair Databases are also known as KVP databases. A key is a field name and attribute, an identifier. The content of that field is its value, the data that is being identified and stored. They have a very simple implementation of NoSQL database concepts. They do not have schema hence they are very flexible as well as scalable. The disadvantages of Key Value Pair (KVP) database are that they do not follow ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) properties. Additionally, it will require data architects to plan for data placement, replication as well as high availability. In KVP databases the data is stored as strings. Here is a simple example of how Key Value Database will look like: Key Value Name Pinal Dave Color Blue Twitter @pinaldave Name Nupur Dave Movie The Hero As the number of users grow in Key Value Pair databases it starts getting difficult to manage the entire database. As there is no specific schema or rules associated with the database, there are chances that database grows exponentially as well. It is very crucial to select the right Key Value Pair Database which offers an additional set of tools to manage the data and provides finer control over various business aspects of the same. Riak Rick is one of the most popular Key Value Database. It is known for its scalability and performance in high volume and velocity database. Additionally, it implements a mechanism for collection key and values which further helps to build manageable system. We will further discuss Riak in future blog posts. Key Value Databases are a good choice for social media, communities, caching layers for connecting other databases. In simpler words, whenever we required flexibility of the data storage keeping scalability in mind – KVP databases are good options to consider. Document Database There are two different kinds of document databases. 1) Full document Content (web pages, word docs etc) and 2) Storing Document Components for storage. The second types of the document database we are talking about over here. They use Javascript Object Notation (JSON) and Binary JSON for the structure of the documents. JSON is very easy to understand language and it is very easy to write for applications. There are two major structures of JSON used for Document Database – 1) Name Value Pairs and 2) Ordered List. MongoDB and CouchDB are two of the most popular Open Source NonRelational Document Database. MongoDB MongoDB databases are called collections. Each collection is build of documents and each document is composed of fields. MongoDB collections can be indexed for optimal performance. MongoDB ecosystem is highly available, supports query services as well as MapReduce. It is often used in high volume content management system. CouchDB CouchDB databases are composed of documents which consists fields and attachments (known as description). It supports ACID properties. The main attraction points of CouchDB are that it will continue to operate even though network connectivity is sketchy. Due to this nature CouchDB prefers local data storage. Document Database is a good choice of the database when users have to generate dynamic reports from elements which are changing very frequently. A good example of document usages is in real time analytics in social networking or content management system. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about various other Operational Databases supporting Big Data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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Inspiring a co-worker to adopt better coding practices?

- by Aaronaught

In the Handling my antiquated coworker question, various people discussed strategies for dealing with coworkers who are unwilling to integrate their workflow with the team's. I'd like, if possible, to learn some strategies for "teaching" a coworker who is merely ignorant of modern techniques and tools, and possibly a little apathetic. I've started working with a programmer who until recently has been working in relative isolation, in a different part of the company. He has extensive domain knowledge and most importantly he has demonstrated good problem-solving skills, something which many candidates seem to lack. However, the actual (C#) code I've seen is a throwback to the VB6 days. Procedural structure, Hungarian notation, global variables (abuse of static), no interfaces, no tests, non-use of Generics, throwing System.Exception... you get the idea. This programmer is a fair bit older than I am and, by first impressions at least, doesn't actively seek positive change. I'm not going to say resistant to change, because I think that is largely an issue of how the topic gets broached, and I want to be prepared. Programmers tend to be stubborn people, and going in with guns blazing and instituting rip-it-to-shreds code reviews and strictly-enforced policies is very likely not going to produce the end result that I want. If this were a new hire, a junior programmer, I wouldn't think twice about taking a "mentor" stance, but I'm extremely wary of treating an experienced employee as a clueless newbie (which he's not - he just hasn't kept pace with certain advancements in the field). How might I go about raising this developer's code quality standard the Dale Carnegie way, through gentle persuasion and non-material incentives? What would be the best strategy for effecting subtle, gradual changes, without creating an adversarial situation? Have other people - especially lead developers - been in this type of situation before? Which strategies were successful at stimulating interest and creating a positive group dynamic? Which strategies weren't successful and would be better to avoid? Clarifications: I really feel that several people are answering based on personal feelings without actually reading all of the details of the question. Please note the following, which should have been implied but I am now making explicit: This coworker is only my "senior" by virtue of age. I never said that his title, sphere of influence, or years at the organization exceed mine, and in fact, none of those things are true. He's a LOB programmer who's been absorbed into the main development shop. That's it. I am not a new hire, junior programmer, or other naïve idiot with grand plans to transform the company overnight. I am basically in charge of the software process, but as many who've worked as "leads" will know, responsibilities don't always correlate precisely with the org chart. I'm not asking people how to get my way, come hell or high water. I could do that if I wanted to, with the net result being that this person would become resentful and/or quit. Please try to understand that I am looking for a social, cooperative method of driving change. The mention of "...global variables... no tests... throwing System.Exception" was intended to demonstrate that the problems are not just superficial or aesthetic. Practices that may work for relatively small CRUD apps do not necessarily work for large enterprise apps, and in fact, none of the code so far has actually passed the integration tests. Please, try to take the question at face value, accept that I actually know what I'm talking about, and either answer the question that I actually asked or move on. P.S. My sincerest gratitude to those who -did- offer constructive advice rather than arguing with the premise. I'm going to leave this open for a while longer as I'm hoping to hear more in the way of real-world experiences.

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Flow-Design Cheat Sheet – Part II, Translation

- by Ralf Westphal

In my previous post I summarized the notation for Flow-Design (FD) diagrams. Now is the time to show you how to translate those diagrams into code. Hopefully you feel how different this is from UML. UML leaves you alone with your sequence diagram or component diagram or activity diagram. They leave it to you how to translate your elaborate design into code. Or maybe UML thinks it´s so easy no further explanations are needed? I don´t know. I just know that, as soon as people stop designing with UML and start coding, things end up to be very different from the design. And that´s bad. That degrades graphical designs to just time waste on paper (or some designer). I even believe that´s the reason why most programmers view textual source code as the only and single source of truth. Design and code usually do not match. FD is trying to change that. It wants to make true design a first class method in every developers toolchest. For that the first prerequisite is to be able to easily translate any design into code. Mechanically, without thinking. Even a compiler could do it :-) (More of that in some other article.) Translating to Methods The first translation I want to show you is for small designs. When you start using FD you should translate your diagrams like this. Functional units become methods. That´s it. An input-pin becomes a method parameter, an output-pin becomes a return value: The above is a part. But a board can be translated likewise and calls the nested FUs in order: In any case be sure to keep the board method clear of any and all business logic. It should not contain any control structures like if, switch, or a loop. Boards do just one thing: calling nested functional units in proper sequence. What about multiple input-pins? Try to avoid them. Replace them with a join returning a tuple: What about multiple output-pins? Try to avoid them. Or return a tuple. Or use out-parameters: But as I said, this simple translation is for simple designs only. Splits and joins are easily done with method translation: All pretty straightforward, isn´t it. But what about wires, named pins, entry points, explicit dependencies? I suggest you don´t use this kind of translation when your designs need these features. Translating to methods is for small scale designs like you might do once you´re working on the implementation of a part of a larger design. Or maybe for a code kata you´re doing in your local coding dojo. Instead of doing TDD try doing FD and translate your design into methods. You´ll see that way it´s much easier to work collaboratively on designs, remember them more easily, keep them clean, and lessen the need for refactoring. Translating to Events [coming soon]

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Mounting a drive in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)

- by morpheous

I have just installed Ubuntu on a machine that previously had XP installed on it. The machine has 2 HDD (hard disk drives). I opted to install Ubuntu completely over XP. I am new to Linux, and I am still learning how to navigate teh file structure. However, AFAICT), there is only one drive. I want to be able to store programs etc on the first drive, and store data (program output etc) on the second drive. It appears Ubuntu is not aware that I have 2 drives (on XP, these were drives C and D). How can I mount the second drive (ideally, I want to do this automatically on login, so that the drive is available to me whenever I login - withou manual intervention from me) In XP, I could refer to files on a specific drive by prefixing with the drive letter (e.g. c:\foobar.cpp and d:\foobar.dat). I suspect the notation on ubuntu is different. How may I specify specific files on different drives? Last but notbthe least (a bit unrelated to previous questions). This relates to direcory structure again. I am a developer (C++ for desktops and PHP for websites), I want to install the following apps/ libraries. i). Apache 2.2 ii). PHP 5.2.11 iii). MySQL (5.1) iv). SVN v). Netbeans vi). C++ development tools (gcc, gdb, emacs etc) vii). QT toolkit viii). Some miscellaeous scientific software (e.g. www.r-project.org, www.gnu.org/software/octave/) I would be grateful if a someone can recommend a directory layout for these applications. Regarding development, I would also be grateful if someone could point out where to store my project and source files i.e: (i) *.cpp, *.hpp, *.mak files for cpp projects (ii) individual websites On my XP machine the layout for C++ dev was like this: c:\dev\devtools (common libs and headers etc) c:\dev\workarea (root folder for projects) c:\dev\workarea\c++ (c++ projects) c:\dev\workarea\websites (web projects) I would like to create a similar folder structure on the linux machine, but its not clear whether to place these folders under /, /usr, /home or swomewhere else (there seems to be abffling number of choices, so I want to get it "right" first time - i.e having a directory structure that most developer use, so it is easier when communicating with other ubuntu/linux developers)

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Nullpointerexcption & abrupt IOStream closure with inheritence and subclasses

- by user1401652

A brief background before so we can communicate on the same wave length. I've had about 8-10 university courses on programming from data structure, to one on all languages, to specific ones such as java & c++. I'm a bit rusty because i usually take 2-3 month breaks from coding. This is a personal project that I started thinking of two years back. Okay down to the details, and a specific question, I'm having problems with my mutator functions. It seems to be that I am trying to access a private variable incorrectly. The question is, am I nesting my classes too much and trying to mutate a base class variable the incorrect way. If so point me in the way of the correct literature, or confirm this is my problem so I can restudy this information. Thanks package GroceryReceiptProgram; import java.io.*; import java.util.Vector; public class Date { private int hour, minute, day, month, year; Date() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What's the hour? (Use 1-24 military notation"); hour = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); System.out.println("what's the minute? "); minute = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); System.out.println("What's the day of the month?"); day = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); System.out.println("Which month of the year is it, use an integer"); month = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); System.out.println("What year is it?"); year = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); keyboard.close(); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println("Yo houston we have a problem"); } } public void setHour(int hour) { this.hour = hour; } public void setHour() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What hour, use military notation?"); this.hour = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); keyboard.close(); } catch (NumberFormatException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ":doesnt seem to be a number"); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public int getHour() { return hour; } public void setMinute(int minute) { this.minute = minute; } public void setMinute() { try (BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in))) { System.out.println("What minute?"); this.minute = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); } catch (NumberFormatException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ": doesnt seem to be a number"); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ": minute shall not cooperate"); } catch (NullPointerException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ": in the setMinute function of the Date class"); } } public int getMinute() { return minute; } public void setDay(int day) { this.day = day; } public void setDay() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What day 0-6?"); this.day = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); keyboard.close(); } catch (NumberFormatException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ":doesnt seem to be a number"); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public int getDay() { return day; } public void setMonth(int month) { this.month = month; } public void setMonth() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What month 0-11?"); this.month = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); keyboard.close(); } catch (NumberFormatException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ":doesnt seem to be a number"); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public int getMonth() { return month; } public void setYear(int year) { this.year = year; } public void setYear() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What year?"); this.year = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); keyboard.close(); } catch (NumberFormatException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ":doesnt seem to be a number"); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public int getYear() { return year; } public void set() { setMinute(); setHour(); setDay(); setMonth(); setYear(); } public Vector<Integer> get() { Vector<Integer> holder = new Vector<Integer>(5); holder.add(hour); holder.add(minute); holder.add(month); holder.add(day); holder.add(year); return holder; } }; That is the Date class obviously, next is the other base class Location. package GroceryReceiptProgram; import java.io.*; import java.util.Vector; public class Location { String streetName, state, city, country; int zipCode, address; Location() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What is the street name"); streetName = keyboard.readLine(); System.out.println("Which state?"); state = keyboard.readLine(); System.out.println("Which city?"); city = keyboard.readLine(); System.out.println("Which country?"); country = keyboard.readLine(); System.out.println("Which zipcode?");//if not u.s. continue around this step zipCode = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); System.out.println("What address?"); address = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public void setZipCode(int zipCode) { this.zipCode = zipCode; } public void setZipCode() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What zipCode?"); this.zipCode = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); keyboard.close(); } catch (NumberFormatException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ":doesnt seem to be a number"); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public void set() { setAddress(); setCity(); setCountry(); setState(); setStreetName(); setZipCode(); } public int getZipCode() { return zipCode; } public void setAddress(int address) { this.address = address; } public void setAddress() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What minute?"); this.address = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); keyboard.close(); } catch (NumberFormatException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ":doesnt seem to be a number"); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public int getAddress() { return address; } public void setStreetName(String streetName) { this.streetName = streetName; } public void setStreetName() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What minute?"); this.streetName = keyboard.readLine(); keyboard.close(); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public String getStreetName() { return streetName; } public void setState(String state) { this.state = state; } public void setState() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What minute?"); this.state = keyboard.readLine(); keyboard.close(); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public String getState() { return state; } public void setCity(String city) { this.city = city; } public void setCity() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What minute?"); this.city = keyboard.readLine(); keyboard.close(); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public String getCity() { return city; } public void setCountry(String country) { this.country = country; } public void setCountry() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What minute?"); this.country = keyboard.readLine(); keyboard.close(); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public String getCountry() { return country; } }; their parent(What is the proper name?) class package GroceryReceiptProgram; import java.io.*; public class FoodGroup { private int price, count; private Date purchaseDate, expirationDate; private Location location; private String name; public FoodGroup() { try { setPrice(); setCount(); expirationDate.set(); purchaseDate.set(); location.set(); } catch (NullPointerException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ": in the constructor of the FoodGroup class"); } } public void setPrice(int price) { this.price = price; } public void setPrice() { try (BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in))) { System.out.println("What Price?"); price = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); } catch (NumberFormatException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ":doesnt seem to be a number"); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ": in the FoodGroup class, setPrice function"); } catch (NullPointerException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ": in FoodGroup class. SetPrice()"); } } public int getPrice() { return price; } public void setCount(int count) { this.count = count; } public void setCount() { try (BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in))) { System.out.println("What count?"); count = Integer.parseInt(keyboard.readLine()); } catch (NumberFormatException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ":doesnt seem to be a number"); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ": in the FoodGroup class, setCount()"); } catch (NullPointerException e) { System.out.println(e.toString() + ": in FoodGroup class, setCount"); } } public int getCount() { return count; } public void setName(String name) { this.name = name; } public void setName() { try { BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); System.out.println("What minute?"); this.name = keyboard.readLine(); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e.toString()); } } public String getName() { return name; } public void setLocation(Location location) { this.location = location; } public Location getLocation() { return location; } public void setPurchaseDate(Date purchaseDate) { this.purchaseDate = purchaseDate; } public void setPurchaseDate() { this.purchaseDate.set(); } public Date getPurchaseDate() { return purchaseDate; } public void setExpirationDate(Date expirationDate) { this.expirationDate = expirationDate; } public void setExpirationDate() { this.expirationDate.set(); } public Date getExpirationDate() { return expirationDate; } } and finally the main class, so I can get access to all of this work. package GroceryReceiptProgram; public class NewMain { public static void main(String[] args) { FoodGroup test = new FoodGroup(); } } If anyone is further interested, here is a link the UML for this. https://www.dropbox.com/s/1weigjnxih70tbv/GRP.dia

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Hue, saturation, brightness, contrast effect in hlsl

- by Vibhore Tanwer

I am new to pixel shader, and I am trying to write a simple brightness, contrast, hue, saturation effect. I have written a shader for it but I doubt that my shader is not providing me correct result, Brightness, contrast, saturation is working fine, problem is with hue. if I apply hue between -1 to 1, it seems to be working fine, but to make things more sharp, I need to apply hue value between -180 and 180, like we can apply hue in Paint.NET. Here is my code. // Amount to shift the Hue, range 0 to 6 float Hue; float Brightness; float Contrast; float Saturation; float Alpha; sampler Samp : register(S0); // Converts the rgb value to hsv, where H's range is -1 to 5 float3 rgb_to_hsv(float3 RGB) { float r = RGB.x; float g = RGB.y; float b = RGB.z; float minChannel = min(r, min(g, b)); float maxChannel = max(r, max(g, b)); float h = 0; float s = 0; float v = maxChannel; float delta = maxChannel - minChannel; if (delta != 0) { s = delta / v; if (r == v) h = (g - b) / delta; else if (g == v) h = 2 + (b - r) / delta; else if (b == v) h = 4 + (r - g) / delta; } return float3(h, s, v); } float3 hsv_to_rgb(float3 HSV) { float3 RGB = HSV.z; float h = HSV.x; float s = HSV.y; float v = HSV.z; float i = floor(h); float f = h - i; float p = (1.0 - s); float q = (1.0 - s * f); float t = (1.0 - s * (1 - f)); if (i == 0) { RGB = float3(1, t, p); } else if (i == 1) { RGB = float3(q, 1, p); } else if (i == 2) { RGB = float3(p, 1, t); } else if (i == 3) { RGB = float3(p, q, 1); } else if (i == 4) { RGB = float3(t, p, 1); } else /* i == -1 */ { RGB = float3(1, p, q); } RGB *= v; return RGB; } float4 mainPS(float2 uv : TEXCOORD) : COLOR { float4 col = tex2D(Samp, uv); float3 hsv = rgb_to_hsv(col.xyz); hsv.x += Hue; // Put the hue back to the -1 to 5 range //if (hsv.x > 5) { hsv.x -= 6.0; } hsv = hsv_to_rgb(hsv); float4 newColor = float4(hsv,col.w); float4 colorWithBrightnessAndContrast = newColor; colorWithBrightnessAndContrast.rgb /= colorWithBrightnessAndContrast.a; colorWithBrightnessAndContrast.rgb = colorWithBrightnessAndContrast.rgb + Brightness; colorWithBrightnessAndContrast.rgb = ((colorWithBrightnessAndContrast.rgb - 0.5f) * max(Contrast + 1.0, 0)) + 0.5f; colorWithBrightnessAndContrast.rgb *= colorWithBrightnessAndContrast.a; float greyscale = dot(colorWithBrightnessAndContrast.rgb, float3(0.3, 0.59, 0.11)); colorWithBrightnessAndContrast.rgb = lerp(greyscale, colorWithBrightnessAndContrast.rgb, col.a * (Saturation + 1.0)); return colorWithBrightnessAndContrast; } technique TransformTexture { pass p0 { PixelShader = compile ps_2_0 mainPS(); } } Please If anyone can help me learning what am I doing wrong or any suggestions? Any help will be of great value. EDIT: Images of the effect at hue 180: On the left hand side, the effect I got with @teodron answer. On the right hand side, The effect Paint.NET gives and I'm trying to reproduce.

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Ambient occlusion shader just shows models as all white

- by dvds414

Okay so I have this shader for ambient occlusion. It loads to world correctly, but it just shows all the models as being white. I do not know why. I am just running the shader while the model is rendering, is that correct? or do I need to make a render target or something? If so then how? I'm using C++. Here is my shader: float sampleRadius; float distanceScale; float4x4 xProjection; float4x4 xView; float4x4 xWorld; float3 cornerFustrum; struct VS_OUTPUT { float4 pos : POSITION; float2 TexCoord : TEXCOORD0; float3 viewDirection : TEXCOORD1; }; VS_OUTPUT VertexShaderFunction( float4 Position : POSITION, float2 TexCoord : TEXCOORD0) { VS_OUTPUT Out = (VS_OUTPUT)0; float4 WorldPosition = mul(Position, xWorld); float4 ViewPosition = mul(WorldPosition, xView); Out.pos = mul(ViewPosition, xProjection); Position.xy = sign(Position.xy); Out.TexCoord = (float2(Position.x, -Position.y) + float2( 1.0f, 1.0f ) ) * 0.5f; float3 corner = float3(-cornerFustrum.x * Position.x, cornerFustrum.y * Position.y, cornerFustrum.z); Out.viewDirection = corner; return Out; } texture depthTexture; texture randomTexture; sampler2D depthSampler = sampler_state { Texture = <depthTexture>; ADDRESSU = CLAMP; ADDRESSV = CLAMP; MAGFILTER = LINEAR; MINFILTER = LINEAR; }; sampler2D RandNormal = sampler_state { Texture = <randomTexture>; ADDRESSU = WRAP; ADDRESSV = WRAP; MAGFILTER = LINEAR; MINFILTER = LINEAR; }; float4 PixelShaderFunction(VS_OUTPUT IN) : COLOR0 { float4 samples[16] = { float4(0.355512, -0.709318, -0.102371, 0.0 ), float4(0.534186, 0.71511, -0.115167, 0.0 ), float4(-0.87866, 0.157139, -0.115167, 0.0 ), float4(0.140679, -0.475516, -0.0639818, 0.0 ), float4(-0.0796121, 0.158842, -0.677075, 0.0 ), float4(-0.0759516, -0.101676, -0.483625, 0.0 ), float4(0.12493, -0.0223423, -0.483625, 0.0 ), float4(-0.0720074, 0.243395, -0.967251, 0.0 ), float4(-0.207641, 0.414286, 0.187755, 0.0 ), float4(-0.277332, -0.371262, 0.187755, 0.0 ), float4(0.63864, -0.114214, 0.262857, 0.0 ), float4(-0.184051, 0.622119, 0.262857, 0.0 ), float4(0.110007, -0.219486, 0.435574, 0.0 ), float4(0.235085, 0.314707, 0.696918, 0.0 ), float4(-0.290012, 0.0518654, 0.522688, 0.0 ), float4(0.0975089, -0.329594, 0.609803, 0.0 ) }; IN.TexCoord.x += 1.0/1600.0; IN.TexCoord.y += 1.0/1200.0; normalize (IN.viewDirection); float depth = tex2D(depthSampler, IN.TexCoord).a; float3 se = depth * IN.viewDirection; float3 randNormal = tex2D( RandNormal, IN.TexCoord * 200.0 ).rgb; float3 normal = tex2D(depthSampler, IN.TexCoord).rgb; float finalColor = 0.0f; for (int i = 0; i < 16; i++) { float3 ray = reflect(samples[i].xyz,randNormal) * sampleRadius; //if (dot(ray, normal) < 0) // ray += normal * sampleRadius; float4 sample = float4(se + ray, 1.0f); float4 ss = mul(sample, xProjection); float2 sampleTexCoord = 0.5f * ss.xy/ss.w + float2(0.5f, 0.5f); sampleTexCoord.x += 1.0/1600.0; sampleTexCoord.y += 1.0/1200.0; float sampleDepth = tex2D(depthSampler, sampleTexCoord).a; if (sampleDepth == 1.0) { finalColor ++; } else { float occlusion = distanceScale* max(sampleDepth - depth, 0.0f); finalColor += 1.0f / (1.0f + occlusion * occlusion * 0.1); } } return float4(finalColor/16, finalColor/16, finalColor/16, 1.0f); } technique SSAO { pass P0 { VertexShader = compile vs_3_0 VertexShaderFunction(); PixelShader = compile ps_3_0 PixelShaderFunction(); } }

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Independence Day for Software Components – Loosening Coupling by Reducing Connascence

- by Brian Schroer

Today is Independence Day in the USA, which got me thinking about loosely-coupled “independent” software components. I was reminded of a video I bookmarked quite a while ago of Jim Weirich’s “Grand Unified Theory of Software Design” talk at MountainWest RubyConf 2009. I finally watched that video this morning. I highly recommend it. In the video, Jim talks about software connascence. The dictionary definition of connascence (con-NAY-sense) is: 1. The common birth of two or more at the same time 2. That which is born or produced with another. 3. The act of growing together. The brief Wikipedia page about Connascent Software Components says that: Two software components are connascent if a change in one would require the other to be modified in order to maintain the overall correctness of the system. Connascence is a way to characterize and reason about certain types of complexity in software systems. The term was introduced to the software world in Meilir Page-Jones’ 1996 book “What Every Programmer Should Know About Object-Oriented Design”. The middle third of that book is the author’s proposed graphical notation for describing OO designs. UML became the standard about a year later, so a revised version of the book was published in 1999 as “Fundamentals of Object-Oriented Design in UML”. Weirich says that the third part of the book, in which Page-Jones introduces the concept of connascence “is worth the price of the entire book”. (The price of the entire book, by the way, is not much – I just bought a used copy on Amazon for $1.36, so that was a pretty low-risk investment. I’m looking forward to getting the book and learning about connascence from the original source.) Meanwhile, here’s my summary of Weirich’s summary of Page-Jones writings about connascence: The stronger the form of connascence, the more difficult and costly it is to change the elements in the relationship. Some of the connascence types, ordered from weak to strong are: Connascence of Name Connascence of name is when multiple components must agree on the name of an entity. If you change the name of a method or property, then you need to change all references to that method or property. Duh. Connascence of name is unavoidable, assuming your objects are actually used. My main takeaway about connascence of name is that it emphasizes the importance of giving things good names so you don’t need to go changing them later. Connascence of Type Connascence of type is when multiple components must agree on the type of an entity. I assume this is more of a problem for languages without compilers (especially when used in apps without tests). I know it’s an issue with evil JavaScript type coercion. Connascence of Meaning Connascence of meaning is when multiple components must agree on the meaning of particular values, e.g that “1” means normal customer and “2” means preferred customer. The solution to this is to use constants or enums instead of “magic” strings or numbers, which reduces the coupling by changing the connascence form from “meaning” to “name”. Connascence of Position Connascence of positions is when multiple components must agree on the order of values. This refers to methods with multiple parameters, e.g.: eMailer.Send("[email protected]", "[email protected]", "Your order is complete", "Order completion notification"); The more parameters there are, the stronger the connascence of position is between the component and its callers. In the example above, it’s not immediately clear when reading the code which email addresses are sender and receiver, and which of the final two strings are subject vs. body. Connascence of position could be improved to connascence of type by replacing the parameter list with a struct or class. This “introduce parameter object” refactoring might be overkill for a method with 2 parameters, but would definitely be an improvement for a method with 10 parameters. This points out two “rules” of connascence: The Rule of Degree: The acceptability of connascence is related to the degree of its occurrence. The Rule of Locality: Stronger forms of connascence are more acceptable if the elements involved are closely related. For example, positional arguments in private methods are less problematic than in public methods. Connascence of Algorithm Connascence of algorithm is when multiple components must agree on a particular algorithm. Be DRY – Don’t Repeat Yourself. If you have “cloned” code in multiple locations, refactor it into a common function. Those are the “static” forms of connascence. There are also “dynamic” forms, including… Connascence of Execution Connascence of execution is when the order of execution of multiple components is important. Consumers of your class shouldn’t have to know that they have to call an .Initialize method before it’s safe to call a .DoSomething method. Connascence of Timing Connascence of timing is when the timing of the execution of multiple components is important. I’ll have to read up on this one when I get the book, but assume it’s largely about threading. Connascence of Identity Connascence of identity is when multiple components must reference the entity. The example Weirich gives is when you have two instances of the “Bob” Employee class and you call the .RaiseSalary method on one and then the .Pay method on the other does the payment use the updated salary? Again, this is my summary of a summary, so please be forgiving if I misunderstood anything. Once I get/read the book, I’ll make corrections if necessary and share any other useful information I might learn. See Also: Gregory Brown: Ruby Best Practices Issue #24: Connascence as a Software Design Metric (That link is failing at the time I write this, so I had to go to the Google cache of the page.)

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Using the StopWatch class to calculate the execution time of a block of code

- by vik20000in

Many of the times while doing the performance tuning of some, class, webpage, component, control etc. we first measure the current time taken in the execution of that code. This helps in understanding the location in code which is actually causing the performance issue and also help in measuring the amount of improvement by making the changes. This measurement is very important as it helps us understand the problem in code, Helps us to write better code next time (as we have already learnt what kind of improvement can be made with different code) . Normally developers create 2 objects of the DateTime class. The exact time is collected before and after the code where the performance needs to be measured. Next the difference between the two objects is used to know about the time spent in the code that is measured. Below is an example of the sample code. DateTime dt1, dt2; dt1 = DateTime.Now; for (int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++) { string str = "string"; } dt2 = DateTime.Now; TimeSpan ts = dt2.Subtract(dt1); Console.WriteLine("Time Spent : " + ts.TotalMilliseconds.ToString()); The above code works great. But the dot net framework also provides for another way to capture the time spent on the code without doing much effort (creating 2 datetime object, timespan object etc..). We can use the inbuilt StopWatch class to get the exact time spent. Below is an example of the same work with the help of the StopWatch class. Stopwatch sw = Stopwatch.StartNew(); for (int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++) { string str = "string"; } sw.Stop(); Console.WriteLine("Time Spent : " +sw.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds.ToString()); [Note the StopWatch class resides in the System.Diagnostics namespace] If you use the StopWatch class the time taken for measuring the performance is much better, with very little effort. Vikram

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F# WPF Form – the basics

- by MarkPearl

I was listening to Dot Net Rocks show #560 about F# and during the podcast Richard Campbell brought up a good point with regards to F# and a GUI. In essence what I understood his point to be was that until one could write an end to end application in F#, it would be a hard sell to developers to take it on. In part I agree with him, while I am beginning to really enjoy learning F#, I can’t but help feel that I would be a lot further into the language if I could do my Windows Forms like I do in C# or VB.NET for the simple reason that in “playing” applications I spend the majority of the time in the UI layer… So I have been keeping my eye out for some examples of creating a WPF form in a F# project and came across Tim’s F# Twitter Stream Sample, which had exactly this…. of course he actually had a bit more than a basic form… but it was enough for me to scrap the insides and glean what I needed. So today I am going to make just the very basic WPF form with all the goodness of a XAML window. Getting Started First thing we need to do is create a new solution with a blank F# application project – I have made mine called FSharpWPF. Once you have the project created you will need to change the project type from a Console Application to a Windows Application. You do this by right clicking on the project file and going to its properties… Once that is done you will need to add the appropriate references. You do this by right clicking on the References in the Solution Explorer and clicking “Add Reference'”. You should add the appropriate .Net references below for WPF & XAMl to work. Once these references are added you then need to add your XAML file to the project. You can do this by adding a new item to the project of type xml and simply changing the file extension from xml to xaml. Once the xaml file has been added to the project you will need to add valid window XAML. Example of a very basic xaml file is shown below… <Window xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Title="F# WPF WPF Form" Height="350" Width="525"> <Grid> </Grid> </Window> Once your xaml file is done… you need to set the build action of the xaml file from “None” to “Resource” as depicted in the picture below. If you do not set this you will get an IOException error when running the completed project with a message along the lines of “Cannot locate resource ‘window.xaml’ You then need to tie everything up by putting the correct F# code in the Program.fs to load the xaml window. In the Program.fs put the following code… module Program open System open System.Collections.ObjectModel open System.IO open System.Windows open System.Windows.Controls open System.Windows.Markup [<STAThread>] [<EntryPoint>] let main(_) = let w = Application.LoadComponent(new System.Uri("/FSharpWPF;component/Window.xaml", System.UriKind.Relative)) :?> Window (new Application()).Run(w) Once all this is done you should be able to build and run your project. What you have done is created a WPF based window inside a FSharp project. It should look something like below… Nothing to exciting, but sufficient to illustrate the very basic WPF form in F#. Hopefully in future posts I will build on this to expose button events etc.

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Three Easy Ways of Providing Feedback to the Oracle AutoVue Team

- by Celine Beck

Customer feedback is essential in helping us deliver best-in-class Enterprise Visualization solutions which are centered around real-world usage. As the Oracle AutoVue Product Management team is busy prioritizing the next round of improvements, enhancements and new innovation to the AutoVue platform, I thought it would be a good idea to provide our blog-readers with a recap of how best to provide product feedback to the AutoVue Product Management team. This gives you the opportunity to help shape our future agenda and make our solutions better for you. Enterprise Visualization Special Interest Group (EV SIG): the AutoVue EV SIG is a customer-driven initiative that has recently been created to share knowledge and information between members and discuss common and best practices around Enterprise Visualization. The EV SIG also serves as a mechanism for establishing and communicating to AutoVue Product Management users’ collective priorities for the future development, direction and enhancement of the AutoVue product family with the objective of ensuring their continuous improvement. Essentially, EV SIG members meet in order to share and prioritize feedback and use this input to begin dialog with the AutoVue Product Management team on what they deem to be the most important improvements to Enterprise Visualization solutions. The AutoVue EV SIG is by far the best platform for sharing and relaying feedback to our Product Strategy / Management team regarding general product enhancements, industry-specific scenarios, new use cases, usability, support, deployability, etc, and helping us shape the future direction of Enterprise Visualization solutions. We strongly encourage ALL our customers to sign up for the SIG; here is how you can do so: Sign up for the EVSIG mailing list b. Visit the group’s website c. Contact Dennis Walker at Harris Corporation directly should you have any questions: dwalke22-AT-harris-DOT-com Customer / Partner Advisory Boards: The AutoVue Product Strategy / Management team also periodically runs Customer and Partner Advisory Boards. These invitation-only events bring together individuals chosen from Oracle AutoVue’s top customers that are using AutoVue at the enterprise level, as well as strategic partners. The idea here is to establish open lines of communication between top customers and partners and the Oracle AutoVue Product Strategy team, help us communicate AutoVue’s product direction, share perspectives on today and tomorrow’s challenges and needs for Enterprise Visualization, and validate that proposed additions to the product are valid industry solutions. Our next Customer / Partner Advisory Board will be held in San Francisco during Oracle Open World, please contact your account manager to find out more about the CAB Members’ nomination process. Enhancement Requests: Enhancement requests are request logged by customers or partners with Product Development for a feature that is not currently available in Oracle AutoVue. Enhancement requests (ER) can be logged easily via the My Oracle Support portal. This is the best way to share feedback with us at the functionality level; for instance if you would like to see a new format supported in AutoVue or make suggestions as per how certain functionality can be improved or should behave. Once the ER is logged, it is then evaluated by Product Management based on feasibility, product adequation and business justification. Product Management then decides whether to consider this ER for future release or not. What helps accelerate the process is hearing from a large number of customers who urgently need a particular feature or configuration. Hence the importance of logging Metalink Service Requests, and describing in details your business expectations. You can include key milestones dates and justifications as to why this request is important and the benefits your organization stands to gain should this request be accepted. Again, feedback from customers and partners is critical to ensure we offer solutions that have the biggest impact on customers’ business processes and day-to-day operations. All feedback is welcome,. So please don’t be shy!

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ATG Live Webcast: Advanced E-Business Suite Architectures

- by BillSawyer

I am pleased to announce the ATG Live Webcast event for Dec. 8th, 2011: Advanced E-Business Suite Architectures Join Elke Phelps, Senior Principal Product Manager and Sriram Veeraraghavan, Senior Principal Software Engineer as they discuss advanced E-Business Suite architectures that can help you improve performance, scalability, business continuity, utilization, provisioning, and security. This one-hour webcasts provides an overview of advanced architectures with Q&A. This session will cover the latest advanced architectural options, including the use of Oracle database high-availability features and functions such as Real Application Clusters, ASM, Active Data Guard, clouds, virtualization, Oracle VM, high-availability and load-balancing architectures, WebLogic Server, and more. This session will also cover the latest updates to systems management tools like AutoConfig, and may also include sneak previews of upcoming functionality. This event is targeted to architects, system administrators, DBAs, developers, and implementers. The agenda for the Advanced E-Business Suite Architectures webcast includes the following topics: Advanced Oracle E-Business Suite Architectures Optional External Integrations Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 Improving Performance and Scalability Providing Business Continuity Improving Utilization and Provisioning Improving Security Date: Thursday, December 8, 2011Time: 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Pacific Standard TimePresenter: Elke Phelps, Senior Principal Product Manager Sriram Veeraraghavan, Senior Principal Software EngineerWebcast Registration Link (Preregistration is optional but encouraged)To hear the audio feed: Domestic Participant Dial-In Number: 877-697-8128 International Participant Dial-In Number: 706-634-9568 Additional International Dial-In Numbers Link: Dial-In Passcode: 98514To see the presentation: The Direct Access Web Conference details are: Website URL: https://ouweb.webex.com Meeting Number: 273291684If you miss the webcast, or you have missed any webcast, don't worry -- we'll post links to the recording as soon as it's available from Oracle University. You can monitor this blog for pointers to the replay. And, you can find our archive of our past webcasts and training at http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/entry/e_business_suite_technology_learningIf you have any questions or comments, feel free to email Bill Sawyer (Senior Manager, Applications Technology Curriculum) at BilldotSawyer-AT-Oracle-DOT-com.

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Oracle Data Integration 12c: Simplified, Future-Ready, High-Performance Solutions

- by Thanos Terentes Printzios

In today’s data-driven business environment, organizations need to cost-effectively manage the ever-growing streams of information originating both inside and outside the firewall and address emerging deployment styles like cloud, big data analytics, and real-time replication. Oracle Data Integration delivers pervasive and continuous access to timely and trusted data across heterogeneous systems. Oracle is enhancing its data integration offering announcing the general availability of 12c release for the key data integration products: Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c, delivering Simplified and High-Performance Solutions for Cloud, Big Data Analytics, and Real-Time Replication. The new release delivers extreme performance, increase IT productivity, and simplify deployment, while helping IT organizations to keep pace with new data-oriented technology trends including cloud computing, big data analytics, real-time business intelligence. With the 12c release Oracle becomes the new leader in the data integration and replication technologies as no other vendor offers such a complete set of data integration capabilities for pervasive, continuous access to trusted data across Oracle platforms as well as third-party systems and applications. Oracle Data Integration 12c release addresses data-driven organizations’ critical and evolving data integration requirements under 3 key themes: Future-Ready Solutions : Supporting Current and Emerging Initiatives Extreme Performance : Even higher performance than ever before Fast Time-to-Value : Higher IT Productivity and Simplified Solutions With the new capabilities in Oracle Data Integrator 12c, customers can benefit from: Superior developer productivity, ease of use, and rapid time-to-market with the new flow-based mapping model, reusable mappings, and step-by-step debugger. Increased performance when executing data integration processes due to improved parallelism. Improved productivity and monitoring via tighter integration with Oracle GoldenGate 12c and Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. Improved interoperability with Oracle Warehouse Builder which enables faster and easier migration to Oracle Data Integrator’s strategic data integration offering. Faster implementation of business analytics through Oracle Data Integrator pre-integrated with Oracle BI Applications’ latest release. Oracle Data Integrator also integrates simply and easily with Oracle Business Analytics tools, including OBI-EE and Oracle Hyperion. Support for loading and transforming big and fast data, enabled by integration with big data technologies: Hadoop, Hive, HDFS, and Oracle Big Data Appliance. Only Oracle GoldenGate provides the best-of-breed real-time replication of data in heterogeneous data environments. With the new capabilities in Oracle GoldenGate 12c, customers can benefit from: Simplified setup and management of Oracle GoldenGate 12c when using multiple database delivery processes via a new Coordinated Delivery feature for non-Oracle databases. Expanded heterogeneity through added support for the latest versions of major databases such as Sybase ASE v 15.7, MySQL NDB Clusters 7.2, and MySQL 5.6., as well as integration with Oracle Coherence. Enhanced high availability and data protection via integration with Oracle Data Guard and Fast-Start Failover integration. Enhanced security for credentials and encryption keys using Oracle Wallet. Real-time replication for databases hosted on public cloud environments supported by third-party clouds. Tight integration between Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c and other Oracle technologies, such as Oracle Database 12c and Oracle Applications, provides a number of benefits for organizations: Tight integration between Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c enables developers to leverage Oracle GoldenGate’s low overhead, real-time change data capture completely within the Oracle Data Integrator Studio without additional training. Integration with Oracle Database 12c provides a strong foundation for seamless private cloud deployments. Delivers real-time data for reporting, zero downtime migration, and improved performance and availability for Oracle Applications, such as Oracle E-Business Suite and ATG Web Commerce . Oracle’s data integration offering is optimized for Oracle Engineered Systems and is an integral part of Oracle’s fast data, real-time analytics strategy on Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine. Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c differentiate the new offering on data integration with these many new features. This is just a quick glimpse into Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c. Find out much more about the new release in the video webcast "Introducing 12c for Oracle Data Integration", where customer and partner speakers, including SolarWorld, BT, Rittman Mead will join us in launching the new release. Resource Kits Meet Oracle Data Integration 12c Discover what's new with Oracle Goldengate 12c Oracle EMEA DIS (Data Integration Solutions) Partner Community is available for all your questions, while additional partner focused webcasts will be made available through our blog here, so stay connected. For any questions please contact us at partner.imc-AT-beehiveonline.oracle-DOT-com Stay Connected Oracle Newsletters

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How to detect and configure an output with xrandr?

- by ysap

I have a DELL U2410 monitor connected to a Compaq 100B desktop equipped with an integrated AMD/ATI graphics card (AMD E-350). The installed O/S is Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. The computer is connected to the monitor via the DVI connection. The problem is that I cannot set the desktop resolution to the native 1920x1200. The maximum allowed resolution is 1600x1200. Doing some research I found about the xrandr utility. Unfortunately, when trying to use it I cannot configure it to the required resolution. First, it does not report the output name (which supposed to be DVI-0), saying default instead. Without it I cannot use the --fb option. The EDID utility seems to identify the monitor well. Here's the output from get-edid: # EDID version 1 revision 3 Section "Monitor" # Block type: 2:0 3:ff # Block type: 2:0 3:fc Identifier "DELL U2410" VendorName "DEL" ModelName "DELL U2410" # Block type: 2:0 3:ff # Block type: 2:0 3:fc # Block type: 2:0 3:fd HorizSync 30-81 VertRefresh 56-76 # Max dot clock (video bandwidth) 170 MHz # DPMS capabilities: Active off:yes Suspend:yes Standby:yes Mode "1920x1200" # vfreq 59.950Hz, hfreq 74.038kHz DotClock 154.000000 HTimings 1920 1968 2000 2080 VTimings 1200 1203 1209 1235 Flags "-HSync" "+VSync" EndMode # Block type: 2:0 3:ff # Block type: 2:0 3:fc # Block type: 2:0 3:fd EndSection but the xrandr -q command returns: Screen 0: minimum 640 x 400, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 1600 x 1200 default connected 1600x1200+0+0 0mm x 0mm 1600x1200 0.0* 1280x1024 0.0 1152x864 0.0 1024x768 0.0 800x600 0.0 640x480 0.0 720x400 0.0 When I try to set the resolution, I get: $ xrandr --fb 1920x1200 xrandr: screen cannot be larger than 1600x1200 (desired size 1920x1200) $ xrandr --output DVI-0 --auto warning: output DVI-0 not found; ignoring How can I set the screen resolution to 1920x1200? Why doesn't xrandr identify the DVI-0 output? Note that the same computer running Ubuntu version higher than 10.04 detects the correct resolution with no problems. On this machine I cannot upgrade due to some legacy hardware compatibility problems. Also, I don't see any optional screen drivers available in the Hardware Drivers dialog. ---- UPDATE: following the answer to this question, I got some advance. Now the required mode is listed in the xrandr -q list, but I can't switch to that mode. Using the Monitors applet (which now shows the new mode), I get the response that: The selected configuration for displays could not be applied. Could not set the configuration to CRTC 262. From the command line it looks like this: $ cvt 1920 1200 60 # 1920x1200 59.88 Hz (CVT 2.30MA) hsync: 74.56 kHz; pclk: 193.25 MHz Modeline "1920x1200_60.00" 193.25 1920 2056 2256 2592 1200 1203 1209 1245 -hsync +vsync $ xrandr --newmode "1920x1200_60.00" 193.25 1920 2056 2256 2592 1200 1203 1209 1245 -hsync +vsync $ xrandr -q Screen 0: minimum 640 x 400, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 1600 x 1200 default connected 1600x1200+0+0 0mm x 0mm 1600x1200 0.0* 1280x1024 0.0 1152x864 0.0 1024x768 0.0 800x600 0.0 640x480 0.0 720x400 0.0 1920x1200_60.00 (0x120) 193.0MHz h: width 1920 start 2056 end 2256 total 2592 skew 0 clock 74.5KHz v: height 1200 start 1203 end 1209 total 1245 clock 59.8Hz $ xrandr --addmode default 1920x1200_60.00 $ xrandr -q Screen 0: minimum 640 x 400, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 1600 x 1200 default connected 1600x1200+0+0 0mm x 0mm 1600x1200 0.0* 1280x1024 0.0 1152x864 0.0 1024x768 0.0 800x600 0.0 640x480 0.0 720x400 0.0 1920x1200_60.00 59.8 $ xrandr --output default --mode 1920x1200_60.00 xrandr: Configure crtc 0 failed Another piece of info (if it helps anyone): $ sudo lshw -c video *-display UNCLAIMED description: VGA compatible controller product: ATI Technologies Inc vendor: ATI Technologies Inc physical id: 1 bus info: pci@0000:00:01.0 version: 00 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm pciexpress msi bus_master cap_list configuration: latency=0 resources: memory:c0000000-cfffffff(prefetchable) ioport:f000(size=256) memory:feb00000-feb3ffff

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10 Best Programming Podcast 2010 Edition

- by mbcrump

This list is in no particular order. Just the 10 best programming podcast that I have found so far. Stack Overflow Podcast - Jeff Atwood (of codinghorror.com) and Joel Spolsky (of joelonsoftware.com) discuss the development of their new programming community, StackOverflow.com. [This Podcast hasn’t been updated in a while, but its always great to hear more from Jeff Atwood] Hanselminutes - Hanselminutes is a weekly audio talk show with noted web developer and technologist Scott Hanselman and hosted by Carl Franklin. Scott discusses utilities and tools, gives practical how-to advice, and discusses ASP.NET or Windows issues and workarounds. [This Podcast has recently started talking about random topics like diabetes, plane travel and geek relationship tips. I am not sure if Scott is trying to move to a more mainstream audience or not] Herding Code - A weekly discussion featuring K. Scott Allen (odetocode.com), Kevin Dente, Scott Koon (lazycoder.com), and Jon Galloway. [Great all all-around podcast that I would recommend to all] Deep Fried Bytes - Deep Fried Bytes is an audio talk show with a Southern flavor hosted by technologists and developers Keith Elder and Chris Woodruff. The show discusses a wide range of topics including application development, operating systems and technology in general. Anything is fair game if it plugs into the wall or takes a battery. [This is one that just keeps getting better] Dot Net Rocks - .NET Rocks! is an Internet Audio Talk Show for Microsoft .NET Developers. [One of the first and usually very high quality content] Connected Show - Connected Show Podcast! A podcast covering new Microsoft technology for the developer community. The show is hosted by Dmitry Lyalin and Peter Laudati. [This and Polymorphic are one of my favorite podcast – Dmitry is a great host and would recommend this to all] Polymorphic Podcast - Object oriented development, architecture and best practices in .NET [Craig is a ASP.NET MVP and a great presenter. His podcast is great and it could only be better if he recorded it more often] ASP.NET Podcast - Wallace B. (Wally) McClure presents interviews and short technical talks on .NET Technologies. [Has great information on ASP.NET of course as well as iPhone Dev] Ruby on Rails Podcast - News and interviews about the Ruby language and the Rails website framework. [Even though I am not a Ruby programmer, I’ve found this podcast very interesting] Software Engineering Radio - Software Engineering Radio is a podcast targeted at the professional software developer. The goal is to be a lasting educational resource, not a newscast. Every ten days, a new episode is published that covers all topics software engineering. Episodes are either tutorials on a specific topic, or an interview with a well-known character from the software engineering world. All SE Radio episodes are original content ? we do not record conferences or talks given in other venues. Each episode comprises two speakers to ensure a lively listening experience. SE Radio is an independent and non-commercial organization. [Another excellent podcast – I would recommend any programmer add this to his/her drive home] If I have missed something, please feel free to email me and it might make the 2011 list. =)

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LINQ und ArcObjects

- by Marko Apfel

LINQ und ArcObjects Motivation LINQ1 (language integrated query) ist eine Komponente des Microsoft .NET Frameworks seit der Version 3.5. Es erlaubt eine SQL-ähnliche Abfrage zu verschiedenen Datenquellen wie SQL, XML u.v.m. Wie SQL auch, bietet LINQ dazu eine deklarative Notation der Problemlösung - d.h. man muss nicht im Detail beschreiben wie eine Aufgabe, sondern was überhaupt zu lösen ist. Das befreit den Entwickler abfrageseitig von fehleranfälligen Iterator-Konstrukten. Ideal wäre es natürlich auf diese Möglichkeiten auch in der ArcObjects-Programmierung mit Features zugreifen zu können. Denkbar wäre dann folgendes Konstrukt: var largeFeatures = from feature in features where (feature.GetValue("SHAPE_Area").ToDouble() > 3000) select feature; bzw. dessen Äquivalent als Lambda-Expression: var largeFeatures = features.Where(feature => (feature.GetValue("SHAPE_Area").ToDouble() > 3000)); Dazu muss ein entsprechender Provider zu Verfügung stehen, der die entsprechende Iterator-Logik managt. Dies ist leichter als man auf den ersten Blick denkt - man muss nur die gewünschten Entitäten als IEnumerable<IFeature> liefern. (Anm.: nicht wundern - die Methoden GetValue() und ToDouble() habe ich nebenbei als Erweiterungsmethoden deklariert.) Im Hintergrund baut LINQ selbständig eine Zustandsmaschine (state machine)2 auf deren Ausführung verzögert ist (deferred execution)3 - d.h. dass erst beim tatsächlichen Anfordern von Entitäten (foreach, Count(), ToList(), ..) eine Instanziierung und Verarbeitung stattfindet, obwohl die Zuweisung schon an ganz anderer Stelle erfolgte. Insbesondere bei mehrfacher Iteration durch die Entitäten reibt man sich bei den ersten Debuggings verwundert die Augen wenn der Ausführungszeiger wie von Geisterhand wieder in die Iterator-Logik springt. Realisierung Eine ganz knappe Logik zum Konstruieren von IEnumerable<IFeature> lässt sich mittels Durchlaufen eines IFeatureCursor realisieren. Dazu werden die einzelnen Feature mit yield ausgegeben. Der einfachen Verwendung wegen, habe ich die Logik in eine Erweiterungsmethode GetFeatures() für IFeatureClass aufgenommen: public static IEnumerable GetFeatures(this IFeatureClass featureClass, IQueryFilter queryFilter, RecyclingPolicy policy) { IFeatureCursor featureCursor = featureClass.Search(queryFilter, RecyclingPolicy.Recycle == policy); IFeature feature; while (null != (feature = featureCursor.NextFeature())) { yield return feature; } //this is skipped in unit tests with cursor-mock if (Marshal.IsComObject(featureCursor)) { Marshal.ReleaseComObject(featureCursor); } } Damit kann man sich nun ganz einfach die IEnumerable<IFeature> erzeugen lassen: IEnumerable features = _featureClass.GetFeatures(RecyclingPolicy.DoNotRecycle); Etwas aufpassen muss man bei der Verwendung des "Recycling-Cursors". Nach einer verzögerten Ausführung darf im selben Kontext nicht erneut über die Features iteriert werden. In diesem Fall wird nämlich nur noch der Inhalt des letzten (recycelten) Features geliefert und alle Features sind innerhalb der Menge gleich. Kritisch würde daher das Konstrukt largeFeatures.ToList(). ForEach(feature => Debug.WriteLine(feature.OID)); weil ToList() schon einmal durch die Liste iteriert und der Cursor somit einmal durch die Features bewegt wurde. Die Erweiterungsmethode ForEach liefert dann immer dasselbe Feature. In derartigen Situationen darf also kein Cursor mit Recycling verwendet werden. Ein mehrfaches Ausführen von foreach ist hingegen kein Problem weil dafür jedes Mal die Zustandsmaschine neu instanziiert wird und somit der Cursor neu durchlaufen wird – das ist die oben schon erwähnte Magie. Ausblick Nun kann man auch einen Schritt weiter gehen und ganz eigene Implementierungen für die Schnittstelle IEnumerable<IFeature> in Angriff nehmen. Dazu müssen nur die Methode und das Property zum Zugriff auf den Enumerator ausprogrammiert werden. Im Enumerator selbst veranlasst man in der Reset()-Methode das erneute Ausführen der Suche – dazu übergibt man beispielsweise ein entsprechendes Delegate in den Konstruktur: new FeatureEnumerator( _featureClass, featureClass => featureClass.Search(_filter, isRecyclingCursor)); und ruft dieses beim Reset auf: public void Reset() { _featureCursor = _resetCursor(_t); } Auf diese Art und Weise können Enumeratoren für völlig verschiedene Szenarien implementiert werden, die clientseitig restlos identisch nach obigen Schema verwendet werden. Damit verschmelzen Cursors, SelectionSets u.s.w. zu einer einzigen Materie und die Wiederverwendbarkeit von Code steigt immens. Obendrein lässt sich ein IEnumerable in automatisierten Unit-Tests sehr einfach mocken - ein großer Schritt in Richtung höherer Software-Qualität.4 Fazit Nichtsdestotrotz ist Vorsicht mit diesen Konstrukten in performance-relevante Abfragen geboten. Dadurch dass im Hintergrund eine Zustandsmaschine verwalten wird, entsteht einiges an Overhead dessen Verarbeitung zusätzliche Zeit kostet - ca. 20 bis 100 Prozent. Darüber hinaus ist auch das Arbeiten ohne Recycling schnell ein Performance-Gap. Allerdings ist deklarativer LINQ-Code viel eleganter, fehlerfreier und wartungsfreundlicher als das manuelle Iterieren, Vergleichen und Aufbauen einer Ergebnisliste. Der Code-Umfang verringert sich erfahrungsgemäß im Schnitt um 75 bis 90 Prozent! Dafür warte ich gerne ein paar Millisekunden länger. Wie so oft muss abgewogen werden zwischen Wartbarkeit und Performance - wobei für mich Wartbarkeit zunehmend an Priorität gewinnt. Zumeist ist sowieso nicht der Code sondern der Anwender die Bremse im Prozess. Demo-Quellcode support.esri.de [1] Wikipedia: LINQ http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/LINQ [2] Wikipedia: Zustandsmaschine http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endlicher_Automat [3] Charlie Calverts Blog: LINQ and Deferred Execution http://blogs.msdn.com/b/charlie/archive/2007/12/09/deferred-execution.aspx [4] Clean Code Developer - gelber Grad/Automatisierte Unit Tests http://www.clean-code-developer.de/Gelber-Grad.ashx#Automatisierte_Unit_Tests_8

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HSSFS Part 2.1 - Parsing @@VERSION

- by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

For Part 2 of the Handy SQL Server Function Series I decided to tackle parsing useful information from the @@VERSION function, because I am an idiot. It turns out I was confused about CHARINDEX() vs. PATINDEX() and it pretty much invalidated my original solution. All is not lost though, this mistake turned out to be informative for me, and hopefully for you. Referring back to the "Version" view in the prelude I started with the following query to extract the version number: SELECT DISTINCT SQLVersion, SUBSTRING(VersionString,PATINDEX('%-%',VersionString)+2, 12) VerNum FROM VERSION I used PATINDEX() to find the first hyphen "-" character in the string, since the version number appears 2 positions after it, and got these results: SQLVersion VerNum ----------- ------------ 2000 8.00.2055 (I 2005 9.00.3080.00 2005 9.00.4053.00 2008 10.50.1600.1 As you can see it was good enough for most of the values, but not for the SQL 2000 @@VERSION. You'll notice it has only 3 version sections/octets where the others have 4, and the SUBSTRING() grabbed the non-numeric characters after. To properly parse the version number will require a non-fixed value for the 3rd parameter of SUBSTRING(), which is the number of characters to extract. The best value is the position of the first space to occur after the version number (VN), the trick is to figure out how to find it. Here's where my confusion about PATINDEX() came about. The CHARINDEX() function has a handy optional 3rd parameter: CHARINDEX (expression1 ,expression2 [ ,start_location ] ) While PATINDEX(): PATINDEX ('%pattern%',expression ) Does not. I had expected to use PATINDEX() to start searching for a space AFTER the position of the VN, but it doesn't work that way. Since there are plenty of spaces before the VN, I thought I'd try PATINDEX() on another character that doesn't appear before, and tried "(": SELECT SQLVersion, SUBSTRING(VersionString,PATINDEX('%-%',VersionString)+2, PATINDEX('%(%',VersionString)) FROM VERSION Unfortunately this messes up the length calculation and yields: SQLVersion VerNum ----------- --------------------------- 2000 8.00.2055 (Intel X86) Dec 16 2008 19:4 2005 9.00.3080.00 (Intel X86) Sep 6 2009 01: 2005 9.00.4053.00 (Intel X86) May 26 2009 14: 2008 10.50.1600.1 (Intel X86) Apr 2008 10.50.1600.1 (X64) Apr 2 20 Yuck. The problem is that PATINDEX() returns position, and SUBSTRING() needs length, so I have to subtract the VN starting position: SELECT SQLVersion, SUBSTRING(VersionString,PATINDEX('%-%',VersionString)+2, PATINDEX('%(%',VersionString)-PATINDEX('%-%',VersionString)) VerNum FROM VERSION And the results are: SQLVersion VerNum ----------- -------------------------------------------------------- 2000 8.00.2055 (I 2005 9.00.4053.00 (I Msg 537, Level 16, State 2, Line 1 Invalid length parameter passed to the LEFT or SUBSTRING function. Ummmm, whoops. Turns out SQL Server 2008 R2 includes "(RTM)" before the VN, and that causes the length to turn negative. So now that that blew up, I started to think about matching digit and dot (.) patterns. Sadly, a quick look at the first set of results will quickly scuttle that idea, since different versions have different digit patterns and lengths. At this point (which took far longer than I wanted) I decided to cut my losses and redo the query using CHARINDEX(), which I'll cover in Part 2.2. So to do a little post-mortem on this technique: PATINDEX() doesn't have the flexibility to match the digit pattern of the version number; PATINDEX() doesn't have a "start" parameter like CHARINDEX(), that allows us to skip over parts of the string; The SUBSTRING() expression is getting pretty complicated for this relatively simple task! This doesn't mean that PATINDEX() isn't useful, it's just not a good fit for this particular problem. I'll include a version in the next post that extracts the version number properly. UPDATE: Sorry if you saw the unformatted version of this earlier, I'm on a quest to find blog software that ACTUALLY WORKS.

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ATG Live Webcast June 28: Scrambling Sensitive Data in EBS 12 Cloned Environments

- by BillSawyer

Securing the Oracle E-Business Suite includes protecting the underlying E-Business data in production and non-production databases. While steps can be taken to provide a secure configuration to limit EBS access, a better approach to protecting non-production data is simply to scramble (mask) the data in the non-production copy. The Oracle E-Business Suite Template for Data Masking Pack can be used in situations where confidential or regulated data needs to be shared with other non-production users who need access to some of the original data, but not necessarily every table. Examples of non-production users include internal application developers or external business partners such as offshore testing companies, suppliers or customers. The Oracle E-Business Suite Template for Data Masking Pack is applied to a non-production environment with the Enterprise Manager Grid Control Data Masking Pack. When applied, the Oracle E-Business Suite Template for Data Masking Pack will create an irreversibly scrambled version of your production database for development and testing. This ATG Live Webcast is your chance to come learn about the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3 Template for Data Masking Pack from the experts. Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3 Template for Data Masking The agenda for the Oracle E-Business Suite Template for Data Masking Pack webcast includes the following topics: What does data masking do in E-Business Suite environments? De-identify the data Mask sensitive data Maintain data validity How can EBS customers use data masking? References Join Eric Bing, Senior Director and Elke Phelps, Senior Principal Product Manager, as they discusses the Oracle E-Business Suite Template for Data Masking Pack.Date: Thursday, June 28, 2012Time: 8:00AM Pacific Standard TimePresenters: Eric Bing, Senior Director Elke Phelps, Senior Principal Product ManagerWebcast Registration Link (Preregistration is optional but encouraged) To hear the audio feed: Domestic Participant Dial-In Number: 877-697-8128 International Participant Dial-In Number: 706-634-9568 Additional International Dial-In Numbers Link: Dial-In Passcode: 100865To see the presentation: The Direct Access Web Conference details are: Website URL: https://ouweb.webex.com Meeting Number: 599097152If you miss the webcast, or you have missed any webcast, don't worry -- we'll post links to the recording as soon as it's available from Oracle University. You can monitor this blog for pointers to the replay. And, you can find our archive of our past webcasts and training here.If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email Bill Sawyer (Senior Manager, Applications Technology Curriculum) at BilldotSawyer-AT-Oracle-DOT-com.

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Help me get my 3D camera to look like the ones in RTS

- by rFactor

I am a newbie in 3D game development and I am trying to make a real-time strategy game. I am struggling with the camera currently as I am unable to make it look like they do in RTS games. Here is my Camera.cs class using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; namespace BB { public class Camera : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GameComponent { public Matrix view; public Matrix projection; protected Game game; KeyboardState currentKeyboardState; Vector3 cameraPosition = new Vector3(600.0f, 0.0f, 600.0f); Vector3 cameraForward = new Vector3(0, -0.4472136f, -0.8944272f); BoundingFrustum cameraFrustum = new BoundingFrustum(Matrix.Identity); // Light direction Vector3 lightDir = new Vector3(-0.3333333f, 0.6666667f, 0.6666667f); public Camera(Game game) : base(game) { this.game = game; } public override void Initialize() { this.view = Matrix.CreateLookAt(this.cameraPosition, this.cameraPosition + this.cameraForward, Vector3.Up); this.projection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView(MathHelper.PiOver4, this.game.renderer.aspectRatio, 1, 10000); base.Initialize(); } /* Handles the user input * @ param GameTime gameTime */ private void HandleInput(GameTime gameTime) { float time = (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds; currentKeyboardState = Keyboard.GetState(); } void UpdateCamera(GameTime gameTime) { float time = (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds; // Check for input to rotate the camera. float pitch = 0.0f; float turn = 0.0f; if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Up)) pitch += time * 0.001f; if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Down)) pitch -= time * 0.001f; if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left)) turn += time * 0.001f; if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Right)) turn -= time * 0.001f; Vector3 cameraRight = Vector3.Cross(Vector3.Up, cameraForward); Vector3 flatFront = Vector3.Cross(cameraRight, Vector3.Up); Matrix pitchMatrix = Matrix.CreateFromAxisAngle(cameraRight, pitch); Matrix turnMatrix = Matrix.CreateFromAxisAngle(Vector3.Up, turn); Vector3 tiltedFront = Vector3.TransformNormal(cameraForward, pitchMatrix * turnMatrix); // Check angle so we cant flip over if (Vector3.Dot(tiltedFront, flatFront) > 0.001f) { cameraForward = Vector3.Normalize(tiltedFront); } // Check for input to move the camera around. if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.W)) cameraPosition += cameraForward * time * 0.4f; if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.S)) cameraPosition -= cameraForward * time * 0.4f; if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.A)) cameraPosition += cameraRight * time * 0.4f; if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.D)) cameraPosition -= cameraRight * time * 0.4f; if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.R)) { cameraPosition = new Vector3(0, 50, 50); cameraForward = new Vector3(0, 0, -1); } cameraForward.Normalize(); // Create the new view matrix view = Matrix.CreateLookAt(cameraPosition, cameraPosition + cameraForward, Vector3.Up); // Set the new frustum value cameraFrustum.Matrix = view * projection; } public override void Update(Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GameTime gameTime) { HandleInput(gameTime); UpdateCamera(gameTime); } } } The problem is that the initial view is looking in a horizontal direction. I would like to have an RTS like top down view (but with a slight pitch). Can you help me out?

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How do I get FEATURE_LEVEL_9_3 to work with shaders in Direct3D11?

- by Dominic

Currently I'm going through some tutorials and learning DX11 on a DX10 machine (though I just ordered a new DX11 compatible computer) by means of setting the D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_ setting to 10_0 and switching the vertex and pixel shader versions in D3DX11CompileFromFile to "vs_4_0" and "ps_4_0" respectively. This works fine as I'm not using any DX11-only features yet. I'd like to make it compatible with DX9.0c, which naively I thought I could do by changing the feature level setting to 9_3 or something and taking the vertex/pixel shader versions down to 3 or 2. However, no matter what I change the vertex/pixel shader versions to, it always fails when I try to call D3DX11CompileFromFile to compile the vertex/pixel shader files when I have D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_9_3 enabled. Maybe this is due to the the vertex/pixel shader files themselves being incompatible for the lower vertex/pixel shader versions, but I'm not expert enough to say. My shader files are listed below: Vertex shader: cbuffer MatrixBuffer { matrix worldMatrix; matrix viewMatrix; matrix projectionMatrix; }; struct VertexInputType { float4 position : POSITION; float2 tex : TEXCOORD0; float3 normal : NORMAL; }; struct PixelInputType { float4 position : SV_POSITION; float2 tex : TEXCOORD0; float3 normal : NORMAL; }; PixelInputType LightVertexShader(VertexInputType input) { PixelInputType output; // Change the position vector to be 4 units for proper matrix calculations. input.position.w = 1.0f; // Calculate the position of the vertex against the world, view, and projection matrices. output.position = mul(input.position, worldMatrix); output.position = mul(output.position, viewMatrix); output.position = mul(output.position, projectionMatrix); // Store the texture coordinates for the pixel shader. output.tex = input.tex; // Calculate the normal vector against the world matrix only. output.normal = mul(input.normal, (float3x3)worldMatrix); // Normalize the normal vector. output.normal = normalize(output.normal); return output; } Pixel Shader: Texture2D shaderTexture; SamplerState SampleType; cbuffer LightBuffer { float4 ambientColor; float4 diffuseColor; float3 lightDirection; float padding; }; struct PixelInputType { float4 position : SV_POSITION; float2 tex : TEXCOORD0; float3 normal : NORMAL; }; float4 LightPixelShader(PixelInputType input) : SV_TARGET { float4 textureColor; float3 lightDir; float lightIntensity; float4 color; // Sample the pixel color from the texture using the sampler at this texture coordinate location. textureColor = shaderTexture.Sample(SampleType, input.tex); // Set the default output color to the ambient light value for all pixels. color = ambientColor; // Invert the light direction for calculations. lightDir = -lightDirection; // Calculate the amount of light on this pixel. lightIntensity = saturate(dot(input.normal, lightDir)); if(lightIntensity > 0.0f) { // Determine the final diffuse color based on the diffuse color and the amount of light intensity. color += (diffuseColor * lightIntensity); } // Saturate the final light color. color = saturate(color); // Multiply the texture pixel and the final diffuse color to get the final pixel color result. color = color * textureColor; return color; }

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How to Customize Fonts and Colors for Gnome Panels in Ubuntu Linux

- by The Geek

Earlier this week we showed you how to make the Gnome Panels totally transparent, but you really need some customized fonts and colors to make the effect work better. Here’s how to do it. This article is the first part of a multi-part series on how to customize the Ubuntu desktop, written by How-To Geek reader and ubergeek, Omar Hafiz. Changing the Gnome Colors the Easy Way You’ll first need to install Gnome Color Chooser which is available in the default repositories (the package name is gnome-color-chooser). Then go to System > Preferences > Gnome Color Chooser to launch the program. When you see all these tabs you immediately know that Gnome Color Chooser does not only change the font color of the panel, but also the color of the fonts all over Ubuntu, desktop icons, and many other things as well. Now switch to the panel tab, here you can control every thing about your panels. You can change font, font color, background and background color of the panels and start menus. Tick the “Normal” option and choose the color you want for the panel font. If you want you can change the hover color of the buttons on the panel by too. A little below the color option is the font options, this includes the font, font size, and the X and Y positioning of the font. The first two options are pretty straight forward, they change the typeface and the size. The X-Padding and Y-Padding may confuse you but they are interesting, they may give a nice look for your panels by increasing the space between items on your panel like this: X-Padding: Y-Padding: The bottom half of the window controls the look of your start menus which is the Applications, Places, and Systems menus. You can customize them just the way you did with the panel. Alright, this was the easy way to change the font of your panels. Changing the Gnome Theme Colors the Command-Line Way The other hard (not so hard really) way will be changing the configuration files that tell your panel how it should look like. In your Home Folder, press Ctrl+H to show the hidden files, now find the file “.gtkrc-2.0”, open it and insert this line in it. If there are any other lines in the file leave them intact. include “/home/<username>/.gnome2/panel-fontrc” Don’t forget to replace the <user_name> with you user account name. When done close and save the file. Now navigate the folder “.gnome2” from your Home Folder and create a new file and name it “panel-fontrc”. Open the file you just created with a text editor and paste the following in it: style “my_color”{fg[NORMAL] = “#FF0000”}widget “*PanelWidget*” style “my_color”widget “*PanelApplet*” style “my_color” This text will make the font red. If you want other colors you’ll need to replace the Hex value/HTML Notation (in this case #FF0000) with the value of the color you want. To get the hex value you can use GIMP, Gcolor2 witch is available in the default repositories or you can right-click on your panel > Properties > Background tab then click to choose the color you want and copy the Hex value. Don’t change any other thing in the text. When done, save and close. Now press Alt+F2 and enter “killall gnome-panel” to force it to restart or you can log out and login again. Most of you will prefer the first way of changing the font and color for it’s ease of applying and because it gives you much more options but, some may not have the ability/will to download and install a new program on their machine or have reasons of their own for not to using it, that’s why we provided the two way. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Splendiferous Array of Culinary Tools [Infographic] Add a Real-Time Earth Wallpaper App to Ubuntu with xplanetFX The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker

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Some non-generic collections

- by Simon Cooper

Although the collections classes introduced in .NET 2, 3.5 and 4 cover most scenarios, there are still some .NET 1 collections that don't have generic counterparts. In this post, I'll be examining what they do, why you might use them, and some things you'll need to bear in mind when doing so. BitArray System.Collections.BitArray is conceptually the same as a List<bool>, but whereas List<bool> stores each boolean in a single byte (as that's what the backing bool[] does), BitArray uses a single bit to store each value, and uses various bitmasks to access each bit individually. This means that BitArray is eight times smaller than a List<bool>. Furthermore, BitArray has some useful functions for bitmasks, like And, Xor and Not, and it's not limited to 32 or 64 bits; a BitArray can hold as many bits as you need. However, it's not all roses and kittens. There are some fundamental limitations you have to bear in mind when using BitArray: It's a non-generic collection. The enumerator returns object (a boxed boolean), rather than an unboxed bool. This means that if you do this: foreach (bool b in bitArray) { ... } Every single boolean value will be boxed, then unboxed. And if you do this: foreach (var b in bitArray) { ... } you'll have to manually unbox b on every iteration, as it'll come out of the enumerator an object. Instead, you should manually iterate over the collection using a for loop: for (int i=0; i<bitArray.Length; i++) { bool b = bitArray[i]; ... } Following on from that, if you want to use BitArray in the context of an IEnumerable<bool>, ICollection<bool> or IList<bool>, you'll need to write a wrapper class, or use the Enumerable.Cast<bool> extension method (although Cast would box and unbox every value you get out of it). There is no Add or Remove method. You specify the number of bits you need in the constructor, and that's what you get. You can change the length yourself using the Length property setter though. It doesn't implement IList. Although not really important if you're writing a generic wrapper around it, it is something to bear in mind if you're using it with pre-generic code. However, if you use BitArray carefully, it can provide significant gains over a List<bool> for functionality and efficiency of space. OrderedDictionary System.Collections.Specialized.OrderedDictionary does exactly what you would expect - it's an IDictionary that maintains items in the order they are added. It does this by storing key/value pairs in a Hashtable (to get O(1) key lookup) and an ArrayList (to maintain the order). You can access values by key or index, and insert or remove items at a particular index. The enumerator returns items in index order. However, the Keys and Values properties return ICollection, not IList, as you might expect; CopyTo doesn't maintain the same ordering, as it copies from the backing Hashtable, not ArrayList; and any operations that insert or remove items from the middle of the collection are O(n), just like a normal list. In short; don't use this class. If you need some sort of ordered dictionary, it would be better to write your own generic dictionary combining a Dictionary<TKey, TValue> and List<KeyValuePair<TKey, TValue>> or List<TKey> for your specific situation. ListDictionary and HybridDictionary To look at why you might want to use ListDictionary or HybridDictionary, we need to examine the performance of these dictionaries compared to Hashtable and Dictionary<object, object>. For this test, I added n items to each collection, then randomly accessed n/2 items: So, what's going on here? Well, ListDictionary is implemented as a linked list of key/value pairs; all operations on the dictionary require an O(n) search through the list. However, for small n, the constant factor that big-o notation doesn't measure is much lower than the hashing overhead of Hashtable or Dictionary. HybridDictionary combines a Hashtable and ListDictionary; for small n, it uses a backing ListDictionary, but switches to a Hashtable when it gets to 9 items (you can see the point it switches from a ListDictionary to Hashtable in the graph). Apart from that, it's got very similar performance to Hashtable. So why would you want to use either of these? In short, you wouldn't. Any gain in performance by using ListDictionary over Dictionary<TKey, TValue> would be offset by the generic dictionary not having to cast or box the items you store, something the graphs above don't measure. Only if the performance of the dictionary is vital, the dictionary will hold less than 30 items, and you don't need type safety, would you use ListDictionary over the generic Dictionary. And even then, there's probably more useful performance gains you can make elsewhere.

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Computing a normal matrix in conjunction with gluLookAt

- by Chris Smith

I have a hand-rolled camera class that converts yaw, pitch, and roll angles into a forward, side, and up vector suitable for calling gluLookAt. Using this camera class I can modify the model-view matrix to move about the 3D world just fine. However, I am having trouble when using this camera class (and associated model-view matrix) when trying to perform directional lighting in my vertex shader. The problem is that the light direction, (0, 1, 0) for example, is relative to where the 'camera is looking' and not the actual world coordinates. (Or is this eye coordinates vs. model coordinates?) I would like the light direction to be unaffected by the camera's viewing direction. For example, when the camera is looking down the Z axis the ground is lit correctly. However, if I point the camera straight at the ground, then it goes dark. This is (I think) because the light direction is parallel with the camera's 'up' vector which is perpendicular with the ground's normal vector. I tried computing the normal matrix without taking the camera's model view into account, but then none of my objects were rotated correctly. Sorry if this sounds vague. I suspect there is a straight forward answer, but I'm not 100% clear on how the normal matrix should be used for transforming vertex normals in my vertex shader. For reference, here is pseudo code for my rendering loop: pMatrix = new Matrix(); pMatrix = makePerspective(...) mvMatrix = new Matrix() camera.apply(mvMatrix); // Calls gluLookAt // Move the object into position. mvMatrix.translatev(position); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.x, 1, 0, 0); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.y, 0, 1, 0); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.z, 0, 0, 1); var nMatrix = new Matrix(); nMatrix.set(mvMatrix.get().getInverse().getTranspose()); // Set vertex shader uniforms. gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.pMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(pMatrix.getFlattened())); gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.mvMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(mvMatrix.getFlattened())); gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.nMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(nMatrix.getFlattened())); // ... gl.drawElements(gl.TRIANGLES, this.vertexIndexBuffer.numItems, gl.UNSIGNED_SHORT, 0); And the corresponding vertex shader: // Attributes attribute vec3 aVertexPosition; attribute vec4 aVertexColor; attribute vec3 aVertexNormal; // Uniforms uniform mat4 uMVMatrix; uniform mat4 uNMatrix; uniform mat4 uPMatrix; // Varyings varying vec4 vColor; // Constants const vec3 LIGHT_DIRECTION = vec3(0, 1, 0); // Opposite direction of photons. const vec4 AMBIENT_COLOR = vec4 (0.2, 0.2, 0.2, 1.0); float ComputeLighting() { vec4 transformedNormal = vec4(aVertexNormal.xyz, 1.0); transformedNormal = uNMatrix * transformedNormal; float base = dot(normalize(transformedNormal.xyz), normalize(LIGHT_DIRECTION)); return max(base, 0.0); } void main(void) { gl_Position = uPMatrix * uMVMatrix * vec4(aVertexPosition, 1.0); float lightWeight = ComputeLighting(); vColor = vec4(aVertexColor.xyz * lightWeight, 1.0) + AMBIENT_COLOR; } Note that I am using WebGL, so if the anser is use glFixThisProblem(...) any pointers on how to re-implement that on WebGL if missing would be appreciated.

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Move a sphere along the swipe?

- by gameOne

I am trying to get a sphere curl based on the swipe. I know this has been asked many times, but still it's yearning to be answered. I have managed to add force on the direction of the swipe and it works near perfect. I also have all the swipe positions stored in a list. Now I would like to know how can the curl be achieved. I believe the the curve in the swipe can be calculated by the Vector dot product If theta is 0, then there is no need to add the swipe. If it is not, then add the curl. Maybe this condition is redundant if I managed to find how to curl the sphere along the swipe position The code that adds the force to sphere based on the swipe direction is as below: using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Generic; public class SwipeControl : MonoBehaviour { //First establish some variables private Vector3 fp; //First finger position private Vector3 lp; //Last finger position private Vector3 ip; //some intermediate finger position private float dragDistance; //Distance needed for a swipe to register public float power; private Vector3 footballPos; private bool canShoot = true; private float factor = 40f; private List<Vector3> touchPositions = new List<Vector3>(); void Start(){ dragDistance = Screen.height*20/100; Physics.gravity = new Vector3(0, -20, 0); footballPos = transform.position; } // Update is called once per frame void Update() { //Examine the touch inputs foreach (Touch touch in Input.touches) { /*if (touch.phase == TouchPhase.Began) { fp = touch.position; lp = touch.position; }*/ if (touch.phase == TouchPhase.Moved) { touchPositions.Add(touch.position); } if (touch.phase == TouchPhase.Ended) { fp = touchPositions[0]; lp = touchPositions[touchPositions.Count-1]; ip = touchPositions[touchPositions.Count/2]; //First check if it's actually a drag if (Mathf.Abs(lp.x - fp.x) > dragDistance || Mathf.Abs(lp.y - fp.y) > dragDistance) { //It's a drag //Now check what direction the drag was //First check which axis if (Mathf.Abs(lp.x - fp.x) > Mathf.Abs(lp.y - fp.y)) { //If the horizontal movement is greater than the vertical movement... if ((lp.x>fp.x) && canShoot) //If the movement was to the right) { //Right move float x = (lp.x - fp.x) / Screen.height * factor; rigidbody.AddForce((new Vector3(x,10,16))*power); Debug.Log("right "+(lp.x-fp.x));//MOVE RIGHT CODE HERE canShoot = false; //rigidbody.AddForce((new Vector3((lp.x-fp.x)/30,10,16))*power); StartCoroutine(ReturnBall()); } else { //Left move float x = (lp.x - fp.x) / Screen.height * factor; rigidbody.AddForce((new Vector3(x,10,16))*power); Debug.Log("left "+(lp.x-fp.x));//MOVE LEFT CODE HERE canShoot = false; //rigidbody.AddForce(new Vector3((lp.x-fp.x)/30,10,16)*power); StartCoroutine(ReturnBall()); } } else { //the vertical movement is greater than the horizontal movement if (lp.y>fp.y) //If the movement was up { //Up move float y = (lp.y-fp.y)/Screen.height*factor; float x = (lp.x - fp.x) / Screen.height * factor; rigidbody.AddForce((new Vector3(x,y,16))*power); Debug.Log("up "+(lp.x-fp.x));//MOVE UP CODE HERE canShoot = false; //rigidbody.AddForce(new Vector3((lp.x-fp.x)/30,10,16)*power); StartCoroutine(ReturnBall()); } else { //Down move Debug.Log("down "+lp+" "+fp);//MOVE DOWN CODE HERE } } } else { //It's a tap Debug.Log("none");//TAP CODE HERE } } } } IEnumerator ReturnBall() { yield return new WaitForSeconds(5.0f); rigidbody.velocity = Vector3.zero; rigidbody.angularVelocity = Vector3.zero; transform.position = footballPos; canShoot =true; isKicked = false; } }

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