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• SQL Spatial: Getting “nearest” calculations working properly

  - by Rob Farley

  If you’ve ever done spatial work with SQL Server, I hope you’ve come across the ‘nearest’ problem. You have five thousand stores around the world, and you want to identify the one that’s closest to a particular place. Maybe you want the store closest to the LobsterPot office in Adelaide, at -34.925806, 138.605073. Or our new US office, at 42.524929, -87.858244. Or maybe both! You know how to do this. You don’t want to use an aggregate MIN or MAX, because you want the whole row, telling you which store it is. You want to use TOP, and if you want to find the closest store for multiple locations, you use APPLY. Let’s do this (but I’m going to use addresses in AdventureWorks2012, as I don’t have a list of stores). Oh, and before I do, let’s make sure we have a spatial index in place. I’m going to use the default options. CREATE SPATIAL INDEX spin_Address ON Person.Address(SpatialLocation); And my actual query: WITH MyLocations AS (SELECT * FROM (VALUES ('LobsterPot Adelaide', geography::Point(-34.925806, 138.605073, 4326)),                        ('LobsterPot USA', geography::Point(42.524929, -87.858244, 4326))                ) t (Name, Geo)) SELECT l.Name, a.AddressLine1, a.City, s.Name AS [State], c.Name AS Country FROM MyLocations AS l CROSS APPLY (     SELECT TOP (1) *     FROM Person.Address AS ad     ORDER BY l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation)     ) AS a JOIN Person.StateProvince AS s     ON s.StateProvinceID = a.StateProvinceID JOIN Person.CountryRegion AS c     ON c.CountryRegionCode = s.CountryRegionCode ; Great! This is definitely working. I know both those City locations, even if the AddressLine1s don’t quite ring a bell. I’m sure I’ll be able to find them next time I’m in the area. But of course what I’m concerned about from a querying perspective is what’s happened behind the scenes – the execution plan. This isn’t pretty. It’s not using my index. It’s sucking every row out of the Address table TWICE (which sucks), and then it’s sorting them by the distance to find the smallest one. It’s not pretty, and it takes a while. Mind you, I do like the fact that it saw an indexed view it could use for the State and Country details – that’s pretty neat. But yeah – users of my nifty website aren’t going to like how long that query takes. The frustrating thing is that I know that I can use the index to find locations that are within a particular distance of my locations quite easily, and Microsoft recommends this for solving the ‘nearest’ problem, as described at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/library/ff929109.aspx. Now, in the first example on this page, it says that the query there will use the spatial index. But when I run it on my machine, it does nothing of the sort. I’m not particularly impressed. But what we see here is that parallelism has kicked in. In my scenario, it’s split the data up into 4 threads, but it’s still slow, and not using my index. It’s disappointing. But I can persuade it with hints! If I tell it to FORCESEEK, or use my index, or even turn off the parallelism with MAXDOP 1, then I get the index being used, and it’s a thing of beauty! Part of the plan is here: It’s massive, and it’s ugly, and it uses a TVF… but it’s quick. The way it works is to hook into the GeodeticTessellation function, which is essentially finds where the point is, and works out through the spatial index cells that surround it. This then provides a framework to be able to see into the spatial index for the items we want. You can read more about it at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb895265.aspx#tessellation – including a bunch of pretty diagrams. One of those times when we have a much more complex-looking plan, but just because of the good that’s going on. This tessellation stuff was introduced in SQL Server 2012. But my query isn’t using it. When I try to use the FORCESEEK hint on the Person.Address table, I get the friendly error: Msg 8622, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Query processor could not produce a query plan because of the hints defined in this query. Resubmit the query without specifying any hints and without using SET FORCEPLAN. And I’m almost tempted to just give up and move back to the old method of checking increasingly large circles around my location. After all, I can even leverage multiple OUTER APPLY clauses just like I did in my recent Lookup post. WITH MyLocations AS (SELECT * FROM (VALUES ('LobsterPot Adelaide', geography::Point(-34.925806, 138.605073, 4326)),                        ('LobsterPot USA', geography::Point(42.524929, -87.858244, 4326))                ) t (Name, Geo)) SELECT     l.Name,     COALESCE(a1.AddressLine1,a2.AddressLine1,a3.AddressLine1),     COALESCE(a1.City,a2.City,a3.City),     s.Name AS [State],     c.Name AS Country FROM MyLocations AS l OUTER APPLY (     SELECT TOP (1) *     FROM Person.Address AS ad     WHERE l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation) < 1000     ORDER BY l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation)     ) AS a1 OUTER APPLY (     SELECT TOP (1) *     FROM Person.Address AS ad     WHERE l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation) < 5000     AND a1.AddressID IS NULL     ORDER BY l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation)     ) AS a2 OUTER APPLY (     SELECT TOP (1) *     FROM Person.Address AS ad     WHERE l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation) < 20000     AND a2.AddressID IS NULL     ORDER BY l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation)     ) AS a3 JOIN Person.StateProvince AS s     ON s.StateProvinceID = COALESCE(a1.StateProvinceID,a2.StateProvinceID,a3.StateProvinceID) JOIN Person.CountryRegion AS c     ON c.CountryRegionCode = s.CountryRegionCode ; But this isn’t friendly-looking at all, and I’d use the method recommended by Isaac Kunen, who uses a table of numbers for the expanding circles. It feels old-school though, when I’m dealing with SQL 2012 (and later) versions. So why isn’t my query doing what it’s supposed to? Remember the query... WITH MyLocations AS (SELECT * FROM (VALUES ('LobsterPot Adelaide', geography::Point(-34.925806, 138.605073, 4326)),                        ('LobsterPot USA', geography::Point(42.524929, -87.858244, 4326))                ) t (Name, Geo)) SELECT l.Name, a.AddressLine1, a.City, s.Name AS [State], c.Name AS Country FROM MyLocations AS l CROSS APPLY (     SELECT TOP (1) *     FROM Person.Address AS ad     ORDER BY l.Geo.STDistance(ad.SpatialLocation)     ) AS a JOIN Person.StateProvince AS s     ON s.StateProvinceID = a.StateProvinceID JOIN Person.CountryRegion AS c     ON c.CountryRegionCode = s.CountryRegionCode ; Well, I just wasn’t reading http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff929109.aspx properly. The following requirements must be met for a Nearest Neighbor query to use a spatial index: A spatial index must be present on one of the spatial columns and the STDistance() method must use that column in the WHERE and ORDER BY clauses. The TOP clause cannot contain a PERCENT statement. The WHERE clause must contain a STDistance() method. If there are multiple predicates in the WHERE clause then the predicate containing STDistance() method must be connected by an AND conjunction to the other predicates. The STDistance() method cannot be in an optional part of the WHERE clause. The first expression in the ORDER BY clause must use the STDistance() method. Sort order for the first STDistance() expression in the ORDER BY clause must be ASC. All the rows for which STDistance returns NULL must be filtered out. Let’s start from the top. 1. Needs a spatial index on one of the columns that’s in the STDistance call. Yup, got the index. 2. No ‘PERCENT’. Yeah, I don’t have that. 3. The WHERE clause needs to use STDistance(). Ok, but I’m not filtering, so that should be fine. 4. Yeah, I don’t have multiple predicates. 5. The first expression in the ORDER BY is my distance, that’s fine. 6. Sort order is ASC, because otherwise we’d be starting with the ones that are furthest away, and that’s tricky. 7. All the rows for which STDistance returns NULL must be filtered out. But I don’t have any NULL values, so that shouldn’t affect me either. ...but something’s wrong. I do actually need to satisfy #3. And I do need to make sure #7 is being handled properly, because there are some situations (eg, differing SRIDs) where STDistance can return NULL. It says so at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb933808.aspx – “STDistance() always returns null if the spatial reference IDs (SRIDs) of the geography instances do not match.” So if I simply make sure that I’m filtering out the rows that return NULL… …then it’s blindingly fast, I get the right results, and I’ve got the complex-but-brilliant plan that I wanted. It just wasn’t overly intuitive, despite being documented. @rob_farley

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• Looking Back at MIX10

  - by WeigeltRo

  It’s the sad truth of my life that even though I’m fascinated by airplanes and flight in general since my childhood days, my body doesn’t like flying. Even the ridiculously short flights inside Germany are taking their toll on me each time. Now combine this with sitting in the cramped space of economy class for many hours on a transatlantic flight from Germany to Las Vegas and back, and factor in some heavy dose of jet lag (especially on my way eastwards), and you get an idea why after coming back home I had this question on my mind: Was it really worth it to attend MIX10? This of course is a question that will also be asked by my boss at Comma Soft (for other reasons, obviously), who decided to send me and my colleague Jens Schaller, to the MIX10 conference. (A note to my German readers: An dieser Stelle der Hinweis, dass Comma Soft noch Silverlight-Entwickler und/oder UI-Designer für den Standort Bonn sucht – aussagekräftige Bewerbungen bitte an [email protected]) Too keep things short: My answer is yes. Before I’ll go into detail, let me ask the heretical questions whether tech conferences in general still make sense. There was a time, where actually being at a tech conference gave you a head-start in regard to learning about new technologies. Nowadays this is no longer true, where every bit of information and every detail is immediately twittered, blogged and whatevered to death. In the case of MIX10 you even can download the video-taped sessions shortly after. So: Does visiting a conference still make sense? It depends on what you expect from a conference. It should be clear to everybody that you’ll neither get exclusive information, nor receive training in a small group. What a conference does offer that sitting in front of your computer does not can be summarized as follows: Focus Being away from work and home will help you to focus on the presented information. Of course there are always the poor guys who are haunted by their work (with mails and short text messages reporting the latest showstopper problem), but in general being out of your office makes a huge difference. Inspiration With the focus comes the emotional involvement. I find it much easier to absorb information if I feel that certain vibe when sitting in a session. This still means that I have put work into reviewing the information later, but it’s a better starting point. And all the impressions collected at a (good) conference combined lead to a higher motivation – be it by the buzz (“this is gonna be sooo cool!”) or by the fear to fall behind (“man, we’ll have work on this, or else…”). People At a conference it’s pretty easy to get into contact with other people during breakfast, lunch and other breaks. This is a good opportunity to get a feel for what other development teams are doing (on a very general level of course, nobody will tell you about their secret formula) and what they are thinking about specific technologies. So MIX10 did offer focus, inspiration and people, but that would have meant nothing without valuable content. When I (being a frontend developer with a strong interest in UI/UX) planned my visit to MIX10, I made the decision to focus on the "soft" topics of design, interaction and user experience. I figured that I would be bombarded with all the technical details about Silverlight 4 anyway in the weeks and months to come. Actually, I would have liked to catch a few technical sessions, but the agenda wasn’t exactly in favor of people interested in any kind of Silverlight and UI/UX/Design topics. That’s one of my few complaints about the conference – I would have liked one more day and/or more sessions per day. Overall, the quality of the workshops and sessions was pretty high. In fact, looking back at my collection of conferences I’ve visited in the past I’d say that MIX10 ranks somewhere near the top spot. Here’s an overview of the workshops/sessions I attended (I’ll leave out the keynotes): Day 0 (Workshops on Sunday) Design Fundamentals for Developers Robby Ingebretsen is the man! Great workshop in three parts with the perfect mix of examples, well-structured definition of terminology and the right dose of humor. Robby was part of the WPF team before founding his own company so he not only has a strong interest in design (and the skillz!) but also the technical background.   Design Tools and Techniques Originally announced to be held by Arturo Toledo, the Rosso brothers from ArcheType filled in for the first two parts, and Corrina Black had a pretty general part about the Windows Phone UI. The first two thirds were a mixed bag; the two guys definitely knew what they were talking about, and the demos were great, but the talk lacked the preparation and polish of a truly great presentation. Corrina was not allowed to go into too much detail before the keynote on Monday, but the session was still very interesting as it showed how much thought went into the Windows Phone UI (and there’s always a lot to learn when people talk about their thought process). Day 1 (Monday) Designing Rich Experiences for Data-Centric Applications I wonder whether there was ever a test-run for this session, but what Ken Azuma and Yoshihiro Saito delivered in the first 15 minutes of a 30-minutes-session made me walk out. A commercial for a product (just great: a video showing a SharePoint plug-in in an all-Japanese UI) combined with the most generic blah blah one could imagine. EPIC FAIL.   Great User Experiences: Seamlessly Blending Technology & Design I switched to this session from the one above but I guess I missed the interesting part – what I did catch was what looked like a “look at the cool stuff we did” without being helpful. Or maybe I was just in a bad mood after the other session.   The Art, Technology and Science of Reading This talk by Kevin Larson was very interesting, but was more a presentation of what Microsoft is doing in research (pretty impressive) and in the end lacked a bit the helpful advice one could have hoped for.   10 Ways to Attack a Design Problem and Come Out Winning Robby Ingebretsen again, and again a great mix of theory and practice. The clean and simple, yet effective, UI of the reader app resulted in a simultaneous “wow” of Jens and me. If you’d watch only one session video, this should be it. Microsoft has to bring Robby back next year! Day 2 (Tuesday) Touch in Public: Multi-touch Interaction Design for Kiosks & Architectural Experiences Very interesting session by Jason Brush, a great inspiration with many details to look out for in the examples. Exactly what I was hoping for – and then some!   Designing Bing: Heart and Science How hard can it be to design the UI for a search engine? An input field and a list of results, that should be it, right? Well, not so fast! The talk by Paul Ray showed the many iterations to finally get it right (up to the choice of a specific blue for the links). And yes, I want an eye-tracking device to play around with!   The Elephant in the Room When Nishant Kothary presented a long list of what his session was not about, I told to myself (not having the description text present) “Am I in the wrong talk? Should I leave?”. Boy, was I wrong. A great talk about human factors in the process of designing stuff.   An Hour with Bill Buxton Having seen Bill Buxton’s presentation in the keynote, I just had to see this man again – even though I didn’t know what to expect. Being more or less unplanned and intended to be more of a conversation, the session didn’t provide a wealth of immediately useful information. Nevertheless Bill Buxton was impressive with his huge knowledge of seemingly everything. But this could/should have been a session some when in the evening and not in parallel to at least two other interesting talks. Day 3 (Wednesday) Design the Ordinary, Like the Fixie This session by DL Byron and Kevin Tamura started really well and brought across the message to keep things simple. But towards the end the talk lost some of its steam. And, as a member of the audience pointed out, they kind of ignored their own advice when they used a fancy presentation software other then PowerPoint that sometimes got in the way of showing things.   Developing Natural User Interfaces Speaking of alternative presentation software, Joshua Blake definitely had the most remarkable alternative to PowerPoint, a self-written program called NaturalShow that was controlled using multi-touch on a touch screen. Not a PowerPoint-killer, but impressive nevertheless. The (excellent) talk itself was kind of eye-opening in regard to what “multi-touch support” on various platforms (WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone) actually means.   Treat your Content Right The talk by Tiffani Jones Brown wasn’t even on my planned schedule, but somehow I ended up in that session – and it was great. And even for people who don’t necessarily have to write content for websites, some points made by Tiffani are valid in many places, notably wherever you put texts with more than a single word into your UI. Creating Effective Info Viz in Microsoft Silverlight The last session of MIX10 I attended was kind of disappointing. At first things were very promising, with Matthias Shapiro giving a brief but well-structured introduction to info graphics and interactive visualizations. Then the live-coding began and while the result was interesting, too much time was spend on wrestling to get the code working. Ending earlier than planned, the talk was a bit light on actual content, but at least it included a nice list of resources. Conclusion It could be felt all across MIX10, UIs will take a huge leap forward; in fact, there are enough examples that have already. People who both have the technical know-how and at least a basic understanding of design (“literacy” as Bill Buxton called it) are in high demand. The concept of the MIX conference and initiatives like design.toolbox shows that Microsoft understands very well that frontend developers have to acquire new knowledge besides knowing how to hack code and putting buttons on a form. There are extremely exciting times before us, with lots of opportunity for those who are eager to develop their skills, that is for sure.

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• How to Remote View and Control Your Android Phone

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  If you’ve ever wished you could see your Android phone’s screen on your desktop or remote control it using your mouse and keyboard we’ll show you how in this simple guide to gaining remote access to your Android device. Why would you want to gain access? When you’re done with this tutorial you’ll be able to view your phone’s screen on your computer monitor which is great for: putting your Android notifications right along side other notification boxes on your monitor, using it like an on-monitor caller ID, and taking screenshots and screencasts. Also if your phone is rooted (and it should be! rooting unlocks so many great features) you’ll gain the ability to use your computer’s keyboard and mouse to control your Android phone. Remote keyboard/mouse control is great for inputting data on the tiny screen without needing to peck at the on-screen keyboard. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC RGB? CMYK? Alpha? What Are Image Channels and What Do They Mean? How to Recover that Photo, Picture or File You Deleted Accidentally How To Colorize Black and White Vintage Photographs in Photoshop How To Get SSH Command-Line Access to Windows 7 Using Cygwin The How-To Geek Video Guide to Using Windows 7 Speech Recognition How To Create Your Own Custom ASCII Art from Any Image Google Cloud Print Extension Lets You Print Doc/PDF/Txt Files from Web Sites Hack a $10 Flashlight into an Ultra-bright Premium One Firefox Personas Arrive on Firefox Mobile Focus Booster Is a Sleek and Free Productivity Timer What is the Internet? From the Today Show January 1994 [Historical Video] Take Screenshots and Edit Them in Chrome and Iron Using Aviary Screen Capture

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• printable PHP manual - 'all but the Function Reference section'

  - by JW01

  My Motivation I find it easier to learn things by reading 'offline'. I'd like to lean back and read the narrative part of a paper version of the official php manual. My Scuppered Plan My plan was to download the manual, print all but the Function Reference section and then read it. I have downloaded the "Single HTML file" version of the manual from the php.net download page. (That version did not contain any images, so I patched-in the ones from the Many HTML files version with no problem.) My plan was to open that "Single HTML file" in an HTML editor, delete the Function Reference section then print it out. Unfortunately, although I have tried three different editors, I have not been able to successfully load-up that massive html file to be able to edit it. Its about (~40MB). I started to look into the phpdoc framework with a view to rendering my own html docs from the source...but that's a steep learning curve for a newby..and is a last resort. I would use a file splitter, but they tend to split files crudely with no regard for html/xml/xhtml sematics. So the question is... Does anyone know know where you can download the php manual in a version that is a kind of half-way house between the 'Single HTML file' and the 'Many HTML files'? Ideally with the docs split into 3 parts: File 1 - stuff before the function reference File 2 - function reference File 3 - stuff after the function reference Or Can you suggest any editors/tools will enable me to split up this file myself?

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• Lubuntu Stability Problems

  - by marinara

  I installed Lubuntu 11.10 from scratch a few days ago, now I can't even run aptitude without crashing from the mess it's made of the package system. (yes I added a non-offical repository, because I needed firefox 8) I'm a new user. So I don't know. Did I make a mistake by loading Lubuntu? I really like the LXDE stuff. but so many things seem very buggy. ***edit I think besides the sound problems, all of my other problems are with either LXDE or with openbox. And I think the sound problem is Lubuntu specific also. Problems like windows not popping up, windows not getting painted. Windows flashing in the panel for no reason, Windows losing their title bar occasionally, mousewheel changing desktops when i'm clearly in a window, LXDE panel not responding to clicks, applications not launching from the menu, applications not launching from firefox downloads window, applications crashing when I don't do anything but click on them. Pretty sure all this stuff is openbox or LXDE. This is just too much work to keep Lubuntu running. It's a lemon. (sorry I realize I should be constructive but I'm tired) It's pretty clear that openbox needs some damn bugfixes for compatibility with Oneric. And LXDE isn't that great either. I expect things to launch when I click on them. I think installing the acpid package is what made it clear to me. If 20 seconds after installing the package (from the offical repo), linux has already crashed, then I'm in the wrong damn neighborhood.

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• Daylight Saving Time Visualized

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  When you map out the Daylight Saving Time adjusted sunrise and sunset times over the course of the year, an interesting pattern emerges. Chart designer Germanium writes: I tried to come up with the reason for the daylight saving time change by just looking at the data for sunset and sunrise times. The figure represents sunset and sunrise times thought the year. It shows that the daylight saving time change marked by the lines (DLS) is keeping the sunrise time pretty much constant throughout the whole year, while making the sunset time change a lot. The spread of sunrise times as measured by the standard deviation is 42 minutes, which means that the sunrise time changes within that range the whole year, while the standard deviation for the sunset times is 1:30 hours. Whatever the argument for doing this is, it’s pretty clear that reason is to keep the sunrise time constant. You can read more about the controversial history of Daylight Saving Time here. Daylight Saving Time Explained [via Cool Infographics] 6 Ways Windows 8 Is More Secure Than Windows 7 HTG Explains: Why It’s Good That Your Computer’s RAM Is Full 10 Awesome Improvements For Desktop Users in Windows 8

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• Please help me, I need some solid career advice, put myself in a dumb situation

  - by Kevin

  Hi, First off, I just want to say thank you in advance for looking at my question and would really value your input on this subject. My core question is how do I proceed from the following predicament. I will be honest with you, I wasted my College Experience. I slacked off and didn't take any of my comp sci classes that seriously, somehow i still got out with a 3.25 GPA. But truth be told I learned nothing. I befriended most of my professors who went pretty lenient on me in terms of grading. However, I basically came out of College knowing how to program a simple calculator in VB.Net. I was (to my great surprise) hired by a very large respected company in Denver as a Junior developer. Well the long and the short of it is that I knew so little about programming that I quickly became the office pariah and was almost fired due to my incompetence. It has been 8 months now and I feel I have learned some basic things and I am not as picked on as I used to be by the other developers. However, everyone hates me and the first few months have given the other developers a horrible perception of me. I am no longer afraid of code or learning, but I have put my self in the precarious position of being the scapegoat of our department. I hate going to work every day because no one there is my friend and pretty much everyone is hostile to me. What should I do? Any advice?

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• How to install Canon MP610 printer on Ubuntu 12.04 x64

  - by Arkadius

  I installed Ubuntu 12.04 x64. Orginal Canon drivers are only for 32-bit version. How can I install this printer in 64-bit version ? Arkadius HERE IS SOLUTION I looked for solution some time and finally found it. First I try to do it by adding repository like it is written here: http://www.iheartubuntu.com/2012/02/install-canon-printer-for-ubuntu-linux.html BUT it did NOT work. Printer was installed but every print JOB goes somewhere ( probably to /dev/null :) ) Also installing sudo apt-get install ia32-libs did NOT worked (it was already installed) Finally I found solution. NOTE I did NOT use orginal Canon drivers for 32-bit. I also removed drivers from repository: ppa:michael-gruz/canon I found solution almost at the end of this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1967725&page=10 Most important hint was found in Response #97 "Do NOT install any PPA" I did as follows: Removed all copies of my printer Removed Canon drivers from repository ppa:michael-gruz/canon sudo apt-get remove cnijfilter* Added new repository and installed CUPS for Canon: sudo apt-add-repository ppa:robbiew/cups-bjnp sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install cups-bjnp Installed Gutenprint: sudo apt-get install printer-driver-gutenprint Restarted CUPS: sudo restart cups Add myself to group lp: sudo usermod -G lp -a your_user_name Added printer usings steps from link above: Don't install any PPA for the drivers. Click the Cog up in the right-hand corner and select Printers. Turn on the printer and make sure it is connected. When the Printers windows appears, click +Add and wait a few minutes. Your printer should appear within the configuration wizard. Mine did and its an Canon MX330. Click the defaults and continue on. Cups should identify your printer. I saw a few other models in the list. I was able to successfully print a test page afterwards. I hope this will also help someone else. Arkadius .

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• Tips on combining the right Art Assets with a 2D Skeleton and making it flexible

  - by DevilWithin

  I am on my first attempt to build a skeletal animation system for 2D side-scrollers, so I don't really have experience of what may appear in later stages. So i ask advice from anyone that been there and done that! My approach: I built a Tree structure, the root node is like the center-of-mass of the skeleton, allowing to apply global transformations to the skeleton. Then, i make the hierarchy of the bones, so when moving a leg, the foot also moves. (I also make a Joint, which connects two bones, for utility). I load animations to it from a simple key frame lerp, so it does smooth movement. I map the animation hierarchy to the skeleton, or a part of it, to see if the structure is alike, otherwise the animation doesnt start. I think this is pretty much a standard implementation for such a thing, even if i want to convert it to a Rag Doll on the fly.. Now to my question: Imagine a game like prototype, there is a skeleton animation of the main character, which can animate all meshes in the game that are rigged the same way.. That way the character can transform into anything without any extra code. That is pretty much what i want to do for a side-scroller, in theory it sounds easy, but I want to know if that will work well. If the different people will be decently animated when using the same skeleton-animation pair. I can see this working well with a Stickman, but what about actual humans? Will the perspective look right, or i will need to dynamically change the sprites attached to bones? What do you recommend for such a system?

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• release management system - architectural question

  - by Sonic Soul

  Every place i've worked created their own release process, and all of them worked pretty well, however it took pretty good effort (and often a dedicated team) to manage releases. I am currently at a new place, and about to design such a system, however this time the team is very lean and we won't have dedicated resources to releasing. It will be up to development manager until the system is proofed enough for other developers to use. we're using Subversion as code repository, Team City as the build server, Jira issue tracker, Oracle db. I was thinking about writing a basic workflow app, that will let developers create a new manifest which will specify the following items. release details (who, jira issues etc) workflow step (dev, test, uat, prod approved, prod released) source files that last item is where it can get hairy. especially with database scripts. Figured I'd ask if there is a good pattern, or off the shelf product that could help with the database part, or perhaps the whole process. I briefly tested Red Gate Oracle deployment tool, but it didn't work out as well as I had hoped (from 1 day of testing at least) Questions: I think I could get around releasing of our code with something like Octopus Deploy straight from Team City. I am not clear however, how I could create a simple database deployment part, that will track which version of which script (from subversion) has been deployed where. Is there already some utility I could utilize for navigating subversion to choose which scripts should be released, instead of writing one from scratch. I'd just need it to produce some manifest of paths + versions.

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• Minecraft-style player-gound collision detection

  - by khyperia

  The title pretty much says it all... (Minecraft is a game consisting of evenly-spaced cubes for terrain, like voxels) Note: I am using C# XNA. I am pretty sure AABB is the way to go, yet I don't know how to implement it. I admit, I'm almost looking for code, but theories/ideas are very welcome. Important capabilities of my code: I have a function that can get a block anywhere in the world, and get a BoundingBox for that cube. Hence, I have created a BoundingBox for the player to collide with those cubes. My idea was to get the blocks around the player (maybe 4x6x4) and test against those. The problems I have been having: Say the world is a flat plane. If I use the method of go the shortest distance out, then if the player is slightly clipped into the ground (from gravity), but even slighter into the next block over, then the player will be pushed sideways (and so cannot walk along ground). Of course, this is assuming I react to every block intersected. Another problem is knowing which direction to go (aka negative x or positive). That takes me to my final problem- Getting the amount of intersection, in the correct direction (+ or -) has been tough for me. I hope I haven't been too hard to understand, I'm not too good at explaining things... And if this question has already been asked, I'm sorry, I looked for it... for 3 days straight. One last thing, if someone knows exactly how minecraft does it, or has source (I know MC modders have the source, how else would they mod), please point me to it.

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• Searching Your PL/SQL Source with Oracle SQL Developer

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Version 3.2.1 included a few tweaks along with several hundred bug fixes. One of those tweaks was the addition of ‘ALL_SOURCE’ as a selection for the Type drop down in the Find Database Object panel. Scroll ALL the way down to the bottom Searching the database for your code or objects can be expensive. The ALL_SOURCE view comes in pretty handy when I want to demo how to cancel long running queries or the Task Progress panel – did you know you can manage all of your long running queries here? Yeah, don’t run this I pretty much hosed our demo pod at Open World b/c I ran that same query but added an ORDER BY b.TEXT DESC to the query and blew up the TEMP space and filled the primary partition on the image. Fun stuff. Anyways, where was I going with this? Oh yeah, searching ALL_SOURCE can be expensive. So we took it out of the product for awhile. And now it’s back in. If you select the ‘ALL’ field, it doesn’t actually search EVERYTHING, because that would probably be less than helpful. So if you want to search your PL/SQL objects for a scrap or bit of code, use the ‘ALL_SOURCE’ option in v3.2.1 Double-Click on the search results to go to the code you’re looking for. Be careful what you search for. Just like any query, it could take awhile.

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• Duck checker in Python: does one exist?

  - by elliot42

  Python uses duck-typing, rather than static type checking. But many of the same concerns ultimately apply: does an object have the desired methods and attributes? Do those attributes have valid, in-range values? Whether you're writing constraints in code, or writing test cases, or validating user input, or just debugging, inevitably somewhere you'll need to verify that an object is still in a proper state--that it still "looks like a duck" and "quacks like a duck." In statically typed languages you can simply declare "int x", and anytime you create or mutate x, it will always be a valid int. It seems feasible to decorate a Python object to ensure that it is valid under certain constraints, and that every time that object is mutated it is still valid under those constraints. Ideally there would be a simple declarative syntax to express "hasattr length and length is non-negative" (not in those words. Not unlike Rails validators, but less human-language and more programming-language). You could think of this as ad-hoc interface/type system, or you could think of it as an ever-present object-level unit test. Does such a library exist to declare and validate constraint/duck-checking on Python-objects? Is this an unreasonable tool to want? :) (Thanks!) Contrived example: rectangle = {'length': 5, 'width': 10} # We live in a fictional universe where multiplication is super expensive. # Therefore any time we multiply, we need to cache the results. def area(rect): if 'area' in rect: return rect['area'] rect['area'] = rect['length'] * rect['width'] return rect['area'] print area(rectangle) rectangle['length'] = 15 print area(rectangle) # compare expected vs. actual output! # imagine the same thing with object attributes rather than dictionary keys.

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• Codeigniter + JQuery + Processing.js to replace a Delphi App

  - by Peter Turner

  So, I've got a mandate to make our aged trillion lined Delphi app web based and it needs to make heavy use of the <canvas> element (HTML5 compatibility doesn't seem to be a big issue since we can just make our clients use a compatible browser the way we'd make them use a compatible version of Windows in the win32 environment). The Delphi app in question is almost completely database driven and will still pretty much continue to be developed as the main product. What I am tasked with is pretty much recreating a scaled down version of the program that performs the major functions of the whole program. I couldn't find any frameworks that simulate windows forms using the canvas element, I'm assuming this is probably by design since it is easier just to use HTML, well, be that as it may, I still think it would be cool to have a few of my cool controls on the web (TRichView and TVirtualTree, etc...) So my question is, to anyone who has tried this before, A.) What can we use for an IDE to code this web app (I just use emacs, but no one else in my company does)? B.) Is it a good idea to mix PHP and Processing.JS? It seems like I'm using a lot of AJAX to get anything to happen. 3 calls just for one dialog box to pop up, Loads the HTML for the dialog, Loads the XML to populate the database info on the form Loads the processing.js PJS file which draws the database info to the canvas. Is three a lot, do people usually combine all their gets into one?

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• Ubuntu Won't Load Up

  - by Russ

  I'm having trouble with Ubuntu. It was working fine on Weds 24/08/12. Fired up my laptop yesterday and came up with the Grub screen. What I basically want to know is how do I get back to normal service? I'm pretty illiterate when it comes to Ubuntu/Linux systems. I think I'm running the latest version of Ubuntu. Currently using the 11.10 trial which I burnt to disc to use my laptop at the minute to post this question. This is the first screen I get come up. 'http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v419/R1187/20121025_173033.jpg' Following the first option it just takes me to a black screen with a flashing underscore. Pretty sure it doesn't allow me to enter any text. When I follow the second option I get this screen: I've tried following the advice on this question, but it hasn't done the trick. It keeps asking me if it's mounted. Any help will be appreciated. Ideally I'd like to get things back to normal. Failing that copying my data from the hard drive to an external one and reinstalling Ubuntu would be fine.

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• Designing a Content-Based ETL Process with .NET and SFDC

  - by Patrick

  As my firm makes the transition to using SFDC as our main operational system, we've spun together a couple of SFDC portals where we can post customer-specific documents to be viewed at will. As such, we've had the need for pseudo-ETL applications to be implemented that are able to extract metadata from the documents our analysts generate internally (most are industry-standard PDFs, XML, or MS Office formats) and place in networked "queue" folders. From there, our applications scoop of the queued documents and upload them to the appropriate SFDC CRM Content Library along with some select pieces of metadata. I've mostly used DbAmp to broker communication with SFDC (DbAmp is a Linked Server provider that allows you to use SQL conventions to interact with your SFDC Org data). I've been able to create [console] applications in C# that work pretty well, and they're usually structured something like this: static void Main() { // Load parameters from app.config. // Get documents from queue. var files = someInterface.GetFiles(someFilterOrRegexPattern); foreach (var file in files) { // Extract metadata from the file. // Validate some attributes of the file; add any validation errors to an in-memory // structure (e.g. List<ValidationErrors>). if (isValid) { var fileData = File.ReadAllBytes(file); // Upload using some wrapper for an ORM or DAL someInterface.Upload(fileData, meta.Param1, meta.Param2, ...); } else { // Bounce the file } } // Report any validation errors (via message bus or SMTP or some such). } And that's pretty much it. Most of the time I wrap all these operations in a "Worker" class that takes the needed interfaces as constructor parameters. This approach has worked reasonably well, but I just get this feeling in my gut that there's something awful about it and would love some feedback. Is writing an ETL process as a C# Console app a bad idea? I'm also wondering if there are some design patterns that would be useful in this scenario that I'm clearly overlooking. Thanks in advance!

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• unexpected EOF and end of document

  - by WASasquatch

  I have been fiddling with this code for a few days. Mind you I am a beginner. I just want to get my script to be able to download a remote file, and scan MineCraft plugins. I got the scan plugins to work, but I'm having two other issues. One, I can't get the mc_addplugin to work correctly, and I get a Unexpected EOF and unexpected end of document when running any other command besides mc_scanplugins or mc_start bash: -c: line 0: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `"' bash: -c: line 1: syntax error: unexpected end of file Help would be so much appreciated! Thanks in advance. #!/bin/bash # /etc/init.d/craftbukkit # version 0.9.1 2012-07-06 (YYYY-MM-DD) ### BEGIN INIT INFO # Provides: craftbukkit # Required-Start: $local_fs $remote_fs # Required-Stop: $local_fs $remote_fs # Should-Start: $network # Should-Stop: $network # Default-Start: 2 3 4 5 # Default-Stop: 0 1 6 # Short-Description: Starts craftbukkit server # Description: Starts and controls the craftbukkit server ### END INIT INFO # SETTINGS SERVICE='craftbukkit-1.2.5-R1.0.jar' OPTIONS='nogui' USERNAME='smith' # LIST ALL THE WORLDS IN YOUR CRAFTBUKKIT SERVER FOLDER WORLDS[1]='world' WORLDS[2]='world_nether' WORLDS[3]='world_the_end' WORLDS[4]='flat_world' MCPATH='/var/www/servers/Foundation' PLUGINSPATH='/var/www/servers/Foundation/plugins' TEMPPLUGINS='/var/www/servers/Foundationplugins/temp_plugins' BACKUPPATH='/var/www/servers/Foundation/backup' CPU_COUNT=2 INVOCATION="java -Xmx2024M -Xms2024M -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -XX:+CMSIncrementalPacing -XX:ParallelGCThreads=$CPU_COUNT -XX:+AggressiveOpts -jar $SERVICE $OPTIONS" ME=`whoami` as_user() { if [ $ME == $USERNAME ] ; then bash -c "$1" else su - $USERNAME -c "$1" fi } mc_start() { if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then echo "$SERVICE is already running!" else echo "Starting $SERVICE..." cd $MCPATH as_user "cd $MCPATH && screen -dmS craftbukkit $INVOCATION" sleep 7 if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then echo "$SERVICE is now running." else echo "Error! Could not start $SERVICE!" fi fi } mc_saveoff() { if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then echo "$SERVICE is running... suspending saves" as_user "screen -p 0 -S craftbukkit -X eval 'stuff \"say The server is preforming a backup. Server going to read-only mode. Do not build...\"\015'" as_user "screen -p 0 -S craftbukkit -X eval 'stuff \"save-off\"\015'" as_user "screen -p 0 -S craftbukkit -X eval 'stuff \"save-all\"\015'" sync sleep 10 else echo "$SERVICE is not running. Not suspending saves." fi } mc_save() { if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then echo "$SERVICE is running... Saving worlds..." as_user "screen -p 0 -S craftbukkit -X eval 'stuff \"save-all\"\015'" sync sleep 10 echo "Save complete!" else echo "$SERVICE is not running. Cannot save!" fi } mc_saveon() { if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then echo "$SERVICE is running... re-enabling saves" as_user "screen -p 0 -S craftbukkit -X eval 'stuff \"save-on\"\015'" as_user "screen -p 0 -S craftbukkit -X eval 'stuff \"say Server backup has completed. Server going to read-write mode. You can now continue building...\"\015'" else echo "$SERVICE is not running. Not resuming saves." fi } mc_stop() { if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then echo "Stopping $SERVICE" as_user "screen -p 0 -S craftbukkit -X eval 'stuff \"say $SERVERNAME is shutting down in 30 seconds! Please stop what you are doing. Check back later, we'll be back!\"\015'" as_user "screen -p 0 -S craftbukkit -X eval 'stuff \"save-all\"\015'" sleep 30 as_user "screen -p 0 -S craftbukkit -X eval 'stuff \"stop\"\015'" sleep 7 else echo "$SERVICE was not running." fi if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then echo "Error! $SERVICE could not be stopped." else echo "$SERVICE is stopped." fi } mc_update() { if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then echo "$SERVICE is running! Will not start update." else MC_SERVER_URL=http://dl.bukkit.org/latest-rb/craftbukkit.jar as_user "cd $MCPATH && wget -q -O $MCPATH/craftbukkit_server.jar.update $MC_SERVER_URL" if [ -f $MCPATH/craftbukkit_server.jar.update ] then if `diff $MCPATH/$SERVICE $MCPATH/craftbukkit_server.jar.update >/dev/null` then echo "You are already running the latest version of $SERVICE. Update anyway? [Y/n]" select yn in "Yes" "No"; do case $yn in Yes ) as_user "mv $MCPATH/$SERVICE $MCPATH/${SERVICE}_old.jar" as_user "mv $MCPATH/craftbukkit_server.jar.update $MCPATH/$SERVICE" echo "$SERVICE updated successfully!"; break;; No ) echo "The update was not installed! Removing temporary files and exiting..." as_user "rm $MCPATH/craftbukkit_server.jar.update" exit;; esac done else as_user "mv $MCPATH/$SERVICE $MCPATH/${SERVICE}_old.jar" as_user "mv $MCPATH/craftbukkit_server.jar.update $MCPATH/$SERVICE" echo "$SERVICE updated successfully!" fi else echo "$SERVICE update could not be downloaded." fi fi } mc_addplugin() { if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then echo "$SERVICE is running! Please stop the service before adding a plugin." else echo "Paste the URL to the .JAR Plugin..." read JARURL JARNAME=$(basename "$JARURL") if [ -d "$TEMPPLUGINS" ] then as_user "cd $PLUGINSPATH && wget -r -A.jar $JARURL -o temp_plugins/$JARNAME" else as_user "cd $PLUGINSPATH && mkdir $TEMPPLUGINS && wget -r -A.jar $JARURL -o temp_plugins/$JARNAME" fi if [ -f "$TMPDIR/$JARNAME" ] then if [ -f "$PLUGINSPATH/$JARNAME" ] then if `diff $PLUGINSPATH/$JARNAME $TMPDIR/$JARNAME >/dev/null` then echo "You are already running the latest version of $JARNAME." else NOW=`date "+%Y-%m-%d_%Hh%M"` echo "Are you sure you want to overwrite this plugin? [Y/n]" echo "Note: Your old plugin will be moved to the "$TEMPPLUGINS" folder with todays date." select yn in "Yes" "No"; do case $yn in Yes ) as_user "mv $PLUGINSPATH/$JARNAME $TEMPPLUGINS/${JARNAME}_${NOW} && mv $TEMPPLUGINS/$JARNAME $PLUGINSPATH/$JARNAME"; break;; No ) echo "The plugin has not been installed! Removing temporary plugin and exiting..." as_user "rm $TEMPPLUGINS/$JARNAME"; exit;; esac done echo "Would you like to start the $SERVICE now? [Y/n]" select yn in "Yes" "No"; do case $yn in Yes ) mc_start; break;; No ) "$SERVICE not running! To start the service run: /etc/init.d/craftbukkit start"; exit;; esac done fi else echo "Are you sure you want to add this new plugin? [Y/n]" select yn in "Yes" "No"; do case $yn in Yes ) as_user "mv $PLUGINSPATH/$JARNAME $TEMPPLUGINS/${JARNAME}_${NOW} && mv $TEMPPLUGINS/$JARNAME $PLUGINSPATH/$JARNAME"; break;; No ) echo "The plugin has not been installed! Removing temporary plugin and exiting..." as_user "rm $TEMPPLUGINS/$JARNAME"; exit;; esac done echo "Would you like to start the $SERVICE now? [Y/n]?" select yn in "Yes" "No"; do case $yn in Yes ) mc_start; break;; No ) "$SERVICE not running! To start the service run: /etc/init.d/craftbukkit start"; exit;; esac done fi else echo "Failed to download the plugin from the URL you specified!" exit; fi fi } mc_scanplugins() { if [ "$(ls -A $PLUGINSPATH)" ] then shopt -s nullglob PLUGINS=($PLUGINSPATH/*.jar) i=1 for f in "${PLUGINS[@]}" do echo "${i}: $f" PLUGIN[$i]=$f i=$(( $i + 1 )) done echo "Enter the ID of a plugin you want removed, or any other key to cancel." read INPUT if [ ! -z "${INPUT##*[!0-9]*}" ] then if [ -f "${PLUGIN[INPUT]}" ] then echo "Removing plugin..." JAR=$(basename ${PLUGIN[INPUT]}) JARNAME=${JAR%.jar} as_user "rm -f ${PLUGIN[INPUT]}" sleep 2 as_user "cd $PLUGINSPATH && rm -rf ./${JARNAME}" if [ -f "${PLUGINSPATH}/${JARNAME}" ] then echo "Plugin folder could not be removed..." fi echo "Plugin removed." else echo "${PLUGIN[INPUT]}" echo "Invalid plugin! Does not exist! Canceling..." exit; fi else echo "Canceling..." exit; fi else echo "You have no plugins installed." exit; fi } mc_backup() { mc_saveoff for i in "${WORLDS[@]}"; do NOW=`date "+%Y-%m-%d_%Hh%M"` BACKUP_FILE="$BACKUPPATH/${i}_${NOW}.tar" echo "Backing up world: $i..." #as_user "cd $MCPATH && cp -r $i $BACKUPPATH/${i}_`date "+%Y.%m.%d_%H.%M""` as_user "tar -C \"$MCPATH\" -cf \"$BACKUP_FILE\" $i" done echo "Backing up $SERVICE" as_user "tar -C \"$MCPATH\" -rf \"$BACKUP_FILE\" $SERVICE" #as_user "cp \"$MCPATH/$SERVICE\" \"$BACKUPPATH/craftbukkit_server_${NOW}.jar\"" mc_saveon echo "Compressing backup..." as_user "tar -cvzf $BACKUPPATH/server_backup_${NOW}.tar.gz $MCPATH" echo "Backup has completed successfully." } mc_command() { command="$1"; if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then pre_log_len=`wc -l "$MCPATH/server.log" | awk '{print $1}'` echo "$SERVICE is running... executing command" as_user "screen -p 0 -S craftbukkit -X eval 'stuff \"$command\"\015'" sleep .1 # assumes that the command will run and print to the log file in less than .1 seconds # print output tail -n $[`wc -l "$MCPATH/server.log" | awk '{print $1}'`-$pre_log_len] "$MCPATH/server.log" fi } #Start-Stop here case "$1" in start) mc_start ;; stop) mc_stop ;; restart) mc_stop mc_start ;; save) mc_save ;; update) mc_stop mc_backup mc_update mc_start ;; scanplugins) mc_scanplugins ;; addplugin) mc_addplugin ;; backup) mc_backup ;; status) if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then echo "$SERVICE is running." else echo "$SERVICE is not running." fi ;; command) if [ $# -gt 1 ]; then shift mc_command "$*" else echo "Must specify server command (try 'help'?)" fi ;; *) echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|update|backup|status|restart|command \"server command\"}" exit 1 ;; esac exit 0

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• How should I evaluate the Database Solution for Large Data Application

  - by GµårÐïåñ

  Background I have been tasked to write an application that will be a combination of document and inventory management in VB.net which will be used to store document images in TIFF, PDF, XPS, TXT, DOC, PPT and so on as binary data that can be retrieved for viewing, printing, and possible OCR to be searchable as well along with meta data such as sender, recipient, type of document, date, source, etc. So the table would probably be something like: DOC_NAME, DOC_DATE, NOTES, ... DOC_BINARY (where the actual document will be put inside) Help Please I need help with understanding how to evaluate my database options. What my concern is finding a database solution that will not become unstable due to size restrictions, records limitations and performance. Some of the options are MS_SQL, SQL Express, SQLite, mySQL, and Access. Now I can pretty much eliminate Access right off the bat as it is just too limiting and not scalable. I can further eliminate SQL Express because of the 2 GB limit and again scalability. So I believe that leaves me with MS_SQL, SQLite and mySQL (note, I am open to alternatives). And this is where I need help in understanding how to evaluate those databases. The goal is that the data is all in one place (a single file) that will make backup and portability easier. For small volume usage, pretty much any solution will hold for a while, but my goal is to think ahead and make sure its able to withstand heavy large volume usage as well. Another consideration is also the interoperability with .NET and stability of such code to avoid errors and memory leaks. How should I evaluate my database options for this scenario?

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• How can I better implement A star algorithm with a very large set of nodes?

  - by Stephen

  I'm making a game with nodejs in which many enemies must converge on the player as the player moves around a relatively open space (right now it is an open field with few obstacles, but eventually there may be some small buildings in the field with 1 or 2 rooms). It's a multiplayer game using websockets, so the server needs to keep track of enemies and players. I found this javascript A* library which I've modified to be used on the server as a nodejs module. The library utilizes a Binary Heap to track the nodes for the algorithm, so it should be pretty fast (and indeed, with a small grid, say 100x100 it is lightning fast). The problem is that my game is not really tile-based. As the player moves around the map, he is moving on a more or less 1-to-1 per-pixel coordinate system (the player can move in 8 directions, 1 or 2 pixels at a time). In preliminary tests, on an 800x600 field, the path-finding can take anywhere from 400 to 1000 ms. Multiply that by 10 enemies and the game starts to get pretty choppy. I have already set it up so that each enemy will only do a path-finding call once per second or even as slow as once every 2 seconds (they have to keep updating their path because the players can move freely). But even with this long interval, there are noticeable lag spikes or chops every couple of seconds as the enemies update their paths. I'm willing to approach the problem of path-finding differently, if there's another option. I'm assuming that the real problem is the enormous grid (800x600). It also occurs to me that maybe the large arrays are to blame, as I've read that V8 has trouble with large arrays.

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• Project Euler 12: (Iron)Python

  - by Ben Griswold

  In my attempt to learn (Iron)Python out in the open, here’s my solution for Project Euler Problem 12.  As always, any feedback is welcome. # Euler 12 # http://projecteuler.net/index.php?section=problems&id=12 # The sequence of triangle numbers is generated by adding # the natural numbers. So the 7th triangle number would be # 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 = 28. The first ten terms # would be: # 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, 45, 55, ... # Let us list the factors of the first seven triangle # numbers: # 1: 1 # 3: 1,3 # 6: 1,2,3,6 # 10: 1,2,5,10 # 15: 1,3,5,15 # 21: 1,3,7,21 # 28: 1,2,4,7,14,28 # We can see that 28 is the first triangle number to have # over five divisors. What is the value of the first # triangle number to have over five hundred divisors? import time start = time.time() from math import sqrt def divisor_count(x): count = 2 # itself and 1 for i in xrange(2, int(sqrt(x)) + 1): if ((x % i) == 0): if (i != sqrt(x)): count += 2 else: count += 1 return count def triangle_generator(): i = 1 while True: yield int(0.5 * i * (i + 1)) i += 1 triangles = triangle_generator() answer = 0 while True: num = triangles.next() if (divisor_count(num) >= 501): answer = num break; print answer print "Elapsed Time:", (time.time() - start) * 1000, "millisecs" a=raw_input('Press return to continue')

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• single for-loop runtime explanation problem

  - by owwyess

  I am analyzing some running times of different for-loops, and as I'm getting more knowledge, I'm curious to understand this problem which I have still yet to find out. I have this exercise called "How many stars are printed": for (int i = N; i > 1; i = i/2) System.out.println("*"); The answers to pick from is A: ~log N B: ~N C: ~N log N D: ~0.5N^2 So the answer should be A and I agree to that, but on the other side.. Let's say N = 500 what would Log N then be? It would be 2.7. So what if we say that N=500 on our exercise above? That would most definitely print more han 2.7 stars? How is that related? Because it makes sense to say that if the for-loop looked like this: for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) it would print N stars. I hope to find an explanation for this here, maybe I'm interpreting all these things wrong and thinking about it in a bad way. Thanks in advance.

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• 2D graphics - why use spritesheets?

  - by Columbo

  I have seen many examples of how to render sprites from a spritesheet but I havent grasped why it is the most common way of dealing with sprites in 2d games. I have started out with 2d sprite rendering in the few demo applications I've made by dealing with each animation frame for any given sprite type as its own texture - and this collection of textures is stored in a dictionary. This seems to work for me, and suits my workflow pretty well, as I tend to make my animations as gif/mng files and then extract the frames to individual pngs. Is there a noticeable performance advantage to rendering from a single sheet rather than from individual textures? With modern hardware that is capable of drawing millions of polygons to the screen a hundred times a second, does it even matter for my 2d games which just deal with a few dozen 50x100px rectangles? The implementation details of loading a texture into graphics memory and displaying it in XNA seems pretty abstracted. All I know is that textures are bound to the graphics device when they are loaded, then during the game loop, the textures get rendered in batches. So it's not clear to me whether my choice affects performance. I suspect that there are some very good reasons most 2d game developers seem to be using them, I just don't understand why.

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• Shuffling algorithm with no "self-mapping"?

  - by OregonTrail

  To randomly shuffle an array, with no bias towards any particular permutation, there is the Knuth Fischer-Yeats algorithm. In Python: #!/usr/bin/env python import sys from random import randrange def KFYShuffle(items): i = len(items) - 1 while i > 0: j = randrange(i+1) # 0 <= j <= i items[j], items[i] = items[i], items[j] i = i - 1 return items print KFYShuffle(range(int(sys.argv[1]))) There is also Sattolo's algorithm, which produces random cycles. In Python: #!/usr/bin/env python import sys from random import randrange def SattoloShuffle(items): i = len(items) while i > 1: i = i - 1 j = randrange(i) # 0 <= j <= i-1 items[j], items[i] = items[i], items[j] return items print SattoloShuffle(range(int(sys.argv[1]))) I'm currently writing a simulation with the following specifications for a shuffling algorithm: The algorithm is unbiased. If a true random number generator was used, no permutation would be more likely than any other. No number ends up at its original index. The input to the shuffle will always be A[i] = i for i from 0 to N-1 Permutations are produced that are not cycles, but still meet specification 2. The cycles produced by Sattolo's algorithm meet specification 2, but not specification 1 or 3. I've been working at creating an algorithm that meets these specifications, what I came up with was equivalent to Sattolo's algorithm. Does anyone have an algorithm for this problem?

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• crunchbang: it takes up *how* much memory?!?!

  - by Theo Moore

  I've been trying many distros of Linux lately, trying to find something I like for my netbook. I started out with Ubuntu, and I can tell you I am a big fan. Ubuntu is now fast to install, much simpler to administer, and pretty light resource-wise. My original install was the standard 32 bit version of 9.04. I tried the netbook remix version of this release, but it was very, very slow. Even the full-blown version used only about 200mb. Much better than the almost 800 that the recommended Windows y version took. Once the newest release of Ubuntu was released, I decided to try the netbook remx of 10.04. It used even less RAM; only about 150mb. I thought I'd found my OS. I certainly settled in and prepared to use it forever. Then, someone I know suggested I try cunchbang. It is the most minimalistic UI I've ever seen, using Openbox rather than Gnome or KDE. Very slick, simple and clean. Since I am using the alpha of the most recent version (using Debian Squeeze), the apps provided for you are few...although more will be provided soon. You do have a word processor, etc., although not the OpenOffice you would normally get in Ubuntu. But the best part? 48MB. That's it. 48mb fully loaded, supporting what I can "hotel services". It's fast, boots quick, and believe it or not, I can even do Java-based development....on my netbook! Pretty slick.   More on it as I use it.

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• How to Create Geo-Reminders in Android with GeoNote

  - by Zainul Franciscus

  Unlike most reminders that remind you to do a certain action at a desired time, GeoNote gives you reminders when you enter a location. If you’re a big fan of location-based services, then GeoNote is the perfect reminder for you. Image by Menino.Us GeoNote is one of the few Geo-Reminder applications that are available on the market for free. Its simple interface allows us to create To-Do list quickly. Just click the “Add Location” button to add your first note Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines RGB? CMYK? Alpha? What Are Image Channels and What Do They Mean? How to Recover that Photo, Picture or File You Deleted Accidentally How To Colorize Black and White Vintage Photographs in Photoshop How To Get SSH Command-Line Access to Windows 7 Using Cygwin The How-To Geek Video Guide to Using Windows 7 Speech Recognition A History of Vintage Transformers [Infographic] Amazon Finally Adds Real Page Numbers to the Kindle Now You Can Print Google Docs and Gmail through Google Cloud Print AppBrain Enables Direct-to-Phone Installation Again Build a DIY Clapper to Hone Your Electronics Chops How to Kid Proof Your Computer’s Power and Reset Buttons

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