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• Content light website and Google - Tell google it's a listings site (as opposed shop, reviews or restaurants)

  - by Doug Firr

  I have a listings style website. Due to the nature of this (listings) the site is content light. Each page is typically less that 50 words but there are many pages. The site in question has had a ton of media coverage and so has some great inbound links from places like Wired, Fast Company, Canada Broadcasting Corporation and many many other bloggers, media websites and recycle related niche authors (It's a recycling site). But Google really ignores it. Traffic from search is very very low - less than 5% of all traffic. I know that using markup you can tell Google whether your site is a restaurant, article, review, shop, local business and a few other categories (https://www.google.com/webmasters/markup-helper/u/0/). Is there a way to tell Google that my site is a listings site? I suspect, but do not know for sure, that part of the problem is that Google simply does not know what my site is? It's a crowdmap where people post curbalerts. The information is useful to people but it is presented in a short, concise way - a pin on a map, a picture and a short description. Adding anything further is not necessary for the site's intended purpose. 1st question - how best to tell the search engines what y site is - listings and not some spammy website? Any recommendations in improving our site's Search presence? You can take a look here if interested: http://tinyurl.com/lxg4hn7

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• Reverse-Engineer Driver for Backlit Keyboard

  - by user87847

  Here's my situation: I recently purchased a Sager NP9170 (same as the Clevo P170EM) and it has a multi-colored, backlit keyboard. Under Windows 7, you can launch an app that allows you to change the color of the backlighting to any of a handful of colors (blue, green, red, etc). I want that same functionality under Linux. I haven't been able to find any software that does this, so I guess I'm going to have to write it myself. I'm a programmer by trade, but I've haven't done much low level programming, and I've certainly never written a device driver, so I was wondering if anyone could answer these two questions: 1) Is there any software already out there that does this sort of thing? I've looked fairly thoroughly but haven't found anything applicable. 2) Where would I start in trying to reverse engineer this sort of thing? Any useful articles, tutorials, books that might help? And just to clarify: The backlighting already works, that's not the problem. I just want to be able to change the color of the backlighting. This functionality is supported by the hardware. The laptop came with windows software that does this and I want the same functionality in Linux. I am willing to write this software myself, I just want to know the best way to go about it. Thanks!

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• Fastest approach to 3D animation

  - by HappyFerret

  I'm currently tasked with designing a small HTML5 game. Having done everything by myself so far (3D models, codebase, game design, etc) I'm now at a point where I'm running out of time. I've less than a day to animate and bind everything together. However, that's exactly my problem. I was under the naive impression that everything would be easier if I went with pre-rendered 3D models. However, I didn't consider the most difficult part. Animation. After having spent over an hour trying to figure out messiahStudio, I figured it's time to ask for outside help. Is there any easier solution to 3D animation than 3D rigging? What I'm basically looking for is some sort of tool that allows me to simply grab and move/deform select polygons. It doesn't have to be as life-like and accurate as rigging, just efficient enough. Were the circumstances any different, I might just learn how to rig. But that's sorely out of scope right now. PS:The models were created in Sculptris but are fairly low-poly.

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• Is text-only mode a saving or a problem for battery savings?

  - by Robottinosino

  A friend is flying to the US from Europe and asked me a very thought-provoking question, which I am not remotely able to answer with substance so I am asking it here: How to absolutely maximise battery life on an Ubuntu (laptop) install? do not rush to mark this as duplicate, there is an important point here: does -GNOME- help or worsen battery life? Let me provide some context: The only task he needs to perform is: edit text files in Vim. He is unsure whether running GNOME will drain his battery life more or actually save him some battery life given the smarts of GNOME's power management features like "switch this peripheral to -power save- after X minutes..." (GNOME might just be a configuration front-end for settings that are governed by command-line utils for all I know?) He could perfectly well boot the system in text-only mode and use the automatic 6 virtual consoles for his needs, if that's a saving at all over running tmux (I think so because of all the smart buffering/history/etc the latter does by default?) Exactly how would you advise him to run his laptop during his flight? What I told him already: power off WiFi in the BIOS, not from the "GUI" power off Bluetooth switch off the courtesy light and use low monitor brightness play music off of his phone, not mp3blaster do not use his tiny portable mouse (and do not attach any other USB gimmicks like "screen light", etc) stop development services he will not be using, especially apache2, tomcat, dovecot, postgresql, etc. Potentially: - switch off his cron jobs? (he does an rsync + tar + 7za of his "work in progress" every so often) I think the above is standard stuff one could get off StackExchange, and with many duplicates... the core of this question is, I think: __ will running Ubuntu in text-only mode be a saving in terms of battery life or a problem? why? (provide some technical arguments) __ I think it will be a saving but I am also scared about "other things" detecting and enabling advanced chipset power management features only when some services are started.. and fear these "services" may be off in text-only mode?

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• Which powerful laptop, with UK keyboard and 8gb ram

  - by RobinL

  I've been searching high and low for high spec laptops compatible with Ubuntu. The lack of coherent information on the topic is high (considering the number of people who apparently want a good laptop with an OS operating system). So I thought you may have some advice. My requirements: a) has = 8Gb ram b) is compatible with Ubuntu c) has a UK keyboard and charger d) does not cost the Earth Which would you go for? Does anyone have good experience with high-end laptops running Ubuntu? So here's some background research: Samsung Series 7 looks great, but has various problems on Ubuntu, including: poor battery life, touchpad does not work, graphics card not fully supported and sucks power when it does (see [here] and [here], for example). Other options on the [wish list] include: the sensible [Acer] (possibly n.1 choice, but not sure about graphics card compatibility or battery), a nice looking [HP Pavilion dv6-6c56ea], which also has incompatibility issues (see [here] and [here] and check ubuntuforums) And another [Acer] which may be best due to its simplicity and cheapness. Other sub-questions: didn't Dell offer Ubuntu support for decent laptops (above 6Gb ram their offerings are scarce); what about pre-installed options such as those provided by System76? If it weren't for the UK keyboard and charger, I'd probably go for this [amazing-looking] [machine]. Many thanks for any advice, P.s. Apologies for lack of hyperlinks; I'm a noob so only allowed 2 :( All 10 links are available here though for the interested reader :) Robin

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• How to encourage domain experts familiar only with C into a C++ opensource project [closed]

  - by paperjam

  Possible Duplicate: How to persuade C fanatics to work on my C++ open source project? I am launching an open-source project into a space where a lot of development is done Linux-kernel-style, i.e. C-language with a low-level mindset. My project is broad and complex and uses aspects of the C++ language and libraries, including the Boost library to best effect for simple, slightly syntactically sweetened, elegant and well structured high level code. We are using C++ templates too to avoid duplication of code and for static polymorphism in code specialisation for performance. Many of the experts in this field are well used to pure C-language projects. How can I persuade them to contribute to my idiomatic C++ based project? I have no objection to C-language subcomponents or the use of a C-like subset for parts of the project so that might be part of the answer. This is a rewritten and retagged rehash of my previous question that was closed. Apologies to those who read and answered for it not being constructive. I hope this new question is viewed as constructive. Please note that this is not a language advocacy question and please keep answers in that spirit.

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• My sound is not working, so I'm going to reinstall FYI [closed]

  - by fer

  I've had trouble getting the sound to work in Ubuntu 12.04 I'm running an Acer Aspire 5739g laptop. This is using a clean install. This wasn't a problem when ubuntu first installed. Rather, it was when I ran the updates that it stopped working. I already tried the suggestions on the ubuntu sites and other similar queries, and they haven't fixed it. Something in the updates is making my sound not work. Edit: It turns out that this might be a bug (the sound issue, first paragraph). After reinstall, it happened again (it's not caused by updates at all, or any software, because I fixed it now w/o reinstall). It seems like I replicated it as follows: I changed auto-hide in the behavior tab of Appearance settings by turning it on, and setting the sensitivity to below the recommended setting. Then instead of restarting, I just logged out and back in. The sound stopped working again. I set the behavior settings to default, restarted, and now it's back to normal. Not sure if it's due to only logging out (and not restarting) or b/c I set my sensitivity to a low setting. Not sure if this helps anyone, but thought I'd mention it.

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• Feedback on meeting of the MSCC - 20.07.2013

  Impression of our meetup on 20.07.2013 Low quantity but high quality! Meetup summary: Quick introduction to ?MSCC? and interesting topics in general, especially for freshman from/at university. It also seems that the open concept of OUYA (Android-based gaming console) got some attention and hopefully new fans. More info is available online: http://www.ouya.tv/ Design contest The design contest is still going on... There's currently only one submission. Come on, you web & graphic designers in Mauritius - SHOW YOUR WORKAny draft will be published over here: MSCC Design Contest - https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.200036533488751.1073741829.181737551985316&type=3 Goodies give-away And the first 2 one-month subscriptions for Pluralsight have been well received by attendees, too. Unfortunately, we didn't have any free WiFi at Talking Drums - so, we might have to consider another location for the next meetup. Change of schedule As we spoke about the advantages of gathering during the weekend, we worked out a schedule that could be applied to future meetups of the MSCC. I'm going to address this tomorrow during our regular meetings on Wednesday to see about the response of other members, too.

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• What's the best way to use requestAnimationFrame and fixed frame rates

  - by m90

  I recently got into using the HTML5-requestAnimationFrame-API a lot on animation-heavy websites, especially after seeing the Jank Busters talk. This seems to work pretty well and really improve performance in many cases. Yet one question still persists for me: When wanting to use an animation that is NOT entirely calculated (think spritesheets for example) you will have to aim for a fixed frame rate. Of course one could go back to use setInterval again, but maybe there are other ways to tackle this. The two ways I could think of using requestAnimationFrame with a fixed frame rate are: var fps = 25; //frames per second function animate(){ //actual drawing goes here setTimeout(function(){ requestAnimationFrame(animate); }, 1000 / fps) } animate(); or var fps = 25; //frames per second var lastExecution = new Date().getTime(); function animate(){ var now = new Date().getTime(); if ((now - lastExecution) > (1000 / fps)){ //do actual drawing lastExecution = new Date().getTime(); } requestAnimationFrame(animate); } animate(); Personally, I'd opt for the second option (the first one feels like cheating), yet it seems to be more buggy in certain situations. Is this approach really worth it (especially at low frame rates like 12.5)? Are there things to be improved? Is there another way to tackle this?

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• Location Change Salary Differences [closed]

  - by GameDev

  DISCLAIMER: I know that this might be a "regional" question but I'm also asking for help as far as what resources to use to determine my decision. I'm currently talking to a recruiter for a game developer in the SF Bay area. I work in a relatively low-cost area in the south. I really want to get into game development but my current career is general web development. I'm very interested in taking the job, but my concern is that the amount they're willing to pay might be a relative pay cut. Here are some factors: It's not an entry-level position, the title is Senior Software Engineer. I have 5+ years of experience. The calculators online tell me that I should be expecting around 2x my current pay rate(http://www.bestplaces.net/col/). My current pay is in the mid $60k/yr, so that's like 120-130k. The recruiter told me at my experience level I can expect about $90-100/yr, and that those cost of living calculators were way off. The benefits will definitely be better, it's much larger company (help with commuting, catered meals, etc). But is the recruiter trying to give me a snow job on the pay scale, or is that a reasonable change from a smallish town in the south to somewhere in the SF bay area? How can I find this out? Glassdoor and Payscale seem to say "senior software developers" in that area make around 110 in median salary, but Payscale says it's closer to $135k, that range seems pretty large.

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• New Nokia SDK 2.0 for Java (beta)

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Nokia recently launched the Asha 305, 306, and 311, which are full touch devices with smartphone-like functionality at a low price. This makes them particularly attractive to consumers in the developing and developed world who may not be able to afford a smartphone but have a strong demand for apps and the smartphone experience. The Asha phones are the latest addition to Nokia's Series 40 platform, all of which support Java ME. The SDK includes new Full Touch API's (e.g. supporting pinch zoom) and Sensor support delivering an enhanced App experience. It also adds improved Maps API support for creating socio-local apps. There are a number of improvements in the tools including the Nokia IDE for Java ME with in-build Device-SDK Manager. Many code examples, training videos, webinars and sample code will help get you started. Porting guides and sample code show you how to port your android app to Java ME. If you don't have access to the hardware you can use Remote Device Access to test on real hardware that's remotely hosted for free. You can also find Light Weight UI Toolkit (LWUIT) support, which can speed development significantly. Both In-App Advertising and In-App Purchase (beta) is supported. Here's a great revenue-making opportunity for developers and a great way of reaching a new app-hungry mass-market audience. Download the new Nokia SDK 2.0 for Java (Beta) and get developing! 

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• Ubuntu 12.04 fresh install wont boot up

  - by user147220

  im running ubuntu 12.04 and it refuses to boot up. the screen will come on for a second, the mosue will appear, then itll go black again all inside about 3 seconds. i let it just do that for a while and eventually a window popped up saying i had a display issue. I didn't have a mouse but there was a button saying "ok" at the bottom that i couldnt click on. i hit enter, got through that screen, now im looking at another that says "What would you like to do?" - run in low-graphics mode for just one session - reconfigure graphics - troubleshoot the error - exit to console login then two buttons, cancel, and ok. I dont have a mouse and its not letting me navigate between these options with tab. firstly, if i make it through these windows will it get me into the computer so i can try and fix whats going on? also, whats going on here? also, how can i click on these buttons without the use of tab or a mouse?

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• 2 year cis degree and in school for computer science what can I do?

  - by chame1eon

  Hi I am 29 and have a recent 2 cis year degree from a community college , an A+ certification , and meager experience with web stuff ( Java , Javascript , php ) while in my 1 year help desk internship. In all the programming classes I was able to blow through the homework easily even while other students were panicking and dropping. I think I have managed to avoid the most atrocious noob/self taught mistakes ( spaghetti code etc) by just doing research before starting something and trying to keep good design in mind. Even so I'd have to make heavy use of references to crawl through even simple projects that would result in fully finished useful applications. I need a job now and I am tired of the slow pace of the classes and would love to get any kind of practical experience I could. The problem is that I am not sure what I should be trying to do. I have a very strong preference for application programming or at least anything light on design and preferably pretty low level. If I can't do that then anything technology related , for example help desk would be better than nothing. I live near Raleigh NC. Am I qualified for anything that could contribute to coding (C++ or Java ) experience or even web development though I don't really like it. Would web development experience help. If not is there anything I could read or do that could help? Is the help desk my only choice? If it is, are there any relatively quick certifications or anything similar that would help while I am waiting? Sorry about the long multi-part question. Thanks for reading.

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• Hitching and Slowness Due to HDD Activity on Ubuntu, But Not Windows?

  - by Espionage724

  It's been bothering me for months now, but I've noticed in Ubuntu (or any distro of Linux I've tried), any major I/O activity will cause hitching and general slowness. For example, if I try doing a file transfer from my network computer to the computer I'm using and try moving the mouse after a while, it might not respond for a second or so. Similar incidents occur in other cases too (right-clicking to get a context menu takes a few seconds, hitting the drop-down application bar takes a while, etc). My HDD isn't top-notch (a WD Blue 500GB 7200RPM drive) but I don't recall it being nearly this bad in Windows 7, 8, or 8.1. CPU activity during file transfers is relatively low (less than 10-20% on all cores of a Phenom II X4 @ 3.3Ghz). I'm using Gnome System Monitor (on Xubuntu) and can't seem to see what kind of HDD activity is occurring though. I have 8GB of RAM too, which is moderately being used (2.5GB), but shouldn't be a problem either. Any ideas what's up? I've tried kernels between 3.8 and 3.11 (i'm using saucy currently with 3.11).

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• How to persuade C fanatics to work on my C++ open source project?

  - by paperjam

  I am launching an open-source project into a space where a lot of the development is still done Linux-kernel-style, i.e. C-language with a low-level mindset. There are multiple benefits to C++ in our space but I fear those used to working in C will be scared off. How can I make the case for the benefits of C++? Specifically, the following C++ attributes are very valuable: concept of objects and reference-counting pointers - really don't want to have to malloc(sizeof(X)) or memcpy() structs templates for specialising whole bodies of code with specific performance optimizations and for avoiding duplication of code. template metaprogramming related to the above syntactic sweetness available (e.g. operator overloading, to be used in very small doses) STL Boost libraries Many of the knee-jerk negative reactions to C++ are illfounded. Performance does not suffer: modern compilers can flatten dozens of call stack levels and avoid bloat through wide use of template specializations. Granted, when using metaprogramming and building multiple specializations of a large call tree, compile time is slower but there are ways to mitigate this. How can I sell C++?

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• How to build a "traffic AI"?

  - by Lunikon

  A project I am working on right now features a lot of "traffic" in the sense of cars moving along roads, aircraft moving aroun an apron etc. As of now the available paths are precalculated, so nodes are generated automatically for crossings which themselves are interconnected by edges. When a character/agent spawns into the world it starts at some node and finds a path to a target node by means of a simply A* algorithm. The agent follows the path and ultimately reaches its destination. No problem so far. Now I need to enable the agents to avoid collisions and to handle complex traffic situations. Since I'm new to the field of AI I looked up several papers/articles on steering behavior but found them to be too low-level. My problem consists less of the actual collision avoidance (which is rather simple in this case because the agents follow strictly defined paths) but of situations like one agent leaving a dead-end while another one wants to enter exactly the same one. Or two agents meeting at a bottleneck which only allows one agent to pass at a time but both need to pass it (according to the optimal route found before) and they need to find a way to let the other one pass first. So basically the main aspect of the problem would be predicting traffic movement to avoid dead-locks. Difficult to describe, but I guess you get what I mean. Do you have any recommendations for me on where to start looking? Any papers, sample projects or similar things that could get me started? I appreciate your help!

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• Database Insider - December 2012 issue

  - by Javier Puerta

  The December issue of the Database Insider newsletter is now available. (Full newsletter here) Big Data: From Acquisition to Analysis 2012 will likely be remembered as the year of big data, as a new generation of technologies enables organizations to acquire, organize, and analyze the exponentially growing and typically less-structured data generated from a variety of new sources. Oracle has produced a series of five short videos that offer a quick and compelling high-level introduction to big data. Read More Total Cost of Ownership Comparison: Oracle Exadata vs. IBM P-Series Read the research that found that over three years, the IBM hardware running Oracle Database cost 31 percent more in total cost of ownership than Oracle Exadata. Webcast - Oracle Exadata Database Machine X3 Learn about Oracle’s next-generation database machine, Oracle Exadata X3, that combines massive memory and low-cost disks to deliver the highest performance at the lowest cost. Available in an eight-rack configuration, it allows you to start small and grow.    Maximum Availability with Oracle GoldenGate Discover how to eliminate not only unplanned downtime but also planned downtime resulting from database upgrades, migrations, and consolidation.Thursday, December 1319:00 CET / 6 pm. UK   

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• How you choose your first job as a programmer? [on hold]

  - by sliter

  For Brief I am a recently graduated CS student. I am looking for a job these days, but I have no idea what kind of software development jobs I like(embedded system,web development or else...). And I am looking for your advice. Here is a little more While I was a student, I had an one year internship experience as a system engineer in a semi-conductor company where I wrote Linux driver, tuned system performance, etc.. I was happy about this experience as it allowed me to deepen my understanding of the operating system and different low level things. And I thought "Em, I will continue in the embedded area after I graduate". At the end of my study, I am doing an another internship in web development, both front-end and back-end. And I also enjoys a lot the process of learning new things and making it work (Backbone, Node, socketio, etc..). Now, when I am looking for a software development position, I do not know what to apply! All I know is that I want a job which allows me to keep up with the trends instead of repeating. But besides this, I've no idea what specific type of job I want to do. Turn back to embedded system? Continue with web development? Change to other promising areas(data mining)? All these development positions makes no big difference to me. But I think this is not good and I need some criteria at choosing. So I am looking for advice and I would really appreciate if you can share your experience.

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• Ubuntu 13.04 Sound Problem after following weird commands

  - by user206356

  After launching a few commands : echo autospawn = no >> ~/.config/pulse/client.conf #use ~/.pulse/client.conf on Ubuntu <= 12.10 killall pulseaudio $LANG=C pulseaudio -vvvv --log-time=1 > ~/pulseverbose.log 2>&1 My sound does not work. (just with the speakers, with headphones it works but I can not change the volume) The sound icon on the top right corner does show a speaker with a single non continuous line. I can not change the volume; it is frozen. There can be an extremely low output of the sound (I hear something but I am not sure...) It does not show a single output device that is avalaible, not even the "dummie". I have tried to reset pulseaudio, alsa, remove it, purging it, reinstalling it, without having success. EDIT: I have tried launching pulseaudio via the terminal. It worked :D However, I am very surprised why it does not automatically start at the start of the computer. Any ideas ? Here the console output : W: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to open cookie file '/home/simonm/.config/pulse/cookie': No such file or directory W: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to load authorization key '/home/simonm/.config/pulse/cookie': No such file or directory W: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to open cookie file '/home/simonm/.pulse-cookie': No such file or directory W: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to load authorization key '/home/simonm/.pulse-cookie': No such file or directory

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• What are the design principles that promote testable code? (designing testable code vs driving design through tests)

  - by bot

  Most of the projects that I work on consider development and unit testing in isolation which makes writing unit tests at a later instance a nightmare. My objective is to keep testing in mind during the high level and low level design phases itself. I want to know if there are any well defined design principles that promote testable code. One such principle that I have come to understand recently is Dependency Inversion through Dependency injection and Inversion of Control. I have read that there is something known as SOLID. I want to understand if following the SOLID principles indirectly results in code that is easily testable? If not, are there any well-defined design principles that promote testable code? I am aware that there is something known as Test Driven Development. Although, I am more interested in designing code with testing in mind during the design phase itself rather than driving design through tests. I hope this makes sense. One more question related to this topic is whether it's alright to re-factor an existing product/project and make changes to code and design for the purpose of being able to write a unit test case for each module?

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• How do I develop database-utilizing application in an agile/test-driven-development way?

  - by user39019

  I want to add databases (traditional client/server RDBMS's like Mysql/Postgresql as opposed to NoSQL, or embedded databases) to my toolbox as a developer. I've been using SQLite for simpler projects with only 1 client, but now I want to do more complicated things (ie, db-backed web development). I usually like following agile and/or test-driven-development principles. I generally code in Perl or Python. Questions: How do I test my code such that each run of the test suite starts with a 'pristine' state? Do I run a separate instance of the database server every test? Do I use a temporary database? How do I design my tables/schema so that it is flexible with respect to changing requirements? Do I start with an ORM for my language? Or do I stick to manually coding SQL? One thing I don't find appealing is having to change more than one thing (say, the CREATE TABLE statement and associated crud statements) for one change, b/c that's error prone. On the other hand, I expect ORM's to be a low slower and harder to debug than raw SQL. What is the general strategy for migrating data between one version of the program and a newer one? Do I carefully write ALTER TABLE statements between each version, or do I dump the data and import fresh in the new version?

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• No Unity after ubuntu 12.10 upgrade

  - by Aivaras

  After I upgraded to Ubuntu 12.10 from 12.04, there was low graphics and no Unity. Just the mouse and the wallpaper. So, I got into the terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T, launched Chrome and searched for a solution. As a result, I tried this: sudo sh amd-driver-installer-12.6-legacy-x86.x86_64.run It did not work. Then I tried this: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:makson96/fglrx sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get install fglrx-legacy It did not work too. I removed the repository, got back the the xorg version to 1.13, and tried this: sudo sh /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx fglRx_* fglrx-amdcccle* fglrx-dev* xorg-driver-fglrx sudo apt-get remove --purge xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-radeon sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-ati sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri xserver-xorg-core It did return the screen resolution back, but still no Unity. Is there something what could I do? My graphics card is: lspci | grep VGA 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV620 [Mobility Radeon HD 3400 Series]

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• Tips for Making this Code Testable [migrated]

  - by Jesse Bunch

  So I'm writing an abstraction layer that wraps a telephony RESTful service for sending text messages and making phone calls. I should build this in such a way that the low-level provider, in this case Twilio, can be easily swapped without having to re-code the higher level interactions. I'm using a package that is pre-built for Twilio and so I'm thinking that I need to create a wrapper interface to standardize the interaction between the Twilio service package and my application. Let us pretend that I cannot modify this pre-built package. Here is what I have so far (in PHP): <?php namespace Telephony; class Provider_Twilio implements Provider_Interface { public function send_sms(Provider_Request_SMS $request) { if (!$request->is_valid()) throw new Provider_Exception_InvalidRequest(); $sms = \Twilio\Twilio::request('SmsMessage'); $response = $sms->create(array( 'To' => $request->to, 'From' => $request->from, 'Body' => $request->body )); if ($this->_did_request_fail($response)) { throw new Provider_Exception_RequestFailed($response->message); } $response = new Provider_Response_SMS(TRUE); return $response; } private function _did_request_fail($api_response) { return isset($api_response->status); } } So the idea is that I can write another file like this for any other telephony service provided that it implements Provider_Interface making them swappable. Here are my questions: First off, do you think this is a good design? How could it be improved? Second, I'm having a hard time testing this because I need to mock out the Twilio package so that I'm not actually depending on Twilio's API for my tests to pass or fail. Do you see any strategy for mocking this out? Thanks in advance for any advice!

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• Should I be worrying about limiting the number of textures in my game?

  - by Donutz

  I am working on a GUI in XNA 4.0 at the moment. (Before you point out that there are many GUIs already in existance, this is as much a learning exercise as a practical project). As you may know, controls and dialogs in Windows actually consist of a number of system-level windows. For instance, a dialog box may consist of a window for the whole dialog, a child window for the client area, another window (barely showing) for the frame, and so on. This makes detecting mouse hits and doing clipping relatively easy. I'd like to design my XNA GUI along the same lines, but using overlapping Textures instead of windows obviously. My question (yes, there's actually a question in this drivel) is: am I at risk of adversely affecting game performance and/or running low in resources if I get too nuts with the creating of many small textures? I haven't been able to find much information on how resource-tight the XNA environment actually is. I grew up in the days of 64K ram so I'm used to obsessing about resources and optimization. Anyway, any feedback appreciated.

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• Function for building an isosurface (a sphere cut by planes)

  - by GameDevEnthusiast

  I want to build an octree over a quarter of a sphere (for debugging and testing). The octree generator relies on the AIsosurface interface to compute the density and normal at any given point in space. For example, for a full sphere the corresponding code is: // returns <0 if the point is inside the solid virtual float GetDensity( float _x, float _y, float _z ) const override { Float3 P = Float3_Set( _x, _y, _z ); Float3 v = Float3_Subtract( P, m_origin ); float l = Float3_LengthSquared( v ); float d = Float_Sqrt(l) - m_radius; return d; } // estimates the gradient at the given point virtual Float3 GetNormal( float _x, float _y, float _z ) const override { Float3 P = Float3_Set( _x, _y, _z ); float d = this->AIsosurface::GetDensity( P ); float Nx = this->GetDensity( _x + 0.001f, _y, _z ) - d; float Ny = this->GetDensity( _x, _y + 0.001f, _z ) - d; float Nz = this->GetDensity( _x, _y, _z + 0.001f ) - d; Float3 N = Float3_Normalized( Float3_Set( Nx, Ny, Nz ) ); return N; } What is a nice and fast way to compute those values when the shape is bounded by a low number of half-spaces?

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