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  • Make the Time

    - by WonderOfItAll
    Took the little one to the pool tonight for swim lessons. Okay, Okay. They're not really lessons so much as they are "Hey, here's a few bucks, let me rent out a small section of your pool to swim around with my little one" Saw a dad at the pool. Bluetooth on, iPad in hand, and two year old somewhere around there. Saw a mom at the pool. Arguing with her five year old to NOT take a shower after swimming. Bluetooth on, iPad in hand, work laptop open on stadium seats. Her reasoning for not wanting the child to shower "Look, I have to get this stuff to the office by 6:30, we don't have time for you to shower. Let's go" Wait, isn't the whole point of this little experience called Mommy and Me (or, as in my case, Daddy and Me). Wherein Mommy/Daddy is supposed to spend time with little one. Not with the Bluetooth. Not with the work laptop. Dad (yeah, the same dad from earlier), in the pool. Bluetooth off (it's not waterproof or I'm sure he would've had it on), two year old in hand and iPad somewhere put away. Getting frustrated with kid because he won't 'perform' on command. Here's a little exchange Kid: "I don't wanna get in the water" Dad: "Well, we're here for 30 minutes, get in the water" Kid: "No, don't wanna" Dad: "Fine, I'm getting in" and, true to his word, in he goes, off to swim. Kid: Crying Dad: "Well, c'mon" Kid: Walking to stands Dad: Ignoring kid Kid: At stands Dad: Out of pool, drying off. Frustrated. Grabs bag, grabs kid, leaves How sad. It really seems like I am living in a generation of parents who view their children as one big scheduled distraction to another. It's almost like the dad was saying "Look, little 2 year old boy, I have a busy scheduled. Right now my Outlook Calendar tells me that I have 30 mins to spend with you, so, let's go kid: PERFORM because I have the time" Really? Can someone please tell me when the hell this happened? When did spending time with your kid, spending time with your family, spending time with your spouse, etc... become a distraction? I've seen people at work all day Tweeting throughout the day, checked in with Four Square, IM up and running constantly so they can 'stay in touch' only to see these same folks come home and be irritated because their kids or their spouse wants to connect with the. I've seen these very same people leave the house, go to the corner bar/store/you-name-the-place to be 'alone' only to find them there, plugged in, tweeting away, etc, etc, etc I LOVE technology. I love working with technology. But I also know that I am a human being. A person who, by very definition, is a social being. I needed social interactions and contact--and, no, I'm not talking about the Social Graph kind of connections, I'm talking about those interactions which, *GASP* involve eye to eye contact and human contact. A recent study found that the number one complaint of kids is that they feel they have to compete with technology for their parents time and attention. The number one wish from high school kids? That there parents would turn off the computer/tv/cell phone at dinner. This, coming from high school kids. Shouldn't that tell you a whole helluva lot? So, do yourself a favor tomorrow. Plug into technology all day. Throw yourself into it. Be passionate about what you do. When you walk through the door to your family, turn it all off for 30 mins and be there with your loved ones. If you can manage to play Angry Birds, I'm sure you can handle being disconnected for 30 minutes. Make the time

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  • The long road to bug-free software

    - by Tony Davis
    The past decade has seen a burgeoning interest in functional programming languages such as Haskell or, in the Microsoft world, F#. Though still on the periphery of mainstream programming, functional programming concepts are gradually seeping into the imperative C# language (for example, Lambda expressions have their root in functional programming). One of the more interesting concepts from functional programming languages is the use of formal methods, the lofty ideal behind which is bug-free software. The idea is that we write a specification that describes exactly how our function (say) should behave. We then prove that our function conforms to it, and in doing so have proved beyond any doubt that it is free from bugs. All programmers already use one form of specification, specifically their programming language's type system. If a value has a specific type then, in a type-safe language, the compiler guarantees that value cannot be an instance of a different type. Many extensions to existing type systems, such as generics in Java and .NET, extend the range of programs that can be type-checked. Unfortunately, type systems can only prevent some bugs. To take a classic problem of retrieving an index value from an array, since the type system doesn't specify the length of the array, the compiler has no way of knowing that a request for the "value of index 4" from an array of only two elements is "unsafe". We restore safety via exception handling, but the ideal type system will prevent us from doing anything that is unsafe in the first place and this is where we start to borrow ideas from a language such as Haskell, with its concept of "dependent types". If the type of an array includes its length, we can ensure that any index accesses into the array are valid. The problem is that we now need to carry around the length of arrays and the values of indices throughout our code so that it can be type-checked. In general, writing the specification to prove a positive property, even for a problem very amenable to specification, such as a simple sorting algorithm, turns out to be very hard and the specification will be different for every program. Extend this to writing a specification for, say, Microsoft Word and we can see that the specification would end up being no simpler, and therefore no less buggy, than the implementation. Fortunately, it is easier to write a specification that proves that a program doesn't have certain, specific and undesirable properties, such as infinite loops or accesses to the wrong bit of memory. If we can write the specifications to prove that a program is immune to such problems, we could reuse them in many places. The problem is the lack of specification "provers" that can do this without a lot of manual intervention (i.e. hints from the programmer). All this might feel a very long way off, but computing power and our understanding of the theory of "provers" advances quickly, and Microsoft is doing some of it already. Via their Terminator research project they have started to prove that their device drivers will always terminate, and in so doing have suddenly eliminated a vast range of possible bugs. This is a huge step forward from saying, "we've tested it lots and it seems fine". What do you think? What might be good targets for specification and verification? SQL could be one: the cost of a bug in SQL Server is quite high given how many important systems rely on it, so there's a good incentive to eliminate bugs, even at high initial cost. [Many thanks to Mike Williamson for guidance and useful conversations during the writing of this piece] Cheers, Tony.

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  • PHP-FPM stops responding and dies [migrated]

    - by user12361
    I'm running Drupal 6 with Nginx 1.5.1 and PHP-FPM (PHP 5.3.26) on a 1GB single core VPS with 3GB of swap space on SSD storage. I just switched from shared hosting to this unmanaged VPS because my site was getting too heavy, so I'm still learning the ropes. I have moderately high traffic, I don't really monitor it closely but Google Adsense usually record close to 30K page views/day. I usually have 50 to 80 authenticated users logged in and a few hundred more anonymous users hitting the Boost static HTML cache at any given moment. The problem I'm having is that PHP-FPM frequently stops responding, resulting in Nginx 502 or 504 errors. I swear I have read every page on the internet about this issue, which seems fairly common, and I've tried endless combinations of configurations, and I can't find a good solution. After restarting Nginx and PHP-FPM, the site runs really fast for a while, and then without warning it simply stops responding. I get a white screen while the browser waits on the server, and after about 30 seconds to a minute it throws an Nginx 502 or 504 error. Sometimes it runs well for 2 minutes, sometimes 5 minutes, sometimes 5 hours, but it always ends up hanging. When I find the server in this state, there is still plenty of free memory (500MB or more) and no major CPU usage, the control and worker PHP-FPM processes are still present, and the server is still pingable and usable via SSH. A reload of PHP-FPM via the init script revives it again. The hangups don't seem to correspond to the amount of traffic, because I observed this behavior consistently when I was testing this configuration on a development VPS with no traffic at all. I've been constantly tweaking the settings, but I can't definitively eliminate the problem. I set Nginx workers to just 1. In the PHP-FPM config I have tried all three of the process managers. "Dynamic" is definitely the least reliable, consistently hanging up after only a few minutes. "Static" also has been unreliable and unpredictable. The least buggy has been "ondemand", but even that is failing me, sometimes after as much as 12 to 24 hours. But I can't leave the server unattended because PHP-FPM dies and never comes back on its own. I tried adjusting the pm.max_children value from as low as 3 to as high as 50, doesn't make a lot of difference, but I currently have it at 10. Same thing for the spare servers values. I also have set pm.max_requests anywhere from 30 to unlimited, and it doesn't seem to make a difference. According to the logs, the PHP-FPM processes are not exiting with SIGSEGV or SIGBUS, but rather with SIGTERM. I get a lot of lines like: WARNING: [pool www] child 3739, script '/var/www/drupal6/index.php' (request: "GET /index.php") execution timed out (38.739494 sec), terminating and: WARNING: [pool www] child 3738 exited on signal 15 (SIGTERM) after 50.004380 seconds from start I actually found several articles that recommend doing a graceful reload of PHP-FPM via cron every few minutes or hours to circumvent this issue. So that's what I did, "/etc/init.d/php-fpm reload" every 5 minutes. So far, it's keeping the lights on. But it feels like a dreadful hack. Is PHP-FPM really that unreliable? Is there anything else I can do? Thanks a lot!

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  • Applying for internship

    - by Margus
    At the moment I'm thinking about applying for internship at Eesti Energia. I seem to be eligible, but before contacting them I need to learn how to compile an informative and complete CV and cover letter. I do not consider myself as shallow minded, but also I'm not sure how to convincingly justify the stand of interest and how internship will help me in my future career. Course of life Tallinna Tehnikagümnaasium 2003 - 2006 Tallinna Tehnikaülikool 2006 – 2009 Military service at Signal Batallion Tallinna Tehnikaülikool 2010 – ... I started my academic career as Computer and Systems Engineer, but as I excelled in programming classes, I changed my major to Software Engineer and taken my specialty in web applications and logic. Nowadays I mainly use Java, Mathematica and C# to solve problems. For 2 times, I have taken part in ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, where my team won the nationals and did pretty well in Europe. Also as part of notable thing in my academic career, my team wrote the Kalah game AI, that won in University's main programming class AI tournament. My hobbies are mind games and occasional problem solving. Few years ago I also competed in International Checkers EM (requires being in top 3 in nationals) as part of cadet and junior age group - I did not come close to winning, but I exceeded about half of the players each time. In high school and gymnasium I took part and later was the captain of team, that passes regionals and made it to top 3 of nationals (and later won) in (blitz) russian checkers. That was impressive because, it was a team effort as we only had (depending on year) 2-3 strong players. Although I started programming exactly 9,5 years ago I have no work experience. Well actually thats not true, as I completed my army duty, I was hired for a year (days still counting) to be apart of communicational (emergency) infrastructure action group where I'm the teams IT specialist (it's more complicated). So I consider myself to be aware of: rough conditions, teamwork, high stress tolerance, being on time and what responsibility means. As negative things I can mention: I do not have drivers licence. Although only Estonian and English are noted as requirements, then Russian is most likely required as well and I barely understand some of it. Reasons why I want to apply there, are: I need to do at least 4-6 week traineeship and it's in the right field I have the requirements and tasks seem easy enough Company is well known and has fairly good reputation Family and friend think, that it would be acceptable place to work Myriad of options to do final thesis about open up Work place is located in the same city I live atm. At moment, I see myself having a hard time explain why I would prefer it or where I see myself in 10 years if I was offered a job there. Question I have some idea how Curriculum Vitæ should look like, or I can google for template, but I'm not sure how to write informative one. Last I did one, it looked like: picture + contact information + education. Vaguely I only remember, that cover letter should be custom tailored for each place you apply containing ...

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  • Is Visual Source Safe (The latest Version) really that bad? Why? What's the Best Alternative? Why? [closed]

    - by hanzolo
    Over the years I've constantly heard horror stories, had people say "Real Programmers Dont Use VSS", and so on. BUT, then in the workplace I've worked at two companies, one, a very well known public facing high traffic website, and another high end Financial Services "Web-Based" hosted solution catering to some very large, very well known companies, which is where I currently Reside and everything's working just fine (KNOCK KNOCK!!). I'm constantly interfacing with EXTREMELY Old technology with some of these financial institutions.. OLD LIKE YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE.. which leads me to the conclusion that if it works "LEAVE IT", and that maybe there's some value in old technology? at least enough value to overrule a rewrite!? right?? Is there something fundamentally flawed with the underlying technology that VSS uses? I have a feeling that if i said "someone said VSS Sucks" they would beg to differ, most likely give me this look like i dont know -ish, and I'd never gain back their respect and my credibility (well, that'll be hard to blow.. lol), BUT, give me an argument that I can take to someone whose been coding for 30 years, that builds Platforms that leverage current technology (.NET 3.5 / SQL 2008 R2 ), write's their own ORM with scaffolding and is able to provide a quality platform that supports thousands of concurrent users on a multi-tenant hosted solution, and does not agree with any benefits from having Source Control Integrated, and yet uses the Infamous Visual Source Safe. I have extensive experience with TFS up to 2010, and honestly I think it's great when a team (beyond developers) can embrace it. I've worked side by side with someone whose a die hard SVN'r and from a purist standpoint, I see the beauty in it (I need a bit more, out of my SS, but it surely suffices). So, why are such smarties not running away from Visual Source Safe? surely if it was so bad, it would've have been realized by now, and I would not be sitting here with this simple old, Check In, Check Out, Version Resistant, Label Intensive system. But here I am... I would love to drop an argument that would be the end all argument, but if it's a matter of opinion and personal experience, there seems to be too much leeway for keeping VSS. UPDATE: I guess the best case is to have the VSS supporters check other people's experiences and draw from that until we (please no) experience the breaking factor ourselves. Until then, i wont be engaging in a discussion to migrate off of VSS.. UPDATE 11-2012: So i was able to convince everyone at my work place that since MS is sun downing Visual Source Safe it might be time to migrate over to TFS. I was able to convince them and have recently upgraded our team to Visual Studio 2012 and TFS 2012. The migration was fairly painless, had to run analyze.exe which found a bunch of errors (not sure they'll ever affect the project) and then manually run the VSSConverter.exe. Again, painless, except it took 16 hours to migrate 5 years worth of everything.. and now we're on TFS.. much more integrated.. much more cooler.. so all in all, VSS served it's purpose for years without hick-up. There were no horror stories and Visual Source Save as source control worked just fine. so to all the nay sayers (me included). there's nothing wrong with using VSS. i wouldnt start a new project with it, and i would definitely consider migrating to TFS. (it's really not super difficult and a new "wizard" type converter is due out any day now so migrating should be painless). But from my experience, it worked just fine and got the job done.

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  • Is the Leptonica implementation of 'Modified Median Cut' not using the median at all?

    - by TheCodeJunkie
    I'm playing around a bit with image processing and decided to read up on how color quantization worked and after a bit of reading I found the Modified Median Cut Quantization algorithm. I've been reading the code of the C implementation in Leptonica library and came across something I thought was a bit odd. Now I want to stress that I am far from an expert in this area, not am I a math-head, so I am predicting that this all comes down to me not understanding all of it and not that the implementation of the algorithm is wrong at all. The algorithm states that the vbox should be split along the lagest axis and that it should be split using the following logic The largest axis is divided by locating the bin with the median pixel (by population), selecting the longer side, and dividing in the center of that side. We could have simply put the bin with the median pixel in the shorter side, but in the early stages of subdivision, this tends to put low density clusters (that are not considered in the subdivision) in the same vbox as part of a high density cluster that will outvote it in median vbox color, even with future median-based subdivisions. The algorithm used here is particularly important in early subdivisions, and 3is useful for giving visible but low population color clusters their own vbox. This has little effect on the subdivision of high density clusters, which ultimately will have roughly equal population in their vboxes. For the sake of the argument, let's assume that we have a vbox that we are in the process of splitting and that the red axis is the largest. In the Leptonica algorithm, on line 01297, the code appears to do the following Iterate over all the possible green and blue variations of the red color For each iteration it adds to the total number of pixels (population) it's found along the red axis For each red color it sum up the population of the current red and the previous ones, thus storing an accumulated value, for each red note: when I say 'red' I mean each point along the axis that is covered by the iteration, the actual color may not be red but contains a certain amount of red So for the sake of illustration, assume we have 9 "bins" along the red axis and that they have the following populations 4 8 20 16 1 9 12 8 8 After the iteration of all red bins, the partialsum array will contain the following count for the bins mentioned above 4 12 32 48 49 58 70 78 86 And total would have a value of 86 Once that's done it's time to perform the actual median cut and for the red axis this is performed on line 01346 It iterates over bins and check they accumulated sum. And here's the part that throws me of from the description of the algorithm. It looks for the first bin that has a value that is greater than total/2 Wouldn't total/2 mean that it is looking for a bin that has a value that is greater than the average value and not the median ? The median for the above bins would be 49 The use of 43 or 49 could potentially have a huge impact on how the boxes are split, even though the algorithm then proceeds by moving to the center of the larger side of where the matched value was.. Another thing that puzzles me a bit is that the paper specified that the bin with the median value should be located, but does not mention how to proceed if there are an even number of bins.. the median would be the result of (a+b)/2 and it's not guaranteed that any of the bins contains that population count. So this is what makes me thing that there are some approximations going on that are negligible because of how the split actually takes part at the center of the larger side of the selected bin. Sorry if it got a bit long winded, but I wanted to be as thoroughas I could because it's been driving me nuts for a couple of days now ;)

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  • The long road to bug-free software

    - by Tony Davis
    The past decade has seen a burgeoning interest in functional programming languages such as Haskell or, in the Microsoft world, F#. Though still on the periphery of mainstream programming, functional programming concepts are gradually seeping into the imperative C# language (for example, Lambda expressions have their root in functional programming). One of the more interesting concepts from functional programming languages is the use of formal methods, the lofty ideal behind which is bug-free software. The idea is that we write a specification that describes exactly how our function (say) should behave. We then prove that our function conforms to it, and in doing so have proved beyond any doubt that it is free from bugs. All programmers already use one form of specification, specifically their programming language's type system. If a value has a specific type then, in a type-safe language, the compiler guarantees that value cannot be an instance of a different type. Many extensions to existing type systems, such as generics in Java and .NET, extend the range of programs that can be type-checked. Unfortunately, type systems can only prevent some bugs. To take a classic problem of retrieving an index value from an array, since the type system doesn't specify the length of the array, the compiler has no way of knowing that a request for the "value of index 4" from an array of only two elements is "unsafe". We restore safety via exception handling, but the ideal type system will prevent us from doing anything that is unsafe in the first place and this is where we start to borrow ideas from a language such as Haskell, with its concept of "dependent types". If the type of an array includes its length, we can ensure that any index accesses into the array are valid. The problem is that we now need to carry around the length of arrays and the values of indices throughout our code so that it can be type-checked. In general, writing the specification to prove a positive property, even for a problem very amenable to specification, such as a simple sorting algorithm, turns out to be very hard and the specification will be different for every program. Extend this to writing a specification for, say, Microsoft Word and we can see that the specification would end up being no simpler, and therefore no less buggy, than the implementation. Fortunately, it is easier to write a specification that proves that a program doesn't have certain, specific and undesirable properties, such as infinite loops or accesses to the wrong bit of memory. If we can write the specifications to prove that a program is immune to such problems, we could reuse them in many places. The problem is the lack of specification "provers" that can do this without a lot of manual intervention (i.e. hints from the programmer). All this might feel a very long way off, but computing power and our understanding of the theory of "provers" advances quickly, and Microsoft is doing some of it already. Via their Terminator research project they have started to prove that their device drivers will always terminate, and in so doing have suddenly eliminated a vast range of possible bugs. This is a huge step forward from saying, "we've tested it lots and it seems fine". What do you think? What might be good targets for specification and verification? SQL could be one: the cost of a bug in SQL Server is quite high given how many important systems rely on it, so there's a good incentive to eliminate bugs, even at high initial cost. [Many thanks to Mike Williamson for guidance and useful conversations during the writing of this piece] Cheers, Tony.

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  • ORA-4031 Troubleshooting Tool ???

    - by Takeyoshi Sasaki
    ORA-4031 ???????????????????? SGA ????????????(??????)??????????????????????????????????????????????????? ORA-4031 ??????????????????? ORA-4031 Troubleshooting Tool ??????????? ORA-4031 Troubleshooting Tool ?? ORA-4031 Troubleshooting Tool ? ORA-4031 ????????? ORA-4031 ???????????????????????????????????WEB????????????????????????????????My Oracle Support ??????????????????????? ORA-4031 ??????????????????????????????ORA-4031 ?????????????????????????????? ORA-4031 Troubleshooting Tool ???????? My Oracle Support ?????? Diagnostic Tools Catalog ??  ORA-4031 Troubleshooting Tool ???????????????? ORA-4031 Troubleshooting Tool ??????????????? ORA-4031 Troubleshooting Tool ????? ???2??????????????? ORA-4031 ?????????????????????????????ORA-4031 Troubleshooting Tool ????????????????????????????????????????ORA-4031 ???????????????????? ??????????????? ORA-4031???????????? ????????????? ORA-4031 ?????? AWR???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ????·???????·???????????? ORA-4031 ?????????? ????????? SR ?????????????????????????? [ADR] ????·??????·?????????? [10g ???] AWR?????(STATSPACK????)???? ?????????? ORA-4031 ????????????????????????????????????????????? ORA-4031 ?????????????? ORA-4031 ??????1?1??????????? ORA-4031 Troubleshooting Tool ???????????(??????????????)???????? ORA-4031 ????????? ???????????????????????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????????????????????1)High Session_Cached_Cursor Setting Causing Excessive Consumption of Shared Pool???SESSION_CACHED_CURSOR ??????????????????????????????????????????????2)Insufficient SGA Free Memory at StartupThis issue could occur if in the init.ora parameters of your Alert log, (shared_pool_size + large_pool_size + java_pool_size + db_keep_cache_size + streams_pool_size + db_cache_size) / sga_target is greater than 90%.????????????????????????? ?????????????? shared_pool_size, large_pool_size, java_pool_size, db_keep_cache_size, streams_pool_size, db_cache_size ????? /sga_target ??? 90% ??????????????????sga_target ??? memory_target ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? shared_pool_size ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????(?????????)? sga_target ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????1)In your Alert log,* Look for parameters under "System parameters with non-default values:". If session_cached_cursor * 2000 / shared_pool_size is greater than 10%, then session_cached_cursors are consuming significant shared_pool_size.??? ????????????? "System parameters with non-default values:" ????  session_cached_cursor * 2000 ??? shared_pool_size ? 10% ???????????????????????? ???2) In your Alert log, SGA Utilization (Sum of shared_pool_size, large_pool_size, java_pool_size, db_keep_cache_size, streams_pool_size and db_cache_size over sga_target) is 99%, which might be too high. ??? shared_pool_size, large_pool_size, java_pool_size, db_keep_cache_size, streams_pool_size and db_cache_size ???? sga_target ? 99% ???????????????????? ?????????????????????????????? My Oracle Support ??????????????????????????1)Decrease the parameter SESSION_CACHED_CURSORSSESSION_CACHED_CURSORS ???????????????????????2)Reduce the minimum values for the dynamic SGA components to allow memory manager to make changes as neededSGA ?????????????????(???)?????????????????? 2????????????????????? ORA-4031 Trobuleshooting Tool ????????????????????????????????????????? ORA-4031 Troubleshooting Tool ?????? ORA-4031 ??????????????????????ORA-4031 Troubleshooting Tool ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????ORA-4031 ????????????????????????????ORA-4031 ??????????????? ORA-4031 Troubleshooting Tool ?????????

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  • A programmer who doesn't get to program - where to turn? [closed]

    - by Just an Anon
    I'm in my mid 20's, and have been working as a full time programmer / developer for the last ~6 years, with several years of part-time freelancing before this, and three straight years of freelancing in the middle of this short career. I work mostly with PHP and the Drupal framework. By and large, I focus on programming custom pieces of functionality; these, of course, vary greatly from project to project. I've got years of solid experience with OOP (have done some Java & C# years ago, too) including intensive experience with front-end development, and even some design work. I've lead small teams (2-4 people) of developers. And of course, given the large amount of freelancing, I've got decent project- & client-management skills. My problem is staying motivated at any place of employment. In the time mentioned I've worked (full-time) at six local companies. The longest I've stayed at any company was just over a year. I find that I'll get hired and be very excited and motivated for the first few months, but the work quickly gets "stale." By that I mean that the interesting components (ie. the programming) get done, and the rest of the work turns into boring cleanup (move a button, add text, change colours, add a field). I don't get challenged, and I don't feel like I'm learning anything new. This happens repeatedly time and time again, and I always end up leaving for either a new opportunity, or to freelance. I'm wondering if perhaps I've painted myself into a corner with the rather niche work market (although with very high demand and good compensation) and need to explore other career choices. Another possibility is that I may be choosing the wrong places of employment, mostly small agencies, and need to look into working for a larger, more established firm. I find programming, writing code, and architecting solutions very rewarding. When I'm working on an interesting problem I lose all sense of time and 14-16 hours can fly by like minutes. I get the same exciting feeling when I'm doing high-level planning of a complex system, breaking up the work and figuring out how everything will tie-in together. I absolutely hate doing small, "stupid" changes that pose no challenge, yet seem to make up more and more of my work. I want to find a workplace where I will get to work on such tasks, be challenged, and improve in all areas of product development. This maybe a programming job, management, architecture of desktop apps, or may be managing a taco stand on a beach in Mexico - I don't know, and I need some advice and real-world feedback. What are some job areas worth exploring? The requirements are fairly simple: working with computers interacting with others challenging decent pay (I'm making just short of 90k / year with a month of vacation & some benefits, and would like to stay in this range, but am willing to take a temporary cut in pay for a more interesting position) Any advice would be much appreciated!

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  • Help getting frame rate (fps) up in Python + Pygame

    - by Jordan Magnuson
    I am working on a little card-swapping world-travel game that I sort of envision as a cross between Bejeweled and the 10 Days geography board games. So far the coding has been going okay, but the frame rate is pretty bad... currently I'm getting low 20's on my Core 2 Duo. This is a problem since I'm creating the game for Intel's March developer competition, which is squarely aimed at netbooks packing underpowered Atom processors. Here's a screen from the game: ![www.necessarygames.com/my_games/betraveled/betraveled-fps.png][1] I am very new to Python and Pygame (this is the first thing I've used them for), and am sadly lacking in formal CS training... which is to say that I think there are probably A LOT of bad practices going on in my code, and A LOT that could be optimized. If some of you older Python hands wouldn't mind taking a look at my code and seeing if you can't find any obvious areas for optimization, I would be extremely grateful. You can download the full source code here: http://www.necessarygames.com/my_games/betraveled/betraveled_src0328.zip Compiled exe here: www.necessarygames.com/my_games/betraveled/betraveled_src0328.zip One thing I am concerned about is my event manager, which I feel may have some performance wholes in it, and another thing is my rendering... I'm pretty much just blitting everything to the screen all the time (see the render routines in my game_components.py below); I recently found out that you should only update the areas of the screen that have changed, but I'm still foggy on how that accomplished exactly... could this be a huge performance issue? Any thoughts are much appreciated! As usual, I'm happy to "tip" you for your time and energy via PayPal. Jordan Here are some bits of the source: Main.py #Remote imports import pygame from pygame.locals import * #Local imports import config import rooms from event_manager import * from events import * class RoomController(object): """Controls which room is currently active (eg Title Screen)""" def __init__(self, screen, ev_manager): self.room = None self.screen = screen self.ev_manager = ev_manager self.ev_manager.register_listener(self) self.room = self.set_room(config.room) def set_room(self, room_const): #Unregister old room from ev_manager if self.room: self.room.ev_manager.unregister_listener(self.room) self.room = None #Set new room based on const if room_const == config.TITLE_SCREEN: return rooms.TitleScreen(self.screen, self.ev_manager) elif room_const == config.GAME_MODE_ROOM: return rooms.GameModeRoom(self.screen, self.ev_manager) elif room_const == config.GAME_ROOM: return rooms.GameRoom(self.screen, self.ev_manager) elif room_const == config.HIGH_SCORES_ROOM: return rooms.HighScoresRoom(self.screen, self.ev_manager) def notify(self, event): if isinstance(event, ChangeRoomRequest): if event.game_mode: config.game_mode = event.game_mode self.room = self.set_room(event.new_room) def render(self, surface): self.room.render(surface) #Run game def main(): pygame.init() screen = pygame.display.set_mode(config.screen_size) ev_manager = EventManager() spinner = CPUSpinnerController(ev_manager) room_controller = RoomController(screen, ev_manager) pygame_event_controller = PyGameEventController(ev_manager) spinner.run() # this runs the main function if this script is called to run. # If it is imported as a module, we don't run the main function. if __name__ == "__main__": main() event_manager.py #Remote imports import pygame from pygame.locals import * #Local imports import config from events import * def debug( msg ): print "Debug Message: " + str(msg) class EventManager: #This object is responsible for coordinating most communication #between the Model, View, and Controller. def __init__(self): from weakref import WeakKeyDictionary self.listeners = WeakKeyDictionary() self.eventQueue= [] self.gui_app = None #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def register_listener(self, listener): self.listeners[listener] = 1 #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def unregister_listener(self, listener): if listener in self.listeners: del self.listeners[listener] #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def post(self, event): if isinstance(event, MouseButtonLeftEvent): debug(event.name) #NOTE: copying the list like this before iterating over it, EVERY tick, is highly inefficient, #but currently has to be done because of how new listeners are added to the queue while it is running #(eg when popping cards from a deck). Should be changed. See: http://dr0id.homepage.bluewin.ch/pygame_tutorial08.html #and search for "Watch the iteration" for listener in list(self.listeners): #NOTE: If the weakref has died, it will be #automatically removed, so we don't have #to worry about it. listener.notify(event) #------------------------------------------------------------------------------ class PyGameEventController: """...""" def __init__(self, ev_manager): self.ev_manager = ev_manager self.ev_manager.register_listener(self) self.input_freeze = False #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def notify(self, incoming_event): if isinstance(incoming_event, UserInputFreeze): self.input_freeze = True elif isinstance(incoming_event, UserInputUnFreeze): self.input_freeze = False elif isinstance(incoming_event, TickEvent): #Share some time with other processes, so we don't hog the cpu pygame.time.wait(5) #Handle Pygame Events for event in pygame.event.get(): #If this event manager has an associated PGU GUI app, notify it of the event if self.ev_manager.gui_app: self.ev_manager.gui_app.event(event) #Standard event handling for everything else ev = None if event.type == QUIT: ev = QuitEvent() elif event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN and not self.input_freeze: if event.button == 1: #Button 1 pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos() ev = MouseButtonLeftEvent(pos) elif event.type == pygame.MOUSEMOTION: pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos() ev = MouseMoveEvent(pos) #Post event to event manager if ev: self.ev_manager.post(ev) #------------------------------------------------------------------------------ class CPUSpinnerController: def __init__(self, ev_manager): self.ev_manager = ev_manager self.ev_manager.register_listener(self) self.clock = pygame.time.Clock() self.cumu_time = 0 self.keep_going = True #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def run(self): if not self.keep_going: raise Exception('dead spinner') while self.keep_going: time_passed = self.clock.tick() fps = self.clock.get_fps() self.cumu_time += time_passed self.ev_manager.post(TickEvent(time_passed, fps)) if self.cumu_time >= 1000: self.cumu_time = 0 self.ev_manager.post(SecondEvent()) pygame.quit() #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def notify(self, event): if isinstance(event, QuitEvent): #this will stop the while loop from running self.keep_going = False rooms.py #Remote imports import pygame #Local imports import config import continents from game_components import * from my_gui import * from pgu import high class Room(object): def __init__(self, screen, ev_manager): self.screen = screen self.ev_manager = ev_manager self.ev_manager.register_listener(self) def notify(self, event): if isinstance(event, TickEvent): pygame.display.set_caption('FPS: ' + str(int(event.fps))) self.render(self.screen) pygame.display.update() def get_highs_table(self): fname = 'high_scores.txt' highs_table = None config.all_highs = high.Highs(fname) if config.game_mode == config.TIME_CHALLENGE: if config.difficulty == config.EASY: highs_table = config.all_highs['time_challenge_easy'] if config.difficulty == config.MED_DIF: highs_table = config.all_highs['time_challenge_med'] if config.difficulty == config.HARD: highs_table = config.all_highs['time_challenge_hard'] if config.difficulty == config.SUPER: highs_table = config.all_highs['time_challenge_super'] elif config.game_mode == config.PLAN_AHEAD: pass return highs_table class TitleScreen(Room): def __init__(self, screen, ev_manager): Room.__init__(self, screen, ev_manager) self.background = pygame.image.load('assets/images/interface/background.jpg').convert() #Initialize #--------------------------------------- self.gui_form = gui.Form() self.gui_app = gui.App(config.gui_theme) self.ev_manager.gui_app = self.gui_app c = gui.Container(align=0,valign=0) #Quit Button #--------------------------------------- b = StartGameButton(ev_manager=self.ev_manager) c.add(b, 0, 0) self.gui_app.init(c) def render(self, surface): surface.blit(self.background, (0, 0)) #GUI self.gui_app.paint(surface) class GameModeRoom(Room): def __init__(self, screen, ev_manager): Room.__init__(self, screen, ev_manager) self.background = pygame.image.load('assets/images/interface/background.jpg').convert() self.create_gui() #Create pgu gui elements def create_gui(self): #Setup #--------------------------------------- self.gui_form = gui.Form() self.gui_app = gui.App(config.gui_theme) self.ev_manager.gui_app = self.gui_app c = gui.Container(align=0,valign=-1) #Mode Relaxed Button #--------------------------------------- b = GameModeRelaxedButton(ev_manager=self.ev_manager) self.b = b print b.rect c.add(b, 0, 200) #Mode Time Challenge Button #--------------------------------------- b = TimeChallengeButton(ev_manager=self.ev_manager) self.b = b print b.rect c.add(b, 0, 250) #Mode Think Ahead Button #--------------------------------------- # b = PlanAheadButton(ev_manager=self.ev_manager) # self.b = b # print b.rect # c.add(b, 0, 300) #Initialize #--------------------------------------- self.gui_app.init(c) def render(self, surface): surface.blit(self.background, (0, 0)) #GUI self.gui_app.paint(surface) class GameRoom(Room): def __init__(self, screen, ev_manager): Room.__init__(self, screen, ev_manager) #Game mode #--------------------------------------- self.new_board_timer = None self.game_mode = config.game_mode config.current_highs = self.get_highs_table() self.highs_dialog = None self.game_over = False #Images #--------------------------------------- self.background = pygame.image.load('assets/images/interface/game screen2-1.jpg').convert() self.logo = pygame.image.load('assets/images/interface/logo_small.png').convert_alpha() self.game_over_text = pygame.image.load('assets/images/interface/text_game_over.png').convert_alpha() self.trip_complete_text = pygame.image.load('assets/images/interface/text_trip_complete.png').convert_alpha() self.zoom_game_over = None self.zoom_trip_complete = None self.fade_out = None #Text #--------------------------------------- self.font = pygame.font.Font(config.font_sans, config.interface_font_size) #Create game components #--------------------------------------- self.continent = self.set_continent(config.continent) self.board = Board(config.board_size, self.ev_manager) self.deck = Deck(self.ev_manager, self.continent) self.map = Map(self.continent) self.longest_trip = 0 #Set pos of game components #--------------------------------------- board_pos = (SCREEN_MARGIN[0], 109) self.board.set_pos(board_pos) map_pos = (config.screen_size[0] - self.map.size[0] - SCREEN_MARGIN[0], 57); self.map.set_pos(map_pos) #Trackers #--------------------------------------- self.game_clock = Chrono(self.ev_manager) self.swap_counter = 0 self.level = 0 #Create gui #--------------------------------------- self.create_gui() #Create initial board #--------------------------------------- self.new_board = self.deck.deal_new_board(self.board) self.ev_manager.post(NewBoardComplete(self.new_board)) def set_continent(self, continent_const): #Set continent based on const if continent_const == config.EUROPE: return continents.Europe() if continent_const == config.AFRICA: return continents.Africa() else: raise Exception('Continent constant not recognized') #Create pgu gui elements def create_gui(self): #Setup #--------------------------------------- self.gui_form = gui.Form() self.gui_app = gui.App(config.gui_theme) self.ev_manager.gui_app = self.gui_app c = gui.Container(align=-1,valign=-1) #Timer Progress bar #--------------------------------------- self.timer_bar = None self.time_increase = None self.minutes_left = None self.seconds_left = None self.timer_text = None if self.game_mode == config.TIME_CHALLENGE: self.time_increase = config.time_challenge_start_time self.timer_bar = gui.ProgressBar(config.time_challenge_start_time,0,config.max_time_bank,width=306) c.add(self.timer_bar, 172, 57) #Connections Progress bar #--------------------------------------- self.connections_bar = None self.connections_bar = gui.ProgressBar(0,0,config.longest_trip_needed,width=306) c.add(self.connections_bar, 172, 83) #Quit Button #--------------------------------------- b = QuitButton(ev_manager=self.ev_manager) c.add(b, 950, 20) #Generate Board Button #--------------------------------------- b = GenerateBoardButton(ev_manager=self.ev_manager, room=self) c.add(b, 500, 20) #Board Size? #--------------------------------------- bs = SetBoardSizeContainer(config.BOARD_LARGE, ev_manager=self.ev_manager, board=self.board) c.add(bs, 640, 20) #Fill Board? #--------------------------------------- t = FillBoardCheckbox(config.fill_board, ev_manager=self.ev_manager) c.add(t, 740, 20) #Darkness? #--------------------------------------- t = UseDarknessCheckbox(config.use_darkness, ev_manager=self.ev_manager) c.add(t, 840, 20) #Initialize #--------------------------------------- self.gui_app.init(c) def advance_level(self): self.level += 1 print 'Advancing to next level' print 'New level: ' + str(self.level) if self.timer_bar: print 'Time increase: ' + str(self.time_increase) self.timer_bar.value += self.time_increase self.time_increase = max(config.min_advance_time, int(self.time_increase * 0.9)) self.board = self.new_board self.new_board = None self.zoom_trip_complete = None self.game_clock.unpause() def notify(self, event): #Tick event if isinstance(event, TickEvent): pygame.display.set_caption('FPS: ' + str(int(event.fps))) self.render(self.screen) pygame.display.update() #Wait to deal new board when advancing levels if self.zoom_trip_complete and self.zoom_trip_complete.finished: self.zoom_trip_complete = None self.ev_manager.post(UnfreezeCards()) self.new_board = self.deck.deal_new_board(self.board) self.ev_manager.post(NewBoardComplete(self.new_board)) #New high score? if self.zoom_game_over and self.zoom_game_over.finished and not self.highs_dialog: if config.current_highs.check(self.level) != None: self.zoom_game_over.visible = False data = 'time:' + str(self.game_clock.time) + ',swaps:' + str(self.swap_counter) self.highs_dialog = HighScoreDialog(score=self.level, data=data, ev_manager=self.ev_manager) self.highs_dialog.open() elif not self.fade_out: self.fade_out = FadeOut(self.ev_manager, config.TITLE_SCREEN) #Second event elif isinstance(event, SecondEvent): if self.timer_bar: if not self.game_clock.paused: self.timer_bar.value -= 1 if self.timer_bar.value <= 0 and not self.game_over: self.ev_manager.post(GameOver()) self.minutes_left = self.timer_bar.value / 60 self.seconds_left = self.timer_bar.value % 60 if self.seconds_left < 10: leading_zero = '0' else: leading_zero = '' self.timer_text = ''.join(['Time Left: ', str(self.minutes_left), ':', leading_zero, str(self.seconds_left)]) #Game over elif isinstance(event, GameOver): self.game_over = True self.zoom_game_over = ZoomImage(self.ev_manager, self.game_over_text) #Trip complete event elif isinstance(event, TripComplete): print 'You did it!' self.game_clock.pause() self.zoom_trip_complete = ZoomImage(self.ev_manager, self.trip_complete_text) self.new_board_timer = Timer(self.ev_manager, 2) self.ev_manager.post(FreezeCards()) print 'Room posted newboardcomplete' #Board Refresh Complete elif isinstance(event, BoardRefreshComplete): if event.board == self.board: print 'Longest trip needed: ' + str(config.longest_trip_needed) print 'Your longest trip: ' + str(self.board.longest_trip) if self.board.longest_trip >= config.longest_trip_needed: self.ev_manager.post(TripComplete()) elif event.board == self.new_board: self.advance_level() self.connections_bar.value = self.board.longest_trip self.connection_text = ' '.join(['Connections:', str(self.board.longest_trip), '/', str(config.longest_trip_needed)]) #CardSwapComplete elif isinstance(event, CardSwapComplete): self.swap_counter += 1 elif isinstance(event, ConfigChangeBoardSize): config.board_size = event.new_size elif isinstance(event, ConfigChangeCardSize): config.card_size = event.new_size elif isinstance(event, ConfigChangeFillBoard): config.fill_board = event.new_value elif isinstance(event, ConfigChangeDarkness): config.use_darkness = event.new_value def render(self, surface): #Background surface.blit(self.background, (0, 0)) #Map self.map.render(surface) #Board self.board.render(surface) #Logo surface.blit(self.logo, (10,10)) #Text connection_text = self.font.render(self.connection_text, True, BLACK) surface.blit(connection_text, (25, 84)) if self.timer_text: timer_text = self.font.render(self.timer_text, True, BLACK) surface.blit(timer_text, (25, 64)) #GUI self.gui_app.paint(surface) if self.zoom_trip_complete: self.zoom_trip_complete.render(surface) if self.zoom_game_over: self.zoom_game_over.render(surface) if self.fade_out: self.fade_out.render(surface) class HighScoresRoom(Room): def __init__(self, screen, ev_manager): Room.__init__(self, screen, ev_manager) self.background = pygame.image.load('assets/images/interface/background.jpg').convert() #Initialize #--------------------------------------- self.gui_app = gui.App(config.gui_theme) self.ev_manager.gui_app = self.gui_app c = gui.Container(align=0,valign=0) #High Scores Table #--------------------------------------- hst = HighScoresTable() c.add(hst, 0, 0) self.gui_app.init(c) def render(self, surface): surface.blit(self.background, (0, 0)) #GUI self.gui_app.paint(surface) game_components.py #Remote imports import pygame from pygame.locals import * import random import operator from copy import copy from math import sqrt, floor #Local imports import config from events import * from matrix import Matrix from textrect import render_textrect, TextRectException from hyphen import hyphenator from textwrap2 import TextWrapper ############################## #CONSTANTS ############################## SCREEN_MARGIN = (10, 10) #Colors BLACK = (0, 0, 0) WHITE = (255, 255, 255) RED = (255, 0, 0) YELLOW = (255, 200, 0) #Directions LEFT = -1 RIGHT = 1 UP = 2 DOWN = -2 #Cards CARD_MARGIN = (10, 10) CARD_PADDING = (2, 2) #Card types BLANK = 0 COUNTRY = 1 TRANSPORT = 2 #Transport types PLANE = 0 TRAIN = 1 CAR = 2 SHIP = 3 class Timer(object): def __init__(self, ev_manager, time_left): self.ev_manager = ev_manager self.ev_manager.register_listener(self) self.time_left = time_left self.paused = False def __repr__(self): return str(self.time_left) def pause(self): self.paused = True def unpause(self): self.paused = False def notify(self, event): #Pause Event if isinstance(event, Pause): self.pause() #Unpause Event elif isinstance(event, Unpause): self.unpause() #Second Event elif isinstance(event, SecondEvent): if not self.paused: self.time_left -= 1 class Chrono(object): def __init__(self, ev_manager, start_time=0): self.ev_manager = ev_manager self.ev_manager.register_listener(self) self.time = start_time self.paused = False def __repr__(self): return str(self.time_left) def pause(self): self.paused = 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config.COLOR5)

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    - by anelson
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    - by Yuval A
    Even when viewing the subject in the most objective way possible, it is clear that software, as a product, generally suffers from low quality. Take for example a house built from scratch. Usually, the house will function as it is supposed to. It will stand for many years to come, the roof will support heavy weather conditions, the doors and the windows will do their job, the foundations will not collapse even when the house is fully populated. Sure, minor problemsdo occur, like a leaking faucet or a bad paint job, but these are not critical. Software, on the other hand is much more susceptible to suffer from bad quality: unexpected crashes, erroneous behavior, miscellaneous bugs, etc. Sure, there are many software projects and products which show high quality and are very reliable. But lots of software products do not fall in this category. Take into consideration paradigms like TDD which its popularity is on the rise in the past few years. Why is this? Why do people have to fear that their software will not work or crash? (Do you walk into a house fearing its foundations will collapse?) Why is software - subjectively - so full of bugs? Possible reasons: Modern software engineering exists for only a few decades, a small time period compared to other forms of engineering/production. Software is very complicated with layers upon layers of complexity, integrating them all is not trivial. Software development is relatively easy to start with, anyone can write a simple program on his PC, which leads to amateur software leaking into the market. Tight budgets and timeframes do not allow complete and high quality development and extensive testing. How do you explain this issue, and do you see software quality advancing in the near future?

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  • jQuery validation plugin and .ajax

    - by FALCONSEYE
    So, I have a form where I load divs as I go asking for various user input and displaying some offers. I have the following: $("#calcPrice").click(function() { $("#invPricing").validate({ rules: { ... }, messages: {... } , submitHandler: function(form) { .... $.ajax({ }); $.ajax({ }); return false; } }); My problem is after validation, none of the ajax calls work. If I remove the validation methods (rules, messages, submitHandler), everything works fine. Can somebody tell me what I am missing here? thanks in advance. btw, these are the ajax calls: $.ajax({ dataType: "json", type: "get", url: <cfoutput>"#actURL#"</cfoutput>, data: formData+"&p_type=LOW&returnJSON=true", cache: false, success: function(result) { // fields to populate: $("#rent").val(result.RENT); $("#discount").val(result.DISCOUNT); $("#salesPrice1").val(result.SALESPRICE); $("#cashPrice1").val(result.CASHSALESPRICE); $("#tax1").val(result.SALESTAX); $("#payment1").val(result.PAYMENTS); } , error: function(xmlHttpRequest, status, err) { confirm('Error!' + err); } }); $.ajax({ dataType: "json", type: "get", url: <cfoutput>"#actURL#"</cfoutput>, data: formData+"&p_type=HIGH&returnJSON=true", cache: false, success: function(result) { // fields to populate: $("#rent").val(result.RENT); $("#discount").val(result.DISCOUNT); $("#salesPrice2").val(result.SALESPRICE); $("#cashPrice2").val(result.CASHSALESPRICE); $("#tax2").val(result.SALESTAX); $("#payment2").val(result.PAYMENTS); } , error: function(xmlHttpRequest, status, err) { confirm('Error!' + err); } }); I am basically displaying two offers one Low, one High.

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  • Embedding a flash object old SWF markup? Will this work??

    - by user342391
    I am embedding a flash object into my site and when I do I get a message from dreamweaver saying "This page contains some swf objects that may not work correctly in the most recent versions of Internet Explorer. Dreamweaver cannot convert them to the new SWF markups please delete each of them and insert them again" I am not aware of any new SWF markups but here is my code to check maybe I am doing something wrong: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <head> </head> <body> <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" width="350" height="140" title="Flash Audio Recorder"> <param name="movie" value="AudioRecorder.swf" /> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="FlashVars" value="userid=2&settings=myXML/settings.xml" /> <embed src="AudioRecorder.swf" FlashVars="userid=2&settings=myXML/settings.xml" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="350" height="140"></embed> </object> </body> </html>

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  • process csv in scala

    - by portoalet
    I am using scala 2.7.7, and wanted to parse CSV file and store the data in SQLite database. I ended up using OpenCSV java library to parse the CSV file, and using sqlitejdbc library. Using these java libraries makes my scala code looks almost identical to that of Java code (sans semicolon and with val/var) As I am dealing with java objects, I can't use scala list, map, etc, unless I do scala2java conversion or upgrade to scala 2.8 Is there a way I can simplify my code further using scala bits that I don't know? val filename = "file.csv"; val reader = new CSVReader(new FileReader(filename)) var aLine = new Array[String](10) var lastSymbol = "" while( (aLine = reader.readNext()) != null ) { if( aLine != null ) { val symbol = aLine(0) if( !symbol.equals(lastSymbol)) { try { val rs = stat.executeQuery("select name from sqlite_master where name='" + symbol + "';" ) if( !rs.next() ) { stat.executeUpdate("drop table if exists '" + symbol + "';") stat.executeUpdate("create table '" + symbol + "' (symbol,data,open,high,low,close,vol);") } } catch { case sqle : java.sql.SQLException => println(sqle) } lastSymbol = symbol } val prep = conn.prepareStatement("insert into '" + symbol + "' values (?,?,?,?,?,?,?);") prep.setString(1, aLine(0)) //symbol prep.setString(2, aLine(1)) //date prep.setString(3, aLine(2)) //open prep.setString(4, aLine(3)) //high prep.setString(5, aLine(4)) //low prep.setString(6, aLine(5)) //close prep.setString(7, aLine(6)) //vol prep.addBatch() prep.executeBatch() } } conn.close()

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  • Windows-Mobile Directshow: Specifying bitrate/quality of a WMV video capture

    - by Landstander
    Hi- I'm stumped on this, and I'm really hoping someone could point me in the right direction. I'm currently capturing video in Windows Mobile and encoding it using the WMV 9 DMO (CLSID_CWMV9EncMediaObject). That all works well enough, but the output video's bitrate is too high, resulting in a video file that's much too large for my needs. Ultimately, my goal is to mimic the video settings that Microsoft's Camera Capture Dialog outputs in the "messaging" quality mode (64kbps) from my C++ code. Currently, my code's outputting a WMV file with a bitrate of 352kbps. The only example I could find of specifying the capture bitrate with a WMV9 DMO was this. The idea in that code was basically to use a propertybag to write a bitrate to a property of the DMO. Update: In windows mobile, the closest codec property I can find that seems to equate to the bitrate is "g_wszWMVCVBRQuality". Microsoft's documentation of this property is extremely confusing to me: It basically seems to say that a higher number equates to a higher quality, but it gives absolutely no explanation of the specifics for each number. When I attempt to set this property to value like "1" via a propertybag for the WMV9 DMO, I run into a -2147467259 (unknown) error. To summarize: What is the basic strategy to specify the bitrate/quality of a video being captured via directshow (wmv9) on a windows mobile platform? I've heard (or wondered about) the following methods: Use the propertybag to change the encoder DMO's property that corresponds to bitrate/quality (currently failing) Create your own custom transcoder/encoder to specify it. This seems unnecessary since the WMV encoder works well enough- it's just at too high a bitrate. The VIDEOINFOHEADER has a bitrate property, but I suspect that specifying new settings here will do nothing to alter the actual encoding process since I wouldn't think file attributes would come into play until after the encoding. Any suggestions? PS: I would post specific source code, but at this point it may confuse more than it helps since I'm floundering so much on how to do this. At this point, I'm just trying to validate the general strategy. THANKS!

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  • Is there an "embedded DBMS" to support multiple writer applications (processes) on the same db files

    - by Amir Moghimi
    I need to know if there is any embedded DBMS (preferably in Java and not necessarily relational) which supports multiple writer applications (processes) on the same set of db files. BerkeleyDB supports multiple readers but just one writer. I need multiple writers and multiple readers. UPDATE: It is not a multiple connection issue. I mean I do not need multiple connections to a running DBMS application (process) to write data. I need multiple DBMS applications (processes) to commit on the same storage files. HSQLDB, H2, JavaDB (Derby) and MongoDB do not support this feature. I think that there may be some File System limitations that prohibit this. If so, is there a File System that allows multiple writers on a single file? Use Case: The use case is a high-throughput clustered system that intends to store its high-volume business log entries into a SAN storage. Storing business logs in separate files for each server does not fit because query and indexing capabilities are needed on the whole biz logs. Because "a SAN typically is its own network of storage devices that are generally not accessible through the regular network by regular devices", I want to use SAN network bandwidth for logging while cluster LAN bandwidth is being used for other server to server and client to server communications.

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  • Scalable / Parallel Large Graph Analysis Library?

    - by Joel Hoff
    I am looking for good recommendations for scalable and/or parallel large graph analysis libraries in various languages. The problems I am working on involve significant computational analysis of graphs/networks with 1-100 million nodes and 10 million to 1+ billion edges. The largest SMP computer I am using has 256 GB memory, but I also have access to an HPC cluster with 1000 cores, 2 TB aggregate memory, and MPI for communication. I am primarily looking for scalable, high-performance graph libraries that could be used in either single or multi-threaded scenarios, but parallel analysis libraries based on MPI or a similar protocol for communication and/or distributed memory are also of interest for high-end problems. Target programming languages include C++, C, Java, and Python. My research to-date has come up with the following possible solutions for these languages: C++ -- The most viable solutions appear to be the Boost Graph Library and Parallel Boost Graph Library. I have looked briefly at MTGL, but it is currently slanted more toward massively multithreaded hardware architectures like the Cray XMT. C - igraph and SNAP (Small-world Network Analysis and Partitioning); latter uses OpenMP for parallelism on SMP systems. Java - I have found no parallel libraries here yet, but JGraphT and perhaps JUNG are leading contenders in the non-parallel space. Python - igraph and NetworkX look like the most solid options, though neither is parallel. There used to be Python bindings for BGL, but these are now unsupported; last release in 2005 looks stale now. Other topics here on SO that I've looked at have discussed graph libraries in C++, Java, Python, and other languages. However, none of these topics focused significantly on scalability. Does anyone have recommendations they can offer based on experience with any of the above or other library packages when applied to large graph analysis problems? Performance, scalability, and code stability/maturity are my primary concerns. Most of the specialized algorithms will be developed by my team with the exception of any graph-oriented parallel communication or distributed memory frameworks (where the graph state is distributed across a cluster).

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  • Windows Sidebar gadget not working in vista home premium(ie 64-bit OS)

    - by stanley
    Hi All, I have developed a windows sidebar gadget which plays videos in a flash player, It works in vista home basic(32-bit OS) but doesn't work in vista home premium(64-bit OS). I use Flash Player 9 and Actionscript 3.0. Can anyone help me Please. ***This is the html content for the player*** <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" width="130" height="200" id="FLVPlayer"> <param name="movie" value="test.swf" /> <param name="salign" value="lt" /> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="scale" value="noscale" /> <param name="FlashVars" value="&MM_ComponentVersion=1&skinName=Clear_Skin_1&streamName=2973&autoPlay=true&autoRewind=true" /> <embed src="test.swf" flashvars="&MM_ComponentVersion=1&skinName=Clear_Skin_1&streamName=2973&autoPlay=true&autoRewind=true" quality="high" scale="noscale" width="130" height="200" name="FLVPlayer" salign="LT" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" />

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  • Reduce number of config files to as few as possible

    - by Scott
    For most of my applications I use iBatis.Net for database access/modeling and log4Net for logging. In doing this, I need a number of *.config files for each project. For example, for a simple application I need to have the following *.config files: app.config ([AssemblyName].[Extention].config) [AssemblyName].SqlMap.config [AssemblyName].log4Net.config [AssemblyName].SqlMapProperties.config providers.config When these applications go from DEV to TEST to PRODUCTION environments, the settings contained in these files change depending on the environment. When the number of files get compounded by having 5-10 (or more) supporting executables per project, the work load on the infrastructure team (the ones doing the roll-outs to the different environments) gets rather high. We also have a high risk of one of the config files being missed, or a mistype in the config file. What is the best way to avoid these risks? Should I combine all of the config files into one file? (is that possible with iBatis?) I know that with VisualStudio 2010 they introduce transforms for these config files that allow the developer to setup all the settings for the different environments and then dynamically (depending on the build kicked off) the config files get updated to the correct versions. (VS 2010 - transforms) Thank you for any help that you can provide.

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  • Execute remote Lua Script

    - by Bruno Lee
    Hi, I want to make an application that executes a remote script. The user can create a script (probabily a LUA script) then stores it in the server. Then he can uses an API for execute the script. I was thinking that API could be a webservice. So my questions are: I need high performance to execute the script. So my first choice was LUA script. Someone has another sugestion? Cause I need high perfomance, I was thinking if the webservice is the best solution. Maybe I could create a TCP/IP Windows Service that hold the users request. It is important to say that I will have many user executing scripts at the same time. So I will have a concurrency problem. My scripts will query in a database. I will use Tokyo Cabinet or Tokio Tyrant. I think Tokio Tyrant is the only solution cause I will have many requests. For perfomance, Do I need to make a connection pooling? Is there anyway to share variables between webservices requests? To make the webservice or the Windows service i was thinking to use C++. Can someone help with these questions? thanks

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  • How can I build something like Amazon S3 in Perl?

    - by Joel G
    I am looking to code a file storage application in perl similar to amazon s3. I already have a amazon s3 clone that I found online called parkplace but its in ruby and is old also isn't built for high loads. I am not really sure what modules and programs I should use so id like some help picking them out. My requirements are listed below (yes I know there are lots but I could start simple then add more once I get it going): Easy API implementation for client side apps. (maybe REST (?) Centralized database server for the USERDB (maybe PostgreSQL (?). Logging of all connections, bandwidth used, well pretty much everything to a centralized server (maybe PostgreSQL again (?). Easy server side configuration (config file(s) stored on the servers). Web based control panel for admin(s) and user(s) to show logs. (could work just running queries from the databases) Fast High Uptime Low memory usage Some sort of load distribution/load balancer (maybe a dns based or pound or perlbal or something else (?). Maybe a cache of some sort (memcached or parlbal or something else (?). Thanks in advance

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