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  • Choosing parts for a high-spec custom PC - feedback required [closed]

    - by James
    I'm looking to build a high-spec PC costing under ~£800 (bearing in mind I can get the CPU half price). This is my first time doing this so I have plenty of questions! I have been doing lots of research and this is what I have come up with: http://pcpartpicker.com/uk/p/j4lE Usage: I will be using it for Adobe CS6, rendering in 3DS Max, particle simulations in Realflow and for playing games like GTA IV (and V when it comes out), Crysis 1/2, Saints Row The Third, Deus Ex HR, etc. Questions: Can you see any obvious problem areas with the current setup? Will it be sufficient for the above usage? I won't be doing any overclocking initially. Is it worth buying the H60 liquid cooler, or will the fan that comes with the CPU be sufficient? Is water cooling generally quieter? Is the chosen motherboard good for the current components? And is it future-proof? I read that the HDD is often the bottleneck when it comes to gaming. I presume this is true to other high-end applications? If so, is my selection good? I keep changing my mind about the GPU; first the 560, now the 660. Can anyone shed some light on how to choose? I read mixed opinions about matching the GPU to the CPU. Will the 560 or the 660 be sufficient for my required usage? Atm I'm basing my choice on the PassMark benchmarks and how much they cost. The specs on the GeForce website state that the 560 and the 660 both require 450W. Is this a good figure to base the wattage of my PSU on? If so, how do you decide? Do I really need 750W? The latest GTX 690 requires 650W. Is it a good idea to buy a 750W PSU now to future-proof myself?

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  • What is the probable failure - no BSOD, no event log, monitors sleeping, force reboot required

    - by Tyler
    Every 3 to 15 days, my PC freezes. This typically happens when the computer is idle, I'm coming home from work, back from vacation, etc. It's never happened while using my computer. The monitors are in power save mode The Caps Lock light on the (wireless) keyboard doesn't work Ctrl-alt-del has no effect, mouse (wireless) has no effect The hardware reset button and single press of power putton have no effect Computer does not appear on the network No BSOD, no memory dump Event logs have no errors or indications of problems near the time of crash. Only messages after reboot indicating that there was a reboot without a clean shutdown. Windows is set to never put the computer to sleep (just the display) Here are the vital stats of the build: OS Windows 8 Pro 64-bit CPU Intel i5-2400 Mobo Intel BOXDP67DE Micro ATX GPU MSI N460GTX Cyclone768D5/OC RAM CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (2 x 4GB) CMX8GX3M2A1333C9 PSU SeaSonic X Series X650 Gold System Drive Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB SSD Data Drive 2 x Western Digital WD20EARS 2TB in hardware RAID 1 Optical Lite-On DVD burner IHAS424-98 And here is the story of how the problem developed and what I've done to diagnose: January 2011, system built with Windows 7 64-bit, runs great. March 2011, Intel replaced the mobo because of the bad sata controllers. October 2012, upgrade to Windows 8 (problems start shortly after). January 2013, system freezes and causes network to fail for the whole house. Unplug the network cable and other devices and PCs can use the internet. Plug it back in, internet goes away for everyone. Reboot and everything is fine. March 2013, install Intel Gigabit CT PCI-E NIC, disable mobo nic in bios. Network strangeness goes away. Freezes are less frequent. Memtest shows no problems (20 passes). Early June 2013, replace Antec PSU with SeaSonic PSU. Mid June 2013, replace OCZ Vertex 2 SSD with Samsung SSD. Late June 2013, get frustrated and hope the community has some good ideas (I'm running out of budget to replace parts). My next plan of attack is setting "Turn off display" to Never and using a screen saver to see how that reacts on the next freeze. It makes me sad to waste power for up to 15 days though. Has anyone out there seen a problem like this? Any ideas on what kind of malfunction would act this way? Ideas of other diagnostic steps to take?

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  • AGENT: The World's Smartest Watch

    - by Rob Chartier
    AGENT: The World's Smartest Watch by Secret Labs + House of Horology Disclaimer: Most if not all of this content has been gleaned from the comments on the Kickstarter project page and comments section. Any discrepancies between this post and any documentation on agentwatches.com, kickstarter.com, etc.., those official sites take precedence. Overview The next generation smartwatch with brand-new technology. World-class developer tools, unparalleled battery life, Qi wireless charging. Kickstarter Page, Comments Funding period : May 21, 2013 - Jun 20, 2013 MSRP : $249 Other Urls http://www.agentwatches.com/ https://www.facebook.com/agentwatches http://twitter.com/agentwatches http://pinterest.com/agentwatches/ http://paper.li/robchartier/1371234640 Developer Story The first official launch of the preview SDK and emulator will happen on 20-Jun-2013.  All development will be done in Visual Studio 2012, using the .NET Micro Framework SDK 2.3.  The SDK will ship with the first round of the expected API for developers along with an emulator. With that said, there is no need to wait for the SDK.  You can download the tooling now and get started with Apps and Faces immediately.  The only thing that you will not be able to work with is the API; but for example, watch faces, you can start building the basic face rendering with the Bitmap graphics drawing in the .NET Micro Framework.   Does it look good? Before we dig into any more of the gory details, here are a few photos of the current available prototype models.   The watch on the tiny QI Charter   If you wander too far away from your phone, your watch will let you know with a vibration and a message, all but one button will dismiss the message.   An app showing the premium weather data!   Nice stitching on the straps, leather and silicon will be available, along with a few lengths to choose from (short, regular, long lengths). On to those gory details…. Hardware Specs Processor 120MHz ARM Cortex-M4 processor (ATSAM4SD32) with secondary AVR co-processor Flash & RAM 2MB of onboard flash and 160KB of RAM 1/4 of the onboard flash will be used by the OS The flash is permanent (non-volatile) storage. Bluetooth Bluetooth 4.0 BD/EDR + LE Bluetooth 4.0 is backwards compatible with Bluetooth 2.1, so classic Bluetooth functions (BD/EDR, SPP/AVRCP/PBAP/etc.) will work fine. Sensors 3D Accelerometer (Motion) ST LSM303DLHC Ambient Light Sensor Hardware power metering Vibration Motor (You can pulse it to create vibration patterns, not sure about the vibration strength - driven with PWM) No piezo/speaker or microphone. Other QI Wireless Charging, no NFC, no wall adapter included Custom LED Backlight No GPS in the watch. It uses the GPS in your phone. AGENT watch apps are deployed and debugged wirelessly from your PC via Bluetooth. RoHS, Pb-free Battery Expected to use a CR2430-sized rechargeable battery – replaceable (Mouser, Amazon) Estimated charging time from empty is 2 hours with provided charger 7 Days typical with Bluetooth on, 30 days with Bluetooth off (watch-face only mode) The battery should last at least 2 years, with 100s of charge cycles. Physical dimensions Roughly 38mm top-to-bottom on the front face 35mm left-to-right on the front face and around 12mm in depth 22mm strap Two ~1/16" hex screws to attach the watch pin The top watchcase material candidates are PVD stainless steel, brushed matte ceramic, and high-quality polycarbonate (TBD). The glass lens is mineral glass, Anti-glare glass lens Strap options Leather and silicon straps will be available Expected to have three sizes Display 1.28" Sharp Memory Display The display stays on 100% of the time. Dimensions: 128x128 pixels Buttons Custom "Pusher" buttons, they will not make noise like a mouse click, and are very durable. The top-left button activates the backlight; bottom-left changes apps; three buttons on the right are up/select/down and can be used for custom purposes by apps. Backup reset procedure is currently activated by holding the home/menu button and the top-right user button for about ten seconds Device Support Android 2.3 or newer iPhone 4S or newer Windows Phone 8 or newer Heart Rate monitors - Bluetooth SPP or Bluetooth LE (GATT) is what you'll want the heart monitor to support. Almost limitless Bluetooth device support! Internationalization & Localization Full UTF8 Support from the ground up. AGENT's user interface is in English. Your content (caller ID, music tracks, notifications) will be in your native language. We have a plan to cover most major character sets, with Latin characters pre-loaded on the watch. Simplified Chinese will be available Feature overview Phone lost alert Caller ID Music Control (possible volume control) Wireless Charging Timer Stopwatch Vibrating Alarm (possibly custom vibrations for caller id) A few default watch faces Airplane mode (by demand or low power) Can be turned off completely Customizable 3rd party watch faces, applications which can be loaded over bluetooth. Sample apps that maybe installed Weather Sample Apps not installed Exercise App Other Possible Skype integration over Bluetooth. They will provide an AGENT app for your smartphone (iPhone, Android, Windows Phone). You'll be able to use it to load apps onto the watch.. You will be able to cancel phone calls. With compatible phones you can also answer, end, etc. They are adopting the standard hands-free profile to provide these features and caller ID.

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  • C# HashSet<T>

    - by Ben Griswold
    I hadn’t done much (read: anything) with the C# generic HashSet until I recently needed to produce a distinct collection.  As it turns out, HashSet<T> was the perfect tool. As the following snippet demonstrates, this collection type offers a lot: // Using HashSet<T>: // http://www.albahari.com/nutshell/ch07.aspx var letters = new HashSet<char>("the quick brown fox");   Console.WriteLine(letters.Contains('t')); // true Console.WriteLine(letters.Contains('j')); // false   foreach (char c in letters) Console.Write(c); // the quickbrownfx Console.WriteLine();   letters = new HashSet<char>("the quick brown fox"); letters.IntersectWith("aeiou"); foreach (char c in letters) Console.Write(c); // euio Console.WriteLine();   letters = new HashSet<char>("the quick brown fox"); letters.ExceptWith("aeiou"); foreach (char c in letters) Console.Write(c); // th qckbrwnfx Console.WriteLine();   letters = new HashSet<char>("the quick brown fox"); letters.SymmetricExceptWith("the lazy brown fox"); foreach (char c in letters) Console.Write(c); // quicklazy Console.WriteLine(); The MSDN documentation is a bit light on HashSet<T> documentation but if you search hard enough you can find some interesting information and benchmarks. But back to that distinct list I needed… // MSDN Add // http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb353005.aspx var employeeA = new Employee {Id = 1, Name = "Employee A"}; var employeeB = new Employee {Id = 2, Name = "Employee B"}; var employeeC = new Employee {Id = 3, Name = "Employee C"}; var employeeD = new Employee {Id = 4, Name = "Employee D"};   var naughty = new List<Employee> {employeeA}; var nice = new List<Employee> {employeeB, employeeC};   var employees = new HashSet<Employee>(); naughty.ForEach(x => employees.Add(x)); nice.ForEach(x => employees.Add(x));   foreach (Employee e in employees) Console.WriteLine(e); // Returns Employee A Employee B Employee C The Add Method returns true on success and, you guessed it, false if the item couldn’t be added to the collection.  I’m using the Linq ForEach syntax to add all valid items to the employees HashSet.  It works really great.  This is just a rough sample, but you may have noticed I’m using Employee, a reference type.  Most samples demonstrate the power of the HashSet with a collection of integers which is kind of cheating.  With value types you don’t have to worry about defining your own equality members.  With reference types, you do. internal class Employee {     public int Id { get; set; }     public string Name { get; set; }       public override string ToString()     {         return Name;     }          public bool Equals(Employee other)     {         if (ReferenceEquals(null, other)) return false;         if (ReferenceEquals(this, other)) return true;         return other.Id == Id;     }       public override bool Equals(object obj)     {         if (ReferenceEquals(null, obj)) return false;         if (ReferenceEquals(this, obj)) return true;         if (obj.GetType() != typeof (Employee)) return false;         return Equals((Employee) obj);     }       public override int GetHashCode()     {         return Id;     }       public static bool operator ==(Employee left, Employee right)     {         return Equals(left, right);     }       public static bool operator !=(Employee left, Employee right)     {         return !Equals(left, right);     } } Fortunately, with Resharper, it’s a snap. Click on the class name, ALT+INS and then follow with the handy dialogues. That’s it. Try out the HashSet<T>. It’s good stuff.

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  • ODI and OBIEE 11g Integration

    - by David Allan
    Here we will see some of the connectivity options to OBIEE 11g using the JDBC driver. You’ll see based upon some connection properties how the physical or presentation layers can be utilized. In the integrators guide for OBIEE 11g you will find a brief statement indicating that there actually is a JDBC driver for OBIEE. In OBIEE 11g its now possible to connect directly to the physical layer, Venkat has an informative post here on this topic. In ODI 11g the Oracle BI technology is shipped with the product along with KMs for reverse engineering, and using OBIEE models for a data source. When you install OBIEE in 11g a light weight demonstration application is preinstalled in the server, when you open this in the BI Administration tool we see the regular 3 panel view within the administration tool. To interrogate this system via JDBC (just like ODI does using the KMs) need a couple of things; the JDBC driver from OBIEE 11g, a java client program and the credentials. In my java client program I want to connect to the OBIEE system, when I connect I can interrogate what the JDBC driver presents for the metadata. The metadata projected via the JDBC connection’s DatabaseMetadata changes depending on whether the property NQ_SESSION.SELECTPHYSICAL is set when the java client connects. Let’s use the sample app to illustrate. I have a java client program here that will print out the tables in the DatabaseMetadata, it will also output the catalog and schema. For example if I execute without any special JDBC properties as follows; java -classpath .;%BIHOMEDIR%\clients\bijdbc.jar meta_jdbc oracle.bi.jdbc.AnaJdbcDriver jdbc:oraclebi://localhost:9703/ weblogic mypass Then I get the following returned representing the presentation layer, the sample I used is XML, and has no schema; Catalog Schema Table Sample Sales Lite null Base Facts Sample Sales Lite null Calculated Facts …     Sample Targets Lite null Base Facts …     Now if I execute with the only difference being the JDBC property NQ_SESSION.SELECTPHYSICAL with the value Yes, then I see a different set of values representing the physical layer in OBIEE; java -classpath .;%BIHOMEDIR%\clients\bijdbc.jar meta_jdbc oracle.bi.jdbc.AnaJdbcDriver jdbc:oraclebi://localhost:9703/ weblogic mypass NQ_SESSION.SELECTPHYSICAL=Yes The following is returned; Catalog Schema Table Sample App Lite Data null D01 Time Day Grain Sample App Lite Data null F10 Revenue Facts (Order grain) …     System DB (Update me)     …     If this was a database system such as Oracle, the catalog value would be the OBIEE database name and the schema would be the Oracle database schema. Other systems which have real catalog structure such as SQLServer would use its catalog value. Its this ‘Catalog’ and ‘Schema’ value that is important when integration OBIEE with ODI. For the demonstration application in OBIEE 11g, the following illustration shows how the information from OBIEE is related via the JDBC driver through to ODI. In the XML example above, within ODI’s physical schema definition on the right, we leave the schema blank since the XML data source has no schema. When I did this at first, I left the default value that ODI places in the Schema field since which was ‘<Undefined>’ (like image below) but this string is actually used in the RKM so ended up not finding any tables in this schema! Entering an empty string resolved this. Below we see a regular Oracle database example that has the database, schema, physical table structure, and how this is defined in ODI.   Remember back to the physical versus presentation layer usage when we passed the special property, well to do this in ODI, the data server has a panel for properties where you can define key/value pairs. So if you want to select physical objects from the OBIEE server, then you must set this property. An additional changed in ODI 11g is the OBIEE connection pool support, this has been implemented via a ‘Connection Pool’ flex field for the Oracle BI data server. So here you set the connection pool name from the OBIEE system that you specifically want to use and this is used by the Oracle BI to Oracle (DBLINK) LKM, so if you are using this you must set this flex field. Hopefully a useful insight into some of the mechanics of how this hangs together.

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  • SQLAuthority News – Training and Consultancy and Travel – Story of 30 Last 30 Days

    - by pinaldave
    Today’s blog post is not technical as usual. Here, I present a real story, and I also invite you all to share your thoughts or opinions on this post. I am a professional SQL Server Trainer; I also do consultation in the area of the Performance Tuning and Query Optimizations. In any month, I like the mix of both in my schedule. I prefer to do training for one week, and then commit the next week for some consultation work. Due to the advancement in technology, for most of the consultation works, there is no client location visit or first time visit for understanding the project. Usually, I conduct high-end training sessions or 400 level training, and these training sessions are very intensive most of the time. Always after completing the training for 5 days straight away at 400 level, I make sure to take out some time to cool down and relax. During this time, I prefer to work on optimization projects. Consultancy is great as it keeps me updated regarding what is going on in the real world. As we all know, all those trainers who have real world experience are always considered to be the best trainers. My learning is immense during my consultations with the real client and while resolving real problems. I share the same with my students the very next week when I go for training sessions. For the same reason, every class is different from the previous ones. An experience trainer would tell you that the class is best if it is driven by Students the way instructor wants! The best scenario is as described above; but you won’t get the best scenario all the time. I was on road for nearly 25 days out of the last 30 days and involved in doing various SQL Server-related trainings. Here is what I have done in the last 30 days. I have gathered the following details from my expenditure reports, which are maintained by my wife. There are few points related to my personal expenses and few other related to business. I maintain a separate list for each of these expenses, but here I have aggregated them. Last 30 days - Training 23 days - 4 – two days training classes – 8 days of training 3 – five days training classes – 15 days of training 1 – one day training classes – 2 days of training Flights 18 flights - 8 – Kingfisher 6 – Spicejet 2 – Jet light 2 – Jet connect Stay in different cities Hyderabad – 16 days Chennai – 6 days Bangalore – 2 days Ahmedabad – 6 days (Hometown) Meals – 54 (Averaging less than 2 per day) Room Services – 16 times Training Campuses – 20 times Restaurants – 6 times Home – 12 times Taxi/Cabs – 64 times (Averaging more than 2 per day) Hotel Cab – 34 times Meru Cab – 8 times Easy Cabs – 10 times Auto Rickshaw – 2 times Looking at the above statistics, I can see that I have eaten less than what I should have, which is not good, and traveled in taxi more than what I should have. Also the temperatures in different cities were very different, not to mention the humidity as well. I missed my family, especially my little girl (9 months). When I was at home, I used to have a proper healthy meal every single day; however, when I was traveling, the food was something I had to compromise on. I have previously written about my travel experience with different airlines, my opinion is still same about them. Well, I have question to all of you road warriors, how do you manage your health and enthusiasm during situations I am going through. I have couple of time stomach upset as well sour throat. I drink lots of water and do my best to keep up. Any idea? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • XNA Notes 004

    - by George Clingerman
    The XNA community has been crazy busy again. It always make me fee like such a slacker collecting all of these notes as I see the tremendous output from people all over the world and it’s incredible and humbling. There are some amazingly skilled people working with XNA. On another not, I’m going to take a minute to get on my soapbox and say, if you are developing ANYTHING and are not using some sort of source/revision control, START IMMEDIATELY. This applies to teams of one. Projects for fun. And “I back up my hard drive” or “I use dropbox!” does NOT count as using source control. You’ll be doing yourself a HUGE favor if you find one, learn to use it and integrate it into your everyday workflow. I personally use Subversion. It’s hosted offsite at xp.dev.com and I use TortoiseSVN as my front end to interface with the repository. It’s simple and easy to use and has saved me from myself so many time. Honestly, get setup with some type of source control immediately. If you don’t understand how, grab another developer that does and have them walk you through setup and the basics of using it. Ok, I’m done. On to the notes… The XNA Team Only 14 days left to Submit XNA GS 3.1 Games! http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/01/24/14-days-left-to-submit-xna-gs-3-1-games-on-app-hub.aspx Shawn Hargreaves shares some great information on Exception Handling best practices on the XNA forums http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/73333/448556.aspx#448556 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2008/09/10/vexing-exceptions.aspx XNA MVPs @CatalinZima gives us a peek at Chicken’s Can’t Fly http://www.amusedsloth.com/games/chickens-cant-fly/ Screen-space deformations in XNA for WP7 from Catalin Zima http://twitter.com/CatalinZima/statuses/30313083767357440 http://www.amusedsloth.com/2011/01/screen-space-deformations-in-xna-for-windows-phone-7/ XNA Developers Going to GDC? Don’t miss the XNA panel hosted by a plethora of well known XNA community names! http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/73576/448842.aspx#448842 MasterBlud does an interview with @Xalterax http://twitter.com/MasterBlud/statuses/28510774812999680 http://www.xboxhornet.com/wordpress/?p=7102 Luke Schneider of Radiangames posts about The Radiangames Style http://radiangames.com/?p=532 Holmade Games had a “vote for the new playable character” poll going on for Hurdle Turtle this past week http://holmadegames.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-level-pack-vote-for-your-favorite.html IGF v0.1.0.0 release post mortem http://indiefreaks.com/2011/01/24/v0-1-0-0-release-post-mortem/ James an Super Dunner post Good Morning Gato #46 and a look at the Vampire Smile box art http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/01/21/good-morning-gato-46/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/01/20/vampire-smiles-digital-box-art/ Alfredo Di Napoli creates Cow Pong using XNA and F#! http://alfredodinapoli.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/cow-pong-a-simple-xna-game-in-f/ Xbox LIVE Indie Games Signed In Podcast posts Episode #61 http://www.signedinpodcast.com/?p=559 Gamergeddon posts the January 23rd edition of XBLIG Round Up http://www.gamergeddon.com/2011/01/23/xbox-indie-games-round-up-january-23rd/ Indie Asylum posts Antipole Review http://www.indieasylum.com/reviews/38-xblig/112-antipole.html 1UPOrPosion Reviews OSR Unhinged http://www.1uporpoison.com/xblig/osr-unhinged/ DarkstarMatryx review Warbirds at Work http://www.darkstarmatryx.com/?p=185 Review of Aban Hawkins and the 1000 Spikes http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/24/xbox-indie-review-aban-hawkins-the-1000-spikes/ XboxHornet reviews Corrupted http://www.xboxhornet.com/wordpress/?p=7123 XBLIG 2010: The Best And The Worst http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JamieMann/20110121/6840/ Xbox LIVE Arcade Sales Analysis - an interesting read for XBLIG developers wondering how they’re doing compared to arcade.. http://www.gamerbytes.com/2011/01/xbla_sales_analysis_dec_2010.php Best of Indies for January 25th http://www.thisisfakediy.co.uk/articles/games/best-of-the-indies-25th-january-2011 Decimation X3 appears as an arcade machine in the wild! http://twitter.com/mdoucette/statuses/29605562484260864 XNA Game Development Guiseppe De Francesco (@PinoEire) announced Torque X 4.0 CEV is now in RC phase! http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/20779 DrMistry of mstargames shares his struggle (and mistakes) with learning to use the Content Pipeline http://www.mstargames.co.uk/mistryblogmain/35-genblog/181-pontent-cipeline-more-like-it.html New Tutorial posted XNA 2D Basic Collision Detection with Rotation from Ioannis Panagopoulos http://www.progware.org/Blog/post/XNA-2D-Basic-Collision-Detection-with-Rotation.aspx Sgt. Conker roars to life! Doing a much better (and prettier) job of collecting XNA news from around the interwebs. http://www.sgtconker.com/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/dedication-for-captain-boki/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/screen-space-deformations-in-xna-for-windows-phone-7/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/xna-4-0-light-pre-pass-2/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/indiefreaks-game-framework-0-1-0-0-released/ Offering a little free publicity for XBLIGs http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/73465/448321.aspx#448321 Ben Kane writes about building loot tables from Excel using the Content Pipeline http://benkane.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/building-loot-tables-from-excel-using-the-content-pipeline/ Good tips on attracting a game artist AND an offer to create your cover art for FREE http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/72998.aspx If you’re an XBLIG developer keeping your eye on places to release on the PC, might want to be watching the IndieCity blog. Seems like these guys are well on their way to constructing something worth watching. http://www.indiecity.com/blog/ DVMGames spotted a new crowd-funding site for Indies http://twitter.com/DVMGames/statuses/29947274767372289 http://www.8bitfunding.com/ Transmute continues to make progress and there’s a nice dev blog to follow along here http://forgottenstarstudios.com/blog/

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  • ISO Files to USB &ndash; The Cheap and Easy Way

    - by RonGarlit
    (DISCLAIMER: Yes there are lots of more elegant ISO software beside the free Microsoft one I’m about to show. But free is free and it has been tested and works for me for making advance bootable USB drives. That is another story. Look up Windows 8 Developer Preview for that one on BING.) For those of use that work with new technology all the time we accumulate a lot of ISO files and have to burn them to CD/DVD’s quite often. But we now have machines without burner in the corporate environment. We have personally Netbooks and light wait highly mobile laptops that do not have DVD burner. USB ports are all the rage and now we have USB 3.0 which is way faster than the 2.0 we are used to. Just looking at the technology, space saving and the cost issues alone is a reason to buy these answer to the DVD’s. So what is special about USB 2.0 and USB 3.0? USB 2 has a maximum speed of 480 Mbps... (That is Megabits per SECOND!!) Now look at the storage that we have with USB thumb drives that are now up to 64 GB in size, cell phone and PDAs that have a lots of internal storage built in well above the 16 Gig range. At the MAX USB 2.0 speed of 480 Mbps a full transfer of data in between devices can take a long time. Time is money right. Every back up a iPhone? Don’t get me started. So at least the engineers have been planning ahead with USB 3.0 which offers a maximum transfer speed of 4.8 Gbps... (That is Giga bits per SECOND!!) That speed is almost 10 times faster than USB 2.0 …. We don’t need to do the math on that one do we? But for now I'm thrilled with USB 2.0 and the fact I can get these little 4 Gig USB drives for $4.00 each at Staples on sale. Well that is a no brainer don’t you think. But what can you do with them to replace that DVD. Simply and cheaply put………. THIS! First let’s get an ISO file like the Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate DVD ISO from MSDN to demonstrate with. I develop on several computers so this is a good choice for me. So we downloaded the ISO file and put it in a folder somewhere like this. Next we go download to the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool site and read about the tool. http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool And click this like to get the tool and install it. Once it is installed you go to the Start, Programs menu, Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool folder. And then click the tool to open it up. As you will see it is a sweet, simple tool that was originally designed to put the ISO for Windows 7 which is designed to be bootable on a USB or DVD for us geeks to play with. It is now being used for the Windows 8 Developer Preview by many developers for that for the same purpose it was built for in the past. But for now we will use it to put a NON Bootable ISO on a USB. Hey it does the job and I’m reusing a left over program. Why buy the fancy one or a free trial and clutter up my machine. We will click the BROWSE button and navigate to where we put our ISO file we want to put on the USB drive. Obviously we are going to click NEXT and continue to select a USB Device (you can guess what the DVD button is for). Next we select the USB that we have plugged into one of our laptops USB ports. Then we click the BEGIN COPYING button and the first thing the program does is format our USB drive. Then it starts copying out files out of the ISO and constructing the USB as if it was a DVD. So now that the files are copying to the drive I’m going to warn you. We will error out here. This program was design for bootable ISO’s of which this one is NOT. No problem because what fails it the writing of the bootable data to the drive that isn’t there. No biggie…. Forget the STARTOVER button is even there and click the dialog’s CLOSE button and exit the program. Now go to Windows Explorer and navigate to the USB Device. You can now access everything and even add stuff to the drive. But for me I want to keep this drive for one purpose and that is to install VS2010 on various machines. So the only stuff I’ll add to this is a folder of notes on things on visual studio that I might want to put on other machines I’m installing VS2010 on to. So that is it. Have a nice day! The Ron

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  • RIDC Accelerator for Portal

    - by Stefan Krantz
    What is RIDC?Remote IntraDoc Client is a Java enabled API that leverages simple transportation protocols like Socket, HTTP and JAX/WS to execute content service operations in WebCenter Content Server. Each operation by design in the Content Server will execute stateless and return a complete result of the request. Each request object simply specifies the in a Map format (key and value pairs) what service to call and what parameters settings to apply. The result responded with will be built on the same Map format (key and value pairs). The possibilities with RIDC is endless since you can consume any available service (even custom made ones), RIDC can be executed from any Java SE application that has any WebCenter Content Services needs. WebCenter Portal and the example Accelerator RIDC adapter frameworkWebCenter Portal currently integrates and leverages WebCenter Content Services to enable available use cases in the portal today, like Content Presenter and Doc Lib. However the current use cases only covers few of the scenarios that the Content Server has to offer, in addition to the existing use cases it is not rare that the customer requirements requires additional steps and functionality that is provided by WebCenter Content but not part of the use cases from the WebCenter Portal.The good news to this is RIDC, the second good news is that WebCenter Portal already leverages the RIDC and has a connection management framework in place. The million dollar question here is how can I leverage this infrastructure for my custom use cases. Oracle A-Team has during its interactions produced a accelerator adapter framework that will reuse and leverage the existing connections provisioned in the webcenter portal application (works for WebCenter Spaces as well), as well as a very comprehensive design patter to minimize the work involved when exposing functionality. Let me introduce the RIDCCommon framework for accelerating WebCenter Content consumption from WebCenter Portal including Spaces. How do I get started?Through a few easy steps you will be on your way, Extract the zip file RIDCCommon.zip to the WebCenter Portal Application file structure (PortalApp) Open you Portal Application in JDeveloper (PS4/PS5) select to open the project in your application - this will add the project as a member of the application Update the Portal project dependencies to include the new RIDCCommon project Make sure that you WebCenter Content Server connection is marked as primary (a checkbox at the top of the connection properties form) You should by this stage have a similar structure in your JDeveloper Application Project Portal Project PortalWebAssets Project RIDCCommon Since the API is coming with some example operations that has already been exposed as DataControl actions, if you open Data Controls accordion you should see following: How do I implement my own operation? Create a new Java Class in for example com.oracle.ateam.portal.ridc.operation call it (GetDocInfoOperation) Extend the abstract class com.oracle.ateam.portal.ridc.operation.RIDCAbstractOperation and implement the interface com.oracle.ateam.portal.ridc.operation.IRIDCOperation The only method you actually are required to implement is execute(RIDCManager, IdcClient, IdcContext) The best practice to set object references for the operation is through the Constructor, example below public GetDocInfoOperation(String dDocName)By leveraging the constructor you can easily force the implementing class to pass right information, you can also overload the Constructor with more or less parameters as required Implement the execute method, the work you supposed to execute here is creating a new request binder and retrieve a response binder with the information in the request binder.In this case the dDocName for which we want the DocInfo Secondly you have to process the response binder by extracting the information you need from the request and restore this information in a simple POJO Java BeanIn the example below we do this in private void processResult(DataBinder responseData) - the new SearchDataObject is a Member of the GetDocInfoOperation so we can return this from a access method. Since the RIDCCommon API leverage template pattern for the operations you are now required to add a method that will enable access to the result after the execution of the operationIn the example below we added the method public SearchDataObject getDataObject() - this method returns the pre processed SearchDataObject from the execute method  This is it, as you can see on the code below you do not need more than 32 lines of very simple code 1: public class GetDocInfoOperation extends RIDCAbstractOperation implements IRIDCOperation { 2: private static final String DOC_INFO_BY_NAME = "DOC_INFO_BY_NAME"; 3: private String dDocName = null; 4: private SearchDataObject sdo = null; 5: 6: public GetDocInfoOperation(String dDocName) { 7: super(); 8: this.dDocName = dDocName; 9: } 10:   11: public boolean execute(RIDCManager manager, IdcClient client, 12: IdcContext userContext) throws Exception { 13: DataBinder dataBinder = createNewRequestBinder(DOC_INFO_BY_NAME); 14: dataBinder.putLocal(DocumentAttributeDef.NAME.getName(), dDocName); 15: 16: DataBinder responseData = getResponseBinder(dataBinder); 17: processResult(responseData); 18: return true; 19: } 20: 21: private void processResult(DataBinder responseData) { 22: DataResultSet rs = responseData.getResultSet("DOC_INFO"); 23: for(DataObject dobj : rs.getRows()) { 24: this.sdo = new SearchDataObject(dobj); 25: } 26: super.setMessage(responseData.getLocal(ATTR_MESSAGE)); 27: } 28: 29: public SearchDataObject getDataObject() { 30: return this.sdo; 31: } 32: } How do I execute my operation? In the previous section we described how to create a operation, so by now you should be ready to execute the operation Step one either add a method to the class  com.oracle.ateam.portal.datacontrol.ContentServicesDC or a class of your own choiceRemember the RIDCManager is a very light object and can be created where needed Create a method signature look like this public SearchDataObject getDocInfo(String dDocName) throws Exception In the method body - create a new instance of GetDocInfoOperation and meet the constructor requirements by passing the dDocNameGetDocInfoOperation docInfo = new GetDocInfoOperation(dDocName) Execute the operation via the RIDCManager instance rMgr.executeOperation(docInfo) Return the result by accessing it from the executed operationreturn docInfo.getDataObject() 1: private RIDCManager rMgr = null; 2: private String lastOperationMessage = null; 3:   4: public ContentServicesDC() { 5: super(); 6: this.rMgr = new RIDCManager(); 7: } 8: .... 9: public SearchDataObject getDocInfo(String dDocName) throws Exception { 10: GetDocInfoOperation docInfo = new GetDocInfoOperation(dDocName); 11: boolean boolVal = rMgr.executeOperation(docInfo); 12: lastOperationMessage = docInfo.getMessage(); 13: return docInfo.getDataObject(); 14: }   Get the binaries! The enclosed code in a example that can be used as a reference on how to consume and leverage similar use cases, user has to guarantee appropriate quality and support.  Download link: https://blogs.oracle.com/ATEAM_WEBCENTER/resource/stefan.krantz/RIDCCommon.zip RIDC API Referencehttp://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/apirefs.1111/e17274/toc.htm

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  • Trying to keep up with Technology and Blogging

    - by Dave Campbell
    A little bit of everything... The heading above got changed a bunch during writing and I finally settled on that because this has become a 'stream of consciousness' post... or maybe a stream of UNconsciousness :) If you've noticed, my blogging has been a tad slow this fall. There's been a lot going on personally. But then again, I haven't skipped anybody either. Rather than go through ALL the blogs I have aggregated, and take a week to get to the bottom, at some point in the last year, I had moved the lists around so I now have "SilverlightMVPs", "Very Prolific", "WP7", and "Top Checks". This is a total of about 250 of the more prolific bloggers. Those 250 bloggers have kept me very busy up through about //BUILD. Sometimes it would take all week to go through just that list putting out 13 posts per blog per day... but not anymore. This weekend I made it all the way through the BIG list... close to 700 blogs, and if you read my blog, you know I had one medium day (Saturday), and yesterday was very short. Why is this? To be honest, I don't know... is everybody busy re-tooling, or churning waiting for direction? I have a short list of WinRT/Metro/W8 folks... maybe I need to be pointed to more of them... but my old favorites are not pumping out posts as they have in the past. I said before that I am attracted to Metro, and I've already got My first Metro app post out there, and were it not for working with the new site, I'd have had another out last weekend... so definitely look for more from me in that area. New Site? Did I say 'new site' ? oops... didn't mean to do that, but now that the cat is out of the bag, I may as well continue... While at //BUILD, I discussed a re-tooling of SilverlightCream with lots of folks... probably more than wanted to hear about it to be honest! ... it's needed a facelift, and there's stuff on there that never worked right, plus there's a lot of manual effort that goes into a blog post. In an effort to alleviate all the above, Michael Washington and I have been working on the next iteration of SilverlightCream. Not wanting to lose that branding or mess with any saved links, I decided to change from a somewhat funky name to something more professional. I also decided to put my blog on the site, and tie my main announcement twitter feed to the site as well. The way things sit today, there are 3 different names in those locations and it's gotta be confusing for folks just stumbling in. We're going to do a series of posts talking about the site and the new backend processing (hint: Michael Washington is responsible for it, so you can take a guess at the technology), but for now, we'd like some eyes on the front end of the site, and some submittals using it to see if it falls over somewhere that we haven't tried. So... I'm going to give it up... the new site is Windows Dev News. The Twitter feed is @WindowsDevNews, and the blog will be on the site as well at Windows Dev News Blog. I've got the RSS Feed on Feedburner too, so I think all the nuts and bolts are good to go. The submittal and search pages work, as does the blog page. You'll notice we used the MasterPage from SilverlightCream to get started. That will probably change, but it's just the visual... the content is the important part. Other missing things are the tracking and 'Skim' page that we will eventually have up and running. There are some formatting issues with the blog posts but if you hang in there with me, those will be taken care of. If you're a blogger, please submit through the site and let me know if you find any problems. If you're a reader, please add this feed and site. I'll be duplicating the effort for a while but at some point will stop that foolishness. We won't lose the data from SilverlightCream though, so keep using that as a search resource... I have hopes to pull that database over to WindowsDevNews, or link to it in some manner... that part isn't set in jello yet, but it will not be lost. So there it is... let me know what you think, send me your WinRT/Metro/W8 postings along with your Silverlight and WP7 posts... it's not that different, it's just more. Stay in the 'Light

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  • HTG Explains: Are You Using IPv6 Yet? Should You Even Care?

    - by Chris Hoffman
    IPv6 is extremely important for the long-term health of the Internet. But is your Internet service provider providing IPv6 connectivity yet? Does your home network support it? Should you even care if you’re using IPv6 yet? Switching from IPv4 to IPv6 will give the Internet a much larger pool of IP addresses. It should also allow every device to have its own public IP address, rather than be hidden behind a NAT router. IPv6 is Important Long-Term IPv6 is very important for the long-term health of the Internet. There are only about 3.7 billion public IPv4 addresses. This may sound like a lot, but it isn’t even one IP address for each person on the planet. Considering people have more and more Internet-connected devices — everything from light bulbs to thermostats are starting to become network-connected — the lack of IP addresses is already proving to be a serious problem. This may not affect those of us in well-off developed countries just yet, but developing countries are already running out of IPv4 addresses. So, if you work at an Internet service provider, manage Internet-connected servers, or develop software or hardware — yes, you should care about IPv6! You should be deploying it and ensuring your software and hardware works properly with it. It’s important to prepare for the future before the current IPv4 situation becomes completely unworkable. But, if you’re just typical user or even a typical geek with a home Internet connection and a home network, should you really care about your home network just yet? Probably not. What You Need to Use IPv6 To use IPv6, you’ll need three things: An IPv6-Compatible Operating System: Your operating system’s software must be capable of using IPv6. All modern desktop operating systems should be compatible — Windows Vista and newer versions of Windows, as well as modern versions of Mac OS X and Linux. Windows XP doesn’t have IPv6 support installed by default, but you shouldn’t be using Windows XP anymore, anyway. A Router With IPv6 Support: Many — maybe even most — consumer routers in the wild don’t support IPv6. Check your router’s specifications details to see if it supports IPv6 if you’re curious. If you’re going to buy a new router, you’ll probably want to get one with IPv6 support to future-proof yourself. If you don’t have an IPv6-enabled router yet, you don’t need to buy a new one just to get it. An ISP With IPv6 Enabled:  Your Internet service provider must also have IPv6 set up on their end. Even if you have modern software and hardware on your end, your ISP has to provide an IPv6 connection for you to use it. IPv6 is rolling out steadily, but slowly — there’s a good chance your ISP hasn’t enabled it for you yet. How to Tell If You’re Using IPv6 The easiest way to tell if you have IPv6 connectivity is to visit a website like testmyipv6.com. This website allows you to connect to it in different ways — click the links near the top to see if you can connect to the website via different types of connections. If you can’t connect via IPv6, it’s either because your operating system is too old (unlikely), your router doesn’t support IPv6 (very possible), or because your ISP hasn’t enabled it for you yet (very likely). Now What? If you can connect to the test website above via IPv6, congratulations! Everything is working as it should. Your ISP is doing a good job of rolling out IPv6 rather than dragging its feet. There’s a good chance you won’t have IPv6 working properly, however. So what should you do about this — should you head to Amazon and buy a new IPv6-enabled router or switch to an ISP that offers IPv6? Should you use a “tunnel broker,” as the test site recommends, to tunnel into IPv6 via your IPv4 connection? Well, probably not. Typical users shouldn’t have to worry about this yet. Connecting to the Internet via IPv6 shouldn’t be perceptibly faster, for example. It’s important for operating system vendors, hardware companies, and Internet service providers to prepare for the future and get IPv6 working, but you don’t need to worry about this on your home network. IPv6 is all about future-proofing. You shouldn’t be racing to implement this at home yet or worrying about it too much — but, when you need to buy a new router, try to buy one that supports IPv6. Image Credit: Adobe of Chaos on Flickr, hisperati on Flickr, Vox Efx on Flickr     

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  • SQL SERVER – Simple Example to Configure Resource Governor – Introduction to Resource Governor

    - by pinaldave
    Let us jump right away with question and answer mode. What is resource governor? Resource Governor is a feature which can manage SQL Server Workload and System Resource Consumption. We can limit the amount of CPU and memory consumption by limiting /governing /throttling on the SQL Server. Why is resource governor required? If there are different workloads running on SQL Server and each of the workload needs different resources or when workloads are competing for resources with each other and affecting the performance of the whole server resource governor is a very important task. What will be the real world example of need of resource governor? Here are two simple scenarios where the resource governor can be very useful. Scenario 1: A server which is running OLTP workload and various resource intensive reports on the same server. The ideal situation is where there are two servers which are data synced with each other and one server runs OLTP transactions and the second server runs all the resource intensive reports. However, not everybody has the luxury to set up this kind of environment. In case of the situation where reports and OLTP transactions are running on the same server, limiting the resources to the reporting workload it can be ensured that OTLP’s critical transaction is not throttled. Scenario 2: There are two DBAs in one organization. One DBA A runs critical queries for business and another DBA B is doing maintenance of the database. At any point in time the DBA A’s work should not be affected but at the same time DBA B should be allowed to work as well. The ideal situation is that when DBA B starts working he get some resources but he can’t get more than defined resources. Does SQL Server have any default resource governor component? Yes, SQL Server have two by default created resource governor component. 1) Internal –This is used by database engine exclusives and user have no control. 2) Default – This is used by all the workloads which are not assigned to any other group. What are the major components of the resource governor? Resource Pools Workload Groups Classification In simple words here is what the process of resource governor is. Create resource pool Create a workload group Create classification function based on the criteria specified Enable Resource Governor with classification function Let me further explain you the same with graphical image. Is it possible to configure resource governor with T-SQL? Yes, here is the code for it with explanation in between. Step 0: Here we are assuming that there are separate login accounts for Reporting server and OLTP server. /*----------------------------------------------- Step 0: (Optional and for Demo Purpose) Create Two User Logins 1) ReportUser, 2) PrimaryUser Use ReportUser login for Reports workload Use PrimaryUser login for OLTP workload -----------------------------------------------*/ Step 1: Creating Resource Pool We are creating two resource pools. 1) Report Server and 2) Primary OLTP Server. We are giving only a few resources to the Report Server Pool as described in the scenario 1 the other server is mission critical and not the report server. ----------------------------------------------- -- Step 1: Create Resource Pool ----------------------------------------------- -- Creating Resource Pool for Report Server CREATE RESOURCE POOL ReportServerPool WITH ( MIN_CPU_PERCENT=0, MAX_CPU_PERCENT=30, MIN_MEMORY_PERCENT=0, MAX_MEMORY_PERCENT=30) GO -- Creating Resource Pool for OLTP Primary Server CREATE RESOURCE POOL PrimaryServerPool WITH ( MIN_CPU_PERCENT=50, MAX_CPU_PERCENT=100, MIN_MEMORY_PERCENT=50, MAX_MEMORY_PERCENT=100) GO Step 2: Creating Workload Group We are creating two workloads each mapping to each of the resource pool which we have just created. ----------------------------------------------- -- Step 2: Create Workload Group ----------------------------------------------- -- Creating Workload Group for Report Server CREATE WORKLOAD GROUP ReportServerGroup USING ReportServerPool ; GO -- Creating Workload Group for OLTP Primary Server CREATE WORKLOAD GROUP PrimaryServerGroup USING PrimaryServerPool ; GO Step 3: Creating user defiled function which routes the workload to the appropriate workload group. In this example we are checking SUSER_NAME() and making the decision of Workgroup selection. We can use other functions such as HOST_NAME(), APP_NAME(), IS_MEMBER() etc. ----------------------------------------------- -- Step 3: Create UDF to Route Workload Group ----------------------------------------------- CREATE FUNCTION dbo.UDFClassifier() RETURNS SYSNAME WITH SCHEMABINDING AS BEGIN DECLARE @WorkloadGroup AS SYSNAME IF(SUSER_NAME() = 'ReportUser') SET @WorkloadGroup = 'ReportServerGroup' ELSE IF (SUSER_NAME() = 'PrimaryServerPool') SET @WorkloadGroup = 'PrimaryServerGroup' ELSE SET @WorkloadGroup = 'default' RETURN @WorkloadGroup END GO Step 4: In this final step we enable the resource governor with the classifier function created in earlier step 3. ----------------------------------------------- -- Step 4: Enable Resource Governer -- with UDFClassifier ----------------------------------------------- ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR WITH (CLASSIFIER_FUNCTION=dbo.UDFClassifier); GO ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR RECONFIGURE GO Step 5: If you are following this demo and want to clean up your example, you should run following script. Running them will disable your resource governor as well delete all the objects created so far. ----------------------------------------------- -- Step 5: Clean Up -- Run only if you want to clean up everything ----------------------------------------------- ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR WITH (CLASSIFIER_FUNCTION = NULL) GO ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR DISABLE GO DROP FUNCTION dbo.UDFClassifier GO DROP WORKLOAD GROUP ReportServerGroup GO DROP WORKLOAD GROUP PrimaryServerGroup GO DROP RESOURCE POOL ReportServerPool GO DROP RESOURCE POOL PrimaryServerPool GO ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR RECONFIGURE GO I hope this introductory example give enough light on the subject of Resource Governor. In future posts we will take this same example and learn a few more details. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Resource Governor

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  • Silverlight Cream for February 26, 2011 -- #1052

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Mark Monster, Gill Cleeren, Pencho Popadiyn, Kevin Dockx, Joost van Schaik, Jesse Liberty, John Papa, Jeremy Likness, Arik Poznanski(-2-), Page Brooks, Deborah Kurata, Mike Snow, Alfred Astort, Samuel Jack, XAMLNinja, and Shawn Wildermuth. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Asynchronous Callbacks with Rx" Jesse Liberty WP7: "Phoney Windows Phone 7 Project Now Available!" Shawn Wildermuth MVVM: "Validating our ViewModel" Mark Monster Shoutouts: Shawn Wildermuth has a video up of his FadingMessage class to show it off: Introducing Phoney's FadingMessage Class From SilverlightCream.com: Validating our ViewModel Mark Monster discusses Validation in his latest post... using INotifyDataErrorInfo and his own implementation of a ViewModel base that supports it and INPC. Getting ready for Microsoft Silverlight Exam 70-506 (Part 7) Gill Cleeren hits part 7 of his series at SilverlightShow on a great walk through Silverlight and getting ready for the exam. This is the final part and concentrates on deploying apps. Windows Phone 7–Creating Custom Keyboard Pencho Popadiyn has a post at SilverlightShow discussing problems with WP7 keyboards in his native Bulgaria, and his solution to the problem... create his own. 360 Degrees Feedback by Kevin Dockx Kevin Dockx produced a white paper for his company about an employee review solution they did in Silverlight. The white paper is available, and SilverlightShow interviewd Kevin to answer questions about the app. Extended Windows Phone 7 page for handling rotation, focused element updates and back key press Looks like Joost van Schaik has a few posts I've missed... and I'm not going to get to them all today! ... this one is about the base class he uses for WP7 apps... a bunch of utilities he uses... definitely worth a look (and a take). Asynchronous Callbacks with Rx Jesse Liberty has his 8th post in the Rx series up and this one's on Asynchronous Callbacks... if you haven't seen this before, you should definitely look into it... cool stuff, Jesse! Silverlight TV 63: Exploring National Instruments' App Using Data and Business Features John Papa has Silverlight TV number 63 up and is talking to Steve Lasker about National Instruments and their Lab View product. Great demo and discussion. Jounce Part 11: Debugging MEF Jeremy Likness's latest (number 11) in his series on his MVVM framework Jounce is out, and he's discussing how to debug MEF, which Jounce handles nicely through the logging he provides... and you can use it externally to Jounce. Get Twitter Trends on Windows Phone 7 Arik Poznanski has a couple Twitter for WP7 posts up... first is one for pulling Twitter trends from whatthetrend.com... plus the code to do it. Searching Twitter on Windows Phone 7 In his next post, Arik Poznanski shows how to search twitter from your WP7 ... again with code. Tiled Background Control in Silverlight Page Brooks shows how to get a tiled background control in Silverlight ... did you know there was one in the JetPack them? Silverlight Charting: Displaying Data Above the Column Deborah Kurata continues her charting posts with this one displaying the column value above the column. I like this... it has a clean look and all the data is available at a glance. Silverlight: Tasks on the Win7 Mobile Phone Mike Snow has a list of the WP7 tasks available and an example of using them... looks like a pretty good reference! 10 of 10 - Aesthetics and alignment matter Alfred Astort discusses aesthetics and WP7 dev... looks like it's the same as any app development, but if you're not doing it, you should be. Simon Squared – We have Multi-player: Days 4, 5 and (ahem!) 6 Samuel Jack details the completion of his multi-player game for WP7 utilizing Azure, in the hour-by-hour detail he's done the rest... plus a video of the final product! Who ate all the pies!! XAMLNinja has a very good discussion/link set of Charting posts all leading up to a portrait-only version of charting for WP7 with labels that looks looks great Phoney Windows Phone 7 Project Now Available! Shawn Wildermuth has a collection of classes he always uses with WP7 dev, and he's sharing them with all of us a "Phoney" Tools project on Codeplex... and now has a NuGet project also. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • Spotlight on Claims: Serving Customers Under Extreme Conditions

    - by [email protected]
    Oracle Insurance's director of marketing for EMEA, John Sinclair, recently attended the CII Spotlight on Claims event in London. Bad weather and its implications for the insurance industry have become very topical as the frequency and diversity of natural disasters - including rains, wind and snow - has surged across Europe this winter. On England's wettest day on record, the county of Cumbria was flooded with 12 inches of rain within 24 hours. Freezing temperatures wreaked havoc on European travel, causing high speed TVG trains to break down and stranding hundreds of passengers under the English Chanel in a tunnel all night long without heat or electricity. A storm named Xynthia thrashed France and surrounding countries with hurricane force, flooding ports and killing 51 people. After the Spring Equinox, insurers may have thought the worst had past. Then came along Eyjafjallajökull, spewing out vast quantities of volcanic ash in what is turning out to be one of most costly natural disasters in history. Such extreme events challenge insurance companies' ability to service their customers just when customers need their help most. When you add economic downturn and competitive pressures to the mix, insurers are further stretched and required to continually learn and innovate to meet high customer expectations with reduced budgets. These and other issues were hot topics of discussion at the recent "Spotlight on Claims" seminar in London, focused on how weather is affecting claims and the insurance industry. The event was organized by the CII (Chartered Insurance Institute), a group with 90,000 members. CII has been at the forefront in setting professional standards for the insurance industry for over a century. Insurers came to the conference to hear how they could better serve their customers under extreme weather conditions, learn from the experience of their peers, and hear about technological breakthroughs in climate modeling, geographic intelligence and IT. Customer case studies at the conference highlighted the importance of effective and constant communication in handling the overflow of catastrophe related claims. First and foremost is the need to rapidly establish initial communication with claimants to build their confidence in a positive outcome. Ongoing communication then needs to be continued throughout the claims cycle to mange expectations and maintain ownership of the process from start to finish. Strong internal communication to support frontline staff was also deemed critical to successful crisis management, as was communication with the broader insurance ecosystem to tap into extended resources and business intelligence. Advances in technology - such web based systems to access policies and enter first notice of loss in the field - as well as customer-focused self-service portals and multichannel alerts, are instrumental in improving customer satisfaction and helping insurers to deal with the claims surge, which often can reach four or more times normal workloads. Dynamic models of the global climate system can now be used to better understand weather-related risks, and as these models mature it is hoped that they will soon become more accurate in predicting the timing of catastrophic events. Geographic intelligence is also being used within a claims environment to better assess loss reserves and detect fraud. Despite these advances in dealing with catastrophes and predicting their occurrence, there will never be a substitute for qualified front line staff to deal with customers. In light of pressures to streamline efficiency, there was debate as to whether outsourcing was the solution, or whether it was better to build on the people you have. In the final analysis, nearly everybody agreed that in the future insurance companies would have to work better and smarter to keep on top. An appeal was also made for greater collaboration amongst industry participants in dealing with the extreme conditions and systematic stress brought on by natural disasters. It was pointed out that the public oftentimes judged the industry as a whole rather than the individual carriers when it comes to freakish events, and that all would benefit at such times from the pooling of limited resources and professional skills rather than competing in silos for competitive advantage - especially the end customer. One case study that stood out was on how The Motorists Insurance Group was able to power through one of the most devastating catastrophes in recent years - Hurricane Ike. The keys to Motorists' success were superior people, processes and technology. They did a lot of upfront planning and invested in their people, creating a healthy team environment that delivered "max service" even when they were experiencing the same level of devastation as the rest of the population. Processes were rapidly adapted to meet the challenge of the catastrophe and continually adapted to Ike's specific conditions as they evolved. Technology was fundamental to the execution of their strategy, enabling them anywhere access, on the fly reassigning of resources and rapid training to augment the work force. You can learn more about the Motorists experience by watching this video. John Sinclair is marketing director for Oracle Insurance in EMEA. He has more than 20 years of experience in insurance and financial services.

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  • Microsoft Sql Server driver for Nodejs - Part 2

    - by chanderdhall
    Nodejs, Sql server and Json response with Rest This post is part 2 of Microsoft Sql Server driver for Node js.In this post we will look at the JSON responses from the Microsoft Sql Server driver for Node js. Pre-requisites: If you have read the Part 1 of the series, you should be good. We will be using a framework for Rest within Nodejs - Restify, but that would need no prior learning. Restify: Restify is a simple node module for building RESTful services. It is slimmer than Express. Express is a complete module that has all what you need to create a full-blown browser app. However, Restify does not have additional overhead of templating, rendering etc that would be needed if your app has views. So, as the name suggests it's an awesome framework for building RESTful services and is very light-weight. Set up - You can continue with the same directory or project structure we had in the previous post, or can start a new one. Install restify using npm and you are good to go. npm install restify Go to Server.js and include Restify in your solution. Then create the server object using restify.CreateServer() - SLICK - ha? var restify = require('restify'); var server = restify.createServer(); server.listen(8080, function () { console.log('%s listening at %s', server.name, server.url); }); Then make sure you provide a port for the Server to listen at. The call back function is optional but helps you for debugging purposes. Once you are done, save the file and then go to the command prompt and hit 'node server.js' and you should see the following:   To test the server, go to your browser and type the address 'http://localhost:8080/' and oops you will see an error.   Why is that? - Well because we haven't defined any routes. Let's go ahead and create a route. To begin with I'd like to return whatever is typed in the url after my name and the following code should do it. server.get('/ChanderDhall/:status', function respond(req, res, next) { res.end("hello " + req.params.name + "") }); You can also avoid writing call backs inline. Something like this. function respond(req, res, next) { res.end("Chander Dhall " + req.params.name + ""); } server.get('/hello/:name', respond); Now if you go ahead and type http://localhost:8080/ChanderDhall/LovesNode you will get the response 'Chander Dhall loves node'. NOTE: Make sure your url has the right case as it's case-sensitive. You could have also typed it in as 'server.get('/chanderdhall/:name', respond);' Stored procedure: We've talked a lot about Restify now, but keep in mind the post is about being able to use Sql server with Node and return JSON. To see this in action, let's go ahead and create another route to a list of Employees from a stored procedure. server.get('/Employees', Employees); The following code will return a JSON response.  function Employees(req, res, next) { res.header("Content-Type: application/json"); //Need to specify the Content-Type which is //JSON in our case. sql.open(conn_str, function (err, conn) { if (err) { //Logs an error console.log("Error opening the database connection!"); return; } console.log("before query!"); conn.queryRaw("exec sp_GetEmployees", function (err, results) { if (err) { //Connection is open but an error occurs whileWhat else can be done? May be create a formatter or may be even come up with a hypermedia type but that may upset some pragmatists. Well, that's going to be a totally different discussion and is really not part of this series. Summary: We've discussed how to execute a stored procedure using Microsoft Sql Server driver for Node. Also, we have discussed how to format and send out a clean JSON to the app calling this API.  

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  • GLSL Atmospheric Scattering Issue

    - by mtf1200
    I am attempting to use Sean O'Neil's shaders to accomplish atmospheric scattering. For now I am just using SkyFromSpace and GroundFromSpace. The atmosphere works fine but the planet itself is just a giant dark sphere with a white blotch that follows the camera. I think the problem might rest in the "v3Attenuation" variable as when this is removed the sphere is show (albeit without scattering). Here is the vertex shader. Thanks for the time! uniform mat4 g_WorldViewProjectionMatrix; uniform mat4 g_WorldMatrix; uniform vec3 m_v3CameraPos; // The camera's current position uniform vec3 m_v3LightPos; // The direction vector to the light source uniform vec3 m_v3InvWavelength; // 1 / pow(wavelength, 4) for the red, green, and blue channels uniform float m_fCameraHeight; // The camera's current height uniform float m_fCameraHeight2; // fCameraHeight^2 uniform float m_fOuterRadius; // The outer (atmosphere) radius uniform float m_fOuterRadius2; // fOuterRadius^2 uniform float m_fInnerRadius; // The inner (planetary) radius uniform float m_fInnerRadius2; // fInnerRadius^2 uniform float m_fKrESun; // Kr * ESun uniform float m_fKmESun; // Km * ESun uniform float m_fKr4PI; // Kr * 4 * PI uniform float m_fKm4PI; // Km * 4 * PI uniform float m_fScale; // 1 / (fOuterRadius - fInnerRadius) uniform float m_fScaleDepth; // The scale depth (i.e. the altitude at which the atmosphere's average density is found) uniform float m_fScaleOverScaleDepth; // fScale / fScaleDepth attribute vec4 inPosition; vec3 v3ELightPos = vec3(g_WorldMatrix * vec4(m_v3LightPos, 1.0)); vec3 v3ECameraPos= vec3(g_WorldMatrix * vec4(m_v3CameraPos, 1.0)); const int nSamples = 2; const float fSamples = 2.0; varying vec4 color; float scale(float fCos) { float x = 1.0 - fCos; return m_fScaleDepth * exp(-0.00287 + x*(0.459 + x*(3.83 + x*(-6.80 + x*5.25)))); } void main(void) { gl_Position = g_WorldViewProjectionMatrix * inPosition; // Get the ray from the camera to the vertex and its length (which is the far point of the ray passing through the atmosphere) vec3 v3Pos = vec3(g_WorldMatrix * inPosition); vec3 v3Ray = v3Pos - v3ECameraPos; float fFar = length(v3Ray); v3Ray /= fFar; // Calculate the closest intersection of the ray with the outer atmosphere (which is the near point of the ray passing through the atmosphere) float B = 2.0 * dot(m_v3CameraPos, v3Ray); float C = m_fCameraHeight2 - m_fOuterRadius2; float fDet = max(0.0, B*B - 4.0 * C); float fNear = 0.5 * (-B - sqrt(fDet)); // Calculate the ray's starting position, then calculate its scattering offset vec3 v3Start = m_v3CameraPos + v3Ray * fNear; fFar -= fNear; float fDepth = exp((m_fInnerRadius - m_fOuterRadius) / m_fScaleDepth); float fCameraAngle = dot(-v3Ray, v3Pos) / fFar; float fLightAngle = dot(v3ELightPos, v3Pos) / fFar; float fCameraScale = scale(fCameraAngle); float fLightScale = scale(fLightAngle); float fCameraOffset = fDepth*fCameraScale; float fTemp = (fLightScale + fCameraScale); // Initialize the scattering loop variables float fSampleLength = fFar / fSamples; float fScaledLength = fSampleLength * m_fScale; vec3 v3SampleRay = v3Ray * fSampleLength; vec3 v3SamplePoint = v3Start + v3SampleRay * 0.5; // Now loop through the sample rays vec3 v3FrontColor = vec3(0.0, 0.0, 0.0); vec3 v3Attenuate; for(int i=0; i<nSamples; i++) { float fHeight = length(v3SamplePoint); float fDepth = exp(m_fScaleOverScaleDepth * (m_fInnerRadius - fHeight)); float fScatter = fDepth*fTemp - fCameraOffset; v3Attenuate = exp(-fScatter * (m_v3InvWavelength * m_fKr4PI + m_fKm4PI)); v3FrontColor += v3Attenuate * (fDepth * fScaledLength); v3SamplePoint += v3SampleRay; } vec3 first = v3FrontColor * (m_v3InvWavelength * m_fKrESun + m_fKmESun); vec3 secondary = v3Attenuate; color = vec4((first + vec3(0.25,0.25,0.25) * secondary), 1.0); // ^^ that color is passed to the frag shader and is used as the gl_FragColor } Here is also an image of the problem image

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  • Happy 3rd Birthday SilverlightCream!

    - by Dave Campbell
    Happy 3rd Birthday!     Yesterday (May 16) was the 'Birthday' of SilverlightCream, which started just after MIX in 2007 with a post "Interesting Silverlight posts today: Silverlight Control & Silverlight Pad". Too many good posts flying around led me to want to archive them, particularly since I was being aggregated at a new site Silverlight.net, and I could give some of that 'reach' to the community. Saturday's post was number 862, and as of that post, there were 5697 blog posts archived in the database all tagged up and searchable at SilverlightCream.com using the search page. The search needs to be better, and that's another discussion, but it does work. The blog didn't begin life as the SilverlightCream blog, as is obvious from the name, but once I realized people were following it closely, I've tried to keep the signal-to-noise ratio very high. I even secured another blog for when I just want to rant about something to keep that stuff out of this one :) If you've been around since MIX07 days you've heard all this, but after talking to some people at MIX10 I realized not everyone knows all the ways the information is presented, so I figured doing a post like this once a year probably isn't a bad idea :) I scrounge through an ever-growing list of blogs (right now sitting at 505) looking for good stuff. I try to spin through the list every day, but with the list growing that large, it's getting tough. I usually use it as a background task while working or watching TV. If I just sit and go through the blogs it takes about an hour. The list is long enough now that from time to time, I'll only get partway through it and have 10 to 13 entries, so I'll just stop there and go on the next day... I don't like to have more than 15 in any single post. It's all pattern recognition as in "seen that", "seen that", "that's new", etc... so if you're a blogger, look at a heading below for some comments about blogging from my perspective. When I see something new, I make sure you're not pulling a 'Mike Taulty' on me and dumping 6 or 8 new posts in one day :), and I tag the ones I want to review. If there's not a lot going on, I may just push the posts as I come across them. Some days there may be 60 posts in that 'to review' list! Some are non-Silverlight, some are essentially duplicates of others, some are demos, ads, new releases of something, session materials, etc. I push lots of material into a database at WynApse.com, and the "Tagged Posts" menu on the left sidebar there takes you to a tag cloud of (at this very moment) "9224 articles tagged 13915 different ways using 459 unique tags". There are links in there on Gibson guitars, Jazz Guitar instructional stuff, Ford F-250 links, and tons of technical and non-technical stuff I've been aggregating for about 5 years now. So when I decide to blog (or shoutout) something, I first push it into the database at WynApse.com. Then I tag it all up and push it into the database at SilverlightCream.com. Then it gets pushed to @SilverlightNews. For a little over a year now, we're tracking unique IP hits on posts launched from either the blog post or from one of the SilverlightCream.com pages, and the posts with top hits from unique IP addresses in the last 7 days are displayed in a 'Skim' page at SilverlightCream... and that page needs work as well. The Skim page and tracking was the brainchild of my buddy Michael Washington. What I blog/shoutout After some time doing posts, I decided there were things that probably have no need to be searchable, but are good information, so I post those as 'Shoutouts'. Eventually I also decided the Shoutouts should get posted to @SilverlightNews, and that's now taking place. Notes to bloggers Remember I said spinning throught the Big List-o-BlogsTM is pattern recognition... that means I don't spend a lot of time on any individual blog deciding if it has new content. If you're familiar with the term 'Above the Fold', then you're probably ok. If I have to scroll the page to see if there's something new, or wade through some maze of menus, I'm probably going to miss new stuff. Likewise if you only show the latest on the front page and make it a puzzle to find the rest of them, or if you make the titles and initial graphics almost identical to the previous article, I'll miss it. Another thing is name/brand-recognition. Far be it for me (WynApse) to comment on someone blogging with a pseudonym, but if you want to get get some recognition, you are going to want your name to be available somewhere. I can think right off the top of my head of a couple good blogs that I have no idea of the individuals' real names. I can pull that off a bit because I've been around so long almost everyone knows who I am, but if you're new to the blog-o-sphere, being able to be name-recognized is as important as getting your brand out there. Kick my tires Finally, stuff happens... I may hit the wrong key and delete your blog, or a post might slip past me and I not realize it's new because of the naming, and never blog it. If you think I missed something, send me an email or use the submit page at SilverlightCream.com. Some bloggers have figured out that if they submit (one way or another) to me, their posts will go out next. I try to honor anyone that takes the time to submit with a quicker 'Cream posting. Thanks! Finally, thanks to everyone that contributes to the community as a whole... the blogs, the videos, and the presentations. A special thanks to everyone that reads SilverlightCream, or follows @WynApse or @SilverlightNews. Keep it all coming, and... Stay in the 'Light

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  • using Unity Android In a sub view and add actionbar and style

    - by aeroxr1
    I exported a simple animation from Unity3D (version 4.5) in android project. With eclipse I modified the manifest and added another activity. In this activity I put a button that it makes start the animation,and this is the result. The action bar appear in the main activity but it doesn't in the unity's activity :( How can I add the action bar and the style of the first activity to unity's animation activity ? This is the unity's activity's code : package com.rabidgremlin.tut.redcube; import android.app.NativeActivity; import android.content.res.Configuration; import android.graphics.PixelFormat; import android.os.Bundle; import android.view.KeyEvent; import android.view.MotionEvent; import android.view.View; import android.view.ViewGroup; import android.view.Window; import android.view.WindowManager; import com.unity3d.player.UnityPlayer; public class UnityPlayerNativeActivity extends NativeActivity { protected UnityPlayer mUnityPlayer; // don't change the name of this variable; referenced from native code // Setup activity layout @Override protected void onCreate (Bundle savedInstanceState) { //requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE); super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); getWindow().takeSurface(null); //setTheme(android.R.style.Theme_NoTitleBar_Fullscreen); getWindow().setFormat(PixelFormat.RGB_565); mUnityPlayer = new UnityPlayer(this); /*if (mUnityPlayer.getSettings ().getBoolean ("hide_status_bar", true)) getWindow ().setFlags (WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FULLSCREEN, WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FULLSCREEN); */ setContentView(mUnityPlayer); mUnityPlayer.requestFocus(); } // Quit Unity @Override protected void onDestroy () { mUnityPlayer.quit(); super.onDestroy(); } // Pause Unity @Override protected void onPause() { super.onPause(); mUnityPlayer.pause(); } // eliminiamo questa onResume() e proviamo a modificare la onResume() // Resume Unity @Override protected void onResume() { super.onResume(); mUnityPlayer.resume(); } // inseriamo qualche modifica qui // This ensures the layout will be correct. @Override public void onConfigurationChanged(Configuration newConfig) { super.onConfigurationChanged(newConfig); mUnityPlayer.configurationChanged(newConfig); } // Notify Unity of the focus change. @Override public void onWindowFocusChanged(boolean hasFocus) { super.onWindowFocusChanged(hasFocus); mUnityPlayer.windowFocusChanged(hasFocus); } // For some reason the multiple keyevent type is not supported by the ndk. // Force event injection by overriding dispatchKeyEvent(). @Override public boolean dispatchKeyEvent(KeyEvent event) { if (event.getAction() == KeyEvent.ACTION_MULTIPLE) return mUnityPlayer.injectEvent(event); return super.dispatchKeyEvent(event); } // Pass any events not handled by (unfocused) views straight to UnityPlayer @Override public boolean onKeyUp(int keyCode, KeyEvent event) { return mUnityPlayer.injectEvent(event); } @Override public boolean onKeyDown(int keyCode, KeyEvent event) { return mUnityPlayer.injectEvent(event); } @Override public boolean onTouchEvent(MotionEvent event) { return mUnityPlayer.injectEvent(event); } /*API12*/ public boolean onGenericMotionEvent(MotionEvent event) { return mUnityPlayer.injectEvent(event); } } And this is the AndroidManifest.xml android:versionCode="1" android:versionName="1.0" > <!-- android:theme="@android:style/Theme.NoTitleBar"--> <supports-screens android:anyDensity="true" android:largeScreens="true" android:normalScreens="true" android:smallScreens="true" android:xlargeScreens="true" /> <application android:icon="@drawable/app_icon" android:label="@string/app_name" android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Holo.Light" > <activity android:name="com.rabidgremlin.tut.redcube.UnityPlayerNativeActivity" android:configChanges="mcc|mnc|locale|touchscreen|keyboard|keyboardHidden|navigation|orientation|screenLayout|uiMode|screenSize|smallestScreenSize|fontScale" android:label="@string/app_name" android:screenOrientation="portrait" > <!--android:launchMode="singleTask"--> <meta-data android:name="unityplayer.UnityActivity" android:value="true" /> <meta-data android:name="unityplayer.ForwardNativeEventsToDalvik" android:value="false" /> </activity> <activity android:name="com.rabidgremlin.tut.redcube.MainActivity" android:label="@string/title_activity_main" > <intent-filter> <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" /> <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" /> </intent-filter> </activity> </application> <uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="17" android:targetSdkVersion="19" /> <uses-feature android:glEsVersion="0x00020000" /> </manifest>

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  • Design a T-shirt for .NET Reflector Pro

    - by Laila
    Win a .NET Reflector Pro license, a box of Red Gate goodies, and a t-shirt printed with your design! Red Gate likes t-shirts. Each of our teams has one. In fact, each individual person has one, numbered according to when they joined the company: Red Gate's 1st, 2nd, and so on right up to Red Gate's 170th, with the slogan "More than just a number". Those t-shirts are important, chiefly because they remind the people wearing them that they are important. But that isn't enough. What really makes us great are the people who choose to use our tools. So we'd like to extend our tradition of t-shirts to include you and put the design of our next shirt entirely in your hands. We'd like you to come up with a witty slogan or create an inventive or simply beautiful t-shirt design for .NET Reflector Pro, our add-in for Visual Studio, which allows you to step into decompiled assemblies whilst debugging in Visual Studio. When you're done, post your masterpiece to Twitter with the hash tag #reflectortees, and @redgate will take a look! We'll pick the best design, and the winner will get a licensed copy of .NET Reflector Pro and a box of Red Gate goodies - not to mention a copy of their t-shirt. The winning design will go into production and be worn and given out at tradeshows, conferences, and user group events across the world, proudly bearing the name of their designer. We'll also pick three runners-up who will receive licenses for .NET Reflector Pro. Red Gate goodie box Interested? If you're up for the challenge, then we've got some resources to get you started. Inside the .zip file you'll find high-quality versions of the following: T-shirt templates: don't forget to design the front and the back! Different versions of the .NET Reflector Pro logo and Red Gate logo. Colour sheets to give you an easy reference to the Red Gate colours, including hex and RGB values. You can create and send us as many designs as you like, and each of them will be considered for the prize. To submit your designs, simply tweet including the competition hash tag, #reflectortees, and a link to somewhere we can see your design: either an image hosting site such as Twitpic, Flickr or Picasa, or a personal blog. You will need to create a Twitter account (which is free), if you don't already have one. You only have three limits: The background colour of the t-shirt should be one of our brand colours (red, light/dark grey or black), though you're welcome to use other colours in the rest of the design. You need to make use of either the .NET Reflector Pro logo OR the Red Gate logo (please keep them as they are) If you include any text or slogan, stick with just one or two colors for it. Apart from that, go wild. Go and do whatever it is you do when you get creative: whether you walk barefoot on the grass with a pencil and paper, sit cross-legged on a pile of cushions with a laptop, or simply close your eyes and float through a mist of ideas, now is your chance. Make sure you enjoy it. We're looking forward to seeing your creations. Terms and conditions 1. The closing date for entries is June 11th, 2010 (4 p.m. UK time). Red Gate Software Ltd reserves the right to extend the competition deadline at its discretion. If there is a revision, the revised date will be published on this blog and the date for announcing the results will be postponed accordingly. 2. The winning designer will be notified on June 14th, 2010 through Twitter. The winner must claim his/her prize by sending us a high-resolution image of their design via email (i.e. Illustrator EPS files or appropriate format, ideally at 300dpi). If the winner does not come forward within 3 days of the announcement, they will forfeit their prize and another winner will be selected from the runners-up. The names of the winner and runners-up will be posted on this blog by June 18th.  3. Entry is completed on the designer posting a link to their entry in a tweet with the correct hash tag, #reflectortees. 4. Red Gate Software needs to hold the rights to using the winning design in order to put the t-shirt into production. We will make sure that this is fine with the winner before we do so, but if you do not want us holding the rights to your design, please do not submit your designs. We reserve the right to slightly alter or adjust any artwork we decide to use (mainly to make it easier to print), but we will make sure we contact the winner for approval first. The winner will also need to allow us the use of his/her name for purposes of promoting your design. 5. Entries must be entirely your own original work and must not breach any copyright or third party rights. Red Gate Software Ltd will not be made partially or fully liable for any non-original work submitted by you. 6. This competition is free: you do not need to buy anything or be an existing customer to enter. 7. This competition is not open to employees of Red Gate Software Ltd, their families, or any other company directly connected with the administration of this promotion.

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  • Unable to sign in. How to debug?

    - by Dmitriy Budnik
    I had to reboot system with reset button. After reboot I can't sign in. When I enter my password It seems like X-server just restarts. I can sing in as guest and also I can sign in in text TTY. Here is first 150 lines of my lightdm.log: [+0.04s] DEBUG: Logging to /var/log/lightdm/lightdm.log [+0.04s] DEBUG: Starting Light Display Manager 1.2.1, UID=0 PID=1070 [+0.04s] DEBUG: Loaded configuration from /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf [+0.04s] DEBUG: Using D-Bus name org.freedesktop.DisplayManager [+0.04s] DEBUG: Registered seat module xlocal [+0.04s] DEBUG: Registered seat module xremote [+0.04s] DEBUG: Adding default seat [+0.04s] DEBUG: Starting seat [+0.04s] DEBUG: Starting new display for automatic login as user dmytro [+0.04s] DEBUG: Starting local X display [+3.64s] DEBUG: X server :0 will replace Plymouth [+3.66s] DEBUG: Using VT 7 [+3.66s] DEBUG: Activating VT 7 [+3.66s] DEBUG: Logging to /var/log/lightdm/x-0.log [+3.66s] DEBUG: Writing X server authority to /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 [+3.66s] DEBUG: Launching X Server [+3.66s] DEBUG: Launching process 1154: /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch -background none [+3.66s] DEBUG: Waiting for ready signal from X server :0 [+3.66s] DEBUG: Acquired bus name org.freedesktop.DisplayManager [+3.66s] DEBUG: Registering seat with bus path /org/freedesktop/DisplayManager/Seat0 [+10.78s] DEBUG: Got signal 10 from process 1154 [+10.78s] DEBUG: Got signal from X server :0 [+10.78s] DEBUG: Stopping Plymouth, X server is ready [+10.80s] DEBUG: Connecting to XServer :0 [+10.80s] DEBUG: Automatically logging in user dmytro [+10.80s] DEBUG: Started session 1303 with service 'lightdm-autologin', username 'dmytro' [+13.22s] DEBUG: Session 1303 authentication complete with return value 0: Success [+13.26s] DEBUG: Autologin user dmytro authorized [+13.27s] DEBUG: Autologin using session ubuntu [+14.44s] DEBUG: Dropping privileges to uid 1000 [+14.48s] DEBUG: Restoring privileges [+14.49s] DEBUG: Dropping privileges to uid 1000 [+14.49s] DEBUG: Writing /home/dmytro/.dmrc [+14.61s] DEBUG: Restoring privileges [+14.81s] DEBUG: Starting session ubuntu as user dmytro [+14.81s] DEBUG: Session 1303 running command /usr/sbin/lightdm-session gnome-session --session=ubuntu [+15.76s] DEBUG: New display ready, switching to it [+15.76s] DEBUG: Activating VT 7 [+15.76s] DEBUG: Registering session with bus path /org/freedesktop/DisplayManager/Session0 [+16.63s] DEBUG: Session 1303 exited with return value 0 [+16.63s] DEBUG: User session quit [+16.63s] DEBUG: Stopping display [+16.63s] DEBUG: Sending signal 15 to process 1154 [+17.19s] DEBUG: Process 1154 exited with return value 0 [+17.19s] DEBUG: X server stopped [+17.19s] DEBUG: Removing X server authority /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 [+17.19s] DEBUG: Releasing VT 7 [+17.19s] DEBUG: Display server stopped [+17.19s] DEBUG: Display stopped [+17.19s] DEBUG: Active display stopped, switching to greeter [+17.19s] DEBUG: Switching to greeter [+17.19s] DEBUG: Starting new display for greeter [+17.19s] DEBUG: Starting local X display [+17.19s] DEBUG: Using VT 7 [+17.19s] DEBUG: Logging to /var/log/lightdm/x-0.log [+17.19s] DEBUG: Writing X server authority to /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 [+17.19s] DEBUG: Launching X Server [+17.19s] DEBUG: Launching process 1563: /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch [+17.19s] DEBUG: Waiting for ready signal from X server :0 [+17.48s] DEBUG: Got signal 10 from process 1563 [+17.48s] DEBUG: Got signal from X server :0 [+17.48s] DEBUG: Connecting to XServer :0 [+17.48s] DEBUG: Starting greeter [+17.48s] DEBUG: Started session 1575 with service 'lightdm', username 'lightdm' [+17.61s] DEBUG: Session 1575 authentication complete with return value 0: Success [+17.61s] DEBUG: Greeter authorized [+17.61s] DEBUG: Logging to /var/log/lightdm/x-0-greeter.log [+17.68s] DEBUG: Session 1575 running command /usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-greeter-session /usr/sbin/unity-greeter [+20.86s] DEBUG: Greeter connected version=1.2.1 [+20.86s] DEBUG: Greeter connected, display is ready [+20.86s] DEBUG: New display ready, switching to it [+20.86s] DEBUG: Activating VT 7 [+20.86s] DEBUG: Stopping greeter display being switched from [+24.90s] DEBUG: Greeter start authentication for dmytro [+24.90s] DEBUG: Started session 1746 with service 'lightdm', username 'dmytro' [+25.10s] DEBUG: Session 1746 got 1 message(s) from PAM [+25.10s] DEBUG: Prompt greeter with 1 message(s) [+31.87s] DEBUG: Continue authentication [+33.75s] DEBUG: Session 1746 authentication complete with return value 7: Authentication failure [+33.75s] DEBUG: Authenticate result for user dmytro: Authentication failure [+33.75s] DEBUG: Greeter start authentication for dmytro [+33.75s] DEBUG: Session 1746: Sending SIGTERM [+33.75s] DEBUG: Started session 2264 with service 'lightdm', username 'dmytro' [+33.75s] DEBUG: Session 2264 got 1 message(s) from PAM [+33.75s] DEBUG: Prompt greeter with 1 message(s) [+36.41s] DEBUG: Continue authentication [+36.53s] DEBUG: Session 2264 authentication complete with return value 0: Success [+36.53s] DEBUG: Authenticate result for user dmytro: Success [+36.54s] DEBUG: User dmytro authorized [+36.54s] DEBUG: Greeter requests session ubuntu [+36.54s] DEBUG: Using session ubuntu [+36.54s] DEBUG: Stopping greeter [+36.54s] DEBUG: Session 1575: Sending SIGTERM [+37.41s] DEBUG: Greeter closed communication channel [+37.41s] DEBUG: Session 1575 exited with return value 0 [+37.41s] DEBUG: Greeter quit [+37.42s] DEBUG: Dropping privileges to uid 1000 [+37.42s] DEBUG: Restoring privileges [+37.43s] DEBUG: Dropping privileges to uid 1000 [+37.43s] DEBUG: Writing /home/dmytro/.dmrc [+38.35s] DEBUG: Restoring privileges [+40.37s] DEBUG: Starting session ubuntu as user dmytro [+40.37s] DEBUG: Session 2264 running command /usr/sbin/lightdm-session gnome-session --session=ubuntu [+40.39s] DEBUG: Registering session with bus path /org/freedesktop/DisplayManager/Session1 [+50.78s] DEBUG: Session 2264 exited with return value 0 [+50.78s] DEBUG: User session quit [+50.78s] DEBUG: Stopping display [+50.78s] DEBUG: Sending signal 15 to process 1563 [+51.53s] DEBUG: Process 1563 exited with return value 0 [+51.53s] DEBUG: X server stopped [+51.53s] DEBUG: Removing X server authority /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 [+51.53s] DEBUG: Releasing VT 7 [+51.53s] DEBUG: Display server stopped [+51.53s] DEBUG: Display stopped [+51.53s] DEBUG: Active display stopped, switching to greeter [+51.53s] DEBUG: Switching to greeter [+51.53s] DEBUG: Starting new display for greeter [+51.53s] DEBUG: Starting local X display [+51.53s] DEBUG: Using VT 7 [+51.53s] DEBUG: Logging to /var/log/lightdm/x-0.log [+51.53s] DEBUG: Writing X server authority to /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 [+51.53s] DEBUG: Launching X Server [+51.53s] DEBUG: Launching process 2894: /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch [+51.53s] DEBUG: Waiting for ready signal from X server :0 [+51.75s] DEBUG: Got signal 10 from process 2894 [+51.75s] DEBUG: Got signal from X server :0 [+51.75s] DEBUG: Connecting to XServer :0 [+51.75s] DEBUG: Starting greeter [+51.75s] DEBUG: Started session 2898 with service 'lightdm', username 'lightdm' [+51.76s] DEBUG: Session 2898 authentication complete with return value 0: Success [+51.76s] DEBUG: Greeter authorized [+51.76s] DEBUG: Logging to /var/log/lightdm/x-0-greeter.log [+51.76s] DEBUG: Session 2898 running command /usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-greeter-session /usr/sbin/unity-greeter [+53.26s] DEBUG: Greeter connected version=1.2.1 [+53.26s] DEBUG: Greeter connected, display is ready [+53.26s] DEBUG: New display ready, switching to it [+53.26s] DEBUG: Activating VT 7 [+53.26s] DEBUG: Stopping greeter display being switched from [+54.17s] DEBUG: Greeter start authentication for dmytro [+54.17s] DEBUG: Started session 3152 with service 'lightdm', username 'dmytro' [+54.18s] DEBUG: Session 3152 got 1 message(s) from PAM [+54.18s] DEBUG: Prompt greeter with 1 message(s) [+58.61s] DEBUG: Continue authentication [+58.65s] DEBUG: Session 3152 authentication complete with return value 0: Success [+58.65s] DEBUG: Authenticate result for user dmytro: Success [+58.66s] DEBUG: User dmytro authorized [+58.66s] DEBUG: Greeter requests session ubuntu [+58.66s] DEBUG: Using session ubuntu [+58.66s] DEBUG: Stopping greeter [+58.66s] DEBUG: Session 2898: Sending SIGTERM How can I fix it? What other .log files could possibly give me a clue? Update: Possibly it's duplicate of Desktop login fails, terminal works

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  • Windows 7 doesn't boot after Ubuntu install

    - by Omu
    I had windows 7 installed on my pc, then I installed Ubuntu 10.10/ During the installation process I have chosen to manually set my partitions: I set a 10GB drive for ubuntu root 1GB drive for swap and for boot drive I've chosen the one used by windows 7 Now I can boot ubuntu, I have the windows 7 option in the boot list, but when I choose Windows 7, it shows me a black screen for a second and returns back to boot screen. Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010 ============================= Boot Info Summary: ============================== = Windows is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda sda1: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Grub 2 Boot sector info: Grub 2 is installed in the boot sector of sda1 and looks at sector 304908237 of the same hard drive for core.img, but core.img can not be found at this location. No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Windows 7 Boot files/dirs: /bootmgr /Boot/BCD /Windows/System32/winload.exe sda2: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows XP Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Boot files/dirs: sda3: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: Extended Partition Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: sda5: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ext4 Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: Operating System: Ubuntu 10.10 Boot files/dirs: /boot/grub/grub.cfg /etc/fstab /boot/grub/core.img sda4: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: swap Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: =========================== Drive/Partition Info: ============================= Drive: sda ___________________ _____________________________________________________ Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Partition Boot Start End Size Id System /dev/sda1 * 63 62,894,474 62,894,412 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda2 62,894,478 291,579,749 228,685,272 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda3 291,579,811 309,157,937 17,578,127 5 Extended /dev/sda5 291,579,813 309,157,937 17,578,125 83 Linux /dev/sda4 309,159,936 312,580,095 3,420,160 82 Linux swap / Solaris blkid -c /dev/null: ____________________________________________________________ Device UUID TYPE LABEL /dev/sda1 1266BB2766BB0A8D ntfs /dev/sda2 BEDBF1147C76F703 ntfs DATA /dev/sda3: PTTYPE="dos" /dev/sda4 dd38226d-c7c9-4ae5-a726-6d18d34a22e4 swap /dev/sda5 e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 ext4 /dev/sda: PTTYPE="dos" ============================ "mount | grep ^/dev output: =========================== Device Mount_Point Type Options /dev/sda5 / ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0) =========================== sda5/boot/grub/grub.cfg: =========================== # # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE # # It is automatically generated by grub-mkconfig using templates # from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub # ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/00_header ### if [ -s $prefix/grubenv ]; then set have_grubenv=true load_env fi set default="0" if [ "${prev_saved_entry}" ]; then set saved_entry="${prev_saved_entry}" save_env saved_entry set prev_saved_entry= save_env prev_saved_entry set boot_once=true fi function savedefault { if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then saved_entry="${chosen}" save_env saved_entry fi } function recordfail { set recordfail=1 if [ -n "${have_grubenv}" ]; then if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then save_env recordfail; fi; fi } function load_video { insmod vbe insmod vga } insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 if loadfont /usr/share/grub/unicode.pf2 ; then set gfxmode=640x480 load_video insmod gfxterm fi terminal_output gfxterm insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 set locale_dir=($root)/boot/grub/locale set lang=en insmod gettext if [ "${recordfail}" = 1 ]; then set timeout=-1 else set timeout=10 fi ### END /etc/grub.d/00_header ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ### set menu_color_normal=white/black set menu_color_highlight=black/light-gray ### END /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.35-22-generic' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic root=UUID=e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 ro quiet splash initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic } menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.35-22-generic (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 echo 'Loading Linux 2.6.35-22-generic ...' linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic root=UUID=e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 ro single echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic } ### END /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ### ### END /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+)" { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin } menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+, serial console 115200)" { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set e1dafd1c-f855-406b-8f9a-f9d527c70255 linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin console=ttyS0,115200n8 } ### END /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### menuentry "Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda1)" { insmod part_msdos insmod ntfs set root='(hd0,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 1266bb2766bb0a8d chainloader +1 } ### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### # This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the # menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change # the 'exec tail' line above. ### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/41_custom ### if [ -f $prefix/custom.cfg ]; then source $prefix/custom.cfg; fi ### END /etc/grub.d/41_custom ### =============================== sda5/etc/fstab: =============================== # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier # for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name # devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5). # # proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0 /dev/sda5 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1 # swap was on /dev/sda4 during installation UUID=dd38226d-c7c9-4ae5-a726-6d18d34a22e4 none swap sw 0 0 =================== sda5: Location of files loaded by Grub: =================== 156.1GB: boot/grub/core.img 156.3GB: boot/grub/grub.cfg 149.9GB: boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic 156.3GB: boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic 149.9GB: initrd.img 156.3GB: vmlinuz

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  • Driver error when using multiple shaders

    - by Jinxi
    I'm using 3 different shaders: a tessellation shader to use the tessellation feature of DirectX11 :) a regular shader to show how it would look without tessellation and a text shader to display debug-info such as FPS, model count etc. All of these shaders are initialized at the beginning. Using the keyboard, I can switch between the tessellation shader and regular shader to render the scene. Additionally, I also want to be able toggle the display of debug-info using the text shader. Since implementing the tessellation shader the text shader doesn't work anymore. When I activate the DebugText (rendered using the text-shader) my screens go black for a while, and Windows displays the following message: Display Driver stopped responding and has recovered This happens with either of the two shaders used to render the scene. Additionally: I can start the application using the regular shader to render the scene and then switch to the tessellation shader. If I try to switch back to the regular shader I get the same error as with the text shader. What am I doing wrong when switching between shaders? What am I doing wrong when displaying text at the same time? What file can I post to help you help me? :) thx P.S. I already checked if my keyinputs interrupt at the wrong time (during render or so..), but that seems to be ok Testing Procedure Regular Shader without text shader Add text shader to Regular Shader by keyinput (works now, I built the text shader back to only vertex and pixel shader) (somthing with the z buffer is stil wrong...) Remove text shader, then change shader to Tessellation Shader by key input Then if I add the Text Shader or switch back to the Regular Shader Switching/Render Shader Here the code snipet from the Renderer.cpp where I choose the Shader according to the boolean "m_useTessellationShader": if(m_useTessellationShader) { // Render the model using the tesselation shader ecResult = m_ShaderManager->renderTessellationShader(m_D3D->getDeviceContext(), meshes[lod_level]->getIndexCount(), worldMatrix, viewMatrix, projectionMatrix, textures, texturecount, m_Light->getDirection(), m_Light->getAmbientColor(), m_Light->getDiffuseColor(), (D3DXVECTOR3)m_Camera->getPosition(), TESSELLATION_AMOUNT); } else { // todo: loaded model depends on distance to camera // Render the model using the light shader. ecResult = m_ShaderManager->renderShader(m_D3D->getDeviceContext(), meshes[lod_level]->getIndexCount(), lod_level, textures, texturecount, m_Light->getDirection(), m_Light->getAmbientColor(), m_Light->getDiffuseColor(), worldMatrix, viewMatrix, projectionMatrix); } And here the code snipet from the Mesh.cpp where I choose the Typology according to the boolean "useTessellationShader": // RenderBuffers is called from the Render function. The purpose of this function is to set the vertex buffer and index buffer as active on the input assembler in the GPU. Once the GPU has an active vertex buffer it can then use the shader to render that buffer. void Mesh::renderBuffers(ID3D11DeviceContext* deviceContext, bool useTessellationShader) { unsigned int stride; unsigned int offset; // Set vertex buffer stride and offset. stride = sizeof(VertexType); offset = 0; // Set the vertex buffer to active in the input assembler so it can be rendered. deviceContext->IASetVertexBuffers(0, 1, &m_vertexBuffer, &stride, &offset); // Set the index buffer to active in the input assembler so it can be rendered. deviceContext->IASetIndexBuffer(m_indexBuffer, DXGI_FORMAT_R32_UINT, 0); // Check which Shader is used to set the appropriate Topology // Set the type of primitive that should be rendered from this vertex buffer, in this case triangles. if(useTessellationShader) { deviceContext->IASetPrimitiveTopology(D3D11_PRIMITIVE_TOPOLOGY_3_CONTROL_POINT_PATCHLIST); }else{ deviceContext->IASetPrimitiveTopology(D3D11_PRIMITIVE_TOPOLOGY_TRIANGLELIST); } return; } RenderShader Could there be a problem using sometimes only vertex and pixel shader and after switching using vertex, hull, domain and pixel shader? Here a little overview of my architecture: TextClass: uses font.vs and font.ps deviceContext-VSSetShader(m_vertexShader, NULL, 0); deviceContext-PSSetShader(m_pixelShader, NULL, 0); deviceContext-PSSetSamplers(0, 1, &m_sampleState); RegularShader: uses vertex.vs and pixel.ps deviceContext-VSSetShader(m_vertexShader, NULL, 0); deviceContext-PSSetShader(m_pixelShader, NULL, 0); deviceContext-PSSetSamplers(0, 1, &m_sampleState); TessellationShader: uses tessellation.vs, tessellation.hs, tessellation.ds, tessellation.ps deviceContext-VSSetShader(m_vertexShader, NULL, 0); deviceContext-HSSetShader(m_hullShader, NULL, 0); deviceContext-DSSetShader(m_domainShader, NULL, 0); deviceContext-PSSetShader(m_pixelShader, NULL, 0); deviceContext-PSSetSamplers(0, 1, &m_sampleState); ClearState I'd like to switch between 2 shaders and it seems they have different context parameters, right? In clearstate methode it says it resets following params to NULL: I found following in my Direct3D Class: depth-stencil state - m_deviceContext-OMSetDepthStencilState rasterizer state - m_deviceContext-RSSetState(m_rasterState); blend state - m_device-CreateBlendState viewports - m_deviceContext-RSSetViewports(1, &viewport); I found following in every Shader Class: input/output resource slots - deviceContext-PSSetShaderResources shaders - deviceContext-VSSetShader to - deviceContext-PSSetShader input layouts - device-CreateInputLayout sampler state - device-CreateSamplerState These two I didn't understand, where can I find them? predications - ? scissor rectangles - ? Do I need to store them all localy so I can switch between them, because it doesn't feel right to reinitialize the Direct3d and the Shaders by every switch (key input)?!

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  • Vacations on Rodrigues 2014

    And now something completely different compared to the usual technical or community related articles here on this blog. Yes, this time I'm writing some lines on my (and my family's) activities during our long weekend stay on Rodrigues. So, please bear with me, it's eventually a bit more personal... Grab a soda, some popcorn and a cosy place to continue to read. var googleAlbumLink = "https://plus.google.com/photos/117698191428446859536/albums/6047895311458281985"; //optional----------------------- var mySlideWidth = 580; var mySlideHeight = 340; var mySlideDelay = 7000; //delay in milliseconds Special promotions during school holidays Originally, our children started to ask more frequently about going on the plane again. Obviously, after their aunty from Germany was around during May, they were really eager to travel again. So, we decided that it might be a great opportunity to book some vacations during their school holidays. And just in time the local hotels and hotel groups started to advertise their special promotions for citizens and residents. After collecting multiple brochures over several days, we got attracted by various hotel packages on Rodrigues - most interestingly the expenses for the stay and flight ticket were less compared to other resorts here on the main island. As we have been to Rodrigues already back in 2008, we followed up on this idea and got in touch with a couple travel agencies. Well, I have to report that you should be really careful about the promotions from some of them. We had a very negative experience with Shamal Travel Agency in Quatre Bornes regarding their adverts and the actual price levels and age definition for children. Please, stay away from them if you are interested in transparent cost and services. Anyway, after some arrangements with two other close families we managed to confirm our stay at the Cotton Bay Hotel in Rodrigues. Given the fact that we already stayed there, and the hotel has been renovated recently, and it is under new management all looked very promising and relaxed for our vacation. Counting the days... As we already booked in July our children were counting down the days. And it got more interesting as soon as they were on school holidays finally. Well, the day arrived and waking them up at 2:30 hrs wasn't a problem after all. Quite the opposite it was fascinating for us parents to watch them waiting for the transport and later on during the airport transfer. Despite the early hours both didn't fall asleep and it was all so exciting. We are taking the plane! Well organised by the Cotton Bay Hotel Honestly, it was a breeze and a smooth ride during our stay at the hotel. From the airport transfer, the cleanliness of our bungalow, the organisation of our day trips, and the SPA - all very well and enjoyable. The children had great fun, and although it was a bit too windy to plunge into the pool they had a lot of fun with other activities on the beach and at the Kid's Club. Oh, and we had our private petting zoo with cows, sheep and goats just close to the terrace. Some of us went to check out the SPA facilities and I have to admit that the services regarding Hammam and Sauna are better than at some other hotels in Mauritius. I don't know after how many months or years I was once again enjoying a very hot sauna. Little draw-back but nothing to worry about... There is no cold water or at least ice cubes to cool down the body, but hey there was a nice breeze coming over the hills. Some day trips to mention Based on a friend's recommendation we walked to a "restaurant" called Chez Solange & Robert. Hahaha, restaurant is widely stretched in this case, as we enjoyed a great BBQ with fresh lobster, whole fish, and pieces of chicken breast in an open cottage. Just some wooden structure covered with dried palm leaves on the roof - island feeling pure! The other day we went to the Giant Tortoise & Cave Reserve Francois Leguat to observe the giant Aldabra turtles and to visit the Grande Caverne. The biggest limestone cave on the island. Compared to our last visit this was a novelty after checking out the Caverne Partate. The formations of stalactites and stalagmites are very impressive and imaginative. Our guide had lots of funny terms and despite the low light conditions the kids had a great time wandering around on the narrow wooden paths and stairs. And last but not least, we decided to check out the Tyrodrig zip lines... Everyone was allowed to join the trip through the air, and our little ones stayed close to our field guides. But finally went on their own on the very last traversal. Puuuh, it was astounishing to glide over the valley, and for sure something to repeat next time. Impressions of our vacation on Rodrigues 2014   Next stay has been discussed already Oh yes, Rodrigues baby! We are going to come again! Tentative dates have been discussed already and now it's up to us to earn enough our next holiday on that wonderful remote piece of paradise. Eventually, a little bit longer than this time. We'll see...

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  • Searching for the Perfect Developer&rsquo;s Laptop.

    - by mbcrump
    I have been in the market for a new computer for several months. I set out with a budget of around $1200. I knew up front that the machine would be used for developing applications and maybe some light gaming. I kept switching between buying a laptop or a desktop but the laptop won because: With a Laptop, I can carry it everywhere and with a desktop I can’t. I searched for about 2 weeks and narrowed it down to a list of must-have’s : i7 Processor (I wasn’t going to settle for an i5 or AMD. I wanted a true Quad-core machine, not 2 dual-core fused together). 15.6” monitor SSD 128GB or Larger. – It’s almost 2011 and I don’t want an old standard HDD in this machine. 8GB of DDR3 Ram. – The more the better, right? 1GB Video Card (Prefer NVidia) – I might want to play games with this. HDMI Port – Almost a standard on new Machines. This would be used when I am on the road and want to stream Netflix to the HDTV in the Hotel room. Webcam Built-in – This would be to video chat with the wife and kids if I am on the road. 6-Cell Battery. – I’ve read that an i7 in a laptop really kills the battery. A 6-cell or 9-cell is even better. That is a pretty long list for a budget of around $1200. I searched around the internet and could not buy this machine prebuilt for under $1200. That was even with coupons and my company’s 10% Dell discount. The only way that I would get a machine like this was to buy a prebuilt and replace parts. I chose the  Lenovo Y560 on Newegg to start as my base. Below is a top-down picture of it.   Part 1: The Hardware The Specs for this machine: Color :  GrayOperating System : Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bitCPU Type : Intel Core i7-740QM(1.73GHz)Screen : 15.6" WXGAMemory Size : 4GB DDR3Hard Disk : 500GBOptical Drive : DVD±R/RWGraphics Card : ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730Video Memory : 1GBCommunication : Gigabit LAN and WLANCard slot : 1 x Express Card/34Battery Life : Up to 3.5 hoursDimensions : 15.20" x 10.00" x 0.80" - 1.30"Weight : 5.95 lbs. This computer met most of the requirements above except that it didn’t come with an SSD or have 8GB of DDR3 Memory. So, I needed to start shopping except this time for an SSD. I asked around on twitter and other hardware forums and everyone pointed me to the Crucial C300 SSD. After checking prices of the drive, it was going to cost an extra $275 bucks and I was going from a spacious 500GB drive to 128GB. After watching some of the SSD videos on YouTube I started feeling better. Below is a pic of the Crucial C300 SSD. The second thing that I needed to upgrade was the RAM. It came with 4GB of DDR3 RAM, but it was slow. I decided to buy the Crucial 8GB (4GB x 2) Kit from Newegg. This RAM cost an extra $120 and had a CAS Latency of 7. In the end this machine delivered everything that I wanted and it cost around $1300. You are probably saying, well your budget was $1200. I have spare parts that I’m planning on selling on eBay or Anandtech.  =) If you are interested then shoot me an email and I will give you a great deal mbcrump[at]gmail[dot]com. 500GB Laptop 7200RPM HDD 4GB of DDR3 RAM (2GB x 2) faceVision HD 720p Camera – Unopened In the end my Windows Experience Rating of the SSD was 7.7 and the CPU 7.1. The max that you can get is a 7.9. Part 2: The Software I’m very lucky that I get a lot of software for free. When choosing a laptop, the OS really doesn’t matter because I would never keep the bloatware pre-installed or Windows 7 Home Premium on my main development machine. Matter of fact, as soon as I got the laptop, I immediately took out the old HDD without booting into it. After I got the SSD into the machine, I installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit. The BIOS was out of date, so I updated that to the latest version and started downloading drivers off of Lenovo’s site. I had to download the Wireless Networking Drivers to a USB-Key before I could get my machine on my wireless network. I also discovered that if the date on your computer is off then you cannot join the Windows 7 Homegroup until you fix it. I’m aware that most people like peeking into what programs other software developers use and I went ahead and listed my “essentials” of a fresh build. I am a big Silverlight guy, so naturally some of the software listed below is specific to Silverlight. You should also check out my master list of Tools and Utilities for the .NET Developer. See a killer app that I’m missing? Feel free to leave it in the comments below. My Software Essential List. CPU-Z Dropbox Everything Search Tool Expression Encoder Update Expression Studio 4 Ultimate Foxit Reader Google Chrome Infragistics NetAdvantage Ultimate Edition Keepass Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Microsoft Security Essentials 2  Mindscape Silverlight Elements Notepad 2 (with shell extension) Precode Code Snippet Manager RealVNC Reflector ReSharper v5.1.1753.4 Silverlight 4 Toolkit Silverlight Spy Snagit 10 SyncFusion Reporting Controls for Silverlight Telerik Silverlight RadControls TweetDeck Virtual Clone Drive Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2 Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate VS KB2403277 Update to get Feature Pack 2 to work. Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit Windows Live Essentials 2011 Windows Live Writer Backup. Windows Phone Development Tools That is pretty much it, I have a new laptop and am happy with the purchase. If you have any questions then feel free to leave a comment below.  Subscribe to my feed

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  • What should you bring to the table as a Software Architect?

    - by Ahmad Mageed
    There have been many questions with good answers about the role of a Software Architect (SA) on StackOverflow and Programmers SE. I am trying to ask a slightly more focused question than those. The very definition of a SA is broad so for the sake of this question let's define a SA as follows: A Software Architect guides the overall design of a project, gets involved with coding efforts, conducts code reviews, and selects the technologies to be used. In other words, I am not talking about managerial rest and vest at the crest (further rhyming words elided) types of SAs. If I were to pursue any type of SA position I don't want to be away from coding. I might sacrifice some time to interface with clients and Business Analysts etc., but I am still technically involved and I'm not just aware of what's going on through meetings. With these points in mind, what should a SA bring to the table? Should they come in with a mentality of "laying down the law" (so to speak) and enforcing the usage of certain tools to fit "their way," i.e., coding guidelines, source control, patterns, UML documentation, etc.? Or should they specify initial direction and strategy then be laid back and jump in as needed to correct the ship's direction? Depending on the organization this might not work. An SA who relies on TFS to enforce everything may struggle to implement their plan at an employer that only uses StarTeam. Similarly, an SA needs to be flexible depending on the stage of the project. If it's a fresh project they have more choices, whereas they might have less for existing projects. Here are some SA stories I have experienced as a way of sharing some background in hopes that answers to my questions might also shed some light on these issues: I've worked with an SA who code reviewed literally every single line of code of the team. The SA would do this for not just our project but other projects in the organization (imagine the time spent on this). At first it was useful to enforce certain standards, but later it became crippling. FxCop was how the SA would find issues. Don't get me wrong, it was a good way to teach junior developers and force them to think of the consequences of their chosen approach, but for senior developers it was seen as somewhat draconian. One particular SA was against the use of a certain library, claiming it was slow. This forced us to write tons of code to achieve things differently while the other library would've saved us a lot of time. Fast forward to the last month of the project and the clients were complaining about performance. The only solution was to change certain functionality to use the originally ignored approach despite early warnings from the devs. By that point a lot of code was thrown out and not reusable, leading to overtime and stress. Sadly the estimates used for the project were based on the old approach which my project was forbidden from using so it wasn't an appropriate indicator for estimation. I would hear the PM say "we've done this before," when in reality they had not since we were using a new library and the devs working on it were not the same devs used on the old project. The SA who would enforce the usage of DTOs, DOs, BOs, Service layers and so on for all projects. New devs had to learn this architecture and the SA adamantly enforced usage guidelines. Exceptions to usage guidelines were made when it was absolutely difficult to follow the guidelines. The SA was grounded in their approach. Classes for DTOs and all CRUD operations were generated via CodeSmith and database schemas were another similar ball of wax. However, having used this setup everywhere, the SA was not open to new technologies such as LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework. I am not using this post as a platform for venting. There were positive and negative aspects to my experiences with the SA stories mentioned above. My questions boil down to: What should an SA bring to the table? How can they strike a balance in their decision making? Should one approach an SA job (as defined earlier) with the mentality that they must enforce certain ground rules? Anything else to consider? Thanks! I'm sure these job tasks are easily extended to people who are senior devs or technical leads, so feel free to answer at that capacity as well.

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