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• Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community

  There we go! I finally managed to push myself forward and pick up an old, actually too old, idea since I ever arrived here in Mauritius more than six years ago. I'm talking about a community for all kind of ICT connected people. In the past (back in Germany), I used to be involved in various community activities. For example, I was part of the Microsoft Community Leader/Influencer Program (CLIP) in Germany due to an FAQ on Visual FoxPro, actually Active FoxPro Pages (AFP) to be more precise. Then in 2003/2004 I addressed the responsible person of the dFPUG user group in Speyer in order to assist him in organising monthly user group meetings. Well, he handed over management completely, and attended our meetings regularly. Why did it take you so long? Well, I don't want to bother you with the details but short version is that I was too busy on either job (building up new companies) or private life (got married and we have two lovely children, eh 'monsters') or even both. But now is the time where I was starting to look for new fields given the fact that I gained some spare time. My businesses are up and running, the kids are in school, and I am finally in a position where I can commit myself again to community activities. And I love to do that! Why a new user group? Good question... And 'easy' to answer. Since back in 2007 I did my usual research, eh Google searches, to see whether there existing user groups in Mauritius and in which field of interest. And yes, there are! If I recall this correctly, then there are communities for PHP, Drupal, Python (just recently), Oracle, and Linux (which used to be even two). But... either they do not exist anymore, they are dormant, or there is only a low heart-beat, frankly speaking. And yes, I went to meetings of the Linux User Group Meta (Mauritius) back in 2010/2011 and just recently. I really like the setup and the way the LUGM is organised. It's just that I have a slightly different point of view on how a user group or community should organise itself and how to approach future members. Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing others doing a very good job, I'm only saying that I'd like to do it differently. The last meeting of the LUGM was awesome; read my feedback about it. Ok, so what's up with 'Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community' or short: MSCC? As I've already written in my article on 'Communities - The importance of exchange and discussion' I think it is essential in a world of IT to stay 'connected' with a good number of other people in the same field. There is so much dynamic and every day's news that it is almost impossible to keep on track with all of them. The MSCC is going to provide a common platform to exchange experience and share knowledge between each other. You might be a newbie and want to know what to expect working as a software developer, or as a database administrator, or maybe as an IT systems administrator, or you're an experienced geek that loves to share your ideas or solutions that you implemented to solve a specific problem, or you're the business (or HR) guy that is looking for 'fresh' blood to enforce your existing team. Or... you're just interested and you'd like to communicate with like-minded people. Meetup of 26.06.2013 @ L'arabica: Of course there are laptops around. Free WiFi, power outlet, coffee, code and Linux in one go. The MSCC is technology-agnostic and spans an umbrella over any kind of technology. Simply because you can't ignore other technologies anymore in a connected IT world as we have. A front-end developer for iOS applications should have the chance to connect with a Python back-end coder and eventually with a DBA for MySQL or PostgreSQL and exchange their experience. Furthermore, I'm a huge fan of cross-platform development, and it is very pleasant to have pure Web developers - with all that HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and JS libraries stuff - and passionate C# or Java coders at the same table. This diversity of knowledge can assist and boost your personal situation. And last but not least, there are projects and open positions 'flying' around... People might like to hear others opinion about an employer or get new impulses on how to tackle down an issue at their workspace, etc. This is about community. And that's how I see the MSCC in general - free of any limitations be it by programming language or technology. Having the chance to exchange experience and to discuss certain aspects of technology saves you time and money, and it's a pleasure to enjoy. Compared to dusty books and remote online resources. It's human! Organising meetups (meetings, get-together, gatherings - you name it!) As of writing this article, the MSCC is currently meeting every Wednesday for the weekly 'Code & Coffee' session at various locations (suggestions are welcome!) in Mauritius. This might change in the future eventually but especially at the beginning I think it is very important to create awareness in the Mauritian IT world. Yes, we are here! Come and join us! ;-) The MSCC's main online presence is located at Meetup.com because it allows me to handle the organisation of events and meeting appointments very easily, and any member can have a look who else is involved so that an exchange of contacts is given at any time. In combination with the other entities (G+ Communities, FB Pages or in Groups) I advertise and manage all future activities here: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community This is a community for those who care and are proud of what they do. For those developers, regardless how experienced they are, who want to improve and master their craft. This is a community for those who believe that being average is just not good enough. I know, there are not many 'craftsmen' yet but it's a start... Let's see how it looks like by the end of the year. There are free smartphone apps for Android and iOS from Meetup.com that allow you to keep track of meetings and to stay informed on latest updates. And last but not least, there is a Trello workspace to collect and share ideas and provide downloads of slides, etc. Trello is also available as free smartphone app. Sharing is caring! As mentioned, the #MSCC is present in various social media networks in order to cover as many people as possible here in Mauritius. Following is an overview of the current networks: Twitter - Latest updates and quickies Google+ - Community channel Facebook - Community Page LinkedIn - Community Group Trello - Collaboration workspace to share and develop ideas Hopefully, this covers the majority of computer-related people in Mauritius. Please spread the word about the #MSCC between your colleagues, your friends and other interested 'geeks'. Your future looks bright Running and participating in a user group or any kind of community usually provides quite a number of advantages for anyone. On the one side it is very joyful for me to organise appointments and get in touch with people that might be interested to present a little demo of their projects or their recent problems they had to tackle down, and on the other side there are lots of companies that have various support programs or sponsorships especially tailored for user groups. At the moment, I already have a couple of gimmicks that I would like to hand out in small contests or raffles during one of the upcoming meetings, and as said, companies provide all kind of goodies, books free of charge, or sometimes even licenses for communities. Meeting other software developers or IT guys also opens up your point of view on the local market and there might be interesting projects or job offers available, too. A community like the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community is great for freelancers, self-employed, students and of course employees. Meetings will be organised on a regular basis, and I'm open to all kind of suggestions from you. Please leave a comment here in blog or join the conversations in the above mentioned social networks. Let's get this community up and running, my fellow Mauritians! Recent updates The MSCC is now officially participating in the O'Reilly UK User Group programm and we are allowed to request review or recension copies of recent titles. Additionally, we have a discount code for any books or ebooks that you might like to order on shop.oreilly.com. More applications for user group sponsorship programms are pending and I'm looking forward to a couple of announcement very soon. And... we need some kind of 'corporate identity' - Over at the MSCC website there is a call for action (or better said a contest with prizes) to create a unique design for the MSCC. This would include a decent colour palette, a logo, graphical banners for Meetup, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. and of course badges for our craftsmen to add to their personal blogs and websites. Please spread the word and contribute. Thanks!

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• Metro: Understanding the default.js File

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The goal of this blog entry is to describe — in painful detail — the contents of the default.js file in a Metro style application written with JavaScript. When you use Visual Studio to create a new Metro application then you get a default.js file automatically. The file is located in a folder named \js\default.js. The default.js file kicks off all of your custom JavaScript code. It is the main entry point to a Metro application. The default contents of the default.js file are included below: // For an introduction to the Blank template, see the following documentation: // http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=232509 (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { if (eventObject.detail.previousExecutionState !== Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ApplicationExecutionState.terminated) { // TODO: This application has been newly launched. Initialize // your application here. } else { // TODO: This application has been reactivated from suspension. // Restore application state here. } WinJS.UI.processAll(); } }; app.oncheckpoint = function (eventObject) { // TODO: This application is about to be suspended. Save any state // that needs to persist across suspensions here. You might use the // WinJS.Application.sessionState object, which is automatically // saved and restored across suspension. If you need to complete an // asynchronous operation before your application is suspended, call // eventObject.setPromise(). }; app.start(); })(); There are several mysterious things happening in this file. The purpose of this blog entry is to dispel this mystery. Understanding the Module Pattern The first thing that you should notice about the default.js file is that the entire contents of this file are enclosed within a self-executing JavaScript function: (function () { ... })(); Metro applications written with JavaScript use something called the module pattern. The module pattern is a common pattern used in JavaScript applications to create private variables, objects, and methods. Anything that you create within the module is encapsulated within the module. Enclosing all of your custom code within a module prevents you from stomping on code from other libraries accidently. Your application might reference several JavaScript libraries and the JavaScript libraries might have variables, objects, or methods with the same names. By encapsulating your code in a module, you avoid overwriting variables, objects, or methods in the other libraries accidently. Enabling Strict Mode with “use strict” The first statement within the default.js module enables JavaScript strict mode: 'use strict'; Strict mode is a new feature of ECMAScript 5 (the latest standard for JavaScript) which enables you to make JavaScript more strict. For example, when strict mode is enabled, you cannot declare variables without using the var keyword. The following statement would result in an exception: hello = "world!"; When strict mode is enabled, this statement throws a ReferenceError. When strict mode is not enabled, a global variable is created which, most likely, is not what you want to happen. I’d rather get the exception instead of the unwanted global variable. The full specification for strict mode is contained in the ECMAScript 5 specification (look at Annex C): http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/ECMA-262.pdf Aliasing the WinJS.Application Object The next line of code in the default.js file is used to alias the WinJS.Application object: var app = WinJS.Application; This line of code enables you to use a short-hand syntax when referring to the WinJS.Application object: for example,  app.onactivated instead of WinJS.Application.onactivated. The WinJS.Application object  represents your running Metro application. Handling Application Events The default.js file contains an event handler for the WinJS.Application activated event: app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { if (eventObject.detail.previousExecutionState !== Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ApplicationExecutionState.terminated) { // TODO: This application has been newly launched. Initialize // your application here. } else { // TODO: This application has been reactivated from suspension. // Restore application state here. } WinJS.UI.processAll(); } }; This WinJS.Application class supports the following events: · loaded – Happens after browser DOMContentLoaded event. After this event, the DOM is ready and you can access elements in a page. This event is raised before external images have been loaded. · activated – Triggered by the Windows.UI.WebUI.WebUIApplication activated event. After this event, the WinRT is ready. · ready – Happens after both loaded and activated events. · unloaded – Happens before application is unloaded. The following default.js file has been modified to capture each of these events and write a message to the Visual Studio JavaScript Console window: (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; WinJS.Application.onloaded = function (e) { console.log("Loaded"); }; WinJS.Application.onactivated = function (e) { console.log("Activated"); }; WinJS.Application.onready = function (e) { console.log("Ready"); } WinJS.Application.onunload = function (e) { console.log("Unload"); } app.start(); })(); When you execute the code above, a message is written to the Visual Studio JavaScript Console window when each event occurs with the exception of the Unload event (presumably because the console is not attached when that event is raised).   Handling Different Activation Contexts The code for the activated handler in the default.js file looks like this: app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { if (eventObject.detail.previousExecutionState !== Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ApplicationExecutionState.terminated) { // TODO: This application has been newly launched. Initialize // your application here. } else { // TODO: This application has been reactivated from suspension. // Restore application state here. } WinJS.UI.processAll(); } }; Notice that the code contains a conditional which checks the Kind of the event (the value of e.detail.kind). The startup code is executed only when the activated event is triggered by a Launch event, The ActivationKind enumeration has the following values: · launch · search · shareTarget · file · protocol · fileOpenPicker · fileSavePicker · cacheFileUpdater · contactPicker · device · printTaskSettings · cameraSettings Metro style applications can be activated in different contexts. For example, a camera application can be activated when modifying camera settings. In that case, the ActivationKind would be CameraSettings. Because we want to execute our JavaScript code when our application first launches, we verify that the kind of the activation event is an ActivationKind.Launch event. There is a second conditional within the activated event handler which checks whether an application is being newly launched or whether the application is being resumed from a suspended state. When running a Metro application with Visual Studio, you can use Visual Studio to simulate different application execution states by taking advantage of the Debug toolbar and the new Debug Location toolbar.  Handling the checkpoint Event The default.js file also includes an event handler for the WinJS.Application checkpoint event: app.oncheckpoint = function (eventObject) { // TODO: This application is about to be suspended. Save any state // that needs to persist across suspensions here. You might use the // WinJS.Application.sessionState object, which is automatically // saved and restored across suspension. If you need to complete an // asynchronous operation before your application is suspended, call // eventObject.setPromise(). }; The checkpoint event is raised when your Metro application goes into a suspended state. The idea is that you can save your application data when your application is suspended and reload your application data when your application resumes. Starting the Application The final statement in the default.js file is the statement that gets everything going: app.start(); Events are queued up in a JavaScript array named eventQueue . Until you call the start() method, the events in the queue are not processed. If you don’t call the start() method then the Loaded, Activated, Ready, and Unloaded events are never raised. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to describe the contents of the default.js file which is the JavaScript file which you use to kick off your custom code in a Windows Metro style application written with JavaScript. In this blog entry, I discussed the module pattern, JavaScript strict mode, handling first chance exceptions, WinJS Application events, and activation contexts.

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• Top Down RPG Movement w/ Correction?

  - by Corey Ogburn

  I would hope that we have all played Zelda: A Link to the Past, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I want to emulate that kind of 2D, top-down character movement with a touch of correction. It has been done in other games, but I feel this reference would be the easiest to relate to. More specifically the kind of movement and correction I'm talking about is: Floating movement not restricted to tile based movement like Pokemon and other games where one tap of the movement pad moves you one square in that cardinal direction. This floating movement should be able to achieve diagonal motion. If you're walking West and you come to a wall that is diagonal in a North East/South West fashion, you are corrected into a South West movement even if you continue holding left (West) on the controller. This should work for both diagonals correcting in both directions. If you're a few pixels off from walking squarely into a door or hallway, you are corrected into walking through the hall or down the hallway, i.e. bumping into the corner causes you to be pushed into the hall/door. I've hunted for efficient ways to achieve this and have had no luck. To be clear I'm talking about the human character's movement, not an NPC's movement. Are their resources available on this kind of movement? Equations or algorithms explained on a wiki or something? I'm using the XNA Framework, is there anything in it to help with this?

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• C# XNA: Effecient mesh building algorithm for voxel based terrain ("top" outside layer only, non-destructible)

  - by Tim Hatch

  To put this bluntly, for non-destructible/non-constructible voxel style terrain, are generated meshes handled much better than instancing? Is there another method to achieve millions of visible quad faces per scene with ease? If generated meshes per chunk is the way to go, what kind of algorithm might I want to use based on only EVER needing the outer layer rendered? I'm using 3D Perlin Noise for terrain generation (for overhangs/caves/etc). The layout is fantastic, but even for around 20k visible faces, it's quite slow using instancing (whether it's one big draw call or multiple smaller chunks). I've simplified it to the point of removing non-visible cubes and only having the top faces of my cube-like terrain be rendered, but with 20k quad instances, it's still pretty sluggish (30fps on my machine). My goal is for the world to be made using quite small cubes. Where multiple games (IE: Minecraft) have the player 1x1 cube in width/length and 2 high, I'm shooting for 6x6 width/length and 9 high. With a lot of advantages as far as gameplay goes, it also means I could quite easily have a single scene with millions of truly visible quads. So, I have been trying to look into changing my method from instancing to mesh generation on a chunk by chunk basis. Do video cards handle this type of processing better than separate quads/cubes through instancing? What kind of existing algorithms should I be looking into? I've seen references to marching cubes a few times now, but I haven't spent much time investigating it since I don't know if it's the better route for my situation or not. I'm also starting to doubt my need of using 3D Perlin noise for terrain generation since I won't want the kind of depth it would seem best at. I just like the idea of overhangs and occasional cave-like structures, but could find no better 'surface only' algorithms to cover that. If anyone has any better suggestions there, feel free to throw them at me too. Thanks, Mythics

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• Split a 2D scene in layers or have a z coordinate

  - by Bane

  I am in the process of writing a 2D game engine, and a dilemma emerged. Let me explain the situation... I have a Scene class, to which various objects can be added (Drawable, ParticleEmitter, Light2D, etc), and as this is a 2D scene, things will obviously be drawn over each other. My first thought was that I could have basic add and remove methods, but I soon realized that then there would be no way for the programmer to control the order in which things were drawn. So I can up with two options, each with its pros and cons. A) Would be to split the scene in layers. By that I mean instead of having the scene be a container of objects, have it be a container of layers, which are in turn the containers of objects. B) Would require to have some kind of z-coordinate, and then have the scene sorted so objects with lower z get drawn first. Option A is pretty solid, but the problem is with the lights. In what layer do I add it? Does it work cross-layer? On all bottom layers? And I still need the Z coordinate to calculate the shadow! Option B would require me to change all my code from having Vector2D positions, to some kind of class that inherits from Vector2D and adds a z coordinate to it (I don't want it to be a Vector3D because I still need all the same methods the 2D kind has, just with .z clamped on). Am I missing something? Is there an alternative to these methods? I'm working in Javascript, if that makes a difference.

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• Control convention for circular movement?

  - by Christian

  I'm currently doing a kind of training project in Unity (still a beginner). It's supposed to be somewhat like Breakout, but instead of just going left and right I want the paddle to circle around the center point. This is all fine and dandy, but the problem I have is: how do you control this with a keyboard or gamepad? For touch and mouse control I could work around the problem by letting the paddle follow the cursor/finger, but with the other control methods I'm a bit stumped. With a keyboard for example, I could either make it so that the Left arrow always moves the paddle clockwise (it starts at the bottom of the circle), or I could link it to the actual direction - meaning that if the paddle is at the bottom, it goes left and up along the circle or, if it's in the upper hemisphere, it moves left and down, both times toward the outer left point of the circle. Both feel kind of weird. With the first one, it can be counter intuitive to press Left to move the paddle right when it's in the upper area, while in the second method you'd need to constantly switch buttons to keep moving. So, long story short: is there any kind of existing standard, convention or accepted example for this type of movement and the corresponding controls? I didn't really know what to google for (control conventions for circular movement was one of the searches I tried, but it didn't give me much), and I also didn't really find anything about this on here. If there is a Question that I simply didn't see, please excuse the duplicate.

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• Server-side Architecture for Online Game

  - by Draiken

  basically I have a game client that has communicate with a server for almost every action it takes, the game is in Java (using LWJGL) and right now I will start making the server. The base of the game is normally one client communicating with the server alone, but I will require later on for several clients to work together for some functionalities. I've already read how authentication server should be sepparated and I intend on doing it. The problem is I am completely inexperienced in this kind of server-side programming, all I've ever programmed were JSF web applications. I imagine I'll do socket connections for pretty much every game communication since HTML is very slow, but I still don't really know where to start on my server. I would appreciate reading material or guidelines on where to start, what architecture should the game server have and maybe some suggestions on frameworks that could help me getting the client-server communication. I've looked into JNAG but I have no experience with this kind of thing, so I can't really tell if it is a solid and good messaging layer. Any help is appreciated... Thanks ! EDIT: Just a little more information about the game. It is intended to be a very complex game with several functionalities, making some functionalities a "program" inside the program. It is not an usual game, like FPS or RPG but I intend on having a lot of users using these many different "programs" inside the game. If I wasn't clear enough, I'd really appreciate people that have already developed games with java client/server architecture, how they communicated, any frameworks, apis, messaging systems, etc. It is not a question of lack of knowledge of language, more a question for advice, so I don't end up creating something that works, but in the later stages will have to be rewriten for any kind of limiting reason. PS: sorry if my english is not perfect...

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• How should I structure moving from overworld to menu system / combat?

  - by persepolis

  I'm making a text-based "Arena" game where the player is the owner of 5 creatures that battle other teams for loot, experience and glory. The game is very simple, using Python and a curses emulator. I have a static ASCII map of an "overworld" of sorts. My character, represented by a glyph, can move about this static map. There are locations all over the map that the character can visit, that break down into two types: 1) Towns, which are a series of menus that will allow the player to buy equipment for his team, hire new recruits or do other things. 2) Arenas, where the player's team will have a "battle" interface with actions he can perform, messages about the fight, etc. Maybe later, an ASCII representation of the fight but for now, just screens of information with action prompts. My main problem is what kind of design or structure I should use to implement this? Right now, the game goes through a master loop which waits for keyboard input and then moves the player about the screen. My current thinking is this: 1) Upon keyboard input, the Player coordinates are checked against a list of Location objects and if the Player coords match the Location coords then... 2) ??? I'm not sure if I should then call a seperate function to initiate a "menu" or "combat" mode. Or should I create some kind of new GameMode object that contains a method itself for drawing the screen, printing the necessary info? How do I pass my player's team data into this object? My main concern is passing around the program flow into all these objects. Should I be calling straight functions for different parts of my game, and objects to represent "things" within my game? I was reading about the MVC pattern and how this kind of problem might benefit - decouple the GUI from the game logic and user input but I have no idea how this applies to my game.

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• How to start a Software Company

  - by MeshMan

  I've always been interested in wondering how software companies happen. I find it extremely difficult once you're tied down with car, house, life etc. Funding is always the biggest concern. To make this a bit more specific, I see two types. Those offering a product/service or those offering a consultancy company. One things that bugs me about the product/service kind is that we all know how burning the candle at both ends is extremely exhausting. Coding for 8-10 hours in the day and then code in the evenings on your own stuff, doesn't last long. No matter how passionate you are about your idea, simply put, coding day and night is a recipe for burn out. Is this a defeatist attitude though? Can it be balanced? A consultancy kind isn't as tricky in my honest opinion. I think once you have spent years and years in the industry building up relationships, contacts from contracting or moving around, and of course, being involved in the community, then landing your first project as a consultant I'm sure is easier than the product/service kind. I'd imagine friends then could join you as you take on bigger company projects, like an Agile implementation or TDD training, then off you go gaining bigger things. Could you please specify which company type you're answering if you can't contribute to both. I'd like to hear everyone's experiences or ideas on any level for software company start-ups.

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• What packages are safe to uninstall to reduce installation size?

  - by mathematician1975

  This question is similar to a previous question I asked How can I turn my desktop Ubuntu 8.04 into a command line only install?. I was wondering if anyone can recommend any other bulky packages from the standard 8.04 installation that can reduce the size on disk of my installation. All I really require is socket functionality, g++ and gcc, some kind of text editor and SSH client and server. Things that I don't require are things like media players, audio packages, and the more "superficial" kind of desktop niceties. Is there anything particularly large in a standard install that is safe for me to remove without compromising my requirements above? I am a bit apprehensive about trying to uninstall items and I am not totally confident about removal of particular things having a negative effect on the functionality of any other things I might need (an example is would it be safe for me to remove everything to do with Perl, or does the system/kernel/other processes require this) ??? Basically I would like to be left with the kind of items that would have been installed in the CLI version of 8.04 (had the alternative iso image not been faulty). Any help/suggestions would be gratefully received.

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• WHY Google does not ban these sites using this SEO pattern? [on hold]

  - by saddam.bg

  I have seen some sites using a different kind of SEO to promote copyrighted materials such as movies. They also have submitted their site to Google webmaster tools but still now did not get banned. Their Alexa ranks are 7000 or less. On the other hand I have run 5 movie affiliate sites and all of them got banned by Google within a short period of time. I have copied the url of the homepage of solarmovie.me and pasted it on the google search and instead of the homepage url I have seen that their category or tag shows as the homepage (www.solarmovie.me/watch-category/hollyw... Now is solarmovie.me publishing its posts as a single page or something else? I tried to find out what kind of SEO or coding that was, but I couldn't since I have very little knowledge about coding. Also I have seen the same thing with ALLUC.TO in google search (www.alluc.to/popular-links.html). Could anyone please help with the SEO of this kind so that I don't get banned by google frequently or index removed. All SEO webmaster i need your help!!!! Please give me some good tips for this type of SEO. Thank You Very Much

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• How do I defer execution of some Ruby code until later and run it on demand in this scenario?

  - by Kyle Kaitan

  I've got some code that looks like the following. First, there's a simple Parser class for parsing command-line arguments with options. class Parser def initialize(&b); ...; end # Create new parser. def parse(args = ARGV); ...; end # Consume command-line args. def opt(...); ...; end # Declare supported option. def die(...); ...; end # Validation handler. end Then I have my own Parsers module which holds some metadata about parsers that I want to track. module Parsers ParserMap = {} def self.make_parser(kind, desc, &b) b ||= lambda {} module_eval { ParserMap[kind] = {:desc => "", :validation => lambda {} } ParserMap[kind][:desc] = desc # Create new parser identified by `<Kind>Parser`. Making a Parser is very # expensive, so we defer its creation until it's actually needed later # by wrapping it in a lambda and calling it when we actually need it. const_set(name_for_parser(kind), lambda { Parser.new(&b) }) } end # ... end Now when you want to add a new parser, you can call make_parser like so: make_parser :db, "login to database" do # Options that this parser knows how to parse. opt :verbose, "be verbose with output messages" opt :uid, "user id" opt :pwd, "password" end Cool. But there's a problem. We want to optionally associate validation with each parser, so that we can write something like: validation = lambda { |parser, opts| parser.die unless opts[:uid] && opts[:pwd] # Must provide login. } The interface contract with Parser says that we can't do any validation until after Parser#parse has been called. So, we want to do the following: Associate an optional block with every Parser we make with make_parser. We also want to be able to run this block, ideally as a new method called Parser#validate. But any on-demand method is equally suitable. How do we do that?

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• How do you deal with poor management [closed]

  - by Sybiam

  I come from a company where during a project, we saw the client 3 time during the whole project. We were never informed when did the client came in office in order to discuss with him about his requirements. I did setup redmine and told them that if they have any request they can post an issue there. But they never really used redmine to publish anything. They would instead: harass a team member on the phone at any time of the day or night hand us over sheets of paper with new requests or changes hand us over new design (graphical) They requested how much time it would take us to finish the project, I gave them a date and a week to test everything and deployment. I calculated that time taking into account the current features we had to do. And then blamed us that our deadline was wrong and that we lied. But the truth is that one week before that deadline they added a couple of monster feature from nowhere and that week were we were supposed to test and deploy, my friends spent all day in the office changing all little things. After that project, my friend got some kind of depression and got scared everytime his phone rang. They kind of used him as a communication proxy. After that project of hell, (every body got pissed off on that project) as far as I know the designer who was working with us left work after that project and she had some kind of issue too with managers. My team also started looking for work somewhere else. At first I tried to get things straight with management, I tried to make a meeting to discuss about the communication issues and so on.. What really pissed me off and made me leave that job for good is the following. Me: "We have to discuss about what went wrong on the last project. It's quite important" Him: "Lets talk about it in a week or two. Just make a list of all the things you did wrong" Me: "We already have a new project and we want to prevent what happened on the last project to happen again" Him: "Just do it and well have our meeting in a week, make a list of all the thing you did wrong." It kind of ended there then he organized a meeting at a moment I wasn't unable to come. My friend discussed with him and tried to explained him that we really had to discuss about organization issue on how to manage a project. And his answer was pretty much: "During the meeting I don't want to ear how you want to us to manage a project but I want to know what you guys did wrong" After that I felt it wasn't even worth it discussing anything since they weren't even ready listening to us. Found a new job and I'm pretty happy with my choice. I'd like to know how you'd handle such situation. Is there anything to do to solve communication problem? After that project my friend got a depression and some other employee had their down too as far as I know. I wonder what else we can do other than leave these place as soon as possible. Feel sad for the people that are still there and get screamed at just because they need money in order to eat and finding an other job like that isn't that easy. note I died a little when our boss asked us to make a list of things we (programmers) did wrong. This is probably the stupidest request I ever got. If everybody thinks they did everything right, it doesn't mean that there is no problems. Individual problem are rarely the big issue. Colleagues help each others and solve theses issues to prevent problems.

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• Where should instantiated classes be stored?

  - by Eric C.

  I'm having a bit of a design dilemma here. I'm writing a library that consists of a bunch of template classes that are designed to be used as a base for creating content. For example: public class Template { public string Name {get; set;} public string Description {get; set;} public string Attribute1 {get; set;} public string Attribute2 {get; set;} public Template() { //constructor } public void DoSomething() { //does something } ... } The problem is, not only is the library providing the templates, it will also supply quite a few predefined templates which are instances of these template classes. The question is, where do I put these instances of the templates? The three solutions I've come up with so far are: 1) Provide serialized instances of the templates as files. On the one hand, this solution would keep the instances separated from the library itself, which is nice, but it would also potentially add complexity for the user. Even if we provided methods for loading/deserializing the files, they'd still have to deal with a bunch of files, and some kind of config file so the app knows where to look for those files. Plus, creating the template files would probably require a separate app, so if the user wanted to stick with the files method of storing templates, we'd have to provide some kind of app for creating the template files. Also, this requires external dependencies for testing the templates in the user's code. 2) Add readonly instances to the template class Example: public class Template { public string Name {get; set;} public string Description {get; set;} public string Attribute1 {get; set;} public string Attribute2 {get; set;} public Template PredefinedTemplate { get { Template templateInstance = new Template(); templateInstance.Name = "Some Name"; templateInstance.Description = "A description"; ... return templateInstance; } } public Template() { //constructor } public void DoSomething() { //does something } ... } This method would be convenient for users, as they would be able to access the predefined templates in code directly, and would be able to unit test code that used them. The drawback here is that the predefined templates pollute the Template type namespace with a bunch of extra stuff. I suppose I could put the predefined templates in a different namespace to get around this drawback. The only other problem with this approach is that I'd have to basically duplicate all the namespaces in the library in the predefined namespace (e.g. Templates.SubTemplates and Predefined.Templates.SubTemplates) which would be a pain, and would also make refactoring more difficult. 3) Make the templates abstract classes and make the predefined templates inherit from those classes. For example: public abstract class Template { public string Name {get; set;} public string Description {get; set;} public string Attribute1 {get; set;} public string Attribute2 {get; set;} public Template() { //constructor } public void DoSomething() { //does something } ... } and public class PredefinedTemplate : Template { public PredefinedTemplate() { this.Name = "Some Name"; this.Description = "A description"; this.Attribute1 = "Some Value"; ... } } This solution is pretty similar to #2, but it ends up creating a lot of classes that don't really do anything (none of our predefined templates are currently overriding behavior), and don't have any methods, so I'm not sure how good a practice this is. Has anyone else had any experience with something like this? Is there a best practice of some kind, or a different/better approach that I haven't thought of? I'm kind of banging my head against a wall trying to figure out the best way to go. Thanks!

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• need a near 100% uptime third-party web-accesible hosting for static web resources

  - by Jared Henderson

  I hope this makes sense: my business sells a website template, we currently have about 10,000 users. For various reasons that are unimportant to this question, I try to keep the file size of the zipped template we give them as small as possible. Because of this, I have taken a bunch of images and a couple of static files used by the template and moved them to external hosting. They are referenced by absolute URL in the css and markup, instead of shipping all of those images and files with every template. So, basically 10,000+ and growing users are requesting images and files from a third-party host. I don't use my own webhosting for this because I still kind of use a medium-cheap shared hosting for my website, and if it goes down, 10,000+ users are potentially effected. Currently I'm having the template directly access files inside of an open-source google-code project that I created for just this purpose. But, that seems like a bastardization of what a google-code repository is for, and plus, google code (i've found out) often spews 502 bad gateway errors for hours at a time. So, anyway, my question is: where is the right kind of place to host these? Obviously I'm willing to pay. My main needs are speed and uptime, since the images and files are being requested from thousands of different websites every day. Is this something that I should use Amazon S3 for? I'm guessing there's some kind of service exactly for this kind of need, but I'm at a loss to figure out what it is.

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• Is F# a good language for card game AI?

  - by Anthony Brien

  I'm writing a Mahjong Game in C# (the Chinese traditional game, not the solitaire kind). While writing the code for the bot player's AI, I'm wondering if a functional language like F# would be a more suitable language than what I currently use which is C# with a lot of Linq. I don't know much about F# which is why I ask here. To illustrate what I try to solve, here's a quick summary of Mahjong: Mahjong plays a bit like Gin Rummy. You have 13 tiles in your hand, and each turn, you draw a tile and discard another one, trying to improve your hand towards a winning Mahjong hand, which consists or 4 sets and a pair. Sets can be a 3 of a kind (pungs), 4 of a kind (kongs) or a sequence of 3 consecutive tiles (chows). You can also steal another player's discard, if it can complete one of your sets. The code I had to write to detect if the bot can declare 3 consecutive tiles set (chow) is pretty tedious. I have to find all the unique tiles in the hand, and then start checking if there's a sequence of 3 tiles that contain that one in the hand. Detecting if the bot can go Mahjong is even more complicated since it's a combination of detecting if there's 4 sets and a pair in his hand. And that's just a standard Mahjong hand. There's also numerous "special" hands that break those rules but are still a Mahjong hand. For example, "13 unique wonders" consists of 13 specific tiles, "Jade Empire" consists of only tiles colored green, etc. In a perfect world, I'd love to be able to just state the 'rules' of Mahjong, and have the language be able to match a set of 13 tiles against those rules to retrieve which rules it fulfills, for example, checking if it's a Mahjong hand or if it includes a 4 of a kind. Is this something F#'s pattern matching feature can help solve?

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• How do I get XML path by its value?

  - by user299938

  I need to get the xml path opf the xml file by providing the value of an xml child element as the input. For example: XML file: <?xml version="1.0"?> <document-inquiry xmlns="http://ops.epo.org"> <publication-reference data-format="docdb" xmlns="http://www.epo.org/exchange"> <document-id> <country>EP</country> <doc-number>1000</doc-number> <kind>A1</kind> </document-id> </publication-reference> </document-inquiry> For the above XML file. I need to get the XML path by using the value "1000". If my input is value of the element "1000" Output i need is : <document-id> <country>EP</country> <doc-number>1000</doc-number> <kind>A1</kind> </document-id> I need to achieve this using c# code. Can anyone please help me out on this...

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• Are there solutions for streamlining the update of legacy code in multiple places?

  - by ccomet

  I'm working in some old code which was originally designed for handling two different kinds of files. I was recently tasked with adding a new kind of file to this code. Most of my problems were solved by filling out an extensive XML file with a new entry that handled everything from what lists were named to how the file is written in plural lower case. But this ended up being insufficient, as there were maybe 50 different places in 24 different code files where I had to update hardcoded switch-statements that only branched for the original two file types. Unfortunately there is no consistency in this; there are methods which operate half from the XML file, and half off of hardcode. Some of the files which look like they would operate off of the XML file don't, and some that I would expect that I'd need to update the hardcode don't need it. So the only way to find the majority of these is to run through testing the whole system when only part of it is operational, finding that one step to fix (when I'm lucky that error logging actually tells me what is going on), and then running the whole thing again. This wastes time testing the parts of the code which are already confirmed to work, time better spent testing the new parts I have to add on top of it all. It's a hassle and a half, and to my luck I can expect that I will have to add yet another new kind of file in the near future. Are there any solutions out there which can aid in this kind of endeavour? Something which I can input some parameters of current features, document what points in a whole code project actually need to be updated, and run something nice the next time I need to add a new feature to the code. It needn't even be fully automated, something that'll help me navigate straight to the specific points in everything and maybe even record what kind of parameters need to be loaded. Doubt it matters specifically, but the code is comprised of ASP.NET pages, some ASP.NET controls, hundreds of C# code files, and a handful of additional XML files. It's all currently in a couple big Visual Studio 2008 projects.

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• The mathematics of Schellings segregation model

  - by Bruce

  For those who don't know the model. You can read this pdf. I want to find what is the probability that 2 nodes are each others neighbors when the algorithm converges (i.e. when all nodes are happy). Here's the model in a gist. You have a grid (say 10x10). You have nodes of two kind (red and green) 45 each. So we have 10 empty spaces. We randomly place the nodes on the grid. Now we scan through this grid (Exact order does not matter according to Schelling). Each node wants a specific percentage of people of same kind in its Moore neighborhood (say b = 50% for each red and green). We calculate the happiness of each node (a = Number of neighbors of same kind/Number of neighbors of different kind). If a node is unhappy (a < b) it moves to an empty cell where it knows it will be happy. This movement can change the dynamics of old as well as new neighborhood. Algorithm converges when all nodes are happy. PS - I am looking for links for any mathematical analysis of the Schelling's model.

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• I just discovered why all ASP.Net websites are slow, and I am trying to work out what to do about it

  - by James

  I just discovered that every request in an ASP.Net web application gets a Session lock at the begging of a request, and then releases it at the end of the request!!! I mean, WTF Microsoft! In case the implication is lost on you, as it was from me at first, this basically means the following: Anytime an ASP.Net webpage is taking a long time to load (maybe due to a slow database call or whatever), and the user decides they want to navigate to a different page because they are tired of waiting, THEY CANT! The ASP.Net session lock forces the new page request to wait until the original request has finished its painfully slow load. Arrrgh. Anytime an UpdatePanel is loading slowly, and the user decides to navigate to a different page before the UpdadePanel has finished updating... THEY CANT! The ASP.Net session lock forces the new page request to wait until the original request has finished its painfully slow load. Double Arrrgh! So what are the options? So far I have come up with: Implement a Custom SessionStateDataStore, which ASP.Net supports. I haven't found too many out there to copy, and it seems kind of high risk and easy to mess up. Keep track of all requests in progress, and if a request comes in from the same user, cancel the original request. Seems kind of extreme, but it would work (I think) Don't user Session! When I need some kind of state for the user, I could just user Cache instead, and key items on the authenticated user's name, or some such thing. Again seems kind of extreme I really can't believe that the ASP.Net Microsoft team would have left such a huge performance bottleneck in the framework at version 4.0! Am I missing something obvious? How hard would it be to use a ThreadSafe collection for the Session? Arrrrghhhhhh. Any advice much appreciated.

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• Something is making my page perform an Ajax call multiple times... [read: I've never been more frust

  - by Jack Webb-Heller

  NOTE: This is a long question. I've explained all the 'basics' at the top and then there's some further (optional) information for if you need it. Hi folks Basically last night this started happening at about 9PM whilst I was trying to restructure my code to make it a bit nicer for the designer to add a few bits to. I tried to fix it until 2AM at which point I gave up. Came back to it this morning, still baffled. I'll be honest with you, I'm a pretty bad Javascript developer. Since starting this project Javascript has been completely new to me and I've just learn as I went along. So please forgive me if my code structure is really bad (perhaps give a couple of pointers on how to improve it?). So, to the problem: to reproduce it, visit http://furnace.howcode.com (it's far from complete). This problem is a little confusing but I'd really appreciate the help. So in the second column you'll see three tabs The 'Newest' tab is selected by default. Scroll to the bottom, and 3 further results should be dynamically fetched via Ajax. Now click on the 'Top Rated' tab. You'll see all the results, but ordered by rating Scroll to the bottom of 'Top Rated'. You'll see SIX results returned. This is where it goes wrong. Only a further three should be returned (there are 18 entries in total). If you're observant you'll notice two 'blocks' of 3 returned. The first 'block' is the second page of results from the 'Newest' tab. The second block is what I just want returned. Did that make any sense? Never mind! So basically I checked this out in Firebug. What happens is, from a 'Clean' page (first load, nothing done) it calls ONE POST request to http://furnace.howcode.com/code/loadmore . But every time you load a new one of the tabs, it makes an ADDITIONAL POST request each time where there should normally only be ONE. So, can you help me? I'd really appreciate it! At this point you could start independent investigation or read on for a little further (optional) information. Thanks! Jack Further Info (may be irrelevant but here for reference): It's almost like there's some Javascript code or something being left behind that duplicates it each time. I thought it might be this code that I use to detect when the browser is scrolled to the bottom: var col = $('#col2'); col.scroll(function(){ if (col.outerHeight() == (col.get(0).scrollHeight - col.scrollTop())) loadMore(1); }); So what I thought was that code was left behind, and so every time you scroll #col2 (which contains different data for each tab) it detected that and added it for #newest as well. So, I made each tab click give #col2 a dynamic class - either .newestcol, .featuredcol, or .topratedcol. And then I changed the var col=$('.newestcol');dynamically so it would only detect it individually for each tab (makin' any sense?!). But hey, that didn't do anything. Another useful tidbit: here's the PHP for http://furnace.howcode.com/code/loadmore: $kind = $this->input->post('kind'); if ($kind == 1){ // kind is 1 - newest $start = $this->input->post('currentpage'); $data['query'] = "SELECT code.id AS codeid, code.title AS codetitle, code.summary AS codesummary, code.author AS codeauthor, code.rating AS rating, code.date, code_tags.*, tags.*, users.firstname AS authorname, users.id AS authorid, GROUP_CONCAT(tags.tag SEPARATOR ', ') AS taggroup FROM code, code_tags, tags, users WHERE users.id = code.author AND code_tags.code_id = code.id AND tags.id = code_tags.tag_id GROUP BY code_id ORDER BY date DESC LIMIT $start, 15 "; $this->load->view('code/ajaxlist',$data); } elseif ($kind == 2) { // kind is 2 - featured So my jQuery code sends a variable 'kind'. If it's 1, it runs the query for Newest, etc. etc. The PHP code for furnace.howcode.com/code/ajaxlist is: <?php // Our query base // SELECT * FROM code ORDER BY date DESC $query = $this->db->query($query); foreach($query->result() as $row) { ?> <script type="text/javascript"> $('#title-<?php echo $row->codeid;?>').click(function() { var form_data = { id: <?php echo $row->codeid; ?> }; $('#col3').fadeOut('slow', function() { $.ajax({ url: "<?php echo site_url('code/viewajax');?>", type: 'POST', data: form_data, success: function(msg) { $('#col3').html(msg); $('#col3').fadeIn('fast'); } }); }); }); </script> <div class="result"> <div class="resulttext"> <div id="title-<?php echo $row->codeid; ?>" class="title"> <?php echo anchor('#',$row->codetitle); ?> </div> <div class="summary"> <?php echo $row->codesummary; ?> </div> <!-- Now insert the 5-star rating system --> <?php include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/fivestars/5star.php");?> <div class="bottom"> <div class="author"> Submitted by <?php echo anchor('auth/profile/'.$row->authorid,''.$row->authorname);?> </div> <?php // Now we need to take the GROUP_CONCATted tags and split them using the magic of PHP into seperate tags $tagarray = explode(", ", $row->taggroup); foreach ($tagarray as $tag) { ?> <div class="tagbutton" href="#"> <span><?php echo $tag; ?></span> </div> <?php } ?> </div> </div> </div> <?php } echo "&nbsp;";?> <script type="text/javascript"> var newpage = <?php echo $this->input->post('currentpage') + 15;?>; </script> So that's everything in PHP. The rest you should be able to view with Firebug or by viewing the Source code. I've put all the Tab/clicking/Ajaxloading bits in the tags at the very bottom. There's a comment before it all kicks off. Thanks so much for your help!

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• Disable Google Chrome warning if security certificate is not trusted

  - by sippa

  Hi, I want to know if it's possible to disable the warning you get in Chrome when you try to go to some HTTPS site that doesn't have a trusted certificate. I have a few sites in my bookmarks that use HTTPS but none of them have trusted certificates, so each time I visit them I manually have to click "Proceed anyway" in the warning and it's getting kind of annoying. Is there any way to disable the warning or somehow add these sites to some kind of safe list? Thanks

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• Ethernet switch capacity question

  - by Andrew Queisser

  We're looking at hooking up 48 small embedded systems with 10/100 Ethernet ports to an Ethernet switch and then have that switch talk to a server upstream via a faster connection. I have a couple of questions about that scenario: What kind of upstream connection is best (fiber, other?) Would it be reasonable to download 1GB/hour from each of the 48 systems concurrently? We'd be using some kind of TCP based protocol of our own design. Thanks, Andrew

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• How do I use the awesome window manager?

  - by Jason Baker

  I've installed awesome on my Ubuntu laptop, and I like it. But I feel kind of lost. I don't know any keyboard shortcuts and the man pages aren't really any help (for instance, what does Mod4 mean?). Is there any kind of brief introduction to awesome I can read?

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• Ubuntu: Unsupported Sources

  - by Scott

  What kind of software is available in that source tree ? Also what is the best way to see what kind of software is available in a repository ? I have always reluctant to enable it because I didn't want to wind up with an unstable system.

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