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• How to restore/change Alt+Tab behaviour/ram usage and a few other things after Ubuntu upgrade from 11.04 to 11.10?

  - by fiktor

  I use Ubuntu for programming. I recently updated it from 11.04 to 11.10. There are some things I don't like in the new version of Unity desktop interface. I don't actually know if it is hard to restore previous behavior or not, and if it is not, where should I look to do that. I know a bit of programming, but I really don't know much about Linux settings. I used to have 3-6 terminal windows and switch between them with Alt+Tab and Shift+Alt+Tab. I liked half-transparent terminal windows, since with them I could open web-page with some instruction in Firefox, press Alt+Tab and type commands in a console window, being able to recognize text on a web-page under it. Now I have problems with my usual work-style because of the following. List of "negative" changes Alt+Tab shows just one icon for all console windows. When I wait some time, it, however, shows all windows, but I don't like to wait. I prefer to remember order of windows and press Alt+Tab as many times as I need to switch to the right window. Alt+Shift+Tab to switch in reverse order doesn't work now. Console windows are not transparent any more. When I don't wait, and switch to this icon, it shows all console windows altogether. So even if they were transparent, I wouldn't be able to see anything below them (I can read something only from the window, which is directly under current one, not a few levels under). When I run a few console windows in Unity I had 740Mb used on Ubuntu 11.04, but I have 1050Mb now. The question is how to make it back to 750-. I really need my memory, since I use my computer to work with 1512Mb of data and I try to save every 10Mb possible (if it doesn't take too much of machine and, more importantly, my time). When I press "The Super key" I have a field to type the name of the program I want to run. But now it sometimes shows this field, but when I'm trying to type nothing happens. Probably, focus is not on the right field. I don't really mean to restore exactly the same behavior, but I want to make my work in Ubuntu 11.10 efficient (at least as efficient as in Ubuntu 11.04). I would be happy if there are some ways to accomplish that. What have I tried I have installed CompizConfig Settings Manager. I have read this question. However enabling "Static Application Switcher" makes Alt+Tab crazy: after enabling it It says about key-binding conflicts with "Ubuntu Unity Plugin"; "Alt+Tab" switching doesn't change, but "Shift+Alt+Tab" now works and shows all windows; Memory usage increases. I have tried turning off Ubuntu Unity Plugin, but this doesn't seem right thing to do, since it seems to turn off all menus, a lot of keystrokes and app-launcher, which usually activates with "The Super key". I have found, that window transparency can be enabled by "Opacity, Brightness and Saturation" plugin from Accessibility. However I don't know if enabling it is the right thing to do (at least it increases memory usage). Update: everything solved but #3: see my own answer below. I have made a separate question about issue #3 (transparency).

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• Appropriate design / technologies to handle dynamic string formatting?

  - by Mark W

  recently I was tasked with implementing a way of adding support for versioning of hardware packet specifications to one of our libraries. First a bit of information about the project. We have a hardware library which has classes for each of the various commands we support sending to our hardware. These hardware modules are essentially just lights with a few buttons, and a 2 or 4 digit display. The packets typically follow the format {SOH}AADD{ETX}, where AA is our sentinel action code, and DD is the device ID. These packet specs are different from one command to the next obviously, and the different firmware versions we have support different specifications. For example, on version 1 an action code of 14 may have a spec of {SOH}AADDTEXT{ETX} which would be AA = 14 literal, DD = device ID, TEXT = literal text to display on the device. Then we come out with a revision with adds an extended byte(s) onto the end of the packet like this {SOH}AADDTEXTE{ETX}. Assume the TEXT field is fixed width for this example. We have now added a new field onto the end which could be used to say specify the color or flash rate of the text/buttons. Currently this java library only supports one version of the commands, the latest. In our hardware library we would have a class for this command, say a DisplayTextArgs.java. That class would have fields for the device ID, the text, and the extended byte. The command class would expose a method which generates the string ("{SOH}AADDTEXTE{ETX}") using the value from the class. In practice we would create the Args class as needed, populate the fields, call the method to get our packet string, then ship that down across the CAN. Some of our other commands specification can vary for the same command, on the same version, depending on some runtime state. For example, another command for version 1 may be {SOH}AA{ETX}, where this action code clears all of the modules behind a specific controller device of their text. We may overload this packet to have option fields with multiple meanings like {SOH}AAOC{ETX} where OC is literal text, which tells the controller to only clear text on a specific module type, and to leave the others alone, or the spec could also have an option format of {SOH}AADD{ETX} to clear the text off a a specific device. Currently, in the method which generates the packet string, we would evaluate fields on the args class to determine which spec we will be using when formatting the packet. For this example, it would be along the lines of: if m_DeviceID != null then use {SOH}AADD{ETX} else if m_ClearOCs == true then use {SOH}AAOC{EXT} else use {SOH}AA{ETX} I had considered using XML, or a database to store String.format format strings, which were linked to firmware version numbers in some table. We would load them up at startup, and pass in the version number of the hardwares firmware we are currently using (I can query the devices for their firmware version, but the version is not included in all packets as part of the spec). This breaks down pretty quickly because of the dynamic nature of how we select which version of the command to use. I then considered using a rule engine to possibly build out expressions which could be interpreted at runtume, to evaluate the args class's state, and from that select the appropriate format string to use, but my brief look at rule engines for java scared me away with its complexity. While it seems like it might be a viable solution, it seems overly complex. So this is why I am here. I wouldn't say design is my strongest skill, and im having trouble figuring out the best way to approach this problem. I probably wont be able to radically change the args classes, but if the trade off was good enough, I may be able to convince my boss that the change is appropriate. What I would like from the community is some feedback on some best practices / design methodologies / API or other resources which I could use to accomplish: Logic to determine which set of commands to use for a given firmware version Of those command, which version of each command to use (based on the args classes state) Keep the rules logic decoupled from the application so as to avoid needing releases for every firmware version Be simple enough so I don't need weeks of study and trial and error to implement effectively.

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• VBA WinHTTPRequest and submitting forms

  - by Hazerider

  Hi. I spent all day yesterday trying to figure out how to submit a form using WinHTTPRequest. I can do it pretty easily with an InternetExplorer object, but the problem is that I need to save a PDF file that gets returned, and I am not sure how to do this with the IE object. Here is the relevant HTML code snippet: <div class="loginHome-left"> <fieldset> <h3>Log in Using</h3> <form> <label for="standardLogin" accesskey="s"> <input name="useLogin" id="standardLogin" value="standard" type="radio" checked="true">Standard Login</label> &nbsp; <label for="rsaSecurID" accesskey="r"> <input name="useLogin" value="rsaSecur" type="radio" id="rsaSecurID" onclick="redirectLogin('ct_logon_securid');return false;">RSA SecurID</label> &nbsp; <label for="employeeNTXP" accesskey="e"> <input name="useLogin" id="employeeNTXP" value="employee" type="radio" onclick="redirectLogin('ct_logon_external_nt');return false; "> Employee Windows Login<br></label> </form> <br> <div class="error">Error: ...</div><br> <form onSubmit="if(validate(this)) {formSubmit();} return false;" name="passwdForm" method="post" action="/UAB/ct_logon"> <input value="custom" name="pageId" type="hidden"> <input value="custom" name="auth_mode" type="hidden"> <input value="/UAB/ct_logon" name="ct_orig_uri" type="hidden"> <INPUT VALUE="" NAME="orig_url" TYPE="hidden"> <input value="" name="lpSp" type="hidden"> <label for="user"> <strong>Username</strong> </label> <input autocomplete="off" name="user" type="text" value="" class="txtFld" onkeypress="return handleEnter(this, event);"> <br> <label for="EnterPassword"> <strong>Password</strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;(<a tabindex="-1" href="/UAB/BCResetWithSecrets">Forgot Your Password?</a>) </label> <input autocomplete="off" name="password" type="password" class="txtFld" onkeypress="return handleEnter(this, event);"> <INPUT id="rememberLogin" name="lpCookie" type="checkbox"> <label for="rememberLogin">Remember My Login Information</label><br> </form> <div class="right"> <br> <input type="image" src="/BC_S/images/bclogin/btn_login.gif" name="" value="Submit" onClick="if(validate(document.forms['passwdForm'])){formSubmit();}return false;"> </div> <div class="clearfix"></div> </fieldset> </div> In order to log in through InternetExplorer, I do the following: Sub TestLogin() Dim ie As InternetExplorer, doc As HTMLDocument, form As HTMLFormElement, inp As Variant Set ie = New InternetExplorer ie.Visible = True ie.navigate "https://URL of the login page" Do Until ie.readyState = READYSTATE_COMPLETE Loop Set doc = ie.document For Each form In doc.forms If InStr(form.innerText, "Password") <> 0 Then form.elements("user").Value = "my_name" form.elements("password").Value = "my_password" Exit For Else End If Next 'This is the unnamed input with an image that is used to submit the form' doc.all(78).Click ie.navigate "https://url of the PDF" Do Until ie.readyState = READYSTATE_COMPLETE Loop Dim filename As String, filenum As Integer filename = "somefile.pdf" filenum = FreeFile Open filename For Binary Access Write As #filenum Write #filenum, doc.DocumentElement.innerText Close #filenum ie.Quit Debug.Print Set ie = Nothing End Sub What I really would like to do is something along the lines of the following: Sub TestLogin3() Dim whr As New WinHttpRequest, postData As String whr.Open "POST", "https://live.barcap.com/UAB/ct_logon", False whr.setRequestHeader "User-Agent", "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)" whr.setRequestHeader "Connection", "Keep-Alive" whr.Send whr.WaitForResponse postData = "user=paschom1&password=change01" 'Or the following?' postData = "user=paschom1&password=change01&orig_url=&pageId=custom&auth_mode=custom&ct_orig_uri=/BC/dispatcher&lpSp=&lpCookie=off" whr.Send postData whr.WaitForResponse Debug.Print whr.responseText End Sub It just refuses to work though. Not sure if I need to use more setRequestHeader with Content-Form or something similar, and if I do, not sure what exactly I am supposed to pass it. If anyone has any advice regarding this, it would be hugely appreciated. I could probably use a perl module to do it, but I would rather keep it all in VBA if possible. Thanks, Marc.

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• What’s new in ASP.NET 4.0: Core Features

  - by Rick Strahl

  Microsoft released the .NET Runtime 4.0 and with it comes a brand spanking new version of ASP.NET – version 4.0 – which provides an incremental set of improvements to an already powerful platform. .NET 4.0 is a full release of the .NET Framework, unlike version 3.5, which was merely a set of library updates on top of the .NET Framework version 2.0. Because of this full framework revision, there has been a welcome bit of consolidation of assemblies and configuration settings. The full runtime version change to 4.0 also means that you have to explicitly pick version 4.0 of the runtime when you create a new Application Pool in IIS, unlike .NET 3.5, which actually requires version 2.0 of the runtime. In this first of two parts I'll take a look at some of the changes in the core ASP.NET runtime. In the next edition I'll go over improvements in Web Forms and Visual Studio. Core Engine Features Most of the high profile improvements in ASP.NET have to do with Web Forms, but there are a few gems in the core runtime that should make life easier for ASP.NET developers. The following list describes some of the things I've found useful among the new features. Clean web.config Files Are Back! If you've been using ASP.NET 3.5, you probably have noticed that the web.config file has turned into quite a mess of configuration settings between all the custom handler and module mappings for the various web server versions. Part of the reason for this mess is that .NET 3.5 is a collection of add-on components running on top of the .NET Runtime 2.0 and so almost all of the new features of .NET 3.5 where essentially introduced as custom modules and handlers that had to be explicitly configured in the config file. Because the core runtime didn't rev with 3.5, all those configuration options couldn't be moved up to other configuration files in the system chain. With version 4.0 a consolidation was possible, and the result is a much simpler web.config file by default. A default empty ASP.NET 4.0 Web Forms project looks like this: <?xml version="1.0"?> <configuration> <system.web> <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0" /> </system.web> </configuration> Need I say more? Configuration Transformation Files to Manage Configurations and Application Packaging ASP.NET 4.0 introduces the ability to create multi-target configuration files. This means it's possible to create a single configuration file that can be transformed based on relatively simple replacement rules using a Visual Studio and WebDeploy provided XSLT syntax. The idea is that you can create a 'master' configuration file and then create customized versions of this master configuration file by applying some relatively simplistic search and replace, add or remove logic to specific elements and attributes in the original file. To give you an idea, here's the example code that Visual Studio creates for a default web.Release.config file, which replaces a connection string, removes the debug attribute and replaces the CustomErrors section: <?xml version="1.0"?> <configuration xmlns:xdt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/XML-Document-Transform"> <connectionStrings> <add name="MyDB" connectionString="Data Source=ReleaseSQLServer;Initial Catalog=MyReleaseDB;Integrated Security=True" xdt:Transform="SetAttributes" xdt:Locator="Match(name)"/> </connectionStrings> <system.web> <compilation xdt:Transform="RemoveAttributes(debug)" /> <customErrors defaultRedirect="GenericError.htm" mode="RemoteOnly" xdt:Transform="Replace"> <error statusCode="500" redirect="InternalError.htm"/> </customErrors> </system.web> </configuration> You can see the XSL transform syntax that drives this functionality. Basically, only the elements listed in the override file are matched and updated – all the rest of the original web.config file stays intact. Visual Studio 2010 supports this functionality directly in the project system so it's easy to create and maintain these customized configurations in the project tree. Once you're ready to publish your application, you can then use the Publish <yourWebApplication> option on the Build menu which allows publishing to disk, via FTP or to a Web Server using Web Deploy. You can also create a deployment package as a .zip file which can be used by the WebDeploy tool to configure and install the application. You can manually run the Web Deploy tool or use the IIS Manager to install the package on the server or other machine. You can find out more about WebDeploy and Packaging here: http://tinyurl.com/2anxcje. Improved Routing Routing provides a relatively simple way to create clean URLs with ASP.NET by associating a template URL path and routing it to a specific ASP.NET HttpHandler. Microsoft first introduced routing with ASP.NET MVC and then they integrated routing with a basic implementation in the core ASP.NET engine via a separate ASP.NET routing assembly. In ASP.NET 4.0, the process of using routing functionality gets a bit easier. First, routing is now rolled directly into System.Web, so no extra assembly reference is required in your projects to use routing. The RouteCollection class now includes a MapPageRoute() method that makes it easy to route to any ASP.NET Page requests without first having to implement an IRouteHandler implementation. It would have been nice if this could have been extended to serve *any* handler implementation, but unfortunately for anything but a Page derived handlers you still will have to implement a custom IRouteHandler implementation. ASP.NET Pages now include a RouteData collection that will contain route information. Retrieving route data is now a lot easier by simply using this.RouteData.Values["routeKey"] where the routeKey is the value specified in the route template (i.e., "users/{userId}" would use Values["userId"]). The Page class also has a GetRouteUrl() method that you can use to create URLs with route data values rather than hardcoding the URL: <%= this.GetRouteUrl("users",new { userId="ricks" }) %> You can also use the new Expression syntax using <%$RouteUrl %> to accomplish something similar, which can be easier to embed into Page or MVC View code: <a runat="server" href='<%$RouteUrl:RouteName=user, id=ricks %>'>Visit User</a> Finally, the Response object also includes a new RedirectToRoute() method to build a route url for redirection without hardcoding the URL. Response.RedirectToRoute("users", new { userId = "ricks" }); All of these routines are helpers that have been integrated into the core ASP.NET engine to make it easier to create routes and retrieve route data, which hopefully will result in more people taking advantage of routing in ASP.NET. To find out more about the routing improvements you can check out Dan Maharry's blog which has a couple of nice blog entries on this subject: http://tinyurl.com/37trutj and http://tinyurl.com/39tt5w5. Session State Improvements Session state is an often used and abused feature in ASP.NET and version 4.0 introduces a few enhancements geared towards making session state more efficient and to minimize at least some of the ill effects of overuse. The first improvement affects out of process session state, which is typically used in web farm environments or for sites that store application sensitive data that must survive AppDomain restarts (which in my opinion is just about any application). When using OutOfProc session state, ASP.NET serializes all the data in the session statebag into a blob that gets carried over the network and stored either in the State server or SQL Server via the Session provider. Version 4.0 provides some improvement in this serialization of the session data by offering an enableCompression option on the web.Config <Session> section, which forces the serialized session state to be compressed. Depending on the type of data that is being serialized, this compression can reduce the size of the data travelling over the wire by as much as a third. It works best on string data, but can also reduce the size of binary data. In addition, ASP.NET 4.0 now offers a way to programmatically turn session state on or off as part of the request processing queue. In prior versions, the only way to specify whether session state is available is by implementing a marker interface on the HTTP handler implementation. In ASP.NET 4.0, you can now turn session state on and off programmatically via HttpContext.Current.SetSessionStateBehavior() as part of the ASP.NET module pipeline processing as long as it occurs before the AquireRequestState pipeline event. Output Cache Provider Output caching in ASP.NET has been a very useful but potentially memory intensive feature. The default OutputCache mechanism works through in-memory storage that persists generated output based on various lifetime related parameters. While this works well enough for many intended scenarios, it also can quickly cause runaway memory consumption as the cache fills up and serves many variations of pages on your site. ASP.NET 4.0 introduces a provider model for the OutputCache module so it becomes possible to plug-in custom storage strategies for cached pages. One of the goals also appears to be to consolidate some of the different cache storage mechanisms used in .NET in general to a generic Windows AppFabric framework in the future, so various different mechanisms like OutputCache, the non-Page specific ASP.NET cache and possibly even session state eventually can use the same caching engine for storage of persisted data both in memory and out of process scenarios. For developers, the OutputCache provider feature means that you can now extend caching on your own by implementing a custom Cache provider based on the System.Web.Caching.OutputCacheProvider class. You can find more info on creating an Output Cache provider in Gunnar Peipman's blog at: http://tinyurl.com/2vt6g7l. Response.RedirectPermanent ASP.NET 4.0 includes features to issue a permanent redirect that issues as an HTTP 301 Moved Permanently response rather than the standard 302 Redirect respond. In pre-4.0 versions you had to manually create your permanent redirect by setting the Status and Status code properties – Response.RedirectPermanent() makes this operation more obvious and discoverable. There's also a Response.RedirectToRoutePermanent() which provides permanent redirection of route Urls. Preloading of Applications ASP.NET 4.0 provides a new feature to preload ASP.NET applications on startup, which is meant to provide a more consistent startup experience. If your application has a lengthy startup cycle it can appear very slow to serve data to clients while the application is warming up and loading initial resources. So rather than serve these startup requests slowly in ASP.NET 4.0, you can force the application to initialize itself first before even accepting requests for processing. This feature works only on IIS 7.5 (Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2) and works in combination with IIS. You can set up a worker process in IIS 7.5 to always be running, which starts the Application Pool worker process immediately. ASP.NET 4.0 then allows you to specify site-specific settings by setting the serverAutoStartEnabled on a particular site along with an optional serviceAutoStartProvider class that can be used to receive "startup events" when the application starts up. This event in turn can be used to configure the application and optionally pre-load cache data and other information required by the app on startup.  The configuration settings need to be made in applicationhost.config: <sites> <site name="WebApplication2" id="1"> <application path="/" serviceAutoStartEnabled="true" serviceAutoStartProvider="PreWarmup" /> </site> </sites> <serviceAutoStartProviders> <add name="PreWarmup" type="PreWarmupProvider,MyAssembly" /> </serviceAutoStartProviders> Hooking up a warm up provider is optional so you can omit the provider definition and reference. If you do define it here's what it looks like: public class PreWarmupProvider System.Web.Hosting.IProcessHostPreloadClient { public void Preload(string[] parameters) { // initialization for app } } This code fires and while it's running, ASP.NET/IIS will hold requests from hitting the pipeline. So until this code completes the application will not start taking requests. The idea is that you can perform any pre-loading of resources and cache values so that the first request will be ready to perform at optimal performance level without lag. Runtime Performance Improvements According to Microsoft, there have also been a number of invisible performance improvements in the internals of the ASP.NET runtime that should make ASP.NET 4.0 applications run more efficiently and use less resources. These features come without any change requirements in applications and are virtually transparent, except that you get the benefits by updating to ASP.NET 4.0. Summary The core feature set changes are minimal which continues a tradition of small incremental changes to the ASP.NET runtime. ASP.NET has been proven as a solid platform and I'm actually rather happy to see that most of the effort in this release went into stability, performance and usability improvements rather than a massive amount of new features. The new functionality added in 4.0 is minimal but very useful. A lot of people are still running pure .NET 2.0 applications these days and have stayed off of .NET 3.5 for some time now. I think that version 4.0 with its full .NET runtime rev and assembly and configuration consolidation will make an attractive platform for developers to update to. If you're a Web Forms developer in particular, ASP.NET 4.0 includes a host of new features in the Web Forms engine that are significant enough to warrant a quick move to .NET 4.0. I'll cover those changes in my next column. Until then, I suggest you give ASP.NET 4.0 a spin and see for yourself how the new features can help you out. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

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• Inheritance Mapping Strategies with Entity Framework Code First CTP5: Part 3 – Table per Concrete Type (TPC) and Choosing Strategy Guidelines

  - by mortezam

  This is the third (and last) post in a series that explains different approaches to map an inheritance hierarchy with EF Code First. I've described these strategies in previous posts: Part 1 – Table per Hierarchy (TPH) Part 2 – Table per Type (TPT)In today’s blog post I am going to discuss Table per Concrete Type (TPC) which completes the inheritance mapping strategies supported by EF Code First. At the end of this post I will provide some guidelines to choose an inheritance strategy mainly based on what we've learned in this series. TPC and Entity Framework in the Past Table per Concrete type is somehow the simplest approach suggested, yet using TPC with EF is one of those concepts that has not been covered very well so far and I've seen in some resources that it was even discouraged. The reason for that is just because Entity Data Model Designer in VS2010 doesn't support TPC (even though the EF runtime does). That basically means if you are following EF's Database-First or Model-First approaches then configuring TPC requires manually writing XML in the EDMX file which is not considered to be a fun practice. Well, no more. You'll see that with Code First, creating TPC is perfectly possible with fluent API just like other strategies and you don't need to avoid TPC due to the lack of designer support as you would probably do in other EF approaches. Table per Concrete Type (TPC)In Table per Concrete type (aka Table per Concrete class) we use exactly one table for each (nonabstract) class. All properties of a class, including inherited properties, can be mapped to columns of this table, as shown in the following figure: As you can see, the SQL schema is not aware of the inheritance; effectively, we’ve mapped two unrelated tables to a more expressive class structure. If the base class was concrete, then an additional table would be needed to hold instances of that class. I have to emphasize that there is no relationship between the database tables, except for the fact that they share some similar columns. TPC Implementation in Code First Just like the TPT implementation, we need to specify a separate table for each of the subclasses. We also need to tell Code First that we want all of the inherited properties to be mapped as part of this table. In CTP5, there is a new helper method on EntityMappingConfiguration class called MapInheritedProperties that exactly does this for us. Here is the complete object model as well as the fluent API to create a TPC mapping: public abstract class BillingDetail {     public int BillingDetailId { get; set; }     public string Owner { get; set; }     public string Number { get; set; } }          public class BankAccount : BillingDetail {     public string BankName { get; set; }     public string Swift { get; set; } }          public class CreditCard : BillingDetail {     public int CardType { get; set; }     public string ExpiryMonth { get; set; }     public string ExpiryYear { get; set; } }      public class InheritanceMappingContext : DbContext {     public DbSet<BillingDetail> BillingDetails { get; set; }              protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)     {         modelBuilder.Entity<BankAccount>().Map(m =>         {             m.MapInheritedProperties();             m.ToTable("BankAccounts");         });         modelBuilder.Entity<CreditCard>().Map(m =>         {             m.MapInheritedProperties();             m.ToTable("CreditCards");         });                 } } The Importance of EntityMappingConfiguration ClassAs a side note, it worth mentioning that EntityMappingConfiguration class turns out to be a key type for inheritance mapping in Code First. Here is an snapshot of this class: namespace System.Data.Entity.ModelConfiguration.Configuration.Mapping {     public class EntityMappingConfiguration<TEntityType> where TEntityType : class     {         public ValueConditionConfiguration Requires(string discriminator);         public void ToTable(string tableName);         public void MapInheritedProperties();     } } As you have seen so far, we used its Requires method to customize TPH. We also used its ToTable method to create a TPT and now we are using its MapInheritedProperties along with ToTable method to create our TPC mapping. TPC Configuration is Not Done Yet!We are not quite done with our TPC configuration and there is more into this story even though the fluent API we saw perfectly created a TPC mapping for us in the database. To see why, let's start working with our object model. For example, the following code creates two new objects of BankAccount and CreditCard types and tries to add them to the database: using (var context = new InheritanceMappingContext()) {     BankAccount bankAccount = new BankAccount();     CreditCard creditCard = new CreditCard() { CardType = 1 };                      context.BillingDetails.Add(bankAccount);     context.BillingDetails.Add(creditCard);     context.SaveChanges(); } Running this code throws an InvalidOperationException with this message: The changes to the database were committed successfully, but an error occurred while updating the object context. The ObjectContext might be in an inconsistent state. Inner exception message: AcceptChanges cannot continue because the object's key values conflict with another object in the ObjectStateManager. Make sure that the key values are unique before calling AcceptChanges. The reason we got this exception is because DbContext.SaveChanges() internally invokes SaveChanges method of its internal ObjectContext. ObjectContext's SaveChanges method on its turn by default calls AcceptAllChanges after it has performed the database modifications. AcceptAllChanges method merely iterates over all entries in ObjectStateManager and invokes AcceptChanges on each of them. Since the entities are in Added state, AcceptChanges method replaces their temporary EntityKey with a regular EntityKey based on the primary key values (i.e. BillingDetailId) that come back from the database and that's where the problem occurs since both the entities have been assigned the same value for their primary key by the database (i.e. on both BillingDetailId = 1) and the problem is that ObjectStateManager cannot track objects of the same type (i.e. BillingDetail) with the same EntityKey value hence it throws. If you take a closer look at the TPC's SQL schema above, you'll see why the database generated the same values for the primary keys: the BillingDetailId column in both BankAccounts and CreditCards table has been marked as identity. How to Solve The Identity Problem in TPC As you saw, using SQL Server’s int identity columns doesn't work very well together with TPC since there will be duplicate entity keys when inserting in subclasses tables with all having the same identity seed. Therefore, to solve this, either a spread seed (where each table has its own initial seed value) will be needed, or a mechanism other than SQL Server’s int identity should be used. Some other RDBMSes have other mechanisms allowing a sequence (identity) to be shared by multiple tables, and something similar can be achieved with GUID keys in SQL Server. While using GUID keys, or int identity keys with different starting seeds will solve the problem but yet another solution would be to completely switch off identity on the primary key property. As a result, we need to take the responsibility of providing unique keys when inserting records to the database. We will go with this solution since it works regardless of which database engine is used. Switching Off Identity in Code First We can switch off identity simply by placing DatabaseGenerated attribute on the primary key property and pass DatabaseGenerationOption.None to its constructor. DatabaseGenerated attribute is a new data annotation which has been added to System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace in CTP5: public abstract class BillingDetail {     [DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGenerationOption.None)]     public int BillingDetailId { get; set; }     public string Owner { get; set; }     public string Number { get; set; } } As always, we can achieve the same result by using fluent API, if you prefer that: modelBuilder.Entity<BillingDetail>()             .Property(p => p.BillingDetailId)             .HasDatabaseGenerationOption(DatabaseGenerationOption.None); Working With The Object Model Our TPC mapping is ready and we can try adding new records to the database. But, like I said, now we need to take care of providing unique keys when creating new objects: using (var context = new InheritanceMappingContext()) {     BankAccount bankAccount = new BankAccount()      {          BillingDetailId = 1                          };     CreditCard creditCard = new CreditCard()      {          BillingDetailId = 2,         CardType = 1     };                      context.BillingDetails.Add(bankAccount);     context.BillingDetails.Add(creditCard);     context.SaveChanges(); } Polymorphic Associations with TPC is Problematic The main problem with this approach is that it doesn’t support Polymorphic Associations very well. After all, in the database, associations are represented as foreign key relationships and in TPC, the subclasses are all mapped to different tables so a polymorphic association to their base class (abstract BillingDetail in our example) cannot be represented as a simple foreign key relationship. For example, consider the the domain model we introduced here where User has a polymorphic association with BillingDetail. This would be problematic in our TPC Schema, because if User has a many-to-one relationship with BillingDetail, the Users table would need a single foreign key column, which would have to refer both concrete subclass tables. This isn’t possible with regular foreign key constraints. Schema Evolution with TPC is Complex A further conceptual problem with this mapping strategy is that several different columns, of different tables, share exactly the same semantics. This makes schema evolution more complex. For example, a change to a base class property results in changes to multiple columns. It also makes it much more difficult to implement database integrity constraints that apply to all subclasses. Generated SQLLet's examine SQL output for polymorphic queries in TPC mapping. For example, consider this polymorphic query for all BillingDetails and the resulting SQL statements that being executed in the database: var query = from b in context.BillingDetails select b; Just like the SQL query generated by TPT mapping, the CASE statements that you see in the beginning of the query is merely to ensure columns that are irrelevant for a particular row have NULL values in the returning flattened table. (e.g. BankName for a row that represents a CreditCard type). TPC's SQL Queries are Union Based As you can see in the above screenshot, the first SELECT uses a FROM-clause subquery (which is selected with a red rectangle) to retrieve all instances of BillingDetails from all concrete class tables. The tables are combined with a UNION operator, and a literal (in this case, 0 and 1) is inserted into the intermediate result; (look at the lines highlighted in yellow.) EF reads this to instantiate the correct class given the data from a particular row. A union requires that the queries that are combined, project over the same columns; hence, EF has to pad and fill up nonexistent columns with NULL. This query will really perform well since here we can let the database optimizer find the best execution plan to combine rows from several tables. There is also no Joins involved so it has a better performance than the SQL queries generated by TPT where a Join is required between the base and subclasses tables. Choosing Strategy GuidelinesBefore we get into this discussion, I want to emphasize that there is no one single "best strategy fits all scenarios" exists. As you saw, each of the approaches have their own advantages and drawbacks. Here are some rules of thumb to identify the best strategy in a particular scenario: If you don’t require polymorphic associations or queries, lean toward TPC—in other words, if you never or rarely query for BillingDetails and you have no class that has an association to BillingDetail base class. I recommend TPC (only) for the top level of your class hierarchy, where polymorphism isn’t usually required, and when modification of the base class in the future is unlikely. If you do require polymorphic associations or queries, and subclasses declare relatively few properties (particularly if the main difference between subclasses is in their behavior), lean toward TPH. Your goal is to minimize the number of nullable columns and to convince yourself (and your DBA) that a denormalized schema won’t create problems in the long run. If you do require polymorphic associations or queries, and subclasses declare many properties (subclasses differ mainly by the data they hold), lean toward TPT. Or, depending on the width and depth of your inheritance hierarchy and the possible cost of joins versus unions, use TPC. By default, choose TPH only for simple problems. For more complex cases (or when you’re overruled by a data modeler insisting on the importance of nullability constraints and normalization), you should consider the TPT strategy. But at that point, ask yourself whether it may not be better to remodel inheritance as delegation in the object model (delegation is a way of making composition as powerful for reuse as inheritance). Complex inheritance is often best avoided for all sorts of reasons unrelated to persistence or ORM. EF acts as a buffer between the domain and relational models, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore persistence concerns when designing your classes. SummaryIn this series, we focused on one of the main structural aspect of the object/relational paradigm mismatch which is inheritance and discussed how EF solve this problem as an ORM solution. We learned about the three well-known inheritance mapping strategies and their implementations in EF Code First. Hopefully it gives you a better insight about the mapping of inheritance hierarchies as well as choosing the best strategy for your particular scenario. Happy New Year and Happy Code-Firsting! References ADO.NET team blog Java Persistence with Hibernate book a { color: #5A99FF; } a:visited { color: #5A99FF; } .title { padding-bottom: 5px; font-family: Segoe UI; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: bold; padding-top: 15px; } .code, .typeName { font-family: consolas; } .typeName { color: #2b91af; } .padTop5 { padding-top: 5px; } .padTop10 { padding-top: 10px; } .exception { background-color: #f0f0f0; font-style: italic; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 5px; padding-top: 5px; padding-right: 5px; }

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• Ball to Ball Collision - Detection and Handling

  - by Simucal

  With the help of the Stack Overflow community I've written a pretty basic-but fun physics simulator. You click and drag the mouse to launch a ball. It will bounce around and eventually stop on the "floor". My next big feature I want to add in is ball to ball collision. The ball's movement is broken up into a x and y speed vector. I have gravity (small reduction of the y vector each step), I have friction (small reduction of both vectors each collision with a wall). The balls honestly move around in a surprisingly realistic way. I guess my question has two parts: What is the best method to detect ball to ball collision? Do I just have an O(n^2) loop that iterates over each ball and checks every other ball to see if it's radius overlaps? What equations do I use to handle the ball to ball collisions? Physics 101 How does it effect the two balls speed x/y vectors? What is the resulting direction the two balls head off in? How do I apply this to each ball? Handling the collision detection of the "walls" and the resulting vector changes were easy but I see more complications with ball-ball collisions. With walls I simply had to take the negative of the appropriate x or y vector and off it would go in the correct direction. With balls I don't think it is that way. Some quick clarifications: for simplicity I'm ok with a perfectly elastic collision for now, also all my balls have the same mass right now, but I might change that in the future. In case anyone is interested in playing with the simulator I have made so far, I've uploaded the source here (EDIT: Check the updated source below). Edit: Resources I have found useful 2d Ball physics with vectors: 2-Dimensional Collisions Without Trigonometry.pdf 2d Ball collision detection example: Adding Collision Detection Success! I have the ball collision detection and response working great! Relevant code: Collision Detection: for (int i = 0; i < ballCount; i++) { for (int j = i + 1; j < ballCount; j++) { if (balls[i].colliding(balls[j])) { balls[i].resolveCollision(balls[j]); } } } This will check for collisions between every ball but skip redundant checks (if you have to check if ball 1 collides with ball 2 then you don't need to check if ball 2 collides with ball 1. Also, it skips checking for collisions with itself). Then, in my ball class I have my colliding() and resolveCollision() methods: public boolean colliding(Ball ball) { float xd = position.getX() - ball.position.getX(); float yd = position.getY() - ball.position.getY(); float sumRadius = getRadius() + ball.getRadius(); float sqrRadius = sumRadius * sumRadius; float distSqr = (xd * xd) + (yd * yd); if (distSqr <= sqrRadius) { return true; } return false; } public void resolveCollision(Ball ball) { // get the mtd Vector2d delta = (position.subtract(ball.position)); float d = delta.getLength(); // minimum translation distance to push balls apart after intersecting Vector2d mtd = delta.multiply(((getRadius() + ball.getRadius())-d)/d); // resolve intersection -- // inverse mass quantities float im1 = 1 / getMass(); float im2 = 1 / ball.getMass(); // push-pull them apart based off their mass position = position.add(mtd.multiply(im1 / (im1 + im2))); ball.position = ball.position.subtract(mtd.multiply(im2 / (im1 + im2))); // impact speed Vector2d v = (this.velocity.subtract(ball.velocity)); float vn = v.dot(mtd.normalize()); // sphere intersecting but moving away from each other already if (vn > 0.0f) return; // collision impulse float i = (-(1.0f + Constants.restitution) * vn) / (im1 + im2); Vector2d impulse = mtd.multiply(i); // change in momentum this.velocity = this.velocity.add(impulse.multiply(im1)); ball.velocity = ball.velocity.subtract(impulse.multiply(im2)); } Source Code: Complete source for ball to ball collider. Binary: Compiled binary in case you just want to try bouncing some balls around. If anyone has some suggestions for how to improve this basic physics simulator let me know! One thing I have yet to add is angular momentum so the balls will roll more realistically. Any other suggestions? Leave a comment!

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• Building The Right SharePoint Team For Your Organization

  - by Mark Rackley

  I see the question posted fairly often asking what kind SharePoint team an organization should have. How many people do I need? What roles do I need to fill? What is best for my organization? Well, just like every other answer in SharePoint, the correct answer is “it depends”. Do you ever get sick of hearing that??? I know I do… So, let me give you my thoughts and opinions based upon my experience and what I’ve seen and let you come to your own conclusions. What are the possible SharePoint roles? I guess the first thing you need to understand are the different roles that exist in SharePoint (and their are LOTS). Remember, SharePoint is a massive beast and you will NOT find one person who can do it all. If you are hoping to find that person you will be sorely disappointed. For the most part this is true in SharePoint 2007 and 2010. However, generally things are improved in 2010 and easier for junior individuals to grasp. SharePoint Administrator The absolutely positively only role that you should not be without no matter the size of your organization or SharePoint deployment is a SharePoint administrator. These guys are essential to keeping things running and figuring out what’s wrong when things aren’t running well. These unsung heroes do more before 10 am than I do all day. The bad thing is, when these guys are awesome, you don’t even know they exist because everything is running so smoothly. You should definitely invest some time and money here to make sure you have some competent if not rockstar help. You need an admin who truly loves SharePoint and will go that extra mile when necessary. Let me give you a real world example of what I’m talking about: We have a rockstar admin… and I’m sure she’s sick of my throwing her name around so she’ll just have to live with remaining anonymous in this post… sorry Lori… Anyway! A couple of weeks ago our Server teams came to us and said Hi Lori, I’m finalizing the MOSS servers and doing updates that require a restart; can I restart them? Seems like a harmless request from your server team does it not? Sure, go ahead and apply the patches and reboot during our scheduled maintenance window. No problem? right? Sounded fair to me… but no…. not to our fearless SharePoint admin… I need a complete list of patches that will be applied. There is an update that is out there that will break SharePoint… KB973917 is the patch that has been shown to cause issues. What? You mean Microsoft released a patch that would actually adversely affect SharePoint? If we did NOT have a rockstar admin, our server team would have applied these patches and then when some problem occurred in SharePoint we’d have to go through the fun task of tracking down exactly what caused the issue and resolve it. How much time would that have taken? If you have a junior SharePoint admin or an admin who’s not out there staying on top of what’s going on you could have spent days tracking down something so simple as applying a patch you should not have applied. I will even go as far to say the only SharePoint rockstar you NEED in your organization is a SharePoint admin. You can always outsource really complicated development projects or bring in a rockstar contractor every now and then to make sure you aren’t way off track in other areas. For your day-to-day sanity and to keep SharePoint running smoothly, you need an awesome Admin. Some rockstars in this category are: Ben Curry, Mike Watson, Joel Oleson, Todd Klindt, Shane Young, John Ferringer, Sean McDonough, and of course Lori Gowin. SharePoint Developer Another essential role for your SharePoint deployment is a SharePoint developer. Things do start to get a little hazy here and there are many flavors of “developers”. Are you writing custom code? using SharePoint Designer? What about SharePoint Branding?  Are all of these considered developers? I would say yes. Are they interchangeable? I’d say no. Development in SharePoint is such a large beast in itself. I would say that it’s not so large that you can’t know it all well, but it is so large that there are many people who specialize in one particular category. If you are lucky enough to have someone on staff who knows it all well, you better make sure they are well taken care of because those guys are ready-made to move over to a consulting role and charge you 3 times what you are probably paying them. :) Some of the all-around rockstars are Eric Shupps, Andrew Connell (go Razorbacks), Rob Foster, Paul Schaeflein, and Todd Bleeker SharePoint Power User/No-Code Solutions Developer These SharePoint Swiss Army Knives are essential for quick wins in your organization. These people can twist the out-of-the-box functionality to make it do things you would not even imagine. Give these guys SharePoint Designer, jQuery, InfoPath, and a little time and they will create views, dashboards, and KPI’s that will blow your mind away and give your execs the “wow” they are looking for. Not only can they deliver that wow factor, but they can mashup, merge, and really help make your SharePoint application usable and deliver an overall better user experience. Before you hand off a project to your SharePoint Custom Code developer, let one of these rockstars look at it and show you what they can do (in probably less time). I would say the second most important role you can fill in your organization is one of these guys. Rockstars in this category are Christina Wheeler, Laura Rogers, Jennifer Mason, and Mark Miller SharePoint Developer – Custom Code If you want to really integrate SharePoint into your legacy systems, or really twist it and make it bend to your will, you are going to have to open up Visual Studio and write some custom code.  Remember, SharePoint is essentially just a big, huge, ginormous .NET application, so you CAN write code to make it do ANYTHING, but do you really want to spend the time and effort to do so? At some point with every other form of SharePoint development you are going to run into SOME limitation (SPD Workflows is the big one that comes to mind). If you truly want to knock down all the walls then custom development is the way to go. PLEASE keep in mind when you are looking for a custom code developer that a .NET developer does NOT equal a SharePoint developer. Just SOME of the things these guys write are: Custom Workflows Custom Web Parts Web Service functionality Import data from legacy systems Export data to legacy systems Custom Actions Event Receivers Service Applications (2010) These guys are also the ones generally responsible for packaging everything up into solution packages (you are doing that, right?). Rockstars in this category are Phil Wicklund, Christina Wheeler, Geoff Varosky, and Brian Jackett. SharePoint Branding “But it LOOKS like SharePoint!” Somebody call the WAAAAAAAAAAAAHMbulance…   Themes, Master Pages, Page Layouts, Zones, and over 2000 styles in CSS.. these guys not only have to be comfortable with all of SharePoint’s quirks and pain points when branding, but they have to know it TWICE for publishing and non-publishing sites.  Not only that, but these guys really need to have an eye for graphic design and be able to translate the ramblings of business into something visually stunning. They also have to be comfortable with XSLT, XML, and be able to hand off what they do to your custom developers for them to package as solutions (which you are doing, right?). These rockstars include Heater Waterman, Cathy Dew, and Marcy Kellar SharePoint Architect SharePoint Architects are generally SharePoint Admins or Developers who have moved into more of a BA role? Is that fair to say? These guys really have a grasp and understanding for what SharePoint IS and what it can do. These guys help you structure your farms to meet your needs and help you design your applications the correct way. It’s always a good idea to bring in a rockstar SharePoint Architect to do a sanity check and make sure you aren’t doing anything stupid.  Most organizations probably do not have a rockstar architect on staff. These guys are generally brought in at the deployment of a farm, upgrade of a farm, or for large development projects. I personally also find architects very useful for sitting down with the business to translate their needs into what SharePoint can do. A good architect will be able to pick out what can be done out-of-the-box and what has to be custom built and hand those requirements to the development Staff. Architects can generally fill in as an admin or a developer when needed. Some rockstar architects are Rick Taylor, Dan Usher, Bill English, Spence Harbar, Neil Hodgkins, Eric Harlan, and Bjørn Furuknap. Other Roles / Specialties On top of all these other roles you also get these people who specialize in things like Reporting, BDC (BCS in 2010), Search, Performance, Security, Project Management, etc... etc... etc... Again, most organizations will not have one of these gurus on staff, they’ll just pay out the nose for them when they need them. :) SharePoint End User Everyone else in your organization that touches SharePoint falls into this category. What they actually DO in SharePoint is determined by your governance and what permissions you give these guys. Hopefully you have these guys on a fairly short leash and are NOT giving them access to tools like SharePoint Designer. Sadly end users are the ones who truly make your deployment a success by using it, but are also your biggest enemy in breaking it.  :)  We love you guys… really!!! Okay, all that’s fine and dandy, but what should MY SharePoint team look like? It depends! Okay… Are you just doing out of the box team sites with no custom development? Then you are probably fine with a great Admin team and a great No-Code Solution Development team. How many people do you need? Depends on how busy you can keep them. Sorry, can’t answer the question about numbers without knowing your specific needs. I can just tell you who you MIGHT need and what they will do for you. I’ll leave you with what my ideal SharePoint Team would look like for a particular scenario: Farm / Organization Structure Dev, QA, and 2 Production Farms. 5000 – 10000 Users Custom Development and Integration with legacy systems Team Sites, My Sites, Intranet, Document libraries and overall company collaboration Team Rockstar SharePoint Administrator 2-3 junior SharePoint Administrators SharePoint Architect / Lead Developer 2 Power User / No-Code Solution Developers 2-3 Custom Code developers Branding expert With a team of that size and skill set, they should be able to keep a substantial SharePoint deployment running smoothly and meet your business needs. This does NOT mean that you would not need to bring in contract help from time to time when you need an uber specialist in one area. Also, this team assumes there will be ongoing development for the life of your SharePoint farm. If you are just going to be doing sporadic custom development, it might make sense to partner with an awesome firm that specializes in that sort of work (I can give you the name of a couple if you are interested).  Again though, the size of your team depends on the number of requests you are receiving and how much active deployment you are doing. So, don’t bring in a team that looks like this and then yell at me because they are sitting around with nothing to do or are so overwhelmed that nothing is getting done. I do URGE you to take the proper time to asses your needs and determine what team is BEST for your organization. Also, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not skimp on the talent. When it comes to SharePoint you really do get what you pay for when it comes to employees, contractors, and software.  SharePoint can become absolutely critical to your business and because you skimped on hiring a developer he created a web part that brings down the farm because he doesn’t know what he’s doing, or you hire an admin who thinks it’s fine to stick everything in the same Content Database and then can’t figure out why people are complaining. SharePoint can be an enormous blessing to an organization or it’s biggest curse. Spend the time and money to do it right, or be prepared to spending even more time and money later to fix it.

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• The Art of Productivity

  - by dwahlin

  Getting things done has always been a challenge regardless of gender, age, race, skill, or job position. No matter how hard some people try, they end up procrastinating tasks until the last minute. Some people simply focus better when they know they’re out of time and can’t procrastinate any longer. How many times have you put off working on a term paper in school until the very last minute? With only a few hours left your mental energy and focus seem to kick in to high gear especially as you realize that you either get the paper done now or risk failing. It’s amazing how a little pressure can turn into a motivator and allow our minds to focus on a given task. Some people seem to specialize in procrastinating just about everything they do while others tend to be the “doers” who get a lot done and ultimately rise up the ladder at work. What’s the difference between these types of people? Is it pure laziness or are other factors at play? I think that some people are certainly more motivated than others, but I also think a lot of it is based on the process that “doers” tend to follow - whether knowingly or unknowingly. While I’ve certainly fought battles with procrastination, I’ve always had a knack for being able to get a lot done in a relatively short amount of time. I think a lot of my “get it done” attitude goes back to the the strong work ethic my parents instilled in me at a young age. I remember my dad saying, “You need to learn to work hard!” when I was around 5 years old. I remember that moment specifically because I was on a tractor with him the first time I heard it while he was trying to move some large rocks into a pile. The tractor was big but so were the rocks and my dad had to balance the tractor perfectly so that it didn’t tip forward too far. It was challenging work and somewhat tedious but my dad finished the task and taught me a few important lessons along the way including persistence, the importance of having a skill, and getting the job done right without skimping along the way. In this post I’m going to list a few of the techniques and processes I follow that I hope may be beneficial to others. I blogged about the general concept back in 2009 but thought I’d share some updated information and lessons learned since then. Most of the ideas that follow came from learning and refining my daily work process over the years. However, since most of the ideas are common sense (at least in my opinion), I suspect they can be found in other productivity processes that are out there. Let’s start off with one of the most important yet simple tips: Start Each Day with a List. Start Each Day with a List What are you planning to get done today? Do you keep track of everything in your head or rely on your calendar? While most of us think that we’re pretty good at managing “to do” lists strictly in our head you might be surprised at how affective writing out lists can be. By writing out tasks you’re forced to focus on the most important tasks to accomplish that day, commit yourself to those tasks, and have an easy way to track what was supposed to get done and what actually got done. Start every morning by making a list of specific tasks that you want to accomplish throughout the day. I’ll even go so far as to fill in times when I’d like to work on tasks if I have a lot of meetings or other events tying up my calendar on a given day. I’m not a big fan of using paper since I type a lot faster than I write (plus I write like a 3rd grader according to my wife), so I use the Sticky Notes feature available in Windows. Here’s an example of yesterday’s sticky note: What do you add to your list? That’s the subject of the next tip. Focus on Small Tasks It’s no secret that focusing on small, manageable tasks is more effective than trying to focus on large and more vague tasks. When you make your list each morning only add tasks that you can accomplish within a given time period. For example, if I only have 30 minutes blocked out to work on an article I don’t list “Write Article”. If I do that I’ll end up wasting 30 minutes stressing about how I’m going to get the article done in 30 minutes and ultimately get nothing done. Instead, I’ll list something like “Write Introductory Paragraphs for Article”. The next day I may add, “Write first section of article” or something that’s small and manageable – something I’m confident that I can get done. You’ll find that once you’ve knocked out several smaller tasks it’s easy to continue completing others since you want to keep the momentum going. In addition to keeping my tasks focused and small, I also make a conscious effort to limit my list to 4 or 5 tasks initially. I’ve found that if I list more than 5 tasks I feel a bit overwhelmed which hurts my productivity. It’s easy to add additional tasks as you complete others and you get the added benefit of that confidence boost of knowing that you’re being productive and getting things done as you remove tasks and add others. Getting Started is the Hardest (Yet Easiest) Part I’ve always found that getting started is the hardest part and one of the biggest contributors to procrastination. Getting started working on tasks is a lot like getting a large rock pushed to the bottom of a hill. It’s difficult to get the rock rolling at first, but once you manage to get it rocking some it’s really easy to get it rolling on its way to the bottom. As an example, I’ve written 100s of articles for technical magazines over the years and have really struggled with the initial introductory paragraphs. Keep in mind that these are the paragraphs that don’t really add that much value (in my opinion anyway). They introduce the reader to the subject matter and nothing more. What a waste of time for me to sit there stressing about how to start the article. On more than one occasion I’ve spent more than an hour trying to come up with 2-3 paragraphs of text.  Talk about a productivity killer! Whether you’re struggling with a writing task, some code for a project, an email, or other tasks, jumping in without thinking too much is the best way to get started I’ve found. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have an overall plan when jumping into a task, but on some occasions you’ll find that if you simply jump into the task and stop worrying about doing everything perfectly that things will flow more smoothly. For my introductory paragraph problem I give myself 5 minutes to write out some general concepts about what I know the article will cover and then spend another 10-15 minutes going back and refining that information. That way I actually have some ideas to work with rather than a blank sheet of paper. If I still find myself struggling I’ll write the rest of the article first and then circle back to the introductory paragraphs once I’m done. To sum this tip up: Jump into a task without thinking too hard about it. It’s better to to get the rock at the top of the hill rocking some than doing nothing at all. You can always go back and refine your work.   Learn a Productivity Technique and Stick to It There are a lot of different productivity programs and seminars out there being sold by companies. I’ve always laughed at how much money people spend on some of these motivational programs/seminars because I think that being productive isn’t that hard if you create a re-useable set of steps and processes to follow. That’s not to say that some of these programs/seminars aren’t worth the money of course because I know they’ve definitely benefited some people that have a hard time getting things done and staying focused. One of the best productivity techniques I’ve ever learned is called the “Pomodoro Technique” and it’s completely free. This technique is an extremely simple way to manage your time without having to remember a bunch of steps, color coding mechanisms, or other processes. The technique was originally developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 80s and can be implemented with a simple timer. In a nutshell here’s how the technique works: Pick a task to work on Set the timer to 25 minutes and work on the task Once the timer rings record your time Take a 5 minute break Repeat the process Here’s why the technique works well for me: It forces me to focus on a single task for 25 minutes. In the past I had no time goal in mind and just worked aimlessly on a task until I got interrupted or bored. 25 minutes is a small enough chunk of time for me to stay focused. Any distractions that may come up have to wait until after the timer goes off. If the distraction is really important then I stop the timer and record my time up to that point. When the timer is running I act as if I only have 25 minutes total for the task (like you’re down to the last 25 minutes before turning in your term paper….frantically working to get it done) which helps me stay focused and turns into a “beat the clock” type of game. It’s actually kind of fun if you treat it that way and really helps me focus on a the task at hand. I automatically know how much time I’m spending on a given task (more on this later) by using this technique. I know that I have 5 minutes after each pomodoro (the 25 minute sprint) to waste on anything I’d like including visiting a website, stepping away from the computer, etc. which also helps me stay focused when the 25 minute timer is counting down. I use this technique so much that I decided to build a program for Windows 8 called Pomodoro Focus (I plan to blog about how it was built in a later post). It’s a Windows Store application that allows people to track tasks, productive time spent on tasks, interruption time experienced while working on a given task, and the number of pomodoros completed. If a time estimate is given when the task is initially created, Pomodoro Focus will also show the task completion percentage. I like it because it allows me to track my tasks, time spent on tasks (very useful in the consulting world), and even how much time I wasted on tasks (pressing the pause button while working on a task starts the interruption timer). I recently added a new feature that charts productive and interruption time for tasks since I wanted to see how productive I was from week to week and month to month. A few screenshots from the Pomodoro Focus app are shown next, I had a lot of fun building it and use it myself to as I work on tasks.   There are certainly many other productivity techniques and processes out there (and a slew of books describing them), but the Pomodoro Technique has been the simplest and most effective technique I’ve ever come across for staying focused and getting things done.   Persistence is Key Getting things done is great but one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in life is that persistence is key especially when you’re trying to get something done that at times seems insurmountable. Small tasks ultimately lead to larger tasks getting accomplished, however, it’s not all roses along the way as some of the smaller tasks may come with their own share of bumps and bruises that lead to discouragement about the end goal and whether or not it is worth achieving at all. I’ve been on several long-term projects over my career as a software developer (I have one personal project going right now that fits well here) and found that repeating, “Persistence is the key!” over and over to myself really helps. Not every project turns out to be successful, but if you don’t show persistence through the hard times you’ll never know if you succeeded or not. Likewise, if you don’t persistently stick to the process of creating a daily list, follow a productivity process, etc. then the odds of consistently staying productive aren’t good.   Track Your Time How much time do you actually spend working on various tasks? If you don’t currently track time spent answering emails, on phone calls, and working on various tasks then you might be surprised to find out that a task that you thought was going to take you 30 minutes ultimately ended up taking 2 hours. If you don’t track the time you spend working on tasks how can you expect to learn from your mistakes, optimize your time better, and become more productive? That’s another reason why I like the Pomodoro Technique – it makes it easy to stay focused on tasks while also tracking how much time I’m working on a given task.   Eliminate Distractions I blogged about this final tip several years ago but wanted to bring it up again. If you want to be productive (and ultimately successful at whatever you’re doing) then you can’t waste a lot of time playing games or on Twitter, Facebook, or other time sucking websites. If you see an article you’re interested in that has no relation at all to the tasks you’re trying to accomplish then bookmark it and read it when you have some spare time (such as during a pomodoro break). Fighting the temptation to check your friends’ status updates on Facebook? Resist the urge and realize how much those types of activities are hurting your productivity and taking away from your focus. I’ll admit that eliminating distractions is still tough for me personally and something I have to constantly battle. But, I’ve made a conscious decision to cut back on my visits and updates to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other sites. Sure, my Klout score has suffered as a result lately, but does anyone actually care about those types of scores aside from your online “friends” (few of whom you’ve actually met in person)? :-) Ultimately it comes down to self-discipline and how badly you want to be productive and successful in your career, life goals, hobbies, or whatever you’re working on. Rather than having your homepage take you to a time wasting news site, game site, social site, picture site, or others, how about adding something like the following as your homepage? Every time your browser opens you’ll see a personal message which helps keep you on the right track. You can download my ubber-sophisticated homepage here if interested. Summary Is there a single set of steps that if followed can ultimately lead to productivity? I don’t think so since one size has never fit all. Every person is different, works in their own unique way, and has their own set of motivators, distractions, and more. While I certainly don’t consider myself to be an expert on the subject of productivity, I do think that if you learn what steps work best for you and gradually refine them over time that you can come up with a personal productivity process that can serve you well. Productivity is definitely an “art” that anyone can learn with a little practice and persistence. You’ve seen some of the steps that I personally like to follow and I hope you find some of them useful in boosting your productivity. If you have others you use please leave a comment. I’m always looking for ways to improve.

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• Load and Web Performance Testing using Visual Studio Ultimate 2010-Part 3

  - by Tarun Arora

  Welcome back once again, in Part 1 of Load and Web Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 I talked about why Performance Testing the application is important, the test tools available in Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 and various test rig topologies, in Part 2 of Load and Web Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 I discussed the details of web performance & load tests as well as why it’s important to follow a goal based pattern while performance testing your application. In part 3 I’ll be discussing Test Result Analysis, Test Result Drill through, Test Report Generation, Test Run Comparison, Asp.net Profiler and some closing thoughts. Test Results – I see some creepy worms! In Part 2 we put together a web performance test and a load test, lets run the test to see load test to see how the Web site responds to the load simulation. While the load test is running you will be able to see close to real time analysis in the Load Test Analyser window. You can use the Load Test Analyser to conduct load test analysis in three ways: Monitor a running load test - A condensed set of the performance counter data is maintained in memory. To prevent the results memory requirements from growing unbounded, up to 200 samples for each performance counter are maintained. This includes 100 evenly spaced samples that span the current elapsed time of the run and the most recent 100 samples.         After the load test run is completed - The test controller spools all collected performance counter data to a database while the test is running. Additional data, such as timing details and error details, is loaded into the database when the test completes. The performance data for a completed test is loaded from the database and analysed by the Load Test Analyser. Below you can see a screen shot of the summary view, this provides key results in a format that is compact and easy to read. You can also print the load test summary, this is generated after the test has completed or been stopped.         Analyse the load test results of a previously run load test – We’ll see this in the section where i discuss comparison between two test runs. The performance counters can be plotted on the graphs. You also have the option to highlight a selected part of the test and view details, drill down to the user activity chart where you can hover over to see more details of the test run.   Generate Report => Test Run Comparisons The level of reports you can generate using the Load Test Analyser is astonishing. You have the option to create excel reports and conduct side by side analysis of two test results or to track trend analysis. The tools also allows you to export the graph data either to MS Excel or to a CSV file. You can view the ASP.NET profiler report to conduct further analysis as well. View Data and Diagnostic Attachments opens the Choose Diagnostic Data Adapter Attachment dialog box to select an adapter to analyse the result type. For example, you can select an IntelliTrace adapter, click OK and open the IntelliTrace summary for the test agent that was used in the load test.   Compare results This creates a set of reports that compares the data from two load test results using tables and bar charts. I have taken these screen shots from the MSDN documentation, I would highly recommend exploring the wealth of knowledge available on MSDN. Leaving Thoughts While load testing the application with an excessive load for a longer duration of time, i managed to bring the IIS to its knees by piling up a huge queue of requests waiting to be processed. This clearly means that the IIS had run out of threads as all the threads were busy processing existing request, one easy way of fixing this is by increasing the default number of allocated threads, but this might escalate the problem. The better suggestion is to try and drill down to the actual root cause of the problem. When ever the garbage collection runs it stops processing any pages so all requests that come in during that period are queued up, but realistically the garbage collection completes in fraction of a a second. To understand this better lets look at the .net heap, it is divided into large heap and small heap, anything greater than 85kB in size will be allocated to the Large object heap, the Large object heap is non compacting and remember large objects are expensive to move around, so if you are allocating something in the large object heap, make sure that you really need it! The small object heap on the other hand is divided into generations, so all objects that are supposed to be short-lived are suppose to live in Gen-0 and the long living objects eventually move to Gen-2 as garbage collection goes through.  As you can see in the picture below all < 85 KB size objects are first assigned to Gen-0, when Gen-0 fills up and a new object comes in and finds Gen-0 full, the garbage collection process is started, the process checks for all the dead objects and assigns them as the valid candidate for deletion to free up memory and promotes all the remaining objects in Gen-0 to Gen-1. So in the future when ever you clean up Gen-1 you have to clean up Gen-0 as well. When you fill up Gen – 0 again, all of Gen – 1 dead objects are drenched and rest are moved to Gen-2 and Gen-0 objects are moved to Gen-1 to free up Gen-0, but by this time your Garbage collection process has started to take much more time than it usually takes. Now as I mentioned earlier when garbage collection is being run all page requests that come in during that period are queued up. Does this explain why possibly page requests are getting queued up, apart from this it could also be the case that you are waiting for a long running database process to complete.      Lets explore the heap a bit more… What is really a case of crisis is when the objects are living long enough to make it to Gen-2 and then dying, this is definitely a high cost operation. But sometimes you need objects in memory, for example when you cache data you hold on to the objects because you need to use them right across the user session, which is acceptable. But if you wanted to see what extreme caching can do to your server then write a simple application that chucks in a lot of data in cache, run a load test over it for about 10-15 minutes, forcing a lot of data in memory causing the heap to run out of memory. If you get to such a state where you start running out of memory the IIS as a mode of recovery restarts the worker process. It is great way to free up all your memory in the heap but this would clear the cache. The problem with this is if the customer had 10 items in their shopping basket and that data was stored in the application cache, the user basket will now be empty forcing them either to get frustrated and go to a competitor website or if the customer is really patient, give it another try! How can you address this, well two ways of addressing this; 1. Workaround – A x86 bit processor only allows a maximum of 4GB of RAM, this means the machine effectively has around 3.4 GB of RAM available, the OS needs about 1.5 GB of RAM to run efficiently, the IIS and .net framework also need their share of memory, leaving you a heap of around 800 MB to play with. Because Team builds by default build your application in ‘Compile as any mode’ it means the application is build such that it will run in x86 bit mode if run on a x86 bit processor and run in a x64 bit mode if run on a x64 but processor. The problem with this is not all applications are really x64 bit compatible specially if you are using com objects or external libraries. So, as a quick win if you compiled your application in x86 bit mode by changing the compile as any selection to compile as x86 in the team build, you will be able to run your application on a x64 bit machine in x86 bit mode (WOW – By running Windows on Windows) and what that means is, you could use 8GB+ worth of RAM, if you take away everything else your application will roughly get a heap size of at least 4 GB to play with, which is immense. If you need a heap size of more than 4 GB you have either build a software for NASA or there is something fundamentally wrong in your application. 2. Solution – Now that you have put a workaround in place the IIS will not restart the worker process that regularly, which means you can take a breather and start working to get to the root cause of this memory leak. But this begs a question “How do I Identify possible memory leaks in my application?” Well i won’t say that there is one single tool that can tell you where the memory leak is, but trust me, ‘Performance Profiling’ is a great start point, it definitely gets you started in the right direction, let’s have a look at how. Performance Wizard - Start the Performance Wizard and select Instrumentation, this lets you measure function call counts and timings. Before running the performance session right click the performance session settings and chose properties from the context menu to bring up the Performance session properties page and as shown in the screen shot below, check the check boxes in the group ‘.NET memory profiling collection’ namely ‘Collect .NET object allocation information’ and ‘Also collect the .NET Object lifetime information’.    Now if you fire off the profiling session on your pages you will notice that the results allows you to view ‘Object Lifetime’ which shows you the number of objects that made it to Gen-0, Gen-1, Gen-2, Large heap, etc. Another great feature about the profile is that if your application has > 5% cases where objects die right after making to the Gen-2 storage a threshold alert is generated to alert you. Since you have the option to also view the most expensive methods and by capturing the IntelliTrace data you can drill in to narrow down to the line of code that is the root cause of the problem. Well now that we have seen how crucial memory management is and how easy Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 makes it for us to identify and reproduce the problem with the best of breed tools in the product. Caching One of the main ways to improve performance is Caching. Which basically means you tell the web server that instead of going to the database for each request you keep the data in the webserver and when the user asks for it you serve it from the webserver itself. BUT that can have consequences! Let’s look at some code, trust me caching code is not very intuitive, I define a cache key for almost all searches made through the common search page and cache the results. The approach works fine, first time i get the data from the database and second time data is served from the cache, significant performance improvement, EXCEPT when two users try to do the same operation and run into each other. But it is easy to handle this by adding the lock as you can see in the snippet below. So, as long as a user comes in and finds that the cache is empty, the user locks and starts to get the cache no more concurrency issues. But lets say you are processing 10 requests per second, by the time i have locked the operation to get the results from the database, 9 other users came in and found that the cache key is null so after i have come out and populated the cache they will still go in to get the results again. The application will still be faster because the next set of 10 users and so on would continue to get data from the cache. BUT if we added another null check after locking to build the cache and before actual call to the db then the 9 users who follow me would not make the extra trip to the database at all and that would really increase the performance, but didn’t i say that the code won’t be very intuitive, may be you should leave a comment you don’t want another developer to come in and think what a fresher why is he checking for the cache key null twice !!! The downside of caching is, you are storing the data outside of the database and the data could be wrong because the updates applied to the database would make the data cached at the web server out of sync. So, how do you invalidate the cache? Well if you only had one way of updating the data lets say only one entry point to the data update you can write some logic to say that every time new data is entered set the cache object to null. But this approach will not work as soon as you have several ways of feeding data to the system or your system is scaled out across a farm of web servers. The perfect solution to this is Micro Caching which means you cache the query for a set time duration and invalidate the cache after that set duration. The advantage is every time the user queries for that data with in the time span for which you have cached the results there are no calls made to the database and the data is served right from the server which makes the response immensely quick. Now figuring out the appropriate time span for which you micro cache the query results really depends on the application. Lets say your website gets 10 requests per second, if you retain the cache results for even 1 minute you will have immense performance gains. You would reduce 90% hits to the database for searching. Ever wondered why when you go to e-bookers.com or xpedia.com or yatra.com to book a flight and you click on the book button because the fare seems too exciting and you get an error message telling you that the fare is not valid any more. Yes, exactly => That is a cache failure! These travel sites or price compare engines are not going to hit the database every time you hit the compare button instead the results will be served from the cache, because the query results are micro cached, its a perfect trade-off, by micro caching the results the site gains 100% performance benefits but every once in a while annoys a customer because the fare has expired. But the trade off works in the favour of these sites as they are still able to process up to 30+ page requests per second which means cater to the site traffic by may be losing 1 customer every once in a while to a competitor who is also using a similar caching technique what are the odds that the user will not come back to their site sooner or later? Recap   Resources Below are some Key resource you might like to review. I would highly recommend the documentation, walkthroughs and videos available on MSDN. You can always make use of Fiddler to debug Web Performance Tests. Some community test extensions and plug ins available on Codeplex might also be of interest to you. The Road Ahead Thank you for taking the time out and reading this blog post, you may also want to read Part I and Part II if you haven’t so far. If you enjoyed the post, remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Questions/Feedback/Suggestions, etc please leave a comment. Next ‘Load Testing in the cloud’, I’ll be working on exploring the possibilities of running Test controller/Agents in the Cloud. See you on the other side! Thank You!   Share this post : CodeProject

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• Stored Procedures with SSRS? Hmm… not so much

  - by Rob Farley

  Little Bobby Tables’ mother says you should always sanitise your data input. Except that I think she’s wrong. The SQL Injection aspect is for another post, where I’ll show you why I think SQL Injection is the same kind of attack as many other attacks, such as the old buffer overflow, but here I want to have a bit of a whinge about the way that some people sanitise data input, and even have a whinge about people who insist on using stored procedures for SSRS reports. Let me say that again, in case you missed it the first time: I want to have a whinge about people who insist on using stored procedures for SSRS reports. Let’s look at the data input sanitisation aspect – except that I’m going to call it ‘parameter validation’. I’m talking about code that looks like this: create procedure dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomdate datetime) as begin     /* First check that @eomdate is a valid date */     if isdate(@eomdate) != 1     begin         select 'Please enter a valid date' as ErrorMessage;         return;     end     /* Then check that time has passed since @eomdate */     if datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) < 5     begin         select 'Sorry - EOM is not complete yet' as ErrorMessage;         return;     end         /* If those checks have succeeded, return the data */     select SalesPersonID, count(*) as NumSales, sum(TotalDue) as TotalSales     from Sales.SalesOrderHeader     where OrderDate >= dateadd(month,-1,@eomdate)         and OrderDate < @eomdate     group by SalesPersonID     order by SalesPersonID; end Notice that the code checks that a date has been entered. Seriously??!! This must only be to check for NULL values being passed in, because anything else would have to be a valid datetime to avoid an error. The other check is maybe fair enough, but I still don’t like it. The two problems I have with this stored procedure are the result sets and the small fact that the stored procedure even exists in the first place. But let’s consider the first one of these problems for starters. I’ll get to the second one in a moment. If you read Jes Borland (@grrl_geek)’s recent post about returning multiple result sets in Reporting Services, you’ll be aware that Reporting Services doesn’t support multiple results sets from a single query. And when it says ‘single query’, it includes ‘stored procedure call’. It’ll only handle the first result set that comes back. But that’s okay – we have RETURN statements, so our stored procedure will only ever return a single result set.  Sometimes that result set might contain a single field called ErrorMessage, but it’s still only one result set. Except that it’s not okay, because Reporting Services needs to know what fields to expect. Your report needs to hook into your fields, so SSRS needs to have a way to get that information. For stored procs, it uses an option called FMTONLY. When Reporting Services tries to figure out what fields are going to be returned by a query (or stored procedure call), it doesn’t want to have to run the whole thing. That could take ages. (Maybe it’s seen some of the stored procedures I’ve had to deal with over the years!) So it turns on FMTONLY before it makes the call (and turns it off again afterwards). FMTONLY is designed to be able to figure out the shape of the output, without actually running the contents. It’s very useful, you might think. set fmtonly on exec dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson '20030401'; set fmtonly off Without the FMTONLY lines, this stored procedure returns a result set that has three columns and fourteen rows. But with FMTONLY turned on, those rows don’t come back. But what I do get back hurts Reporting Services. It doesn’t run the stored procedure at all. It just looks for anything that could be returned and pushes out a result set in that shape. Despite the fact that I’ve made sure that the logic will only ever return a single result set, the FMTONLY option kills me by returning three of them. It would have been much better to push these checks down into the query itself. alter procedure dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomdate datetime) as begin     select SalesPersonID, count(*) as NumSales, sum(TotalDue) as TotalSales     from Sales.SalesOrderHeader     where     /* Make sure that @eomdate is valid */         isdate(@eomdate) = 1     /* And that it's sufficiently past */     and datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) >= 5     /* And now use it in the filter as appropriate */     and OrderDate >= dateadd(month,-1,@eomdate)     and OrderDate < @eomdate     group by SalesPersonID     order by SalesPersonID; end Now if we run it with FMTONLY turned on, we get the single result set back. But let’s consider the execution plan when we pass in an invalid date. First let’s look at one that returns data. I’ve got a semi-useful index in place on OrderDate, which includes the SalesPersonID and TotalDue fields. It does the job, despite a hefty Sort operation. …compared to one that uses a future date: You might notice that the estimated costs are similar – the Index Seek is still 28%, the Sort is still 71%. But the size of that arrow coming out of the Index Seek is a whole bunch smaller. The coolest thing here is what’s going on with that Index Seek. Let’s look at some of the properties of it. Glance down it with me… Estimated CPU cost of 0.0005728, 387 estimated rows, estimated subtree cost of 0.0044385, ForceSeek false, Number of Executions 0. That’s right – it doesn’t run. So much for reading plans right-to-left... The key is the Filter on the left of it. It has a Startup Expression Predicate in it, which means that it doesn’t call anything further down the plan (to the right) if the predicate evaluates to false. Using this method, we can make sure that our stored procedure contains a single query, and therefore avoid any problems with multiple result sets. If we wanted, we could always use UNION ALL to make sure that we can return an appropriate error message. alter procedure dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomdate datetime) as begin     select SalesPersonID, count(*) as NumSales, sum(TotalDue) as TotalSales, /*Placeholder: */ '' as ErrorMessage     from Sales.SalesOrderHeader     where     /* Make sure that @eomdate is valid */         isdate(@eomdate) = 1     /* And that it's sufficiently past */     and datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) >= 5     /* And now use it in the filter as appropriate */     and OrderDate >= dateadd(month,-1,@eomdate)     and OrderDate < @eomdate     group by SalesPersonID     /* Now include the error messages */     union all     select 0, 0, 0, 'Please enter a valid date' as ErrorMessage     where isdate(@eomdate) != 1     union all     select 0, 0, 0, 'Sorry - EOM is not complete yet' as ErrorMessage     where datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) < 5     order by SalesPersonID; end But still I don’t like it, because it’s now a stored procedure with a single query. And I don’t like stored procedures that should be functions. That’s right – I think this should be a function, and SSRS should call the function. And I apologise to those of you who are now planning a bonfire for me. Guy Fawkes’ night has already passed this year, so I think you miss out. (And I’m not going to remind you about when the PASS Summit is in 2012.) create function dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomdate datetime) returns table as return (     select SalesPersonID, count(*) as NumSales, sum(TotalDue) as TotalSales, '' as ErrorMessage     from Sales.SalesOrderHeader     where     /* Make sure that @eomdate is valid */         isdate(@eomdate) = 1     /* And that it's sufficiently past */     and datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) >= 5     /* And now use it in the filter as appropriate */     and OrderDate >= dateadd(month,-1,@eomdate)     and OrderDate < @eomdate     group by SalesPersonID     union all     select 0, 0, 0, 'Please enter a valid date' as ErrorMessage     where isdate(@eomdate) != 1     union all     select 0, 0, 0, 'Sorry - EOM is not complete yet' as ErrorMessage     where datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) < 5 ); We’ve had to lose the ORDER BY – but that’s fine, as that’s a client thing anyway. We can have our reports leverage this stored query still, but we’re recognising that it’s a query, not a procedure. A procedure is designed to DO stuff, not just return data. We even get entries in sys.columns that confirm what the shape of the result set actually is, which makes sense, because a table-valued function is the right mechanism to return data. And we get so much more flexibility with this. If you haven’t seen the simplification stuff that I’ve preached on before, jump over to http://bit.ly/SimpleRob and watch the video of when I broke a microphone and nearly fell off the stage in Wales. You’ll see the impact of being able to have a simplifiable query. You can also read the procedural functions post I wrote recently, if you didn’t follow the link from a few paragraphs ago. So if we want the list of SalesPeople that made any kind of sales in a given month, we can do something like: select SalesPersonID from dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomonth) order by SalesPersonID; This doesn’t need to look up the TotalDue field, which makes a simpler plan. select * from dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomonth) where SalesPersonID is not null order by SalesPersonID; This one can avoid having to do the work on the rows that don’t have a SalesPersonID value, pushing the predicate into the Index Seek rather than filtering the results that come back to the report. If we had joins involved, we might see some of those being simplified out. We also get the ability to include query hints in individual reports. We shift from having a single-use stored procedure to having a reusable stored query – and isn’t that one of the main points of modularisation? Stored procedures in Reporting Services are just a bit limited for my liking. They’re useful in plenty of ways, but if you insist on using stored procedures all the time rather that queries that use functions – that’s rubbish. @rob_farley

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• URL Rewrite – Protocol (http/https) in the Action

  - by OWScott

  IIS URL Rewrite supports server variables for pretty much every part of the URL and http header. However, there is one commonly used server variable that isn’t readily available.  That’s the protocol—HTTP or HTTPS. You can easily check if a page request uses HTTP or HTTPS, but that only works in the conditions part of the rule.  There isn’t a variable available to dynamically set the protocol in the action part of the rule.  What I wish is that there would be a variable like {HTTP_PROTOCOL} which would have a value of ‘HTTP’ or ‘HTTPS’.  There is a server variable called {HTTPS}, but the values of ‘on’ and ‘off’ aren’t practical in the action.  You can also use {SERVER_PORT} or {SERVER_PORT_SECURE}, but again, they aren’t useful in the action. Let me illustrate.  The following rule will redirect traffic for http(s)://localtest.me/ to http://www.localtest.me/. <rule name="Redirect to www"> <match url="(.*)" /> <conditions> <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^localtest\.me$" /> </conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="http://www.localtest.me/{R:1}" /> </rule> The problem is that it forces the request to HTTP even if the original request was for HTTPS. Interestingly enough, I planned to blog about this topic this week when I noticed in my twitter feed yesterday that Jeff Graves, a former colleague of mine, just wrote an excellent blog post about this very topic.  He beat me to the punch by just a couple days.  However, I figured I would still write my blog post on this topic.  While his solution is a excellent one, I personally handle this another way most of the time.  Plus, it’s a commonly asked question that isn’t documented well enough on the web yet, so having another article on the web won’t hurt. I can think of four different ways to handle this, and depending on your situation you may lean towards any of the four.  Don’t let the choices overwhelm you though.  Let’s keep it simple, Option 1 is what I use most of the time, Option 2 is what Jeff proposed and is the safest option, and Option 3 and Option 4 need only be considered if you have a more unique situation.  All four options will work for most situations. Option 1 – CACHE_URL, single rule There is a server variable that has the protocol in it; {CACHE_URL}.  This server variable contains the entire URL string (e.g. http://www.localtest.me:80/info.aspx?id=5)  All we need to do is extract the HTTP or HTTPS and we’ll be set. This tends to be my preferred way to handle this situation. Indeed, Jeff did briefly mention this in his blog post: … you could use a condition on the CACHE_URL variable and a back reference in the rewritten URL. The problem there is that you then need to match all of the conditions which could be a problem if your rule depends on a logical “or” match for conditions. Thus the problem.  If you have multiple conditions set to “Match Any” rather than “Match All” then this option won’t work.  However, I find that 95% of all rules that I write use “Match All” and therefore, being the lazy administrator that I am I like this simple solution that only requires adding a single condition to a rule.  The caveat is that if you use “Match Any” then you must consider one of the next two options. Enough with the preamble.  Here’s how it works.  Add a condition that checks for {CACHE_URL} with a pattern of “^(.+)://” like so: How you have a back-reference to the part before the ://, which is our treasured HTTP or HTTPS.  In URL Rewrite 2.0 or greater you can check the “Track capture groups across conditions”, make that condition the first condition, and you have yourself a back-reference of {C:1}. The “Redirect to www” example with support for maintaining the protocol, will become: <rule name="Redirect to www" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="(.*)" /> <conditions trackAllCaptures="true"> <add input="{CACHE_URL}" pattern="^(.+)://" /> <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^localtest\.me$" /> </conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="{C:1}://www.localtest.me/{R:1}" /> </rule> It’s not as easy as it would be if Microsoft gave us a built-in {HTTP_PROTOCOL} variable, but it’s pretty close. I also like this option since I often create rule examples for other people and this type of rule is portable since it’s self-contained within a single rule. Option 2 – Using a Rewrite Map For a safer rule that works for both “Match Any” and “Match All” situations, you can use the Rewrite Map solution that Jeff proposed.  It’s a perfectly good solution with the only drawback being the ever so slight extra effort to set it up since you need to create a rewrite map before you create the rule.  In other words, if you choose to use this as your sole method of handling the protocol, you’ll be safe. After you create a Rewrite Map called MapProtocol, you can use “{MapProtocol:{HTTPS}}” for the protocol within any rule action.  Following is an example using a Rewrite Map. <rewrite> <rules> <rule name="Redirect to www" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="(.*)" /> <conditions trackAllCaptures="false"> <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^localtest\.me$" /> </conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="{MapProtocol:{HTTPS}}://www.localtest.me/{R:1}" /> </rule> </rules> <rewriteMaps> <rewriteMap name="MapProtocol"> <add key="on" value="https" /> <add key="off" value="http" /> </rewriteMap> </rewriteMaps> </rewrite> Option 3 – CACHE_URL, Multi-rule If you have many rules that will use the protocol, you can create your own server variable which can be used in subsequent rules. This option is no easier to set up than Option 2 above, but you can use it if you prefer the easier to remember syntax of {HTTP_PROTOCOL} vs. {MapProtocol:{HTTPS}}. The potential issue with this rule is that if you don’t have access to the server level (e.g. in a shared environment) then you cannot set server variables without permission. First, create a rule and place it at the top of the set of rules.  You can create this at the server, site or subfolder level.  However, if you create it at the site or subfolder level then the HTTP_PROTOCOL server variable needs to be approved at the server level.  This can be achieved in IIS Manager by navigating to URL Rewrite at the server level, clicking on “View Server Variables” from the Actions pane, and added HTTP_PROTOCOL. If you create the rule at the server level then this step is not necessary.  Following is an example of the first rule to create the HTTP_PROTOCOL and then a rule that uses it.  The Create HTTP_PROTOCOL rule only needs to be created once on the server. <rule name="Create HTTP_PROTOCOL"> <match url=".*" /> <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false"> <add input="{CACHE_URL}" pattern="^(.+)://" /> </conditions> <serverVariables> <set name="HTTP_PROTOCOL" value="{C:1}" /> </serverVariables> <action type="None" /> </rule>   <rule name="Redirect to www" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="(.*)" /> <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false"> <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^localtest\.me$" /> </conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="{HTTP_PROTOCOL}://www.localtest.me/{R:1}" /> </rule> Option 4 – Multi-rule Just to be complete I’ll include an example of how to achieve the same thing with multiple rules. I don’t see any reason to use it over the previous examples, but I’ll include an example anyway.  Note that it will only work with the “Match All” setting for the conditions. <rule name="Redirect to www - http" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="(.*)" /> <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false"> <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^localtest\.me$" /> <add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="off" /> </conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="http://www.localtest.me/{R:1}" /> </rule> <rule name="Redirect to www - https" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="(.*)" /> <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false"> <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^localtest\.me$" /> <add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="on" /> </conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="https://www.localtest.me/{R:1}" /> </rule> Conclusion Above are four working examples of methods to call the protocol (HTTP or HTTPS) from the action of a URL Rewrite rule.  You can use whichever method you most prefer.  I’ve listed them in the order that I favor them, although I could see some people preferring Option 2 as their first choice.  In any of the cases, hopefully you can use this as a reference for when you need to use the protocol in the rule’s action when writing your URL Rewrite rules. Further information: Viewing all Server Variable for a site. URL Parts available to URL Rewrite Rules Further URL Rewrite articles

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• Wireless card power management

  - by penner

  I have noticed that when my computer in plugged in, the wireless strength increases. I'm assuming this is to do with power management. Is there a way to disable Wireless Power Management? I have found a few blog posts that show hacks to disable this but what is best practice here? Should there not be an option via the power menu that lets you toggle this? EDIT -- FILES AND LOGS AS REQUESTED /var/log/kern.log Jul 11 11:45:27 CoolBreeze kernel: [ 6.528052] postgres (1308): /proc/1308/oom_adj is deprecated, please use /proc/1308/oom_score_adj instead. Jul 11 11:45:27 CoolBreeze kernel: [ 6.532080] [fglrx] Gart USWC size:1280 M. Jul 11 11:45:27 CoolBreeze kernel: [ 6.532084] [fglrx] Gart cacheable size:508 M. Jul 11 11:45:27 CoolBreeze kernel: [ 6.532091] [fglrx] Reserved FB block: Shared offset:0, size:1000000 Jul 11 11:45:27 CoolBreeze kernel: [ 6.532094] [fglrx] Reserved FB block: Unshared offset:f8fd000, size:403000 Jul 11 11:45:27 CoolBreeze kernel: [ 6.532098] [fglrx] Reserved FB block: Unshared offset:3fff4000, size:c000 Jul 11 11:45:38 CoolBreeze kernel: [ 17.423743] eth1: no IPv6 routers present Jul 11 11:46:37 CoolBreeze kernel: [ 75.836426] warning: `proftpd' uses 32-bit capabilities (legacy support in use) Jul 11 11:46:37 CoolBreeze kernel: [ 75.884215] init: plymouth-stop pre-start process (2922) terminated with status 1 Jul 11 11:54:25 CoolBreeze kernel: [ 543.679614] eth1: no IPv6 routers present dmesg [ 1.411959] ACPI: Power Button [PWRB] [ 1.412046] input: Sleep Button as /devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0C0E:00/input/input1 [ 1.412054] ACPI: Sleep Button [SLPB] [ 1.412150] input: Lid Switch as /devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0C0D:00/input/input2 [ 1.412765] ACPI: Lid Switch [LID0] [ 1.412866] input: Power Button as /devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXPWRBN:00/input/input3 [ 1.412874] ACPI: Power Button [PWRF] [ 1.412996] ACPI: Fan [FAN0] (off) [ 1.413068] ACPI: Fan [FAN1] (off) [ 1.419493] thermal LNXTHERM:00: registered as thermal_zone0 [ 1.419498] ACPI: Thermal Zone [TZ00] (27 C) [ 1.421913] thermal LNXTHERM:01: registered as thermal_zone1 [ 1.421918] ACPI: Thermal Zone [TZ01] (61 C) [ 1.421971] ACPI: Deprecated procfs I/F for battery is loaded, please retry with CONFIG_ACPI_PROCFS_POWER cleared [ 1.421986] ACPI: Battery Slot [BAT0] (battery present) [ 1.422062] ERST: Table is not found! [ 1.422067] GHES: HEST is not enabled! [ 1.422158] isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards... [ 1.422242] Serial: 8250/16550 driver, 32 ports, IRQ sharing enabled [ 1.434620] ACPI: Battery Slot [BAT0] (battery present) [ 1.736355] Freeing initrd memory: 14352k freed [ 1.777846] isapnp: No Plug & Play device found [ 1.963650] Linux agpgart interface v0.103 [ 1.967148] brd: module loaded [ 1.968866] loop: module loaded [ 1.969134] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: version 3.0 [ 1.969154] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: PCI INT B -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 [ 1.969226] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: irq 45 for MSI/MSI-X [ 1.969277] ahci: SSS flag set, parallel bus scan disabled [ 1.969320] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: AHCI 0001.0300 32 slots 6 ports 3 Gbps 0x23 impl SATA mode [ 1.969329] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: flags: 64bit ncq sntf stag pm led clo pio slum part ems sxs apst [ 1.969338] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: setting latency timer to 64 [ 1.983340] scsi0 : ahci [ 1.983515] scsi1 : ahci [ 1.983670] scsi2 : ahci [ 1.983829] scsi3 : ahci [ 1.983985] scsi4 : ahci [ 1.984145] scsi5 : ahci [ 1.984270] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xf1005000 port 0xf1005100 irq 45 [ 1.984277] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xf1005000 port 0xf1005180 irq 45 [ 1.984282] ata3: DUMMY [ 1.984285] ata4: DUMMY [ 1.984288] ata5: DUMMY [ 1.984292] ata6: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xf1005000 port 0xf1005380 irq 45 [ 1.985150] Fixed MDIO Bus: probed [ 1.985192] tun: Universal TUN/TAP device driver, 1.6 [ 1.985196] tun: (C) 1999-2004 Max Krasnyansky <[email protected]> [ 1.985285] PPP generic driver version 2.4.2 [ 1.985472] ehci_hcd: USB 2.0 'Enhanced' Host Controller (EHCI) Driver [ 1.985507] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 [ 1.985534] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 1.985541] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: EHCI Host Controller [ 1.985626] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1 [ 1.985666] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: debug port 2 [ 1.989663] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: cache line size of 64 is not supported [ 1.989690] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: irq 16, io mem 0xf1005800 [ 2.002183] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00 [ 2.002447] hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found [ 2.002455] hub 1-0:1.0: 3 ports detected [ 2.002607] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23 [ 2.002633] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 2.002639] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: EHCI Host Controller [ 2.002737] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2 [ 2.002775] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: debug port 2 [ 2.006780] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: cache line size of 64 is not supported [ 2.006806] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: irq 23, io mem 0xf1005c00 [ 2.022161] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00 [ 2.022401] hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found [ 2.022409] hub 2-0:1.0: 3 ports detected [ 2.022567] ohci_hcd: USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver [ 2.022599] uhci_hcd: USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver [ 2.022720] usbcore: registered new interface driver libusual [ 2.022813] i8042: PNP: PS/2 Controller [PNP0303:PS2K,PNP0f13:PS2M] at 0x60,0x64 irq 1,12 [ 2.035831] serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1 [ 2.035844] serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12 [ 2.036096] mousedev: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice [ 2.036710] rtc_cmos 00:07: RTC can wake from S4 [ 2.036881] rtc_cmos 00:07: rtc core: registered rtc_cmos as rtc0 [ 2.037143] rtc0: alarms up to one month, y3k, 242 bytes nvram, hpet irqs [ 2.037503] device-mapper: uevent: version 1.0.3 [ 2.037656] device-mapper: ioctl: 4.22.0-ioctl (2011-10-19) initialised: [email protected] [ 2.037725] EISA: Probing bus 0 at eisa.0 [ 2.037729] EISA: Cannot allocate resource for mainboard [ 2.037734] Cannot allocate resource for EISA slot 1 [ 2.037738] Cannot allocate resource for EISA slot 2 [ 2.037741] Cannot allocate resource for EISA slot 3 [ 2.037745] Cannot allocate resource for EISA slot 4 [ 2.037749] Cannot allocate resource for EISA slot 5 [ 2.037753] Cannot allocate resource for EISA slot 6 [ 2.037756] Cannot allocate resource for EISA slot 7 [ 2.037760] Cannot allocate resource for EISA slot 8 [ 2.037764] EISA: Detected 0 cards. [ 2.037782] cpufreq-nforce2: No nForce2 chipset. [ 2.038264] cpuidle: using governor ladder [ 2.039015] cpuidle: using governor menu [ 2.039019] EFI Variables Facility v0.08 2004-May-17 [ 2.040061] TCP cubic registered [ 2.041438] NET: Registered protocol family 10 [ 2.043814] NET: Registered protocol family 17 [ 2.043823] Registering the dns_resolver key type [ 2.044290] input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard as /devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input4 [ 2.044336] Using IPI No-Shortcut mode [ 2.045620] PM: Hibernation image not present or could not be loaded. [ 2.045644] registered taskstats version 1 [ 2.073070] Magic number: 4:976:796 [ 2.073415] rtc_cmos 00:07: setting system clock to 2012-07-11 18:45:23 UTC (1342032323) [ 2.076654] BIOS EDD facility v0.16 2004-Jun-25, 0 devices found [ 2.076658] EDD information not available. [ 2.302111] ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300) [ 2.302587] ata1.00: ATA-9: M4-CT128M4SSD2, 000F, max UDMA/100 [ 2.302595] ata1.00: 250069680 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32), AA [ 2.303143] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/100 [ 2.303453] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA M4-CT128M4SSD2 000F PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 [ 2.303746] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0 [ 2.303920] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 250069680 512-byte logical blocks: (128 GB/119 GiB) [ 2.304213] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off [ 2.304225] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00 [ 2.304471] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA [ 2.306818] sda: sda1 sda2 < sda5 > [ 2.308780] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk [ 2.318162] Refined TSC clocksource calibration: 1595.999 MHz. [ 2.318169] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 2 using ehci_hcd [ 2.318178] Switching to clocksource tsc [ 2.450939] hub 1-1:1.0: USB hub found [ 2.451121] hub 1-1:1.0: 6 ports detected [ 2.561786] usb 2-1: new high-speed USB device number 2 using ehci_hcd [ 2.621757] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) [ 2.636143] ata2.00: ATAPI: TSSTcorp DVD+/-RW TS-T633C, D800, max UDMA/100 [ 2.636152] ata2.00: applying bridge limits [ 2.649711] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/100 [ 2.653762] scsi 1:0:0:0: CD-ROM TSSTcorp DVD+-RW TS-T633C D800 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 [ 2.661486] sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 24x/24x writer dvd-ram cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray [ 2.661494] cdrom: Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20 [ 2.661890] sr 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 [ 2.662156] sr 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 5 [ 2.694649] hub 2-1:1.0: USB hub found [ 2.694840] hub 2-1:1.0: 8 ports detected [ 2.765823] usb 1-1.4: new high-speed USB device number 3 using ehci_hcd [ 2.981454] ata6: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 2.982597] Freeing unused kernel memory: 740k freed [ 2.983523] Write protecting the kernel text: 5816k [ 2.983808] Write protecting the kernel read-only data: 2376k [ 2.983811] NX-protecting the kernel data: 4424k [ 3.014594] udevd[127]: starting version 175 [ 3.068925] sdhci: Secure Digital Host Controller Interface driver [ 3.068932] sdhci: Copyright(c) Pierre Ossman [ 3.069714] sdhci-pci 0000:09:00.0: SDHCI controller found [1180:e822] (rev 1) [ 3.069742] sdhci-pci 0000:09:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 [ 3.069786] sdhci-pci 0000:09:00.0: Will use DMA mode even though HW doesn't fully claim to support it. [ 3.069798] sdhci-pci 0000:09:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 3.069816] mmc0: no vmmc regulator found [ 3.069877] Registered led device: mmc0:: [ 3.070946] mmc0: SDHCI controller on PCI [0000:09:00.0] using DMA [ 3.071078] tg3.c:v3.121 (November 2, 2011) [ 3.071252] tg3 0000:0b:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17 [ 3.071269] tg3 0000:0b:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 3.071403] firewire_ohci 0000:09:00.3: PCI INT D -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 [ 3.071417] firewire_ohci 0000:09:00.3: setting latency timer to 64 [ 3.078509] EXT4-fs (sda1): INFO: recovery required on readonly filesystem [ 3.078517] EXT4-fs (sda1): write access will be enabled during recovery [ 3.110417] tg3 0000:0b:00.0: eth0: Tigon3 [partno(BCM95784M) rev 5784100] (PCI Express) MAC address b8:ac:6f:71:02:a6 [ 3.110425] tg3 0000:0b:00.0: eth0: attached PHY is 5784 (10/100/1000Base-T Ethernet) (WireSpeed[1], EEE[0]) [ 3.110431] tg3 0000:0b:00.0: eth0: RXcsums[1] LinkChgREG[0] MIirq[0] ASF[0] TSOcap[1] [ 3.110436] tg3 0000:0b:00.0: eth0: dma_rwctrl[76180000] dma_mask[64-bit] [ 3.125492] firewire_ohci: Added fw-ohci device 0000:09:00.3, OHCI v1.10, 4 IR + 4 IT contexts, quirks 0x11 [ 3.390124] EXT4-fs (sda1): orphan cleanup on readonly fs [ 3.390135] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 7078710 [ 3.390232] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 2363071 [ 3.390327] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 7078711 [ 3.390350] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 7078709 [ 3.390367] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 7078708 [ 3.390384] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 7078707 [ 3.390401] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 7078706 [ 3.390417] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 7078705 [ 3.390435] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 7078551 [ 3.390452] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 7078523 [ 3.390470] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 7078520 [ 3.390487] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 7077901 [ 3.390551] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 4063272 [ 3.390562] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 4063266 [ 3.390572] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 4063261 [ 3.390582] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 4063256 [ 3.390592] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 4063255 [ 3.390602] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 2363072 [ 3.390620] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 2360050 [ 3.390698] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 5250064 [ 3.390710] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 2365394 [ 3.390728] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 2365390 [ 3.390745] EXT4-fs (sda1): 22 orphan inodes deleted [ 3.390748] EXT4-fs (sda1): recovery complete [ 3.397636] EXT4-fs (sda1): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null) [ 3.624910] firewire_core: created device fw0: GUID 464fc000110e2661, S400 [ 3.927467] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready [ 3.929965] udevd[400]: starting version 175 [ 3.933581] Adding 6278140k swap on /dev/sda5. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:6278140k SS [ 3.945183] lp: driver loaded but no devices found [ 3.999389] wmi: Mapper loaded [ 4.016696] ite_cir: Auto-detected model: ITE8708 CIR transceiver [ 4.016702] ite_cir: Using model: ITE8708 CIR transceiver [ 4.016706] ite_cir: TX-capable: 1 [ 4.016710] ite_cir: Sample period (ns): 8680 [ 4.016713] ite_cir: TX carrier frequency (Hz): 38000 [ 4.016716] ite_cir: TX duty cycle (%): 33 [ 4.016719] ite_cir: RX low carrier frequency (Hz): 0 [ 4.016722] ite_cir: RX high carrier frequency (Hz): 0 [ 4.025684] fglrx: module license 'Proprietary. (C) 2002 - ATI Technologies, Starnberg, GERMANY' taints kernel. [ 4.025691] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint [ 4.027410] IR NEC protocol handler initialized [ 4.030250] lib80211: common routines for IEEE802.11 drivers [ 4.030257] lib80211_crypt: registered algorithm 'NULL' [ 4.036024] IR RC5(x) protocol handler initialized [ 4.036092] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 22 [ 4.036188] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: irq 46 for MSI/MSI-X [ 4.036307] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 4.036361] [Firmware Bug]: ACPI: No _BQC method, cannot determine initial brightness [ 4.039006] acpi device:03: registered as cooling_device10 [ 4.039164] input: Video Bus as /devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0A08:00/device:01/LNXVIDEO:00/input/input5 [ 4.039261] ACPI: Video Device [M86] (multi-head: yes rom: no post: no) [ 4.049753] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro [ 4.050201] wl 0000:05:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17 [ 4.050215] wl 0000:05:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 4.052252] Registered IR keymap rc-rc6-mce [ 4.052432] input: ITE8708 CIR transceiver as /devices/virtual/rc/rc0/input6 [ 4.054614] IR RC6 protocol handler initialized [ 4.054787] rc0: ITE8708 CIR transceiver as /devices/virtual/rc/rc0 [ 4.054839] ite_cir: driver has been successfully loaded [ 4.057338] IR JVC protocol handler initialized [ 4.061553] IR Sony protocol handler initialized [ 4.066578] input: MCE IR Keyboard/Mouse (ite-cir) as /devices/virtual/input/input7 [ 4.066724] IR MCE Keyboard/mouse protocol handler initialized [ 4.072580] lirc_dev: IR Remote Control driver registered, major 250 [ 4.073280] rc rc0: lirc_dev: driver ir-lirc-codec (ite-cir) registered at minor = 0 [ 4.073286] IR LIRC bridge handler initialized [ 4.077849] Linux video capture interface: v2.00 [ 4.079402] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device Laptop_Integrated_Webcam_2M (0c45:640f) [ 4.085492] EDAC MC: Ver: 2.1.0 [ 4.087138] lib80211_crypt: registered algorithm 'TKIP' [ 4.091027] input: HDA Intel Mic as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0/input8 [ 4.091733] snd_hda_intel 0000:02:00.1: PCI INT B -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17 [ 4.091826] snd_hda_intel 0000:02:00.1: irq 47 for MSI/MSI-X [ 4.091861] snd_hda_intel 0000:02:00.1: setting latency timer to 64 [ 4.093115] EDAC i7core: Device not found: dev 00.0 PCI ID 8086:2c50 [ 4.112448] HDMI status: Codec=0 Pin=3 Presence_Detect=0 ELD_Valid=0 [ 4.112612] input: HD-Audio Generic HDMI/DP,pcm=3 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.0/0000:02:00.1/sound/card1/input9 [ 4.113311] type=1400 audit(1342032325.540:2): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/sbin/dhclient" pid=658 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 4.114501] type=1400 audit(1342032325.540:3): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action" pid=658 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 4.115253] type=1400 audit(1342032325.540:4): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/connman/scripts/dhclient-script" pid=658 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 4.121870] input: Laptop_Integrated_Webcam_2M as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.4/1-1.4:1.0/input/input10 [ 4.122096] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo [ 4.122100] USB Video Class driver (1.1.1) [ 4.128729] [fglrx] Maximum main memory to use for locked dma buffers: 5840 MBytes. [ 4.129678] [fglrx] vendor: 1002 device: 68c0 count: 1 [ 4.131991] [fglrx] ioport: bar 4, base 0x2000, size: 0x100 [ 4.132015] pci 0000:02:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 [ 4.132024] pci 0000:02:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 4.133712] [fglrx] Kernel PAT support is enabled [ 4.133747] [fglrx] module loaded - fglrx 8.96.4 [Mar 12 2012] with 1 minors [ 4.162666] eth1: Broadcom BCM4727 802.11 Hybrid Wireless Controller 5.100.82.38 [ 4.184133] device-mapper: multipath: version 1.3.0 loaded [ 4.196660] dcdbas dcdbas: Dell Systems Management Base Driver (version 5.6.0-3.2) [ 4.279897] input: Dell WMI hotkeys as /devices/virtual/input/input11 [ 4.292402] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.16 [ 4.292449] NET: Registered protocol family 31 [ 4.292454] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized [ 4.292459] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized [ 4.292463] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized [ 4.292473] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized [ 4.296333] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized [ 4.296342] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized [ 4.296345] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11 [ 4.313586] ppdev: user-space parallel port driver [ 4.316619] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3 [ 4.316625] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast [ 4.383980] type=1400 audit(1342032325.812:5): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" pid=938 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 4.385173] type=1400 audit(1342032325.812:6): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=938 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 4.425757] init: failsafe main process (898) killed by TERM signal [ 4.477052] type=1400 audit(1342032325.904:7): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/sbin/dhclient" pid=1011 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 4.477592] type=1400 audit(1342032325.904:8): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm/lightdm-guest-session-wrapper" pid=1010 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 4.478099] type=1400 audit(1342032325.904:9): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/sbin/tcpdump" pid=1017 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 4.479233] type=1400 audit(1342032325.904:10): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/telepathy/mission-control-5" pid=1014 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 4.510060] vesafb: mode is 1152x864x32, linelength=4608, pages=0 [ 4.510065] vesafb: scrolling: redraw [ 4.510071] vesafb: Truecolor: size=0:8:8:8, shift=0:16:8:0 [ 4.510084] mtrr: no more MTRRs available [ 4.513081] vesafb: framebuffer at 0xd0000000, mapped to 0xf9400000, using 3904k, total 3904k [ 4.515203] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 144x54 [ 4.515278] fb0: VESA VGA frame buffer device [ 4.590743] tg3 0000:0b:00.0: irq 48 for MSI/MSI-X [ 4.702009] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready [ 4.704409] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready [ 4.978379] psmouse serio1: synaptics: Touchpad model: 1, fw: 7.2, id: 0x1c0b1, caps: 0xd04733/0xa40000/0xa0000 [ 5.030104] input: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input12 [ 5.045782] kvm: VM_EXIT_LOAD_IA32_PERF_GLOBAL_CTRL does not work properly. Using workaround [ 5.519573] [fglrx] ATIF platform detected with notification ID: 0x81 [ 6.391466] fglrx_pci 0000:02:00.0: irq 49 for MSI/MSI-X [ 6.393137] [fglrx] Firegl kernel thread PID: 1305 [ 6.393306] [fglrx] Firegl kernel thread PID: 1306 [ 6.393472] [fglrx] Firegl kernel thread PID: 1307 [ 6.393726] [fglrx] IRQ 49 Enabled [ 6.528052] postgres (1308): /proc/1308/oom_adj is deprecated, please use /proc/1308/oom_score_adj instead. [ 6.532080] [fglrx] Gart USWC size:1280 M. [ 6.532084] [fglrx] Gart cacheable size:508 M. [ 6.532091] [fglrx] Reserved FB block: Shared offset:0, size:1000000 [ 6.532094] [fglrx] Reserved FB block: Unshared offset:f8fd000, size:403000 [ 6.532098] [fglrx] Reserved FB block: Unshared offset:3fff4000, size:c000 [ 17.423743] eth1: no IPv6 routers present [ 75.836426] warning: `proftpd' uses 32-bit capabilities (legacy support in use) [ 75.884215] init: plymouth-stop pre-start process (2922) terminated with status 1 [ 543.679614] eth1: no IPv6 routers present lsmod Module Size Used by kvm_intel 127560 0 kvm 359456 1 kvm_intel joydev 17393 0 vesafb 13516 1 parport_pc 32114 0 bnep 17830 2 ppdev 12849 0 rfcomm 38139 0 bluetooth 158438 10 bnep,rfcomm dell_wmi 12601 0 sparse_keymap 13658 1 dell_wmi binfmt_misc 17292 1 dell_laptop 17767 0 dcdbas 14098 1 dell_laptop dm_multipath 22710 0 fglrx 2909855 143 snd_hda_codec_hdmi 31775 1 psmouse 72919 0 serio_raw 13027 0 i7core_edac 23382 0 lib80211_crypt_tkip 17275 0 edac_core 46858 1 i7core_edac uvcvideo 67203 0 snd_hda_codec_idt 60251 1 videodev 86588 1 uvcvideo ir_lirc_codec 12739 0 lirc_dev 18700 1 ir_lirc_codec ir_mce_kbd_decoder 12681 0 snd_seq_midi 13132 0 ir_sony_decoder 12462 0 ir_jvc_decoder 12459 0 snd_rawmidi 25424 1 snd_seq_midi ir_rc6_decoder 12459 0 wl 2646601 0 snd_seq_midi_event 14475 1 snd_seq_midi snd_seq 51567 2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event ir_rc5_decoder 12459 0 video 19068 0 snd_hda_intel 32765 5 snd_seq_device 14172 3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq snd_hda_codec 109562 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_intel rc_rc6_mce 12454 0 lib80211 14040 2 lib80211_crypt_tkip,wl snd_hwdep 13276 1 snd_hda_codec ir_nec_decoder 12459 0 snd_pcm 80845 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec ite_cir 24743 0 rc_core 21263 10 ir_lirc_codec,ir_mce_kbd_decoder,ir_sony_decoder,ir_jvc_decoder,ir_rc6_decoder,ir_rc5_decoder,rc_rc6_mce,ir_nec_decoder,ite_cir snd_timer 28931 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm wmi 18744 1 dell_wmi snd 62064 20 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_timer mac_hid 13077 0 soundcore 14635 1 snd snd_page_alloc 14108 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm coretemp 13269 0 lp 17455 0 parport 40930 3 parport_pc,ppdev,lp tg3 141369 0 firewire_ohci 40172 0 sdhci_pci 18324 0 firewire_core 56906 1 firewire_ohci sdhci 28241 1 sdhci_pci crc_itu_t 12627 1 firewire_core lshw *-network description: Wireless interface product: BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:05:00.0 logical name: eth1 version: 01 serial: 70:f1:a1:a9:54:31 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=wl0 driverversion=5.100.82.38 ip=192.168.0.117 latency=0 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11 resources: irq:17 memory:f0900000-f0903fff *-network description: Ethernet interface product: NetLink BCM5784M Gigabit Ethernet PCIe vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:0b:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: 10 serial: b8:ac:6f:71:02:a6 capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm vpd msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=tg3 driverversion=3.121 firmware=sb v2.19 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=twisted pair resources: irq:48 memory:f0d00000-f0d0ffff

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• Prepping a conference

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  I have had the chance to talk at many conferences these past few years, and came up with a way to prepare them which works really well for me. Most importantly, it would make it quite easy to overcome an emergency (for example if my laptop would suddenly lose data). The whole code as well as the slides and other documents are in the cloud. I also use source control for my demos, so that I always have the latest and the greatest, but also a history of changes I made to my demos. Finally I have a system of code snippets which works great, and I often had very positive remarks from the audience regarding that. Putting everything in the cloud The one thing I used to be the most scared of was a sudden crash of my laptop, and being unable to restore in time for a conference. Most conferences ask speakers to send slides a few days (or weeks…) in advance, but let's face it, we all have last minute changes to our talks and I always come in the conference with updated slides that I pass to the management team. The answer to that dilemma used to be working off memory sticks, and that worked not bad. However last year I started putting all the documents relating to a conference in a DropBox folder, and that works great too. Obviously DropBox works only if you have connectivity, so if I for instance update slides while on an international flight, I cannot save to the cloud. The obvious answer to that is to backup everything on a memory stick… but I have to admit, I have been trusting my luck and working off my laptop HD and then synching everything to the cloud after landing. Of course on some US national flights you get WiFi on board, so in that case it is even simpler :) Usually after the conference is done, I remove the files from DropBox and copy them to their "final destination". They are backed up from there to BackBlaze, the great online backup service I am using routinely (I currently have about 90GB of data in BackBlaze). Outlining the presentations I like to have a written outline of my presentations written somewhere. I keep it simple, just write the various sections of the presentation with timing. I guess it is a remnant of the time when I was a private pilot, and using checklists for flight preparation. For example: Demo about designability 15' (0:37) Switch to Blend Open MainPage.xaml Create a DataTemplate ... Here I can immediately see during the presentation if I am taking too much time for my demo (0:37 is where I need to be when I am done with this section of the presentation, and 15' is the time that this particular section takes). I keep these sections reasonable, I don't detail every step of the preparation. Typically I have one such section for every 10-15 minutes of my talks. Yes, I am timing my presentations. I keep adjusting these numbers when I rehearse, and this really helps to feel more confident during the presentations. This is especially important for presentations that are long, like my MIX11 demo which clocked at 57 minutes (I had a lot of stuff to show…). Such presentations are risky, because if anything goes wrong, you will have to cut stuff, so the answer to that is: Rehearse, rehearse and when you're done rehearsing, rehearse a little more. I also have a "Preparation" section where I outline what I need to do before a presentation. For instance: Preparation Reboot in VHD Make sure MSN and Twitter are not running. Open VS10 and load demo Open Blend and load demo Run the WP7 emulator ... I typically start preparing my laptop an hour before the talk, starting everything I need to start and then putting my laptop to sleep. Saving and printing the outline, Timing Printing is a real problem because it is really hard to find a printer at most conference venues, and also quite hard in hotels. To solve that, I simply write everything in OneNote (synched to the cloud, now you start to know what I like ;) and then I print it to a PDF (I use CutePDFWriter) that I save to my Kindle. During the presentation, I read the outline off the Kindle (I mostly just need a quick check to see how I am timing). For timing during the presentation, I use the free tool ChronoGPS on my Windows Phone 7, but of course any phone these days has a clock/chrono application. In some conferences, they even have timers that the presenters can see, but they tend to count down and I prefer to count up… so I just use my own :) Source control for demos For demos, I create a separate folder and use Mercurial as source control. Mercurial has the huge advantage (over SVN or TFS) to work offline too, so I can commit while on a plane, and all the history is saved. Then when I have connectivity I push everything to the cloud (I am using the fantastic Trunksapp.com for my private repositories). Here too the obvious downside is the risk of losing my last changes if my laptop crashes before I can push to the cloud, and here too the obvious answer would be to work from a memory stick… though I have to admit I didn't do that lately (except when I was writing Silverlight 4 Unleashed, where I was really paranoid…) And code snippets? I am one of these presenters who hates to type in front of an audience. I can type really fast (writing two books has this advantage, it really teaches you to touch type and be fast at it) but in the context of an audience, on a stage where it is often damn cold (an issue I had a lot in past conferences, air conditioning can freeze your fingers and make it really hard to type), it doesn't work as well. I don't know for you, but I really dislike seeing a presentation where the speaker uses the backspace key more often than others ;) To solve that, I like to have my code ready in snippets, and drag them to the screen. Then I can spend time explaining each code snippet, while highlighting portions of the code (always highlight what you talk about, the audience often doesn't even see the cursor and doesn't know where you are on the screen!) Over the years I have used various solutions for code snippets, and now I have one which works really well… if you take a few precautions! I use the Visual Studio Toolbox. Preparing the code snippets You can store code snippets in the Toolbox for anything, XAML, C# etc. I arrange the snippets in the order in which I need them, which is a great way to remember what comes next in the presentation. I also separate them by topic, to make it easier to find them, for example when I switch to the slides and then back to the code. Remember that no matter how experienced you are, you will feel more nervous on stage than while you are preparing, so any way to make it easier for you is going to be beneficial to the audience. To store a code snippet, I do the following: Open the final demo that you want to show to the audience in Visual Studio. In your code, select a snippet of code that you want to explain in particular. Make sure that the Visual Studio Toolbox is open (menu View, Toolbox or Ctrl-Alt-X). Drag the selected snippet from the code window to the toolbox. (if needed) drag the snippet to the correct location (for example between two other code snippets so that you can access it as you speak through the demo). Right click on the snippet and select Rename Item from the context menu. Select a meaningful name. For me I use the following conventions: If it is a method, I use the method's name. If it is not a whole method, I use a descriptive name. If it is the content of a method (i.e. the body only, without the method's signature), I use "-> MethodName". This reminds me during the presentation that this is only the body, and that I need to insert that into an existing signature. This is the case, for instance, when I use Visual Studio to automatically generate the members of an interface’s implementation; then I only need to insert my snippet inside the generated method body. Saving the snippets This is the most important!! It happened to me a few times that VS10 lost its settings. When that happens, the snippets are lost too! Yeah that really sucks, especially (as it happened once) when this is the case about an hour before a talk… Stress and sweat follows, not good conditions to start a talk in front of an audience believe me. Thankfully, saving snippets is really easy with the following steps: Select the menu Tools, Import and Export Settings. Select Export selected environment settings and press Next. Uncheck All Settings. Then expand General Settings and select Toolbox (only!). Press Next. Select your source control folder and save under a meaningful name (for instance Snippets.vssettings). Commit to source control and push to the cloud. By the way, this also has the advantage of applying source control to the snippets file (which is an XML file), so you get history for free on that file! Reimporting the snippets If VS loses its settings and you need to reimport the snippets, this can be done super easily and very fast. Make sure that the Toolbox is empty. When you import snippets, they are merged with existing ones, they do not replace the content of the Toolbox. Unless merging is really what you want, make sure that your Toolbox is clean before you import, it is really easier. Select the menu Tools, Import and Export Settings. Select Import selected environment settings and press Next. Select No, just import new settings and press Next. Press Browse and select the Snippets.vssettings file. Press Finish. Et voila, all your snippets appear again in the Toolbox. Whew, the worst was averted and you can start your demo without sweating! (I had to do that once literally 5 minutes before the start of a demo, while my laptop was already hooked to the projector, and it went just fine). What about special tools? When using special tools (for example beta versions of tools you have an early access to), or a special configuration of your laptop, things can get tricky because you cannot really be sure that you will get a laptop with the same tools and the same configuration at the conference. To solve that, I use the following precautions: I make my demos from a Virtual Hard Disk. The great John Papa made a very easy-to-follow web page where he explains how to create a VHD and install Win7 to it. This gives you the full power of your laptop (as fast as booting from the metal). For me, I have a basic configuration that I saved on a USB harddrive (Win7 plus drivers, basic settings for desktop, folder options, taskbar etc) and Visual Studio 2010 SP1 on it. When preparing, I start by copying this "basis VHD" to my laptop. I install additional tools and configurations. I save the VHD back to the USB harddrive in a different folder. This would allow me to reinstall my demo environment quite fast, for example in case of harddrive failure. Replace the harddrive, copy the VHD to it, configure the BCD and you can start. Unfortunately this only works if the laptop itself still works. In the worst case of total failure, my security is to back all the installers up: The installers I use are synched on all my laptops and backed up to BackBlaze. If the worst happens and my laptop is absolutely broken, I can download the installer from BackBlaze and install on another laptop. This of course takes some time, and if that happens 5 minutes before a presentation, well… I don't have an answer to that, except of course crossing my fingers. Still, all that gives me additional security. Conclusion Remember folks, talking to an audience, large or small, will make you nervous. Just ask Scott Hanselman :) The goal here is to create the best possible conditions for you, and to create an environment where everything is saved and easy to restore, where everything is well known and provides you with additional confidence. The cooler you feel before the presentation (and during ;)), the better your presentation will be. Here too, the goal is to provide the best user experience you can have, which in turn will make it more enjoyable for your audience! Happy presenting :) Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• MacBook Pro Late 2009 SATA Resets, Slowness (Is my motherboard dying on both machines?)

  - by A Student at a University

  My MacBook Pro runs slower the longer it's on. I am getting kernel warnings. Some, but not all, resets correlate with AC power connects and disconnects. I don't think the warnings do. (How do I tell?) What are these errors? What causes them? Can this damage the drive or corrupt data? What is it seeing that motivates these? 02:37:16[ 0.791992] ahci 0000:00:0b.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LSI0] -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 20 02:37:16[ 0.792047] ahci 0000:00:0b.0: irq 43 for MSI/MSI-X 02:37:16[ 0.792053] ahci 0000:00:0b.0: controller can't do PMP, turning off CAP_PMP 02:37:16[ 0.792104] ahci 0000:00:0b.0: AHCI 0001.0200 32 slots 6 ports 1.5 Gbps 0x3 impl IDE mode 02:37:16[ 0.792107] ahci 0000:00:0b.0: flags: 64bit ncq sntf pm led pio slum part boh 02:37:16[ 0.792111] ahci 0000:00:0b.0: setting latency timer to 64 02:37:16[ 0.813473] scsi0 : ahci 02:37:16[ 0.823340] scsi1 : ahci 02:37:16[ 0.848164] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xe7484000 port 0xe7484100 irq 43 02:37:16[ 0.848166] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xe7484000 port 0xe7484180 irq 43 02:37:16[ 1.190132] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) 02:37:16[ 1.190153] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) 02:37:16[ 1.213568] ata1.00: ATA-8: OCZ-VERTEX2, 1.23, max UDMA/133 02:37:16[ 1.213572] ata1.00: 195371568 sectors, multi 1: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32) 02:37:16[ 1.227293] ata2.00: ATA-8: ST9500420ASG, 0002SDM1, max UDMA/133 02:37:16[ 1.227297] ata2.00: 976773168 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32) 02:37:16[ 1.229570] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:37:16[ 1.240120] ata2: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5850000 action 0xe frozen 02:37:16[ 1.240123] ata2: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:37:16[ 1.240127] ata2: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:37:16[ 1.240133] ata2: hard resetting link 02:37:16[ 1.260738] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:37:16[ 1.280111] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5850000 action 0xe frozen 02:37:16[ 1.280114] ata1: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:37:16[ 1.280118] ata1: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:37:16[ 1.280122] ata1: hard resetting link 02:37:16[ 1.990101] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) 02:37:16[ 1.994215] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:37:16[ 1.994220] ata2: EH complete 02:37:16[ 2.030097] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) 02:37:16[ 2.090773] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:37:16[ 2.090778] ata1: EH complete 02:37:16[ 2.090931] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA OCZ-VERTEX2 1.23 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 02:37:16[ 2.091045] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0 02:37:16[ 2.091121] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 195371568 512-byte logical blocks: (100 GB/93.1 GiB) 02:37:16[ 2.091159] scsi 1:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA ST9500420ASG 0002 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 02:37:16[ 2.091163] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off 02:37:16[ 2.091165] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00 02:37:16[ 2.091183] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA 02:37:16[ 2.091252] sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0 02:37:16[ 2.091446] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] 976773168 512-byte logical blocks: (500 GB/465 GiB) 02:37:16[ 2.091580] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off 02:37:16[ 2.091582] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00 02:37:16[ 2.091637] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA 02:37:16[ 2.093140] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk 02:37:16[ 2.093773] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk 02:37:16[ 2.693899] EXT4-fs (dm-0): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null) 02:37:16[ 5.483492] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro 02:37:16[ 7.905040] EXT4-fs (dm-2): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null) 02:37:25[ 19.553095] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=600 02:37:25[ 19.555266] EXT4-fs (dm-2): re-mounted. Opts: commit=600 02:37:25[ 19.641532] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5950000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:37:25[ 19.641532] ata1: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:37:25[ 19.641532] ata1: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:37:25[ 19.641533] ata1: hard resetting link 02:37:25[ 19.642076] ata2: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5950000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:37:25[ 19.642078] ata2: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:37:25[ 19.642081] ata2: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:37:25[ 19.642084] ata2: hard resetting link 02:37:26[ 20.392606] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) 02:37:26[ 20.392610] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) 02:37:26[ 20.396697] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:37:26[ 20.396703] ata2: EH complete 02:37:26[ 20.451491] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:37:26[ 20.451498] ata1: EH complete 02:37:30[ 24.563725] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=600 02:37:30[ 24.565939] EXT4-fs (dm-2): re-mounted. Opts: commit=600 02:37:30[ 24.627236] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5900000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:37:30[ 24.627240] ata1: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:37:30[ 24.627242] ata1: SError: { Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:37:30[ 24.627246] ata1: hard resetting link 02:37:30[ 24.632241] ata2: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5950000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:37:30[ 24.632244] ata2: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:37:30[ 24.632247] ata2: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:37:30[ 24.632250] ata2: hard resetting link 02:37:31[ 25.372582] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) 02:37:31[ 25.382615] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) 02:37:31[ 25.386782] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:37:31[ 25.386788] ata2: EH complete 02:37:31[ 25.431668] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:37:31[ 25.431674] ata1: EH complete 02:45:54[ 529.141844] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=0 02:45:55[ 529.544529] EXT4-fs (dm-2): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0 02:45:55[ 529.622561] ata1: limiting SATA link speed to 1.5 Gbps 02:45:55[ 529.622568] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5850000 action 0xe frozen 02:45:55[ 529.622572] ata1: irq_stat 0x00400040, connection status changed 02:45:55[ 529.622576] ata1: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:45:55[ 529.622583] ata1: hard resetting link 02:45:55[ 529.622609] ata2: limiting SATA link speed to 1.5 Gbps 02:45:55[ 529.622613] ata2: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5950000 action 0xe frozen 02:45:55[ 529.622616] ata2: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:45:55[ 529.622620] ata2: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:45:55[ 529.622624] ata2: hard resetting link 02:45:56[ 530.380135] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:45:56[ 530.380157] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:45:56[ 530.384305] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:45:56[ 530.384314] ata2: EH complete 02:45:56[ 530.399225] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:45:56[ 530.399233] ata1: EH complete 02:45:58[ 532.395990] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=600 02:45:58[ 532.518270] EXT4-fs (dm-2): re-mounted. Opts: commit=600 02:45:58[ 532.590968] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5840000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:45:58[ 532.590973] ata1: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:45:58[ 532.590977] ata1: SError: { CommWake LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:45:58[ 532.590983] ata1: hard resetting link 02:45:58[ 532.591034] ata2: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5950000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:45:58[ 532.591037] ata2: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:45:58[ 532.591041] ata2: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:45:58[ 532.591045] ata2: hard resetting link 02:45:59[ 533.340147] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:45:59[ 533.340168] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:45:59[ 533.344416] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:45:59[ 533.344424] ata2: EH complete 02:45:59[ 533.360839] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:45:59[ 533.360847] ata1: EH complete 02:45:59[ 533.584449] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=0 02:45:59[ 533.586999] EXT4-fs (dm-2): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0 02:45:59[ 533.660117] ata2: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5950000 action 0xe frozen 02:45:59[ 533.660122] ata2: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:45:59[ 533.660126] ata2: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:45:59[ 533.660132] ata2: hard resetting link 02:45:59[ 533.660141] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5850000 action 0xe frozen 02:45:59[ 533.660143] ata1: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:45:59[ 533.660147] ata1: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:45:59[ 533.660151] ata1: hard resetting link 02:46:00[ 534.412536] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:00[ 534.412562] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:00[ 534.416768] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:46:00[ 534.416777] ata2: EH complete 02:46:00[ 534.431396] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:46:00[ 534.431401] ata1: EH complete 02:46:03[ 537.384649] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=600 02:46:03[ 537.504214] EXT4-fs (dm-2): re-mounted. Opts: commit=600 02:46:03[ 537.585992] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5900000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:46:03[ 537.585996] ata1: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:46:03[ 537.585999] ata1: SError: { Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:46:03[ 537.586002] ata1: hard resetting link 02:46:03[ 537.586028] ata2: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5950000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:46:03[ 537.586030] ata2: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:46:03[ 537.586033] ata2: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:46:03[ 537.586036] ata2: hard resetting link 02:46:04[ 538.330147] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:04[ 538.330168] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:04[ 538.334389] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:46:04[ 538.334398] ata2: EH complete 02:46:04[ 538.343511] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:46:04[ 538.343519] ata1: EH complete 02:46:04[ 538.456413] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=0 02:46:04[ 538.459404] EXT4-fs (dm-2): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0 02:46:04[ 538.540138] ata1.00: limiting speed to UDMA/100:PIO4 02:46:04[ 538.540144] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5850000 action 0xe frozen 02:46:04[ 538.540148] ata1: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:46:04[ 538.540153] ata1: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:46:04[ 538.540159] ata1: hard resetting link 02:46:04[ 538.540202] ata2.00: limiting speed to UDMA/100:PIO4 02:46:04[ 538.540207] ata2: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5950000 action 0xe frozen 02:46:04[ 538.540211] ata2: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:46:04[ 538.540215] ata2: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:46:04[ 538.540220] ata2: hard resetting link 02:46:05[ 539.290054] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:05[ 539.290041] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:05[ 539.294100] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/100 02:46:05[ 539.294106] ata2: EH complete 02:46:05[ 539.314125] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/100 02:46:05[ 539.314132] ------------[ cut here ]------------ 02:46:05[ 539.314140] WARNING: at /build/buildd/linux-2.6.35/drivers/ata/libata-eh.c:3638 ata_eh_finish+0xdf/0xf0() 02:46:05[ 539.314144] Hardware name: MacBookPro5,3 02:46:05[ 539.314146] Modules linked in: michael_mic arc4 xt_multiport binfmt_misc rfcomm sco bnep l2cap parport_pc ppdev nvidia(P) ipt_REJECT xt_recent snd_hda_codec_cirrus xt_limit xt_tcpudp ipt_addrtype xt_state snd_hda_intel snd_hda_codec snd_hwdep snd_pcm snd_seq_midi applesmc led_class ip6table_filter lib80211_crypt_tkip snd_rawmidi snd_seq_midi_event ip6_tables input_polldev hid_apple snd_seq wl(P) snd_timer snd_seq_device snd joydev bcm5974 usbhid mbp_nvidia_bl uvcvideo btusb videodev v4l1_compat v4l2_compat_ioctl32 nf_nat_irc hid nf_conntrack_irc soundcore snd_page_alloc i2c_nforce2 coretemp lib80211 bluetooth nf_nat_ftp nf_nat nf_conntrack_ipv4 nf_defrag_ipv4 nf_conntrack_ftp nf_conntrack lp parport iptable_filter ip_tables x_tables usb_storage firewire_ohci firewire_core forcedeth crc_itu_t ahci libahci 02:46:05[ 539.314221] Pid: 202, comm: scsi_eh_0 Tainted: P 2.6.35-25-generic #44-Ubuntu 02:46:05[ 539.314224] Call Trace: 02:46:05[ 539.314233] [<ffffffff8106091f>] warn_slowpath_common+0x7f/0xc0 02:46:05[ 539.314237] [<ffffffff8106097a>] warn_slowpath_null+0x1a/0x20 02:46:05[ 539.314242] [<ffffffff813dc77f>] ata_eh_finish+0xdf/0xf0 02:46:05[ 539.314246] [<ffffffff813e441e>] sata_pmp_error_handler+0x2e/0x40 02:46:05[ 539.314256] [<ffffffffa00021bf>] ahci_error_handler+0x1f/0x90 [libahci] 02:46:05[ 539.314261] [<ffffffff813dd6d2>] ata_scsi_error+0x492/0x5e0 02:46:05[ 539.314266] [<ffffffff813b24cd>] scsi_error_handler+0x10d/0x190 02:46:05[ 539.314270] [<ffffffff813b23c0>] ? scsi_error_handler+0x0/0x190 02:46:05[ 539.314275] [<ffffffff8107f266>] kthread+0x96/0xa0 02:46:05[ 539.314280] [<ffffffff8100aee4>] kernel_thread_helper+0x4/0x10 02:46:05[ 539.314284] [<ffffffff8107f1d0>] ? kthread+0x0/0xa0 02:46:05[ 539.314288] [<ffffffff8100aee0>] ? kernel_thread_helper+0x0/0x10 02:46:05[ 539.314291] ---[ end trace 76dbffc2d5d49d9b ]--- 02:46:05[ 539.314296] ata1: EH complete 02:46:12[ 547.040091] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen 02:46:12[ 547.040098] ata1.00: failed command: IDENTIFY DEVICE 02:46:12[ 547.040106] ata1.00: cmd ec/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 0 pio 512 in 02:46:12[ 547.040108] res 40/00:01:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/e0 Emask 0x4 (timeout) 02:46:12[ 547.040111] ata1.00: status: { DRDY } 02:46:12[ 547.040117] ata1: hard resetting link 02:46:13[ 547.390144] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:13[ 547.408430] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/100 02:46:13[ 547.408438] ------------[ cut here ]------------ 02:46:13[ 547.408447] WARNING: at /build/buildd/linux-2.6.35/drivers/ata/libata-eh.c:3638 ata_eh_finish+0xdf/0xf0() 02:46:13[ 547.408451] Hardware name: MacBookPro5,3 02:46:13[ 547.408453] Modules linked in: michael_mic arc4 xt_multiport binfmt_misc rfcomm sco bnep l2cap parport_pc ppdev nvidia(P) ipt_REJECT xt_recent snd_hda_codec_cirrus xt_limit xt_tcpudp ipt_addrtype xt_state snd_hda_intel snd_hda_codec snd_hwdep snd_pcm snd_seq_midi applesmc led_class ip6table_filter lib80211_crypt_tkip snd_rawmidi snd_seq_midi_event ip6_tables input_polldev hid_apple snd_seq wl(P) snd_timer snd_seq_device snd joydev bcm5974 usbhid mbp_nvidia_bl uvcvideo btusb videodev v4l1_compat v4l2_compat_ioctl32 nf_nat_irc hid nf_conntrack_irc soundcore snd_page_alloc i2c_nforce2 coretemp lib80211 bluetooth nf_nat_ftp nf_nat nf_conntrack_ipv4 nf_defrag_ipv4 nf_conntrack_ftp nf_conntrack lp parport iptable_filter ip_tables x_tables usb_storage firewire_ohci firewire_core forcedeth crc_itu_t ahci libahci 02:46:13[ 547.408528] Pid: 202, comm: scsi_eh_0 Tainted: P W 2.6.35-25-generic #44-Ubuntu 02:46:13[ 547.408531] Call Trace: 02:46:13[ 547.408540] [<ffffffff8106091f>] warn_slowpath_common+0x7f/0xc0 02:46:13[ 547.408544] [<ffffffff8106097a>] warn_slowpath_null+0x1a/0x20 02:46:13[ 547.408549] [<ffffffff813dc77f>] ata_eh_finish+0xdf/0xf0 02:46:13[ 547.408553] [<ffffffff813e441e>] sata_pmp_error_handler+0x2e/0x40 02:46:13[ 547.408563] [<ffffffffa00021bf>] ahci_error_handler+0x1f/0x90 [libahci] 02:46:13[ 547.408567] [<ffffffff813dd6d2>] ata_scsi_error+0x492/0x5e0 02:46:13[ 547.408572] [<ffffffff813b24cd>] scsi_error_handler+0x10d/0x190 02:46:13[ 547.408577] [<ffffffff813b23c0>] ? scsi_error_handler+0x0/0x190 02:46:13[ 547.408582] [<ffffffff8107f266>] kthread+0x96/0xa0 02:46:13[ 547.408587] [<ffffffff8100aee4>] kernel_thread_helper+0x4/0x10 02:46:13[ 547.408591] [<ffffffff8107f1d0>] ? kthread+0x0/0xa0 02:46:13[ 547.408595] [<ffffffff8100aee0>] ? kernel_thread_helper+0x0/0x10 02:46:13[ 547.408598] ---[ end trace 76dbffc2d5d49d9c ]--- 02:46:13[ 547.408620] ata1: EH complete 02:46:13[ 547.562470] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=600 02:46:13[ 547.671380] EXT4-fs (dm-2): re-mounted. Opts: commit=600 02:46:13[ 547.738198] ata1.00: limiting speed to UDMA/33:PIO4 02:46:13[ 547.738204] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5800000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:46:13[ 547.738208] ata1: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:46:13[ 547.738212] ata1: SError: { LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:46:13[ 547.738218] ata1: hard resetting link 02:46:13[ 547.738262] ata2: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5900000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:46:13[ 547.738265] ata2: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:46:13[ 547.738269] ata2: SError: { Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:46:13[ 547.738274] ata2: hard resetting link 02:46:14[ 548.482561] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:14[ 548.484083] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:14[ 548.486809] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/100 02:46:14[ 548.486818] ata2: EH complete 02:46:14[ 548.498998] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/33 02:46:14[ 548.499004] ata1: EH complete 02:46:18[ 552.410499] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=600 02:46:18[ 552.522521] EXT4-fs (dm-2): re-mounted. Opts: commit=600 02:46:18[ 552.529674] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5800000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:46:18[ 552.529678] ata1: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:46:18[ 552.529680] ata1: SError: { LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:46:18[ 552.529684] ata1: hard resetting link 02:46:18[ 552.529716] ata2: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5800000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:46:18[ 552.529718] ata2: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:46:18[ 552.529720] ata2: SError: { LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:46:18[ 552.529723] ata2: hard resetting link 02:46:19[ 553.280059] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:19[ 553.280068] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:19[ 553.284141] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/100 02:46:19[ 553.284150] ata2: EH complete 02:46:19[ 553.301629] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/33 02:46:19[ 553.301637] ata1: EH complete

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• Creating a new instance, C#

  - by Dave Voyles

  This sounds like a very n00b question, but bear with me here: I'm trying to access the position of my bat (paddle) in my pong game and use it in my ball class. I'm doing this because I want a particle effect to go off at the point of contact where the ball hits the bat. Each time the ball hits the bat, I receive an error stating that I haven't created an instance of the bat. I understand that I have to (or can use a static class), but I'm not sure of how to do so in this example. I've included both my Bat and Ball classes. namespace Pong { #region Using Statements using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; #endregion public class Ball { #region Fields private readonly Random rand; private readonly Texture2D texture; private readonly SoundEffect warp; private double direction; private bool isVisible; private float moveSpeed; private Vector2 position; private Vector2 resetPos; private Rectangle size; private float speed; private bool isResetting; private bool collided; private Vector2 oldPos; private ParticleEngine particleEngine; private ContentManager contentManager; private SpriteBatch spriteBatch; private bool hasHitBat; private AIBat aiBat; private Bat bat; #endregion #region Constructors and Destructors /// <summary> /// Constructor for the ball /// </summary> public Ball(ContentManager contentManager, Vector2 ScreenSize) { moveSpeed = 15f; speed = 0; texture = contentManager.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/balls/redBall"); direction = 0; size = new Rectangle(0, 0, texture.Width, texture.Height); resetPos = new Vector2(ScreenSize.X / 2, ScreenSize.Y / 2); position = resetPos; rand = new Random(); isVisible = true; hasHitBat = false; // Everything to do with particles List<Texture2D> textures = new List<Texture2D>(); textures.Add(contentManager.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/particle/circle")); textures.Add(contentManager.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/particle/star")); textures.Add(contentManager.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/particle/diamond")); particleEngine = new ParticleEngine(textures, new Vector2()); } #endregion #region Public Methods and Operators /// <summary> /// Checks for the collision between the bat and the ball. Sends ball in the appropriate /// direction /// </summary> public void BatHit(int block) { if (direction > Math.PI * 1.5f || direction < Math.PI * 0.5f) { hasHitBat = true; particleEngine.EmitterLocation = new Vector2(aiBat.Position.X, aiBat.Position.Y); switch (block) { case 1: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(200); break; case 2: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(195); break; case 3: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(180); break; case 4: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(180); break; case 5: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(165); break; } } else { hasHitBat = true; particleEngine.EmitterLocation = new Vector2(bat.Position.X, bat.Position.Y); switch (block) { case 1: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(310); break; case 2: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(345); break; case 3: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(0); break; case 4: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(15); break; case 5: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(50); break; } } if (rand.Next(2) == 0) { direction += MathHelper.ToRadians(rand.Next(3)); } else { direction -= MathHelper.ToRadians(rand.Next(3)); } AudioManager.Instance.PlaySoundEffect("hit"); } /// <summary> /// JEP - added method to slow down ball after powerup deactivates /// </summary> public void DecreaseSpeed() { moveSpeed -= 0.6f; } /// <summary> /// Draws the ball on the screen /// </summary> public void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { if (isVisible) { spriteBatch.Begin(); spriteBatch.Draw(texture, size, Color.White); spriteBatch.End(); // Draws sprites for particles when contact is made particleEngine.Draw(spriteBatch); } } /// <summary> /// Checks for the current direction of the ball /// </summary> public double GetDirection() { return direction; } /// <summary> /// Checks for the current position of the ball /// </summary> public Vector2 GetPosition() { return position; } /// <summary> /// Checks for the current size of the ball (for the powerups) /// </summary> public Rectangle GetSize() { return size; } /// <summary> /// Grows the size of the ball when the GrowBall powerup is used. /// </summary> public void GrowBall() { size = new Rectangle(0, 0, texture.Width * 2, texture.Height * 2); } /// <summary> /// Was used to increased the speed of the ball after each point is scored. /// No longer used, but am considering implementing again. /// </summary> public void IncreaseSpeed() { moveSpeed += 0.6f; } /// <summary> /// Check for the ball to return normal size after the Powerup has expired /// </summary> public void NormalBallSize() { size = new Rectangle(0, 0, texture.Width, texture.Height); } /// <summary> /// Check for the ball to return normal speed after the Powerup has expired /// </summary> public void NormalSpeed() { moveSpeed += 15f; } /// <summary> /// Checks to see if ball went out of bounds, and triggers warp sfx /// </summary> public void OutOfBounds() { // Checks if the player is still alive or not if (isResetting) { AudioManager.Instance.PlaySoundEffect("warp"); { // Used to stop the the issue where the ball hit sfx kept going off when detecting collison isResetting = false; AudioManager.Instance.Dispose(); } } } /// <summary> /// Speed for the ball when Speedball powerup is activated /// </summary> public void PowerupSpeed() { moveSpeed += 20.0f; } /// <summary> /// Check for where to reset the ball after each point is scored /// </summary> public void Reset(bool left) { if (left) { direction = 0; } else { direction = Math.PI; } // Used to stop the the issue where the ball hit sfx kept going off when detecting collison isResetting = true; position = resetPos; // Resets the ball to the center of the screen isVisible = true; speed = 15f; // Returns the ball back to the default speed, in case the speedBall was active if (rand.Next(2) == 0) { direction += MathHelper.ToRadians(rand.Next(30)); } else { direction -= MathHelper.ToRadians(rand.Next(30)); } } /// <summary> /// Shrinks the ball when the ShrinkBall powerup is activated /// </summary> public void ShrinkBall() { size = new Rectangle(0, 0, texture.Width / 2, texture.Height / 2); } /// <summary> /// Stops the ball each time it is reset. Ex: Between points / rounds /// </summary> public void Stop() { isVisible = true; speed = 0; } /// <summary> /// Updates position of the ball /// </summary> public void UpdatePosition() { size.X = (int)position.X; size.Y = (int)position.Y; oldPos.X = position.X; oldPos.Y = position.Y; position.X += speed * (float)Math.Cos(direction); position.Y += speed * (float)Math.Sin(direction); bool collided = CheckWallHit(); particleEngine.Update(); // Stops the issue where ball was oscillating on the ceiling or floor if (collided) { position.X = oldPos.X + speed * (float)Math.Cos(direction); position.Y = oldPos.Y + speed * (float)Math.Sin(direction); } } #endregion #region Methods /// <summary> /// Checks for collision with the ceiling or floor. 2*Math.pi = 360 degrees /// </summary> private bool CheckWallHit() { while (direction > 2 * Math.PI) { direction -= 2 * Math.PI; return true; } while (direction < 0) { direction += 2 * Math.PI; return true; } if (position.Y <= 0 || (position.Y > resetPos.Y * 2 - size.Height)) { direction = 2 * Math.PI - direction; return true; } return true; } #endregion } } namespace Pong { using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using System; public class Bat { public Vector2 Position; public float moveSpeed; public Rectangle size; private int points; private int yHeight; private Texture2D leftBat; public float turbo; public float recharge; public float interval; public bool isTurbo; /// <summary> /// Constructor for the bat /// </summary> public Bat(ContentManager contentManager, Vector2 screenSize, bool side) { moveSpeed = 7f; turbo = 15f; recharge = 100f; points = 0; interval = 5f; leftBat = contentManager.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/bats/batGrey"); size = new Rectangle(0, 0, leftBat.Width, leftBat.Height); // True means left bat, false means right bat. if (side) Position = new Vector2(30, screenSize.Y / 2 - size.Height / 2); else Position = new Vector2(screenSize.X - 30, screenSize.Y / 2 - size.Height / 2); yHeight = (int)screenSize.Y; } public void IncreaseSpeed() { moveSpeed += .5f; } /// <summary> /// The speed of the bat when Turbo is activated /// </summary> public void Turbo() { moveSpeed += 8.0f; } /// <summary> /// Returns the speed of the bat back to normal after Turbo is deactivated /// </summary> public void DisableTurbo() { moveSpeed = 7.0f; isTurbo = false; } /// <summary> /// Returns the bat to the nrmal size after the Grow/Shrink powerup has expired /// </summary> public void NormalSize() { size = new Rectangle(0, 0, leftBat.Width, leftBat.Height); } /// <summary> /// Checks for the size of the bat /// </summary> public Rectangle GetSize() { return size; } /// <summary> /// Adds point to the player or the AI after scoring. Currently Disabled. /// </summary> public void IncrementPoints() { points++; } /// <summary> /// Checks for the number of points at the moment /// </summary> public int GetPoints() { return points; } /// <summary> /// Sets thedefault starting position for the bats /// </summary> /// <param name="position"></param> public void SetPosition(Vector2 position) { if (position.Y < 0) { position.Y = 0; } if (position.Y > yHeight - size.Height) { position.Y = yHeight - size.Height; } this.Position = position; } /// <summary> /// Checks for the current position of the bat /// </summary> public Vector2 GetPosition() { return Position; } /// <summary> /// Controls the bat moving up the screen /// </summary> public void MoveUp() { SetPosition(Position + new Vector2(0, -moveSpeed)); } /// <summary> /// Controls the bat moving down the screen /// </summary> public void MoveDown() { SetPosition(Position + new Vector2(0, moveSpeed)); } /// <summary> /// Updates the position of the AI bat, in order to track the ball /// </summary> /// <param name="ball"></param> public virtual void UpdatePosition(Ball ball) { size.X = (int)Position.X; size.Y = (int)Position.Y; } /// <summary> /// Resets the bat to the center location after a new game starts /// </summary> public void ResetPosition() { SetPosition(new Vector2(GetPosition().X, yHeight / 2 - size.Height)); } /// <summary> /// Used for the Growbat powerup /// </summary> public void GrowBat() { // Doubles the size of the bat collision size = new Rectangle(0, 0, leftBat.Width * 2, leftBat.Height * 2); } /// <summary> /// Used for the Shrinkbat powerup /// </summary> public void ShrinkBat() { // 1/2 the size of the bat collision size = new Rectangle(0, 0, leftBat.Width / 2, leftBat.Height / 2); } /// <summary> /// Draws the bats /// </summary> public virtual void Draw(SpriteBatch batch) { batch.Draw(leftBat, size, Color.White); } } }

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• Project Management Helps AmeriCares Deliver International Aid

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  Excerpt from PROFIT - ORACLE - by Alison Weiss Handle with Care Sound project management helps AmeriCares bring international aid to those in need. The stakes are always high for AmeriCares. On a mission to restore health and save lives during times of disaster, the nonprofit international relief and humanitarian aid organization delivers donated medicines, medical supplies, and humanitarian aid to people in the U.S. and around the globe. Founded in 1982 with the express mission of responding as quickly and efficiently as possible to help people in need, the Stamford, Connecticut-based AmeriCares has delivered more than US$10.5 billion in aid to 147 countries over the past three decades. Launch the Slideshow “It’s critically important to us that we steward all the donations and that the medical supplies and medicines get to people as quickly as possible with no loss,” says Kate Sears, senior vice president for finance and technology at AmeriCares. “Whether we’re shipping IV solutions to victims of cholera in Haiti or antibiotics to Somali famine victims, we need to get the medicines there sooner because it means more people will be helped and lives improved or even saved.” Ten years ago, the tracking systems used by AmeriCares associates were paper-based. In recent years, staff started using spreadsheets, but the tracking processes were not standardized between teams. “Every team was tracking completely different information,” says Megan McDermott, senior associate, Sub-Saharan Africa partnerships, at AmeriCares. “It was just a few key things. For example, we tracked the date a shipment was supposed to arrive and the date we got reports from our partner that a hospital received aid on their end.” While the data was accurate, much detail was being lost in the process. AmeriCares management knew it could do a better job of tracking this enterprise data and in 2011 took a significant step by implementing Oracle’s Primavera P6 Professional Project Management. “It’s a comprehensive solution that has helped us improve the monitoring and controlling processes. It has allowed us to do our distribution better,” says Sears. In addition, the implementation effort has been a change agent, helping AmeriCares leadership rethink project management across the entire organization. Initially, much of the focus was on standardizing processes, but staff members also learned the importance of thinking proactively to prevent possible problems and evaluating results to determine if goals and objectives are truly being met. Such data about process efficiency and overall results is critical not only to AmeriCares staff but also to the donors supporting the organization’s life-saving missions. Efficiency Saves Lives One of AmeriCares’ core operations is to gather product donations from the private sector, establish where the most-urgent needs are, and solicit monetary support to send the aid via ocean cargo or airlift to welfare- and health-oriented nongovernmental organizations, hospitals, health networks, and government ministries based in areas in need. In 2011 alone, AmeriCares sent more than 3,500 shipments to 95 countries in response to both ongoing humanitarian needs and more than two dozen emergencies, including deadly tornadoes and storms in the U.S. and the devastating tsunami in Japan. When it comes to nonprofits in general, donors want to know that the charitable organizations they support are using funds wisely. Typically, nonprofits are evaluated by donors in terms of efficiency, an area where AmeriCares has an excellent reputation: 98 percent of expenses go directly to supporting programs and less than 2 percent represent administrative and fundraising costs. Donors, however, should look at more than simple efficiency, says Peter York, senior partner and chief research and learning officer at TCC Group, a nonprofit consultancy headquartered in New York, New York. They should also look at whether organizations have the systems in place to sustain their missions and continue to thrive. An expert on nonprofit organizational management, York has spent years studying sustainable charitable organizations. He defines them as nonprofits that are able to achieve the ongoing financial support to stay relevant and continue doing core mission work. In his analysis of well over 2,500 larger nonprofits, York has found that many are not sustaining, and are actually scaling back in size. “One of the biggest challenges of nonprofit sustainability is the general public’s perception that every dollar donated has to go only to the delivery of service,” says York. “What our data shows is that there are some fundamental capacities that have to be there in order for organizations to sustain and grow.” York’s research highlights the importance of data-driven leadership at successful nonprofits. “You’ve got to have the tools, the systems, and the technologies to get objective information on what you do, the people you serve, and the results you’re achieving,” says York. “If leaders don’t have the knowledge and the data, they can’t make the strategic decisions about programs to take organizations to the next level.” Historically, AmeriCares associates have used time-tested and cost-effective strategies to ship and then track supplies from donation to delivery to their destinations in designated time frames. When disaster strikes, AmeriCares ships by air and generally pulls out all the stops to deliver the most urgently needed aid within the first few days and weeks. Then, as situations stabilize, AmeriCares turns to delivering sea containers for the postemergency and ongoing aid so often needed over the long term. According to McDermott, getting a shipment out the door is fairly complicated, requiring as many as five different AmeriCares teams collaborating together. The entire process can take months—from when products are received in the warehouse and deciding which recipients to allocate supplies to, to getting customs and governmental approvals in place, actually shipping products, and finally ensuring that the products are received in-country. Delivering that aid is no small affair. “Our volume exceeds half a billion dollars a year worth of donated medicines and medical supplies, so it’s a sizable logistical operation to bring these products in and get them out to the right place quickly to have the most impact,” says Sears. “We really pride ourselves on our controls and efficiencies.” Adding to that complexity is the fact that the longer it takes to deliver aid, the more dire the human need can be. Any time AmeriCares associates can shave off the complicated aid delivery process can translate into lives saved. “It’s really being able to track information consistently that will help us to see where are the bottlenecks and where can we work on improving our processes,” says McDermott. Setting a Standard Productivity and information management improvements were key objectives for AmeriCares when staff began the process of implementing Oracle’s Primavera solution. But before configuring the software, the staff needed to take the time to analyze the systems already in place. According to Greg Loop, manager of database systems at AmeriCares, the organization received guidance from several consultants, including Rich D’Addario, consulting project manager in the Primavera Global Business Unit at Oracle, who was instrumental in shepherding the critical requirements-gathering phase. D’Addario encouraged staff to begin documenting shipping processes by considering the order in which activities occur and which ones are dependent on others to get accomplished. This exercise helped everyone realize that to be more efficient, they needed to keep track of shipments in a more standard way. “The staff didn’t recognize formal project management methodology,” says D’Addario. “But they did understand what the most important things are and that if they go wrong, an entire project can go off course.” Before, if a boatload of supplies was being sent to Haiti and there was a problem somewhere, a lot of time was taken up finding out where the problem was—because staff was not tracking things in a standard way. As a result, even more time was needed to find possible solutions to the problem and alert recipients that the aid might be delayed. “For everyone to put on the project manager hat and standardize the way every single thing is done means that now the whole organization is on the same page as to what needs to occur from the time a hurricane hits Haiti and when a boat pulls in to unload supplies,” says D’Addario. With so much care taken to put a process foundation firmly in place, configuring the Primavera solution was actually quite simple. Specific templates were set up for different types of shipments, and dashboards were implemented to provide executives with clear overviews of every project in the system. AmeriCares’ Loop reports that system planning, refining, and testing, followed by writing up documentation and training, took approximately four months. The system went live in spring 2011 at AmeriCares’ Connecticut headquarters. While the nonprofit has an international presence, with warehouses in Europe and offices in Haiti, India, Japan, and Sri Lanka, most donated medicines come from U.S. entities and are shipped from the U.S. out to the rest of the world. In addition, all shipments are tracked from the U.S. office. AmeriCares doesn’t expect the Primavera system to take months off the shipping time, especially for sea containers. However, any time saved is still important because it will allow aid to be delivered to people more quickly at a lower overall cost. “If we can trim a day or two here or there, that can translate into lives that we’re saving, especially in emergency situations,” says Sears. A Cultural Change Beyond the measurable benefits that come with IT-driven process improvement, AmeriCares management is seeing a change in culture as a result of the Primavera project. One change has been treating every shipment of aid as a project, and everyone involved with facilitating shipments as a project manager. “This is a revolutionary concept for us,” says McDermott. “Before, we were used to thinking we were doing logistics—getting a container from point A to point B without looking at it as one project and really understanding what it meant to manage it.” AmeriCares staff is also happy to report that collaboration within the organization is much more efficient. When someone creates a shipment in the Primavera system, the same shared template is used, which means anyone can log in to the system to see the status of a shipment. Knowledgeable staff can access a shipment project to help troubleshoot a problem. Management can easily check the status of projects across the organization. “Dashboards are really useful,” says McDermott. “Instead of going into the details of each project, you can just see the high-level real-time information at a glance.” The new system is helping team members focus on proactively managing shipments rather than simply reacting when problems occur. For example, when a container is shipped, documents must be included for customs clearance. Now, the shipping template has built-in reminders to prompt team members to ask for copies of these documents from freight forwarders and to follow up with partners to discover if a shipment is on time. In the past, staff may not have worked on securing these documents until they’d been notified a shipment had arrived in-country. Another benefit of capturing and adopting best practices within the Primavera system is that staff training is easier. “Capturing the processes in documented steps and milestones allows us to teach new staff members how to do their jobs faster,” says Sears. “It provides them with the knowledge of their predecessors so they don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel.” With the Primavera system already generating positive results, management is eager to take advantage of advanced capabilities. Loop is working on integrating the company’s proprietary inventory management system with the Primavera system so that when logistics or warehousing operators input data, the information will automatically go into the Primavera system. In the past, this information had to be manually keyed into spreadsheets, often leading to errors. Mining Historical Data Another feature on the horizon for AmeriCares is utilizing Primavera P6 Professional Project Management reporting capabilities. As the system begins to include more historical data, management soon will be able to draw on this information to conduct analysis that has not been possible before and create customized reports. For example, at the beginning of the shipment process, staff will be able to use historical data to more accurately estimate how long the approval process should take for a particular country. This could help ensure that food and medicine with limited shelf lives do not get stuck in customs or used beyond their expiration dates. The historical data in the Primavera system will also help AmeriCares with better planning year to year. The nonprofit’s staff has always put together a plan at the beginning of the year, but this has been very challenging simply because it is impossible to predict disasters. Now, management will be able to look at historical data and see trends and statistics as they set current objectives and prepare for future need. In addition, this historical data will provide AmeriCares management with the ability to review year-end data and compare actual project results with goals set at the beginning of the year—to see if desired outcomes were achieved and if there are areas that need improvement. It’s this type of information that is so valuable to donors. And, according to York, project management software can play a critical role in generating the data to help nonprofits sustain and grow. “It is important to invest in systems to help replicate, expand, and deliver services,” says York. “Project management software can help because it encourages nonprofits to examine program or service changes and how to manage moving forward.” Sears believes that AmeriCares donors will support the return on investment the organization will achieve with the Primavera solution. “It won’t be financial returns, but rather how many more people we can help for a given dollar or how much more quickly we can respond to a need,” says Sears. “I think donors are receptive to such arguments.” And for AmeriCares, it is all about the future and increasing results. The project management environment currently may be quite simple, but IT staff plans to expand the complexity and functionality as the organization grows in its knowledge of project management and the goals it wants to achieve. “As we use the system over time, we’ll continue to refine our best practices and accumulate more data,” says Sears. “It will advance our ability to make better data-driven decisions.”

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• jQuery toggle fucntion not working as expected

  - by Bunny Rabbit

  <!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> $(function(){ $('div#menu div') .bind('mouseover',function(event){ popHelp(this); }) .bind('mouseout',function(event){ clearHelp(); }) .toggle( function(event){$('#menu div a').not(this).css('opacity',1);$(event.target).css('opacity',0.4)}, function(event){$(event.target).css('opacity',1)} ) $('div.item').not('#mainPage') .hide() $('#customerManagement').click(function(event){ $('.item').hide('slow'); $('#customerManagementCon').toggle('slow'); return false; }) $('#userManagement').click(function(){ $('.item').hide('slow'); $('#userManagementCon').toggle('slow'); return false; }) $('#storageManagement').click(function(){ $('.item').hide('slow'); $('#storageManagementCon').toggle('slow'); return false; }) $('#searchManagement').click(function(){ $('.item').hide('slow'); $('#searchManagementCon').toggle('slow'); return false; }) $('#signOff').click(function(){ $('.item').hide('slow'); $('#signOffCon').toggle('slow'); return false; }) } ); function popHelp(ref){ var text; if(ref.id=="customerManagement") text="click here for customer management"; else if(ref.id=="userManagement") text="click here for user management"; else if(ref.id=="storageManagement") text="click here for storage management"; else if(ref.id=="searchManagement") text="search management"; else if(ref.id=="signOff") text="click here to sign off"; $('#helpConsole').append('<div class="help">'+text+'<div>'); } function clearHelp(){ $('#helpConsole > div').remove(); } </script> <style type="text/css" > #helpConsole { background-color:Aqua; margin-left:500px; width:300px; height:100px; outline-width:medium; } </style> </head> <body> <div id="menu"> <table border="2"> <thead> <tr> <th colspan="5">Welcome $Employee Name</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td><div id="customerManagement" class="menuItem"><a>Customer Management</a></div></td> <td><div id="userManagement" class="menuItem"><a>User Management</a></div></td> <td><div id="storageManagement" class="menuItem"><a>Storage Management</a></div></td> <td><div id="searchManagement" class="menuItem"><a>Search Management</a></div></td> <td><div id="signOff" class="menuItem"><a>Sign Off</a></div></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> <div id="helpConsole"><h3>help</h3></div> <div id="mainPage" class="item"><h1>Storage Service</h1></div> <div id="customerManagementCon" class="item"> <h3>Customer Management</h3> </div> <div id="userManagementCon" class="item"> <h3>User Management</h3> </div> <div id="storageManagementCon" class="item"> <h3>Storage Management</h3> </div> <div id="searchManagementCon" class="item"> <h3>Search Mangement</h3> </div> <div id="signOffCon" class="item"> <h3>Sign Off</h3> </div> <div id="menuItemCon" class="item">menuItem</div> </body> The toggle function in this code is not working as expected though it shows the #menu items when clicked it doesn't hide them always .

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• JPanel Layout Image Cutoff

  - by Trizicus

  I am adding images to a JPanel but the images are getting cut off. I was originally trying BorderLayout but that only worked for one image and adding others added image cut-off. So I switched to other layouts and the best and closest I could get was BoxLayout however that adds a very large cut-off which is not acceptable either. So basically; How can I add images (from a custom JComponent) to a custom JPanel without bad effects such as the one present in the code. Custom JPanel: import java.awt.Color; import java.awt.Graphics; import java.awt.Graphics2D; import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.awt.event.ActionListener; import java.awt.event.MouseEvent; import java.awt.event.MouseListener; import javax.swing.BoxLayout; import javax.swing.JPanel; import javax.swing.Timer; public class GraphicsPanel extends JPanel implements MouseListener { private Entity test; private Timer timer; private long startTime = 0; private int numFrames = 0; private float fps = 0.0f; GraphicsPanel() { test = new Entity("test.png"); Thread t1 = new Thread(test); t1.start(); Entity ent2 = new Entity("images.jpg"); ent2.setX(150); ent2.setY(150); Thread t2 = new Thread(ent2); t2.start(); Entity ent3 = new Entity("test.png"); ent3.setX(0); ent3.setY(150); Thread t3 = new Thread(ent3); t3.start(); //ESSENTIAL setLayout(new BoxLayout(this, BoxLayout.X_AXIS)); add(test); add(ent2); add(ent3); //GAMELOOP timer = new Timer(30, new Gameloop(this)); timer.start(); addMouseListener(this); } @Override public void paintComponent(Graphics g) { super.paintComponent(g); Graphics2D g2 = (Graphics2D) g.create(); g2.setClip(0, 0, getWidth(), getHeight()); g2.setColor(Color.BLACK); g2.drawString("FPS: " + fps, 1, 15); } public void getFPS() { ++numFrames; if (startTime == 0) { startTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); } else { long currentTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); long delta = (currentTime - startTime); if (delta > 1000) { fps = (numFrames * 1000) / delta; numFrames = 0; startTime = currentTime; } } } public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) {} public void mousePressed(MouseEvent e) {} public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent e) {} public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent e) { } public void mouseExited(MouseEvent e) { } class Gameloop implements ActionListener { private GraphicsPanel gp; Gameloop(GraphicsPanel gp) { this.gp = gp; } public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) { try { gp.getFPS(); gp.repaint(); } catch (Exception ez) { } } } } Main class: import java.awt.EventQueue; import javax.swing.JFrame; public class MainWindow { public static void main(String[] args) { new MainWindow(); } private JFrame frame; private GraphicsPanel gp = new GraphicsPanel(); MainWindow() { EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() { public void run() { frame = new JFrame("Graphics Practice"); frame.setSize(680, 420); frame.setVisible(true); frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); frame.add(gp); } }); } } Custom JComponent import java.awt.Color; import java.awt.Dimension; import java.awt.Graphics; import java.awt.Graphics2D; import java.awt.image.BufferedImage; import javax.imageio.ImageIO; import javax.swing.JComponent; public class Entity extends JComponent implements Runnable { private BufferedImage bImg; private int x = 0; private int y = 0; private int entityWidth, entityHeight; private String filename; Entity(String filename) { this.filename = filename; } public void run() { bImg = loadBImage(filename); entityWidth = bImg.getWidth(); entityHeight = bImg.getHeight(); setPreferredSize(new Dimension(entityWidth, entityHeight)); } @Override public void paintComponent(Graphics g) { super.paintComponent(g); Graphics2D g2d = (Graphics2D) g.create(); g2d.drawImage(bImg, x, y, null); g2d.dispose(); } public BufferedImage loadBImage(String filename) { try { bImg = ImageIO.read(getClass().getResource(filename)); } catch (Exception e) { } return bImg; } public int getEntityWidth() { return entityWidth; } public int getEntityHeight() { return entityHeight; } public int getX() { return x; } public int getY() { return y; } public void setX(int x) { this.x = x; } public void setY(int y) { this.y = y; } }

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• MacBook Pro Late 2009 SATA Resets, Slowness (Is my motherboard dying on both machines?)

  - by A Student at a University

  My MacBook Pro runs slower the longer it's on. I am getting kernel warnings. Some, but not all, resets correlate with AC power connects and disconnects. I don't think the warnings do. (How do I tell?) What are these errors? What causes them? Can this damage the drive or corrupt data? What is it seeing that motivates these? 02:37:16[ 0.791992] ahci 0000:00:0b.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LSI0] -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 20 02:37:16[ 0.792047] ahci 0000:00:0b.0: irq 43 for MSI/MSI-X 02:37:16[ 0.792053] ahci 0000:00:0b.0: controller can't do PMP, turning off CAP_PMP 02:37:16[ 0.792104] ahci 0000:00:0b.0: AHCI 0001.0200 32 slots 6 ports 1.5 Gbps 0x3 impl IDE mode 02:37:16[ 0.792107] ahci 0000:00:0b.0: flags: 64bit ncq sntf pm led pio slum part boh 02:37:16[ 0.792111] ahci 0000:00:0b.0: setting latency timer to 64 02:37:16[ 0.813473] scsi0 : ahci 02:37:16[ 0.823340] scsi1 : ahci 02:37:16[ 0.848164] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xe7484000 port 0xe7484100 irq 43 02:37:16[ 0.848166] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xe7484000 port 0xe7484180 irq 43 02:37:16[ 1.190132] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) 02:37:16[ 1.190153] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) 02:37:16[ 1.213568] ata1.00: ATA-8: OCZ-VERTEX2, 1.23, max UDMA/133 02:37:16[ 1.213572] ata1.00: 195371568 sectors, multi 1: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32) 02:37:16[ 1.227293] ata2.00: ATA-8: ST9500420ASG, 0002SDM1, max UDMA/133 02:37:16[ 1.227297] ata2.00: 976773168 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32) 02:37:16[ 1.229570] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:37:16[ 1.240120] ata2: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5850000 action 0xe frozen 02:37:16[ 1.240123] ata2: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:37:16[ 1.240127] ata2: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:37:16[ 1.240133] ata2: hard resetting link 02:37:16[ 1.260738] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:37:16[ 1.280111] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5850000 action 0xe frozen 02:37:16[ 1.280114] ata1: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:37:16[ 1.280118] ata1: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:37:16[ 1.280122] ata1: hard resetting link 02:37:16[ 1.990101] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) 02:37:16[ 1.994215] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:37:16[ 1.994220] ata2: EH complete 02:37:16[ 2.030097] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) 02:37:16[ 2.090773] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:37:16[ 2.090778] ata1: EH complete 02:37:16[ 2.090931] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA OCZ-VERTEX2 1.23 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 02:37:16[ 2.091045] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0 02:37:16[ 2.091121] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 195371568 512-byte logical blocks: (100 GB/93.1 GiB) 02:37:16[ 2.091159] scsi 1:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA ST9500420ASG 0002 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 02:37:16[ 2.091163] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off 02:37:16[ 2.091165] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00 02:37:16[ 2.091183] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA 02:37:16[ 2.091252] sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0 02:37:16[ 2.091446] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] 976773168 512-byte logical blocks: (500 GB/465 GiB) 02:37:16[ 2.091580] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off 02:37:16[ 2.091582] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00 02:37:16[ 2.091637] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA 02:37:16[ 2.093140] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk 02:37:16[ 2.093773] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk 02:37:16[ 2.693899] EXT4-fs (dm-0): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null) 02:37:16[ 5.483492] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro 02:37:16[ 7.905040] EXT4-fs (dm-2): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null) 02:37:25[ 19.553095] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=600 02:37:25[ 19.555266] EXT4-fs (dm-2): re-mounted. Opts: commit=600 02:37:25[ 19.641532] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5950000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:37:25[ 19.641532] ata1: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:37:25[ 19.641532] ata1: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:37:25[ 19.641533] ata1: hard resetting link 02:37:25[ 19.642076] ata2: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5950000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:37:25[ 19.642078] ata2: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:37:25[ 19.642081] ata2: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:37:25[ 19.642084] ata2: hard resetting link 02:37:26[ 20.392606] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) 02:37:26[ 20.392610] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) 02:37:26[ 20.396697] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:37:26[ 20.396703] ata2: EH complete 02:37:26[ 20.451491] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:37:26[ 20.451498] ata1: EH complete 02:37:30[ 24.563725] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=600 02:37:30[ 24.565939] EXT4-fs (dm-2): re-mounted. Opts: commit=600 02:37:30[ 24.627236] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5900000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:37:30[ 24.627240] ata1: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:37:30[ 24.627242] ata1: SError: { Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:37:30[ 24.627246] ata1: hard resetting link 02:37:30[ 24.632241] ata2: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5950000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:37:30[ 24.632244] ata2: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:37:30[ 24.632247] ata2: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:37:30[ 24.632250] ata2: hard resetting link 02:37:31[ 25.372582] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) 02:37:31[ 25.382615] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) 02:37:31[ 25.386782] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:37:31[ 25.386788] ata2: EH complete 02:37:31[ 25.431668] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:37:31[ 25.431674] ata1: EH complete 02:45:54[ 529.141844] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=0 02:45:55[ 529.544529] EXT4-fs (dm-2): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0 02:45:55[ 529.622561] ata1: limiting SATA link speed to 1.5 Gbps 02:45:55[ 529.622568] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5850000 action 0xe frozen 02:45:55[ 529.622572] ata1: irq_stat 0x00400040, connection status changed 02:45:55[ 529.622576] ata1: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:45:55[ 529.622583] ata1: hard resetting link 02:45:55[ 529.622609] ata2: limiting SATA link speed to 1.5 Gbps 02:45:55[ 529.622613] ata2: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5950000 action 0xe frozen 02:45:55[ 529.622616] ata2: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:45:55[ 529.622620] ata2: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:45:55[ 529.622624] ata2: hard resetting link 02:45:56[ 530.380135] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:45:56[ 530.380157] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:45:56[ 530.384305] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:45:56[ 530.384314] ata2: EH complete 02:45:56[ 530.399225] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:45:56[ 530.399233] ata1: EH complete 02:45:58[ 532.395990] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=600 02:45:58[ 532.518270] EXT4-fs (dm-2): re-mounted. Opts: commit=600 02:45:58[ 532.590968] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5840000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:45:58[ 532.590973] ata1: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:45:58[ 532.590977] ata1: SError: { CommWake LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:45:58[ 532.590983] ata1: hard resetting link 02:45:58[ 532.591034] ata2: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5950000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:45:58[ 532.591037] ata2: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:45:58[ 532.591041] ata2: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:45:58[ 532.591045] ata2: hard resetting link 02:45:59[ 533.340147] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:45:59[ 533.340168] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:45:59[ 533.344416] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:45:59[ 533.344424] ata2: EH complete 02:45:59[ 533.360839] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:45:59[ 533.360847] ata1: EH complete 02:45:59[ 533.584449] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=0 02:45:59[ 533.586999] EXT4-fs (dm-2): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0 02:45:59[ 533.660117] ata2: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5950000 action 0xe frozen 02:45:59[ 533.660122] ata2: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:45:59[ 533.660126] ata2: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:45:59[ 533.660132] ata2: hard resetting link 02:45:59[ 533.660141] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5850000 action 0xe frozen 02:45:59[ 533.660143] ata1: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:45:59[ 533.660147] ata1: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:45:59[ 533.660151] ata1: hard resetting link 02:46:00[ 534.412536] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:00[ 534.412562] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:00[ 534.416768] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:46:00[ 534.416777] ata2: EH complete 02:46:00[ 534.431396] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:46:00[ 534.431401] ata1: EH complete 02:46:03[ 537.384649] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=600 02:46:03[ 537.504214] EXT4-fs (dm-2): re-mounted. Opts: commit=600 02:46:03[ 537.585992] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5900000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:46:03[ 537.585996] ata1: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:46:03[ 537.585999] ata1: SError: { Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:46:03[ 537.586002] ata1: hard resetting link 02:46:03[ 537.586028] ata2: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5950000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:46:03[ 537.586030] ata2: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:46:03[ 537.586033] ata2: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:46:03[ 537.586036] ata2: hard resetting link 02:46:04[ 538.330147] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:04[ 538.330168] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:04[ 538.334389] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:46:04[ 538.334398] ata2: EH complete 02:46:04[ 538.343511] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 02:46:04[ 538.343519] ata1: EH complete 02:46:04[ 538.456413] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=0 02:46:04[ 538.459404] EXT4-fs (dm-2): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0 02:46:04[ 538.540138] ata1.00: limiting speed to UDMA/100:PIO4 02:46:04[ 538.540144] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5850000 action 0xe frozen 02:46:04[ 538.540148] ata1: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:46:04[ 538.540153] ata1: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:46:04[ 538.540159] ata1: hard resetting link 02:46:04[ 538.540202] ata2.00: limiting speed to UDMA/100:PIO4 02:46:04[ 538.540207] ata2: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5950000 action 0xe frozen 02:46:04[ 538.540211] ata2: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:46:04[ 538.540215] ata2: SError: { PHYRdyChg CommWake Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:46:04[ 538.540220] ata2: hard resetting link 02:46:05[ 539.290054] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:05[ 539.290041] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:05[ 539.294100] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/100 02:46:05[ 539.294106] ata2: EH complete 02:46:05[ 539.314125] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/100 02:46:05[ 539.314132] ------------[ cut here ]------------ 02:46:05[ 539.314140] WARNING: at /build/buildd/linux-2.6.35/drivers/ata/libata-eh.c:3638 ata_eh_finish+0xdf/0xf0() 02:46:05[ 539.314144] Hardware name: MacBookPro5,3 02:46:05[ 539.314146] Modules linked in: michael_mic arc4 xt_multiport binfmt_misc rfcomm sco bnep l2cap parport_pc ppdev nvidia(P) ipt_REJECT xt_recent snd_hda_codec_cirrus xt_limit xt_tcpudp ipt_addrtype xt_state snd_hda_intel snd_hda_codec snd_hwdep snd_pcm snd_seq_midi applesmc led_class ip6table_filter lib80211_crypt_tkip snd_rawmidi snd_seq_midi_event ip6_tables input_polldev hid_apple snd_seq wl(P) snd_timer snd_seq_device snd joydev bcm5974 usbhid mbp_nvidia_bl uvcvideo btusb videodev v4l1_compat v4l2_compat_ioctl32 nf_nat_irc hid nf_conntrack_irc soundcore snd_page_alloc i2c_nforce2 coretemp lib80211 bluetooth nf_nat_ftp nf_nat nf_conntrack_ipv4 nf_defrag_ipv4 nf_conntrack_ftp nf_conntrack lp parport iptable_filter ip_tables x_tables usb_storage firewire_ohci firewire_core forcedeth crc_itu_t ahci libahci 02:46:05[ 539.314221] Pid: 202, comm: scsi_eh_0 Tainted: P 2.6.35-25-generic #44-Ubuntu 02:46:05[ 539.314224] Call Trace: 02:46:05[ 539.314233] [<ffffffff8106091f>] warn_slowpath_common+0x7f/0xc0 02:46:05[ 539.314237] [<ffffffff8106097a>] warn_slowpath_null+0x1a/0x20 02:46:05[ 539.314242] [<ffffffff813dc77f>] ata_eh_finish+0xdf/0xf0 02:46:05[ 539.314246] [<ffffffff813e441e>] sata_pmp_error_handler+0x2e/0x40 02:46:05[ 539.314256] [<ffffffffa00021bf>] ahci_error_handler+0x1f/0x90 [libahci] 02:46:05[ 539.314261] [<ffffffff813dd6d2>] ata_scsi_error+0x492/0x5e0 02:46:05[ 539.314266] [<ffffffff813b24cd>] scsi_error_handler+0x10d/0x190 02:46:05[ 539.314270] [<ffffffff813b23c0>] ? scsi_error_handler+0x0/0x190 02:46:05[ 539.314275] [<ffffffff8107f266>] kthread+0x96/0xa0 02:46:05[ 539.314280] [<ffffffff8100aee4>] kernel_thread_helper+0x4/0x10 02:46:05[ 539.314284] [<ffffffff8107f1d0>] ? kthread+0x0/0xa0 02:46:05[ 539.314288] [<ffffffff8100aee0>] ? kernel_thread_helper+0x0/0x10 02:46:05[ 539.314291] ---[ end trace 76dbffc2d5d49d9b ]--- 02:46:05[ 539.314296] ata1: EH complete 02:46:12[ 547.040091] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen 02:46:12[ 547.040098] ata1.00: failed command: IDENTIFY DEVICE 02:46:12[ 547.040106] ata1.00: cmd ec/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 0 pio 512 in 02:46:12[ 547.040108] res 40/00:01:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/e0 Emask 0x4 (timeout) 02:46:12[ 547.040111] ata1.00: status: { DRDY } 02:46:12[ 547.040117] ata1: hard resetting link 02:46:13[ 547.390144] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:13[ 547.408430] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/100 02:46:13[ 547.408438] ------------[ cut here ]------------ 02:46:13[ 547.408447] WARNING: at /build/buildd/linux-2.6.35/drivers/ata/libata-eh.c:3638 ata_eh_finish+0xdf/0xf0() 02:46:13[ 547.408451] Hardware name: MacBookPro5,3 02:46:13[ 547.408453] Modules linked in: michael_mic arc4 xt_multiport binfmt_misc rfcomm sco bnep l2cap parport_pc ppdev nvidia(P) ipt_REJECT xt_recent snd_hda_codec_cirrus xt_limit xt_tcpudp ipt_addrtype xt_state snd_hda_intel snd_hda_codec snd_hwdep snd_pcm snd_seq_midi applesmc led_class ip6table_filter lib80211_crypt_tkip snd_rawmidi snd_seq_midi_event ip6_tables input_polldev hid_apple snd_seq wl(P) snd_timer snd_seq_device snd joydev bcm5974 usbhid mbp_nvidia_bl uvcvideo btusb videodev v4l1_compat v4l2_compat_ioctl32 nf_nat_irc hid nf_conntrack_irc soundcore snd_page_alloc i2c_nforce2 coretemp lib80211 bluetooth nf_nat_ftp nf_nat nf_conntrack_ipv4 nf_defrag_ipv4 nf_conntrack_ftp nf_conntrack lp parport iptable_filter ip_tables x_tables usb_storage firewire_ohci firewire_core forcedeth crc_itu_t ahci libahci 02:46:13[ 547.408528] Pid: 202, comm: scsi_eh_0 Tainted: P W 2.6.35-25-generic #44-Ubuntu 02:46:13[ 547.408531] Call Trace: 02:46:13[ 547.408540] [<ffffffff8106091f>] warn_slowpath_common+0x7f/0xc0 02:46:13[ 547.408544] [<ffffffff8106097a>] warn_slowpath_null+0x1a/0x20 02:46:13[ 547.408549] [<ffffffff813dc77f>] ata_eh_finish+0xdf/0xf0 02:46:13[ 547.408553] [<ffffffff813e441e>] sata_pmp_error_handler+0x2e/0x40 02:46:13[ 547.408563] [<ffffffffa00021bf>] ahci_error_handler+0x1f/0x90 [libahci] 02:46:13[ 547.408567] [<ffffffff813dd6d2>] ata_scsi_error+0x492/0x5e0 02:46:13[ 547.408572] [<ffffffff813b24cd>] scsi_error_handler+0x10d/0x190 02:46:13[ 547.408577] [<ffffffff813b23c0>] ? scsi_error_handler+0x0/0x190 02:46:13[ 547.408582] [<ffffffff8107f266>] kthread+0x96/0xa0 02:46:13[ 547.408587] [<ffffffff8100aee4>] kernel_thread_helper+0x4/0x10 02:46:13[ 547.408591] [<ffffffff8107f1d0>] ? kthread+0x0/0xa0 02:46:13[ 547.408595] [<ffffffff8100aee0>] ? kernel_thread_helper+0x0/0x10 02:46:13[ 547.408598] ---[ end trace 76dbffc2d5d49d9c ]--- 02:46:13[ 547.408620] ata1: EH complete 02:46:13[ 547.562470] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=600 02:46:13[ 547.671380] EXT4-fs (dm-2): re-mounted. Opts: commit=600 02:46:13[ 547.738198] ata1.00: limiting speed to UDMA/33:PIO4 02:46:13[ 547.738204] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5800000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:46:13[ 547.738208] ata1: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:46:13[ 547.738212] ata1: SError: { LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:46:13[ 547.738218] ata1: hard resetting link 02:46:13[ 547.738262] ata2: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5900000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:46:13[ 547.738265] ata2: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:46:13[ 547.738269] ata2: SError: { Dispar LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:46:13[ 547.738274] ata2: hard resetting link 02:46:14[ 548.482561] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:14[ 548.484083] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:14[ 548.486809] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/100 02:46:14[ 548.486818] ata2: EH complete 02:46:14[ 548.498998] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/33 02:46:14[ 548.499004] ata1: EH complete 02:46:18[ 552.410499] EXT4-fs (dm-0): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=600 02:46:18[ 552.522521] EXT4-fs (dm-2): re-mounted. Opts: commit=600 02:46:18[ 552.529674] ata1: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5800000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:46:18[ 552.529678] ata1: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:46:18[ 552.529680] ata1: SError: { LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:46:18[ 552.529684] ata1: hard resetting link 02:46:18[ 552.529716] ata2: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x5800000 action 0xe frozen t4 02:46:18[ 552.529718] ata2: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 02:46:18[ 552.529720] ata2: SError: { LinkSeq TrStaTrns DevExch } 02:46:18[ 552.529723] ata2: hard resetting link 02:46:19[ 553.280059] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:19[ 553.280068] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 02:46:19[ 553.284141] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/100 02:46:19[ 553.284150] ata2: EH complete 02:46:19[ 553.301629] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/33 02:46:19[ 553.301637] ata1: EH complete

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• Tips for XNA WP7 Developers

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  There are several things any XNA developer should know/consider when coming to the Windows Phone 7 platform. This post assumes you are familiar with the XNA Framework and with the changes between XNA 3.1 and XNA 4.0. It’s not exhaustive; it’s simply a list of things I’ve gathered over time. I may come back and add to it over time, and I’m happy to add anything anyone else has experienced or learned as well. Display · The screen is either 800x480 or 480x800. · But you aren’t required to use only those resolutions. · The hardware scaler on the phone will scale up from 240x240. · One dimension will be capped at 800 and the other at 480; which depends on your code, but you cannot have, e.g., an 800x600 back buffer – that will be created as 800x480. · The hardware scaler will not normally change aspect ratio, though, so no unintended stretching. · Any dimension (width, height, or both) below 240 will be adjusted to 240 (without any aspect ratio adjustment such that, e.g. 200x240 will be treated as 240x240). · Dimensions below 240 will be honored in terms of calculating whether to use portrait or landscape. · If dimensions are exactly equal or if height is greater than width then game will be in portrait. · If width is greater than height, the game will be in landscape. · Landscape games will automatically flip if the user turns the phone 180°; no code required. · Default landscape is top = left. In other words a user holding a phone who starts a landscape game will see the first image presented so that the “top” of the screen is along the right edge of his/her phone, such that the natural behavior would be to turn the phone 90° so that the top of the phone will be held in the user’s left hand and the bottom would be held in the user’s right hand. · The status bar (where the clock, battery power, etc., are found) is hidden when the Game-derived class sets GraphicsDeviceManager.IsFullScreen = true. It is shown when IsFullScreen = false. The default value is false (i.e. the status bar is shown). · You should have a good reason for hiding the status bar. Users find it helpful to know what time it is, how much charge their battery has left, and whether or not their phone is in service range. This is especially true for casual games that you expect someone to play for a few minutes at a time, e.g. while waiting for some event to start, for a phone call to come in, or for a train, bus, or subway to arrive. · In portrait mode, the status bar occupies 32 pixels of space. This means that a game with a back buffer of 480x800 will be scaled down to occupy approximately 461x768 screen pixels. Setting the back buffer to 480x768 (or some resolution with the same 0.625 aspect ratio) will avoid this scaling. · In landscape mode, the status bar occupies 72 pixels of space. This means that a game with a back buffer of 800x480 will be scaled down to occupy approximately 728x437 screen pixels. Setting the back buffer to 728x480 (or some resolution with the same 1.51666667 aspect ratio) will avoid this scaling. Input · Touch input is scaled with screen size. · So if your back buffer is 600x360, a tap in the bottom right corner will come in as (599,359). You don’t need to do anything special to get this automatic scaling of touch behavior. · If you do not use full area of the screen, any touch input outside the area you use will still register as a touch input. For example, if you set a portrait resolution of 240x240, it would be scaled up to occupy a 480x480 area, centered in the screen. If you touch anywhere above this area, you will get a touch input of (X,0) where X is a number from 0 to 239 (in accordance with your 240 pixel wide back buffer). Any touch below this area will give a touch input of (X,239). · If you keep the status bar visible, touches within its area will not be passed to your game. · In general, a screen measurement is the diagonal. So a 3.5” screen is 3.5” long from the bottom right corner to the top left corner. With an aspect ratio of 0.6 (480/800 = 0.6), this means that a phone with a 3.5” screen is only approximately 1.8” wide by 3” tall. So there are approximately 267 pixels in an inch on a 3.5” screen. · Again, this time in metric! 3.5 inches is approximately 8.89 cm. So an 8.89 cm screen is 8.89 cm long from the bottom right corner to the top left corner. With an aspect ratio of 0.6, this means that a phone with an 8.89 cm screen is only approximately 4.57 cm wide by 7.62 cm tall. So there are approximately 105 pixels in a centimeter on an 8.89 cm screen. · Think about the size of your finger tip. If you do not have large hands, think about the size of the fingertip of someone with large hands. Consider that when you are sizing your touch input. Especially consider that when you are spacing two touch targets near one another. You need to judge it for yourself, but items that are next to each other and are each 100x100 should be fine when it comes to selecting items individually. Smaller targets than that are ok provided that you leave space between them. · You want your users to have a pleasant experience. Making touch controls too small or too close to one another will make them nervous about whether they will touch the right target. Take this into account when you plan out your game initially. If possible, do some quick size mockups on an actual phone using colored rectangles that you position and size where you plan to have your game controls. Adjust as necessary. · People do not have transparent hands! Nor are their hands the size of a mouse pointer icon. Consider leaving a dedicated space for input rather than forcing the user to cover up to one-third of the screen with a finger just to play the game. · Another benefit of designing your controls to use a dedicated area is that you’re less likely to have players moving their finger(s) so frantically that they accidentally hit the back button, start button, or search button (many phones have one or more of these on the screen itself – it’s easy to hit one by accident and really annoying if you hit, e.g., the search button and then quickly tap back only to find out that the game didn’t save your progress such that you just wasted all the time you spent playing). · People do not like doing somersaults in order to move something forward with accelerometer-based controls. Test your accelerometer-based controls extensively and get a lot of feedback. Very well-known games from noted publishers have created really bad accelerometer controls and been virtually unplayable as a result. Also be wary of exceptions and other possible failures that the documentation warns about. · When done properly, the accelerometer can add a nice touch to your game (see, e.g. ilomilo where the accelerometer was used to move the background; it added a nice touch without frustrating the user; I also think CarniVale does direct accelerometer controls very well). However, if done poorly, it will make your game an abomination unto the Marketplace. Days, weeks, perhaps even months of development time that you will never get back. I won’t name names; you can search the marketplace for games with terrible reviews and you’ll find them. Graphics · The maximum frame rate is 30 frames per second. This was set as a compromise between battery life and quality. · At least one model of phone is known to have a screen refresh rate that is between 59 and 60 hertz. Because of this, using a fixed time step with a target frame rate of 30 will cause a slight internal delay to build up as the framework is forced to wait slightly for the next refresh. Eventually the delay will get to the point where a draw is skipped in order to recover from the delay. (See Nick's comment below for clarification.) · To deal with that delay, you can either stay with a fixed time step and set the frame rate slightly lower or else you can go to a variable time step and make sure to adjust all of your update data (e.g. player movement distance) to take into account the elapsed time from the last update. A variable time step makes your update logic slightly more complicated but will avoid frame skips entirely. · Currently there are no custom shaders. This might change in the future (there is no hardware limitation preventing it; it simply wasn’t a feature that could be implemented in the time available before launch). · There are five built-in shaders. You can create a lot of nice effects with the built-in shaders. · There is more power on the CPU than there is on the GPU so things you might typically off-load to the GPU will instead make sense to do on the CPU side. · This is a phone. It is not a PC. It is not an Xbox 360. The emulator runs on a PC and uses the full power of your PC. It is very good for testing your code for bugs and doing early prototyping and layout. You should not use it to measure performance. Use actual phone hardware instead. · There are many phone models, each of which has slightly different performance levels for I/O, screen blitting, CPU performance, etc. Do not take your game right to the performance limit on your phone since for some other phones you might be crossing their limits and leaving players with a bad experience. Leave a cushion to account for hardware differences. · Smaller screened phones will have slightly more dots per inch (dpi). Larger screened phones will have slightly less. Either way, the dpi will be much higher than the typical 96 found on most computer screens. Make sure that whoever is doing art for your game takes this into account. · Screens are only required to have 16 bit color (65,536 colors). This is common among smart phones. Using gradients on a 16 bit display can produce an ugly artifact known as banding. Banding is when, rather than a smooth transition from one color to another, you instead see distinct lines. Be careful to avoid this when possible. Banding can be avoided through careful art creation. Its effects can be minimized and even unnoticeable when the texture in question is always moving. You should be careful not to rely on “looks good on my phone” since some phones do have 32-bit displays and thus you’ll find yourself wondering why you’re getting bad reviews that complain about the graphics. Avoid gradients; if you can’t, make sure they are 16-bit safe. Audio · Never rely on sounds as your sole signal to the player that something is happening in the game. They might have the sound off. They might be playing somewhere loud. Etc. · You have to provide controls to disable sound & music. These should be separate. · On at least one model of phone, the volume control API currently has no effect. Players can adjust sound with their hardware volume buttons, but in game selectors simply won’t work. As such, it may not be worth the effort of providing anything beyond on/off switches for sound and music. · MediaPlayer.GameHasControl will return true when a game is hooked up to a PC running Zune. When Zune is running, any attempts to do anything (beyond check GameHasControl) with MediaPlayer will cause an exception to be thrown. If this exception is thrown, catch it and disable music. Exceptions take time to propagate; you don’t want one popping up in every single run of your game’s Update method. · Remember that players can already be listening to music or using the FM radio. In this case GameHasControl will be false and you should handle this appropriately. You can, alternately, ask the player for permission to stop their current music and play your music instead, but the (current) requirement that you restore their music when done is very hard (if not impossible) to deal with. · You can still play sound effects even when the game doesn’t have control of the music, but don’t think this is a backdoor to playing music. Your game will fail certification if your “sound effect” seems to be more like music in scope and length.

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• Yet another C# Deadlock Debugging Question

  - by Roo

  Hi All, I have a multi-threaded application build in C# using VS2010 Professional. It's quite a large application and we've experienced the classing GUI cross-threading and deadlock issues before, but in the past month we've noticed the appears to lock up when left idle for around 20-30 minutes. The application is irresponsive and although it will repaint itself when other windows are dragged in front of the application and over it, the GUI still appears to be locked... interstingly (unlike if the GUI thread is being used for a considerable amount of time) the Close, Maximise and minimise buttons are also irresponsive and when clicked the little (Not Responding...) text is not displayed in the title of the application i.e. Windows still seems to think it's running fine. If I break/pause the application using the debugger, and view the threads that are running. There are 3 threads of our managed code that are running, and a few other worker threads whom the source code cannot be displayed for. The 3 threads that run are: The main/GUI thread A thread that loops indefinitely A thread that loops indefinitely If I step into threads 2 and 3, they appear to be looping correctly. They do not share locks (even with the main GUI thread) and they are not using the GUI thread at all. When stepping into the main/GUI thread however, it's broken on Application.Run... This problem screams deadlock to me, but what I don't understand is if it's deadlock, why can't I see the line of code the main/GUI thread is hanging on? Any help will be greatly appreciated! Let me know if you need more information... Cheers, Roo -----------------------------------------------------SOLUTION-------------------------------------------------- Okay, so the problem is now solved. Thanks to everyone for their suggestions! Much appreciated! I've marked the answer that solved my initial problem of determining where on the main/UI thread the application hangs (I handn't turned off the "Enable Just My Code" option). The overall issue I was experiencing was indeed Deadlock, however. After obtaining the call-stack and popping the top half of it into Google I came across this which explains exactly what I was experiencing... http://timl.net/ This references a lovely guide to debugging the issue... http://www.aaronlerch.com/blog/2008/12/15/debugging-ui/ This identified a control I was constructing off the GUI thread. I did know this, however, and was marshalling calls correctly, but what I didn't realise was that behind the scenes this Control was subscribing to an event or set of events that are triggered when e.g. a Windows session is unlocked or the screensaver exits. These calls are always made on the main/UI thread and were blocking when it saw the call was made on the incorrect thread. Kim explains in more detail here... http://krgreenlee.blogspot.com/2007/09/onuserpreferencechanged-hang.html In the end I found an alternative solution which did not require this Control off the main/UI thread. That appears to have solved the problem and the application no longer hangs. I hope this helps anyone who's confronted by a similar problem. Thanks again to everyone on here who helped! (and indirectly, the delightful bloggers I've referenced above!) Roo -----------------------------------------------------SOLUTION II-------------------------------------------------- Aren't threading issues delightful...you think you've solved it, and a month down the line it pops back up again. I still believe the solution above resolved an issue that would cause simillar behaviour, but we encountered the problem again. As we spent a while debugging this, I thought I'd update this question with our (hopefully) final solution: The problem appears to have been a bug in the Infragistics components in the WinForms 2010.1 release (no hot fixes). We had been running from around the time the freeze issue appeared (but had also added a bunch of other stuff too). After upgrading to WinForms 2010.3, we've yet to reproduce the issue (deja vu). See my question here for a bit more information: 'http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4077822/net-4-0-and-the-dreaded-onuserpreferencechanged-hang'. Hans has given a nice summary of the general issue. I hope this adds a little to the suggestions/information surrounding the nutorious OnUserPreferenceChanged Hang (or whatever you'd like to call it). Cheers, Roo

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• trying to make an accordion menu from a list - jquery indexhibit

  - by orionrush

  Hello - Im teaching my self javascript & jquery so this might be a bit of a low brow question or entirely too much code for anyone to wade through, but Im hoping for some feedback. I have looked around and haven't found a thread that looks like it will deals neatly with my question. Im using the cms indexhibit (cant create a new tag!) and trying to create an accordion style menu from the menu list it generates. I basically have the behaviour Im after, modifying an existing bit of work but there are quite a few foibles, which are no doubt a conflict between the .click and .toggle and a confused use if statements. I basically want to start from scratch and redo this so I can a) learn from my mistakes b) understand what's happening. Im having trouble now because I dont know where to go from here, or how to trouble shoot it. Can anyone give me a quick analysis how the the script in the head of the document work together? Also any insight into the nature of the conflicts Im seeing and what approach might take to remedy them? If you were going to start afresh what would be your approach? Here is a test to see it in action (warts and all): http://stillstatic.nfshost.com/ This script goes into the document head: <script type='text/javascript'> //im not entirely clear as to what this achieves path = 'path/to/script/'; $(document).ready(function() { setTimeout('move_up()', 1); expandingMenu(0); expandingMenu(1); expandingMenu(2); expandingMenu(3); expandingMenu(4); //etc }); </script> the generated list: <ul> <li class='section-title active_menu'>blogs</li> <li><a class="active" href='#' onclick="do_click();">3</a></li> </ul> <ul> //this menu section dose not have a label: class .section-title <li><a href='#' onclick="do_click();">1</a></li> <li><a href='#' onclick="do_click();">2</a></li> </ul> <ul> //this menu section is not the 'active menu' this is achieved by the jquery script <li class='section-title'>writing</li> <li><a href='#' onclick="do_click();">4</a></li> <li><a href='#' onclick="do_click();">5</a></li> </ul> The meat of in an external script: function expandingMenu(num) { var speed = 500; var menu_title = $("#menu ul").eq(num).children(":first"); // ie. first child be the title with the class .section-title unless the user turned it off var menu_items = $("#menu ul").eq(num).children().filter(function (index) { return index 0; }); // ie. any li NOT in position 0, below li.section-title if (menu_items.is(".active") == true) { menu_title.addClass("active_menu"); //Add a class to the active list so we can style it. } if (menu_title.is(".section-title") == true){ // this if prevents interference with users who turn off the section titling if ((menu_items.is(".active") == false) && (menu_items.is(":visible")) ) { menu_items.hide(0);// first we hide the inactive exhibits } $('li').click(function (){ if ( (menu_title.is(":visible") == true) ){ menu_items.hide(speed); } if ( (menu_items.is(":hidden") == true ) && (('')) ){// ?! without this second condition things break down. . . menu_items.show(speed); } }) menu_title.css({cursor:"pointer"}).toggle( // add click functions + pointer to menu_title function () { menu_items.show(speed);//Open it up }, function () { // this function could even be empty but without the if things get weird if (menu_items.is(".xx")) menu_items.hide(speed); //Take the menu item off of active duty! } ) } }

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• What is "Disable class based route addition" good for?

  - by id.roppert.dejroppert

  In the advanced TCP/IP settings of a VPN connection, i found a checkbox labeled with "Disable class based route addition". The checkbox is only enabled as long as "Use default gateway on remote network" is switched off. What is "Disable class based route addition" good for? Detailed instructions to find the settings: Open Properties of VPN connection Go to Networking tab Open Properties of "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)" (and/or TCP/IPv6) Click "Advanced..." Button Change to "IP Settings" tab Here you can find the checkboxes mentioned above

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• PHP suddenly failed after IIS update

  - by James Hay

  All my application pools were stopped this morning after I got to work. I can restart them, but when I try to load the website the app pool crashes again. Update: I've looked in the GAC as the error below suggests and it seems that the file is not there. How do I get it back? Update 2: I found a further error in the event log saying The Module name FastCgiModule path C:\WINDOWS\System32\inetsrv\iisfcgi.dll returned an error from registration. The data is the error. So following the information from here http://forums.iis.net/t/1153937.aspx I removed CGI and my sites are working again. This has fixed the initial problem, but now I don't have FastCGI so I'm fairly sure that PHP will no longer be working (I don't have any PHP at the moment to test). Original Post I'm getting this error in the event viewer: IISMANAGER_ERROR_LOADING_PROVIDER_TYPE IIS Manager could not load type 'Web.Management.PHP.PHPProvider, Web.Management.PHP, Version=1.2.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=8175de49a9aec91d' for module provider 'PHP' that is declared in %windir%\system32\inetsrv\config\administration.config. Verify that the type is correct, and that the assembly that contains the module provider is in the Global Assembly Cache (GAC). Exception:System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'Web.Management.PHP, Version=1.2.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=8175de49a9aec91d' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. File name: 'Web.Management.PHP, Version=1.2.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=8175de49a9aec91d' at System.RuntimeTypeHandle._GetTypeByName(String name, Boolean throwOnError, Boolean ignoreCase, Boolean reflectionOnly, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean loadTypeFromPartialName) at System.RuntimeTypeHandle.GetTypeByName(String name, Boolean throwOnError, Boolean ignoreCase, Boolean reflectionOnly, StackCrawlMark& stackMark) at System.RuntimeType.PrivateGetType(String typeName, Boolean throwOnError, Boolean ignoreCase, Boolean reflectionOnly, StackCrawlMark& stackMark) at System.Type.GetType(String typeName, Boolean throwOnError) at Microsoft.Web.Management.Server.AdministrationModuleProvider.GetModuleProvider(String userName, String connectionName) WRN: Assembly binding logging is turned OFF. To enable assembly bind failure logging, set the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog] (DWORD) to 1. Note: There is some performance penalty associated with assembly bind failure logging. To turn this feature off, remove the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog]. Process:InetMgr Connection:CT211511\Administrator Everything was working fine last night when I left work, and since they've done the maintenance it's all broken.

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• Outlook 2007 freezes my system when I start it says it is "synchonizing folders"

  - by buzz

  When I try to start Outlook 2007, my system freezes, and Outlook says it is "synchonizing folders". I don't use exchange, and haven't seen any answers online. I've tried turning off the exchange integration (right clicking my folders) Since doing the latter, there is no longer an icon in the system tray when this is frozen (there was before) UPDATE: It seems my anti-virus program (comodo) was what was actually locking during Outlook file synch. I disabled that, and things seemed to settle down.

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