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• What to do when you inherit an unmaintainable codebase?

  - by GordonM

  I'm currently working at a company with 2 other PHP developers aside from me, and 1 junior developer. The senior developer who originally built the system we're all working on has resigned and will only be here for a matter of weeks. The other developer, who is the only other guy who knows anything about the system, is unhappy here and is looking for a new job. I'm very real danger of being left behind as the only experienced developer on this codebase. Since I've joined this company I've tried to push for better coding standards, project documentation, etc and I do think I've made some headway, but the vast majority of the code is simply unmaintainable and uncommented. A lot of this has to do with the need to get things done fast at points in the project before I joined, but now the technical debt is enormous, even with the two developers who do understand the system on board. Without them, it will simply be impossible to do anything with it. The senior developer is working on trying to at least comment all his code before he leaves but I think the codebase is simply too vast to properly document in the remaining time. Besides, when he does comment it still doesn't make things as clear as it could. If the system was better organized and documented I could probably start refactoring it incrementally, but the whole thing is so tightly coupled that it's very difficult to make any changes in one module without having unintended knock-on effects in other modules. Naturally, there's no unit tests either, and I honestly don't think this codebase could possibly be unit tested anyway given how it's implemented. There also never seems to be enough time to get things done even with 3 developers and 1 junior developer. With one developer and one junior, neither of which had significant input into the early design of the system, I don't see how we could possibly get anything done with keeping the current system working, implementing new features as needed and developing a replacement for the current codebase that is better organized. Is there an approach I can take to cope with this situation, or should I be getting my own CV in order as well at this point? If it was just me and the junior designer who would be left I'd go for the latter option almost without question. However, there's a team of front-end developers and content managers as well, and I'm worried what would become of them if I left and put them in a position where there would be no developers at all. The department might just be closed down altogether under such circumstances, and then I'd have their unemployment on my conscience as well!

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• Play the Microsoft Game “Are You Certifiable?”

  - by Mysticgeek

  Want to know if you have what it takes to be certified by Microsoft? Today we check out an enjoyable way to practice and test your IT knowledge of Microsoft products.  There are two modes, one where you log in with your Live account so you can save your progress, and play additional levels.   If you log in with your Live account, it’s obvious that Microsoft wants to sell you some certification courses, so just be aware of that. Or Guest Play where you can only play one episode and scores are not saved.   Playing the Game We’ll take a look at the Guest Play just so you get a sense of what the game is about. Enter in a username and pick an avatar… Then read the instructions…we won’t go over them all here, there are a lot of options and points are scored by correct answers, amount of time it takes to answer them, you get vouchers to play a question before answers are shown…etc. Once you start playing, you get certification questions, you can take as much time to read the question as you want, then hit the Answer button when you’re ready. Now you have four answers to choose from…notice the time clicking down, so you want to try to answer as quickly as possible. After selecting the answer, you’re told if it is correct or not, then given an answer explaination, along with your score. You can flag the topic so it comes up again, which is a good way to get repetition of various topics, which really helps when taking the cert tests. If you get an answer wrong, you still get an answer explanation which is cool, so you can learn and better understand the topic. Conclusion This game is definitely not for everyone, only those who are curious or want a fun way to practice for Microsoft certifications. If you are interested in a cert from Microsoft, it’s a fun way to practice up. Play Are You Certifiable? Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Geek Fun: Play Alien Arena the Free FPS GameFriday Fun: Get Your Mario OnFriday Fun: Play Bubble QuodFriday Fun: 13 Days in HellFriday Fun: Open Doors TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Download Free iPad Wallpapers at iPad Decor Get Your Delicious Bookmarks In Firefox’s Awesome Bar Manage Photos Across Different Social Sites With Dropico Test Drive Windows 7 Online Download Wallpapers From National Geographic Site Spyware Blaster v4.3

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• Pathfinding for fleeing

  - by Philipp

  As you know there are plenty of solutions when you wand to find the best path in a 2-dimensional environment which leads from point A to point B. But how do I calculate a path when an object is at point A, and wants to get away from point B, as fast and far as possible? A bit of background information: My game uses a 2d environment which isn't tile-based but has floating point accuracy. The movement is vector-based. The pathfinding is done by partitioning the game world into rectangles which are walkable or non-walkable and building a graph out of their corners. I already have pathfinding between points working by using Dijkstras algorithm. The use-case for the fleeing algorithm is that in certain situations, actors in my game should perceive another actor as a danger and flee from it. The trivial solution would be to just move the actor in a vector in the direction which is opposite from the threat until a "safe" distance was reached or the actor reaches a wall where it then covers in fear. The problem with this approach is that actors will be blocked by small obstacles they could easily get around. As long as moving along the wall wouldn't bring them closer to the threat they could do that, but it would look smarter when they would avoid obstacles in the first place: Another problem I see is with dead ends in the map geometry. In some situations a being must choose between a path which gets it faster away now but ends in a dead end where it would be trapped, or another path which would mean that it wouldn't get that far away from the danger at first (or even a bit closer) but on the other hand would have a much greater long-term reward in that it would eventually get them much further away. So the short-term reward of getting away fast must be somehow valued against the long-term reward of getting away far. There is also another rating problem for situations where an actor should accept to move closer to a minor threat to get away from a much larger threat. But completely ignoring all minor threats would be foolish, too (that's why the actor in this graphic goes out of its way to avoid the minor threat in the upper right area): Are there any standard solutions for this problem?

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• Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon support

  - by Robottinosino

  I am considering selling my Mac to get money towards a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 because what I really want to do is to be running an Ubuntu system all the time. Is this machine completely supported in Ubuntu, with no tiny little feature missing just because I am "going Linux"? Optional user story section, skip to the question below if you don't have time: I have a friend who bought a "works on Ubuntu" system a year ago and has hated the fact ever since: battery lasts less than if he boots in Windows (which he despises) and he ascribes that to "no good OS/harware integration and support for advanced chipset power management features", odd behaviour on suspend/resume/hibernate (says: "when it works 90% of the time and the other 10% it makes you lose your work is as good as broken - 90% is the same as 0% he says), some occasional graphics card glitches he can perfectly well live with and has almost grown affectionate to, and finally, and that is what would make him undo his choice if he could, bad "input device drivers". He says: trackpoint and trackpad just "feel different", "so much better" on Windows and that was impossible to know from the website brochure. That story makes me very doubtful... but I want to abandon this "walled garden" of prison that is my Mac and go Ubuntu all the way, no doubt about that! My dilemma at this time is just: "I don't want to live with those eternal frustrations for sure"! Here's a directly answerable phrasing of my question: Is the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 supported on Ubuntu? Yes/no, which version? Which hardware features are not supported? Provide a list Optionally: sort the list in descending order of frustration from your experience Optionally: mention if there are acceptable workarounds to the "out-of-the-box" condition described in the earlier points and whether this ameliorates frustration at least to "tolerable" levels Comment: the Ubuntu hardware certification page is so not-for-end-users it's unreal. Whoa. What would make it end-user friendly is: Link to "buy here and you'll be just fine, this is the right configuration for you, it'll work as long as you press BUY on that page and don't browse further" Remove mentions of may and might not work. Just tell it straight: press buy here and you will get a working system with the exception of A, B, C (so that I can decide whether the philosophical "freedom pleasure" I get from escaping an Apple world is enough to off-balance the loss, for instance, of Bluetooth capabilities (something that I of course use on my Mac) but "could" lose to use free (as in freedom) software The certification page fails to dispel doubts in me as an end-user. I don't feel "eased into Ubuntu", I feel "partially informed".

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• BIDS Helper 1.6 Beta Release (now with SQL 2012 support!)

  - by Darren Gosbell

  The beta for BIDS Helper 1.6 was just released. We have not updated the version notification just yet as we would like to get some feedback on people's experiences with the SQL 2012 version. So if you are using SQL 2012, go grab it and let us know how you go (you can post a comment on this blog post or on the BIDS Helper site itself). This is the first release that supports SQL 2012 and consequently also the first release that runs in Visual Studio 2010. A big thanks to Greg Galloway for doing the bulk of the work on this release. Please note that if you are doing an xcopy deploy that you will need to unblock the files you download or you will get a cryptic error message. This appears to be caused by a security update to either Visual Studio or the .Net framework – the xcopy deploy instructions have been updated to show you how to do this. Below are the notes from the release page. ====== This beta release is the first to support SQL Server 2012 (in addition to SQL Server 2005, 2008, and 2008 R2). Since it is marked as a beta release, we are looking for bug reports in the next few months as you use BIDS Helper on real projects. In addition to getting all existing BIDS Helper functionality working appropriately in SQL Server 2012 (SSDT), the following features are new... Analysis Services Tabular Smart Diff Tabular Actions Editor Tabular HideMemberIf Tabular Pre-Build Fixes and Updates The Unused Datasets feature for Reporting Services now accounts for new features in Reporting Services 2008 R2 like Lookups and new features in Reporting Services 2012. SSIS: emit an informational message when a variable has an expression defined and EvaluateAsExpression = False SSAS: roles reports points to wrong server SSIS - Variable Copy / Move broken in v1.5 "Unused DataSets Report" not showing up in Context menu on VS2005 if Solution Folders used SSAS Tabular: Create a UI for managing actions SSAS Tabular: Smart Diff improvements for new schema and Tabular models SSIS: Copy/Move Variable Erroring due to custom Control Flow item Icon SSIS Performance Visualization Index out of range fixing bugs in AggManager when aggregation design IDs don't match names The exe downloads are a self extracting installer, the zip downloads allow for an xcopy deploy. Make sure to note the updated xcopy deploy instructions for SQL Server 2012.

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• Is Innovation Dead?

  - by wulfers

  My question is has innovation died?  For large businesses that do not have a vibrant, and fearless leadership (see Apple under Steve jobs), I think is has.  If you look at the organizational charts for many of the large corporate megaliths you will see a plethora of middle managers who are so risk averse that innovation (any change involves risk) is choked off since there are no innovation champions in the middle layers.  And innovation driven top down can only happen when you have a visionary in the top ranks, and that is also very rare.So where is actual innovation happening, at the bottom layer, the people who live in the trenches…   The people who live for a challenge. So how can big business leverage this innovation layer?  Remove the middle management layer.   Provide an innovation champion who has an R&D budget and is tasked with working with the bottom layer of a company, the engineers, developers  and business analysts that live on the edge (Where the corporate tires meet the road). Here are two innovation failures I will tell you about, and both have been impacted by a company so risk averse it is starting to fail in its primary business ventures: This company initiated an innovation process several years ago.  The process was driven companywide with team managers being the central points of collection of innovative ideas.  These managers were given no budget to do anything with these ideas.  There was no process or incentive for these managers to drive it about their team.  This lasted close to a year and the innovation program slowly slipped into oblivion…. A second example:  This same company failed an attempt to market a consumer product in a line where there was already a major market leader.  This product was under development for several years and needed to provide some major device differentiation form the current market leader.  This same company had a large Lead Technologist community made up of real innovators in all areas of technology.  Did this same company leverage the skills and experience of this internal community,   NO!!! So to wrap this up, if large companies really want to survive, then they need to start acting like a small company.  Support those innovators and risk takers!  Reward them by implementing their innovative ideas.  Champion (from the top down) innovation (found at the bottom) in your companies.  Remember if you stand still you are really falling behind.Do it now!  Take a risk!

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• Collision in PyGame for spinning rectangular object.touching circles

  - by OverAchiever

  I'm creating a variation of Pong. One of the differences is that I use a rectangular structure as the object which is being bounced around, and I use circles as paddles. So far, all the collision handling I've worked with was using simple math (I wasn't using the collision "feature" in PyGame). The game is contained within a 2-dimensional continuous space. The idea is that the rectangular structure will spin at different speed depending on how far from the center you touch it with the circle. Also, any extremity of the rectangular structure should be able to touch any extremity of the circle. So I need to keep track of where it has been touched on both the circle and the rectangle to figure out the direction it will be bounced to. I intend to have basically 8 possible directions (Up, down, left, right and the half points between each one of those). I can work out the calculation of how the objected will be dislocated once I get the direction it will be dislocated to based on where it has been touch. I also need to keep track of where it has been touched to decide if the rectangular structure will spin clockwise or counter-clockwise after it collided. Before I started coding, I read the resources available at the PyGame website on the collision class they have (And its respective functions). I tried to work out the logic of what I was trying to achieve based on those resources and how the game will function. The only thing I could figure out that I could do was to make each one of these objects as a group of rectangular objects, and depending on which rectangle was touched the other would behave accordingly and give the illusion it is a single object. However, not only I don't know if this will work, but I also don't know if it is gonna look convincing based on how PyGame redraws the objects. Is there a way I can use PyGame to handle these collision detections by still having a single object? Can I figure out the point of collision on both objects using functions within PyGame precisely enough to achieve what I'm looking for? P.s: I hope the question was specific and clear enough. I apologize if there were any grammar mistakes, English is not my native language.

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• Ray Picking Problems

  - by A Name I Haven't Decided On

  I've read so many answers on here about how to do Ray Picking, that I thought I had the idea of it down. But when I try to implement it in my game, I get garbage. I'm working with LWJGL. Here's the code: public static Ray getPick(int mouseX, int mouseY){ glPushMatrix(); //Setting up the Mouse Clip Vector4f mouseClip = new Vector4f((float)mouseX * 2 / 960f - 1, 1 - (float)mouseY * 2 / 640f ,0 ,1); //Loading Matrices FloatBuffer modMatrix = BufferUtils.createFloatBuffer(16); FloatBuffer projMatrix = BufferUtils.createFloatBuffer(16); glGetFloat(GL_MODELVIEW_MATRIX, modMatrix); glGetFloat(GL_PROJECTION_MATRIX, projMatrix); //Assigning Matrices Matrix4f proj = new Matrix4f(); Matrix4f model = new Matrix4f(); model.load(modMatrix); proj.load(projMatrix); //Multiplying the Projection Matrix by the Model View Matrix Matrix4f tempView = new Matrix4f(); Matrix4f.mul(proj, model, tempView); tempView.invert(); //Getting the Camera Position in World Space. The 4th Column of the Model View Matrix. model.invert(); Point cameraPos = new Point(model.m30, model.m31, model.m32); //Theoretically getting the vector the Picking Ray goes Vector4f rayVector = new Vector4f(); Matrix4f.transform(tempView, mouseClip, rayVector); rayVector.translate((float)-cameraPos.getX(),(float) -cameraPos.getY(),(float) -cameraPos.getZ(), 0f); rayVector.normalise(); glPopMatrix(); //This Basically Spits out a value that changes as the Camera moves. //When the Mouse moves, the values change around 0.001 points from screen edge to edge. System.out.format("Vector: %f %f %f%n", rayVector.x, rayVector.y, rayVector.z); //return new Ray(cameraPos, rayVector); return null; } I don't really know why this isn't working. I was hoping some more experienced eyes might be able to help me out. I can get the camera position like a champ, it's the vector the rays going in that I can't seem to get right. Thanks.

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• Migrating to Natty (or any other future versions of ubuntu)

  - by Nik

  I am hoping that this question would help other ubuntu users when migrating to a newer version of ubuntu. This should have all the info that they need. So please when you answer try to phrase them into points for easy understanding. I understand that some questions that I ask might have been asked before by other users. In that case just provide the links to those questions. I am running ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat in case that is important. I can say for sure that a clean install is definitely better than an upgrade since it gives you an opportunity to clean your system and get a fresh start. However some of us like to retain certain software configuration or files etc. The questions are as follows, How do you save the configuration files of certain application like for instance Thunderbird, firefox, etc...so that you can basically paste in the new version of ubuntu? (Thunderbird for instance has all my mail, so I definitely would like to backup its configuration and then use it the new installation that I do) I have some applications like MATLAB and Maple (Based on JAVA) installed. When I migrate, can I just copy the entire installation folder to the new version of ubuntu? Would it still work as now if I do that? When doing a backup which folders should be backed up? Obviously your personal files would be backup. But other than that, is it necessary to back up stuff in the home folder, /usr/bin etc? I have BURG installed. I am guessing that would be erased when I do a clean install along with the program's configuration and everything. How can I do a backup of it? I am dual booting my ubuntu alongside with Windows 7. When I perform the clean install of ubuntu, would GRUB (bootloader) be removed and in anyway jeopardize my windows installation? Over time I have added a lot of PPA which are of course compatible with my current ubuntu version. How do I make a backup of all my PPA and would they be compatible to the newer version of ubuntu when I restore them? I hope this covers all the questions or doubts that a user might face when thinking about performing a clean install of his system. If I missed anything please mention it as a comment and I will add it to my answer.

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• 2D Collision in Canvas - Balls Overlapping When Velocity is High

  - by kushsolitary

  I am doing a simple experiment in canvas using Javascript in which some balls will be thrown on the screen with some initial velocity and then they will bounce on colliding with each other or with the walls. I managed to do the collision with walls perfectly but now the problem is with the collision with other balls. I am using the following code for it: //Check collision between two bodies function collides(b1, b2) { //Find the distance between their mid-points var dx = b1.x - b2.x, dy = b1.y - b2.y, dist = Math.round(Math.sqrt(dx*dx + dy*dy)); //Check if it is a collision if(dist <= (b1.r + b2.r)) { //Calculate the angles var angle = Math.atan2(dy, dx), sin = Math.sin(angle), cos = Math.cos(angle); //Calculate the old velocity components var v1x = b1.vx * cos, v2x = b2.vx * cos, v1y = b1.vy * sin, v2y = b2.vy * sin; //Calculate the new velocity components var vel1x = ((b1.m - b2.m) / (b1.m + b2.m)) * v1x + (2 * b2.m / (b1.m + b2.m)) * v2x, vel2x = (2 * b1.m / (b1.m + b2.m)) * v1x + ((b2.m - b1.m) / (b2.m + b1.m)) * v2x, vel1y = v1y, vel2y = v2y; //Set the new velocities b1.vx = vel1x; b2.vx = vel2x; b1.vy = vel1y; b2.vy = vel2y; } } You can see the experiment here. The problem is, some balls overlap each other and stick together while some of them rebound perfectly. I don't know what is causing this issue. Here's my balls object if that matters: function Ball() { //Random Positions this.x = 50 + Math.random() * W; this.y = 50 + Math.random() * H; //Random radii this.r = 15 + Math.random() * 30; this.m = this.r; //Random velocity components this.vx = 1 + Math.random() * 4; this.vy = 1 + Math.random() * 4; //Random shade of grey color this.c = Math.round(Math.random() * 200); this.draw = function() { ctx.beginPath(); ctx.fillStyle = "rgb(" + this.c + ", " + this.c + ", " + this.c + ")"; ctx.arc(this.x, this.y, this.r, 0, Math.PI*2, false); ctx.fill(); ctx.closePath(); } }

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• Part 5: Choose the right tool - or - why

  - by volker.eckardt(at)oracle.com

  Consider the following client request “Please create a report for us to list expenses”. Which Oracle EBS tool would you choose? There are plenty of options available: Oracle Reports, or BI Publisher with PDF or Excel layout, or Discoverer, or BI Publisher Stand Alone, or PDF online generation, or Oracle WebADI, or Plain SQL*Plus as Concurrent Program, or Online review option … Assuming, you as development lead have to decide, you may decide by available skill set in your development team. However, is this a good decision? An important question to influence the decision is the “Why” question: why do you need this report, what process is behind, what exactly you like to achieve? We see often data created or printed, although it would be much better to get the data in Excel, and upload changes via WebADI directly. There are more points that should drive your decision: How many of such requirements you have got? Has this technique been used in the project already? Are there related reusable’s you may gain from? How difficult is it to maintain your solution? Can you merge this report with another one, to reduce test and maintenance work? In addition, also your own development standards should guide you a bit to come to a good decision. In one of my own projects, we discussed such topics in our weekly team meeting. By utilizing the team knowledge best, you may come to a better decision, and additionally, your team supports your decision. Unfortunately, I have rarely seen dedicated team trainings or planned knowledge transfer to support such processes. Often the pressure to deliver on time is too high to have discussion and decision time left. But exactly this can help keeping maintenance costs low by limiting the number of alternative solutions for similar requirements. Lastly, design decisions should be documented to allow another person taking this over easily. Decisions shall be reviewed and updated regularly, to reflect related procedures or Oracle products respective product versions. Summary: Oracle EBS offers plenty of alternatives to implement customizations. Create and maintain a decision tree to support the design process. Do not leave the decision just on developer side. Limit the number of alternative solutions as best as possible; choose one which is the most appropriate also from future maintenance perspective.

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• Oracle Application in DMZ (Demilitarized Zone)

  - by PRajkumar

   Business Needs Large Organizations want to expose their Oracle Application services outside their private network (HTTP/HTTPS and SSL). Usually these exposures must exist to promote external communication. So they want to separate an external network from directly referencing an internal network   Business Challenges ·         Business does not want to compromise with security information ·         Business cannot expose internal domain or internal URL information   Business Solution DMZ is the solution of this problem. In Oracle application we can achieve this by following way –   ·         Oracle Application consists of fleet nodes (FND_NODES) so first decide which node have to expose to public ·         To expose the node to public use the profile “Node Trust Level” ·         Set node to Public/Private (Normal -> private, External -> public) ·         Set "Responsibility Trust Level" profile to decide whether to expose Application Responsibility to inside or outside firewall         Solution Features   ·         Exposed web services can be accessed by both internal and external users ·         Configurable and can be very easily rolled out ·         Internal network and business data is secured from outside traffic ·         Unauthorized access to internal network from outside is prohibited ·         No need for VPN and Secure FTP server   Benefits  ·       Large Organizations having Oracle Application can expose their web services like (HTTP/HTTPS and SSL) to the internet without compromise with security information and without exposing their internal domain   Possible Week Points  ·         If external firewall is compromised, then external application server is also compromised, exposing an attack on E-Business Suite database ·         There’s nothing to prevent internal users from attacking internal application server, also exposing an attack on E-Business Suite database   Reference Links  ·         https://blogs.oracle.com/manojmadhusoodanan/tags/dmz

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• What is going on in this SAT/vector projection code?

  - by ssb

  I'm looking at the example XNA SAT collision code presented here: http://www.xnadevelopment.com/tutorials/rotatedrectanglecollisions/rotatedrectanglecollisions.shtml See the following code: private int GenerateScalar(Vector2 theRectangleCorner, Vector2 theAxis) { //Using the formula for Vector projection. Take the corner being passed in //and project it onto the given Axis float aNumerator = (theRectangleCorner.X * theAxis.X) + (theRectangleCorner.Y * theAxis.Y); float aDenominator = (theAxis.X * theAxis.X) + (theAxis.Y * theAxis.Y); float aDivisionResult = aNumerator / aDenominator; Vector2 aCornerProjected = new Vector2(aDivisionResult * theAxis.X, aDivisionResult * theAxis.Y); //Now that we have our projected Vector, calculate a scalar of that projection //that can be used to more easily do comparisons float aScalar = (theAxis.X * aCornerProjected.X) + (theAxis.Y * aCornerProjected.Y); return (int)aScalar; } I think the problems I'm having with this come mostly from translating physics concepts into data structures. For example, earlier in the code there is a calculation of the axes to be used, and these are stored as Vector2, and they are found by subtracting one point from another, however these points are also stored as Vector2s. So are the axes being stored as slopes in a single Vector2? Next, what exactly does the Vector2 produced by the vector projection code represent? That is, I know it represents the projected vector, but as it pertains to a Vector2, what does this represent? A point on a line? Finally, what does the scalar at the end actually represent? It's fine to tell me that you're getting a scalar value of the projected vector, but none of the information I can find online seems to tell me about a scalar of a vector as it's used in this context. I don't see angles or magnitudes with these vectors so I'm a little disoriented when it comes to thinking in terms of physics. If this final scalar calculation is just a dot product, how is that directly applicable to SAT from here on? Is this what I use to calculate maximum/minimum values for overlap? I guess I'm just having trouble figuring out exactly what the dot product is representing in this particular context. Clearly I'm not quite up to date on my elementary physics, but any explanations would be greatly appreciated.

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• How do you conquer the challenge of designing for large screen real-estate?

  - by Berin Loritsch

  This question is a bit more subjective, but I'm hoping to get some new perspective. I'm so used to designing for a certain screen size (typically 1024x768) that I find that size to not be a problem. Expanding the size to 1280x1024 doesn't buy you enough screen real estate to make an appreciable difference, but will give me a little more breathing room. Basically, I just expand my "grid size" and the same basic design for the slightly smaller screen still works. However, in the last couple of projects my clients were all using 1080p (1920x1080) screens and they wanted solutions to use as much of that real estate as possible. 1920 pixels across provides just under twice the width I am used to, and the wide screen makes some of my old go to design approaches not to work as well. The problem I'm running into is that when presented with so much space, I'm confronted with some major problems. How many columns should I use? The wide format lends itself to a 3 column split with a 2:1:1 split (i.e. the content column bigger than the other two). However, if I go with three columns what do I do with that extra column? How do I make efficient use of the screen real estate? There's a temptation to put everything on the screen at once, but too much information actually makes the application harder to use. White space is important to help make sense of complex information, but too much makes related concepts look too separate. I'm usually working with web applications that have complex data, and visualization and presentation is key to making sense of the raw data. When your user also has a large screen (at least 24"), some information is out of eye sight and you need to move the pointer a long distance. How do you make sure everything that's needed stays within the visual hot points? Simple sites like blogs actually do better when the width is constrained, which results in a lot of wasted real estate. I kind of wonder if having the text box and the text preview side by side would be a big benefit for the admin side of that type of screen? (1:1 two column split). For your answers, I know almost everything in design is "it depends". What I'm looking for is: General principles you use How your approach to design has changed I'm finding that i have to retrain myself how to work with this different format. Every bump in resolution I've worked through to date has been about 25%: 640 to 800 (25% increase), 800 to 1024 (28% increase), and 1024 to 1280 (25% increase). However, the jump from 1280 to 1920 is a good 50% increase in space--the equivalent from jumping from 640 straight to 1024. There was no commonly used middle size to help learn lessons more gradually.

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• Code Design question, circular reference across classes?

  - by dsollen

  I have no code here, as this is more of a design question (I assume this is still the best place to ask it). I have a very simple server in java which stores a mapping between certain values and UUID which are to be used by many systems across multiple platforms. It accepts a connection from a client and creates a clientSocket which stores the socket and all the other relevant data unique to that connection. Each clientSocket will run in their own thread and will block on the socket waiting for a read. I expect very little strain on this system, it will rarely get called, but when it does get a call it will need to respond quickly and due to the risk of it having a peak time with multiple calls coming in at once threaded is still better. Each thread has a reference to a Mapper class which stores the mapping of UUID which it's reporting to others (with proper synchronization of course). This all works until I have to add a new UUID to the list. When this happens I want to report to all clients that care about that particular UUID that a new one was added. I can't multicast (limitation of the system I'm running on) so I'm having each socket send the message to the client through the established socket. However, since each thread only knows about the socket it's waiting on I didn't have a clear method of looking up every thread/socket that cares about the data to inform them of the new UUID. Polling is out mostly because it seems a little too convoluted to try to maintain a list of newly added UUID. My solution as of now is to have the 'parent' class which creates the mapper class and spawns all the threads pass itself as an argument to the mapper. Then when the mapper creates a new UUID it can make a call to the parent class telling it to send out updates to all the other sockets that care about the change. I'm concerned that this may be a bad design due to the use of a circular reference; parent has a reference to mapper (to pass it to new ClientSocket threads) and mapper points to parent. It doesn't really feel like a bad design to me but I wanted to check since circular references are suppose to be bad. Note: I realize this means that the thread associated with whatever socket originally received the request that spawned the creation of a UUID is going to pay the 'cost' of outputting to all the other clients that care about the new UUID. I don't care about this; as I said I suspect the client to receive only intermittent messages. It's unlikely for one socket to receive multiple messages at one time, and there won't be that many sockets so it shouldn't take too long to send messages to each of them. Perhaps later I'll fix the fact that I'm saddling higher work load on whatever unfortunate thread gets the first request; but for now I think it's fine.

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• How do I create weapon attachments?

  - by Tron86

  My question is; I am developing a game for XNA and I am trying to create a weapon attachment for my player model. My player model loads the .md3 format and reads tags for attachment points. I am able to get the tag of my model's hand. And I am also able to get the tag of my weapon's handle. Each tag I am able to get the rotation and position of and this is how I am calculating it: Model.worldMatrix = Matrix.CreateScale(Model.scale) * Matrix.CreateRotationX(-MathHelper.PiOver2) * Matrix.CreateRotationY(MathHelper.PiOver2); Pretty simple, the player model has a scale and its orientation(it loads on its side so I just use a 90 degree X axis rotation, and a Y axis rotation to face away from the camera). I then calculate the torso tag on the lower body, which gives me a local coordinate at the waist. Then I take that matrix and calculate the tag_weapon in the upper body. This gives me the hand position in local space. I also get the rotation matrix from that tag that I store for later use. All this seems to work fine. Now I move onto my weapon: Matrix weaponWorld = Matrix.CreateScale(CurrentWeapon.scale) * Matrix.CreateRotationX(-MathHelper.PiOver2) * TagRotationMatrix * Matrix.CreateTranslation(HandTag.Position) * Matrix.CreateRotationY(PlayerRotation) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(CollisionBody.Position) * You may notice the weapon matrix gets rotated by 90 degress on the X axis as well. This is because they load in on their sides. Once again this seems pretty simple and follows the SRT order I keep reading about. My TagRotation matrix is the hand's rotation. HandTag.Position is its position in local space. CreateRotationY(PlayerRotation) is the player's rotation in world space, and the CollisionBody.Position is the player's world location. Everything seems to be in order, and almost works in game. However when the gun spawns and follows the player's hand it seems to be flipped on an axis every couple frames. Almost like the X or Y axis is being inversed then put right back. Its hard to explain and I am totally stumped. Even removing all my X axis fixes does nothing to solve the problem. Hopefully I explained everything enough as I am a bit new to this! Thanks!

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• Accessing Controls Within A Gridview

  - by Bunch

  Sometimes you need to access a control within a GridView, but it isn’t quite as straight forward as just using FindControl to grab the control like you can in a FormView. Since the GridView builds multiple rows the key is to specify the row. In this example there is a GridView with a control for a player’s errors. If the errors is greater than 9 the GridView should display the control (lblErrors) in red so it stands out. Here is the GridView: <asp:GridView ID="gvFielding" runat="server" DataSourceID="sqlFielding" DataKeyNames="PlayerID" AutoGenerateColumns="false" >     <Columns>         <asp:BoundField DataField="PlayerName" HeaderText="Player Name" />         <asp:BoundField DataField="PlayerNumber" HeaderText="Player Number" />         <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Errors">             <ItemTemplate>                 <asp:Label ID="lblErrors" runat="server" Text='<%# EVAL("Errors") %>'  />             </ItemTemplate>         </asp:TemplateField>     </Columns> </asp:GridView> In the code behind you can add the code to change the label’s ForeColor property to red based on the amount of errors. In this case 10 or more errors triggers the color change. Protected Sub gvFielding_DataBound(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles gvFielding.DataBound     Dim errorLabel As Label     Dim errors As Integer     Dim i As Integer = 0     For Each row As GridViewRow In gvFielding.Rows         errorLabel = gvFielding.Rows(i).FindControl("lblErrors")         If Not errorLabel.Text = Nothing Then             Integer.TryParse(errorLabel.Text, errors)             If errors > 9 Then                 errorLabel.ForeColor = Drawing.Color.Red             End If         End If         i += 1     Next End Sub The main points in the DataBound sub is use a For Each statement to loop through the rows and to increment the variable i so you loop through every row. That way you check each one and if the value is greater than 9 the label changes to red. The If Not errorLabel.Text = Nothing line is there as a check in case no data comes back at all for Errors. Technorati Tags: GridView,ASP.Net,VB.Net

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• Android Array Lag?

  - by Mike

  I am making a platform game for Android. It is sort of a tile based game. I added bullets and enemies with AI and a bunch of tile types. I created a simple map with no Enemies. Everything was running well and smooth until I shot a bunch of bullets randomly everywhere. A couple of hundreds of bullets later, the FPS lowered. I made a test to find out if the bullets were the problem so I made another simple map with just a tile to stand on and left it for a while. Minutes later, I played around with it a bit to check if the FPS changed and it didnt. I reloaded the same map and shot a lot of bullets. Minutes later, the FPS was visibly lower even after the number of bullets were zero. Points to note: Programmed FPS is 30 Tested on a Samsung Galaxy Y and Samsung Galaxy W Any tile, enemy, bullet that is off screen is not drawn to prevent lag Bullets collide with Tiles (if they dont collide with in 450 frames, they are removed from the array) I used List bullets = new ListArray(); I used bullets.add(new Bullet(x, y, params...)); I used for(...){ if(...){ bullets.remove(i); } } Code for bullet: private void drawBullets(Canvas canvas) { for (int i = 0; i < bullets.size(); i++) { Bullet b = bullets.get(i); b.update(canvas); //updates physics if (b.t > blm) { //if the bullet is past its expiry bullets.remove(i); i--; } else { if (svx((b.x)) > 0 && svx(b.x) < width && svy((b.y)) > 0 && svy(b.y) < height) { // if bullet is not off screen b.draw(canvas); // draw the bullet } } } } I tried searching for solutions and references but I have no luck. I'm guessing that the lag has something to do with the Array and the Bullets or Classes that I've loaded? I'm not sure! Someone please help! Thanks in advance! :)

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• C Programming arrays, I dont understand how I would go about making this program, If anyone can just guide me through the basic outline please :) [on hold]

  - by Rashmi Kohli

  Problem The temperature of a car engine has been measured, from real-world experiments, as shown in the table and graph below: Time (min) Temperature (oC) 0 20 1 36 2 61 3 68 4 77 5 110 Use linear regression to find the engine’s temperature at 1.5 minutes, 4.3 minutes, and any other time specified by the user. Background In engineering, many times we measure several data points in an experiment, but then we need to predict a value that we have not measured which lies between two measured values, such as the problem statement above. If the relation between the measured parameters seems to be roughly linear, then we can use linear regression to find the relationship between those parameters. In the graph of the problem statement above, the relation seems to be roughly linear. Hence, we can apply linear regression to the above problem. Assuming y {y0, y1, …yn-1} has a linear relation with x {x0, x1, … xn-1}, we can say that: y = mx+b where m and b can be found with linear regression as follows: For the problem in this lab, using linear regression gives us the following line (in blue) compared to the measured curve (in red). As you can see, there is usually a difference between the measured values and the estimated (predicted) values. What linear regression does is to minimize those differences and still give us a straight line (blue). Other methods, such as non-linear regression, are also possible to achieve higher accuracy and better curve fitting. Requirements Your program should first print the table of the temperatures similar to the way it’s printed in the problem statement. It should then calculate the temperature at minute 1.5 and 4.3 and show the answers to the user. Next, it should prompt the user to enter a time in minutes (or -1 to quit), and after reading the user’s specified time it should give the value of the engine’s temperature at that time. It should then go back to the prompt. Hints •Use a one dimensional array to store the temperature values given in the problem statement. •Use functions to separate tasks such as calculating m, calculating b, calculating the temperature at a given time, printing the prompt, etc. You can then give your algorithm as well as you pseudo code per function, as opposed to one large algorithm diagram or one large sequence of pseudo code.

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• Working the Chart Percentages

  - by Tim Dexter

  Charting in BIP is such fun, well sometimes it is. Not so much today, at least not for Ron in San Diego. He needed a horizontal bar chart showing values plotted for various test areas with value labels at the end of the bars. Simple enough right? The wrinkle, they were percentage values so he needed to see '56%' not '56'! Still, it should be simple enough but the percentage formatting has a requirement for your values to be in a decimal format i.e. 0.56 not 56.0. 56.0 gets formatted as 5600%. OK, so either pull the values out as decimals or use the div function to divide the values in the chart by 100 e.g. <xsl:value-of select="myval div 100)" /> Now I can use the following the chart XML to format the percentages as I need them:   <Graph ... > ... <MarkerText visible="true"> <Y1ViewFormat> <ViewFormat numberType="NUMTYPE_PERCENT" decimalDigit="0" numberTypeUsed="true" leadingZeroUsed="true" decimalDigitUsed="true"/> </Y1ViewFormat> </MarkerText> ... </Graph>   That gets me the values shown the way I want but the auto axis formatting gets me from 0 >> 1. I now need to go in and add the formatting for the axis too.   <Graph ...> ... <Y1Axis axisMinAutoScaled="false" axisMinValue="0.0" axisMaxAutoScaled="false" axisMaxValue="1.0" majorTickStepAutomatic="true"> <ViewFormat numberType="NUMTYPE_PERCENT" decimalDigit="0" scaleFactor="SCALEFACTOR_NONE" numberTypeUsed="true" leadingZeroUsed="true" decimalDigitUsed="true" scaleFactorUsed="true"/> </Y1Axis>   Now I have a chart that's showing the percentage values and formatting axis scale correctly for me too. You can of course mess with the attributes above to get more decimal points on your labels, etc. Happy Charting!

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• A Simple Entity Tagger

  - by Elton Stoneman

  In the REST world, ETags are your gateway to performance boosts by letting clients cache responses. In the non-REST world, you may also want to add an ETag to an entity definition inside a traditional service contract – think of a scenario where a consumer persists its own representation of your entity, and wants to keep it in sync. Rather than load every entity by ID and check for changes, the consumer can send in a set of linked IDs and ETags, and you can return only the entities where the current ETag is different from the consumer’s version.  If your entity is a projection from various sources, you may not have a persistent ETag, so you need an efficient way to generate an ETag which is deterministic, so an entity with the same state always generates the same ETag. I have an implementation for a generic ETag generator on GitHub here: EntityTagger code sample. The essence is simple - we get the entity, serialize it and build a hash from the serialized value. Any changes to either the state or the structure of the entity will result in a different hash. To use it, just call SetETag, passing your populated object and a Func<> which acts as an accessor to the ETag property: EntityTagger.SetETag(user, x => x.ETag); The implementation is all in at 80 lines of code, which is all pretty straightforward: var eTagProperty = AsPropertyInfo(eTagPropertyAccessor); var originalETag = eTagProperty.GetValue(entity, null); try { ResetETag(entity, eTagPropertyAccessor); string json; var serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(entity.GetType()); using (var stream = new MemoryStream()) { serializer.WriteObject(stream, entity); json = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(stream.GetBuffer(), 0, (int)stream.Length); } var guid = GetDeterministicGuid(json); eTagProperty.SetValue(entity, guid.ToString(), null); //... There are a couple of helper methods to check if the object has changed since the ETag value was last set, and to reset the ETag. This implementation uses JSON to do the serializing rather than XML. Benefit - should be marginally more efficient as your hashing a much smaller serialized string; downside, JSON doesn't include namespaces or class names at the root level, so if you have two classes with the exact same structure but different names, then instances which have the same content will have the same ETag. You may want that behaviour, but change to use the XML DataContractSerializer if you think that will be an issue. If you can persist the ETag somewhere, it will save you server processing to load up the entity, but that will only apply to scenarios where you can reliably invalidate your ETag (e.g. if you control all the entry points where entity contents can be updated, then you can calculate and persist the new ETag with each update).

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• Physics Engine [Collision Response, 2-dimensional] experts, help!! My stack is unstable!

  - by Register Sole

  Previously, I struggle with the sequential impulse-based method I developed. Thanks to jedediah referring me to this paper, I managed to rebuild the codes and implement the simultaneous impulse based method with Projected-Gauss-Seidel (PGS) iterative solver as described by Erin Catto (mentioned in the reference of the paper as [Catt05]). So here's how it currently is: The simulation handles 2-dimensional rotating convex polygons. Detection is using separating-axis test, with a SKIN, meaning closest points between two polygons is detected and determined if their distance is less than SKIN. To resolve collision, simultaneous impulse-based method is used. It is solved using iterative solver (PGS-solver) as in Erin Catto's paper. Error-correction is implemented using Baumgarte's stabilization (you can refer to either paper for this) using J V = beta/dt*overlap, J is the Jacobian for the constraints, V the matrix containing the velocities of the bodies, beta an error-correction parameter that is better be < 1, dt the time-step taken by the engine, and overlap, the overlap between the bodies (true overlap, so SKIN is ignored). However, it is still less stable than I expected :s I tried to stack hexagons (or squares, doesn't really matter), and even with only 4 to 5 of them, they hardly stand still! Also note that I am not looking for a sleeping scheme. But I would settle if you have any explicit scheme to handle resting contacts. That said, I would be more than happy if you have a way of treating it generally (as continuous collision, instead of explicitly as a special state). Ideas I have: I would try adding a damping term (proportional to velocity) to the Baumgarte. Is this a good idea in general? If not I would not want to waste my time trying to tune the parameter hoping it magically works. Ideas I have tried: Using simultaneous position based error correction as described in the paper in section 5.3.2, turned out to be worse than the current scheme. If you want to know the parameters I used: Hexagons, side 50 (pixels) gravity 2400 (pixels/sec^2) time-step 1/60 (sec) beta 0.1 restitution 0 to 0.2 coeff. of friction 0.2 PGS iteration 10 initial separation 10 (pixels) mass 1 (unit is irrelevant for now, i modified velocity directly<-impulse method) inertia 1/1000 Thanks in advance! I really appreciate any help from you guys!! :)

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• JDK 8u20 Documentation Updates

  - by joni g.

  JDK 8u20 has been released and is available from the Java Downloads page. See the JDK 8u20 Update Release Notes for details. Highlights for this release: The Medium security level has been removed. Now only High and Very High levels are available. Applets that do not conform with the latest security practices can still be authorized to run by adding the sites that host them to the Exception Site List. See Security for more information. The javafxpackager tool has been renamed to javapackager, and supports both Java and JavaFX applications. The -B option has been added to the javapackager deploy command to enable arguments to be passed to the bundlers that are used to create self-contained applications. See javapackager for Windows or Linux and OS X for information. The <fx:bundleArgument> helper parameter argument has been added to enable arguments to be passed to the bundlers when using ant tasks. See JavaFX Ant Task Reference for more information. A new attribute is available for JAR file manifests. The Entry-Point attribute is used to identify the classes that are allowed to be used as entry points to your application. See Entry-Point Attribute for more information. A new Microsoft Windows Installer (MSI) Enterprise JRE Installer, which enables users to install the JRE across the enterprise, is available for Java SE Advanced or Java SE Suite licensees. See Downloading the Installer in JRE Installation For Microsoft Windows for more information. The following new configuration parameters are added to the installation process to support commercial features, for use by Java SE Advanced or Java SE Suite licensees only: USAGETRACKERCFG= DEPLOYMENT_RULE_SET= See Installing With a Configuration File for more information about these and other installer parameters. Documentation highlights: New Troubleshooting Guide combines and replaces the Desktop Technologies Troubleshooting Guide and the HotSpot Virtual Machine Troubleshooting Guide to provide a single location for diagnosing and solving problems that might occur with Java Client applications. New Deployment Guide combines and replaces the JavaFX Deployment Guide and the Java Rich Internet Applications Guide to provide a single location for information about the Java packaging tools, creating self-contained applications, and deploying Java and JavaFX applications. New Garbage Collection Tuning Guide describes the garbage collectors included with the Java HotSpot VM and helps you choose which one to use. The Java Tutorials have a new look.

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• IPv6, isn't it just a few extra bits?

  - by rclewis

  It's always an interesting task, to try and explain what you do to family and friends. I have described IPv6 as the "Next Generation Internet"  or "Second Internet" but the hollow expressions on my kids faces scream for the instant relief of the latest video game.  Never one to give up easily, I have formulated a new example - the Post Office... Similar to the Post Office the Internet delivers mail and packages based on addresses. As the number of residences, businesses, and delivery locations increased, the 5 digit ZIP Code (Washington, DC 20005) was expanded to ZIP+4  allowing for more precise delivery points (Postmaster General, Washington, DC 20260-3100). Ah, if only computers were as simple.  IPv6 isn't an add-on or expansion of the existing IPv4 Addressing, it is a new addressing model which will allow the internet to grow from a single computer in the basement of a university or your parents kitchen table, to support the multitude of smart phones, smart TV's, tablets, dvr's, and disk players, all clambering to connect for information. Unfortunetly there are only a finite number of IPv4 public addresses left, and those are being consumed at an ever increasing rate. Few people could have predicted the explosive growth of the internet or the shortage of IPv4 addresses we now face - but there is a "Plan B" and that is the vastly larger address space of IPv6.  Many in the industry have labeled this a "business continuity" problem,  when in fact most companies will be able to continue conducting business once they run out of existing IPv4 Addresses. The problem is really a Customer Continuity problem, how will businesses communicate with existing customers and reach new customers online who's only option is to adopt IPv6 when IPv4 is depleted? Perhaps a first step is publishing a blog that is also accessible via IPv6, it's just a few extra bits. Join us for the Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Session:   Navigating IPv6 @ Oracle Thursday, Oct. 4th 2:15PM - 3:15PM  Palace Hotel - Concert   Learn more about IPv6 Technologies at Oracle

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• Are there software options (preferabbly .NET) for doing distance and speed analysis of footballers moving on video?

  - by Anonymous Type

  Editing Question for Clarity Thanks for feedback so far, very insightful. I'm not sure how far along this part of the software community is, and what if any libraries exist for me to leverage from. Heres what I'm trying to do. Problem: Take an existing video of a game of rugby league. The Rugby League field is 100 metres long, 70 metres wide, and has white line markings every 10 metres running along the width of the field, as well as along the sidelines. Each side has 13 players on the field. Players on each team have identical jerseys that normally constrast strongly against background colours (green/brown field colour) and the referee's colour (usually yellow) and the designated water runner (orange). All players have a unique number in thick white lettering on their backs for identification. Video is taken with a high definition camera. Currently only one camera is used (2D) and existing video does not contain a foreground object of fixed spatial dimensions (as suggested in one answer for comparision measurements, however I could add this to future filming sessions if it is worthwhile). The player's do not run in a straight line 50% of the time but will go sideways on on a diagonal to the play the ball. The distance measured always starts from the spot of the previous "tackle", which ends where the player stops forward movement. It is not always possible to determine the players number from the video (facing other direction, sunlight, others standing in the way of the camera). But this isn't important as the software could allow for manual inputting of unknown "runs" at a later point after analysis. Determine the distance between two points (i.e. where the player started his "run" and where he finished it). I'm guessing that this would be quite doable if I manually marked the start and end point in the video. But how would I use landmarks in the background to determine the distance (assuming the person taking the video has kept it from jerking around). Question: Do software packages or libraries exist that are specialised enough to assist with writing analysis software to determine a sports persons distance travelled based on video taken of the performance?

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