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• Romanian parter Omnilogic Delivers “No Limits” Scalability, Performance, Security, and Affordability through Next-Generation, Enterprise-Grade Engineered Systems

  - by swalker

  Omnilogic SRL is a leading technology and information systems provider in Romania and central and Eastern Europe. An Oracle Value-Added Distributor Partner, Omnilogic resells Oracle software, hardware, and engineered systems to Oracle Partner Network members and provides specialized training, support, and testing facilities. Independent software vendors (ISVs) also use Omnilogic’s demonstration and testing facilities to upgrade the performance and efficiency of their solutions and those of their customers by migrating them from competitor technologies to Oracle platforms. Omnilogic also has a dedicated offering for ISV solutions, based on Oracle technology in a hosting service provider model. Omnilogic wanted to help Oracle Partners and ISVs migrate solutions to Oracle Exadata and sell Oracle Exadata to end-customers. It installed Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 Quarter Rack at its data center to create a demonstration and testing environment. Demonstrations proved that Oracle Exadata achieved processing speeds up to 100 times faster than competitor systems, cut typical back-up times from 6 hours to 20 minutes, and stored 10 times more data. Oracle Partners and ISVs learned that migrating solutions to Oracle Exadata’s preconfigured, pre-integrated hardware and software can be completed rapidly, at low cost, without business disruption, and with reduced ongoing operating costs. Challenges A word from Omnilogic “Oracle Exadata is the new killer application—the smartest solution on the market. There is no competition.” – Sorin Dragomir, Chief Operating Officer, Omnilogic SRL Enable Oracle Partners in Romania and central and eastern Europe to achieve Oracle Exadata Ready status by providing facilities to test and optimize existing applications and build real-life proofs of concept (POCs) for new solutions on Oracle Exadata Database Machine Provide technical support and demonstration facilities for ISVs migrating their customers’ solutions from competitor technologies to Oracle Exadata to maximize performance, scalability, and security; optimize hardware and datacenter space; cut maintenance costs; and improve return on investment Demonstrate power of Oracle Exadata’s high-performance, high-capacity engineered systems for customer-facing businesses, such as government organizations, telecommunications, banking and insurance, and utility companies, which typically require continuous availability to support very large data volumes Showcase Oracle Exadata’s unchallenged online transaction processing (OLTP) capabilities that cut application run times to provide unrivalled query turnaround and user response speeds while significantly reducing back-up times and eliminating risk of unplanned outages Capitalize on providing a world-class training and demonstration environment for Oracle Exadata to accelerate sales with Oracle Partners Solutions Created a testing environment to enable Oracle Partners and ISVs to test their own solutions and those of their customers on Oracle Exadata running on Oracle Enterprise Linux or Oracle Solaris Express to benchmark performance prior to migration Leveraged expertise on Oracle Exadata to offer Oracle Exadata training, migration, support seminars and to showcase live demonstrations for Oracle Partners Proved how Oracle Exadata’s pre-engineered systems, that come assembled, configured, and ready to run, reduce deployment time and cost, minimize risk, and help customers achieve the full performance potential immediately after go live Increased processing speeds 10-fold and with zero data loss for a telecommunications provider’s client-facing customer relationship management solution Achieved performance improvements of between 6 and 100 times faster for financial and utility company applications currently running on IBM, Microsoft, or SAP HANA platforms Showed how daily closure procedures carried out overnight by banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions to analyze each day’s business, can typically be cut from around six hours to 20 minutes, some 18 times faster, when running on Oracle Exadata Simulated concurrent back-ups while running applications under normal working conditions to prove that Oracle Exadata-based solutions can be backed up during business hours without causing bottlenecks or impacting the end-user experience Demonstrated that Oracle Exadata’s built-in analytics, data mining and OLTP capabilities make it the highest-performance, lowest-cost choice for large data warehousing operations Showed how Oracle Exadata’s columnar compression and intelligent storage architecture allows 10 times more data to be stored than on competitor platforms Demonstrated how Oracle Exadata cuts hardware requirements significantly by consolidating workloads on to fewer servers which delivers greater power efficiency and lower operating costs that competing systems from IBM and other manufacturers Proved to ISVs that migrating solutions to Oracle Exadata’s preconfigured, pre-integrated hardware and software can be completed rapidly, at low cost, and with minimal business disruption Demonstrated how storage servers, database servers, and network switches can be added incrementally and inexpensively to the Oracle Exadata platform to support business expansion On track to grow revenues by 10% in year one and by 15% annually thereafter through increased business generated from Oracle Partners and ISVs

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• Manage Your WordPress Blog Comments from Your Windows Desktop

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you never more than a few steps away from your PC and want to keep up with comments on your blog?  Then here’s how you can stay on top of your WordPress comments right from your desktop. Wp-comment-notifier is a small free app for Windows that lets you easily view, approve, reply to, and delete comments from your WordPress blog.  Whether you have a free WordPress.com blog or are running WordPress on your own server, this tool can keep you connected to your comments.  Unfortunately it only lets you manage comments at one blog, so if manage multiple WordPress-powered sites you may find this a downside.  Otherwise, it works great and helps you stay on top of the conversation at your blog. Get notified with wp-comment-notifier Download the wp-comment-notifier (link below) and install as usual. Run it once it’s installed.  Enter your blog address, username, and password when prompted. Wp-comment-notifier will automatically setup your account and download recent comments. Finally, enter your blog’s name, and click Finish. Review Comments with wp-comment-notifier You can now review your comments directly by double-clicking the new WordPress icon in your system tray.  The window has 3 tabs…comments, pending, and spam.  Select a comment to reply, edit, spam, or delete it directly from your desktop. If you select Edit, then you can edit the HTML of the comment (including links) directly from within the notifier. You can approve or permanently delete any spam messages that are caught by your blog’s spam filter. Whenever new comments come in, you’ll see a tray popup letting you know how many comments are waiting to be approved or are in the spam folder.  Click the popup to open the editor. Now, you can directly approve that pending comment without going to your WordPress admin page.  When you’re done, just press Enter on your Keyboard to post the reply. Or, if you want to reply to the comment, click the reply link and enter your comment in the entry box at the bottom. If you ever want to double-check if there’s any new comments, just right-click on the tray icon and select refresh. Finally, you can change the settings from the Configuration link in the tray button or by clicking the gear button on the bottom of the review window.  You can change how often it checks for new comments, not to start the notifier at system startup, and edit your account information. Conclusion Whether you’re managing your personal blog or administer a site with millions of hits per day, staying on top of the conversation is one of the best ways to build and maintain your audience.  With wp-comment-notifier, you can be sure that you’re always in control of your blogs comments.  This app is especially useful if you review all comments before allowing them to be published. Download wp-comment-notifier Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How-To Geek SoftwareHow-To Geek Software: WordPress Comment Moderation NotifierSave Time Commenting with Pre-Fill Comments Greasemonkey ScriptAdd Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress BlogTools to Help Post Content On Your WordPress Blog 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 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Error Goblin Explains Windows Error Codes Twelve must-have Google Chrome plugins Cool Looking Skins for Windows Media Player 12 Move the Mouse Pointer With Your Face Movement Using eViacam Boot Windows Faster With Boot Performance Diagnostics Create Ringtones For Your Android Phone With RingDroid

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• Backup and Transfer Foobar2000 to a New Computer

  - by Mysticgeek

  If you are a fan of Foobar2000 you undoubtedly have tweaked it to the point where you don’t want to set it all up again on a new machine. Here we look at how to transfer Foobar2000 settings to a new Windows 7 machine. Note: For this article we are transferring Foobar2000 settings from on Windows 7 machine to another over a network running Windows Home Server.  Foobar2000 Foobar2000 is an awesome music player which is highly customizable and we’ve previously covered. Here we take a look at how it’s set up on the current machine. It’s a nothing flashy, but is set up for our needs and includes a lot of components and playlists.   Backup Files Rather than wasting time setting everything up again on a new machine, we can backup the important files and replace them on the new machine. First type or copy the following into the Explorer address bar. %appdata%\foobar2000 Now copy all of the files in the folder and store them on a network drive or some type removable media or device. New Machine Now you can install the latest version of Foobar2000 on your new machine. You can go with a Standard install as we will be replacing our backed up configuration files anyway. When it launches, it will be set with all the defaults…and we want what we had back. Browse to the following on the new machine… %appdata%\foobar2000 Delete all of the files in this directory… Then replace them with the ones we backed up from the other machine. You’ll also want to navigate to C:\Program Files\Foobar2000 and replace the existing Components folder with the backed up one. When you get the screen telling you there is already files of the same name, select Move and Replace, and check the box Do this for the next 6 conflicts. Now we’re back in business! Everything is exactly as it was on the old machine. In this example, we were moving the Foobar2000 files from a computer on the same home network. All the music is coming from a directory on our Windows Home Server so they hadn’t changed. If you’re moving these files to a computer on another machine… say your work computer, you’ll need to adjust where the music folders point to. Windows XP If you’re setting up Foobar2000 on an XP machine, you can enter the following into the Run line. %appdata%\foobar2000 Then copy your backed up files into the Foobar2000 folder, and remember to swap out the Components folder in C:\Program Files\Foobar2000. Confirm to replace the files and folders by clicking Yes to All… Conclusion This method worked perfectly for us on our home network setup. There might be some other things that will need a bit of tweaking, but overall the process is quick and easy. There is a lot of cool things you can do with Foobar2000 like rip an audio CD to FlAC. If you’re a fan of Foobar2000 or considering switching to it, we will be covering more awesome features in future articles. Download Foobar2000 – Windows Only Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Backup or Transfer Microsoft Office 2007 Quick Parts Between ComputersBackup and Restore Internet Explorer’s Trusted Sites ListSecond Copy 7 [Review]Backup and Restore Firefox Profiles EasilyFoobar2000 is a Fully Customizable Music Player 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 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Windows Media Player Glass Icons (icons we like) How to Forecast Weather, without Gadgets Outlook Tools, one stop tweaking for any Outlook version Zoofs, find the most popular tweeted YouTube videos Video preview of new Windows Live Essentials 21 Cursor Packs for XP, Vista & 7

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• Having Fun with Coding4Fun&rsquo;s Windows Phone 7 Controls

  - by mbcrump

  I’m a big believer in having a hobby project as you can probably tell from the first sentence in my “personal webpage using Silverlight” article. One of my current hobby projects is to re-do my current WP7 application in the marketplace. I knew up front that I needed a “Loading” animation and a better “About” box. After starting to develop my own, I noticed a great set of WP7 controls by Coding4Fun and decided to use them in my new application. Before I go any further they are FREE and Open-Source. It is really simple to get started, just go to the CodePlex site and click the download button. After you have downloaded it then extract it to a Folder and you will have 4 DLL files. They are listed below: Now create a Windows Phone 7 Project and add references to the DLL’s by right clicking on the References folder and clicking “Add references”.   After adding the references, we can get started. I needed a ProgressOverlay animation or “Loading Screen” while my RSS feed is downloading. Basically, you just need to add the following namespace to whatever page you want the control on: xmlns:Controls="clr-namespace:Coding4Fun.Phone.Controls;assembly=Coding4Fun.Phone.Controls" And then the code inside your Grid or wherever you want the Loading screen placed. <Controls:ProgressOverlay Name="progressOverlay" > <Controls:ProgressOverlay.Content> <TextBlock>Loading</TextBlock> </Controls:ProgressOverlay.Content> </Controls:ProgressOverlay> Bam, you now have a great looking loading screen. Of course inside the ProgressOverlay, you may want to add a Visibility property to turn it off after your data loads if you are using MVVM or similar pattern.   Next up, I needed a nice clean “About Box” that looks good but is also functional. Meaning, if they click on my twitter name, web or email to launch the appropriate task. Again, this is only a few lines of code: var p = new AboutPrompt(); p.VersionNumber = "2.0"; p.Show("Michael Crump", "@mbcrump", "[email protected]", @"http://michaelcrump.net"); A nice clean “About” box with just a few lines of code! I’m all for code that I don’t have to write. It also comes with a pretty sweet InputPrompt for grabbing info from a user: The code for this is also very simple: InputPrompt input = new InputPrompt(); input.Completed += (s, e) => { MessageBox.Show(e.Result.ToString()); }; input.Title = "Input Box"; input.Message = "What does a \"Developer Large\" T-Shirt Mean? "; input.Show(); I also enjoyed the PhoneHelper that allows you to get data out of the WMAppManifest File very easy. So for example if I wanted the Version info from the WMAppManifest file. I could write one line and get it. PhoneHelper.GetAppAttribute("Version") Of course you would want to make sure you add the following using statement: using Coding4Fun.Phone.Controls.Data; You can’t have all these cool controls without a great set of Converters. The included BooleanToVisibility converter will convert a Boolean to and from a Visibility value. This is excellent when using something like a CheckBox to display a TextBox when its checked. See the example below: The code is below: <phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources> <Converters:BooleanToVisibilityConverter x:Key="BooleanToVisibilityConverter"/> </phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources> <CheckBox x:Name="checkBox"/> <TextBlock Text="Display Text" Visibility="{Binding ElementName=checkBox, Path=IsChecked, Converter={StaticResource BooleanToVisibilityConverter} }"/> That’s not all the goodies included. They also provide a RoundedButton, TimePicker and several other converters. The documentation is great and I would recommend you give them a shot if you need any of this functionality. Btw, thank Brian Peek for his awesome work on Coding4Fun!  Subscribe to my feed

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• Java Spotlight Episode 57: Live From #Devoxx - Ben Evans and Martijn Verburg of the London JUG with Yara Senger of SouJava

  - by Roger Brinkley

  Tweet Live from Devoxx 11,  an interview with Ben Evans and Martijn Verburg from the London JUG along with  Yara Senger from the SouJava JUG on the JCP Executive Committee Elections, JSR 248, and Adopt-a-JSR program. Both the London JUG and SouJava JUG are JCP Standard Edition Executive Committee Members. Joining us this week on the Java All Star Developer Panel are Geertjan Wielenga, Principal Product Manger in Oracle Developer Tools; Stephen Chin, Java Champion and Java FX expert; and Antonio Goncalves, Paris JUG leader. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link: Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News Netbeans 7.1 JDK 7 upgrade tools Netbeans First Patch Program OpenJFX approved as an OpenJDK project Devoxx France April 18-20, 2012 Events Nov 22-25, OTN Developer Days in the Nordics Nov 22-23, Goto Conference, Prague Dec 6-8, Java One Brazil, Sao Paulo Feature interview Ben Evans has lived in "Interesting Times" in technology - he was the lead performance testing engineer for the Google IPO, worked on the initial UK trials of 3G networks with BT, built award-winning websites for some of Hollywood's biggest hits of the 90s, rearchitected and reimagined technology helping some of the most vulnerable people in the UK and has worked on everything from some of the UKs very first ecommerce sites, through to multi-billion dollar currency trading systems. He helps to run the London Java Community, and represents the JUG on the Java SE/EE Executive Committee. His first book "The Well-Grounded Java Developer" (with Martijn Verburg) has just been published by Manning. Martijn Verburg (aka 'the Diabolical Developer') herds Cats in the Java/open source communities and is constantly humbled by the creative power to be found there. Currently he resides in London where he co-leads the London JUG (a JCP EC member), runs a couple of open source projects & drinks too much beer at his local pub. You can find him online moderating at the Javaranch or discussing (ranting?) subjects on the Prgorammers Stack Exchange site. Most recently he's become a regular speaker at conferences on Java, open source and software development and has recently wrapped up his first Manning title - "The Well-Grounded Java Developer" with his co-author Ben Evans. Yara Senger is the partner and director of teacher education and Globalcode, graduated from the University of Sao Paulo, Sao Carlos, has significant experience in Brazil and abroad in developing solutions to critical Java. She is the co-creator of Java programs Academy and Academy of Web Developer, accumulating over 1000 hours in the classroom teaching Java. She currently serves as the President of Sou Java. In this interview Ben, Martijn, and Yara talk about the JCP Executive Committee Elections, JSR 348, and the Adopt-a-JSR program. Mail Bag What's Cool Show Transcripts Transcript for this show is available here when available.

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• My Mother Bought a Droid

  - by Ben Griswold

  I converted to iPhone two years ago when I left my former employer and my Blackberry behind. The truth is I half-heartedly purchased my iPhone. It was a great looking device, but as far as I was concerned, it was a mere toy compared to my Blackberry.  I remember hiding the toy in my briefcase when attending business meetings because I didn’t consider it to be professional enough.  I’ve since owned all three generations of the iPhone and, well, iPhone seems to have caught on. I still miss the click of the Blackberry keyboard and the blinking red light letting me know that someone/something requires my attention, but I’m officially an iPhone fanboy now.  My mom called last weekend and asked if she should buy an iPhone. I talked her ear off about everything I love about iPhone. I went on for about twenty minutes. I couldn’t help myself. I mentioned everything from my podcast subscriptions to the application which manages my workouts.  I went as far as to say that someday all smart phones will be referred to as iPhones just like all tissues are referred to as Kleenex and all sodas are referred to as Cokes.  I was really on a roll and then I stopped. I had to…the call dropped.  There I was, strategically standing in the far corner of my backyard where I get the most reliable AT&T reception and the call drops in middle of my iPhone pitch.  Folks, I don’t care how good a salesperson you are, it’s tough to recover from a situation like this.   I dialed my mom back and jokingly asked if she was planning to make calls with her new phone. I explained that AT&T is bound to provide better service eventually but I’m not sure she should wait. After all, I have troubles with the network in San Diego and I can only image how bad it would be for her in Western Massachusetts. Mom called back a few days later exclaiming, “I bought a Droid! I love this phone! I haven’t done anything with it but make phone calls, but I love it.”  I had to laugh.  My mom made the right call (pun intended.)  The iPhone is an amazing device, but owners are constantly reminded that its core function (it’s a phone, remember?) is subpar.  If you love gadgets, you’re probably enthralled by iPhone’s many bells and whistles and, relatively speaking, the terrible phone service might not amount to much.  (Maybe it amounts to a rant on your blog.) The overall iPhone offering is so attractive that consumers are willing to wait for AT&T to straighten up their act or wait until Apple grants a choice of carriers.  But I don’t see either of these remedies coming soon. In the interim, I’m willing to take my iPhone for what it is and just continue to enjoy my favorite features while pretending that poor coverage isn’t a big deal. With any luck, more and more reasonable folks will recognize that Android Phones are legitimate players in the smart phone space, they will buy loads of them and there will become plenty of functional phones to borrow when my “phone” is showing zero bars.  Heck, I’m already covered when I visit my mom.

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• List of Upcoming Appearances

  - by Chris Gardner

  Greetings. I know I have been in work sponsored hiding lately. We are working furiously on a beta project to secure a contract, and I can't really talk about it yet. Hopefully, the contracts will be soon signed. Not only will we then have money, but I can talk about all this really cool tech with which I have been playing. However, since the contract is not signed, I need to bring you people up to date with where I will be during the summer. Let's face it, you can't be a speaker / blogger without pandering to shameless self-promotion. First, I will, once again, be staffing the Hands-on-Labs at TechEd North America. Unfortunately, TechEd North America is already sold out for this year. However, if you're already going, drop by the labs and say Hi. Also, keep an eye on Twitter to track me throughout the event. Also, look for a post in a few hours with my specific picks for what content I'm looking forward to seeing this year. Immediately following TechEd North America, I will be flying into Knoxville to speak at CodeStock. I will be presenting my introduction and intermediate Xbox 360 development talks. There are a TON of great content at CodeStock this year, but there are only about 50 tickets left. After that whirlwind of work, things settle for awhile. That means I'm available to speak at your User Group, luncheon, bowling league, birthday party, anniversary, or bat mitzvah. Mid August brings us to That Conference. This one is going to be a blast. If you haven't heard of That Conference yet, you should really check it out. This will also be my introduction and intermediate Xbox 360 development talks. This is a new conference, and it looks like it will be a great one. Finally, we will turn our attention to DevLink. DevLink has the distinction of picking up my newest talk, Creating Stereoscopic 3D Graphics in XNA. On top of that, I'm giving an general Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 talk. DevLink has added an new "XNA and Kinect" track, so there will me a ton of great game content. That should bring us through the summer. As I solidify the Stereoscopic talk, look for some content on that to creep up on here. I will say it's the first topic I've played around with that is easier in 3D than 2D. Also, the organizers of Alabama Code Camp are still trying to reschedule the event. When that happens, I'll get that information out. Also, we are looking to expand our development team. If you are interested in working for / with me, keep an eye on the T & W Operations website. I know we're immediately looking for a junior level developer, but I think a few higher level position may come up soon. You MUST apply through the website, but drop me a personal line if you do apply. I'll keep an eye out for the application.

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• Christian Radio Locator iPhone app

  - by Tim Hibbard

  For the last three months or so I've been working on an iPhone (and iPad) app in my spare time. It all started when I took the kids to Minneapolis and had a hard time finding radio stations to listen to on the trip. I looked in the App Store for an app that would use my GPS to show me Christian radio stations nearby, but there wasn't one. So I decided to build my own. Using public information from the FCC and a few other sources, I built a database in Google docs that contains the frequency for all Christian radio stations, where the tower is located and how far the tower can reach. I also included any streaming audio information and other contact information like Facebook or Twitter that I could find. Google spreadsheets publish in JSON format (yes, really) and Xcode can automatically deserialize JSON into a properly formatted entity. This is one area that Xcode is far superior to C#. In a just a few lines of code, I can have a list of in-memory strongly typed objects from a web-based JSON feed. To accomplish the same thing natively in .NET would be much more work and wouldn't feel nearly as clean when it was said and done. The snazzy icon shown above was built by my very talented wife. She hasn't yet provided any feedback on the app's user interface, which is why it is so plain and boring. I used a navigation view controller and EGO pull to refresh table view to construct the main window. Pulling down to refresh initiates a GPS lookup, which queries the database for radio stations in range (yes, you can pass parameters to Google spreadsheets and get a subset back in JSON). Pulling up on the table extends the range of the search and includes stations that may not be close enough to get clear audio. This feature is not that intuitive and the next version contains an update to that functionality. Tapping a cell will show a detail view that displays additional information about the station. The user can click to view the station on a map, click to listen to an online stream (if available) or click to see the station's Facebook or Twitter pages. Swiping back and forth on the table changes the information that is displayed on the right hand side of the table cell. It scrolls through the city where the tower is located, how far the phone is from the tower, the range of the tower and in the next version a signal strength indicator. This was pretty easy to implement once I figured out how to assign the gesture recognizer delegate.  Tapping and holding on a cell will jump the user to the map view screen. Which is pretty cool, but very hard for even a power user to discover. To tackle the issue of discoverability, the next version has a series of instructions displayed at the bottom of the screen to show the user the various shortcuts. Once the user has performed the swipes and long holds, the instructions disappear. I've learned a lot developing this app. Spending over a decade exclusively in .NET made the learning curve a bit steep, but once I learned the structure and syntax of Objective-C, I've learned to appreciate the power and simplicity of it. Here are a few screenshots. I would really appreciate any feedback and especially iTunes reviews. Technically it is open source and a smart googler could probably find it. I just haven't promoted it as open source.     Cross posted from timhibbard.com

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• It&rsquo;s ok to throw System.Exception&hellip;

  - by Chris Skardon

  No. No it’s not. It’s not just me saying that, it’s the Microsoft guidelines: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229007.aspx  Do not throw System.Exception or System.SystemException. Also – as important: Do not catch System.Exception or System.SystemException in framework code, unless you intend to re-throw.. Throwing: Always, always try to pick the most specific exception type you can, if the parameter you have received in your method is null, throw an ArgumentNullException, value received greater than expected? ArgumentOutOfRangeException. For example: public void ArgChecker(int theInt, string theString) { if (theInt < 0) throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("theInt", theInt, "theInt needs to be greater than zero."); if (theString == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("theString"); if (theString.Length == 0) throw new ArgumentException("theString needs to have content.", "theString"); } Why do we want to do this? It’s a lot of extra code when compared with a simple: public void ArgChecker(int theInt, string theString) { if (theInt < 0 || string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(theString)) throw new Exception("The parameters were invalid."); } It all comes down to a couple of things; the catching of the exceptions, and the information you are passing back to the calling code. Catching: Ok, so let’s go with introduction level Exception handling, taught by many-a-university: You do all your work in a try clause, and catch anything wrong in the catch clause. So this tends to give us code like this: try { /* All the shizzle */ } catch { /* Deal with errors */ } But of course, we can improve on that by catching the exception so we can report on it: try { } catch(Exception ex) { /* Log that 'ex' occurred? */ } Now we’re at the point where people tend to go: Brilliant, I’ve got exception handling nailed, what next??? and code gets littered with the catch(Exception ex) nastiness. Why is it nasty? Let’s imagine for a moment our code is throwing an ArgumentNullException which we’re catching in the catch block and logging. Ok, the log entry has been made, so we can debug the code right? We’ve got all the info… What about an OutOfMemoryException – what can we do with that? That’s right, not a lot, chances are you can’t even log it (you are out of memory after all), but you’ve caught it – and as such - have hidden it. So, as part of this, there are two things you can do one, is the rethrow method: try { /* code */ } catch (Exception ex) { //Log throw; } Note, it’s not catch (Exception ex) { throw ex; } as that will wipe all your important stack trace information. This does get your exception to continue, and is the only reason you would catch Exception (anywhere other than a global catch-all) in your code. The other preferred method is to catch the exceptions you can deal with. It may not matter that the string I’m passing in is null, and I can cope with it like this: try{ DoSomething(myString); } catch(ArgumentNullException){} And that’s fine, it means that any exceptions I can’t deal with (OutOfMemory for example) will be propagated out to other code that can deal with it. Of course, this is horribly messy, no one wants try / catch blocks everywhere and that’s why Microsoft added the ‘Try’ methods to the framework, and it’s a strategy we should continue. If I try: int i = (int) "one"; I will get an InvalidCastException which means I need the try / catch block, but I could mitigate this using the ‘TryParse’ method: int i; if(!Int32.TryParse("one", out i)) return; Similarly, in the ‘DoSomething’ example, it might be beneficial to have a ‘TryDoSomething’ that returns a boolean value indicating the success of continuing. Obviously this isn’t practical in every case, so use the ol’ common sense approach. Onwards Yer thanks Chris, I’m looking forward to writing tonnes of new code. Fear not, that is where helpers come into it… (but that’s the next post)

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• Silverlight Cream for March 06, 2011 -- #1054

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Back from the Summit Issue, I am overloaded with posts to choose from. Submittals go first, but I'll eventually catch up... hopefully by MIX :) : Ollie Riches(-2-), Colin Eberhardt, John Papa, Jeremy Likness, Martin Krüger, Joost van Schaik, Karl Shifflett, Michael Crump, Georgi Stoyanov, Yochay Kiriaty, Page Brooks, and Deborah Kurata. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "ClassifiedCabinet: A Quick Start" Georgi Stoyanov WP7: "Easy access to WMAppManifest.xml App properties like version and title" Joost van Schaik Multiple: "Flashcards.Show Version 2 for the Desktop, Browser, and Windows Phone" Yochay Kiriaty Shoutouts: Mohamed Mosallem delivered an online session at the Second Riyadh Online Community Summit: Silverlight 4.0 with SharePoint 2010 John-Daniel Trask posted about a release of a new set of tools released for WP7 development... there's a free trial, so definitely worth a look: Mindscape Phone Elements released! From SilverlightCream.com: WP7Contrib: Trickling data to a bound collection Ollie Riches submitted a couple links... first up is this on a way they found to decrease the load on a data template in WP7 to get under the 90 mb limit and then added their solution to the WP7Contrib lib. WP7Contrib: Why we use SilverlightSerializer instead of DataContractSerializer Ollie Riches' next submittal compares the performance of the SilverlightSerializer & DataContractSerializer on the WP7 platform. MVVM Charting – Binding Multiple Series to a Visiblox Chart Colin Eberhardt sent me this post where he describes binding multiple series to a chart with no code-behind... great long multi-phase tutorial all with source. Silverlight TV 64: Dive into 64bit Support, App Model and Security John Papa has Nick Kramer of the Silverlight team up for his latest Silverlight TV episode, discussing some cool new Silverlight stuff: 64-bit support, multiple windows, etc. Building a Windows Phone 7 Application with UltraLight.mvvm Jeremy Likness has a pre-summit tutorial up on his UltraLight.mvvm project, and how he would use it to build a WP7 app... great to meet you, Jeremy! How to: Storyboard only start with the conspicuousness of the application in the browser window Martin Krüger continues his Storyboard startup solutions with this one about what to do if the Silverlight app is small or simply an island on an html page. Easy access to WMAppManifest.xml App properties like version and title Joost van Schaik posted about the WP7 manifest file and how you can get access to that information at runtime... why you ask? How about version number or title? Be sure to read the helpful hints in the last paragraph too! Mole 2010 Released Karl Shifflett, Josh Smith, and others have released the latest version of Mole... well worth the money in my opinion, if only it worked for Silverlight! (not their fault) Changing the Default Windows Phone 7 Deployment Target In Visual Studio 2010 Michael Crump points out an annoyance with the 2011 WP7 tools update... VS2010 defaults to the device rather than the emulator... and he shows us how to get it pointed back to the emulator! ClassifiedCabinet: A Quick Start Georgi Stoyanov posted a QuickStart to a 'ClassifiedCabinet' control posted on CodePlex... check out the demo first, you'll want to read the article after that. He builds a simple project from scratch using the control. Flashcards.Show Version 2 for the Desktop, Browser, and Windows Phone Yochay Kiriaty has a post up about FlashCards.Show version 2 that he worked on with Arik Poznanski and has it now running on the desktop, browser, and WP7, plus you get the source... I've been wanting to write just such an app for WP7, so hey... this saves me some time! A Simple Focus Manager for Jounce Applications Page Brooks has a post up about Jeremy Likness' Jounce... how to set focus to a particular control when a view loads. Silverlight Charting: Formatting the Axis Deborah Kurata is continuing her charting series with this one on setting axis font color and putting the text at an angle... really dresses up the chart! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• A Few of My Favorite HTML5 and CSS3 Online Tools

  - by dwahlin

  I really enjoy coding up HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript applications but there are some things that I’m better off writing with the help of a development tool. For example, CSS3 gradients aren’t exactly the most fun thing to write by hand and the same could be said for animations, transforms, or styles that require various vendor extensions. There are a lot of online tools that can simplify building HTML5/CSS3 sites and increase productivity in the process so I thought I’d put together a post on a few of my favorites tools. HTML5 Boilerplate HTML5 Boilerplate provides a great way to get started building HTML5 sites. It includes many best practices out of the box and even includes a few tricks that many people don’t even know about. The custom download option allows you to pick the features that you want to include in the files that’s generated. You can read more about it here.   Initializr Although HTML5 Boilerplate provides a great foundation for starting HTML5 sites, it focuses on providing a starting shell structure (namely an html page, JavaScript files, and a CSS stylesheet) and doesn’t include much in the way of page content to get started with. Initializer builds on HTML5 Boilerplate and provides an initial test page that can be tweaked to meet your needs. It also provides several different customization options to include/exclude features. CSS3 Maker CSS3 provides a lot of great features ranging from gradient support to rounded corners. Although many of the features are fairly straightforward there are some that are pretty involved such as gradients, animations, and really any styles that require custom vendor extensions to use across browsers. Sure, you can type everything by hand, but sites such as CSS3 Maker provide a visual way to generate CSS3 styles. CSS3, Please! CSS3, Please! is a code generation tool that can be used to generate cross-browser CSS3 styles quickly and easily. All of the main things you can do with CSS3 are available including a clever way to visually generate CSS3 transform styles.       Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator CSS3 Maker (above) has a gradient generator built-in but my favorite tool for creating CSS3 gradients is the Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator. If you’ve created gradients in tools like Photoshop then you’ll love what this tool has to offer especially since it makes it extremely straightforward to work with different gradient stops. @font-face Fonts Although @font-face has been available for awhile, I think fonts are cool and wanted to mention a site that provides a lot of font choices. When used correctly fonts can really enhance a page and when used incorrectly (think Comic Sans) they can absolutely ruin a page. Several sites exist that provide fonts that can be used with @font-face definitions in CSS style sheets. One of my favorites is Font Squirrel.   HTML5 & CSS3 Support and Tests Interested in knowing what HTML5 and CSS3 features a given browser supports? Want to know how various browsers stack up with each other as far as HTML5/CSS3 support. Look no further than the HTML5 & CSS3 Support page or the HTML5 Test page.   CSS3 Easing Animation Tool CSS3 animations aren’t widely supported across browsers right now (I’m not really using them at this point) but they do offer a lot of promise. Creating easings for animations can definitely be a challenge but they’re something that are critical for adding that “professional touch” to your animations. Fortunately you can use the Ceaser CSS Easing Animation Tool to simplify the process and handle animation easing with…...ease.   There are several other online tools that I like but these are some of the ones I find myself using the most. If you have any favorite online tools that simplify working with HTML5 or CSS3 let me know.     For more information about onsite or online training, mentoring and consulting solutions for HTML5, jQuery, .NET, SharePoint or Silverlight please visit http://www.thewahlingroup.com.

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• Upgrade Office 2003 to 2010 on XP or Run them Side by Side

  - by Mysticgeek

  If you’re still running XP, currently have Office 2003 installed on your machine, and skipped Office 2007, you might want to upgrade to Office 2010. In this guide we will show you the upgrade process or how to run them side by side. In this example we are upgrading from Office 2003 Standard to Office Professional Plus 2010 RTM (Final) on XP Professional. System Requirements To run Office 2010 on your XP machine you have to make sure you have Service Pack 3 and Microsoft Silverlight installed (links below). Or you can just install them through Windows Update. Recommended Hardware 1GHZ CPU or higher 512 MB of RAM or higher 1024×768 Resolution or higher DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics card with 64 MB of memory or higher Installing Office 2010 Simply kick off the Office Professional Plus 2010 installation. Enter in your product key… Agree to the EULA…   Select the Customize button… Setup will detect Office 2003 and allow you to remove all applications, keep them, or select only the ones you want to keep. In this example we’re going to remove Excel and PowerPoint, and keep Outlook and Word 2003. Next, click the Installation Options tab and select Office programs you want to install. Since we’re keeping Outlook 2003 and don’t want to use Outlook 2010, we’re making sure not to install Outlook 2010. However, we want to run Word 2003 and 2010 on the same machine. After you’ve made your selections click the Upgrade button. The installation begins and you’re shown the progress. The amount of time it takes to install will vary between systems. Installation is complete and you can close out of the installer. Now when you go into the Start menu under Microsoft Office, you’ll see both versions of the Office apps available. Here is a shot of Word 2003 and 2010 running together on our XP machine.   Conclusion If you’re moving from Office 2003 to 2010, this allows you to install both versions side by side. It gives you a chance to learn 2010 features, and still work in the familiar 2003 environment when you need to get things done quickly. If you’re having problems installing Office 2010 make sure to check out our article on how to fix problems upgrading Office 2010 beta to RTM (Final) release. Also, if you were using Office 2007 and are currently using the 2010 beta, we have a guide on how to switch back to Office 2007 after the 2010 beta ends. Links XP Service Pack 3 Microsoft Silverlight Details on Office 2010 System Requirements Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add Word/Excel 97-2003 Documents Back to the "New" Context Menu After Installing Office 2007Make Word 2007 Always Save in Word 2003 FormatMake Excel 2007 Always Save in Excel 2003 FormatRemove Office 2010 Beta and Reinstall Office 2007How to Find Office 2003 Commands in Office 2010 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 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Enable or Disable the Task Manager Using TaskMgrED Explorer++ is a Worthy Windows Explorer Alternative Error Goblin Explains Windows Error Codes Twelve must-have Google Chrome plugins Cool Looking Skins for Windows Media Player 12 Move the Mouse Pointer With Your Face Movement Using eViacam

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• Redirect all access requests to a domain and subdomain(s) except from specific IP address? [closed]

  - by Christopher

  This is a self-answered question... After much wrangling I found the magic combination of mod_rewrite rules so I'm posting here. My scenario is that I have two domains - domain1.com and domain2.com - both of which are currently serving identical content (by way of a global 301 redirect from domain1 to domain2). Domain1 was then chosen to be repurposed to be a 'portal' domain - with a corporate CMS-based site leading off from the front page, and the existing 'retail' domain (domain2) left to serve the main web site. In addition, a staging subdomain was created on domain1 in order to prepare the new corporate site without impinging on the root domain's existing operation. I contemplated just rewriting all requests to domain2 and setting up the new corporate site 'behind the scenes' without using a staging domain, but I usually use subdomains when setting up new sites. Finally, I required access to the 'actual' contents of the domains and subdomains - i.e., to not be redirected like all other visitors - in order that I can develop the new site and test it in the staging environment on the live server, as I'm not using a separate development webserver in this case. I also have another test subdomain on domain1 which needed to be preserved. The way I eventually set it up was as follows: (10.2.2.1 would be my home WAN IP) .htaccess in root of domain1 RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^10\.2\.2\.1 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^staging.domain1.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^staging2.domain1.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain2.com/$1 [R=301] .htaccess in staging subdomain on domain1: RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^10\.2\.2\.1 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^staging.revolver.coop$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain2.com/$1 [R=301,L] The multiple .htaccess files and multiple rulesets require more processing overhead and longer iteration as the visitor is potentially redirected twice, however I find it to be a more granular method of control as I can selectively allow more than one IP address access to individual staging subdomain(s) without automatically granting them access to everything else. It also keeps the rulesets fairly simple and easy to read. (or re-interpret, because I'm always forgetting how I put rules together!) If anybody can suggest a more efficient way of merging all these rules and conditions into just one main ruleset in the root of domain1, please post! I'm always keen to learn, this post is more my attempt to preserve this information for those who are looking to redirect entire domains for all visitors except themselves (for design/testing purposes) and not just denying specific file access for maintenance mode (there are many good examples of simple mod_rewrite rules for 'maintenance mode' style operation easily findable via Google). You can also extend the IP address detection - firstly by using wildcards ^10\.2\.2\..*: the last octet's \..* denotes the usual "." and then "zero or more arbitrary characters", signified by the .* - so you can specify specific ranges of IPs in a subnet or entire subnets if you wish. You can also use square brackets: ^10\.2\.[1-255]\.[120-140]; ^10\.2\.[1-9]?[0-9]\.; ^10\.2\.1[0-1][0-9]\. etc. The third way, if you wish to specify multiple discrete IP addresses, is to bracket them in the style of ^(1.1.1.1|2.2.2.2|3.3.3.3)$, and you can of course use square brackets to substitute octets or single digits again. NB: if you're using individual RewriteCond lines to specify multiple IPs / ranges, make sure to put [OR] at the end of each one otherwise mod_rewrite will interpret as "if IP address matches 1.1.1.1 AND if IP address matches 2.2.2.2... which is of course impossible! However as far as I'm aware this isn't necessary if you're using the ! negator to specify "and is not...". Kudos also to SE: this older question also came in useful when I was verifying my own knowledge prior to my futzing around with code. This page was helpful, as were the various other links posted below (can't hyperlink them all due to spam protection... other regex checkers are available). The AddedBytes cheat sheet's useful to pin up on your wall. Other referenced URLs: internetofficer.com/seo-tool/regex-tester/ fantomaster.com/faarticles/rewritingurls.txt internetofficer.com/seo-tool/regex-tester/ addedbytes.com/cheat-sheets/mod_rewrite-cheat-sheet/

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• Creating an HttpHandler to handle request of your own extension

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  I have already posted about http handler in details before some time here. Now let’s create an http handler which will handle my custom extension. For that we need to create a http handlers class which will implement Ihttphandler. As we are implementing IHttpHandler we need to implement one method called process request and another one is isReusable property. The process request function will handle all the request of my custom extension. so Here is the code for my http handler class. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Web.UI; namespace Experiement { public class MyExtensionHandler:IHttpHandler { public MyExtensionHandler() { //Implement intialization here } bool IHttpHandler.IsReusable { get { return true; } } void IHttpHandler.ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) { string excuttablepath = context.Request.AppRelativeCurrentExecutionFilePath; if (excuttablepath.Contains("HelloWorld.dotnetjalps")) { Page page = new HelloWorld(); page.AppRelativeVirtualPath = context.Request.AppRelativeCurrentExecutionFilePath; page.ProcessRequest(context); } } } } Here in above code you can see that in process request function I am getting current executable path and then I am processing that page. Now Lets create a page with extension .dotnetjalps and then we will process this page with above created http handler. so let’s create it. It will create a page like following. Now let’s write some thing in page load Event like following. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Web.UI; using System.Web.UI.WebControls; namespace Experiement { public partial class HelloWorld : System.Web.UI.Page { protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { Response.Write("Hello World"); } } } Now we have to tell our web server that we want to process request from this .dotnetjalps extension through our custom http handler for that we need to add a tag in httphandler sections of web.config like following. <configuration> <system.web> <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0" /> <httpHandlers> <add verb="*" path="*.dotnetjalps" type="Experiement.MyExtensionHandler,Experiement"/> </httpHandlers> </system.web> </configuration> That’s it now run that page into browser and it will execute like following in browser That’s you.. Isn’t it cool.. Stay tuned for more.. Happy programming.. Technorati Tags: HttpHandler,ASP.NET,Extension

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• Excel Template Teaser

  - by Tim Dexter

  In lieu of some official documentation I'm in the process of putting together some posts on the new 10.1.3.4.1 Excel templates. No more HTML, maskerading as Excel; far more flexibility than Excel Analyzer and no need to write complex XSL templates to create the same output. Multi sheet outputs with macros and embeddable XSL commands are here. Their capabilities are pretty extensive and I have not worked on them for a few years since I helped put them together for EBS FSG users, so Im back on the learning curve. Let me say up front, there is no template builder, its a completely manual process to build them but, the results can be fantastic and provide yet another 'superstar' opportunity for you. The templates can take hierarchical XML data and walk the structure much like an RTF template. They use named cells/ranges and a hidden sheet to provide the rendering engine the hooks to drop the data in. As a taster heres the data and output I worked with on my first effort: <EMPLOYEES> <LIST_G_DEPT> <G_DEPT> <DEPARTMENT_ID>10</DEPARTMENT_ID> <DEPARTMENT_NAME>Administration</DEPARTMENT_NAME> <LIST_G_EMP> <G_EMP> <EMPLOYEE_ID>200</EMPLOYEE_ID> <EMP_NAME>Jennifer Whalen</EMP_NAME> <EMAIL>JWHALEN</EMAIL> <PHONE_NUMBER>515.123.4444</PHONE_NUMBER> <HIRE_DATE>1987-09-17T00:00:00.000-06:00</HIRE_DATE> <SALARY>4400</SALARY> </G_EMP> </LIST_G_EMP> <TOTAL_EMPS>1</TOTAL_EMPS> <TOTAL_SALARY>4400</TOTAL_SALARY> <AVG_SALARY>4400</AVG_SALARY> <MAX_SALARY>4400</MAX_SALARY> <MIN_SALARY>4400</MIN_SALARY> </G_DEPT> ... </LIST_G_DEPT> </EMPLOYEES> Structured XML coming from a data template, check out the data template progression post. I can then generate the following binary XLS file. There are few cool things to notice in this output. DEPARTMENT-EMPLOYEE master detail output. Not easy to do in the Excel analyzer. Date formatting - this is using an Excel function. Remember BIP generates XML dates in the canonical format. I have formatted the other data in the template using native Excel functionality Salary Total - although in the data I have calculated this in the template Conditional formatting - this is handled by Excel based on the incoming data Bursting department data across sheets and using the department name for the sheet name. This alone is worth the wait! there's more, but this is surely enough to whet your appetite. These new templates are already tucked away in EBS R12 under controlled release by the GL team and have now come to the BIEE and standalone releases in the 10.1.3.4.1+ rollup patch. For the rest of you, its going to be a bit of a waiting game for the relevant teams to uptake the latest BIP release. Look out for more soon with some explanation of how they work and how to put them together!

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• OWB 11gR2 - Find and Search Metadata in Designer

  - by David Allan

  Here are some tools and techniques for finding objects, specifically in the design repository. There are ways of navigating and collating objects that are useful for day to day development and build-time usage - this includes features out of the box and utilities constructed on top. There are a variety of techniques to navigate and find objects in the repository, the first 3 are out of the box, the 4th is an expert utility. Navigating by the tree, grouping by project and module - ok if you are aware of the exact module/folder that objects reside in. The structure panel is a useful way of finding parts of an object, especially when large rather than using the canvas. In large scale projects it helps to have accelerators (either find or collections below). Advanced find to search by name - 11gR2 included a find capability specifically for large scale projects. There were improvements in both the tree search and the object editors (including highlighting in mapping for example). So you can now do regular expression based search and quickly navigate to objects within a repository. Collections - logically organize your objects into virtual folders by shortcutting the actual objects. This is useful for a range of things since all the OWB services operate on collections too (export/import, validation, deployment). See the post here for new collection functionality in 11gR2. Reports for searching by type, updated on, updated by etc. Useful for activities such as periodic incremental actions (deploy all mappings changed in the past week). The report style view is useful since I can quickly see who changed what and when. You can see all the audit details for objects within each objects property inspector, but its useful to just get all objects changed today or example, all objects changed since my last build etc. This utility combines both UI extensions via experts and the public views on the repository. In the figure to the right you see the contextual option 'Object Search' which invokes the utility, you can see I have quite a number of modules within my project. Figure out all the potential objects which have been changed is not simple. The utility is an expert which provides this kind of search capability. The utility provides a report of the objects in the design repository which satisfy some filter criteria. The type of criteria includes; objects updated in the last n days optionally filter the objects updated by user filter the user by project and by type (table/mappings etc.) The search dialog appears with these options, you can multi-select the object types, so for example you can select TABLE and MAPPING. Its also possible to search across projects if need be. If you have multiple users using the repository you can define the OWB user name in the 'Updated by' property to restrict the report to just that user also. Finally there is a search name that will be used for some of the options such as building a collection - this name is used for the collection to be built. In the example I have done, I've just searched my project for all process flows and mappings that users have updated in the last 7 days. The results of the query are returned in a table containing the object names, types, full path and audit details. The columns are sort-able, you can sort the results by name, type, path etc. One of the cool things here, is that you can then perform operations on these objects - such as edit them, export single selection or entire results to MDL, create a collection from the results (now you have a saved set of references in the repository, you could do deploy/export etc.), create a deployment script from the results...or even add in your own ideas! You see from this that you can do bulk operations on sets of objects based on search results. So for example selecting the 'Build Collection' option creates a collection with all of the objects from my search, you can subsequently deploy/generate/maintain this collection of objects. Under the hood of the expert if just basic OMB commands from the product and the use of the public views on the design repository. You can see how easy it is to build up macro-like capabilities that will help you do day-to-day as well as build like tasks on sets of objects.

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• Auto-cancel reason not found (6, 13906)

  - by Rajesh Sharma

  There are many errors in the application which are never invoked because of appropriate application configuration done at the time of implementation by the solution architects. So typically, as an application end user you would never stumble upon such errors. But what if the application administrator inadvertently changes the configuration/setup in the development, test, QA, or production environment? This is the time when you as an end user are introduced to a brand-new error for which you may not have a clue or understanding to what it means and neither the access/privilege to rectify it.    In this post we'll focus on one such error '6, 13906 - Auto-cancel reason not found'.   You get this error if you have not defined a Bill (Segment) Cancel Reason (Admin Menu, B, Bill Cancel Reason) code with System Default value of Turn off auto-cancel.   Consider a scenario when you are about to final bill an 'Account' for which the bill period's cut-off date you selected is falling on or after the Service Agreement's (SA) end/stop date (basically SA is Stopped with a date earlier than it was billed previously). And for the same 'Account' either: Bill segments exists that end after the SA's end date OR Non-closing bill segments exists that end on the SA's end date (OR closing bill segments that do not end on SA's end date or do not exist at all - remember closing/final bill segment is generated if the SA is in Stopped status).   CC&B detects such scenario and attempts to cancel all such violating bill segments automatically, but NOT if you are generating the bill Online. If online, the system assumes that you know what you are doing, and prompts you with error 2, 13716 - Bill segments that violate the SA (%1) End Date (%2) exist to take necessary action.   If in batch, system automatically cancels these kinds of bill segment(s).   Since this happens in the background, you have to define within the application which System Default Bill (Segment) cancellation reason code identified as Turn off auto-cancel, should be used by the process when it attempts to cancel any such violating bill segments (You already know that you cannot cancel a bill segment without giving a reason for cancellation).   So what exactly happens during batch billing?   Bill Segment generation routine at first determines billing eligibility of the service agreement being billed. One of the billing eligibility criteria is to check the SA's previous bill segments which have end dates greater than the current cut-off date/end date. Technically, the routine retrieves a count of such violating bill segments.     SELECT COUNT (*) FROM CI_BSEG WHERE SA_ID = :SA-ID AND BSEG_STAT_FLG = '50' -- Frozen AND END_DT IS NOT NULL AND (END_DT > '03-JUN-2010' -- Bill segment greater than SA's End Date OR OR (END_DT = '03-JUN-2010' AND CLOSING_BSEG_SW = 'N')) -- Non-closing bill segment ending on SA's end date   If the count is greater than zero, Bill segment generation routine executes another program to auto-cancel such bill segments. Auto-cancel program retrieves the 'Bill Cancel Reason' code which is identified as Turn off auto-cancel. Retrieved cancel reason code is then placed on the bill segments that are being cancelled automatically.   During this process if the routine fails to determine the bill cancel reason code having System Default Turn off auto-cancel because it was not been configured, you get a bill exception 6, 13906 - Auto-cancel reason not found.   Also note that duplicate or multiple System Default codes identified as Turn off auto-cancel are not allowed. CC&B would complain with an error 2, 54201.   Duplicate validation/check is also performed within Auto-cancel routine, if suppose for test purposes you executed a DML statement updating CI_BILL_CAN_RSN.BSCAN_SYS_DFLT_FLG with a value 'T'.

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• Type Casting variables in PHP: Is there a practical example?

  - by Stephen

  PHP, as most of us know, has weak typing. For those who don't, PHP.net says: PHP does not require (or support) explicit type definition in variable declaration; a variable's type is determined by the context in which the variable is used. Love it or hate it, PHP re-casts variables on-the-fly. So, the following code is valid: $var = "10"; $value = 10 + $var; var_dump($value); // int(20) PHP also alows you to explicitly cast a variable, like so: $var = "10"; $value = 10 + $var; $value = (string)$value; var_dump($value); // string(2) "20" That's all cool... but, for the life of me, I cannot conceive of a practical reason for doing this. I don't have a problem with strong typing in languages that support it, like Java. That's fine, and I completely understand it. Also, I'm aware of—and fully understand the usefulness of—type hinting in function parameters. The problem I have with type casting is explained by the above quote. If PHP can swap types at-will, it can do so even after you force cast a type; and it can do so on-the-fly when you need a certain type in an operation. That makes the following valid: $var = "10"; $value = (int)$var; $value = $value . ' TaDa!'; var_dump($value); // string(8) "10 TaDa!" So what's the point? Can anyone show me a practical application or example of type casting—one that would fail if type casting were not involved? I ask this here instead of SO because I figure practicality is too subjective. Edit in response to Chris' comment Take this theoretical example of a world where user-defined type casting makes sense in PHP: You force cast variable $foo as int -- (int)$foo. You attempt to store a string value in the variable $foo. PHP throws an exception!! <--- That would make sense. Suddenly the reason for user defined type casting exists! The fact that PHP will switch things around as needed makes the point of user defined type casting vague. For example, the following two code samples are equivalent: // example 1 $foo = 0; $foo = (string)$foo; $foo = '# of Reasons for the programmer to type cast $foo as a string: ' . $foo; // example 2 $foo = 0; $foo = (int)$foo; $foo = '# of Reasons for the programmer to type cast $foo as a string: ' . $foo; UPDATE Guess who found himself using typecasting in a practical environment? Yours Truly. The requirement was to display money values on a website for a restaurant menu. The design of the site required that trailing zeros be trimmed, so that the display looked something like the following: Menu Item 1 .............. $ 4 Menu Item 2 .............. $ 7.5 Menu Item 3 .............. $ 3 The best way I found to do that wast to cast the variable as a float: $price = '7.50'; // a string from the database layer. echo 'Menu Item 2 .............. $ ' . (float)$price; PHP trims the float's trailing zeros, and then recasts the float as a string for concatenation.

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• Another sound not working post

  - by Thomas Smart

  Tried all the other "sound not working" posts i think, lost count. purge/reinstall alsa and pulse, reboot, add user to audio group, various lines in the alsa config file such as "options snd-hda-intel model=" then tried different options like generic, auto, basic, default, etc. tried pulseaudio -k && sudo alsa force-reload a few times, with and without rebooting. Hardware: 16gb ram, core I7-4790, Intel Haswell mboard with onboard sound and graphics Multimedia: Audio Adapter: HDA-Intel-HDA Intel HDMI OS: Ubuntu server 14.04 with ubuntu-desktop installed. GUI sound settings lists only the dummy sound card alsamixer -c 0 ¦ Card: HDA Intel HDMI F1: Help ¦ ¦ Chip: Intel Haswell HDMI F2: System information ¦ ¦ View: F3:[Playback] F4: Capture F5: All F6: Select sound card ¦ ¦ Item: S/PDIF ¦ ¦ +--+ ¦ ¦ ¦OO¦ ¦ ¦ +--+ ¦ ¦ < S/PDIF > ¦ aplay -l **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices **** card 0: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 aplay -L default Playback/recording through the PulseAudio sound server null Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture) pulse PulseAudio Sound Server hdmi:CARD=HDMI,DEV=0 HDA Intel HDMI, HDMI 0 HDMI Audio Output dmix:CARD=HDMI,DEV=3 HDA Intel HDMI, HDMI 0 Direct sample mixing device dsnoop:CARD=HDMI,DEV=3 HDA Intel HDMI, HDMI 0 Direct sample snooping device hw:CARD=HDMI,DEV=3 HDA Intel HDMI, HDMI 0 Direct hardware device without any conversions plughw:CARD=HDMI,DEV=3 HDA Intel HDMI, HDMI 0 Hardware device with all software conversions cat /proc/asound/cards 0 [HDMI ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel HDMI HDA Intel HDMI at 0xf7d14000 irq 46 cat /proc/asound/devices 1: : sequencer 2: [ 0- 3]: digital audio playback 3: [ 0- 0]: hardware dependent 4: [ 0] : control 33: : timer mplayer -ao alsa:device=hdmi /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/system-ready.ogg MPlayer 1.1-4.8 (C) 2000-2012 MPlayer Team mplayer: could not connect to socket mplayer: No such file or directory Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control. Playing /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/system-ready.ogg. libavformat version 54.20.4 (external) Mismatching header version 54.20.3 libavformat file format detected. [lavf] stream 0: audio (vorbis), -aid 0 Load subtitles in /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/ ========================================================================== Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders libavcodec version 54.35.0 (external) AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 1 ch, floatle, 80.0 kbit/5.67% (ratio: 10000->176400) Selected audio codec: [ffvorbis] afm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg Vorbis) ========================================================================== [AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '1' [AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory [AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings [AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory [AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name [AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory [AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:4727:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory [AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM hdmi [AO_ALSA] Playback open error: No such file or directory Failed to initialize audio driver 'alsa:device=hdmi' Could not open/initialize audio device -> no sound. Audio: no sound Video: no video Exiting... (End of file) mplayer -ao alsa:device=hw=0.3 /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/system-ready.ogg MPlayer 1.1-4.8 (C) 2000-2012 MPlayer Team mplayer: could not connect to socket mplayer: No such file or directory Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control. Playing /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/system-ready.ogg. libavformat version 54.20.4 (external) Mismatching header version 54.20.3 libavformat file format detected. [lavf] stream 0: audio (vorbis), -aid 0 Load subtitles in /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/ ========================================================================== Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders libavcodec version 54.35.0 (external) AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 1 ch, floatle, 80.0 kbit/5.67% (ratio: 10000->176400) Selected audio codec: [ffvorbis] afm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg Vorbis) ========================================================================== [AO_ALSA] Format floatle is not supported by hardware, trying default. AO: [alsa] 44100Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample) Video: no video Starting playback... A: 0.4 (00.4) of 0.8 (00.7) 0.1% Exiting... (End of file) Thank you for your time and help :)

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• How to Crop Pictures in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2010

  - by DigitalGeekery

  When you add pictures to your Office documents you might need to crop them to remove unwanted areas, or isolate a specific part. Today we’ll take a look at how to crop images in Office 2010. Note: We will show you examples in Word, but you can crop images in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. To insert a picture into your Office document, click the Picture button on the Insert tab. The Picture Tools format ribbon should now be active. If not, click on the image. New in Office 2010 is the ability to see the area of the photo that you are keeping in addition to what will be cropped out. On the Format tab, click Crop. Click and drag inward any of the four corners to crop from any one side. Notice you can still see the area to be cropped out is show in translucent gray. Press and hold the CTRL key while you drag a corner cropping handle inward to crop equally on all four sides. To crop equally on right and left or the top and bottom, press and hold down the CTRL key while you drag the center cropping handle on either side inward. You can further adjust the cropping area by clicking and dragging the picture behind the cropping area. To accept the current dimensions and crop the photo, press escape or click anywhere outside the cropping area. You can manually crop the image to exact dimensions. This can be done by right clicking on the image and entering the dimensions in the Width and Height boxes, or in the Size group on the Format tab.   Crop to a Shape Select your photo and click Crop from the Size group on the Format tab. Select Crop to Shape and choose any of the available shapes. You photo will be cropped into that shape. Using Fit and Fill If you wish to crop a photo but fill the shape, select Fill. When you choose this option, some edges of the picture might not display but the original picture aspect ratio is maintained. If you wish to have all of the picture fit within a shape, choose Fit. The original picture aspect ratio will be maintained.   Conclusion Users moving from previous versions of Microsoft Office are sure to appreciate the improved cropping abilities in Office 2010, especially the ability to see what will and won’t be kept when you crop a photo. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Import Microsoft Access Data Into ExcelEmbed an Excel Worksheet Into PowerPoint or Word 2007Add Artistic Effects to Your Pictures in Office 2010Embed True Type Fonts in Word and PowerPoint 2007 DocumentsChange The Default Color Scheme In Office 2007 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 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 TimeToMeet is a Simple Online Meeting Planning Tool Easily Create More Bookmark Toolbars in Firefox Filevo is a Cool File Hosting & Sharing Site Get a free copy of WinUtilities Pro 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate

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• Post MIX10 Decompression

  - by Dave Campbell

  With a big dose of reality, I walked into this place this morning and found out "yeah, I really do write .NET web apps and MS Access for a living" :( ... but it pays the bills and I've gotten *way* used to eating 3 times a day :) MIX10 was great, although the buzz didn't seem as big as MIX09, and I'm not sure why. It also seemed like a different crowd and other folks I talked to agreed with that. Of course now I can outwardly admit that the "Windows Phone 7 Series" is programmed with Silverlight ... how cool is that? I've been biting my tongue about that info for over a month! I cloistered myself in Ballroom A for the week, not counting the Keynotes. That's where the phone sessions were located. I tried to collect the full set, but ended up bailing on the last one because it was ending at the time that MIX10 was ending, and I hadn't spent a whole lot of time in 'The Commons'. I met a bunch of folks I've blogged about, or exchanged email with, and that's always fun. Renewed associations with folks I only see once or twice a year and way too long a list and don't want to mention some and leave off others... I did have an opportunity to meet Charles Petzold... wow that was interesting... I got into Windows development through Charles' Programming Windows 3.1 book 'back in the day' ... couldn't find anyone at Honeywell wanted to join my journey, so it was just me and 'Chuck' :) ... read every word of that book more than once... all marked up, tags sticking out of it. And now he's writing a WP7 book ... gotta get it: Free ebook: Programming Windows Phone 7 Series (DRAFT Preview) I went through my Big List-o-BlogsTM last night and it took over 2 hours because of all the new content since MIX10. I've got 90 posts tagged as of 9PM on 3/21. If everybody stopped right now, it would take me 9 days to push what I have now, so you'll have to be patient! I had another event on Thursday that was *extremely* tiring, so I ended up staying over another night. I drove back into the strip on Friday morning to try to find a non-cheesy souvenir for my wife, and didn't find much. Then I went to Blueberry Hill restaurant for 3 eggs, 3 strips of bacon, and 3 awesome potato pancakes. Check them out if you have time! And then hit the road. In case anyone is wondering, the 2-1/2 hour drive I took across Hoover Dam on Sunday afternoon only took 30 minutes on Friday afternoon... that was a more normal trip! I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent with everyone. Thanks to John Papa and his crew for the great Insider's party on Monday night... the Blues Brothers were a fun surprise and they did a good job! And the swag was great... thanks to all the contributors for a fun evening at their expense! All I can say is stay tuned, go to live.visitmix.com/videos and watch everything, get the phone tools, start working... everything's different and everything's fun... jump in, it's all Silverlight! Stay in the 'Light! Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone     MIX10

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• A SharePoint Developer&rsquo;s Toolchest

  - by Sahil Malik

  Ad:: SharePoint 2007 Training in .NET 3.5 technologies (more information). When we develop for SharePoint, we end up using many tools, third party or Microsoft, to facilitate our development. What are some of your favorite tools? Mine are as below - 1. Reflector: When I saw reflector, I was pretty convinced that a tool better and more useful than it doesn’t exist. Well I was wrong! Redgate took over reflector and they still offer it as a free version, but they have a paid version called reflector pro. It lets you debug third party source code, as if you had the source code. Brilliant! Who needs documentation anymore when you have real code? 2. ULS Viewer: It is no secret, reading ULS logs is a pain in the rear. Well, not so with ULS Viewer, which does work with SharePoint 2007 as well. But it’s just way cooler with SharePoint 2010. You know when you get an error in SharePoint 2010 it shows you an error like as below: Well, the ULS Viewer will allow you to set filtering critereon, allowing you to immediately zero in, into an error, across multiple WFEs even. Also there are numerous other facilities built into the tool, such as advanced filtering, critical error notifications, etc. A must have! You can read the documentation of the ULSViewer here. 3. SPDisposeCheck: Did you know that the MySite object is strange? What is strange about it? That you have to dispose it even if you didn’t create it!? Well who the hell remembers all that! Honestly I do! And you should too. But there is a tool to help you sanitize your code. And that is SPDisposeCheck. You run it against your DLL or EXE, and it will give you suggestions on where you might have missed calling dispose on an object. You still have to use your head, but having this tool helps. 4. DebugView: Debugging for SharePoint can be difficult sometimes. Sometimes your breakpoints don’t get hit. And while you can try and make them hit, it is sometimes easier to just write a bunch of Debug.WriteLines, and catch them from an external application such as DebugView. You simply use your code, and DebugView will catch all the Debug.WriteLine’s in your code like this - 5. BGInfo: One annoying thing about SharePoint projects, it causes the number of servers to multiply like bunnies. As I’m RDP’ing into many computers trying to diagnose a crazy issue, sometimes it becomes hard to remember which machine is which. BGInfo puts all that on the wallpaper, alongwith a bunch of other useful info. A bit like this - 5. WSPBuilder: SharePoint 2007 only, but I think there maybe a version for SP2010 coming later. I think the VS2010 tools for SP2010 development are quite nice, so WSPBuilder, well so far I don’t miss it. But lets see what WSPBuilder for 2010 brings – I haven’t seen it yet. However, I want to confidently assert that WSPBuilder for SP2007 is simply awesome. 6. SharePoint Manager: The SharePoint Manager 2010 is a SharePoint object model explorer. It enables you to browse every site on the local farm and view every property. It also enables you to change the properties. The VS2010 dev tools now include a server explorer, which show you a subset of properties in read-only. I would LOVE to see SharePoint manager like functionality built into VS2010. SharePoint Manager, a total must-have. Comment on the article ....

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• Kanban Tools Review

  - by GeekAgilistMercenary

  The first two sessions on Sunday were Collaboration and why it is so hard and the following, which was a perfect following session was on Kanban.  While in that second session two online Saas Style Tools were mentioned; AgileZen and Leankit.  I decided right then and there that I would throw together some first impressions and setup some sample projects.  I did this by setting up an account and creating the projects. Agile Zen Account Creation Setting up the initial account required an e-mail verification, which is understandable.  Within a few seconds it was mailed out and I was logged in. Setting Up the Kanban Board The initial setup of the board was pretty easy.  I maybe clicked around an extra few times, but overall everything I needed to use the tool was immediately available.  The representation of everything was very similar to what one expects in a real Kanban Board too.  This is a HUGE plus, especially if a team is smart and places this tool in a centrally viewable area to allow for visibility. Each of the board items is just like a post it, being blue, grey, green, pink, or one of another few colors.  Dragging them onto each swim lane on the board was flawless, making changes through the work super easy and intuitive. The other thing I really liked about AgileZen is that the Kanban Board had the swim lanes setup immediately.  One can change them, but when you know you immediately need a Ready Lane, Working Lane, and a Complete Lane it is nice to just have them right in front of you in the interface.  In addition, the Backlog is simply a little tab on the left hand side.  This is perfect for the Backlog Queue.  Out of the way, with the focus on the primary items. Once  I got the items onto the board I was easily able to get back to the actual work at hand versus playing around with the tool.  The fact that it was so easy to use, fast and easy UX, and overall a great layout put me back to work on things I needed to do versus sitting a playing with the tool.  That, in the end is the key to using these tools. LeanKit Kanban Account Creation Setting up the account got me straight into the online tool.  This I thought was pretty cool. Setting Up the Kanban Board Setting up the Kanban Board within Leankit was a bit of trouble.  There were multiple UX issues in regard to process and intuitiveness.  The Leankit basically forces one to design the whole board first, making no assumptions about how the board should look.  The swim lanes in my humble opinion should be setup immediately without any manipulation with the most common lanes;  ready, working, and complete. The other UX hiccup that I had a problem with is that as soon as I managed to get the swim lanes into place, I wanted to remove the redundant Backlog Lane.  The Backlog Lane, or Backlog Bucket should be somewhere that I accidentally added as a lane.  Then on top of that I screwed up and added an item inside the lane, which then prevented me from deleting the lane.  I had to go back out of the lane manipulation, remove the item, and then remove the excess lane.  Summary Leankit wasn't a bad interface, it just wasn't as good as AgileZen.  The AgileZen interface was just better UX design overall.  AgileZen also presents a much better user interface graphical design all together.  It is much closer to what the Kanban Board would look like if it were a physical Kanban Board.  Since one of the HUGE reasons for Kanban is to increase visibility, the fact the design is similar to what a real Kanban Board is actually a pretty big deal. This is an image (click for larger) that shows the two Kanban Boards side by side.  The one on the left is AgileZen and the right is Leankit. Original Entry

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• Beginner Geek: How to Burn an ISO Image to a Disc

  - by Mysticgeek

  There may be a time when you have an ISO image that you need to burn to a CD or DVD for use in a computer or other device. Today we show you how to do it using ImgBurn, ISO Recorder, and Windows Disc Image Burner in Windows 7. You might need to burn an ISO of an operating system, software app, CD, DVD…etc. It doesn’t matter what the ISO image is, burning an image is a fairly straight-forward process and here we’ll take a look at three free options to accomplish it. Using ImgBurn ImgBurn is an awesome free utility that will create ISO images, allow out burn almost anything, and a lot more. Although there are a lot advanced features available, burning an ISO to disc is easy. Download and install ImgBurn (link below) taking the defaults in the install wizard. The main thing to watch for and uncheck during installation is when it offers the worthless Ask Toolbar. The easiest way to use ImgBurn is to burn an image to disc is pop in a blank disc to the CD/DVD drive, right-click on the ISO file, and select Burn using ImgBurn. ImgBurn opens up with the source and destination fields already filled in. You can leave the default settings, then click the Write button. You’ll notice that the ImgBurn Log screen opens, this is by default and is meant to show error messages you may receive during the writing process.   A successful burn! That is all there is to it…click Ok and close out of ImgBurn. Use ISO Recorder ISO Recorder (link below) is another great utility for burning ISO images to disc. They have a version for XP, Vista, and Windows 7 (32 & 64-bit Versions). Pop your blank disc into your CD/DVD drive and right-click on the ISO image file and select Copy image to CD from the Context Menu. In the next screen the image file path is in the Source Image file field. Under Recorder select the drive with your blank disc, select a recording speed and click Next. You’ll see a progress screen while the data is written to the disc and finalizing… That’s it! Your disc will pop out and you can click Finish to close out of ISO Recorder. Use Windows 7 If You’re using Windows 7, use the built in Windows Disc Image Burner feature to burn ISO images to disc. The process is very straight-forward, and for a full walkthrough on this, check out our article on how to burn an ISO image in Windows 7. Conclusion You don’t need an expensive commercial application to burn an ISO image to disc. Using any one of these free utilities will get the job done quite nicely. Download ImgBurn Download ISO Recorder Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Make a Windows Vista Repair Disk If You Don’t Have OneHow to Create a Windows ISO from a Disc Using ImgBurnEasily Burn Discs With BurnAware Free EditionCreate A Windows Home Server Home Computer Restore DiscWhy is Amarok’s "Burn This Album" Disabled in Ubuntu? 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 Google Translate (for animals) Out of 100 Tweeters Roadkill’s Scan Port scans for open ports Out of band Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 Cool Looking Screensavers for Windows If it were only this easy

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• Best Practices for Handing over Legacy Code

  - by PersonalNexus

  In a couple of months a colleague will be moving on to a new project and I will be inheriting one of his projects. To prepare, I have already ordered Michael Feathers' Working Effectively with Legacy Code. But this books as well as most questions on legacy code I found so far are concerned with the case of inheriting code as-is. But in this case I actually have access to the original developer and we do have some time for an orderly hand-over. Some background on the piece of code I will be inheriting: It's functioning: There are no known bugs, but as performance requirements keep going up, some optimizations will become necessary in the not too distant future. Undocumented: There is pretty much zero documentation at the method and class level. What the code is supposed to do at a higher level, though, is well-understood, because I have been writing against its API (as a black-box) for years. Only higher-level integration tests: There are only integration tests testing proper interaction with other components via the API (again, black-box). Very low-level, optimized for speed: Because this code is central to an entire system of applications, a lot of it has been optimized several times over the years and is extremely low-level (one part has its own memory manager for certain structs/records). Concurrent and lock-free: While I am very familiar with concurrent and lock-free programming and have actually contributed a few pieces to this code, this adds another layer of complexity. Large codebase: This particular project is more than ten thousand lines of code, so there is no way I will be able to have everything explained to me. Written in Delphi: I'm just going to put this out there, although I don't believe the language to be germane to the question, as I believe this type of problem to be language-agnostic. I was wondering how the time until his departure would best be spent. Here are a couple of ideas: Get everything to build on my machine: Even though everything should be checked into source code control, who hasn't forgotten to check in a file once in a while, so this should probably be the first order of business. More tests: While I would like more class-level unit tests so that when I will be making changes, any bugs I introduce can be caught early on, the code as it is now is not testable (huge classes, long methods, too many mutual dependencies). What to document: I think for starters it would be best to focus documentation on those areas in the code that would otherwise be difficult to understand e.g. because of their low-level/highly optimized nature. I am afraid there are a couple of things in there that might look ugly and in need of refactoring/rewriting, but are actually optimizations that have been out in there for a good reason that I might miss (cf. Joel Spolsky, Things You Should Never Do, Part I) How to document: I think some class diagrams of the architecture and sequence diagrams of critical functions accompanied by some prose would be best. Who to document: I was wondering what would be better, to have him write the documentation or have him explain it to me, so I can write the documentation. I am afraid, that things that are obvious to him but not me would otherwise not be covered properly. Refactoring using pair-programming: This might not be possible to do due to time constraints, but maybe I could refactor some of his code to make it more maintainable while he was still around to provide input on why things are the way they are. Please comment on and add to this. Since there isn't enough time to do all of this, I am particularly interested in how you would prioritize.

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