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• add different characters to a NSString one by one??

  - by hemant

  i am retrieving different characters from a string by using thsi function and adding 5 to them to display the corresponding character for eg. 'a' displays 'f' and 'h' displays 'm'.. but the problem is that i am not able to add these characters into a string which i can use to display to display like 'fm'...can anyone help?? heres the code strResult(mutablestring) is getting null only. `str=@"John"; int a=[str length]; for(i=0;i char ch=[str characterAtIndex:i]; ch=ch+5; temp=[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%c",ch]; [strResult appendString:temp]; NSLog(@"%c",ch); }`

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• Return no records if FIndKey results in False?

  - by jwilfong

  Using TDataSet.FindKey you can locate records. When it results in True the datasets cursor will be positioned on the found record. When it results in False the cursor is not moved. This results in the record data prior to FindKey being issued being displayed in data aware components. How can I code the result of FindKey to return an empty record? if Not tblSomeTable.FindKey([SomeSearchData]) then begin < code to return empty or move data cursor to neutral position > end; Thanks, John

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• Subprocess with variables & Command from different class

  - by Pastelinux

  source: http://pastebin.com/utL7Ebeq My thinking is that if i run from controller class "main" it will allow me to take the "data" from Class "model", def "filename". It doesn't seem to work. As you can see below what i mean class Controller: def __init__(self): self.model = Model() self.view = View() def main(self): data = self.model.filename() self.view.tcpdump(data) class View: def tcpdump(self, command): subprocess.call(command.split(), shell=False) When i run my code i get this error: subprocess.call(command.split(), shell=False) AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'split' My guess means that its not picking up command (look at source for reference) or that its not getting command with variables. But i know the error when variables are not being picked up so i don't think it is that. My question is, from what i have thus far, how do i from "class view" grab "command" for my subprocesses to run. Thanks~ John Riselvato

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• Send JSON object via GET and POST in php without having to wrapping it in another object literal.

  - by Kucebe

  My site does some short ajax call in JSON format, using jQuery. At client-side i'd like to send object just passing it in ajax function, without being forced to wrap it in an object literal like this: {'person' : person}. For the same reasons, at server-side i'd like to manage objects without the binding of $_GET['person'] or $_POST['person']. For example: var person = { 'name' : 'John', 'lastName' : 'Doe', 'age' : 32, 'married' : true } sendAjaxRequest(person); in php, using: $person = json_decode(file_get_contents("php://input")); i can get easily the object, but only with POST format, not in GET. Any suggestions?

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• How to use personalized urls in asp.net mvc application.

  - by Bootcamp

  I am working on a website in which many users can create their account and have a personalized page. I wish to provide them a twitter like url to access their pages, for example www.mysite.com/smith or www.mysite.com/john . I am using asp.net mvc 1.0. I have an understand that i can add routes to the global.asax file, but i am not able to figure out how to add a route that will work for such urls. Please provide some help / suggestions. Thanks.

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• handle an arrray posted with $.ajax (jquery) to a webservice

  - by burktelefon

  I'm trying to post data to a webservice (asp.net 3.5), like below (two variants, one commented): var array = [3, 2, 5, 1, 7]; var jsonString = JSON.stringify(array); //var jsonString = '{ "firstName": "John", "lastName": "Smith", "age": 25, "address": { "streetAddress": "21 2nd Street", "city": "New York", "state": "NY", "postalCode": "10021" }, "phoneNumber": [ { "type": "home", "number": "212 555-1234" }, { "type": "fax", "number": "646 555-4567" } ] }' $.ajax({ type: "POST", url: "WebService2.asmx/AddRoute", data: jsonString, contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8", dataType: "json", processData: "false", error: function(msg) { alert('error' + msg.toString); } }); So I need a matching webmethod to recieve it. Something like this: [WebMethod] public string AddRoute(/* xxx */) { //handle data } Could someone please elaborate on how I can fetch the data, where I've typed "xxx"? I would have thought "int[] array" would do the trick, but it's not working. Any help would be greatly appreciated :)

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• Sort a list numerically in Python

  - by Matthew

  So I have this list, we'll call it listA. I'm trying to get the [3] item in each list e.g. ['5.01','5.88','2.10','9.45','17.58','2.76'] in sorted order. So the end result would start the entire list over again with Santa at the top. Does that make any sense? [['John Doe', u'25.78', u'20.77', '5.01'], ['Jane Doe', u'21.08', u'15.20', '5.88'], ['James Bond', u'20.57', u'18.47', '2.10'], ['Michael Jordan', u'28.50', u'19.05', '9.45'], ['Santa', u'31.13', u'13.55', '17.58'], ['Easter Bunny', u'17.20', u'14.44', '2.76']]

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• Pulling international street addresses / phone numbers from free-form text

  - by spitzanator

  Hey, folks. I'm looking for some regular expressions to help grab street addresses and phone numbers from free-form text (a la Gmail). Given some text: "John, I went to the store today, and it was awesome! Did you hear that they moved to 500 Green St.? ... Give me a call at +14252425424 when you get a chance." I'd like to be able to pull out: 500 Green St. (recognized as a street address) +14252425424 (recognized as a phone number) What makes this problem easier is that I don't care about parsing text that gets pulled out. That is, I don't care that Green is the name of the road or that 425 is the area code. I just want to grab strings that "look like" addresses or telephone numbers. Unfortunately, this needs to work internationally, as best as possible. Anyone have any leads? Thanks!

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• Create a graph image (png, jpg ..) from an XML file with Java

  - by alibm

  Hello, I have an XML file and I want to create a graph with some entities, then store this graph in an image, JPG or PNG. So is there a library in Java do like this?? Or is there some tricks by parsing XML files and ... ??? Here an example XML file: <?xml version="1.0"?> <process> <p n=1>Tove</p> <p n=2>Jani</p> <p n=2>Bill</p> <p n=4>John</p> </process> And the output will be like this. http://i.imgur.com [slash] YevGX.png Please change [slash] by / to see the image. Thanks in advance. Best Regards, AliBM

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• how to execute a .exe program by php script

  - by user347262

  hello I want to execute a .exe file on my Apache server using a php script. the procedure is as follow: 1- user comes, fills a html form 2- it goses to a php script 3- php script executes the name.exe file 4- php prints the output of the name.exe file on the page. I execute the name.exe normally from windows like this: run--> cmd--> D:\name [command] the name.exe needs to communicate with other files like libraries in the same directory. the complete comand in cmd at windows is like this: D:\name library.dll [input from user] then program executes and prints some results in cmd window. I actually want to run this program on my server form my clients. I dont know how, but I now there is a way to do this. another related questoin is that, is there any shell that i can install on Linux server and execute name.exe in it? thanks in advanced, John.

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• laravel multiple where clauses within a loop

  - by user1424508

  Pretty much I want the query to select all records of users that are 25 years old AND are either between 150-170cm OR 190-200cm. I have this query written down below. However the problem is it keeps getting 25 year olds OR people who are 190-200cm instead of 25 year olds that are 150-170 OR 25 year olds that 190-200cm tall. How can I fix this? thanks $heightarray=array(array(150,170),array(190,200)); $user->where('age',25); for($i=0;$i<count($heightarray);i++){ if($i==0){ $user->whereBetween('height',$heightarray[$i]) }else{ $user->orWhereBetween('height',$heightarray[$i]) } } $user->get(); Edit: I tried advanced wheres (http://laravel.com/docs/queries#advanced-wheres) and it doesn't work for me as I cannot pass the $heightarray parameter into the closure. from laravel documentation DB::table('users') ->where('name', '=', 'John') ->orWhere(function($query) { $query->where('votes', '>', 100) ->where('title', '<>', 'Admin'); }) ->get();

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• Converting byte array to image in xcode?

  - by arizah

  I am getting a byte array(I reckon) in NSMutableArray's object.The NSMutableArray i get is from Xml parsing from a service URL..Now I need to convert that byte array to UIImage ..Gone through google and found to convert to NSData and then UIImage but couldn't understand how..? How can I do it ? My array looks like this : ( { Name = "John"; Image = "/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD//gA7Q1JFQVRPUjogZ2QtanBlZyB2MS4wICh1c2luZyBJS kcgSlBFRyB2NjIpLCBxdWFsaXR5ID0gODAK/9sAQwAGBAUGBQQGBgUGBwcGCAoQCgoJCQoUDg8MEBcUGBgXF BYWGh0lHxobIxwWFiAsICMmJykqKRkfLTAtKDAlKCko/9sAQwEHBwcKCAoTCgoTKBoWGigoKCgoKCgoKCgoKCgoKCgoKCgoKCgoKCgoKCgoKCgoKCgoKCgoKCgoKCgoKCgoKCgo/8AAEQgEKwZAAwEiAAIRAQMRAf/........ //big byte array } ) First of all I need to clear whether it is a byte array ?How can I extract image from this ?

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• Get a specific word of of the sentence

  - by sm21guy

  H ow can i get 123 out of ::123:: in a sentence then store it in a variable. for example : hi i am john ::123::. It will look for :::: tags and get 123 from the it and strip off other words in the sentence. The results would be 123 I am not sure but is this able to work? $(document).ready(function(){ var store = $('.div').find(/::([^:]+)::/g); alert(store); }); How can i do this using jquery?

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• Activate first workbook after closing second one?

  - by user1830217

  Open workbook A. Code in A opens workbook B. B is now the active WB. Code in B ends with ThisWorkBook.Close B closes, so A appears. Problem is, I can't get ANY Activate events in WB A to fire automatically after WB B closes. But if I close WB B manually, using mouse to 'x' out the WB, or via the menus, then WB A triggers Activate events. Somehow using VBA to close WB B prevents WB A Activate events from triggering. Same results in Excel 97 and 2003 Am I missing something, or is there a workaround?? Thanks! John

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• Are there predifined styles for making arrow buttons in windows phone 7?

  - by Micah

  I want to make some buttons in my app that look like the common round buttons with the arrows found all over the win 7 apps. Anyone know where I can find resources for these? UPDATE Here's a great tutorial on creating round buttons in WP7. This is exactly what I was trying to do, but I will use the images mentioned by John Gardner below: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/priozersk/archive/2010/08/13/creating-round-button-for-wp7-part-1.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/priozersk/archive/2010/08/14/creating-round-image-button-for-wp7-part-1.aspx Thakns!

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• JComboBox to string

  - by gabrielle fregil

  I have a String array of names, and then I added it into an editable JComboBox. The user can either pick his/her name from the choices or just input his/her name if not in the choices. How do I put the user input into a new string variable? String [] chooseName = { Mark, John, Allison, Jessica }; JComboBox combo = new JComboBox (chooseName); combo.setEditable(true); String chosenName = /* how do i place what the user inputed here? */

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• Ruby: Parse Excel 95-2003 files?

  - by Larry K

  Is there a way to read Excel 97-2003 files from Ruby? Background I'm currently using the Ruby Gem parseexcel -- http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/parseexcel/ But it is an old port of the perl module. It works fine, but the latest format it parses is Excel 95. And guess what? Excel 2007 will not produce the Excel 95 format. John McNamara has taken over duties as the maintainer for the Perl Excel parser, see http://search.cpan.org/~jmcnamara/Spreadsheet-ParseExcel-0.55/lib/Spreadsheet/ParseExcel.pm The current version will parse Excel 95-2003 files. But is there a port to Ruby? My other thought is to build some Ruby to Perl glue code to enable use of the Perl library itself from Ruby. Eg, see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/451636/whats-the-best-way-to-export-utf8-data-into-excel/620612#620612 (I think it would be much faster to write the glue code than to port the parser.) Thanks, Larry

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• Hudson pipelines

  - by johnoc

  Hi Can anyone help with this problem? I have a test job, a downstream job and a join job. I only want the join job to run if the downstream job succeeds. If the test job fails and the downstream job succeeds I still want to run the join job. Anyone know of a plugin that can help here? The join plugin is not good enough because I can configure it to run join job when test AND downstream succeed, or run join regardless of either jobs success/failure. But not run join job ONLY if downstream succeeds. Why do I want to do it this way? I want to pipeline jobs together but only if a common "downstream" job succeeds. If it fails then I want the pipeline to "break". Many thanks John

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• Jquery plugin for getting changes in textarea and sending them to server

  - by user763410

  I am getting a file "abc.txt" from server and dispaying it in a text area for editing. <div id="filecontents"> <textarea> CONTENTS OF FILE LARGER THAN 10KB </textarea> </div> The contents of the file are potentially large. The user will edit the textarea and add/delete text from any part(not just the end). I want to send ONLY the changes to the server for patching. How do I accomplish this?. Is there a javascript version of the popular linux command(diff). John Resig's diff code may not work as, for me, it will involve additional parsing on server side. Thanks!

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• XNA Notes 007

  - by George Clingerman

  Every week I keep wondering if there’s going to be enough activity in the community to keep doing these notes on a weekly basis and every week I’m reminded of just how awesome and active the XNA community is. There’s engines being made, tutorials being created, games being crafted. There’s information being shared, questions being answered and then there’s another whole community around the Xbox LIVE Indie Games themselves. It’s really incredibly to just watch all that’s going on and I’m glad I’m playing a small part in all of this. So here’s what I noticed happening in the XNA community last week. If there’s things I’m missing, always feel free to let me know. I love learning about new corners of the XNA community that I wasn’t aware of or just have been missing! XNA Developers: Uditha Bandara held an XNA Game Development Workshops at Singapore Universities http://uditha.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/xna-game-development-workshops-at-singapore-universities-event-update/ Binary Tweed gives his talks about Indie City and gives his opinion on the false promise of digital distribution http://www.develop-online.net/news/37053/OPINION-The-false-promise-of-digital-distribution Kris Steele posts his Trivia or Die postmortem http://www.krissteele.net/blogdetails.aspx?id=246 @MadNinjaSkills (James Johnston) posts his feelings on testing for XBLIG http://www.ezmuze.co.uk/101 Simon (@DDReaper) posts hints and tips for XNA developers to help get the size of their projects down http://twitter.com/#!/DDReaper/status/38279440924545024 http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkgenesis/archive/2011/02/17/look-at-the-size-of-that-thing.aspx Michael B. McLaughlin proving why he should be an XNA MVP posts the list of commonly used value types in XNA games http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/02/17/list-of-commonly-used-value-types-in-xna-games.aspx http://twitter.com/#!/mikebmcl/status/38166541354811392 Paul Powell (@ITSligoPaul) posts about a common sprite batch as a game service http://itspaulsblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/xna-common-sprite-batch-as-game-service.html @SigilXNA (John Defenbaugh) posts his new level editor video for the sequel to Opac’s Journey http://twitter.com/SigilXNA/statuses/36548174373982209 http://twitter.com/#!/SigilXNA/status/36548174373982209 http://youtu.be/QHbmxB_2AW8 @jwatte updates kW Animation for XNA 4.0 http://www.enchantedage.com/xna-animation @DSebJ posts Blender to SunBurn http://twitter.com/#!/DSebJ/status/36564920224976896 http://dsebj.evolvingsoftware.com/?p=187 Ads and WP7 Games - @mechaghost shares his revenue data for his ad based games http://www.occasionalgamer.com/2011/02/09/ads-and-wp7-games/ Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): Steven Hurdle posts day 100 of his quest to find a fantastic XBLIG purchase every day http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/2011/02/17/day-100-radiangames-ballistic/ Xbox 360 Indie Game Buying Guide - 12 games for $60 including several Xbox LIVE Indie games! (although if the XNA community was asked we could have recommended 60 games for $60...) http://www.indiegamemag.com/xbox360-indie-games-buying-guide/ The best selling Xbox LIVE Indie games of 2010 http://www.1up.com/news/xbox-live-most-popular-games I’d buy that for a dollar! - the California Literary Review points out a few gems on the XBLIG marketplace (and other places) where you can game on the cheap. http://calitreview.com/14125 Armless Octopus Episode 39 - The Indie Gem Octocast http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/02/17/armless-octocast-episode-39-the-indie-gem-octocast/ Ska Studios posts a plethora of updates http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/11/good-morning-gato-49/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/14/vampire-smile-valentines/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/16/the-dishwasher-vs-finds-a-home/ Kotaku posts about the Xbox LIVE Indie Game that makes you go Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew http://kotaku.com/#!5760632/the-game-that-makes-you-go-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew GameMarx continues to be active and doing a ton for the XBLIG community reviews and Top 5 indie games of the week 2/4-2/10 http://www.gamemarx.com/video/the-show/22/ep-9-february-11-2010.aspx a new podcast Xbox Indie New Releases http://twitter.com/#!/gamemarx/status/36888849107910656 http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/02/13/a-new-podcast-xbox-indie-new-releases.aspx @MasterBlud uploads Indocalypse XBLIG Collections #2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzCZSv075mc&feature=youtu.be&a http://twitter.com/#!/MasterBlud/status/37100029697064960 Just Press Start interviews Michael Hicks from MichaelArts, 18 year old creator of Honor in Vengeance http://justpressstart.net/?p=465 Achievement Locked interviews Kris Steele of FunInfused Games http://xboxindies.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/interview-fun-infused-games/ XNA Game Development: XNA -UK launches their XAP test service to help the XNA community http://xna-uk.net/blogs/news/archive/2011/02/18/xna-uk-xap-test-service-now-live.aspx Transmute shows off a video of the standard character editor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqH6gErG948&feature=youtu.be Microsoft Tech Student introduces their first tech student of the month.  Meet Daniel Van Tassel from the University of Utah and learn how he created an Xbox LIVE Indie Game using XNA Studio http://blogs.msdn.com/b/techstudent/archive/2010/12/22/introducing-our-first-tech-student-of-the-month-daniel-van-tassel.aspx XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 3 - Animation (transforms) http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-3-Animation-transforms.aspx XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 4 - Animation (frame based) http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-4-Animation-frame-based.aspx @suhinini tweets about an XNA Sprite Font generation tool http://twitter.com/#!/suhinini/status/36841370131890176 http://www.nubik.com/SpriteFont/ XNATouch 1.5 is out and in it’s words is faster, simpler, more reliable and has the XNA 4.0 API http://monogame.codeplex.com/releases/view/60815 IndieCity is hosting marketing workshops for Indie Developers (UK and US) http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/75197/457654.aspx#457654 New York Students - Learn XNA and Silverlight for Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/72753/456964.aspx#456964 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andrewparsons/archive/2011/01/13/learn-to-build-your-own-games-for-xbox-360-and-windows-phone-7.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andrewparsons/archive/2011/01/13/build-a-game-in-48-hours-win-a-kinect-or-windows-phone-7.aspx Extra Credits: Videogame Music http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2019-Videogame-Music Steve Pavlina posts an article with useful information for all XNA/XBLIG developers http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2011/02/completion-vs-perfection/

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• 6 Interesting Facts About NASA’s Mars Rover ‘Curiosity’

  - by Gopinath

  Humans quest for exploring the surrounding planets to see whether we can live there or not is taking new shape today. NASA’s Mars probing robot, Curiosity, blasted off today on its 9 months journey to reach Mars and explore it for the possibilities of life there. Scientist says that Curiosity is one most advanced rover ever launched to probe life on other planets. Here is the launch video and some analysis by a news reporter Lets look at the 6 interesting facts about the mission 1. It’s as big as a car Curiosity is the biggest ever rover ever launched by NASA to probe life on outer planets. It’s as big as a car and almost double the size of its predecessor rover Spirit. The length of Curiosity is around 9 feet 10 inches(3 meters), width is 9 feet 1 inch (2.8 meters) and height is 7 feet (2.1 meters). 2. Powered by Plutonium – Lasts 24×7 for 23 months The earlier missions of NASA to explore Mars are powered by Solar power and that hindered capabilities of the rovers to move around when the Sun is hiding. Due to dependency of Sun the earlier rovers were not able to traverse the places where there is no Sun light. Curiosity on the other hand is equipped with a radioisotope power system that generates electricity from the heat emitted by plutonium’s radioactive decay. The plutonium weighs around 10 pounds and can generate power required for operating the rover close to 23 weeks. The best part of the new power system is, Curiosity can roam around in darkness, light and all year around. 3. Rocket powered backpack for a science fiction style landing The Curiosity is so heavy that NASA could not use parachute and balloons to air-drop the rover on the surface of Mars like it’s previous missions. They are trying out a new science fiction style air-dropping mechanism that is similar to sky crane heavy-lift helicopter. The landing of the rover begins first with entry into the Mars atmosphere protected by a heat shield. At about 6 miles to the surface, the heat shield is jettisoned and a parachute is deployed to glide the rover smoothly. When the rover touches 3 miles above the surface, the parachute is jettisoned and the eight motors rocket backpack is used for a smooth and impact free landing as shown in the image. Here is an animation created by NASA on the landing sequence. If you are interested in getting more detailed information about the landing process check this landing sequence picture available on NASA website 4. Equipped with Star Wars style laser gun Hollywood movie directors and novelist always imagined aliens coming to earth with spaceships full of laser guns and blasting the objects which comes on their way. With Curiosity the equations are going to change. It has a powerful laser gun equipped in one of it’s arms to beam laser on rocks to vaporize them. This is not part of any assault mission Curiosity is expected to carry out, the laser gun is will be used to carry out experiments to detect life and understand nature. 5. Most sophisticated laboratory powered by 10 instruments Around 10 state of art instruments are part of Curiosity rover and the these 10 instruments form a most advanced rover based lab ever built by NASA. There are instruments to cut through rocks to examine them and other instruments will search for organic compounds. Mounted cameras can study targets from a distance, arm mounted instruments can study the targets they touch. Microscopic lens attached to the arm can see and magnify tiny objects as tiny as 12.5 micro meters. 6. Rover Carrying 1.24 million names etched on silicon Early June 2009 NASA launched a campaign called “Send Your Name to Mars” and around 1.24 million people registered their names through NASA’s website. All those 1.24 million names are etched on Silicon chips mounted onto Curiosity’s deck. If you had registered your name in the campaign may be your name is going to reach Mars soon. Curiosity On Web If you wish to follow the mission here are few links to help you NASA’s Curiosity Web Page Follow Curiosity on Facebook Follow @MarsCuriosity on Twitter Artistic Gallery Image of Mars Rover Curiosity A printable sheet of Curiosity Mission [pdf] Images credit: NASA This article titled,6 Interesting Facts About NASA’s Mars Rover ‘Curiosity’, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Feedback on "market manipulation", a peripheral game mechanic for a satirical MMO

  - by BerndBrot

  This question asks for feedback on a specific game-mechanic. Since there is not one right feedback on a game mechanic, I tried to provide enough context and guidelines to still make it possible for users to rate answers and to accept an answer as the best answer (following these criteria from Writer.SE's meta website). Please comment if you have any suggestions on how I could improve the question in that regard. So, let's begin with the game itself and some of its elements which are relevant for this question. Context I'm working on a satirical, text-based multiplayer adventure and role-playing game set in modern-day London. The game resolves around the concept of sin and features a myriad of (venomous) allusions to all the things that go wrong in this world. Players can choose between character classes like bullshit artist (consultant), bankster, lawyer, mobster, celebrity, politician, etc. In order to complete the game, the player has to live so sinfully with regard to any of the seven deadly sins that a demon is willing to offer them a contract of sponsorship. On their quest to live a sinful live, characters explore more and more locations of modern-day London (on a GoogleMap), fight "monsters" like insurance sales agents or Jehovah's Witnesses, and complete quests, like building a PowerPoint presentation out of marketing buzz words or keeping up a number of substance abuse effects in order to progress on the gluttony path. Battles are turn based with both combatants having a deck of cards, with which they try to make their enemy give in to temptations of all sorts. Tempted enemies sometimes become contacts (an item drop mechanic), which can be exploited for various benefits, depending on their area of influence (finance, underworld, bureaucracy, etc.), level of influence, and kind of sway that the player has over them (bribed, seduced, threatened, etc.) Once a contract has been exploited, the player loses that contact. Most actions require turns. Turns are limited, but refill each day. Criteria A number of peripheral game mechanics are supposed to represent real world abuses and mischief in a humorous way integrate real world data and events to strengthen the feeling of relevance of the game's humor with regard to real world problems add fun ways of interacting with other players add ways for players to express themselves through game-play Market manipulation is one such peripheral game mechanic and should fulfill all of these goals. Market manipulation This is my initial design of the mechanic: Players can enter the London Stock Exchange (LSE) (without paying a turn) LSE displays the stock prices of a number of companies in industries like weapons or tobacco as well as some derivatives based on wheat and corn. The stock prices are calculated based on the actual stock prices of these companies and derivatives (in real time) any market manipulations that were conducted by the players any market corrections of the system Players can buy and sell shares with cash, a resource in the game, at current in-game market value (without paying a turn). Players can manipulate the market, i.e. let the price of a share either rise or fall, by some amount, over a certain period of time. Manipulating the market requires 1 turn A contact in the financial sector (see above). The higher the level of influence of the contact, the stronger the effect of the manipulation on the stock price, and/or the shorter it takes for the manipulation to manifest itself. Market manipulation also adds a crime to the player's record. (There are a multitude of ways to take care of that, but it is still another "cost" of market manipulations.) The system continuously corrects market manipulations by letting the in-game prices converge towards their real world counterparts at a rate of 2% of the difference between the two per hour. Because of this market correction mechanism, pushing up prices (and screwing down prices) becomes increasingly difficult the higher (lower) the price already is. Whenever food prices reach a certain level, in-game stories are posted about hunger catastrophes happening somewhere far, far away (maybe with links to real world news stories). Whenever a player sells a certain number of shares with a sufficiently high margin, they are mentioned in that day's in-game financial news. Since the number of stock options is very limited, players will inevitably collide in their efforts to manipulate the market in their favor. Hopefully, it will also be a fun side-arena for guilds and covenants to fight each other. Question(s) What do you think of this mechanism given the criteria for peripheral game mechanics that I specified for my game? Do you have any ideas how the mechanic could be improved with regard to these criteria (or otherwise)? Could it be improved to allow for more expressive game-play, or involve an allusion to some other real world madness (like short selling, leveraging, or some other banking magic)? Are there any game-theoretic problems with this mechanic, like maybe certain dominant individual strategies that, collectively, lead to every player profiting and thus eliminating the idea of market manipulation PVP? Also, if you like (or dislike) this question, feel free to participate in the discussion on GDSE meta: "Should we be more lax with regard to SE's question/answer format to make game design questions possible?"

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• The Winds of Change are a Blowin&rsquo;

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  For six years I have been an avid and outspoken fan and paying customer of SourceGear products…from Vault to Dragnet to Fortress and on to Vault Professional, but that is all changing now.  Not the fan part, but the paying customer part.  I’m still a huge fan.  I think that SourceGear does a great job with their product and support has been fantastic when needed (which is not very often).  I think that Eric Sink has done a fine job building a quality company and products, and I appreciate his contributions to the tech community through this blogging and books.  I still think their products are high quality and do a fantastic job of what they do.  But there’s the rub…what they do is no longer enough for me. As I have rebuilt our development team over the last couple of years, and we have begun to investigate Scrum and Kanban, I realize that I need more visibility into the progress of the team.  I need better project management tools, and this is where Vault Professional lags behind several other tools.  Granted, in the latest release (Vault 6.0) they added a nice time tracking feature, but I want more.  (Note, I did contact SourceGear about my quest for more, but apparently, the rest of their customer base has not been clamoring for this and so they have not built it.  Granted, I wasn’t clamoring for it either until just recently, but unfortunately for SourceGear, I want it now and don’t want to wait for them to build it into their system.) Ironically, it was SourceGear themselves who started to turn me on to the possibilities of other tools.  They built a limited integration with Axosoft OnTime which I read about several times on their support site (I used to regularly read and occasionally comment on their Support Forum).  I decided to check out OnTime and was very impressed with the tool for work item tracking and project management (not to mention their great Scrum Master in 10 Minutes video).  I fell in love with the capabilities of OnTime.  Unfortunately, the integration with Vault for source control management was, as I mentioned, limited.  I could have forfeited the integration between work items and source code, but there is too much benefit to linking check-ins to work items for me to give that up.  So then I did what was previously unthinkable for me, I considered switching not just the work tracking tool, but also the source code management tool.  This was really stepping outside my comfort zone because source code is Gold, and not to be trifled with.  When you find a good weapon to protect your gold, stick with it. I looked at Git and Tortoise SVN, but the integration methods for those was pretty rough compared to what I was used to.  The recommended tool from Axosoft’s point of view appeared to be RocketSVN, but I really wasn’t sure I wanted to go the “flavor of Subversion” route.  Then I started thinking about that other tool I liked back when I first chose to go with Vault, but couldn’t afford:  Team Foundation Server.  And what do you know…Microsoft has not only radically improved it over that version from back in 2006, but they also came to their senses about how it should be licensed, and it is much more affordable now.  So I started looking into the latest capabilities in the 2012 version, and I fell in love all over again. I really went deep on checking out the tools.  I watched numerous webcasts from Microsoft partners, went to a beta preview on Microsoft’s campus, and watched a lot of Channel 9 videos on the new ALM features (oooh…shiny).  Frankly, I was very impressed with the capabilities of the newest version, and figured this was probably our direction.  As an interesting twist of fate, one of my employees crossed paths with an ALM Consultant from Northwest Cadence, a local Microsoft Partner, and one of the companies that produced several of the webcasts that I had been watching.  So I gave Bryon a call and started grilling him to see if he really knew anything or was just another guy who couldn’t find a job so he called himself a consultant.  It turns out Bryon actually knows a lot, especially in an area that was becoming a frustration point for us: Branching strategies and automated builds (that’s probably a whole separate blog entry).  As we talked, Bryon suggested we look into doing a DTDPS (Developer Tools Deployment Planning Services) session with his company.  This is a service that can be paid for by Microsoft Enterprise Agreement planning services credits or SA training benefits, and, again, coincidentally, we had several that were just about to expire, so I put them to good use. The DTDPS sessions were great; and Bryon, Rick, and the rest of the folks at Northwest Cadence have been a pleasure to work with.  We have just purchased a new server for our TFS rollout and are planning the steps and options right now.  This is still a big project ahead of us to not only install and configure TFS, but also to load all of our source code (many different systems, not just one program) and transition to the new way of life with TFS, but I am convinced that it is the right move for my team at this point in time.  We need the new capabilities that are in alignment with Scrum and Kanban methodologies in order to more efficiently manage all the different projects that we have going on at one time. I would still wholeheartedly endorse SourceGear’s products and Axosoft’s OnTime for those whose needs are met by those tools, but for me and my team, I think that TFS is the right fit, and I am looking forward to the change.

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• Unit testing is… well, flawed.

  - by Dewald Galjaard

  Hey someone had to say it. I clearly recall my first IT job. I was appointed Systems Co-coordinator for a leading South African retailer at store level. Don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with an honest day’s labor and in fact I highly recommend it, however I’m obliged to refer to the designation cautiously; in reality all I had to do was monitor in-store prices and two UNIX front line controllers. If anything went wrong – I only had to phone it in… Luckily that wasn’t all I did. My duties extended to some other interesting annual occurrence – stock take. Despite a bit more curious affair, it was still a tedious process that took weeks of preparation and several nights to complete.  Then also I remember that no matter how elaborate our planning was, the entire exercise would be rendered useless if we couldn’t get the basics right – that being the act of counting. Sounds simple right? We’ll with a store which could potentially carry over tens of thousands of different items… we’ll let’s just say I believe that’s when I first became a coffee addict. In those days the act of counting stock was a very humble process. Nothing like we have today. A staff member would be assigned a bin or shelve filled with items he or she had to sort then count. Thereafter they had to record their findings on a complementary piece of paper. Every night I would manage several teams. Each team was divided into two groups - counters and auditors. Both groups had the same task, only auditors followed shortly on the heels of the counters, recounting stock levels, making sure the original count correspond to their findings. It was a simple yet hugely responsible orchestration of people and thankfully there was one fundamental and golden rule I could always abide by to ensure things run smoothly – No-one was allowed to audit their own work. Nope, not even on nights when I didn’t have enough staff available. This meant I too at times had to get up there and get counting, or have the audit stand over until the next evening. The reason for this was obvious - late at night and with so much to do we were prone to make some mistakes, then on the recount, without a fresh set of eyes, you were likely to repeat the offence. Now years later this rule or guideline still holds true as we develop software (as far removed as software development from counting stock may be). For some reason it is a fundamental guideline we’re simply ignorant of. We write our code, we write our tests and thus commit the same horrendous offence. Yes, the procedure of writing unit tests as practiced in most development houses today – is flawed. Most if not all of the tests we write today exercise application logic – our logic. They are based on the way we believe an application or method should/may/will behave or function. As we write our tests, our unit tests mirror our best understanding of the inner workings of our application code. Unfortunately these tests will therefore also include (or be unaware of) any imperfections and errors on our part. If your logic is flawed as you write your initial code, chances are, without a fresh set of eyes, you will commit the same error second time around too. Not even experience seems to be a suitable solution. It certainly helps to have deeper insight, but is that really the answer we should be looking for? Is that really failsafe? What about code review? Code review is certainly an answer. You could have one developer coding away and another (or team) making sure the logic is sound. The practice however has its obvious drawbacks. Firstly and mainly it is resource intensive and from what I’ve seen in most development houses, given heavy deadlines, this guideline is seldom adhered to. Hardly ever do we have the resources, money or time readily available. So what other options are out there? A quest to find some solution revealed a project by Microsoft Research called PEX. PEX is a framework which creates several test scenarios for each method or class you write, automatically. Think of it as your own personal auditor. Within a few clicks the framework will auto generate several unit tests for a given class or method and save them to a single project. PEX help to audit your work. It lends a fresh set of eyes to any project you’re working on and best of all; it is cost effective and fast. Check them out at http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/pex/ In upcoming posts we’ll dive deeper into how it works and how it can help you.   Certainly there are more similar frameworks out there and I would love to hear from you. Please share your experiences and insights.

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• PASS Summit 2010 Recap

  - by AjarnMark

  Last week I attended my eighth PASS Summit in nine years, and every year it is a fantastic event!  I was fortunate my first year to have a contact (Bill Graziano (blog | Twitter) from SQLTeam) that I was expecting to meet, and who got me started on a good track of making new contacts.  Each year I have made a few more, and renewed friendships from years past.  Many of the attendees agree that the pure networking opportunities are one of the best benefits of attending the Summit.  And there’s a lot of great technical stuff, too, some of the things that stick out for me this year include… Pre-Con Monday: PowerShell with Allen White (blog | Twitter).  This was the first time that I attended a pre-con.  For those not familiar with the concept, the regular sessions for the conference are 75-90 minutes long.  For an extra fee, you can attend a full-day session on a single topic during a pre- or post-conference training day.  I had been meaning for several months to dive in and learn PowerShell, but just never seemed to find (or make) the time for it, so when I saw this was one of the all-day sessions, and I was planning to be there on Monday anyway, I decided to go for it.  And it was well worth it!  I definitely came out of there with a good foundation to build my own PowerShell scripts, plus several sample scripts that he showed which already cover the first four or five things I was planning to do with PowerShell anyway.  This looks like the right tool for me to build an automated version of our software deployment process, which right now contains many repeated steps.  Thanks Allen! Service Broker with Denny Cherry (blog | Twitter).  I remembered reading Denny’s blog post on Using Service Broker instead of Replication, and ever since then I have been thinking about using this to populate a new reporting-focused Data Repository that we will be building in the near future.  When I saw he was doing this session, I thought it would be great to get more information and be able to ask the author questions.  When I brought this idea back to my boss, he really liked it, as we had previously been discussing doing nightly data loads, with an option to manually trigger a mid-day load if up-to-the-minute data was needed for something.  If we go the Service Broker route, we can keep the Repository current in near real-time.  Hooray! DBA Mythbusters with Paul Randal (blog | Twitter).  Even though I read every one of the posts in Paul’s blog series of the same name, I had to go see the legend in person.  It was great, and I still learned something new! How to Conduct Effective Meetings with Joe Webb (blog | Twitter).  I always like to sit in on a session that Joe does.  I met Joe several years ago when both he and Bill Graziano were on the PASS Board of Directors together, and we have kept in touch.  Joe is very well-spoken and has great experience with both SQL Server and business.  And we could certainly use some pointers at my work (probably yours, too) on making our meetings more effective and to run on-time.  Of course, now that I’m the Chapter Leader for the Professional Development virtual chapter, I also had to sit in on this ProfDev session and recruit Joe to do a presentation or two for the chapter next year. Query Optimization with David DeWitt.  Anyone who has seen Dr. David DeWitt present the 3rd keynote at a PASS Summit over the last three years knows what a great time it is to sit and listen to him make some really complicated and advanced topic easy to understand (although it still makes your head hurt).  It still amazes me that the simple two-table join query from pubs that he used in his example can possibly have 22 million possible physical query plans.  Ouch! Exhibit Hall:  This year I spent more serious time in the exhibit hall than any year past.  I have talked my boss into making a significant (for us) investment in monitoring tools next year, and this was a great opportunity to talk with all the big-hitters.  Readers of mine may recall that I fell in love with the SQL Sentry Power Suite several months ago and wrote a blog entry about it just from the trial version.  Well as things turned out, short-term budget priorities shifted, and we weren’t able to make the purchase then.  I have it in the budget for next year, but since I was going to the Summit, my boss wanted me to look at the other options to see if this was really the one that we wanted.  I spent a couple of hours talking with representatives from Red-Gate, Idera, Confio, and Quest about their offerings, and giving them each the same 3 scenarios that I wanted to be able to accomplish based on the questions and issues that arise in our company.  It was interesting to discover the different approaches or “world view” that each vendor takes to the subject of performance monitoring and troubleshooting.  I may write a separate article that goes into this in more depth, but the product that best aligned with our point of view, and met the current needs we have is still the SQL Sentry Power Suite.  I’m not saying that the others are bad or wrong or anything like that, just that the way they tackled the issue did not align as well with our particular needs as does SQL Sentry’s product.  And that was something I learned too, when you go shopping for these products, you really need to know what you want to get from them.  It’s best if you have a few example scenarios from work that you can use to test out how well each tool fits your particular needs. Overall, another GREAT event.  I can’t wait to get the DVDs so I can sit in on a bunch of other sessions that I couldn’t get to because I was in one of the ones above.  And I can hardly wait until next year!

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