Search Results

Search found 12984 results on 520 pages for 'little fish'.

Page 19/520 | < Previous Page | 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26  | Next Page >

• Form doesn't resize smoothly with a timer event

  - by BDotA

  I have a grid control at the bottom of my form and it can be shown or hidden if user wants to show/hide it. So one way was to well use AutoSize of the form and change the Visuble property of that grid to true or false,... But I thought let's make it a little cooler! so I wanted the form to resize a little more slowly, like a garage door! So I dropped a Timer on the form and started increasing the height of the form little by little while the timer ticks... so something like this when user says show/hide the grid: timer1.Enabled = true; timer1.Start(); and something like this on the timer_click event: this.Height = this.Height + 5; if(this.Height -10 > ErrorsGrid.Bottom ) timer1.Stop(); It kind of works but still not perfect. For example it lags at the very beginning, stop a like a second and then start moving it...So now with this idea in mind what alterations do you suggest I should do to make this thing look and work better?

  Read the article

• Making Money from your SQL Server Blog

  - by Bill Graziano

  My SQL Server blog reading list is around one hundred blogs.  Many people are writing great content and generating lots of page views.  I see some of them running Google AdSense and trying to make a little money off their traffic.  If you want to earn some some extra money from what you’ve written there are a couple of options.  And one new option that I’m announcing here. Background Internet advertising is sold based on a few different pricing schemes.  Flat Fee.  You offer either all your impressions (page views) or some percentage of your impressions in exchange for a flat monthly fee.  CPM or cost per thousand impressions.  If the quoted price is $2 CPM you’ll get $2 for every 1,000 times the ad is displayed.  While you might think the “M” means millions, the “M” in CPM is the roman numeral for 1,000. CPC or cost per click.  This is also called PPC or pay per click.  In this method you get paid based on how many clicks there are on the ad.  CPA or cost per action.  In this method you get paid based on an action that occurs on the advertisers site after they click on the ad.  This is typically some type of sign up form.  This is how most affiliate programs work. Darren Rowse at ProBlogger has been writing about blogging and making money off blogs for years.  He has a good introduction to making money on your blog in his “Making Money” section.  If you’re interested in learning more he has a post up titled How to Make More Money From Your Blog in the New Year that links to many of his best posts on the subject. Google AdSense This is the most common method for people earning money from their blogging.  It’s easy to setup and administer.  You tell AdSense what size ads you’d like to run and it gives you a little piece of JavaScript to put on your site.  AdSense quickly learns the topics you write about and displays ads that are appropriate for your site.  I typically see ads for hosting, SQL Server tools and developer tools running in AdSense slots.  AdSense pays on a CPC model.  If you translate that back to CPM pricing you’ll see rates from $0.50 to $1.00 CPM. Amazon While you might not make much money writing books it’s now possible to make even less helping Amazon sell them.  You can sign up for an Amazon affiliate program.  Each time you send Amazon a link and someone buys the book you get a cut of that sale.  This is the CPA model from above.  Amazon can help you build some pretty nice “stores”.  Here’s the SQL Server bookstore I built for SQLTeam.com.  If you’re just putting in a page with books like I’ve done on SQLTeam you should keep your expectations low.  If you’re writing book reviews of suggesting books on your blog it really does make sense to setup an Amazon affiliate link.  People are much more likely to buy a book based on a review from a trusted source.  I always try to buy through a referral link if there is one. Amazon pays about 4% of the price as a referral fee.  You also get credit for anything else they buy while on the site.  I recently had someone buy an iPod nano with their SQL Server book making me an extra $5.60 richer!  Estimating how much you can make is difficult though.  How much attention you draw to the links and book reviews can dramatically affect the earnings. Private Ad Sales This is the hardest but potentially most lucrative option.  You sell advertising directly to companies that want to sell things to your readers.  Typically this would be SQL Server tool vendors, hosting companies or anyone else that wants to make money off database administrators.  This is also the most difficult to do.  You’ll need the contacts at the companies and enough page views to make it worth their while.  You’ll also need software to track the page views and clicks, geo-target your ads and smooth out the impressions.  Your earnings are based on whatever you can negotiate with the companies. SQL Server Ad Network For the last couple of years I’ve run any extra ads that I sold on the SQLTeam Weblogs.  You can see an example of that on Mladen’s blog.  The ad in the upper right corner is one that I’m running for him.  (Note: Many of the ads I’m running are geo-targeted to only appear in English speaking countries.  You may see a different set of ads outside the US, Canada and the UK.  You can also see he has a couple of Google ads on his blog.)  When I run ads on his blog I split the advertising revenue with him.  They make a little and I make a little. I recently started to expand this and sell advertising specifically to run on SQL Server-related blogs.  I’m also starting to run ads on non-SQLTeam blogs.  The only way I can sell more advertising is to have more blogs to run it on.  And that’s where you come in. I’ve created a SQL Server advertising network.  I handle all the ad sales and provide the technology to serve the ads.  I handle collections and payments back to you.  You get paid at the end of each month regardless of when (or if) the advertiser actually pays.  All you need to do is add a small piece of JavaScript to your site to display the ads. If you’re writing about SQL Server and interested in earning a little money for your site I’d like to talk to you.  You can use the Contact Us page on SQLTeam.com to reach me.  Running advertising on your blog isn’t for everyone.  If you’re concerned about what advertisers might think about certain posts then you might not be a good fit.  For the most part this isn’t an issue.  You’ll also need to have a PayPal account to receive payments.  You probably won’t get rich doing this.  But you can earn extra cash on the side for doing what you would do anyway.  I do know that people have earned enough to buy themselves a nice laptop doing this. My initial target is blogs with more than 10,000 page views per month.  I expect to pay two to three times what Google pays.  If you have less than 10,000 page views per month but are still interested I’d still like to hear from you.  I may not be able to sign up smaller blogs right away but we’ll get the process started.  If you’re unsure about your traffic Google Analytics is a free tool that provides great reporting on traffic, popular posts and how people find your blog.  If you have any questions or are just curious drop me a line and I’ll try to answer your questions.

  Read the article

• My Code Kata–A Solution Kata

  - by Glav

  There are many developers and coders out there who like to do code Kata’s to keep their coding ability up to scratch and to practice their skills. I think it is a good idea. While I like the concept, I find them dead boring and of minimal purpose. Yes, they serve to hone your skills but that’s about it. They are often quite abstract, in that they usually focus on a small problem set requiring specific solutions. It is fair enough as that is how they are designed but again, I find them quite boring. What I personally like to do is go for something a little larger and a little more fun. It takes a little more time and is not as easily executed as a kata though, but it services the same purposes from a practice perspective and allows me to continue to solve some problems that are not directly part of the initial goal. This means I can cover a broader learning range and have a bit more fun. If I am lucky, sometimes they even end up being useful tools. With that in mind, I thought I’d share my current ‘kata’. It is not really a code kata as it is too big. I prefer to think of it as a ‘solution kata’. The code is on bitbucket here. What I wanted to do was create a kind of simplistic virtual world where I can create a player, or a class, stuff it into the world, and see if it survives, and can navigate its way to the exit. Requirements were pretty simple: Must be able to define a map to describe the world using simple X,Y co-ordinates. Z co-ordinates as well if you feel like getting clever. Should have the concept of entrances, exists, solid blocks, and potentially other materials (again if you want to get clever). A coder should be able to easily write a class which will act as an inhabitant of the world. An inhabitant will receive stimulus from the world in the form of surrounding environment and be able to make a decision on action which it passes back to the ‘world’ for processing. At a minimum, an inhabitant will have sight and speed characteristics which determine how far they can ‘see’ in the world, and how fast they can move. Coders who write a really bad ‘inhabitant’ should not adversely affect the rest of world. Should allow multiple inhabitants in the world. So that was the solution I set out to act as a practice solution and a little bit of fun. It had some interesting problems to solve and I figured, if it turned out ok, I could potentially use this as a ‘developer test’ for interviews. Ask a potential coder to write a class for an inhabitant. Show the coder the map they will navigate, but also mention that we will use their code to navigate a map they have not yet seen and a little more complex. I have been playing with solution for a short time now and have it working in basic concepts. Below is a screen shot using a very basic console visualiser that shows the map, boundaries, blocks, entrance, exit and players/inhabitants. The yellow asterisks ‘*’ are the players, green ‘O’ the entrance, purple ‘^’ the exit, maroon/browny ‘#’ are solid blocks. The players can move around at different speeds, knock into each others, and make directional movement decisions based on what they see and who is around them. It has been quite fun to write and it is also quite fun to develop different players to inject into the world. The code below shows a really simple implementation of an inhabitant that can work out what to do based on stimulus from the world. It is pretty simple and just tries to move in some direction if there is nothing blocking the path. public class TestPlayer:LivingEntity { public TestPlayer() { Name = "Beta Boy"; LifeKey = Guid.NewGuid(); } public override ActionResult DecideActionToPerform(EcoDev.Core.Common.Actions.ActionContext actionContext) { try { var action = new MovementAction(); // move forward if we can if (actionContext.Position.ForwardFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.ForwardFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Forward; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.LeftFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.LeftFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Left; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.RearFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.RearFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Back; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.RightFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.RightFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Right; return action; } } return action; } catch (Exception ex) { World.WriteDebugInformation("Player: "+ Name, string.Format("Player Generated exception: {0}",ex.Message)); throw ex; } } private bool CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(MapBlock block) { if (block == null || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowEntry || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowExit || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowPotentialEntry) { return true; } return false; } } It is simple and it seems to work well. The world implementation itself decides the stimulus context that is passed to he inhabitant to make an action decision. All movement is carried out on separate threads and timed appropriately to be as fair as possible and to cater for additional skills such as speed, and eventually maybe stamina, strength, with actions like fighting. It is pretty fun to make up random maps and see how your inhabitant does. You can download the code from here. Along the way I have played with parallel extensions to make the compute intensive stuff spread across all cores, had to heavily factor in visibility of methods and properties so design of classes was paramount, work out movement algorithms that play fairly in the world and properly favour the players with higher abilities, as well as a host of other issues. So that is my ‘solution kata’. If I keep going with it, I may develop a web interface for it where people can upload assemblies and watch their player within a web browser visualiser and maybe even a map designer. What do you do to keep the fires burning?

  Read the article

• C#/.NET Fundamentals: Choosing the Right Collection Class

  - by James Michael Hare

  The .NET Base Class Library (BCL) has a wide array of collection classes at your disposal which make it easy to manage collections of objects. While it's great to have so many classes available, it can be daunting to choose the right collection to use for any given situation. As hard as it may be, choosing the right collection can be absolutely key to the performance and maintainability of your application! This post will look at breaking down any confusion between each collection and the situations in which they excel. We will be spending most of our time looking at the System.Collections.Generic namespace, which is the recommended set of collections. The Generic Collections: System.Collections.Generic namespace The generic collections were introduced in .NET 2.0 in the System.Collections.Generic namespace. This is the main body of collections you should tend to focus on first, as they will tend to suit 99% of your needs right up front. It is important to note that the generic collections are unsynchronized. This decision was made for performance reasons because depending on how you are using the collections its completely possible that synchronization may not be required or may be needed on a higher level than simple method-level synchronization. Furthermore, concurrent read access (all writes done at beginning and never again) is always safe, but for concurrent mixed access you should either synchronize the collection or use one of the concurrent collections. So let's look at each of the collections in turn and its various pros and cons, at the end we'll summarize with a table to help make it easier to compare and contrast the different collections. The Associative Collection Classes Associative collections store a value in the collection by providing a key that is used to add/remove/lookup the item. Hence, the container associates the value with the key. These collections are most useful when you need to lookup/manipulate a collection using a key value. For example, if you wanted to look up an order in a collection of orders by an order id, you might have an associative collection where they key is the order id and the value is the order. The Dictionary<TKey,TVale> is probably the most used associative container class. The Dictionary<TKey,TValue> is the fastest class for associative lookups/inserts/deletes because it uses a hash table under the covers. Because the keys are hashed, the key type should correctly implement GetHashCode() and Equals() appropriately or you should provide an external IEqualityComparer to the dictionary on construction. The insert/delete/lookup time of items in the dictionary is amortized constant time - O(1) - which means no matter how big the dictionary gets, the time it takes to find something remains relatively constant. This is highly desirable for high-speed lookups. The only downside is that the dictionary, by nature of using a hash table, is unordered, so you cannot easily traverse the items in a Dictionary in order. The SortedDictionary<TKey,TValue> is similar to the Dictionary<TKey,TValue> in usage but very different in implementation. The SortedDictionary<TKey,TValye> uses a binary tree under the covers to maintain the items in order by the key. As a consequence of sorting, the type used for the key must correctly implement IComparable<TKey> so that the keys can be correctly sorted. The sorted dictionary trades a little bit of lookup time for the ability to maintain the items in order, thus insert/delete/lookup times in a sorted dictionary are logarithmic - O(log n). Generally speaking, with logarithmic time, you can double the size of the collection and it only has to perform one extra comparison to find the item. Use the SortedDictionary<TKey,TValue> when you want fast lookups but also want to be able to maintain the collection in order by the key. The SortedList<TKey,TValue> is the other ordered associative container class in the generic containers. Once again SortedList<TKey,TValue>, like SortedDictionary<TKey,TValue>, uses a key to sort key-value pairs. Unlike SortedDictionary, however, items in a SortedList are stored as an ordered array of items. This means that insertions and deletions are linear - O(n) - because deleting or adding an item may involve shifting all items up or down in the list. Lookup time, however is O(log n) because the SortedList can use a binary search to find any item in the list by its key. So why would you ever want to do this? Well, the answer is that if you are going to load the SortedList up-front, the insertions will be slower, but because array indexing is faster than following object links, lookups are marginally faster than a SortedDictionary. Once again I'd use this in situations where you want fast lookups and want to maintain the collection in order by the key, and where insertions and deletions are rare. The Non-Associative Containers The other container classes are non-associative. They don't use keys to manipulate the collection but rely on the object itself being stored or some other means (such as index) to manipulate the collection. The List<T> is a basic contiguous storage container. Some people may call this a vector or dynamic array. Essentially it is an array of items that grow once its current capacity is exceeded. Because the items are stored contiguously as an array, you can access items in the List<T> by index very quickly. However inserting and removing in the beginning or middle of the List<T> are very costly because you must shift all the items up or down as you delete or insert respectively. However, adding and removing at the end of a List<T> is an amortized constant operation - O(1). Typically List<T> is the standard go-to collection when you don't have any other constraints, and typically we favor a List<T> even over arrays unless we are sure the size will remain absolutely fixed. The LinkedList<T> is a basic implementation of a doubly-linked list. This means that you can add or remove items in the middle of a linked list very quickly (because there's no items to move up or down in contiguous memory), but you also lose the ability to index items by position quickly. Most of the time we tend to favor List<T> over LinkedList<T> unless you are doing a lot of adding and removing from the collection, in which case a LinkedList<T> may make more sense. The HashSet<T> is an unordered collection of unique items. This means that the collection cannot have duplicates and no order is maintained. Logically, this is very similar to having a Dictionary<TKey,TValue> where the TKey and TValue both refer to the same object. This collection is very useful for maintaining a collection of items you wish to check membership against. For example, if you receive an order for a given vendor code, you may want to check to make sure the vendor code belongs to the set of vendor codes you handle. In these cases a HashSet<T> is useful for super-quick lookups where order is not important. Once again, like in Dictionary, the type T should have a valid implementation of GetHashCode() and Equals(), or you should provide an appropriate IEqualityComparer<T> to the HashSet<T> on construction. The SortedSet<T> is to HashSet<T> what the SortedDictionary<TKey,TValue> is to Dictionary<TKey,TValue>. That is, the SortedSet<T> is a binary tree where the key and value are the same object. This once again means that adding/removing/lookups are logarithmic - O(log n) - but you gain the ability to iterate over the items in order. For this collection to be effective, type T must implement IComparable<T> or you need to supply an external IComparer<T>. Finally, the Stack<T> and Queue<T> are two very specific collections that allow you to handle a sequential collection of objects in very specific ways. The Stack<T> is a last-in-first-out (LIFO) container where items are added and removed from the top of the stack. Typically this is useful in situations where you want to stack actions and then be able to undo those actions in reverse order as needed. The Queue<T> on the other hand is a first-in-first-out container which adds items at the end of the queue and removes items from the front. This is useful for situations where you need to process items in the order in which they came, such as a print spooler or waiting lines. So that's the basic collections. Let's summarize what we've learned in a quick reference table.  Collection Ordered? Contiguous Storage? Direct Access? Lookup Efficiency Manipulate Efficiency Notes Dictionary No Yes Via Key Key: O(1) O(1) Best for high performance lookups. SortedDictionary Yes No Via Key Key: O(log n) O(log n) Compromise of Dictionary speed and ordering, uses binary search tree. SortedList Yes Yes Via Key Key: O(log n) O(n) Very similar to SortedDictionary, except tree is implemented in an array, so has faster lookup on preloaded data, but slower loads. List No Yes Via Index Index: O(1) Value: O(n) O(n) Best for smaller lists where direct access required and no ordering. LinkedList No No No Value: O(n) O(1) Best for lists where inserting/deleting in middle is common and no direct access required. HashSet No Yes Via Key Key: O(1) O(1) Unique unordered collection, like a Dictionary except key and value are same object. SortedSet Yes No Via Key Key: O(log n) O(log n) Unique ordered collection, like SortedDictionary except key and value are same object. Stack No Yes Only Top Top: O(1) O(1)* Essentially same as List<T> except only process as LIFO Queue No Yes Only Front Front: O(1) O(1) Essentially same as List<T> except only process as FIFO   The Original Collections: System.Collections namespace The original collection classes are largely considered deprecated by developers and by Microsoft itself. In fact they indicate that for the most part you should always favor the generic or concurrent collections, and only use the original collections when you are dealing with legacy .NET code. Because these collections are out of vogue, let's just briefly mention the original collection and their generic equivalents: ArrayList A dynamic, contiguous collection of objects. Favor the generic collection List<T> instead. Hashtable Associative, unordered collection of key-value pairs of objects. Favor the generic collection Dictionary<TKey,TValue> instead. Queue First-in-first-out (FIFO) collection of objects. Favor the generic collection Queue<T> instead. SortedList Associative, ordered collection of key-value pairs of objects. Favor the generic collection SortedList<T> instead. Stack Last-in-first-out (LIFO) collection of objects. Favor the generic collection Stack<T> instead. In general, the older collections are non-type-safe and in some cases less performant than their generic counterparts. Once again, the only reason you should fall back on these older collections is for backward compatibility with legacy code and libraries only. The Concurrent Collections: System.Collections.Concurrent namespace The concurrent collections are new as of .NET 4.0 and are included in the System.Collections.Concurrent namespace. These collections are optimized for use in situations where multi-threaded read and write access of a collection is desired. The concurrent queue, stack, and dictionary work much as you'd expect. The bag and blocking collection are more unique. Below is the summary of each with a link to a blog post I did on each of them. ConcurrentQueue Thread-safe version of a queue (FIFO). For more information see: C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentStack and ConcurrentQueue ConcurrentStack Thread-safe version of a stack (LIFO). For more information see: C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentStack and ConcurrentQueue ConcurrentBag Thread-safe unordered collection of objects. Optimized for situations where a thread may be bother reader and writer. For more information see: C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentBag and BlockingCollection ConcurrentDictionary Thread-safe version of a dictionary. Optimized for multiple readers (allows multiple readers under same lock). For more information see C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentDictionary BlockingCollection Wrapper collection that implement producers & consumers paradigm. Readers can block until items are available to read. Writers can block until space is available to write (if bounded). For more information see C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentBag and BlockingCollection Summary The .NET BCL has lots of collections built in to help you store and manipulate collections of data. Understanding how these collections work and knowing in which situations each container is best is one of the key skills necessary to build more performant code. Choosing the wrong collection for the job can make your code much slower or even harder to maintain if you choose one that doesn’t perform as well or otherwise doesn’t exactly fit the situation. Remember to avoid the original collections and stick with the generic collections.  If you need concurrent access, you can use the generic collections if the data is read-only, or consider the concurrent collections for mixed-access if you are running on .NET 4.0 or higher.   Tweet Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Collecitons,Generic,Concurrent,Dictionary,List,Stack,Queue,SortedList,SortedDictionary,HashSet,SortedSet

  Read the article

• How to Run Low-Cost Minecraft on a Raspberry Pi for Block Building on the Cheap

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  We’ve shown you how to run your own blocktastic personal Minecraft server on a Windows/OSX box, but what if you crave something lighter weight, more energy efficient, and always ready for your friends? Read on as we turn a tiny Raspberry Pi machine into a low-cost Minecraft server you can leave on 24/7 for around a penny a day. Why Do I Want to Do This? There’s two aspects to this tutorial, running your own Minecraft server and specifically running that Minecraft server on a Raspberry Pi. Why would you want to run your own Minecraft server? It’s a really great way to extend and build upon the Minecraft play experience. You can leave the server running when you’re not playing so friends and family can join and continue building your world. You can mess around with game variables and introduce mods in a way that isn’t possible when you’re playing the stand-alone game. It also gives you the kind of control over your multiplayer experience that using public servers doesn’t, without incurring the cost of hosting a private server on a remote host. While running a Minecraft server on its own is appealing enough to a dedicated Minecraft fan, running it on the Raspberry Pi is even more appealing. The tiny little Pi uses so little resources that you can leave your Minecraft server running 24/7 for a couple bucks a year. Aside from the initial cost outlay of the Pi, an SD card, and a little bit of time setting it up, you’ll have an always-on Minecraft server at a monthly cost of around one gumball. What Do I Need? For this tutorial you’ll need a mix of hardware and software tools; aside from the actual Raspberry Pi and SD card, everything is free. 1 Raspberry Pi (preferably a 512MB model) 1 4GB+ SD card This tutorial assumes that you have already familiarized yourself with the Raspberry Pi and have installed a copy of the Debian-derivative Raspbian on the device. If you have not got your Pi up and running yet, don’t worry! Check out our guide, The HTG Guide to Getting Started with Raspberry Pi, to get up to speed. Optimizing Raspbian for the Minecraft Server Unlike other builds we’ve shared where you can layer multiple projects over one another (e.g. the Pi is more than powerful enough to serve as a weather/email indicator and a Google Cloud Print server at the same time) running a Minecraft server is a pretty intense operation for the little Pi and we’d strongly recommend dedicating the entire Pi to the process. Minecraft seems like a simple game, with all its blocky-ness and what not, but it’s actually a pretty complex game beneath the simple skin and required a lot of processing power. As such, we’re going to tweak the configuration file and other settings to optimize Rasbian for the job. The first thing you’ll need to do is dig into the Raspi-Config application to make a few minor changes. If you’re installing Raspbian fresh, wait for the last step (which is the Raspi-Config), if you already installed it, head to the terminal and type in “sudo raspi-config” to launch it again. One of the first and most important things we need to attend to is cranking up the overclock setting. We need all the power we can get to make our Minecraft experience enjoyable. In Raspi-Config, select option number 7 “Overclock”. Be prepared for some stern warnings about overclocking, but rest easy knowing that overclocking is directly supported by the Raspberry Pi foundation and has been included in the configuration options since late 2012. Once you’re in the actual selection screen, select “Turbo 1000MhHz”. Again, you’ll be warned that the degree of overclocking you’ve selected carries risks (specifically, potential corruption of the SD card, but no risk of actual hardware damage). Click OK and wait for the device to reset. Next, make sure you’re set to boot to the command prompt, not the desktop. Select number 3 “Enable Boot to Desktop/Scratch”  and make sure “Console Text console” is selected. Back at the Raspi-Config menu, select number 8 “Advanced Options’. There are two critical changes we need to make in here and one option change. First, the critical changes. Select A3 “Memory Split”: Change the amount of memory available to the GPU to 16MB (down from the default 64MB). Our Minecraft server is going to ruin in a GUI-less environment; there’s no reason to allocate any more than the bare minimum to the GPU. After selecting the GPU memory, you’ll be returned to the main menu. Select “Advanced Options” again and then select A4 “SSH”. Within the sub-menu, enable SSH. There is very little reason to keep this Pi connected to a monitor and keyboard, by enabling SSH we can remotely access the machine from anywhere on the network. Finally (and optionally) return again to the “Advanced Options” menu and select A2 “Hostname”. Here you can change your hostname from “raspberrypi” to a more fitting Minecraft name. We opted for the highly creative hostname “minecraft”, but feel free to spice it up a bit with whatever you feel like: creepertown, minecraft4life, or miner-box are all great minecraft server names. That’s it for the Raspbian configuration tab down to the bottom of the main screen and select “Finish” to reboot. After rebooting you can now SSH into your terminal, or continue working from the keyboard hooked up to your Pi (we strongly recommend switching over to SSH as it allows you to easily cut and paste the commands). If you’ve never used SSH before, check out how to use PuTTY with your Pi here. Installing Java on the Pi The Minecraft server runs on Java, so the first thing we need to do on our freshly configured Pi is install it. Log into your Pi via SSH and then, at the command prompt, enter the following command to make a directory for the installation: sudo mkdir /java/ Now we need to download the newest version of Java. At the time of this publication the newest release is the OCT 2013 update and the link/filename we use will reflect that. Please check for a more current version of the Linux ARMv6/7 Java release on the Java download page and update the link/filename accordingly when following our instructions. At the command prompt, enter the following command: sudo wget --no-check-certificate http://www.java.net/download/jdk8/archive/b111/binaries/jdk-8-ea-b111-linux-arm-vfp-hflt-09_oct_2013.tar.gz Once the download has finished successfully, enter the following command: sudo tar zxvf jdk-8-ea-b111-linux-arm-vfp-hflt-09_oct_2013.tar.gz -C /opt/ Fun fact: the /opt/ directory name scheme is a remnant of early Unix design wherein the /opt/ directory was for “optional” software installed after the main operating system; it was the /Program Files/ of the Unix world. After the file has finished extracting, enter: sudo /opt/jdk1.8.0/bin/java -version This command will return the version number of your new Java installation like so: java version "1.8.0-ea" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0-ea-b111) Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 25.0-b53, mixed mode) If you don’t see the above printout (or a variation thereof if you’re using a newer version of Java), try to extract the archive again. If you do see the readout, enter the following command to tidy up after yourself: sudo rm jdk-8-ea-b111-linux-arm-vfp-hflt-09_oct_2013.tar.gz At this point Java is installed and we’re ready to move onto installing our Minecraft server! Installing and Configuring the Minecraft Server Now that we have a foundation for our Minecraft server, it’s time to install the part that matter. We’ll be using SpigotMC a lightweight and stable Minecraft server build that works wonderfully on the Pi. First, grab a copy of the the code with the following command: sudo wget http://ci.md-5.net/job/Spigot/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/Spigot-Server/target/spigot.jar This link should remain stable over time, as it points directly to the most current stable release of Spigot, but if you have any issues you can always reference the SpigotMC download page here. After the download finishes successfully, enter the following command: sudo /opt/jdk1.8.0/bin/java -Xms256M -Xmx496M -jar /home/pi/spigot.jar nogui Note: if you’re running the command on a 256MB Pi change the 256 and 496 in the above command to 128 and 256, respectively. Your server will launch and a flurry of on-screen activity will follow. Be prepared to wait around 3-6 minutes or so for the process of setting up the server and generating the map to finish. Future startups will take much less time, around 20-30 seconds. Note: If at any point during the configuration or play process things get really weird (e.g. your new Minecraft server freaks out and starts spawning you in the Nether and killing you instantly), use the “stop” command at the command prompt to gracefully shutdown the server and let you restart and troubleshoot it. After the process has finished, head over to the computer you normally play Minecraft on, fire it up, and click on Multiplayer. You should see your server: If your world doesn’t popup immediately during the network scan, hit the Add button and manually enter the address of your Pi. Once you connect to the server, you’ll see the status change in the server status window: According to the server, we’re in game. According to the actual Minecraft app, we’re also in game but it’s the middle of the night in survival mode: Boo! Spawning in the dead of night, weaponless and without shelter is no way to start things. No worries though, we need to do some more configuration; no time to sit around and get shot at by skeletons. Besides, if you try and play it without some configuration tweaks first, you’ll likely find it quite unstable. We’re just here to confirm the server is up, running, and accepting incoming connections. Once we’ve confirmed the server is running and connectable (albeit not very playable yet), it’s time to shut down the server. Via the server console, enter the command “stop” to shut everything down. When you’re returned to the command prompt, enter the following command: sudo nano server.properties When the configuration file opens up, make the following changes (or just cut and paste our config file minus the first two lines with the name and date stamp): #Minecraft server properties #Thu Oct 17 22:53:51 UTC 2013 generator-settings= #Default is true, toggle to false allow-nether=false level-name=world enable-query=false allow-flight=false server-port=25565 level-type=DEFAULT enable-rcon=false force-gamemode=false level-seed= server-ip= max-build-height=256 spawn-npcs=true white-list=false spawn-animals=true texture-pack= snooper-enabled=true hardcore=false online-mode=true pvp=true difficulty=1 player-idle-timeout=0 gamemode=0 #Default 20; you only need to lower this if you're running #a public server and worried about loads. max-players=20 spawn-monsters=true #Default is 10, 3-5 ideal for Pi view-distance=5 generate-structures=true spawn-protection=16 motd=A Minecraft Server In the server status window, seen through your SSH connection to the pi, enter the following command to give yourself operator status on your Minecraft server (so that you can use more powerful commands in game, without always returning to the server status window). op [your minecraft nickname] At this point things are looking better but we still have a little tweaking to do before the server is really enjoyable. To that end, let’s install some plugins. The first plugin, and the one you should install above all others, is NoSpawnChunks. To install the plugin, first visit the NoSpawnChunks webpage and grab the download link for the most current version. As of this writing the current release is v0.3. Back at the command prompt (the command prompt of your Pi, not the server console–if your server is still active shut it down) enter the following commands: cd /home/pi/plugins sudo wget http://dev.bukkit.org/media/files/586/974/NoSpawnChunks.jar Next, visit the ClearLag plugin page, and grab the latest link (as of this tutorial, it’s v2.6.0). Enter the following at the command prompt: sudo wget http://dev.bukkit.org/media/files/743/213/Clearlag.jar Because the files aren’t compressed in a .ZIP or similar container, that’s all there is to it: the plugins are parked in the plugin directory. (Remember this for future plugin downloads, the file needs to be whateverplugin.jar, so if it’s compressed you need to uncompress it in the plugin directory.) Resart the server: sudo /opt/jdk1.8.0/bin/java -Xms256M -Xmx496M -jar /home/pi/spigot.jar nogui Be prepared for a slightly longer startup time (closer to the 3-6 minutes and much longer than the 30 seconds you just experienced) as the plugins affect the world map and need a minute to massage everything. After the spawn process finishes, type the following at the server console: plugins This lists all the plugins currently active on the server. You should see something like this: If the plugins aren’t loaded, you may need to stop and restart the server. After confirming your plugins are loaded, go ahead and join the game. You should notice significantly snappier play. In addition, you’ll get occasional messages from the plugins indicating they are active, as seen below: At this point Java is installed, the server is installed, and we’ve tweaked our settings for for the Pi.  It’s time to start building with friends!     

  Read the article

• Is the Asus Lion Square compatible with an AMD Athlon II AM3?

  - by wag2639

  I bought an Asus Lion Square compatible with a AMD Athlon II X3 435 Socket AM3 processor? I know strictly speaking, the Lion Square specifies AM2 but I'm a little confused since AM2 and AM3 are suppose to be socket compatible (I'm a little confused here as well but I assume it means an AM3 board will support AM2/AM2+ CPUs). However, will there be a problem with chip height and spacing? Or do people have experience asking ASUS for a standoff adapter?

  Read the article

• Hide Spotify from Windows 7 Task Bar

  - by Tomas Lycken

  When Spotify is running, it shows a little icon in the activity field. On most operative systems, closing the Spotify window minimizes the player to the activity window, freeing up space in the task bar - but not in Windows 7, it seems. I think it's a little uneccessary to have two icons in almost the same place that does almost the same thing. Is there anyway to hide a program icon from the task bar, in this case specifically Spotify?

  Read the article

• Convert mkv/h264 video so it can be played on a "mid-range" Sony Ericsson phone. (using Ubuntu).

  - by Johan

  Hi As a little experiment I thinking of converting some video/movies/tv-series into a format that could be playable on my K850, but to be a little bit more generic in this question let's say "mid range Sony Ericsson" phone since they all more or less behave the same and has the same screen resolution (240 x 320). I am looking for command line based tools (for Ubuntu), since I am thinking about writing a "convert and move" script later if it is successful. A lot of the video I have is encoded in mkv/h264, but since that is not supported by the phone I guess that I need to convert it into some mp4/mpeg4 low quality video. After some googling it seems like a good candidate for the job is ffmpeg, but that seems to be a very versatile tool with a lot of magic tricks. Am I on the right track? And if so how do I use ffmpeg to do this? Thanks Johan Update: After plating a little bit with ffmeg I noticed that it only uses 1 of my 4 cores, so the transcoding takes forever. I found a arg called -threads but that did not change much, maybe I got it wrong. I also found that something like this plays in the phone. ffmpeg -i Mythbusters\ S1D1_1.mkv -threads 4 -t 180 -vcodec mpeg4 -r 15 -s 320x240 Mythbusters\ S1D1_1_mini.mp4 It was possible to use 3gp/h263, but the quality was really useless. ffmpeg -i Mythbusters\ S1D1_1.mkv -t 180 -vcodec h263 -acodec libfaac -s cif Mythbusters\ S1D1_1_cif.3gp And it seems like mp4/h264 is also possible and the result is ok, thanks to this question, this one seem to use more than one core as well so it was a little bit faster for me. ffmpeg -i Mythbusters_S1D1_1.mkv -t 180 -acodec libfaac -ab 60k -s 320x240 -vcodec libx264 -b 500k -flags +loop -cmp +chroma -partitions +parti4x4+partp8x8+partb8x8 -flags2 +mixed_refs -me_method umh -subq 6 -trellis 1 -refs 5 -coder 0 -me_range 16 -g 250 -keyint_min 25 -sc_threshold 40 -i_qfactor 0.71 -bt 500k -maxrate 768k -bufsize 2M -qcomp 0.6 -qmin 10 -qmax 51 -qdiff 4 -level 13 -threads 0 -f mp4 Mythbusters_S1D1_1_qvga.mp4 Update: I have tried to use HandBrakeCLI and it is no problem creating a new file that seem to be the same as the one created with ffmpeg with something like this. HandBrakeCLI -i Mythbusters_S1D1_1.mkv --size 100 -E faac -B 60 --maxHeight 240 -r 15 -e x264 -o Mythbusters_S1D1_1_hand.mp4 But that one did not play in the phone... I found this in the official manual: If you transfer video clips using another program than Media Go™, we recommend that you select H.264 Baseline profile video, up to QVGA at 30 fps, VBR 384 kbps (max 768 kps) with AAC+ audio at 128 kbps (max 255 kbps), 48 kHz and stereo audio in mp4 file format. So the idea to use H264 seems to be correct.

  Read the article

• How do I attach a memory stick physically [closed]

  - by JoelFan

  I got a Kingston memory stick and it has a little place that looks like it would take a keyring, but I cannot attach any keyring to it. I even tried a paper clip and various other things but nothing can get through that little opening. What am I missing here?!

  Read the article

• Are Socket AM2/AM2+ Heatsinks Compatible with Socket AM3 processor?

  - by wag2639

  I bought an Asus Lion Square compatible with a AMD Athlon II X3 435 Socket AM3 processor? I know strictly speaking, the Lion Square specifies AM2 but I'm a little confused since AM2 and AM3 are suppose to be socket compatible (I'm a little confused here as well but I assume it means an AM3 board will support AM2/AM2+ CPUs). However, will there be a problem with chip height and spacing? Or do people have experience asking ASUS for a standoff adapter?

  Read the article

• cluster live postgres 8.3 server

  - by bobinabottle

  Our web application is getting more and more traffic, which is making our poor pg8.3 database server have a little trouble keeping up. I've had a look into using pgpool II for clustering the db to relieve a little strain, and I was wondering how this should be done to minimise downtime considering I would be clustering a live database. Has anyone had experience with this or know of any guides to follow? Cheers :)

  Read the article

• Are Socket AM2/AM2+ Heatsinks Compatible with Socket AM3 Heatsinks?

  - by wag2639

  I bought an Asus Lion Square compatible with a AMD Athlon II X3 435 Socket AM3 processor? I know strictly speaking, the Lion Square specifies AM2 but I'm a little confused since AM2 and AM3 are suppose to be socket compatible (I'm a little confused here as well but I assume it means an AM3 board will support AM2/AM2+ CPUs). However, will there be a problem with chip height and spacing? Or do people have experience asking ASUS for a standoff adapter?

  Read the article

• Video Chat going through a server

  - by Alexander

  I'm trying to build a simple video chat client on the mac as a little project and I want it to be able to go over my own little server and arrive at the other end (so going over the internet rather just locally). So my question is if there are any references I should look for online on how to handle something like this on the server side and such. Any links or pointers would be a great help, thanks!

  Read the article

• Hardware Mediaplayer display

  - by Eric Audio

  I'm looking for a keyboard or just a little display to attach on my keyboard or something like that, what will show me the music tracks i'm playing in windowsmedia player, itunes, etc. I did some research and the only thing I found are gaming keyboards, but i'm not shure if these show my music tracks. So my question: Does somebody knows a keyboard who show the music tracks or just a little display? Bye, Eric

  Read the article

• zsh partially completion in aptitude/wajig

  - by mk_cafe

  I'm using wajig to install packages, however when i've changed my shell to zsh it turned out that zsh doesn't list all packages in completion list, for ex. apt-get install octave[TAB] (about 70 completions) but when i try wajig install octave[TAB] or aptitude install octave[TAB] zsh shows only 19 completions other shells i've tested (bash, fish) shows all ~70 completions in all 3 cases. So is there any way to 'fix' this completion in zsh?

  Read the article

• How do you start a program after X has started?

  - by cyborg

  Hello, there's a little app called F.Lux that sets your screen temperature based on the time of day. The Linux version is a little spartan with just a console interface but it works perfectly well. The question I have is where can I invoke it so that it starts up after X has started? Thanks.

  Read the article

• How do I make sdiff ignore the * character?

  - by Runcible

  Here's what I'm sure is an easy one, but I can't figure it out. I have two files: file1: You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike file2: You are in a maze of twisty little* passages, all alike I want to perform sdiff on these files, but I want to ignore the * character. How do I do this?

  Read the article

• Disable press animation on Vista/Windows7 touch PC

  - by TandemAdam

  I am using a multi-touch HP PC, and I want to disable the little "blip" cursor animations that happens when you touch the screen. Does anyone know how to disable this cursor animation and/or the little dot that shows up?

  Read the article

• How to join dynamic sql statement in variable with normal statement

  - by Oliver

  I have a quite complicated query which will by built up dynamically and is saved in a variable. As second part i have another normal query and i'd like to make an inner join between these both. To make it a little more easier here is a little example to illustrate my problem. For this little example i used the AdventureWorks database. Some query built up dynamically (Yes, i know here is nothing dynamic here, cause it's just an example.) DECLARE @query AS varchar(max) ; set @query = ' select HumanResources.Employee.EmployeeID ,HumanResources.Employee.LoginID ,HumanResources.Employee.Title ,HumanResources.EmployeeAddress.AddressID from HumanResources.Employee inner join HumanResources.EmployeeAddress on HumanResources.Employee.EmployeeID = HumanResources.EmployeeAddress.EmployeeID ;'; EXEC (@query); The normal query i have select Person.Address.AddressID ,Person.Address.City from Person.Address Maybe what i'd like to have but doesn't work select @query.* ,Addresses.City from @query as Employees inner join ( select Person.Address.AddressID ,Person.Address.City from Person.Address ) as Addresses on Employees.AddressID = Addresses.AddressID

  Read the article

• Streaming Flash Video Problem - Clipping

  - by Stanley

  I have a simple flash video player that streams the video from a streaming media server. The stream plays fine and I have no problems with playing the video and doing simple functions. However, my problem is that on a mouse over of the video, I have the controls come up and when I do a seek or scrub on the video, I get little weird boxes that show over the video - like little pockets - of the video playing super fast (you can basically see it seeking) until it gets to the point it needs to be at and then these little boxes disappear. Is anybody else having these problems and if so, how do I fix this? I thought it might be some kind of masking problem, but I haven't been able to figure it out. Please Help!!!

  Read the article

• Tutorials for .NET database app using SQLite

  - by ChrisC

  I have some MS Access experience, and had a class on console c++ apps, now I am trying to develop my first program. It's a little C# db app. I have the db tables and columns planned and keyed into VS, but that's where I'm stuck. I'm needing C#/VS tutorials that will guide me on configuring relationships, datatyping, etc, on the db so I can get it ready for testing of the schema. The only tutorials I've been able to find either talk about general db basics (ie, not helping me with VS/C#), or about C# communications with an existing SQL db. Thank you. (In case it matters, I'm using the open source System.Data.SQLite (sqlite.phxsoftware.com) for the db. I chose it over SQL Server CE after seeing a comparison between the two. Also I wanted a server-less version of SQL because this little app will be on other people's computers and I want to to do as little support as possible.)

  Read the article

• How to get all rows but specifc columns from a DataTable?

  - by Oliver

  Currently i am having some problems with getting some data out of a DataTable by selecting all rows, but only some columns. To be a little more descriptive here is a little example: Sample Data | ID | FirstName | LastName | Age | +----+-----------+----------+-----+ | 1 | Alice | Wannabe | 22 | | 2 | Bob | Consumer | 27 | | 3 | Carol | Detector | 25 | What i have So what we got from our GUI is a IEnumerable<DataColumn> selectedColumns and there we'll find two elements (FirstName and LastName). Now i need some result which contains all rows, but only the above two columns (or any other list of selected columns). So far i already used LINQ on several one dimensional objects, but this two dimensional object gives me a little headache. // The hard-coded way Table.AsEnumerable().Select(row => new { FirstName = row[1], LastName = row[2] }); // The flexible way Table.AsEnumerable().Select(row => row ???) But how can i now say, which columns from row should be selected by using my selectedColumns?

  Read the article

• How to go to the next level integrating animations in WPF applications with Blend / VS2008?

  - by Edward Tanguay

  I have been able to create little animations with the storyline in Blend. And I have been able to copy in the isolated storylines and triggers into existing projects in visual studio to spruce them up on the edges a little bit. But after adding too many animations, they start to conflict or cancel each other out, etc., or I can make a panel slide down and slide it back up, then it no longer can slide down since it is not in its original state anymore. Does anyone have any links, video tutorials, books, resources which not only show you how to make a little animation and then leave you to figure out how to integrate numerous animations into a typical business application layout, but instead take you through the whole process of building a business application while integrating animations and WPF goodness with Blend and Visual Studio?

  Read the article

• How to create a BBC style (facebox?) help popup

  - by Ian Batten

  Hi guys, I have tried to take apart the code, but can't seem to replicate it. On the BBC weather homepage, http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/, you will see a little help quetionmark in a circle in the top right corner or some of the boxes. When you click on it, it brings up a nice help popup, that looks a little like facebox. The main thing I like about this, is the little arrow that points back to the help button to the right of the container. Facebox is just a standard square. If anyone knows how to replicate this, some help would be greatly appreciated. Regards, Ian

  Read the article

• Objective C - RegexKitLite - Parsing inner contents of a string, ie: start(.*?)end

  - by Stu

  Please consider the following: NSString *myText = @"mary had a little lamb"; NSString *regexString = @"mary(.*?)little"; for)NSString *match in [myText captureComponentsMatchedByRegex:regexString]){ NSLog(@"%@",match); } This will output to the console two things: 1) "mary had a little" 2) "had a" What I want is just the 2nd bit of information "had a". Is there is a way of matching a string and returning just the inner part? I'm fairly new to Objective C, this feels a rather trivial question yet I can't find a less messy way of doing this than incrementing an integer in the for loop and on the second iteration storing the "had a" in an NSString.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26  | Next Page >