Search Results

Search found 4841 results on 194 pages for 'poor programmer'.

Page 190/194 | < Previous Page | 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194  | Next Page >

  • Complex sound handling (I.E. pitch change while looping)

    - by Matthew
    Hi everyone I've been meaning to learn Java for a while now (I usually keep myself in languages like C and Lua) but buying an android phone seems like an excellent time to start. now after going through the lovely set of tutorials and a while spent buried in source code I'm beginning to get the feel for it so what's my next step? well to dive in with a fully featured application with graphics, sound, sensor use, touch response and a full menu. hmm now there's a slight conundrum since i can continue to use cryptic references to my project or risk telling you what the application is but at the same time its going to make me look like a raving sci-fi nerd so bare with me for the brief... A semi-working sonic screwdriver (oh yes!) my grand idea was to make an animated screwdriver where sliding the controls up and down modulate the frequency and that frequency dictates the sensor data it returns. now I have a semi-working sound system but its pretty poor for what its designed to represent and I just wouldn't be happy producing a sub-par end product whether its my first or not. the problem : sound must begin looping when the user presses down on the control the sound must stop when the user releases the control when moving the control up or down the sound effect must change pitch accordingly if the user doesn't remove there finger before backing out of the application it must plate the casing of there device with gold (Easter egg ;P) now I'm aware of how monolithic the first 3 look and that's why I would really appreciate any help I can get. sorry for how bad this code looks but my general plan is to create the functional components then refine the code later, no good painting the walls if the roofs not finished. here's my user input, he set slide stuff is used in the graphics for the control @Override public boolean onTouchEvent(MotionEvent event) { //motion event for the screwdriver view if(event.getAction() == MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN) { //make sure the users at least trying to touch the slider if (event.getY() > SonicSlideYTop && event.getY() < SonicSlideYBottom) { //power setup, im using 1.5 to help out the rate on soundpool since it likes 0.5 to 1.5 SonicPower = 1.5f - ((event.getY() - SonicSlideYTop) / SonicSlideLength); //just goes into a method which sets a private variable in my sound pool class thing mSonicAudio.setPower(1, SonicPower); //this handles the slides graphics setSlideY ( (int) event.getY() ); @Override public boolean onTouchEvent(MotionEvent event) { //motion event for the screwdriver view if(event.getAction() == MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN) { //make sure the users at least trying to touch the slider if (event.getY() > SonicSlideYTop && event.getY() < SonicSlideYBottom) { //power setup, im using 1.5 to help out the rate on soundpool since it likes 0.5 to 1.5 SonicPower = 1.5f - ((event.getY() - SonicSlideYTop) / SonicSlideLength); //just goes into a method which sets a private variable in my sound pool class thing mSonicAudio.setPower(1, SonicPower); //this handles the slides graphics setSlideY ( (int) event.getY() ); //this is from my latest attempt at loop pitch change, look for this in my soundPool class mSonicAudio.startLoopedSound(); } } if(event.getAction() == MotionEvent.ACTION_MOVE) { if (event.getY() > SonicSlideYTop && event.getY() < SonicSlideYBottom) { SonicPower = 1.5f - ((event.getY() - SonicSlideYTop) / SonicSlideLength); mSonicAudio.setPower(1, SonicPower); setSlideY ( (int) event.getY() ); } } if(event.getAction() == MotionEvent.ACTION_UP) { mSonicAudio.stopLoopedSound(); SonicPower = 1.5f - ((event.getY() - SonicSlideYTop) / SonicSlideLength); mSonicAudio.setPower(1, SonicPower); } return true; } and here's where those methods end up in my sound pool class its horribly messy but that's because I've been trying a ton of variants to get this to work, you will also notice that I begin to hard code the index, again I was trying to get the methods to work before making them work well. package com.mattster.sonicscrewdriver; import java.util.HashMap; import android.content.Context; import android.media.AudioManager; import android.media.SoundPool; public class SoundManager { private float mPowerLvl = 1f; private SoundPool mSoundPool; private HashMap mSoundPoolMap; private AudioManager mAudioManager; private Context mContext; private int streamVolume; private int LoopState; private long mLastTime; public SoundManager() { } public void initSounds(Context theContext) { mContext = theContext; mSoundPool = new SoundPool(2, AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC, 0); mSoundPoolMap = new HashMap<Integer, Integer>(); mAudioManager = (AudioManager)mContext.getSystemService(Context.AUDIO_SERVICE); streamVolume = mAudioManager.getStreamVolume(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC); } public void addSound(int index,int SoundID) { mSoundPoolMap.put(1, mSoundPool.load(mContext, SoundID, 1)); } public void playUpdate(int index) { if( LoopState == 1) { long now = System.currentTimeMillis(); if (now > mLastTime) { mSoundPool.play(mSoundPoolMap.get(1), streamVolume, streamVolume, 1, 0, mPowerLvl); mLastTime = System.currentTimeMillis() + 250; } } } public void stopLoopedSound() { LoopState = 0; mSoundPool.setVolume(mSoundPoolMap.get(1), 0, 0); mSoundPool.stop(mSoundPoolMap.get(1)); } public void startLoopedSound() { LoopState = 1; } public void setPower(int index, float mPower) { mPowerLvl = mPower; mSoundPool.setRate(mSoundPoolMap.get(1), mPowerLvl); } } ah ha! I almost forgot, that looks pretty ineffective but I omitted my thread which actuality updates it, nothing fancy it just calls : mSonicAudio.playUpdate(1); thanks in advance, Matthew

    Read the article

  • Need help with a possible memory management problem(leak) regarding NSMutableArray

    - by user309030
    Hi, I'm a beginner level programmer trying to make a game app for the iphone and I've encountered a possible issue with the memory management (exc_bad_access) of my program so far. I've searched and read dozens of articles regarding memory management (including apple's docs) but I still can't figure out what exactly is wrong with my codes. So I would really appreciate it if someone can help clear up the mess I made for myself. - (void)viewDidLoad { [super viewDidLoad]; self.gameState = gameStatePaused; fencePoleArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; fencePoleImageArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; fenceImageArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; mainField = CGRectMake(10, 35, 310, 340); .......... [NSTimer scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval:0.05 target:self selector:@selector(gameLoop) userInfo:nil repeats:YES]; } So basically, the player touches the screen to set up the fences/poles -(void)touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event { if(.......) { ....... } else { UITouch *touch = [[event allTouches] anyObject]; currentTapLoc = [touch locationInView:touch.view]; NSLog(@"%i, %i", (int)currentTapLoc.x, (int)currentTapLoc.y); if(CGRectContainsPoint(mainField, currentTapLoc)) { if([self checkFence]) { onFencePole++; //this 3 set functions adds their respective objects into the 3 NSMutableArrays using addObject: [self setFencePole]; [self setFenceImage]; [self setFencePoleImage]; ....... } } else { ....... } } } } The setFence function (setFenceImage and setFencePoleImage is similar to this) -(void)setFencePole { Fence *fencePole; if (!elecFence) { fencePole = [[Fence alloc] initFence:onFencePole fenceType:1 fencePos:currentTapLoc]; } else { fencePole = [[Fence alloc] initFence:onFencePole fenceType:2 fencePos:currentTapLoc]; } [fencePoleArray addObject:fencePole]; [fencePole release]; and whenever I press a button in the game, endOpenState is called to clear away all the extra images(fence/poles) on the screen and also to remove all existing objects in the 3 NSMutableArray -(void)endOpenState { ........ int xMax = [fencePoleArray count]; int yMax = [fenceImageArray count]; for (int x = 0; x < xMax; x++) { [[fencePoleImageArray objectAtIndex:x] removeFromSuperview]; } for (int y = 0; y < yMax; y++) { [[fenceImageArray objectAtIndex:y] removeFromSuperview]; } [fencePoleArray removeAllObjects]; [fencePoleImageArray removeAllObjects]; [fenceImageArray removeAllObjects]; ........ } The crash happens here at the checkFence function. -(BOOL)checkFence { if (onFencePole == 0) { return YES; } else if (onFencePole >= 1 && onFencePole < currentMaxFencePole - 1) { CGPoint tempPoint1 = currentTapLoc; CGPoint tempPoint2 = [[fencePoleArray objectAtIndex:onFencePole-1] returnPos]; // the crash happens at this line if ([self checkDistance:tempPoint1 point2:tempPoint2]) { return YES; } else { return NO; } } else if (onFencePole == currentMaxFencePole - 1) { ...... } else { return NO; } } What I'm thinking of is that fencePoleArray got messed up when I used [fencePoleArray removeAllObjects] because it doesn't crash when I comment it out. It would really be great if someone can explain to me what went wrong. And thanks in advance.

    Read the article

  • How to include the login form on the Home index page in MVC

    - by Bernard Larouche
    Hi guys I really need your help for this. I am relatively new to programming and I need help to something that could be easy for a experienced programmer. I would like to get the login form that we get for free in an MVC application on the left sidebar of my Home index page instead of the usual Account/Login page. I am facing some problems. First I need a product object to be displayed on my Home Index page as well. What I did is that I added a product object to the LogOnModel that they provide in the AccountModels class and I created a UserControl (partial view) copying the content of the LogOn.aspx view. Now my Home index.aspx as well as my partial view inherits the LogOnModel class. I can see the Login form on my Home Index page as well as my product object BUT the login Form is never empty. The last username and password always appear there. I know I must have forgotten something or have done something wrong or the way did it is completely wrong !! Please could you give me some advice Thks <%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl<CoderForTradersSite.Models.LogOnModel>" %> <h4>Login Form</h4> <p> Please enter your username and password. <%= Html.ActionLink("Register", "Register") %> if you don't have an account. </p> <% using (Html.BeginForm()) { %> <%= Html.ValidationSummary(true, "Login was unsuccessful. Please correct the errors and try again.") %> <div> <fieldset> <legend>Account Information</legend> <div class="editor-label"> <%= Html.LabelFor(m => m.UserName) %> </div> <div class="editor-field"> <%= Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.UserName) %> <%= Html.ValidationMessageFor(m => m.UserName) %> </div> <div class="editor-label"> <%= Html.LabelFor(m => m.Password) %> </div> <div class="editor-field"> <%= Html.PasswordFor(m => m.Password) %> <%= Html.ValidationMessageFor(m => m.Password) %> </div> <div class="editor-label"> <%= Html.CheckBoxFor(m => m.RememberMe) %> <%= Html.LabelFor(m => m.RememberMe) %> </div> <p> <input type="submit" value="Log On" /> </p> </fieldset> </div> <% } %>

    Read the article

  • Does this sound like a stack overflow?

    - by Jordan S
    I think I might be having a stack overflow problem or something similar in my embedded firmware code. I am a new programmer and have never dealt with a SO so I'm not sure if that is what's happening or not. The firmware controls a device with a wheel that has magnets evenly spaced around it and the board has a hall effect sensor that senses when magnet is over it. My firmware operates the stepper and also count steps while monitoring the magnet sensor in order to detect if the wheel has stalled. I am using a timer interrupt on my chip (8 bit, 8057 acrh.) to set output ports to control the motor and for the stall detection. The stall detection code looks like this... // Enter ISR // Change the ports to the appropriate value for the next step // ... StallDetector++; // Increment the stall detector if(PosSensor != LastPosMagState) { StallDetector = 0; LastPosMagState = PosSensor; } else { if (PosSensor == ON) { if (StallDetector > (MagnetSize + 10)) { HandleStallEvent(); } } else if (PosSensor == OFF) { if (StallDetector > (GapSize + 10)) { HandleStallEvent(); } } } this code is called every time the ISR is triggered. PosSensor is the magnet sensor. MagnetSize is the number of stepper steps that it takes to get through the magnet field. GapSize is the number of steps between two magnets. So I want to detect if the wheel gets stuck either with the sensor over a magnet or not over a magnet. This works great for a long time but then after a while the first stall event will occur because 'StallDetector (MagnetSize + 10)' but when I look at the value of StallDetector it is always around 220! This doesn't make sense because MagnetSize is always around 35. So the stall event should have been triggered at like 46 but somehow it got all the way up to 220? And I don't set the value of stall detector anywhere else in my code. Do you have any advice on how I can track down the root of this problem? The ISR looks like this void Timer3_ISR(void) interrupt 14 { OperateStepper(); // This is the function shown above TMR3CN &= ~0x80; // Clear Timer3 interrupt flag } HandleStallEvent just sets a few variable back to their default values so that it can attempt another move... #pragma save #pragma nooverlay void HandleStallEvent() { ///* PulseMotor = 0; //Stop the wheel from moving SetMotorPower(0); //Set motor power low MotorSpeed = LOW_SPEED; SetSpeedHz(); ERROR_STATE = 2; DEVICE_IS_HOMED = FALSE; DEVICE_IS_HOMING = FALSE; DEVICE_IS_MOVING = FALSE; HOMING_STATE = 0; MOVING_STATE = 0; CURRENT_POSITION = 0; StallDetector = 0; return; //*/ } #pragma restore

    Read the article

  • Languages and VMs: Features that are hard to optimize and why

    - by mrjoltcola
    I'm doing a survey of features in preparation for a research project. Name a mainstream language or language feature that is hard to optimize, and why the feature is or isn't worth the price paid, or instead, just debunk my theories below with anecdotal evidence. Before anyone flags this as subjective, I am asking for specific examples of languages or features, and ideas for optimization of these features, or important features that I haven't considered. Also, any references to implementations that prove my theories right or wrong. Top on my list of hard to optimize features and my theories (some of my theories are untested and are based on thought experiments): 1) Runtime method overloading (aka multi-method dispatch or signature based dispatch). Is it hard to optimize when combined with features that allow runtime recompilation or method addition. Or is it just hard, anyway? Call site caching is a common optimization for many runtime systems, but multi-methods add additional complexity as well as making it less practical to inline methods. 2) Type morphing / variants (aka value based typing as opposed to variable based) Traditional optimizations simply cannot be applied when you don't know if the type of someting can change in a basic block. Combined with multi-methods, inlining must be done carefully if at all, and probably only for a given threshold of size of the callee. ie. it is easy to consider inlining simple property fetches (getters / setters) but inlining complex methods may result in code bloat. The other issue is I cannot just assign a variant to a register and JIT it to the native instructions because I have to carry around the type info, or every variable needs 2 registers instead of 1. On IA-32 this is inconvenient, even if improved with x64's extra registers. This is probably my favorite feature of dynamic languages, as it simplifies so many things from the programmer's perspective. 3) First class continuations - There are multiple ways to implement them, and I have done so in both of the most common approaches, one being stack copying and the other as implementing the runtime to use continuation passing style, cactus stacks, copy-on-write stack frames, and garbage collection. First class continuations have resource management issues, ie. we must save everything, in case the continuation is resumed, and I'm not aware if any languages support leaving a continuation with "intent" (ie. "I am not coming back here, so you may discard this copy of the world"). Having programmed in the threading model and the contination model, I know both can accomplish the same thing, but continuations' elegance imposes considerable complexity on the runtime and also may affect cache efficienty (locality of stack changes more with use of continuations and co-routines). The other issue is they just don't map to hardware. Optimizing continuations is optimizing for the less-common case, and as we know, the common case should be fast, and the less-common cases should be correct. 4) Pointer arithmetic and ability to mask pointers (storing in integers, etc.) Had to throw this in, but I could actually live without this quite easily. My feelings are that many of the high-level features, particularly in dynamic languages just don't map to hardware. Microprocessor implementations have billions of dollars of research behind the optimizations on the chip, yet the choice of language feature(s) may marginalize many of these features (features like caching, aliasing top of stack to register, instruction parallelism, return address buffers, loop buffers and branch prediction). Macro-applications of micro-features don't necessarily pan out like some developers like to think, and implementing many languages in a VM ends up mapping native ops into function calls (ie. the more dynamic a language is the more we must lookup/cache at runtime, nothing can be assumed, so our instruction mix is made up of a higher percentage of non-local branching than traditional, statically compiled code) and the only thing we can really JIT well is expression evaluation of non-dynamic types and operations on constant or immediate types. It is my gut feeling that bytecode virtual machines and JIT cores are perhaps not always justified for certain languages because of this. I welcome your answers.

    Read the article

  • Simple XNA 2D demo: why is my F# version slower than C# version?

    - by Den
    When running this XNA application it should display a rotated rectangle that moves from top-left corner to bottom-right corner. It looks like my F# version is noticeably much slower. It seems that the Draw method skips a lot of frames. I am using VS 2012 RC, XNA 4.0, .NET 4.5, F# 3.0. I am trying to make it as functional as possible. What could be the reason for poor performance? C#: class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { using (var game = new FlockGame()) { game.Run(); } } } public class FlockGame : Game { private GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; private DrawingManager drawingManager; private Vector2 position = Vector2.Zero; public FlockGame() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); } protected override void Initialize() { drawingManager = new DrawingManager(graphics.GraphicsDevice); this.IsFixedTimeStep = false; } protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { position = new Vector2(position.X + 50.1f * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds, position.Y + 50.1f * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds); base.Update(gameTime); } protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { //this.GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Lavender) drawingManager.DrawRectangle(position, new Vector2(100.0f, 100.0f), 0.7845f, Color.Red); base.Draw(gameTime); } } public class DrawingManager { private GraphicsDevice GraphicsDevice; private Effect Effect; public DrawingManager(GraphicsDevice graphicsDevice) { GraphicsDevice = graphicsDevice; this.Effect = new BasicEffect(this.GraphicsDevice) { VertexColorEnabled = true, Projection = Matrix.CreateOrthographicOffCenter(0.0f, this.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width, this.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f) }; } private VertexPositionColor[] GetRectangleVertices (Vector2 center, Vector2 size, float radians, Color color) { var halfSize = size/2.0f; var topLeft = -halfSize; var bottomRight = halfSize; var topRight = new Vector2(bottomRight.X, topLeft.Y); var bottomLeft = new Vector2(topLeft.X, bottomRight.Y); topLeft = Vector2.Transform(topLeft, Matrix.CreateRotationZ(radians)) + center; topRight = Vector2.Transform(topRight, Matrix.CreateRotationZ(radians)) + center; bottomRight = Vector2.Transform(bottomRight, Matrix.CreateRotationZ(radians)) + center; bottomLeft = Vector2.Transform(bottomLeft, Matrix.CreateRotationZ(radians)) + center; return new VertexPositionColor[] { new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(topLeft, 0.0f), color), new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(topRight, 0.0f), color), new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(topRight, 0.0f), color), new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(bottomRight, 0.0f), color), new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(bottomRight, 0.0f), color), new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(bottomLeft, 0.0f), color), new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(bottomLeft, 0.0f), color), new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(topLeft, 0.0f), color) }; } public void DrawRectangle(Vector2 center, Vector2 size, float radians, Color color) { var vertices = GetRectangleVertices(center, size, radians, color); foreach (var pass in this.Effect.CurrentTechnique.Passes) { pass.Apply(); this.GraphicsDevice.DrawUserPrimitives(PrimitiveType.LineList, vertices, 0, vertices.Length/2); } } } F#: namespace Flocking module FlockingProgram = open System open Flocking [<STAThread>] [<EntryPoint>] let Main _ = use g = new FlockGame() g.Run() 0 //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ namespace Flocking open System open System.Diagnostics open Microsoft.Xna.Framework open Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics open Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input type public FlockGame() as this = inherit Game() let mutable graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this) let mutable drawingManager = null let mutable position = Vector2.Zero override Game.LoadContent() = drawingManager <- new Rendering.DrawingManager(graphics.GraphicsDevice) this.IsFixedTimeStep <- false override Game.Update gameTime = position <- Vector2(position.X + 50.1f * float32 gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds, position.Y + 50.1f * float32 gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds) base.Update gameTime override Game.Draw gameTime = //this.GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Lavender) Rendering.DrawRectangle(drawingManager, position, Vector2(100.0f, 100.0f), 0.7845f, Color.Red) base.Draw gameTime //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ namespace Flocking open System open System.Collections.Generic open Microsoft.Xna.Framework open Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics open Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input module Rendering = [<AllowNullLiteral>] type DrawingManager (graphicsDevice : GraphicsDevice) = member this.GraphicsDevice = graphicsDevice member this.Effect = new BasicEffect(this.GraphicsDevice, VertexColorEnabled = true, Projection = Matrix.CreateOrthographicOffCenter(0.0f, float32 this.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width, float32 this.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f)) let private GetRectangleVertices (center:Vector2, size:Vector2, radians:float32, color:Color) = let halfSize = size / 2.0f let mutable topLeft = -halfSize let mutable bottomRight = halfSize let mutable topRight = new Vector2(bottomRight.X, topLeft.Y) let mutable bottomLeft = new Vector2(topLeft.X, bottomRight.Y) topLeft <- Vector2.Transform(topLeft, Matrix.CreateRotationZ(radians)) + center topRight <- Vector2.Transform(topRight, Matrix.CreateRotationZ(radians)) + center bottomRight <- Vector2.Transform(bottomRight, Matrix.CreateRotationZ(radians)) + center bottomLeft <- Vector2.Transform(bottomLeft, Matrix.CreateRotationZ(radians)) + center [| new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(topLeft, 0.0f), color) new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(topRight, 0.0f), color) new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(topRight, 0.0f), color) new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(bottomRight, 0.0f), color) new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(bottomRight, 0.0f), color) new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(bottomLeft, 0.0f), color) new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(bottomLeft, 0.0f), color) new VertexPositionColor(new Vector3(topLeft, 0.0f), color) |] let DrawRectangle (drawingManager:DrawingManager, center:Vector2, size:Vector2, radians:float32, color:Color) = let vertices = GetRectangleVertices(center, size, radians, color) for pass in drawingManager.Effect.CurrentTechnique.Passes do pass.Apply() drawingManager.GraphicsDevice.DrawUserPrimitives(PrimitiveType.LineList, vertices, 0, vertices.Length/2)

    Read the article

  • Please recommend me intermediate-to-advanced Python books to buy.

    - by anonnoir
    I'm in the final year, final semester of my law degree, and will be graduating very soon. (April, to be specific.) But before I begin practice, I plan to take 2 two months off, purely for serious programming study. So I'm currently looking for some Python-related books, gauged intermediate to advanced, which are interesting (because of the subject matter itself) and possibly useful to my future line of work. I've identified 2 possible purchases at the moment: Natural Language Processing with Python. The law deals mostly with words, and I've quite a number of ideas as to where I might go with NLP. Data extraction, summaries, client management systems linked with document templates, etc. Programming Collective Intelligence. This book fascinates me, because I've always liked the idea of machine learning (and I'm currently studying it by the side too, for fun). I'd like to build/play around with Web 2.0 applications; and who knows if I can apply some of the things I learn to my legal work. (E.g. Playground experiments to determine how and under what circumstances judges might be biased, by forcing algorithms to pore through judgments and calculate similarities, etc.) Please feel free to criticize my current choices, but do at least offer or recommend other books that I should read in their place. My budget can deal with 4 books, max. These books will be used heavily throughout the 2 months; I will be reading them back to back, absorbing the explanations given, and hacking away at their code. Also, the books themselves should satisfy 2 main criteria: Application. The book must teach how to solve problems. I like reading theory, but I want to build things and solve problems first. Even playful applications are fine, because games and experiments always have real-world applications sooner or later. Readability. I like reading technical books, no matter how difficult they are. I enjoy the effort and the feeling that you're learning something. But the book shouldn't contain code or explanations that are too cryptic or erratic. Even if it's difficult, the book's content should be accessible with focused reading. Note: I realize that I am somewhat of a beginner to the whole programming thing, so please don't put me down. But from experience, I think it's better to aim up and leave my comfort zone when learning new things, rather than to just remain stagnant the way I am. (At least the difficulty gives me focus: i.e. if a programmer can be that good, perhaps if I sustain my own efforts I too can be as good as him someday.) If anything, I'm also a very determined person, so two months of day-to-night intensive programming study with nothing else on my mind should, I think, give me a bit of a fighting chance to push my programming skills to a much higher level.

    Read the article

  • Recompiling an old fortran 2/4\66 program that was compiled for os\2 need it to run in dos

    - by Mike Hansen
    I am helping an old scientist with some problems and have 1 program that he found and modified about 20 yrs. ago, and runs fine as a 32 bit os\2 executable but i need it to run under dos! I am not a programmer but a good hardware & software man, so I'am pretty stupid about this problem, but here go's I have downloaded 6 different compilers watcom77,silverfrost ftn95,gfortran,2 versions of g77 and f80. Watcom says it is to old of program,find older compiler,silverfrost opens it,debugs, etc. but is changing all the subroutines from "real" to "complex" and vice-vesa,and the g77's seem to install perfectly (library links and etc.) but wont even compile the test.f programs.My problem is 1; to recompile "as is" or "upgrade" the code? PROGRAM xconvlv INTEGER N,N2,M PARAMETER (N=2048,N2=2048,M=128) INTEGER i,isign REAL data(n),respns(m),resp(n),ans(n2),t3(n),DUMMY OPEN(UNIT=1, FILE='C:\QKBAS20\FDATA1.DAT') DO 1 i=1,N READ(1,*) T3(i), data(i), DUMMY continue CLOSE(UNIT-1) do 12 i=1,N respns(i)=data(i) resp(i)=respns(i) continue isign=-1 call convlv(data,N,resp,M,isign,ans) OPEN(UNIT=1,FILE='C:\QKBAS20\FDATA9.DAT') DO 14 i=1,N WRITE(1,*) T3(i), ans(i) continue END SUBROUTINE CONVLV(data,n,respns,m,isign,ans) INTEGER isign,m,n,NMAX REAL data(n),respns(n) COMPLEX ans(n) PARAMETER (NMAX=4096) * uses realft, twofft INTEGER i,no2 COMPLEX fft (NMAX) do 11 i=1, (m-1)/2 respns(n+1-i)=respns(m+1-i) continue do 12 i=(m+3)/2,n-(m-1)/2 respns(i)=0.0 continue call twofft (data,respns,fft,ans,n) no2=n/2 do 13 i=1,no2+1 if (isign.eq.1) then ans(i)=fft(i)*ans(i)/no2 else if (isign.eq.-1) then if (abs(ans(i)) .eq.0.0) pause ans(i)=fft(i)/ans(i)/no2 else pause 'no meaning for isign in convlv' endif continue ans(1)=cmplx(real (ans(1)),real (ans(no2+1))) call realft(ans,n,-1) return END SUBROUTINE realft(data,n,isign) INTEGER isign,n REAL data(n) * uses four1 INTEGER i,i1,i2,i3,i4,n2p3 REAL c1,c2,hli,hir,h2i,h2r,wis,wrs DOUBLE PRECISION theta,wi,wpi,wpr,wr,wtemp theta=3.141592653589793d0/dble(n/2) cl=0.5 if (isign.eq.1) then c2=-0.5 call four1(data,n/2,+1) else c2=0.5 theta=-theta endif (etc.,etc., etc.) SUBROUTINE twofft(data,data2,fft1,fft2,n) INTEGER n REAL data1(n,data2(n) COMPLEX fft1(n), fft2(n) * uses four1 INTEGER j,n2 COMPLEX h1,h2,c1,c2 c1=cmplx(0.5,0.0) c2=cmplx(0.0,-0.5) do 11 j=1,n fft1(j)=cmplx(data1(j),data2(j) continue call four1 (fft1,n,1) fft2(1)=cmplx(aimag(fft1(1)),0.0) fft1(1)=cmplx(real(fft1(1)),0.0) n2=n+2 do 12 j=2,n/2+1 h1=c1*(fft1(j)+conjg(fft1(n2-j))) h2=c2*(fft1(j)-conjg(fft1(n2-j))) fft1(j)=h1 fft1(n2-j)=conjg(h1) fft2(j)=h2 fft2(n2-j)=conjg(h2) continue return END SUBROUTINE four1(data,nn,isign) INTEGER isign,nn REAL data(2*nn) INTEGER i,istep,j,m,mmax,n REAL tempi,tempr DOUBLE PRECISION theta, wi,wpi,wpr,wr,wtemp n=2*nn j=1 do 11 i=1,n,2 if(j.gt.i)then tempr=data(j) tempi=data(j+1) (etc.,etc.,etc.,) continue mmax=istep goto 2 endif return END There are 4 subroutines with this that are about 3 pages of code and whould be much easier to e-mail to someone if their able to help me with this.My e-mail is [email protected] , or if someone could tell me where to get a "working" compiler that could recompile this? THANK-YOU, THANK-YOU,and THANK-YOU for any help with this! The errors Iam getting are; 1.In a call to CONVLV from another procedure,the first argument was of a type REAL(kind=1), it is now a COMPLEX(kind=1) 2.In a call to REALFT from another procedure, ... COMPLEX(kind=1) it is now a REAL(kind=1) 3.In a call to TWOFFT from...COMPLEX(kind-1) it is now a REAL(kind=1) 4.In a previous call to FOUR1, the first argument was of a type REAL(kind=1) it is now a COMPLEX(kind=1).

    Read the article

  • wordexp followed by strcpy = EXC_BAD_ACCESS + sharedlibrary apply-load-rules-all

    - by fyngyrz
    The implication is a memory problem. I have static allocations for these: char akdir[400]; char homedir[400]; This crashes on the first strcpy(): void setuplibfoo() { long ii; double x; wordexp_t result; // This obtains the user's home directory // -------------------------------------- homedir[0]=0; // in case wordexp fails switch (wordexp("~/",&result,0)) { case 0: // Successful. We'll fall into deallocate when done. { strcpy(homedir,result.we_wordv[0]); // <<--- CRASH! strcpy(akdir,homedir); strcat(akdir,"ak-plugins/"); vs_status(akdir); } case WRDE_NOSPACE: // If the error was WRDE_NOSPACE, then { // perhaps part of the result was allocated. wordfree (&result); } default: // all other errors do not require deallocation { break; } } ...additional code clipped.. doesn't get there on crash. This is in a shared library I've written that is linked to my application, also something I've written. In this case, it doesn't get very far, although if it starts, it's fine. ...I've read the wordexp docs several times; they say they allocate new objects, so you just set up that type and call them with the address. The switch error model is right from the wordexp docs: http://www.gnu.org/s/libc/manual/html_mono/libc.html#Wordexp-Example It doesn't always crash. Just sometimes, and just under 10.6. Never under 10.5 I'm building debug mode with XCode 3.1.1, under OSX 10.5.8 it seems to run ok, I've not seen a crash -- under 10.6, it crashes... sometimes. But always with that same exception, and always in the same place. The Google has it that this actually means, somehow, that it's too soon to allocate memory. But all the instances I could find were memory errors on the part of the programmer. Overruns, etc. And I can't find any docs on when it IS safe to allocate memory. Now, the path that expands there is nowhere near 400 characters. it's this (it it completes): /Users/flake/ak-plugins/ and this: /Users/flake/ ...if it doesn't. the strcpy... copies 2nd param to first. Theirs to mine. And it works! under 10.5. :/ So is wordexp broke? Is 10.6 broke? Am I cRaZy? Here's the debugger output: 0x00013446 <+0049> call 0xc98da <dyld_stub_wordexp> 0x0001344b <+0054> test %eax,%eax 0x0001344d <+0056> je 0x13454 <setuplibfoo+63> 0x0001344f <+0058> jmp 0x134da <setuplibfoo+197> 0x00013454 <+0063> mov -0x1c(%ebp),%eax 0x00013457 <+0066> mov (%eax),%eax 0x00013459 <+0068> mov %eax,0x4(%esp) 0x0001345d <+0072> lea 0xb6cc2(%ebx),%eax 0x00013463 <+0078> mov (%eax),%eax 0x00013465 <+0080> mov %eax,(%esp) 0x00013468 <+0083> call 0xc9898 <dyld_stub_strcpy> 0x0001346d <+0088> lea 0xb6cc2(%ebx),%eax <<--CRASH!

    Read the article

  • ask help: I need to create a demo application in Java to test my new designed Java Api

    - by Christophe
    A new programmer needs yourhelp. I'm working on a porject of re-developement of Java driver for the company's PIN pad terminals. the Java Api (CPXApplicationUpdate) will allow the applications in pinpads to be updated and to be downloaded at different speed (Baud rate). the Java Api was created. i followed the protocolto build the message. the message is to send to a RS-232 port. i'm trying to use setter and getter to let the code work as an API. import java.io.InputStream; import java.io.OutputStream; import java.util.Properties; public class CPXApplicationUpdate extends CPXCommand { private int speed; // TODO: temporary variable for baud rate test stub. // speed: baud rate of the maintenance application performing DL /** Creates a new instance of CPXApplicationUpdate */ public CPXApplicationUpdate() { speed = 9600; // no baud rate change CPXProcessor.logger.fine("-------CPXApplicationUpdate constructor"); // setParam("timeout", _cmdInfo.getDefaultParValue("timeout")); } public CPXApplicationUpdate(int speedinit) { speed = speedinit; // TODO: where to get the speed? wait for user input. CPXProcessor.logger.fine("-------CPXApplicationUpdate constructor"); // setParam("timeout", _cmdInfo.getDefaultParValue("timeout")); } public void setSpeed(int speed){ this.speed = speed; } protected void buildRequest() throws ElitePortException { String trans = ""; // build the full-qualified message trans = addToRequest(trans, (char) 0); trans = addToRequest(trans, (char) 5); trans = addToRequest(trans, (char) 6); trans = addToRequest(trans, (char) 0); trans = addToRequest(trans, (char) 0); trans = addToRequest(trans, (char) 2); switch (speed) { case 9600: trans = addToRequest(trans, (char) 0x09); break; case 19200: trans = addToRequest(trans, (char) 0x0A); break; case 115200: trans = addToRequest(trans, (char) 0x0E); break; default: // TODO: unexpected baud rate. throw(); break; } trans = EncryptBinary(trans); trans = "F0." + trans; wrapRequest(trans); } protected String addToRequest(String req, char c) { CPXProcessor.logger.fine("adding char to request: I-" + (int) c + " C-" + c + " H-" + Integer.toHexString((int) c)); return req + c; } protected String addToRequest(String req, String s) { CPXProcessor.logger.fine("adding String to request: S-" + s); return req + s; } protected String addToRequest(String req) { return req; } public void analyzeResponse() { String response_transaction, response; int absLen = _response.length(); if (absLen < 4) return; response = _response.substring(3); CPXProcessor.logger.fine("stripped response=[" + response + "]"); for (int i = 0; i < response.length(); i++) { char c = response.charAt(i); CPXProcessor.logger.fine("[" + i + "] = " + c + " <> " + Integer.toHexString((int) c)); } int status = (short) response.charAt(3); CPXProcessor.logger.fine("status = " + status); _outputValues.put("status", "" + status); } please help me to correct the code. Now, i need to create a demo application to test if this java driver (Java Api) works. the value of the speed can be input by users (command line), or creat property files. how can i do that?

    Read the article

  • Need help with a memory management problem in my game model

    - by user309030
    Hi, I'm a beginner level programmer trying to make a game app for the iphone and I've encountered a possible issue with the memory management (exc_bad_access) of my program so far. I've searched and read dozens of articles regarding memory management (including apple's docs) but I still can't figure out what exactly is wrong with my codes. So I would really appreciate it if someone can help clear up the mess I made for myself. //in the .h file @property(nonatomic,retain) NSMutableArray *fencePoleArray; @property(nonatomic,retain) NSMutableArray *fencePoleImageArray; @property(nonatomic,retain) NSMutableArray *fenceImageArray; //in the .m file - (void)viewDidLoad { [super viewDidLoad]; self.gameState = gameStatePaused; fencePoleArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; fencePoleImageArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; fenceImageArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; mainField = CGRectMake(10, 35, 310, 340); .......... [NSTimer scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval:0.05 target:self selector:@selector(gameLoop) userInfo:nil repeats:YES]; } So basically, the player touches the screen to set up the fences/poles -(void)touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event { if(.......) { ....... } else { UITouch *touch = [[event allTouches] anyObject]; currentTapLoc = [touch locationInView:touch.view]; NSLog(@"%i, %i", (int)currentTapLoc.x, (int)currentTapLoc.y); if(CGRectContainsPoint(mainField, currentTapLoc)) { if([self checkFence]) { onFencePole++; //this 3 set functions adds their respective objects into the 3 NSMutableArrays using addObject: [self setFencePole]; [self setFenceImage]; [self setFencePoleImage]; ....... } } else { ....... } } } } The setFence function (setFenceImage and setFencePoleImage is similar to this) -(void)setFencePole { Fence *fencePole; if (!elecFence) { fencePole = [[Fence alloc] initFence:onFencePole fenceType:1 fencePos:currentTapLoc]; } else { fencePole = [[Fence alloc] initFence:onFencePole fenceType:2 fencePos:currentTapLoc]; } [fencePoleArray addObject:fencePole]; [fencePole release]; and whenever I press a button in the game, endOpenState is called to clear away all the extra images(fence/poles) on the screen and also to remove all existing objects in the 3 NSMutableArray. Point is to remove all the objects in the NSMutableArrays but keep the array itself so it can be reused later. -(void)endOpenState { ........ int xMax = [fencePoleArray count]; int yMax = [fenceImageArray count]; for (int x = 0; x < xMax; x++) { [[fencePoleImageArray objectAtIndex:x] removeFromSuperview]; } for (int y = 0; y < yMax; y++) { [[fenceImageArray objectAtIndex:y] removeFromSuperview]; } [fencePoleArray removeAllObjects]; [fencePoleImageArray removeAllObjects]; [fenceImageArray removeAllObjects]; ........ } The crash happens here at the checkFence function. -(BOOL)checkFence { if (onFencePole == 0) { return YES; } else if (onFencePole >= 1 && onFencePole < currentMaxFencePole - 1) { CGPoint tempPoint1 = currentTapLoc; CGPoint tempPoint2 = [[fencePoleArray objectAtIndex:onFencePole-1] returnPos]; // the crash happens at this line if ([self checkDistance:tempPoint1 point2:tempPoint2]) { return YES; } else { return NO; } } else if (onFencePole == currentMaxFencePole - 1) { ...... } else { return NO; } } So the problem here is, everything works fine until checkFence is called the 2nd time after endOpenState is called. So its like tap_screen - tap_screen - press_button_to_call_endOpenState - tap screen - tap_screen - crash What I'm thinking of is that fencePoleArray got messed up when I used [fencePoleArray removeAllObjects] because it doesn't crash when I comment it out. It would really be great if someone can explain to me what went wrong. And thanks in advance.

    Read the article

  • how to define div or table cell height depending on the height of other divs or cells

    - by John
    I want to have a web page that contains 3 parts: A header at the top of the page , a footer (both of which having specific height in px)and the main part of the page which should be a div or table cell with the appropriate height attribute in order to take all the available space between them. I want the page to take 100% of the browser window height, trying to avoid scrollbars. The problems I have are the following: USING DIVs a) If I set the maindiv height to 100%, the page overflows and I get a vertical scrolbar. (the maindiv's height is set to the 100% of the browser window) <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <title>Untitled Document</title> </head> <style type="text/css"> <!-- body, html{ height: 100%; max-height:100%; width: 100%; margin:0; padding:0; } div{padding:0;margin:0;} #containerdiv{height:100%;width:100%;background-color:#FF9;border:0;} #headerdiv{height:150px;width:100%;background-color:#0F0;border:0;} #footerdiv{height:50px;width:100%;background-color:#00F;border:0; } #maindiv{ background-color:#F00; height:100%; } div{border:#000 medium solid;border:0;} </style> <body> <div id="containerdiv"> <div id="headerdiv">headerdiv</div> <div id="maindiv">maindiv</div> <div id="footerdiv">footerdiv</div> </div> </body> </html> b) If I set the maindiv height to auto, the maindiv height is depending on it's content, which is not what I want. USING tables a) If I set the main cell height to 100% it works fine with Firefox but in Internet Explorer 8 I get a vertical scrollbar (you can use the next code block using th style="height:100%" instead of "auto" to see this.) b) If I set the main cell to auto it seems to be working both in IE and FF but then I have the problem that anything I put inside the maincell (table or div) cannot get maincell's full height in IE. <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <title>Untitled Document</title> </head> <style type="text/css"> <!-- body, html, table{ height: 100%; width: 100%; margin:0; padding:0; } table{border:#000 0px solid} </style> <body> <table style="background:#063" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"> <tr><th style="height:150px;background-color:#FF0"></th></tr> <tr> <th style="height:auto"><table style="background:#0FF;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"><tr><th style="height:auto">nested cell</th></tr></table> </th> </tr> <tr><th style="height:50px;background-color:#FF0"></th></tr> </table> </body> </html> </html> Any ideas? Maybe there is an easier way to define the size of the main part of the page in px using javascript? (my javascript skills are pretty poor so any help with this is welcome!)

    Read the article

  • Effective optimization strategies on modern C++ compilers

    - by user168715
    I'm working on scientific code that is very performance-critical. An initial version of the code has been written and tested, and now, with profiler in hand, it's time to start shaving cycles from the hot spots. It's well-known that some optimizations, e.g. loop unrolling, are handled these days much more effectively by the compiler than by a programmer meddling by hand. Which techniques are still worthwhile? Obviously, I'll run everything I try through a profiler, but if there's conventional wisdom as to what tends to work and what doesn't, it would save me significant time. I know that optimization is very compiler- and architecture- dependent. I'm using Intel's C++ compiler targeting the Core 2 Duo, but I'm also interested in what works well for gcc, or for "any modern compiler." Here are some concrete ideas I'm considering: Is there any benefit to replacing STL containers/algorithms with hand-rolled ones? In particular, my program includes a very large priority queue (currently a std::priority_queue) whose manipulation is taking a lot of total time. Is this something worth looking into, or is the STL implementation already likely the fastest possible? Along similar lines, for std::vectors whose needed sizes are unknown but have a reasonably small upper bound, is it profitable to replace them with statically-allocated arrays? I've found that dynamic memory allocation is often a severe bottleneck, and that eliminating it can lead to significant speedups. As a consequence I'm interesting in the performance tradeoffs of returning large temporary data structures by value vs. returning by pointer vs. passing the result in by reference. Is there a way to reliably determine whether or not the compiler will use RVO for a given method (assuming the caller doesn't need to modify the result, of course)? How cache-aware do compilers tend to be? For example, is it worth looking into reordering nested loops? Given the scientific nature of the program, floating-point numbers are used everywhere. A significant bottleneck in my code used to be conversions from floating point to integers: the compiler would emit code to save the current rounding mode, change it, perform the conversion, then restore the old rounding mode --- even though nothing in the program ever changed the rounding mode! Disabling this behavior significantly sped up my code. Are there any similar floating-point-related gotchas I should be aware of? One consequence of C++ being compiled and linked separately is that the compiler is unable to do what would seem to be very simple optimizations, such as move method calls like strlen() out of the termination conditions of loop. Are there any optimization like this one that I should look out for because they can't be done by the compiler and must be done by hand? On the flip side, are there any techniques I should avoid because they are likely to interfere with the compiler's ability to automatically optimize code? Lastly, to nip certain kinds of answers in the bud: I understand that optimization has a cost in terms of complexity, reliability, and maintainability. For this particular application, increased performance is worth these costs. I understand that the best optimizations are often to improve the high-level algorithms, and this has already been done.

    Read the article

  • Can someone help me compare using F# over C# in this specific example (IP Address expressions)?

    - by Phobis
    So, I am writing code to parse and IP Address expression and turn it into a regular expression that could be run against and IP Address string and return a boolean response. I wrote the code in C# (OO) and it was 110 lines of code. I am trying to compare the amount of code and the expressiveness of C# to F# (I am a C# programmer and a noob at F#). I don't want to post both the C# and F#, just because I don't want to clutter the post. If needed, I will do so. Anyway, I will give an example. Here is an expression: 192.168.0.250,244-248,108,51,7;127.0.0.1 I would like to take that and turn it into this regular expression: ((192.168.0.(250|244|245|246|247|248|108|51|7))|(127.0.0.1)) Here are some steps I am following: Operations: Break by ";" 192.168.0.250,244-248,108,51,7 127.0.0.1 Break by "." 192 168 0 250,244-248,108,51,7 Break by "," 250 244-248 108 51 7 Break by "-" 244 248 I came up with F# that produces the output. I am trying to forward-pipe through my operations listed above, as I think that would be more expressive. Can anyone make this code better? Teach me something :) open System let createItemArray (group:bool) (y:char) (items:string[]) = [| let indexes = items.Length - 1 let group = indexes > 0 && group if group then yield "(" for i in 0 .. indexes do yield items.[i].ToString() if i < indexes then yield y.ToString() if group then yield ")" |] let breakBy (group:bool) (x:string) (y:char): string[] = x.Split(y) |> createItemArray group y let breakItem (x:string) (y:char): string[] = breakBy false x y let breakGroup (x:string) (y:char): string[] = breakBy true x y let AddressExpression address:string = let builder = new System.Text.StringBuilder "(" breakGroup address ';' |> Array.collect (fun octet -> breakItem octet '.') |> Array.collect (fun options -> breakGroup options ',') |> Array.collect (fun (ranges : string) -> match (breakGroup ranges '-') with | x when x.Length > 3 -> match (Int32.TryParse(x.[1]), Int32.TryParse(x.[3])) with | ((true, a) ,(true, b)) -> [|a .. b|] |> Array.map (int >> string) |> createItemArray false '-' | _ -> [|ranges|] | _ -> [|ranges|] ) |> Array.iter (fun item -> match item with | ";" -> builder.Append ")|(" | "." -> builder.Append "\." | "," | "-" -> builder.Append "|" | _ -> builder.Append item |> ignore ) builder.Append(")").ToString() let address = "192.168.0.250,244-248,108,51,7;127.0.0.1" AddressExpression address

    Read the article

  • how to mount partitions from USB drives in Windows using Delphi?

    - by user569556
    Hi. I'm a Delphi programmer. I want to mount all partitions from USB drives in Windows (XP). The OS is doing this automatically but there are situations when such a program is useful. I know how to find if a drive is on USB or not. My code so far is: type STORAGE_QUERY_TYPE = (PropertyStandardQuery = 0, PropertyExistsQuery, PropertyMaskQuery, PropertyQueryMaxDefined); TStorageQueryType = STORAGE_QUERY_TYPE; STORAGE_PROPERTY_ID = (StorageDeviceProperty = 0, StorageAdapterProperty); TStoragePropertyID = STORAGE_PROPERTY_ID; STORAGE_PROPERTY_QUERY = packed record PropertyId: STORAGE_PROPERTY_ID; QueryType: STORAGE_QUERY_TYPE; AdditionalParameters: array[0..9] of AnsiChar; end; TStoragePropertyQuery = STORAGE_PROPERTY_QUERY; STORAGE_BUS_TYPE = (BusTypeUnknown = 0, BusTypeScsi, BusTypeAtapi, BusTypeAta, BusType1394, BusTypeSsa, BusTypeFibre, BusTypeUsb, BusTypeRAID, BusTypeiScsi, BusTypeSas, BusTypeSata, BusTypeMaxReserved = $7F); TStorageBusType = STORAGE_BUS_TYPE; STORAGE_DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR = packed record Version: DWORD; Size: DWORD; DeviceType: Byte; DeviceTypeModifier: Byte; RemovableMedia: Boolean; CommandQueueing: Boolean; VendorIdOffset: DWORD; ProductIdOffset: DWORD; ProductRevisionOffset: DWORD; SerialNumberOffset: DWORD; BusType: STORAGE_BUS_TYPE; RawPropertiesLength: DWORD; RawDeviceProperties: array[0..0] of AnsiChar; end; TStorageDeviceDescriptor = STORAGE_DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR; const IOCTL_STORAGE_QUERY_PROPERTY = $002D1400; var i: Integer; H: THandle; USBDrives: array of Byte; Query: TStoragePropertyQuery; dwBytesReturned: DWORD; Buffer: array[0..1023] of Byte; sdd: TStorageDeviceDescriptor absolute Buffer; begin SetLength(UsbDrives, 0); SetErrorMode(SEM_FAILCRITICALERRORS); for i := 0 to 99 do begin H := CreateFile(PChar('\\.\PhysicalDrive' + IntToStr(i)), 0, FILE_SHARE_READ or FILE_SHARE_WRITE, nil, OPEN_EXISTING, 0, 0); if H <> INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE then begin try dwBytesReturned := 0; FillChar(Query, SizeOf(Query), 0); FillChar(Buffer, SizeOf(Buffer), 0); sdd.Size := SizeOf(Buffer); Query.PropertyId := StorageDeviceProperty; Query.QueryType := PropertyStandardQuery; if DeviceIoControl(H, IOCTL_STORAGE_QUERY_PROPERTY, @Query, SizeOf(Query), @Buffer, SizeOf(Buffer), dwBytesReturned, nil) then if sdd.BusType = BusTypeUsb then begin SetLength(USBDrives, Length(USBDrives) + 1); UsbDrives[High(USBDrives)] := Byte(i); end; finally CloseHandle(H); end; end; end; for i := 0 to High(USBDrives) do begin // end; end. But I don't know how to access partitions on each drive and mounts them. Can you please help me? I searched before I asked and I couldn't find a working code. But if I did not properly then I'm sorry and please show me that topic. Best regards, John

    Read the article

  • How to select table column names in a view and pass to controller in rails?

    - by zachd1_618
    So I am new to Rails, and OO programming in general. I have some grasp of the MVC architecture. My goal is to make a (nearly) completely dynamic plug-and-play plotting web server. I am fairly confused with params, forms, and select helpers. What I want to do is use Rails drop downs to basically pass parameters as strings to my controller, which will use the params to select certain column data from my database and plot it dynamically. I have the latter part of the task working, but I can't seem to pass values from my view to controller. For simplicity's sake, say my database schema looks like this: --------------Plot--------------- |____x____|____y1____|____y2____| | 1 | 1 | 1 | | 2 | 2 | 4 | | 3 | 3 | 9 | | 4 | 4 | 16 | | 5 | 5 | 25 | ... and in my Model, I have dynamic selector scopes that will let me select just certain columns of data: in Plot.rb class Plot < ActiveRecord::Base scope :select_var, lambda {|varname| select(varname)} scope :between_x, lambda {|x1,x2| where("x BETWEEN ? and ?","#{x1}","#{x2}")} So this way, I can call: irb>>@p1 = Plot.select_var(['x','y1']).between_x(1,3) and get in return a class where @p1.x and @p1.y1 are my only attributes, only for values between x=1 to x=4, which I dynamically plot. I want to start off in a view (plot/index), where I can dynamically select which variable names (table column names), and which rows from the database to fetch and plot. The problem is, most select helpers don't seem to work with columns in the database, only rows. So to select columns, I first get an array of column names that exist in my database with a function I wrote. Plots Controller def index d=Plot.first @tags = d.list_vars end So @tags = ['x','y1','y2'] Then in my plot/index.html.erb I try to use a drop down to select wich variables I send back to the controller. index.html.erb <%= select_tag( :variable, options_for_select(@plots.first.list_vars,:name,:multiple=>:true) )%> <%= button_to 'Plot now!', :controller =>"plots/plot_vars", :variable => params[:variable]%> Finally, in the controller again Plots controller ... def plot_vars @plot_data=Plot.select_vars([params[:variable]]) end The problem is everytime I try this (or one of a hundred variations thereof), the params[:variable] is nill. How can I use a drop down to pass a parameter with string variable names to the controller? Sorry its so long, I have been struggling with this for about a month now. :-( I think my biggest problem is that this setup doesn't really match the Rails architecture. I don't have "users" and "articles" as individual entities. I really have a data structure, not a data object. Trying to work with the structure in terms of data object speak is not necessarily the easiest thing to do I think. For background: My actual database has about 250 columns and a couple million rows, and they get changed and modified from time to time. I know I can make the database smarter, but its not worth it on my end. I work at a scientific institute where there are a ton of projects with databases just like this. Each one has a web developer that spends months setting up a web interface and their own janky plotting setups. I want to make this completely dynamic, as a plug-and-play solution so all you have to do is specify your database connection, and this rails setup will automatically show and plot which data you want in it. I am more of a sequential programmer and number cruncher, as are many people here. I think this project could be very helpful in the end, but its difficult to figure out for me right now.

    Read the article

  • Trying to reinvent the wheel of StackOverflow to have a good learning experience. Need some suggesti

    - by Legend
    I want to learn and am not able to do it unless I have a real "mission" to complete. SO is my favorite and I can't imagine a better experience than actually recreating it but not in ASP. I'd like to use PHP+MySQL+jQuery. So far, I have been a self-taught programmer but I would like to master one paradigm that forces you to adhere to the standards. For instance, recently, jQuery forced me to use some "rules". The plugins were supposed to be written in a particular way and that's it. When I started off, everything seemed like Greek and Latin but when I finished a very small plugin, I felt really happy because it forced me to program in a certain way. I am looking for something like this only in a larger project. I've heard a lot about MVC and all but I am confused about the various frameworks out there. Zend seems awesome but looks heavy at the same time and also requires you to have a lot more control over the web-server whereas CakePHP is a good and a fast framework that needs only little control. Do I use one of these or just write my own MVC? I have the following goals: Goals: Site should be fast - I know this depends on my coding skills but I will learn on my way. The framework itself should not slow me down) Setting up the site should not require you to use command-line - This requirement is ok during development. But some frameworks like Symphony require you to initialize certain things through command-line Should support pluggable modules - For instance, if I want to be able to use the FCK editor, I should be able to organize things in a good way. Should be possible to extend - For instance, SO is mainly a Q&A site but I should be able to logically extend it into an Idea Management System (optional but I'm curious). This goes more into code re-usability I guess. I am comfortable with MySQL so I should be done with database design etc. with some serious effort. As for PHP, I can write code on my own but haven't really used any frameworks that much. jQuery, I started off recently and love it. I would be glad if someone can guide me during these initial steps. Precisely, when designing something like SO, I have the following questions: Do I use a framework? If yes, should it be MVC? If MVC, which one is a good and a scalable one? (I'd love something like jQuery that will not die anytime soon) How do I balance the functionality? The same logic can sometimes be made server centric or client centric. (more Ajax?). Is it a good idea to make a heavy javascript site considering the recent advances on client-side JS processing? Just in case anyone is wondering, I am not interested in commercializing any of this. I need a reason to learn something :)

    Read the article

  • A view interface for large object/array dumps

    - by user685107
    I want to embed in a page a detailed structure report of my model objects, like print_r() or var_export() produce (now I’m doing this with running var_export() on get_object_vars()). But what I actually want to see is only some properties (in most cases), but at this moment I have to use Ctrl+F and seek the variable I want, instead of just staring at it right after the page completes loading. So I’m embedding buttons to show/hide large arrays etc. but thought: ‘What if there already is the thing I do right now?’ So is there? Update: What would your ideal interface look like? First of all, dumped models fit in the first screen. All the properties can be seen at the first look at the screen (there are not many of them, around 10 per each, three models total, so it is possible). Small arrays can be shown unrolled too. Let the size of the array to count it as ‘small’ be definable. Ideally, the user can see values of the properties without doing any click, scrolling the screen or typing something. There must be some improvements to representing the values, say, if an array is empty, show array ‘My_big_array’ is empty and if a boolean variable starting with is_, has_, had_ has a false as the value, make the variable (let us take is_available for example) shown as is_NOT_available in red, and if it has true as the value, show is_available in green. Without any value shown. The same goes for defined constants. That would be ideal. I want to make focus on this kind of switches. Krumo seems useful, but since it always closes up the variable without making difference of how large it is, I cannot use it as is, but there might appear something similar on github soon :) Second update starts here: Any programmer who sees is_available = false will know what it means, no need to do more Bringing in color indication I forgot about one thing: the ‘switches’ let’s call them so, may me important or not. So I have right now some of them that will show in green or red, this is for something global, like caching, which is shown as Caching is… ON with ‘ON’ written in green, (and ‘OFF’ in red when disabled) while the words about what it is, i.e. ‘Caching is… ’ are written in black. And some which are not so important, for example I haven’t defined REVEAL_TIES is… not set with ‘not set’ written in gray, while the words describing what it is stay in black. And if it would be set the whole phrase would be in black since there is nothing important: if this small utility for showing some undercover things is working, I will see some messages after it, if it isn’t — site will be working independently of its state. Dividing switches into important ones and not with corresponding color match should improve readability, especially for those users who are not programmers and just enabled debug mode because some guy from bugzilla said do that — for them it would help to understand what is important and what is not.

    Read the article

  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 09, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 09, 2010New Projects.NET Excel Wrapper - Read, Write, Edit & Automate Excel Files in .NET with ease: .NET Excel Wrapper encapsulates the complexity of working with multiple Excel objects giving you one central point to do all your processing. It h...Advancement Voyage: Advancement Voyage is a high quality RPG experience that provides all the advancement and voyaging that a player could hope for.ASP.Net Routing configuration: ASP.NET routing configuration enables you to configure the routes in the web.config bbinjest: bbinjestBuildUp: BuildUp is a build number increment tool for C# .net projects. It is run as a post build step in Visual Studio.Controlled Vocabulary: This project is devoted to creating tools to assist with Controlling Vocabulary in communication. The initial delivery is an Outlook 2010 Add-in w...CycleList: A replacement for the WPF ListBox Control. Displays only a single item and allows the user to change the selected item by clicking on it once. Very...Forensic Suite: A suite of security softwareFREE DNN Chat Module for 123 Flash Chat -- Embed FREE Chat Room!: 123 Flash Chat is a live chat solution and its DotNetNuke Chat Module helps to embed a live chat room into website with DotNetNuke(DNN) integrated ...HouseFly experimental controls: Experimental controls for use in HouseFly.ICatalogAll: junkMidiStylus: MidiStylus allows you to control MIDI-enabled hardware or software using your pressure-sensitive pen tablet. The program maps the X position, Y po...myTunes: Search for your favorite artistsNColony - Pluggable Socialism?: NColony will maximize the use of MEF to create flexible application architectures through a suite of plug-in solutions. If MEF is an outlet for plu...Network Monitor Decryption Expert: NmDecrypt is a Network Monitor Expert which when given a trace with encrypted frames, a security certificate, and a passkey will create a new trace...occulo: occulo is a free steganography program, meant to embed files within images with optional encrytion. Open Ant: A implementation of a Open Source Ant which is created to show what is possible in the serious game AntMe! The First implementation of that ProjectProgramming Patterns by example: Design patterns provide solutions to common software design problems. This project will contain samples, written in c# and ruby, of each design pat...project4k: Developing bulk mail system storing email informationQuail - Selenium Remote Control Made Easy: Quail makes it easy for Quality Assurance departments write automated tests against web applications. Both HTML and Silverlight applications can b...RedBulb for XNA Framework: RedBulb is a collection of utility functions and classes that make writing games with XNA a lot easier. Key features: Console,GUI (Labels, Buttons,...RegExpress: RegExpress is a WPF application that combines interactive demos of regular expressions with slide content. This was designed for a user group prese...RemoveFolder: Small utility program to remove empty foldersScrumTFS: ScrumTFSSharePoint - Open internal link in new window list definition: A simple SharePoint list definition to render SharePoint internal links with the option to open them in a new window.SqlSiteMap4MVC: SqlSiteMapProvider for ASP.Net MVC.T Sina .NET Client: t.sina.com.cn api 新浪微博APITest-Lint-Extensions: Test Lint is a free Typemock VS 2010 Extension that finds common problems in your unit tests as you type them. this project will host extensions ...ThinkGearNET: ThinkGearNET is a library for easy usage of the Neurosky Mindset headset from .NET .Wiki to Maml: This project enables you to write wiki syntax and have it converted into MAML syntax for Sandcastle documentation projects.WPF Undo/Redo Framework: This project attempts to solve the age-old programmer problem of supporting unlimited undo/redo in an application, in an easily reusable manner. Th...WPFValidators: WPF Validators Validações de campos para WPFWSP Listener: The WSP listener is a windows service application which waits for new WSC and WSP files in a specific folder. If a new WSC and WSP file are added, ...New Releases.NET Excel Wrapper - Read, Write, Edit & Automate Excel Files in .NET with ease: First Release: This is the first release which includes the main library release..NET Excel Wrapper - Read, Write, Edit & Automate Excel Files in .NET with ease: Updated Version: New Features:SetRangeValue using multidimensional array Print current worksheet Print all worksheets Format ranges background, color, alig...ArkSwitch: ArkSwitch v1.1.2: This release removes all memory reporting information, and is focused on stability.BattLineSvc: V2.1: - Fixed a bug where on system start-up, it would pop up a notification box to let you know the service started. Annoying! And fixed! - Fixed the ...BuildUp: BuildUp 1.0 Alpha 1: Use at your own risk!Not yet feature complete. Basic build incrementing and attribute overriding works. Still working on cascading build incremen...Controlled Vocabulary: 1.0.0.1: Initial Alpha Release. System Requirements Outlook 2010 .Net Framework 3.5 Installation 1. Close Outlook (Use Task Manager to ensure no running i...CycleList: CycleList: The binaries contain the .NET 3.5 DLL ONLY. Please download source for usage examples.FluentNHibernate.Search: 0.3 Beta: 0.3 Beta take the following changes : Mappings : - Field Mapping without specifying "Name" - Id Mapping without specifiying "Field" - Builtin Anal...FREE DNN Chat Module for 123 Flash Chat -- Embed FREE Chat Room!: 123 Flash Chat DNN Chat Module: With FREE DotNetNuke Chat Module of 123 Flash Chat, webmaster will be assist to add a chat room into DotNetNuke instantly and help to attract more ...GameStore League Manager: League Manager 1.0 release 3: This release includes a full installer so that you can get your league running faster and generate interest quicker.iExporter - iTunes playlist exporting: iExporter gui v2.3.1.0 - console v1.2.1.0: Paypal donate! Solved a big bug for iExporter ( Gui & Console ) When a track isn't located under the main iTunes library, iExporter would crash! ...jQuery.cssLess: jQuery.cssLess 0.3: New - Removed the dependency from XRegExp - Added comment support (both CSS style and C style) - Optimised it for speed - Added speed test TOD...jQuery.cssLess: jQuery.cssLess 0.4: NEW - @import directive - preserving of comments in the resulting CSS - code refactoring - more class oriented approach TODO - implement operation...MapWindow GIS: MapWindow 6.0 msi (March 8): Rewrote the shapefile saving code in the indexed case so that it uses the shape indices rather than trying to create features. This should allow s...MidiStylus: MidiStylus 0.5.1: MidiStylus Beta 0.5.1 This release contains basic functionality for transmitting MIDI data based on X position, Y position, and pressure value rea...MiniTwitter: 1.09.1: MiniTwitter 1.09.1 更新内容 修正 URL に & が含まれている時に短縮 URL がおかしくなるバグを修正Mosaictor: first executable: .exe file of the app in its current state. Mind you that this will likely be highly unstable due to heaps of uncaught errors.MvcContrib a Codeplex Foundation project: T4MVC: T4MVC is a T4 template that generates strongly typed helpers for ASP.NET MVC. You can download it below, and check out the documention here.N2 CMS: 2.0 beta: Major Changes ASP.NET MVC 2 templates Refreshed management UI LINQ support Performance improvements Auto image resize Upgrade Make a comp...NotesForGallery: ASP.NET AJAX Photo Gallery Control: NotesForGallery 2.0: PresentationNotesForGallery is an open source control on top of the Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX framework for easy displaying image galleries in the as...occulo: occulo 0.1 binaries: Windows binaries. Tested on Windows XP SP2.occulo: occulo 0.1 source: Initial source release.Open NFe: DANFE 1.9.5: Ajuste de layout e correção dos campos de ISS.patterns & practices Web Client Developer Guidance: Web Application Guidance -- March 8th Drop: This iteration we focused on documentation and bug fixes.PoshConsole: PoshConsole 2.0 Beta: With this release, I am refocusing PoshConsole... It will be a PowerShell 2 host, without support for PowerShell 1.0 I have used some of the new P...Quick Performance Monitor: QPerfmon 1.1: Now you can specify different updating frequencies.RedBulb for XNA Framework: Cipher Puzzle (Sample) Creators Club Package: RedBulb Sample Game: Cipher Puzzle http://bayimg.com/image/galgfaacb.jpgRedBulb for XNA Framework: RedBulbStarter (Base Code): This is the code you need to start with. Quick Start Guide: Download the latest version of RedBulb: http://redbulb.codeplex.com/releases/view/415...RoTwee: RoTwee 7.0.0.0 (Alpha): Now this version is under improvement of code structure and may be buggy. However movement of rotation is quite good in this version thanks to clea...SCSI Interface for Multimedia and Block Devices: Release 9 - Improvements and Bug Fixes: Changes I have made in this version: Fixed INQUIRY command timeout problem Lowered ISOBurn's memory usage significantly by not explicitly setting...SharePoint - Open internal link in new window list definition: Open link in new window list definition: First release, with english and italian localization supportSharePoint Outlook Connector: Version 1.2.3.2: Few bug fixing and some ui enhancementsSysI: sysi, release build: Better than ever -- now allows for escalation to adminThe Silverlight Hyper Video Player [http://slhvp.com]: Beta 1: Beta (1.1) The code is ready for intensive testing. I will update the code at least every second day until we are ready to freeze for V1, which wi...Truecrafting: Truecrafting 0.52: fixed several trinkets that broke just before i released 0.51, sorry fixed water elemental not doing anything while summoned if not using glyph o...Truecrafting: Truecrafting 0.53: fixed mp5 calculations when gear contained mp5 and made the formulas more efficient no need to rebuild profiles with this release if placed in th...umbracoSamplePackageCreator (beta): Working Beta: For Visual Studio 2008 creating packages for Umbraco 4.0.3.VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30307.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30308.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVOB2MKV: vob2mkv-1.0.3: This is a maintenance update of the VOB2MKV utility. The MKVMUX filter now describes the cluster locations using a separate SeekHead element at th...WPFValidators: WPFValidators 1.0 Beta: Primeira versão do componente ainda em Beta, pode ser utilizada em produção pois esta funcionando bem e as futuras alterações não sofreram muito im...WSDLGenerator: WSDLGenerator 0.0.06: - Added option to generate SharePoint compatible *disco.aspx file. - Changed commandline optionsWSP Listener: WSP Listener version 1.0.0.0: First version of the WSP Listener includes: Easy cop[y paste installation of WSP solutions Extended logging E-mail when installation is finish...Yet another pali text reader: Pali Text Reader App v1.1: new features/updates + search history is now a tab + format codes in dictionary + add/edit terms in the dictionary + pali keyboard inserts symbols...Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpi4o - Indexed LINQResExBraintree Client LibraryGeek's LibrarySharepoint Feature ManagerConfiguration ManagementOragon Architecture SqlBuilderTerrain Independant Navigating Automaton v2.0WBFS ManagerMost Active ProjectsUmbraco CMSRawrSDS: Scientific DataSet library and toolsBlogEngine.NETjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesFasterflect - A Fast and Simple Reflection APIFarseer Physics Enginepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryTeam FTW - Software ProjectIonics Isapi Rewrite Filter

    Read the article

  • Improving Partitioned Table Join Performance

    - by Paul White
    The query optimizer does not always choose an optimal strategy when joining partitioned tables. This post looks at an example, showing how a manual rewrite of the query can almost double performance, while reducing the memory grant to almost nothing. Test Data The two tables in this example use a common partitioning partition scheme. The partition function uses 41 equal-size partitions: CREATE PARTITION FUNCTION PFT (integer) AS RANGE RIGHT FOR VALUES ( 125000, 250000, 375000, 500000, 625000, 750000, 875000, 1000000, 1125000, 1250000, 1375000, 1500000, 1625000, 1750000, 1875000, 2000000, 2125000, 2250000, 2375000, 2500000, 2625000, 2750000, 2875000, 3000000, 3125000, 3250000, 3375000, 3500000, 3625000, 3750000, 3875000, 4000000, 4125000, 4250000, 4375000, 4500000, 4625000, 4750000, 4875000, 5000000 ); GO CREATE PARTITION SCHEME PST AS PARTITION PFT ALL TO ([PRIMARY]); There two tables are: CREATE TABLE dbo.T1 ( TID integer NOT NULL IDENTITY(0,1), Column1 integer NOT NULL, Padding binary(100) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0x,   CONSTRAINT PK_T1 PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (TID) ON PST (TID) );   CREATE TABLE dbo.T2 ( TID integer NOT NULL, Column1 integer NOT NULL, Padding binary(100) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0x,   CONSTRAINT PK_T2 PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (TID, Column1) ON PST (TID) ); The next script loads 5 million rows into T1 with a pseudo-random value between 1 and 5 for Column1. The table is partitioned on the IDENTITY column TID: INSERT dbo.T1 WITH (TABLOCKX) (Column1) SELECT (ABS(CHECKSUM(NEWID())) % 5) + 1 FROM dbo.Numbers AS N WHERE n BETWEEN 1 AND 5000000; In case you don’t already have an auxiliary table of numbers lying around, here’s a script to create one with 10 million rows: CREATE TABLE dbo.Numbers (n bigint PRIMARY KEY);   WITH L0 AS(SELECT 1 AS c UNION ALL SELECT 1), L1 AS(SELECT 1 AS c FROM L0 AS A CROSS JOIN L0 AS B), L2 AS(SELECT 1 AS c FROM L1 AS A CROSS JOIN L1 AS B), L3 AS(SELECT 1 AS c FROM L2 AS A CROSS JOIN L2 AS B), L4 AS(SELECT 1 AS c FROM L3 AS A CROSS JOIN L3 AS B), L5 AS(SELECT 1 AS c FROM L4 AS A CROSS JOIN L4 AS B), Nums AS(SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)) AS n FROM L5) INSERT dbo.Numbers WITH (TABLOCKX) SELECT TOP (10000000) n FROM Nums ORDER BY n OPTION (MAXDOP 1); Table T1 contains data like this: Next we load data into table T2. The relationship between the two tables is that table 2 contains ‘n’ rows for each row in table 1, where ‘n’ is determined by the value in Column1 of table T1. There is nothing particularly special about the data or distribution, by the way. INSERT dbo.T2 WITH (TABLOCKX) (TID, Column1) SELECT T.TID, N.n FROM dbo.T1 AS T JOIN dbo.Numbers AS N ON N.n >= 1 AND N.n <= T.Column1; Table T2 ends up containing about 15 million rows: The primary key for table T2 is a combination of TID and Column1. The data is partitioned according to the value in column TID alone. Partition Distribution The following query shows the number of rows in each partition of table T1: SELECT PartitionID = CA1.P, NumRows = COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T1 AS T CROSS APPLY (VALUES ($PARTITION.PFT(TID))) AS CA1 (P) GROUP BY CA1.P ORDER BY CA1.P; There are 40 partitions containing 125,000 rows (40 * 125k = 5m rows). The rightmost partition remains empty. The next query shows the distribution for table 2: SELECT PartitionID = CA1.P, NumRows = COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T2 AS T CROSS APPLY (VALUES ($PARTITION.PFT(TID))) AS CA1 (P) GROUP BY CA1.P ORDER BY CA1.P; There are roughly 375,000 rows in each partition (the rightmost partition is also empty): Ok, that’s the test data done. Test Query and Execution Plan The task is to count the rows resulting from joining tables 1 and 2 on the TID column: SET STATISTICS IO ON; DECLARE @s datetime2 = SYSUTCDATETIME();   SELECT COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T1 AS T1 JOIN dbo.T2 AS T2 ON T2.TID = T1.TID;   SELECT DATEDIFF(Millisecond, @s, SYSUTCDATETIME()); SET STATISTICS IO OFF; The optimizer chooses a plan using parallel hash join, and partial aggregation: The Plan Explorer plan tree view shows accurate cardinality estimates and an even distribution of rows across threads (click to enlarge the image): With a warm data cache, the STATISTICS IO output shows that no physical I/O was needed, and all 41 partitions were touched: Running the query without actual execution plan or STATISTICS IO information for maximum performance, the query returns in around 2600ms. Execution Plan Analysis The first step toward improving on the execution plan produced by the query optimizer is to understand how it works, at least in outline. The two parallel Clustered Index Scans use multiple threads to read rows from tables T1 and T2. Parallel scan uses a demand-based scheme where threads are given page(s) to scan from the table as needed. This arrangement has certain important advantages, but does result in an unpredictable distribution of rows amongst threads. The point is that multiple threads cooperate to scan the whole table, but it is impossible to predict which rows end up on which threads. For correct results from the parallel hash join, the execution plan has to ensure that rows from T1 and T2 that might join are processed on the same thread. For example, if a row from T1 with join key value ‘1234’ is placed in thread 5’s hash table, the execution plan must guarantee that any rows from T2 that also have join key value ‘1234’ probe thread 5’s hash table for matches. The way this guarantee is enforced in this parallel hash join plan is by repartitioning rows to threads after each parallel scan. The two repartitioning exchanges route rows to threads using a hash function over the hash join keys. The two repartitioning exchanges use the same hash function so rows from T1 and T2 with the same join key must end up on the same hash join thread. Expensive Exchanges This business of repartitioning rows between threads can be very expensive, especially if a large number of rows is involved. The execution plan selected by the optimizer moves 5 million rows through one repartitioning exchange and around 15 million across the other. As a first step toward removing these exchanges, consider the execution plan selected by the optimizer if we join just one partition from each table, disallowing parallelism: SELECT COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T1 AS T1 JOIN dbo.T2 AS T2 ON T2.TID = T1.TID WHERE $PARTITION.PFT(T1.TID) = 1 AND $PARTITION.PFT(T2.TID) = 1 OPTION (MAXDOP 1); The optimizer has chosen a (one-to-many) merge join instead of a hash join. The single-partition query completes in around 100ms. If everything scaled linearly, we would expect that extending this strategy to all 40 populated partitions would result in an execution time around 4000ms. Using parallelism could reduce that further, perhaps to be competitive with the parallel hash join chosen by the optimizer. This raises a question. If the most efficient way to join one partition from each of the tables is to use a merge join, why does the optimizer not choose a merge join for the full query? Forcing a Merge Join Let’s force the optimizer to use a merge join on the test query using a hint: SELECT COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T1 AS T1 JOIN dbo.T2 AS T2 ON T2.TID = T1.TID OPTION (MERGE JOIN); This is the execution plan selected by the optimizer: This plan results in the same number of logical reads reported previously, but instead of 2600ms the query takes 5000ms. The natural explanation for this drop in performance is that the merge join plan is only using a single thread, whereas the parallel hash join plan could use multiple threads. Parallel Merge Join We can get a parallel merge join plan using the same query hint as before, and adding trace flag 8649: SELECT COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T1 AS T1 JOIN dbo.T2 AS T2 ON T2.TID = T1.TID OPTION (MERGE JOIN, QUERYTRACEON 8649); The execution plan is: This looks promising. It uses a similar strategy to distribute work across threads as seen for the parallel hash join. In practice though, performance is disappointing. On a typical run, the parallel merge plan runs for around 8400ms; slower than the single-threaded merge join plan (5000ms) and much worse than the 2600ms for the parallel hash join. We seem to be going backwards! The logical reads for the parallel merge are still exactly the same as before, with no physical IOs. The cardinality estimates and thread distribution are also still very good (click to enlarge): A big clue to the reason for the poor performance is shown in the wait statistics (captured by Plan Explorer Pro): CXPACKET waits require careful interpretation, and are most often benign, but in this case excessive waiting occurs at the repartitioning exchanges. Unlike the parallel hash join, the repartitioning exchanges in this plan are order-preserving ‘merging’ exchanges (because merge join requires ordered inputs): Parallelism works best when threads can just grab any available unit of work and get on with processing it. Preserving order introduces inter-thread dependencies that can easily lead to significant waits occurring. In extreme cases, these dependencies can result in an intra-query deadlock, though the details of that will have to wait for another time to explore in detail. The potential for waits and deadlocks leads the query optimizer to cost parallel merge join relatively highly, especially as the degree of parallelism (DOP) increases. This high costing resulted in the optimizer choosing a serial merge join rather than parallel in this case. The test results certainly confirm its reasoning. Collocated Joins In SQL Server 2008 and later, the optimizer has another available strategy when joining tables that share a common partition scheme. This strategy is a collocated join, also known as as a per-partition join. It can be applied in both serial and parallel execution plans, though it is limited to 2-way joins in the current optimizer. Whether the optimizer chooses a collocated join or not depends on cost estimation. The primary benefits of a collocated join are that it eliminates an exchange and requires less memory, as we will see next. Costing and Plan Selection The query optimizer did consider a collocated join for our original query, but it was rejected on cost grounds. The parallel hash join with repartitioning exchanges appeared to be a cheaper option. There is no query hint to force a collocated join, so we have to mess with the costing framework to produce one for our test query. Pretending that IOs cost 50 times more than usual is enough to convince the optimizer to use collocated join with our test query: -- Pretend IOs are 50x cost temporarily DBCC SETIOWEIGHT(50);   -- Co-located hash join SELECT COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T1 AS T1 JOIN dbo.T2 AS T2 ON T2.TID = T1.TID OPTION (RECOMPILE);   -- Reset IO costing DBCC SETIOWEIGHT(1); Collocated Join Plan The estimated execution plan for the collocated join is: The Constant Scan contains one row for each partition of the shared partitioning scheme, from 1 to 41. The hash repartitioning exchanges seen previously are replaced by a single Distribute Streams exchange using Demand partitioning. Demand partitioning means that the next partition id is given to the next parallel thread that asks for one. My test machine has eight logical processors, and all are available for SQL Server to use. As a result, there are eight threads in the single parallel branch in this plan, each processing one partition from each table at a time. Once a thread finishes processing a partition, it grabs a new partition number from the Distribute Streams exchange…and so on until all partitions have been processed. It is important to understand that the parallel scans in this plan are different from the parallel hash join plan. Although the scans have the same parallelism icon, tables T1 and T2 are not being co-operatively scanned by multiple threads in the same way. Each thread reads a single partition of T1 and performs a hash match join with the same partition from table T2. The properties of the two Clustered Index Scans show a Seek Predicate (unusual for a scan!) limiting the rows to a single partition: The crucial point is that the join between T1 and T2 is on TID, and TID is the partitioning column for both tables. A thread that processes partition ‘n’ is guaranteed to see all rows that can possibly join on TID for that partition. In addition, no other thread will see rows from that partition, so this removes the need for repartitioning exchanges. CPU and Memory Efficiency Improvements The collocated join has removed two expensive repartitioning exchanges and added a single exchange processing 41 rows (one for each partition id). Remember, the parallel hash join plan exchanges had to process 5 million and 15 million rows. The amount of processor time spent on exchanges will be much lower in the collocated join plan. In addition, the collocated join plan has a maximum of 8 threads processing single partitions at any one time. The 41 partitions will all be processed eventually, but a new partition is not started until a thread asks for it. Threads can reuse hash table memory for the new partition. The parallel hash join plan also had 8 hash tables, but with all 5,000,000 build rows loaded at the same time. The collocated plan needs memory for only 8 * 125,000 = 1,000,000 rows at any one time. Collocated Hash Join Performance The collated join plan has disappointing performance in this case. The query runs for around 25,300ms despite the same IO statistics as usual. This is much the worst result so far, so what went wrong? It turns out that cardinality estimation for the single partition scans of table T1 is slightly low. The properties of the Clustered Index Scan of T1 (graphic immediately above) show the estimation was for 121,951 rows. This is a small shortfall compared with the 125,000 rows actually encountered, but it was enough to cause the hash join to spill to physical tempdb: A level 1 spill doesn’t sound too bad, until you realize that the spill to tempdb probably occurs for each of the 41 partitions. As a side note, the cardinality estimation error is a little surprising because the system tables accurately show there are 125,000 rows in every partition of T1. Unfortunately, the optimizer uses regular column and index statistics to derive cardinality estimates here rather than system table information (e.g. sys.partitions). Collocated Merge Join We will never know how well the collocated parallel hash join plan might have worked without the cardinality estimation error (and the resulting 41 spills to tempdb) but we do know: Merge join does not require a memory grant; and Merge join was the optimizer’s preferred join option for a single partition join Putting this all together, what we would really like to see is the same collocated join strategy, but using merge join instead of hash join. Unfortunately, the current query optimizer cannot produce a collocated merge join; it only knows how to do collocated hash join. So where does this leave us? CROSS APPLY sys.partitions We can try to write our own collocated join query. We can use sys.partitions to find the partition numbers, and CROSS APPLY to get a count per partition, with a final step to sum the partial counts. The following query implements this idea: SELECT row_count = SUM(Subtotals.cnt) FROM ( -- Partition numbers SELECT p.partition_number FROM sys.partitions AS p WHERE p.[object_id] = OBJECT_ID(N'T1', N'U') AND p.index_id = 1 ) AS P CROSS APPLY ( -- Count per collocated join SELECT cnt = COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T1 AS T1 JOIN dbo.T2 AS T2 ON T2.TID = T1.TID WHERE $PARTITION.PFT(T1.TID) = p.partition_number AND $PARTITION.PFT(T2.TID) = p.partition_number ) AS SubTotals; The estimated plan is: The cardinality estimates aren’t all that good here, especially the estimate for the scan of the system table underlying the sys.partitions view. Nevertheless, the plan shape is heading toward where we would like to be. Each partition number from the system table results in a per-partition scan of T1 and T2, a one-to-many Merge Join, and a Stream Aggregate to compute the partial counts. The final Stream Aggregate just sums the partial counts. Execution time for this query is around 3,500ms, with the same IO statistics as always. This compares favourably with 5,000ms for the serial plan produced by the optimizer with the OPTION (MERGE JOIN) hint. This is another case of the sum of the parts being less than the whole – summing 41 partial counts from 41 single-partition merge joins is faster than a single merge join and count over all partitions. Even so, this single-threaded collocated merge join is not as quick as the original parallel hash join plan, which executed in 2,600ms. On the positive side, our collocated merge join uses only one logical processor and requires no memory grant. The parallel hash join plan used 16 threads and reserved 569 MB of memory:   Using a Temporary Table Our collocated merge join plan should benefit from parallelism. The reason parallelism is not being used is that the query references a system table. We can work around that by writing the partition numbers to a temporary table (or table variable): SET STATISTICS IO ON; DECLARE @s datetime2 = SYSUTCDATETIME();   CREATE TABLE #P ( partition_number integer PRIMARY KEY);   INSERT #P (partition_number) SELECT p.partition_number FROM sys.partitions AS p WHERE p.[object_id] = OBJECT_ID(N'T1', N'U') AND p.index_id = 1;   SELECT row_count = SUM(Subtotals.cnt) FROM #P AS p CROSS APPLY ( SELECT cnt = COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T1 AS T1 JOIN dbo.T2 AS T2 ON T2.TID = T1.TID WHERE $PARTITION.PFT(T1.TID) = p.partition_number AND $PARTITION.PFT(T2.TID) = p.partition_number ) AS SubTotals;   DROP TABLE #P;   SELECT DATEDIFF(Millisecond, @s, SYSUTCDATETIME()); SET STATISTICS IO OFF; Using the temporary table adds a few logical reads, but the overall execution time is still around 3500ms, indistinguishable from the same query without the temporary table. The problem is that the query optimizer still doesn’t choose a parallel plan for this query, though the removal of the system table reference means that it could if it chose to: In fact the optimizer did enter the parallel plan phase of query optimization (running search 1 for a second time): Unfortunately, the parallel plan found seemed to be more expensive than the serial plan. This is a crazy result, caused by the optimizer’s cost model not reducing operator CPU costs on the inner side of a nested loops join. Don’t get me started on that, we’ll be here all night. In this plan, everything expensive happens on the inner side of a nested loops join. Without a CPU cost reduction to compensate for the added cost of exchange operators, candidate parallel plans always look more expensive to the optimizer than the equivalent serial plan. Parallel Collocated Merge Join We can produce the desired parallel plan using trace flag 8649 again: SELECT row_count = SUM(Subtotals.cnt) FROM #P AS p CROSS APPLY ( SELECT cnt = COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T1 AS T1 JOIN dbo.T2 AS T2 ON T2.TID = T1.TID WHERE $PARTITION.PFT(T1.TID) = p.partition_number AND $PARTITION.PFT(T2.TID) = p.partition_number ) AS SubTotals OPTION (QUERYTRACEON 8649); The actual execution plan is: One difference between this plan and the collocated hash join plan is that a Repartition Streams exchange operator is used instead of Distribute Streams. The effect is similar, though not quite identical. The Repartition uses round-robin partitioning, meaning the next partition id is pushed to the next thread in sequence. The Distribute Streams exchange seen earlier used Demand partitioning, meaning the next partition id is pulled across the exchange by the next thread that is ready for more work. There are subtle performance implications for each partitioning option, but going into that would again take us too far off the main point of this post. Performance The important thing is the performance of this parallel collocated merge join – just 1350ms on a typical run. The list below shows all the alternatives from this post (all timings include creation, population, and deletion of the temporary table where appropriate) from quickest to slowest: Collocated parallel merge join: 1350ms Parallel hash join: 2600ms Collocated serial merge join: 3500ms Serial merge join: 5000ms Parallel merge join: 8400ms Collated parallel hash join: 25,300ms (hash spill per partition) The parallel collocated merge join requires no memory grant (aside from a paltry 1.2MB used for exchange buffers). This plan uses 16 threads at DOP 8; but 8 of those are (rather pointlessly) allocated to the parallel scan of the temporary table. These are minor concerns, but it turns out there is a way to address them if it bothers you. Parallel Collocated Merge Join with Demand Partitioning This final tweak replaces the temporary table with a hard-coded list of partition ids (dynamic SQL could be used to generate this query from sys.partitions): SELECT row_count = SUM(Subtotals.cnt) FROM ( VALUES (1),(2),(3),(4),(5),(6),(7),(8),(9),(10), (11),(12),(13),(14),(15),(16),(17),(18),(19),(20), (21),(22),(23),(24),(25),(26),(27),(28),(29),(30), (31),(32),(33),(34),(35),(36),(37),(38),(39),(40),(41) ) AS P (partition_number) CROSS APPLY ( SELECT cnt = COUNT_BIG(*) FROM dbo.T1 AS T1 JOIN dbo.T2 AS T2 ON T2.TID = T1.TID WHERE $PARTITION.PFT(T1.TID) = p.partition_number AND $PARTITION.PFT(T2.TID) = p.partition_number ) AS SubTotals OPTION (QUERYTRACEON 8649); The actual execution plan is: The parallel collocated hash join plan is reproduced below for comparison: The manual rewrite has another advantage that has not been mentioned so far: the partial counts (per partition) can be computed earlier than the partial counts (per thread) in the optimizer’s collocated join plan. The earlier aggregation is performed by the extra Stream Aggregate under the nested loops join. The performance of the parallel collocated merge join is unchanged at around 1350ms. Final Words It is a shame that the current query optimizer does not consider a collocated merge join (Connect item closed as Won’t Fix). The example used in this post showed an improvement in execution time from 2600ms to 1350ms using a modestly-sized data set and limited parallelism. In addition, the memory requirement for the query was almost completely eliminated  – down from 569MB to 1.2MB. The problem with the parallel hash join selected by the optimizer is that it attempts to process the full data set all at once (albeit using eight threads). It requires a large memory grant to hold all 5 million rows from table T1 across the eight hash tables, and does not take advantage of the divide-and-conquer opportunity offered by the common partitioning. The great thing about the collocated join strategies is that each parallel thread works on a single partition from both tables, reading rows, performing the join, and computing a per-partition subtotal, before moving on to a new partition. From a thread’s point of view… If you have trouble visualizing what is happening from just looking at the parallel collocated merge join execution plan, let’s look at it again, but from the point of view of just one thread operating between the two Parallelism (exchange) operators. Our thread picks up a single partition id from the Distribute Streams exchange, and starts a merge join using ordered rows from partition 1 of table T1 and partition 1 of table T2. By definition, this is all happening on a single thread. As rows join, they are added to a (per-partition) count in the Stream Aggregate immediately above the Merge Join. Eventually, either T1 (partition 1) or T2 (partition 1) runs out of rows and the merge join stops. The per-partition count from the aggregate passes on through the Nested Loops join to another Stream Aggregate, which is maintaining a per-thread subtotal. Our same thread now picks up a new partition id from the exchange (say it gets id 9 this time). The count in the per-partition aggregate is reset to zero, and the processing of partition 9 of both tables proceeds just as it did for partition 1, and on the same thread. Each thread picks up a single partition id and processes all the data for that partition, completely independently from other threads working on other partitions. One thread might eventually process partitions (1, 9, 17, 25, 33, 41) while another is concurrently processing partitions (2, 10, 18, 26, 34) and so on for the other six threads at DOP 8. The point is that all 8 threads can execute independently and concurrently, continuing to process new partitions until the wider job (of which the thread has no knowledge!) is done. This divide-and-conquer technique can be much more efficient than simply splitting the entire workload across eight threads all at once. Related Reading Understanding and Using Parallelism in SQL Server Parallel Execution Plans Suck © 2013 Paul White – All Rights Reserved Twitter: @SQL_Kiwi

    Read the article

  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, December 08, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, December 08, 2010Popular ReleasesAlgorithmia: Algorithmia 1.1: Algorithmia v1.1, released on December 8th, 2010.SubtitleTools: SubtitleTools 1.1: Added a better ToUTF-8 converter (not just from windows-1256 to utf-8). Refactored OpenFileDialogs to a more MVVM friendly behavior.SuperSocket, an extensible socket application framework: SuperSocket 1.0 SP1: Fixed bugs: fixed a potential bug that the running state hadn't been updated after socket server stopped fixed a synchronization issue when clearing timeout session fixed a bug in ArraySegmentList fixed a bug on getting configuration valueHydroDesktop - CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System Desktop Application: 1.1.340: HydroDesktop 1.1 Stable Release (Build 340)CslaGenFork: CslaGenFork 4.0 CTP 2: The version is 4.0.1 CTP2 and was released 2010 December 7 and includes the following files: CslaGenFork 4.0.1-2010-12-07 Setup.msi Templates-2010-10-07.zip For getting started instructions, refer to How to section. Overview of the changes Since CTP1 there were 53 work items closed (28 features, 24 issues and 1 task). During this 60 days a lot of work has been done on several areas. First the stereotypes: EditableRoot is OK EditableChild is OK EditableRootCollection is OK Editable...My Web Pages Starter Kit: 1.3.1 Production Release (Security HOTFIX): Due to a critical security issue, it's strongly advised to update the My Web Pages Starter Kit to this version. Possible attackers could misuse the image upload to transmit any type of file to the website. If you already have a running version of My Web Pages Starter Kit 1.3.0, you can just replace the ftb.imagegallery.aspx file in the root directory with the one attached to this release.EnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.0 ALPHA: 2.2.0 ALPHAThis release adds in the changes for 4.03a. at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Updated En...ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome (jQuery Ajax helpers): 1.4: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager new stuff: popup WhiteSpaceFilterAttribute tested on mozilla, safari, chrome, opera, ie 9b/8/7/6nopCommerce. ASP.NET open source shopping cart: nopCommerce 1.90: To see the full list of fixes and changes please visit the release notes page (http://www.nopCommerce.com/releasenotes.aspx).TweetSharp: TweetSharp v2.0.0.0 - Preview 4: Documentation for this release may be found at http://tweetsharp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=UserGuide&referringTitle=Documentation. Note: This code is currently preview quality. Preview 4 ChangesReintroduced fluent interface support via satellite assembly Added entities support, entity segmentation, and ITweetable/ITweeter interfaces for client development Numerous fixes reported by preview users Preview 3 ChangesNumerous fixes and improvements to core engine Twitter API coverage: a...myCollections: Version 1.2: New in version 1.2: Big performance improvement. New Design (Added Outlook style View, New detail view, New Groub By...) Added Sort by Media Added Manage Movie Studio Zoom preference is now saved. Media name are now editable. Added Portuguese version You can now Hide details panel Add support for FLAC tags You can now imports books from BibTex Xml file BugFixingmytrip.mvc (CMS & e-Commerce): mytrip.mvc 1.0.49.0 beta: mytrip.mvc 1.0.49.0 beta web Web for install hosting System Requirements: NET 4.0, MSSQL 2008 or MySql (auto creation table to database) if .\SQLEXPRESS auto creation database (App_Data folder) mytrip.mvc 1.0.49.0 beta src System Requirements: Visual Studio 2010 or Web Deweloper 2010 MSSQL 2008 or MySql (auto creation table to database) if .\SQLEXPRESS auto creation database (App_Data folder) Connector/Net 6.3.4, MVC3 RC WARNING For run and debug mytrip.mvc 1.0.49.0 beta src download and ...MiniTwitter: 1.62: MiniTwitter 1.62 ???? ?? ??????????????????????????????????????? 140 ?????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????? ?? ??????????????????????????????????Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.0 (December 2010): The release is targetted for stable daily use. With improved performance and enhanced compatibility with several latest PHP open source applications; it makes this release perfect replacement of your old PHP runtime. Changes made within this release include following and much more: Performance improvements based on real-world applications experience. We determined biggest bottlenecks and we found and removed overheads causing performance problems in many PHP applications. Reimplemented nat...Chronos WPF: Chronos v2.0 Beta 3: Release notes: Updated introduction document. Updated Visual Studio 2010 Extension (vsix) package. Added horizontal scrolling to the main window TaskBar. Added new styles for ListView, ListViewItem, GridViewColumnHeader, ... Added a new WindowViewModel class (allowing to fetch data). Added a new Navigate method (with several overloads) to the NavigationViewModel class (protected). Reimplemented Task usage for the WorkspaceViewModel.OnDelete method. Removed the reflection effect...MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.26.7024: Fixed updater; Fixed MegauploadDJ - jQuery WebControls for ASP.NET: DJ 1.2: What is new? Update to support jQuery 1.4.2 Update to support jQuery ui 1.8.6 Update to Visual Studio 2010 New WebControls with samples added Autocomplete WebControl Button WebControl ToggleButt WebControl The example web site is including in source code project.LateBindingApi.Excel: LateBindingApi.Excel Release 0.7g: Unterschiede zur Vorgängerversion: - Zusätzliche Interior Properties - Group / Ungroup Methoden für Range - Bugfix COM Reference Handling für Application Objekt in einigen Klassen Release+Samples V0.7g: - Enthält Laufzeit DLL und Beispielprojekte Beispielprojekte: COMAddinExample - Demonstriert ein versionslos angebundenes COMAddin Example01 - Background Colors und Borders für Cells Example02 - Font Attributes undAlignment für Cells Example03 - Numberformats Example04 - Shapes, WordArts, P...ESRI ArcGIS Silverlight Toolkit: November 2010 - v2.1: ESRI ArcGIS Silverlight Toolkit v2.1 Added Windows Phone 7 build. New controls added: InfoWindow ChildPage (Windows Phone 7 only) See what's new here full details for : http://help.arcgis.com/en/webapi/silverlight/help/#/What_s_new_in_2_1/016600000025000000/ Note: Requires Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4.0 and Silverlight 4.0.ASP .NET MVC CMS (Content Management System): Atomic CMS 2.1.1: Atomic CMS 2.1.1 release notes Atomic CMS installation guide New ProjectsCore Motives Tracking Web Part: This C# web part was created to allow users of SharePoint 2007 to place CoreMotives (http://www.coremotives.com) tracking code on any web part page. Can also be used in master pages and page layouts.CPEBook: OsefEatFrsh: Keep Track of contents of your Fridge. Eat items while they are still fresh.ENUH10Publisher: Et prosjekt for studenter ved eCademy H10EVE Community Portal: EVE Community Portal is a complete community portal for EVE alliances (and corporations), which will host everything an eve alliance needs, from a forum and blogs to every tool you could whish for and more...FER CSLA.NET Compact: .NET Compact Framework edition of CSLA.NET application framework.Finger Mouse: it's a good idea and simple program help you to use the mouse feature from webcam (without mouse) note : you should have i3 or higher processorGambaru: Gambaru é um techdemo de um game 3D desenvolvido em Delphi. Utiliza engine de física Newton e Open GL (pacote GL-Scene). Foi apresentado como trabalho de conclusão de curso no SENAC-SP por Marcelo, Daniel e Thais em 2007. Exploramos o universo Samurai. Contribua, programe, sonhe!GameBoyEmu: ????,GameBoy ???GenericList Inherits IDataReader ( ListEx<T>() : IDataReader ): This Generic List implements the IDataReader interface and displays the usage of Linq, Lamba expressions and some creative thought around working with collection types. I hope it can serve as reference to your projects.Guard: Provides the argument validation class Guard, ubiquitously used throughout all .NET projects but with no central place for updates.HolidayChecker Library: HolidayChecker Library is a usefull library that allows programmers to know if a certain date is a festivity or not. This library also allows the calculation of Easter day based on the algorithm of Tondering. It's developed in C#.JuniorTour - Junior Golf Tour Silverlight Application: JuniorTour makes it easier for golf tour operators to publish tournament results for multiple divisions and multiple seasons. You'll no longer have to manually edit player pages, tournament results, or compute rankings. It's developed in C# and Silverlight.LibGT: LibGT aims to reduce the amount of overall code a programmer has to write in C#. This library provides many shortcuts and extension methods to facilitate robust development rapidly even without the use of an IDE.Mayhem: Mayhem makes it simple for end users to control complex events with their PCs. Whether you want to Update a Twitter status when your cat is detected by your webcam or monitor your serial ports and trigger events, it's no problem with Mayhem -- wreak your own personal havoc.mmht: ???????,??????MobilePolice: my mobilepolice projectOpenCallback: This is a implementation of the callback handler pattern that allows you to invoke the callback handle methods with out type switching or if...else if chains.Project Baron: Simple, yet powerful Project Management System.PS3Lib for SDK 1.92: Création d'une librairie de ceveloppement pour le SDK 1.92Remote Controller for Trackmania: Evzrecon is a remote controller for Trackmania Forever dedicated servers, much like XASECO but written in Java.SharePointSocial: SharePointSocial is focused on taking social interaction within SharePoint to the next level, extending beyond the corporate boundaries. Corporate listening, one-click interaction through key social media outlets and data-driven management and reporting are planned features.SIGS: ssSimple Routing: Simple Routing allows you to associate arbitrary routes with static methods in an ASP.NET application through attribution.SlimCRM: Aplicación de referencia de buenas prácticas de programaciónTalkBoard: ????????,?????????!uHelpsy - Umbraco Helper Library: uHelpsy is a tiny (but growing) library which makes programatically interacting with Umbraco 4.5.2 much more pleasant. It provides helper methods for creating and updating nodes, working with the Umbraco cache, and dealing with unpublished nodes. VCSS: VCSS is a decorated version of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) that allows you to specify variables and also nest rules. The VCSS file can be compiled into a standard CSS file to be used on any website.Vote: ?,???????????????!WP7 GPS Simulator: Use this project to simulate GPS while doing development on your Windows Phone 7.WPF_CAD: this proyect it's a college proyect form grafic computer course. Consist in the development of a cad soft implementing all grafics algoritms.Xml-Racing: Réaliser une application Web 3-tiers qui permette d'interroger une BD et de restituer les infos sous forme de graphiques et cartes.

    Read the article

  • Need help with PHP web app bootstrapping error potentially related to Zend [migrated]

    - by Matt Shepherd
    I am trying to get a program called OpenFISMA running on an Ubuntu AMI in AWS. The app is not really coded on the Ubuntu platform, but I am in my comfort zone there, and have tried both CentOS and OpenSUSE (both are sort of "native" for the app) for getting it working with the same or worse results. So, why not just get it working on Ubuntu? Anyway, the app is found here: www.openfisma.org and an install guide is found here: https://openfisma.atlassian.net/wiki/display/030100/Installation+Guide The install guide kind of sucks. It doesn't list dependencies in any coherent way or provide much of any detail (does not even mention Zend once on the entire page) so I've done a lot of work to divine the information I do have. This page provided some dependency inf (though again, Zend is not mentioned once): https://openfisma.atlassian.net/wiki/display/PUBLIC/RPM+Management#RPMManagement-BasicOverviewofRPMPackages Anyway, I got all the way through the install (so far as I could reconstruct it). I am going to the login page for the first time, and there should be some sort of bootstrapping occurring when I load the page. (I am not a programmer so I have no idea what it is doing there.) Anyway, I get a message on the web page that says: "An exception occurred while bootstrapping the application." So, then I go look in /var/www/data/logs/php.log and find this message: [22-Oct-2013 17:29:18 UTC] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Zend_Exception' with message 'No entry is registered for key 'Zend_Log'' in /var/www/library/Zend/Registry.php:147 Stack trace: #0 /var/www/public/index.php(188): Zend_Registry::get('Zend_Log') #1 {main} thrown in /var/www/library/Zend/Registry.php on line 147 This occurs every time I load the page. I gather there is an issue related to registering the Zend_Log variable in the Zend registry, but other than that I really have no idea what to do about it. Am I missing a package that it needs, or is this app not coded to register the variables properly? I have no clue. Any help is greatly appreciated. The application file referenced in the log message (index.php) is included below. <?php /** * Copyright (c) 2008 Endeavor Systems, Inc. * * This file is part of OpenFISMA. * * OpenFISMA is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public * License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later * version. * * OpenFISMA is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied * warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more * details. * * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with OpenFISMA. If not, see * {@link http://www.gnu.org/licenses/}. */ try { defined('APPLICATION_PATH') || define( 'APPLICATION_PATH', realpath(dirname(__FILE__) . '/../application') ); // Define application environment defined('APPLICATION_ENV') || define( 'APPLICATION_ENV', (getenv('APPLICATION_ENV') ? getenv('APPLICATION_ENV') : 'production') ); set_include_path( APPLICATION_PATH . '/../library/Symfony/Components' . PATH_SEPARATOR . APPLICATION_PATH . '/../library' . PATH_SEPARATOR . get_include_path() ); require_once 'Fisma.php'; require_once 'Zend/Application.php'; $application = new Zend_Application( APPLICATION_ENV, APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/application.ini' ); Fisma::setAppConfig($application->getOptions()); Fisma::initialize(Fisma::RUN_MODE_WEB_APP); $application->bootstrap()->run(); } catch (Zend_Config_Exception $zce) { // A zend config exception indicates that the application may not be installed properly echo '<h1>The application is not installed correctly</h1>'; $zceMsg = $zce->getMessage(); if (stristr($zceMsg, 'parse_ini_file') !== false) { if (stristr($zceMsg, 'application.ini') !== false) { if (stristr($zceMsg, 'No such file or directory') !== false) { echo 'The ' . APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/application.ini file is missing.'; } elseif (stristr($zceMsg, 'Permission denied') !== false) { echo 'The ' . APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/application.ini file does not have the ' . 'appropriate permissions set for the application to read it.'; } else { echo 'An ini-parsing error has occured in ' . APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/application.ini ' . '<br/>Please check this file and make sure everything is setup correctly.'; } } else if (stristr($zceMsg, 'database.ini') !== false) { if (stristr($zceMsg, 'No such file or directory') !== false) { echo 'The ' . APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/database.ini file is missing.<br/>'; echo 'If you find a database.ini.template file in the config directory, edit this file ' . 'appropriately and rename it to database.ini'; } elseif (stristr($zceMsg, 'Permission denied') !== false) { echo 'The ' . APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/database.ini file does not have the appropriate ' . 'permissions set for the application to read it.'; } else { echo 'An ini-parsing error has occured in ' . APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/database.ini ' . '<br/>Please check this file and make sure everything is setup correctly.'; } } else { echo 'An ini-parsing error has occured. <br/>Please check all configuration files and make sure ' . 'everything is setup correctly'; } } elseif (stristr($zceMsg, 'syntax error') !== false) { if (stristr($zceMsg, 'application.ini') !== false) { echo 'There is a syntax error in ' . APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/application.ini ' . '<br/>Please check this file and make sure everything is setup correctly.'; } elseif (stristr($zceMsg, 'database.ini') !== false) { echo 'There is a syntax error in ' . APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/database.ini ' . '<br/>Please check this file and make sure everything is setup correctly.'; } else { echo 'A syntax error has been reached. <br/>Please check all configuration files and make sure ' . 'everything is setup correctly.'; } } else { // Then the exception message says nothing about parse_ini_file nor 'syntax error' echo 'Please check all configuration files, and ensure all settings are valid.'; } echo '<br/>For more information and help on installing OpenFISMA, please refer to the ' . '<a target="_blank" href="http://manual.openfisma.org/display/ADMIN/Installation">' . 'Installation Guide</a>'; } catch (Doctrine_Manager_Exception $dme) { echo '<h1>An exception occurred while bootstrapping the application.</h1>'; // Does database.ini have valid settings? Or is it the same content as database.ini.template? $databaseIniFail = false; $iniData = file(APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/database.ini'); $iniData = str_replace(chr(10), '', $iniData); if (in_array('db.adapter = ##DB_ADAPTER##', $iniData)) { $databaseIniFail = true; } if (in_array('db.host = ##DB_HOST##', $iniData)) { $databaseIniFail = true; } if (in_array('db.port = ##DB_PORT##', $iniData)) { $databaseIniFail = true; } if (in_array('db.username = ##DB_USER##', $iniData)) { $databaseIniFail = true; } if (in_array('db.password = ##DB_PASS##', $iniData)) { $databaseIniFail = true; } if (in_array('db.schema = ##DB_NAME##', $iniData)) { $databaseIniFail = true; } if ($databaseIniFail) { echo 'You have not applied the settings in ' . APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/database.ini appropriately. ' . 'Please review the contents of this file and try again.'; } else { if (Fisma::debug()) { echo '<p>' . get_class($dme) . '</p><p>' . $dme->getMessage() . '</p><p>' . "<p><pre>Stack Trace:\n" . $dme->getTraceAsString() . '</pre></p>'; } else { $logString = get_class($dme) . "\n" . $dme->getMessage() . "\nStack Trace:\n" . $dme->getTraceAsString() . "\n"; Zend_Registry::get('Zend_Log')->err($logString); } } } catch (Exception $exception) { // If a bootstrap exception occurs, that indicates a serious problem, such as a syntax error. // We won't be able to do anything except display an error. echo '<h1>An exception occurred while bootstrapping the application.</h1>'; if (Fisma::debug()) { echo '<p>' . get_class($exception) . '</p><p>' . $exception->getMessage() . '</p><p>' . "<p><pre>Stack Trace:\n" . $exception->getTraceAsString() . '</pre></p>'; } else { $logString = get_class($exception) . "\n" . $exception->getMessage() . "\nStack Trace:\n" . $exception->getTraceAsString() . "\n"; Zend_Registry::get('Zend_Log')->err($logString); } }

    Read the article

  • Do’s and Don’ts Building SharePoint Applications

    - by Bil Simser
    SharePoint is a great platform for building quick LOB applications. Simple things from employee time trackers to server and software inventory to full blown Help Desks can be crafted up using SharePoint from just customizing Lists. No programming necessary. However there are a few tricks I’ve painfully learned over the years that you can use for your own solutions. DO What’s In A Name? When you create a new list, column, or view you’ll commonly name it something like “Expense Reports”. However this has the ugly effect of creating a url to the list as “Expense%20Reports”. Or worse, an internal field name of “Expense_x0x0020_Reports” which is not only cryptic but hard to remember when you’re trying to find the column by internal name. While “Expense Reports 2011” is user friendly, “ExpenseReports2011” is not (unless you’re a programmer). So that’s not the solution. Well, not entirely. Instead when you create your column or list or view use the scrunched up name (I can’t think of the technical term for it right now) of “ExpenseReports2011”, “WomenAtTheOfficeThatAreMen” or “KoalaMeatIsGoodWhenBroiled”. After you’ve created it, go back and change the name to the more friendly “Silly Expense Reports That Nobody Reads”. The original internal name will be the url and code friendly one without spaces while the one used on data entry forms and view headers will be the human version. Smart Columns When building a view include columns that make sense. By default when you add a column the “Add to default view” is checked. Resist the urge to be lazy and leave it checked. Uncheck that puppy and decide consciously what columns should be included in the view. Pick columns that make sense to what the user is trying to do. This means you have to talk to the user. Yes, I know. That can be trying at times and even painful. Go ahead, talk to them. You might learn something. Find out what’s important to them and why. If they’re doing something repetitively as part of their job, try to make their life easier by including what’s most important to them. Do they really need to see the Created *and* Modified date of a document or do they just need the title and author? You’ll only find out after talking to them (or getting them drunk in a bar and leaving them in the back alley handcuffed to a garbage bin, don’t ask). Gotta Keep it Separated Hey, views are there for a reason. Use them. While “All Items” is a fine way to present a list of well, all items, it’s hardly sufficient to present a list of servers built before the Y2K bug hit. You’ll be scrolling the list for hours finally arriving at Page 387 of 12,591 and cursing that SharePoint guy for convincing you that putting your hardware into a list would be of any use to anyone. Next to collecting the data, presenting it is just as important. Views are often overlooked and many times ignored or misused. They’re the way you can slice and dice the data up so that you’re not trying to consume 3,000 years of human evolution on a single web page. Remember views can be filtered so feel free to create a view for each status or one for each operating system or one for each species of Information Worker you might be putting in that list or document library. Not only will it reduce the number of items someone sees at one time, it’ll also make the information that much more relevant. Also remember that each view is a separate page. Use it in navigation by creating a menu on the Quick Launch to each view. The discoverability of the Views menu isn’t overly obvious and if you violate the rule of columns (see Horizontally Scrolling below) the view menu doesn’t even show up until you shuffle the scroll bar to the left. Navigation links, big giant buttons, a screaming flashing “CLICK ME NOW” will help your users find their way. Sort It! Views are great so we’re building nice, rich views for the user. Awesomesauce. However sort is not very discoverable by the user. For example when you’re looking at a view how do you know if it’s ascending or descending and what is it sorted on. Maybe it’s sorted using two fields so what’s that all about? Help your users by letting them know the information they’re looking at is sorted. Maybe you name the view something appropriate like “Bogus Expense Claims Sorted By Deadbeats”. If you use the naming strategy just make sure you keep the name consistent with the description. In the previous example their better be a Deadbeat column so I can see the sort in action. Having a “Loser” column, while equally correct, is a little obtuse to the average Information Worker. Remember, they usually don’t use acronyms and even if they knew how to, it’s not immediately obvious to them that’s what you’re trying to convey. Another option is to simply drop a Content Editor Web Part above the list and explain exactly the view they’re looking at. Each view is it’s own page so one CEWP won’t be used across the board. Be descriptive in what the user is seeing but try to keep it brief. Dumping the first chapter of I, Claudius might be informative to the data but can gobble up screen real estate and miss the point of having the list. DO NOT Useless Attachments The attachments column is, in a word, useless. For the most part. Sure it indicates there’s an attachment on the list item but in the grand scheme of things that’s not overly informative. Maybe it is and by all means, if it makes sense to you include it. Colour it. Make it shine and stand like the Return of Clippy on every SharePoint list. Without it being functional it can be boring. EndUserSharePoint.com has an article to make the son of Clippy that much more useful so feel free to head over and check out this blog post by Paul Grenier on the task (Warning code ahead! Danger Will Robinson!) In any case, I would suggest you remove it from your views. Again if it’s important then include it but consider the jQuery solution above to make it functional. It’s added by default to views and one of things that people forget to clean up. Horizontal Scrolling Screen real estate is premium so building a list that contains 8,000 columns and stretches horizontally across 15 screens probably isn’t the most user friendly experience. Most users can’t figure out how to scroll vertically let alone horizontally so don’t make it even that more confusing for them. Take the Steve Krug approach in your view designs and try not to make the user think. Again views are your friend. Consider splitting up the data into views where one view contains 10 columns and other view contains the other 10. Okay, maybe your information doesn’t work that way but humans can only process 7 pieces of data at a time, 10 at most (then their heads explode and you don’t want to clean that mess up, especially on a Friday night before the big dance). It drives me batshit crazy when I see a view with 80 columns of data. I often ask the user “So what do you do with all this information”. The response is usually “With this data [the first 10 columns] I decide if I’m going to fire everyone, and with this data [the next 10 columns] I decide if I’m going to set the building on fire and collect the insurance”. It’s at that point I show them how to create two new views “People Who Are About To Get The Axe” and “Beach Time For The Executives”. Again, talk to your users and try to reason with them on cutting down the number of columns they see at once. Vertical Scrolling Another big faux pas I find is the use of multi-line comment fields in views. It’s not so bad when you have a statement like this in your view: “I really like, oh my god, thought I was going to scream when I saw this turtle then I decided what I was going to have for dinner and frankly I hate having to work late so when I was talking to the customer I thought, oh my god, what if the customer has turtles and then it appeared to me that I really was hungry so I'm going to have lunch now.” It’s fine if that’s the only column along with two or three others, but once you slap those 20 columns of data into the list, the comment field wraps and forms a new multi-page novel that takes up your entire screen. Do everyone a favour and just avoid adding the column to views. Train the user to just click through to the item if they need to see the contents. Duplicate Information Duplication is never good. Views and great as you can group data together. For example create a view of project status reports grouped by author. Then you can see what project manager is being a dip and not submitting their report. However if you group by author do you really need the Created By field as well in the view? Or if the view is grouped by Project then Author do you need both. Horizontal real estate is always at a premium so try not to clutter up the view with duplicate data like this. Oh  yeah, if you’re scratching your head saying “But Bil, if I don’t include the Project name in the view and I have a lot of items then how do I know which one I’m looking at”. That’s a hint that your grouping is too vague or you have too much data in the view based on that criteria. Filter it down a notch, create some views, and try to keep the group down to a single screen where you can see the group header at the top of the page. Again it’s just managing the information you have. Redundant, See Redundant This partially relates to duplicate information and smart columns but basically remember to not include the obvious in a view. Remember, don’t make me think. If you’ve gone to the trouble (and it was a lot of trouble wasn’t it?) to create separate views of your data by creating a “September Zombie Brain Sales”, “October Zombie Brain Sales”, etc. then please for the love of all that is holy do not include the Month and Product columns in your view. Similarly if you create a “My” view of anything (“My Favourite Brands of Spandex”, “My Co-Workers I Find The Urge To Disinfect”) then again, do not include the owner or author field (or whatever field you use to identify “My”). That’s just silly. Hope that helps! Happy customizing!

    Read the article

  • NINE Questions with Michelle Juett

    - by NINEQuestions
    Michelle Juett is one of the more interesting people I know, even though we’ve never met face to face. She’s part artist, part techie and all cool. We “met” via my good buddy George Clingerman and have plotting to take over the world, errr… I mean “collaborating” ever since. If you happen to live in the Seattle area, you can catch her and her work at Sakura Con on April 2-4, 2010 and various other gamer and art cons throughout the year. You can also find her on Twitter as @Shelldragon. Now that you know a little bit, I’ll let her tell you the rest of the story in these NINE Questions: 1. Where are you from? I was born in Clearwater, Florida. I like to tell people I'm from the Bermuda Triangle, it just makes explaining myself so much easier. My family moved to Washington when I was 5 and I've been in the Pacific Northwest ever since. We like to QQ about the rain but we really love the green trees and clean water. 2. What do you do? I fight evil by moonlight and win love by daylight.. or something like that.  I’ve been in quality assurance for games during the day since January 2008 and an artist for life. I currently work in QA for a really awesome game company in Bellevue.  At home, I work on personal digital art, making game assets as well as other random freelance projects as they pop up. 3. How did you get to where you are now? I'm still not where I want to be but I'm getting closer. The biggest piece of advice I can give is to work hard and never settle for the minimum required. I tend to overwork myself but I've never regretted it. You can want something really bad but if you aren't willing to work for it, then you can't expect it to just happen. I've always drawn and had an unhealthy love for video games that I was told I’d grow out of.  I knew I would not ‘grow out’ of games and that real adults make them and I could too. After I graduated, in searching for jobs, I discovered game testing. I figured this would be a good way to get my foot in the door and start networking. I’ve worked with consoles, websites and now, PC games.  I stuck with my journey, although it has been a rocky one, daylighting as a tester and moonlighting as an artist. I'm still on that journey but I wouldn't have it any other way. Test has given me a perspective that is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain any other way. It gives an unconditional respect for other hard working testers and an insight into creative problem solving. 4. So video game testing probably sounds WAY cooler than the reality. What's it like? What's a given day for you? Game testers don't get a lot of respect because of their stigmas and the fact most people don't actually know what we do.  People hear about the opening and closing disc trays all day. Many places do treat their testers like numbers. It all depends on where you work and how awesome your company is. I've had to deal with a lot of bad work situations to get to a really good one. QA exists to ensure the game is as flawless and enjoyable as it can be by the time it has to leave the nest and go out into the world. This includes everything obvious: “can I beat the level and save the princess?” to the more obscure: ‘What happens when I lose internet connection while trying to save right before falling into a pit to my death while holding the jump key then my cat pulls out my memory card and hides it in her litter box?” On the dev side, for developers, testers can be very scary people. Especially when the test team is not in house and you can’t see each other’s faces.  I've seen both sides. We don't mean to hurt your feelings. We really DO love you and want your game to be the best it can be! It can be some serious tough love. 5. You are also an accomplished artist. Got any major projects right now you'd like to talk about? LOL, I don't know if I’d say I'm an accomplished artist just yet. I’m still a long way from where I want to be. I figure that’s what makes you grow though: the desire to never stop improving. I like QA but I want to be a full time artist. I was lucky enough to register for a table at Sakura Con in the 11 second window that the tables sold out. As such, I’ll be selling my wares in the Artist Alley April 2-4th. Part of preparing for this is actually making the art to be sold there. Anime is a fun pass time but I don’t draw a whole lot of it so I’m making up for lost time. As I seem to enjoy burying myself in work, I’m an art lead for a secret project that’s so secret I might be killed tonight for even mentioning it. I also take on various freelance projects and do what I can to help out indie games. I discovered the XNA community a year and a half ago and developed a love for Indies when I was writing a weekly newsletter on XBLA news. I’m a little late to the party but I find myself in a unique position where I am an artist and also have technical skills in games. While not programmer myself, I have a lot of game sense and experience. I hope to make some awesome happen. Lastly, I have an ongoing web comic Shell’s Angels) that tends to get neglected when I get busy. I still love drawing comics and keep a little book with me to sketch down ideas as they pop into my head. I may pick it back up again as a larger project sometime in the future. 6. Can you talk about any of the other freelance projects you're doing or are you sworn to secrecy on those too? We wouldn't want a team of game developer ninjas to take you out or anything. All my projects are currently 2d. I have personal projects such as the ongoing comic as well as a graphic novel I've been picking at here and there. My main focus until April is Sakura Con, Sakura Con, Sakura Con.  I see it as a great way to get exposure and convention experience. I found out I love conventions a couple years ago and I want to get more involved in them. 7. As an artist, what is your weapon of choice? What do you use to get most of your stuff done? I am a Photoshop Hero and I have the hoodie to prove it. (http://www.pennyarcademerch.com/pah090011.html) I've dabbled in other paint programs but I always gravitate back to Photoshop. She is my one true love. I'd like to learn programs like Flash or Anime Studio when I get a bit more time because of their animation abilities. I've worked on frame by frame animation forever but I would love to learn 2d rigging. Still, nothing can compare to a simple sketchpad and a pencil. I always have one on me in case I come across or think of something interesting and can't get to a computer. If the Courier ever comes to exist it will be an ideal weapon for me. 8. You did some videos too, depicting the art creation process. What was the motivation behind those? The creative process is just as important as the final product, if not more so.  I've always loved watching speed paint videos and wanted to try it out myself. Turns out it's a lot of work and time but it's definitely fun to go back and rewatch them. Art isn't always the end result and is more often the process itself. 9. Got any interesting tattoos? Designed any for yourself or other people? Not yet, but not for lack of desire. I've toiled over what and where for years. Last year, I finally decided the back of my shoulders would be the place. Like anything permanent, I want it to have meaning. I thought of somehow incorporating games but I couldn't find something I felt would stand the test of time even with all the classic sprite games. I'm very picky so we'll see if I can get something solid decided. Come see me at Sakura Con April 2 -4!!!

    Read the article

  • Time Warp

    - by Jesse
    It’s no secret that daylight savings time can wreak havoc on systems that rely heavily on dates. The system I work on is centered around recording dates and times, so naturally my co-workers and I have seen our fair share of date-related bugs. From time to time, however, we come across something that we haven’t seen before. A few weeks ago the following error message started showing up in our logs: “The supplied DateTime represents an invalid time. For example, when the clock is adjusted forward, any time in the period that is skipped is invalid.” This seemed very cryptic, especially since it was coming from areas of our application that are typically only concerned with capturing date-only (no explicit time component) from the user, like reports that take a “start date” and “end date” parameter. For these types of parameters we just leave off the time component when capturing the date values, so midnight is used as a “placeholder” time. How is midnight an “invalid time”? Globalization Is Hard Over the last couple of years our software has been rolled out to users in several countries outside of the United States, including Brazil. Brazil begins and ends daylight savings time at midnight on pre-determined days of the year. On October 16, 2011 at midnight many areas in Brazil began observing daylight savings time at which time their clocks were set forward one hour. This means that at the instant it became midnight on October 16, it actually became 1:00 AM, so any time between 12:00 AM and 12:59:59 AM never actually happened. Because we store all date values in the database in UTC, always adjust any “local” dates provided by a user to UTC before using them as filters in a query. The error we saw was thrown by .NET when trying to convert the Brazilian local time of 2011-10-16 12:00 AM to UTC since that local time never actually existed. We hadn’t experienced this same issue with any of our US customers because the daylight savings time changes in the US occur at 2:00 AM which doesn’t conflict with our “placeholder” time of midnight. Detecting Invalid Times In .NET you might use code similar to the following for converting a local time to UTC: var localDate = new DateTime(2011, 10, 16); //2011-10-16 @ midnight const string timeZoneId = "E. South America Standard Time"; //Windows system timezone Id for "Brasilia" timezone. var localTimeZone = TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById(timeZoneId); var convertedDate = TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTimeToUtc(localDate, localTimeZone); The code above throws the “invalid time” exception referenced above. We could try to detect whether or not the local time is invalid with something like this: var localDate = new DateTime(2011, 10, 16); //2011-10-16 @ midnight const string timeZoneId = "E. South America Standard Time"; //Windows system timezone Id for "Brasilia" timezone. var localTimeZone = TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById(timeZoneId); if (localTimeZone.IsInvalidTime(localDate)) localDate = localDate.AddHours(1); var convertedDate = TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTimeToUtc(localDate, localTimeZone); This code works in this particular scenario, but it hardly seems robust. It also does nothing to address the issue that can arise when dealing with the ambiguous times that fall around the end of daylight savings. When we roll the clocks back an hour they record the same hour on the same day twice in a row. To continue on with our Brazil example, on February 19, 2012 at 12:00 AM, it will immediately become February 18, 2012 at 11:00 PM all over again. In this scenario, how should we interpret February 18, 2011 11:30 PM? Enter Noda Time I heard about Noda Time, the .NET port of the Java library Joda Time, a little while back and filed it away in the back of my mind under the “sounds-like-it-might-be-useful-someday” category.  Let’s see how we might deal with the issue of invalid and ambiguous local times using Noda Time (note that as of this writing the samples below will only work using the latest code available from the Noda Time repo on Google Code. The NuGet package version 0.1.0 published 2011-08-19 will incorrectly report unambiguous times as being ambiguous) : var localDateTime = new LocalDateTime(2011, 10, 16, 0, 0); const string timeZoneId = "Brazil/East"; var timezone = DateTimeZone.ForId(timeZoneId); var localDateTimeMaping = timezone.MapLocalDateTime(localDateTime); ZonedDateTime unambiguousLocalDateTime; switch (localDateTimeMaping.Type) { case ZoneLocalMapping.ResultType.Unambiguous: unambiguousLocalDateTime = localDateTimeMaping.UnambiguousMapping; break; case ZoneLocalMapping.ResultType.Ambiguous: unambiguousLocalDateTime = localDateTimeMaping.EarlierMapping; break; case ZoneLocalMapping.ResultType.Skipped: unambiguousLocalDateTime = new ZonedDateTime( localDateTimeMaping.ZoneIntervalAfterTransition.Start, timezone); break; default: throw new InvalidOperationException(string.Format("Unexpected mapping result type: {0}", localDateTimeMaping.Type)); } var convertedDateTime = unambiguousLocalDateTime.ToInstant().ToDateTimeUtc(); Let’s break this sample down: I’m using the Noda Time ‘LocalDateTime’ object to represent the local date and time. I’ve provided the year, month, day, hour, and minute (zeros for the hour and minute here represent midnight). You can think of a ‘LocalDateTime’ as an “invalidated” date and time; there is no information available about the time zone that this date and time belong to, so Noda Time can’t make any guarantees about its ambiguity. The ‘timeZoneId’ in this sample is different than the ones above. In order to use the .NET TimeZoneInfo class we need to provide Windows time zone ids. Noda Time expects an Olson (tz / zoneinfo) time zone identifier and does not currently offer any means of mapping the Windows time zones to their Olson counterparts, though project owner Jon Skeet has said that some sort of mapping will be publicly accessible at some point in the future. I’m making use of the Noda Time ‘DateTimeZone.MapLocalDateTime’ method to disambiguate the original local date time value. This method returns an instance of the Noda Time object ‘ZoneLocalMapping’ containing information about the provided local date time maps to the provided time zone.  The disambiguated local date and time value will be stored in the ‘unambiguousLocalDateTime’ variable as an instance of the Noda Time ‘ZonedDateTime’ object. An instance of this object represents a completely unambiguous point in time and is comprised of a local date and time, a time zone, and an offset from UTC. Instances of ZonedDateTime can only be created from within the Noda Time assembly (the constructor is ‘internal’) to ensure to callers that each instance represents an unambiguous point in time. The value of the ‘unambiguousLocalDateTime’ might vary depending upon the ‘ResultType’ returned by the ‘MapLocalDateTime’ method. There are three possible outcomes: If the provided local date time is unambiguous in the provided time zone I can immediately set the ‘unambiguousLocalDateTime’ variable from the ‘Unambiguous Mapping’ property of the mapping returned by the ‘MapLocalDateTime’ method. If the provided local date time is ambiguous in the provided time zone (i.e. it falls in an hour that was repeated when moving clocks backward from Daylight Savings to Standard Time), I can use the ‘EarlierMapping’ property to get the earlier of the two possible local dates to define the unambiguous local date and time that I need. I could have also opted to use the ‘LaterMapping’ property in this case, or even returned an error and asked the user to specify the proper choice. The important thing to note here is that as the programmer I’ve been forced to deal with what appears to be an ambiguous date and time. If the provided local date time represents a skipped time (i.e. it falls in an hour that was skipped when moving clocks forward from Standard Time to Daylight Savings Time),  I have access to the time intervals that fell immediately before and immediately after the point in time that caused my date to be skipped. In this case I have opted to disambiguate my local date and time by moving it forward to the beginning of the interval immediately following the skipped period. Again, I could opt to use the end of the interval immediately preceding the skipped period, or raise an error depending on the needs of the application. The point of this code is to convert a local date and time to a UTC date and time for use in a SQL Server database, so the final ‘convertedDate’  variable (typed as a plain old .NET DateTime) has its value set from a Noda Time ‘Instant’. An 'Instant’ represents a number of ticks since 1970-01-01 at midnight (Unix epoch) and can easily be converted to a .NET DateTime in the UTC time zone using the ‘ToDateTimeUtc()’ method. This sample is admittedly contrived and could certainly use some refactoring, but I think it captures the general approach needed to take a local date and time and convert it to UTC with Noda Time. At first glance it might seem that Noda Time makes this “simple” code more complicated and verbose because it forces you to explicitly deal with the local date disambiguation, but I feel that the length and complexity of the Noda Time sample is proportionate to the complexity of the problem. Using TimeZoneInfo leaves you susceptible to overlooking ambiguous and skipped times that could result in run-time errors or (even worse) run-time data corruption in the form of a local date and time being adjusted to UTC incorrectly. I should point out that this research is my first look at Noda Time and I know that I’ve only scratched the surface of its full capabilities. I also think it’s safe to say that it’s still beta software for the time being so I’m not rushing out to use it production systems just yet, but I will definitely be tinkering with it more and keeping an eye on it as it progresses.

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194  | Next Page >