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• Productivity Tips

  - by Brian T. Jackett

  A few months ago during my first end of year review at Microsoft I was doing an assessment of my year.  One of my personal goals to come out of this reflection was to improve my personal productivity.  While I hear many people say “I wish I had more hours in the day so that I could get more done” I feel like that is the wrong approach.  There is an inherent assumption that you are being productive with your time that you already have and thus more time would allow you to be as productive given more time.    Instead of wishing I could add more hours to the day I’ve begun adopting a number of processes or behavior changes in my personal life to make better use of my time with the goal of improving productivity.  The areas of focus are as follows: Focus Processes Tools Personal health Email Note: A number of these topics have spawned from reading Scott Hanselman’s blog posts on productivity, reading of David Allen’s book Getting Things Done, and discussions with friends and coworkers who had great insights into this topic.   Focus Pre-reading / viewing: Overcome your work addiction Millennials paralyzed by choice Its Not What You Read Its What You Ignore (Scott Hanselman video)    I highly recommend Scott Hanselman’s video above and this post before continuing with this article.  It is well worth the 40+ mins price of admission for the video and couple minutes for article.  One key takeaway for me was listing out my activities in an average week and realizing which ones held little or no value to me.  We all have a finite amount of time to work each day.  Do you know how much time and effort you spend on various aspects of your life (family, friends, religion, work, personal happiness, etc.)?  Do your actions and commitments reflect your priorities?    The biggest time consumers with little value for me were time spent on social media services (Twitter and Facebook), playing an MMO video game, and watching TV.  I still check up on Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft internal chat forums, and other services to keep contact with others but I’ve reduced that time significantly.  As for TV I’ve cut the cord and no longer subscribe to cable TV.  Instead I use Netflix, RedBox, and over the air channels but again with reduced time consumption.  With the time I’ve freed up I’m back to working out 2-3 times a week and reading 4 nights a week (both of which I had been neglecting previously).  I’ll mention a few tools for helping measure your time in the Tools section.   Processes    Do not multi-task.  I’ll say it again.  Do not multi-task.  There is no such thing as multi tasking.  The human brain is optimized to work on one thing at a time.  When you are “multi-tasking” you are really doing 2 or more things at less than 100%, usually by a wide margin.  I take pride in my work and when I’m doing something less than 100% the results typically degrade rapidly.    Now there are some ways of bending the rules of physics for this one.  There is the notion of getting a double amount of work done in the same timeframe.  Some examples would be listening to podcasts / watching a movie while working out, using a treadmill as your work desk, or reading while in the bathroom.    Personally I’ve found good results in combining one task that does not require focus (making dinner, playing certain video games, working out) and one task that does (watching a movie, listening to podcasts).  I believe this is related to me being a visual and kinesthetic (using my hands or actually doing it) learner.  I’m terrible with auditory learning.  My fiance and I joke that sometimes we talk and talk to each other but never really hear each other.   Goals / Tasks    Goals can give us direction in life and a sense of accomplishment when we complete them.  Goals can also overwhelm us and give us a sense of failure when we don’t complete them.  I propose that you shift your perspective and not dwell on all of the things that you haven’t gotten done, but focus instead on regularly setting measureable goals that are within reason of accomplishing.    At the end of each time frame have a retrospective to review your progress.  Do not feel guilty about what you did not accomplish.  Feel proud of what you did accomplish and readjust your goals for the next time frame to more attainable goals.  Here is a sample schedule I’ve seen proposed by some.  I have not consistently set goals for each timeframe, but I do typically set 3 small goals a day (this blog post is #2 for today). Each day set 3 small goals Each week set 3 medium goals Each month set 1 large goal Each year set 2 very large goals   Tools    Tools are an extension of our human body.  They help us extend beyond what we can physically and mentally do.  Below are some tools I use almost daily or have found useful as of late. Disclaimer: I am not getting endorsed to promote any of these products.  I just happen to like them and find them useful. Instapaper – Save internet links for reading later.  There are many tools like this but I’ve found this to be a great one.  There is even a “read it later” JavaScript button you can add to your browser so when you navigate to a site it will then add this to your list. Stacks for Instapaper – A Windows Phone 7 app for reading my Instapaper articles on the go.  It does require a subscription to Instapaper (nominal $3 every three months) but is easily worth the cost.  Alternatively you can set up your Kindle to sync with Instapaper easily but I haven’t done so. SlapDash Podcast – Apps for Windows Phone and  Windows 8 (possibly other platforms) to sync podcast viewing / listening across multiple devices.  Now that I have my Surface RT device (which I love) this is making my consumption easier to manage. Feed Reader – Simple Windows 8 app for quickly catching up on my RSS feeds.  I used to have hundreds of unread items all the time.  Now I’m down to 20-50 regularly and it is much easier and faster to consume on my Surface RT.  There is also a free version (which I use) and I can’t see much different between the free and paid versions currently. Rescue Time – Have you ever wondered how much time you’ve spent on websites vs. email vs. “doing work”?  This service tracks your computer actions and then lets you report on them.  This can help you quantitatively identify areas where your actions are not in line with your priorities. PowerShell – Windows automation tool.  It is now built into every client and server OS.  This tool has saved me days (and I mean the full 24 hrs worth) of time and effort in the past year alone.  If you haven’t started learning PowerShell and you administrating any Windows OS or server product you need to start today. Various blogging tools – I wrote a post a couple years ago called How I Blog about my blogging process and tools used.  Almost all of it still applies today.   Personal Health    Some of these may be common sense or debatable, but I’ve found them to help prioritize my daily activities. Get plenty of sleep on a regular basis.  Sacrificing sleep too many nights a week negatively impacts your cognition, attitude, and overall health. Exercise at least three days.  Exercise could be lifting weights, taking the stairs up multiple flights of stairs, walking for 20 mins, or a number of other "non-traditional” activities.  I find that regular exercise helps with sleep and improves my overall attitude. Eat a well balanced diet.  Too much sugar, caffeine, junk food, etc. are not good for your body.  This is not a matter of losing weight but taking care of your body and helping you perform at your peak potential.   Email    Email can be one of the biggest time consumers (i.e. waster) if you aren’t careful. Time box your email usage.  Set a meeting invite for yourself if necessary to limit how much time you spend checking email. Use rules to prioritize your email.  Email from external customers, my manager, or include me directly on the To line go into my inbox.  Everything else goes a level down and I have 30+ rules to further sort it, mostly distribution lists. Use keyboard shortcuts (when available).  I use Outlook for my primary email and am constantly hitting Alt + S to send, Ctrl + 1 for my inbox, Ctrl + 2 for my calendar, Space / Tab / Shift + Tab to mark items as read, and a number of other useful commands.  Learn them and you’ll see your speed getting through emails increase. Keep emails short.  No one Few people like reading through long emails.  The first line should state exactly why you are sending the email followed by a 3-4 lines to support it.  Anything longer might be better suited as a phone call or in person discussion.   Conclusion    In this post I walked through various tips and tricks I’ve found for improving personal productivity.  It is a mix of re-focusing on the things that matter, using tools to assist in your efforts, and cutting out actions that are not aligned with your priorities.  I originally had a whole section on keyboard shortcuts, but with my recent purchase of the Surface RT I’m finding that touch gestures have replaced numerous keyboard commands that I used to need.  I see a big future in touch enabled devices.  Hopefully some of these tips help you out.  If you have any tools, tips, or ideas you would like to share feel free to add in the comments section.         -Frog Out   Links Scott Hanselman Productivity posts http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CategoryView.aspx?category=Productivity Overcome your work addiction http://blogs.hbr.org/hbsfaculty/2012/05/overcome-your-work-addiction.html?awid=5512355740280659420-3271   Millennials paralyzed by choice http://priyaparker.com/blog/millennials-paralyzed-by-choice   Its Not What You Read Its What You Ignore (video) http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ItsNotWhatYouReadItsWhatYouIgnoreVideoOfScottHanselmansPersonalProductivityTips.aspx   Cutting the cord – Jeff Blankenburg http://www.jeffblankenburg.com/2011/04/06/cutting-the-cord/   Building a sitting standing desk – Eric Harlan http://www.ericharlan.com/Everything_Else/building-a-sitting-standing-desk-a229.html   Instapaper http://www.instapaper.com/u   Stacks for Instapaper http://www.stacksforinstapaper.com/   Slapdash Podcast Windows Phone -  http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/slapdash-podcasts/90e8b121-080b-e011-9264-00237de2db9e Windows 8 - http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en-us/app/slapdash-podcasts/0c62e66a-f2e4-4403-af88-3430a821741e/m/ROW   Feed Reader http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en-us/app/feed-reader/d03199c9-8e08-469a-bda1-7963099840cc/m/ROW   Rescue Time http://www.rescuetime.com/   PowerShell Script Center http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/scriptcenter/bb410849.aspx

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• ScrollViewer.EnsureVisible for Windows Phone

  - by Daniel Moth

  In my Translator By Moth app, on both the current and saved pivot pages the need arose to programmatically scroll to the bottom. In the former, case it is when a translation takes place (if the text is too long, I want to scroll to the bottom of the translation so the user can focus on that, and not their input text for translation). In the latter case it was when a new translation is saved (it is added to the bottom of the list, so scrolling is required to make it visible). On both pages a ScrollViewer is used. In my exploration of the APIs through intellisense and msdn I could not find a method that auto scrolled to the bottom. So I hacked together a solution where I added a blank textblock to the bottom of each page (within the ScrollViewer, but above the translated textblock and the saved list) and tried to make it scroll it into view from code. After searching the web I found a little algorithm that did most of what I wanted (sorry, I do not have the reference handy, but thank you whoever it was) that after minor tweaking I turned into an extension method for the ScrollViewer that is very easy to use: this.Scroller.EnsureVisible(this.BlankText); The method itself I share with you here: public static void EnsureVisible(this System.Windows.Controls.ScrollViewer scroller, System.Windows.UIElement uiElem) { System.Diagnostics.Debug.Assert(scroller != null); System.Diagnostics.Debug.Assert(uiElem != null); scroller.UpdateLayout(); double maxScrollPos = scroller.ExtentHeight - scroller.ViewportHeight; double scrollPos = scroller.VerticalOffset - scroller.TransformToVisual(uiElem).Transform(new System.Windows.Point(0, 0)).Y; if (scrollPos > maxScrollPos) scrollPos = maxScrollPos; else if (scrollPos < 0) scrollPos = 0; scroller.ScrollToVerticalOffset(scrollPos); } I am sure there are better ways, but this "worked for me" :-) Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Development costs of an indie multiplayer arcade shooter

  - by VorteX

  Me and a friend of mine have been wanting to remake one of our favorite games of all time (007: Nightfire) for a long time now. However, remaking a game likes this is really complicated because of the rights to the Bond-franchise. That site was created months ago, and by doing so we have found some great people (modelers, level designers, etc.) that want to help, but our plans have changed a little bit. Our current plan is to create a multiplayer-only remake of the original game, removing all the Bond-references so that the rights shouldn't be a problem anymore. We still want to create the game using the UDK and SteamWorks for both PC and Mac. Currently there's 3 things I need to find out: The costs of creating an arcade shooter like this. We want to use crowdfunding to fund the project. The best way to manage a project like this over the internet. Our current team consists of people all over the world, and we need a central place to discuss, collaborate and store our files. The best place to find suitable people for this project. We already have some modelers and level designers but we also need animators, artists, programmers, etc. I believe creating an arcade game like this with a small team is feasible. The game in a nutshell: ±10 maps, ±20 weapons, ±12 game modes, weapon/armor pickups, grapple hook gadget, no ADS, uses SteamWorks, online matchmaking, custom games, AI bots, appearance selection, level progression using XP (no unlocks), achievements. Does anyone know where to start? Any help is appreciated.

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• Auto-Suggest via &lsquo;Trie&rsquo; (Pre-fix Tree)

  - by Strenium

  Auto-Suggest (Auto-Complete) “thing” has been around for a few years. Here’s my little snippet on the subject. For one of my projects, I had to deal with a non-trivial set of items to be pulled via auto-suggest used by multiple concurrent users. Simple, dumb iteration through a list in local cache or back-end access didn’t quite cut it. Enter a nifty little structure, perfectly suited for storing and matching verbal data: “Trie” (http://tinyurl.com/db56g) also known as a Pre-fix Tree: “Unlike a binary search tree, no node in the tree stores the key associated with that node; instead, its position in the tree defines the key with which it is associated. All the descendants of a node have a common prefix of the string associated with that node, and the root is associated with the empty string. Values are normally not associated with every node, only with leaves and some inner nodes that correspond to keys of interest.” This is a very scalable, performing structure. Though, as usual, something ‘fast’ comes at a cost of ‘size’; fortunately RAM is more plentiful today so I can live with that. I won’t bore you with the detailed algorithmic performance here - Google can do a better job of such. So, here’s C# implementation of all this. Let’s start with individual node: Trie Node /// <summary> /// Contains datum of a single trie node. /// </summary> public class AutoSuggestTrieNode {     public char Value { get; set; }       /// <summary>     /// Gets a value indicating whether this instance is leaf node.     /// </summary>     /// <value>     ///     <c>true</c> if this instance is leaf node; otherwise, a prefix node <c>false</c>.     /// </value>     public bool IsLeafNode { get; private set; }       public List<AutoSuggestTrieNode> DescendantNodes { get; private set; }         /// <summary>     /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="AutoSuggestTrieNode"/> class.     /// </summary>     /// <param name="value">The phonetic value.</param>     /// <param name="isLeafNode">if set to <c>true</c> [is leaf node].</param>     public AutoSuggestTrieNode(char value = ' ', bool isLeafNode = false)     {         Value = value;         IsLeafNode = isLeafNode;           DescendantNodes = new List<AutoSuggestTrieNode>();     }       /// <summary>     /// Gets the descendants of the pre-fix node, if any.     /// </summary>     /// <param name="descendantValue">The descendant value.</param>     /// <returns></returns>     public AutoSuggestTrieNode GetDescendant(char descendantValue)     {         return DescendantNodes.FirstOrDefault(descendant => descendant.Value == descendantValue);     } }   Quite self-explanatory, imho. A node is either a “Pre-fix” or a “Leaf” node. “Leaf” contains the full “word”, while the “Pre-fix” nodes act as indices used for matching the results.   Ok, now the Trie: Trie Structure /// <summary> /// Contains structure and functionality of an AutoSuggest Trie (Pre-fix Tree) /// </summary> public class AutoSuggestTrie {     private readonly AutoSuggestTrieNode _root = new AutoSuggestTrieNode();       /// <summary>     /// Adds the word to the trie by breaking it up to pre-fix nodes + leaf node.     /// </summary>     /// <param name="word">Phonetic value.</param>     public void AddWord(string word)     {         var currentNode = _root;         word = word.Trim().ToLower();           for (int i = 0; i < word.Length; i++)         {             var child = currentNode.GetDescendant(word[i]);               if (child == null) /* this character hasn't yet been indexed in the trie */             {                 var newNode = new AutoSuggestTrieNode(word[i], word.Count() - 1 == i);                   currentNode.DescendantNodes.Add(newNode);                 currentNode = newNode;             }             else                 currentNode = child; /* this character is already indexed, move down the trie */         }     }         /// <summary>     /// Gets the suggested matches.     /// </summary>     /// <param name="word">The phonetic search value.</param>     /// <returns></returns>     public List<string> GetSuggestedMatches(string word)     {         var currentNode = _root;         word = word.Trim().ToLower();           var indexedNodesValues = new StringBuilder();         var resultBag = new ConcurrentBag<string>();           for (int i = 0; i < word.Trim().Length; i++)  /* traverse the trie collecting closest indexed parent (parent can't be leaf, obviously) */         {             var child = currentNode.GetDescendant(word[i]);               if (child == null || word.Count() - 1 == i)                 break; /* done looking, the rest of the characters aren't indexed in the trie */               indexedNodesValues.Append(word[i]);             currentNode = child;         }           Action<AutoSuggestTrieNode, string> collectAllMatches = null;         collectAllMatches = (node, aggregatedValue) => /* traverse the trie collecting matching leafNodes (i.e. "full words") */             {                 if (node.IsLeafNode) /* full word */                     resultBag.Add(aggregatedValue); /* thread-safe write */                   Parallel.ForEach(node.DescendantNodes, descendandNode => /* asynchronous recursive traversal */                 {                     collectAllMatches(descendandNode, String.Format("{0}{1}", aggregatedValue, descendandNode.Value));                 });             };           collectAllMatches(currentNode, indexedNodesValues.ToString());           return resultBag.OrderBy(o => o).ToList();     }         /// <summary>     /// Gets the total words (leafs) in the trie. Recursive traversal.     /// </summary>     public int TotalWords     {         get         {             int runningCount = 0;               Action<AutoSuggestTrieNode> traverseAllDecendants = null;             traverseAllDecendants = n => { runningCount += n.DescendantNodes.Count(o => o.IsLeafNode); n.DescendantNodes.ForEach(traverseAllDecendants); };             traverseAllDecendants(this._root);               return runningCount;         }     } }   Matching operations and Inserts involve traversing the nodes before the right “spot” is found. Inserts need be synchronous since ordering of data matters here. However, matching can be done in parallel traversal using recursion (line 64). Here’s sample usage:   [TestMethod] public void AutoSuggestTest() {     var autoSuggestCache = new AutoSuggestTrie();       var testInput = @"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Integer nec odio. Praesent libero.                 Sed cursus ante dapibus diam. Sed nisi. Nulla quis sem at nibh elementum imperdiet. Duis sagittis ipsum. Praesent mauris.                 Fusce nec tellus sed augue semper porta. Mauris massa. Vestibulum lacinia arcu eget nulla. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad                 litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Curabitur sodales ligula in libero. Sed dignissim lacinia nunc.                 Curabitur tortor. Pellentesque nibh. Aenean quam. In scelerisque sem at dolor. Maecenas mattis. Sed convallis tristique sem.                 Proin ut ligula vel nunc egestas porttitor. Morbi lectus risus, iaculis vel, suscipit quis, luctus non, massa. Fusce ac                 turpis quis ligula lacinia aliquet. Mauris ipsum. Nulla metus metus, ullamcorper vel, tincidunt sed, euismod in, nibh. Quisque                 volutpat condimentum velit. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Nam                 nec ante. Sed lacinia, urna non tincidunt mattis, tortor neque adipiscing diam, a cursus ipsum ante quis turpis. Nulla                 facilisi. Ut fringilla. Suspendisse potenti. Nunc feugiat mi a tellus consequat imperdiet. Vestibulum sapien. Proin quam. Etiam                 ultrices. Suspendisse in justo eu magna luctus suscipit. Sed lectus. Integer euismod lacus luctus magna. Quisque cursus, metus                 vitae pharetra auctor, sem massa mattis sem, at interdum magna augue eget diam. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci                 luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Morbi lacinia molestie dui. Praesent blandit dolor. Sed non quam. In vel mi sit amet                 augue congue elementum. Morbi in ipsum sit amet pede facilisis laoreet. Donec lacus nunc, viverra nec.";       testInput.Split(' ').ToList().ForEach(word => autoSuggestCache.AddWord(word));       var testMatches = autoSuggestCache.GetSuggestedMatches("le"); }   ..and the result: That’s it!

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• Writing a Book, and Moving my Blog

  - by Ben Nevarez

  I started blogging about SQL Server here at SQLblog back in July, 2009 and it was a lot of fun, I enjoyed it a lot. Then later, after a series of blog posts about the Query Optimizer, I was invited to write an entire book about that same topic. But after a few months I realized that it was going to be hard to continue both blogging and writing chapters for a book, this in addition to my regular day job, so I decided to stop blogging for a little while.   Now that I have finished the last chapter of the book and I am working on the final chapter reviews, I decided to start blogging again. This time I am moving my blog to   http://www.benjaminnevarez.com   Same as my previous posts I plan to write about my topics of interest, like the relational engine, and basically anything related to SQL Server. Hopefully you find my new blog interesting and useful.   Finally, I would like to thank Adam for allowing me to blog here. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Java Spotlight Episode 97: Shaun Smith on JPA and EclipseLink

  - by Roger Brinkley

  Interview with Java Champion Shaun Smith on JPA and EclipseLink. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link:  Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News Project Jigsaw: Late for the train: The Q&A JDK 8 Milestone schedule The Coming M2M Revolution: Critical Issues for End-to-End Software and Systems Development JSR 355 passed the JCP EC Final Approval Ballot on 13 August 2012 Vote for GlassFish t-shirt design GlassFish on Openshift JFokus 2012 Call for Papers is open Who do you want to hear in the 100 JavaSpotlight feature interview Events Sep 3-6, Herbstcampus, Nuremberg, Germany Sep 10-15, IMTS 2012 Conference,  Chicago Sep 12,  The Coming M2M Revolution: Critical Issues for End-to-End Software and Systems Development,  Webinar Sep 30-Oct 4, JavaONE, San Francisco Oct 3-4, Java Embedded @ JavaONE, San Francisco Oct 15-17, JAX London Oct 30-Nov 1, Arm TechCon, Santa Clara Oct 22-23, Freescale Technology Forum - Japan, Tokyo Nov 2-3, JMagreb, Morocco Nov 13-17, Devoxx, Belgium Feature InterviewShaun Smith is a Principal Product Manager for Oracle TopLink and an active member of the Eclipse community. He's Ecosystem Development Lead for the Eclipse Persistence Services Project (EclipseLink) and a committer on the Eclipse EMF Teneo and Dali Java Persistence Tools projects. He’s currently involved with the development of JPA persistence for OSGi and Oracle TopLink Grid, which integrates Oracle Coherence with Oracle TopLink to provide JPA on the grid. Mail Bag What’s Cool James Gosling and GlassFish (youtube video) Every time I see a piece of C code I need to port, my heart dies a little. Then I port it to 1/4 as much Java, and feel better. Tweet by Charles Nutter #JavaFX 2.2 is really looking like a great alternative to Flex. SceneBuilder + NetBeans 7.2 = Flash Builder replacement. Tweet by Danny Kopping

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• Manually writing a dx11 tessellation shader

  - by Tudor

  I am looking for resources on what are the steps of manually implementing tessellation (I'm using Unity cg). Today it seems that it is all the rage to hide most of the gpu code far away and use rather rigid simplifications such as unity's SURFace shaders. And it seems useless unless you're doing supeficial stuff. A little background: I have procedurally generated meshes (using marching cubes) which have quality normals but no UVs and no Tangents. I have successfully written a custom vertex and fragment shader to do triplanar texture and bumpmap projection as well as some custom stuff (custom lighting, procedurally warping the texture for variation etc). I am using the GPU Gems book as reference. Now I need to implement tessellation, but It seems I must calculate the tangents at runtime by swizzling normals (ctrl+f this in gems: <normal.z, normal.y, -normal.x>) before the tessellator gets them. And I also need to keep my custom vert+frag setup (with my custom parameters/textures being passed between them) - so apparently I cannot use surface shaders. Can anyone provide some guidence?

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• Streaming Netflix Media with My Wii

  - by Ben Griswold

  Late last year, I wrote about Streaming Media with my Sony Blu-ray Disc Player. I am still digging the Blu-ray player setup but guess what showed up in the mail yesterday?   That’s right!  A free Netflix disc which now let’s me instantly watch TV episodes and movies via my Wii console.  I popped the disc into the console and in less than 2 minutes the brain-numbingly simple activation was complete.  (Full-disclosure: I already had my Wi-Fi connection configured, but I’m confident that the Netflix installation disc would have helpfully walked me through this additional step if need be.) As it turns out, the Wii Netflix UI offers far more options than what one gets with the Blu-ray setup.  Not only can I view my Instant Queue, but there’s a list of recently watched movies, a list of recommended titles by category, the star rating system, movies information and nearly everything you find on the web.  I reread Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability on a flight back from Orlando on Wednesday, so my current view of the world may be a little skewed but, the brilliance of Netflix Wii’s user interface is undeniable. It’s not like the Blu-ray navigation is complicated but the Wii navigation feels familiar and intuitive. How intuitive?  Well, you won’t find a single bit of help text on any of the Wii screens – just a simple and obvious point-and-click navigation system.  And the UI is really pretty (which is still very important if you ask me) and so easy it became fun. Did I mention the media streaming works!  Yep, we watched 2 half-hour kid videos yesterday without any streaming issues at all.  If you have a Netflix account and a Wii, order your disc and give it a go. It’s good stuff.

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• Kids don’t mark their own homework

  - by jamiet

  During a discussion at work today in regard to doing some thorough acceptance testing of the system that I currently work on the topic of who should actually do the testing came up. I remarked that I didn’t think that I as the developer should be doing acceptance testing and a colleague, Russ Taylor, agreed with me and then came out with this little pearler: Kids don’t mark their own homework Maybe its a common turn of phrase but I had never heard it before and, to me, it sums up very succinctly my feelings on the matter. I tweeted about it and it got a couple of retweets as well as a slightly different perspective from Bruce Durling who said: I'm of the opinion that testers should be in the dev team & the dev *team* should be responsible for quality Bruce makes a good point that testers should be considered part of the dev team. I agree wholly with that and don’t think that point of view necessarily conflicts with Russ’s analogy. Yes, developers should absolutely be responsible for testing their own work – I also think that in the murky world of data integration there is often a need for a 3rd party to validate that work. Improving testing mechanisms for data integration projects is something that is near and dear to my heart so I would welcome any other thoughts around this. Let me know if you have any in the comments! @Jamiet

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• SQLAuthority News – 18 Seconds of Fame – My PASS Experience

  - by pinaldave

  Happy Holidays to All of YOU! Life is full of little and happy surprises. I think Christmas and Santa are based on it. I just received very interesting email earlier today, I had no idea about it. Earlier this year, I had visited Seattle to attend SQLPASS – read the complete summary over here: SQLAuthority News – SQLPASS Nov 8-11, 2010-Seattle – An Alternative Look at Experience. While I was walking down, someone has stopped me and asked if they can talk to me for 15 seconds, I said yes and they had shot quick movie with mobile. The conversation was very quick and I had forgotten about it. Today I received email from one of the blog reader about it being on YouTube. Honestly, I did not know if this was ever going to be on YouTube. I am surprised and thrilled. Watch my 18 seconds fame movie. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, T SQL, Technology

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• Enabling 32-Bit Applications on IIS7 (also affects 32-bit oledb or odbc drivers) [Solved]

  - by Humprey Cogay, C|EH

  We just bought a new Web Server, after installing Windows 2008 R2(which is a 64bit OS and IIS7), SQL Server Standard 2008 R2 and IBM Client Access for V5R3 with its Dot Net Data Providers, I tried deploying our new project which is fully functional on an IIS6 Based Web Server, I encountered this Error The 'IBMDA400.DataSource.1' provider is not registered on the local machine. To remove the doubt that I still lack some Software Pre-Requesites or version conflicts  since I encountered some erros while installing my IBM Client Access, I created a Connection Tester which is Windows App that accepts a connection string as a parameter and verifies if that parameter is valid. After entering the Proper Conn String I tried hitting the button and the Test was Succesful. So now I trimmed my suspects to My Web App and IIS7. After Googling around I found this post by a Rakki Muthukumar(Microsoft Developer Support Engineer for ASP.NET and IIS7) http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rakkimk/archive/2007/11/03/iis7-running-32-bit-and-64-bit-asp-net-versions-at-the-same-time-on-different-worker-processes.aspx So I tried scouting on IIS7's management console and found this little tweak under the Application Pool where my App is a member of. After changing this parameter to TRUE Yahoo (although I'm a Google kind of person) the Web App Works .......

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• Pluralsight Meet the Author Podcast on HTML5 Canvas Programming

  - by dwahlin

    In the latest installment of Pluralsight’s Meet the Author podcast series, Fritz Onion and I talk about my new course, HTML5 Canvas Fundamentals.  In the interview I describe different canvas technologies covered throughout the course and a sample application at the end of the course that covers how to build a custom business chart from start to finish. Meet the Author:  Dan Wahlin on HTML5 Canvas Fundamentals   Transcript [Fritz] Hi. This is Fritz Onion. I’m here today with Dan Wahlin to talk about his new course HTML5 Canvas Fundamentals. Dan founded the Wahlin Group, which you can find at thewahlingroup.com, which specializes in ASP.NET, jQuery, Silverlight, and SharePoint consulting. He’s a Microsoft Regional Director and has been awarded Microsoft’s MVP for ASP.NET, Connected Systems, and Silverlight. Dan is on the INETA Bureau’s — Speaker’s Bureau, speaks at conferences and user groups around the world, and has written several books on .NET. Thanks for talking to me today, Dan. [Dan] Always good to talk with you, Fritz. [Fritz] So this new course of yours, HTML5 Canvas Fundamentals, I have to say that most of the really snazzy demos I’ve seen with HTML5 have involved Canvas, so I thought it would be a good starting point to chat with you about why we decided to create a course dedicated just to Canvas. If you want to kind of give us that perspective. [Dan] Sure. So, you know, there’s quite a bit of material out there on HTML5 in general, and as people that have done a lot with HTML5 are probably aware, a lot of HTML5 is actually JavaScript centric. You know, a lot of people when they first learn it, think it’s tags, but most of it’s actually JavaScript, and it just so happens that the HTML5 Canvas is one of those things. And so it’s not just, you know, a tag you add and it just magically draws all these things. You mentioned there’s a lot of cool things you can do from games to there’s some really cool multimedia applications out there where they integrate video and audio and all kinds of things into the Canvas, to more business scenarios such as charting and things along those lines. So the reason we made a course specifically on it is, a lot of the material out there touches on it but the Canvas is actually a pretty deep topic. You can do some pretty advanced stuff or easy stuff depending on what your application requirements are, and the API itself, you know, there’s over 30 functions just in the Canvas API and then a whole set of properties that actually go with that as well. So it’s a pretty big topic, and that’s why we created a course specifically tailored towards just the Canvas. [Fritz] Right. And let’s — let me just review the outline briefly here for everyone. So you start off with an introduction to getting started with Canvas, drawing with the HTML5 Canvas, then you talk about manipulating pixels, and you finish up with building a custom data chart. So I really like your example flow here. I think it will appeal to even business developers, right. Even if you’re not into HTML5 for the games or the media capabilities, there’s still something here for everyone I think working with the Canvas. Which leads me to another question, which is, where do you see the Canvas fitting in to kind of your day-to-day developer, people that are working business applications and maybe vanilla websites that aren’t doing kind of cutting edge stuff with interactivity with users? Is there a still a place for the Canvas in those scenarios? [Dan] Yeah, definitely. I think a lot of us — and I include myself here — over the last few years, the focus has generally been, especially if you’re, let’s say, a PHP or ASP.NET or Java type of developer, we’re kind of accustomed to working on the server side, and, you know, we kind of relied on Flash or Silverlight or these other plug-ins for the client side stuff when it was kind of fancy, like charts and graphs and things along those lines. With the what I call massive shift of applications, you know, mainly because of mobile, to more of client side, one of the big benefits I think from a maybe corporate standard way of thinking of things, since we do a lot of work with different corporations, is that, number one, rather than having to have the plug-in, which of course isn’t going to work on iPad and some of these other devices out there that are pretty popular, you can now use a built-in technology that all the modern browsers support, and that includes things like Safari on the iPad and iPhone and the Android tablets and things like that with their browsers, and actually render some really sophisticated charts. Whether you do it by scratch or from scratch or, you know, get a third party type of library involved, it’s just JavaScript. So it downloads fast so it’s good from a performance perspective; and when it comes to what you can render, it’s extremely robust. You can do everything from, you know, your basic circles to polygons or polylines to really advanced gradients as well and even provide some interactivity and animations, and that’s some of the stuff I touch upon in the class. In fact, you mentioned the last part of the outline there is building a custom data chart and that’s kind of gears towards more of the, what I’d call enterprise or corporate type developer. [Fritz] Yeah, that makes sense. And it’s, you know, a lot of the demos I’ve seen with HTML5 focus on more the interactivity and kind of game side of things, but the Canvas is such a diverse element within HTML5 that I can see it being applicable pretty much anywhere. So why don’t we talk a little bit about some of the specifics of what you cover? You talk about drawing and then manipulating pixels. You want to kind of give us the different ways of working with the Canvas and what some of those APIs provide for you? [Dan] Sure. So going all the way back to the start of the outline, we actually started off by showing different demonstrations of the Canvas in action, and we show some fun stuff — multimedia apps and games and things like that — and then also some more business scenarios; and then once you see that, hopefully it kinds of piques your interest and you go, oh, wow, this is actually pretty phenomenal what you can do. So then we start you off with, so how to you actually draw things. Now, there are some libraries out there that will draw things like graphs, but if you want to customize those or just build something you have from scratch, you need to know the basics, such as, you know, how do you draw circles and lines and arcs and Bezier curves and all those fancy types of shapes that a given chart may have on it or that a game may have in it for that matter. So we start off by covering what I call the core API functions; how do you, for instance, fill a rectangle or convert that to a square by setting the height and the width; how do you draw arcs or different types of curves and there’s different types supported such as I mentioned Bezier curves or quadratic curves; and then we also talk about how do you integrate text into it. You might have some images already that are just regular bitmap type images that you want to integrate, you can do that with a Canvas. And you can even sync video into the Canvas, which actually opens up some pretty interesting possibilities for both business and I think just general multimedia apps. Once you kind of get those core functions down for the basic shapes that you need to be able to draw on any type of Canvas, then we go a little deeper into what are the pixels that are there to manipulate. And that’s one of the important things to understand about the HTML5 Canvas, scalable vector graphics is another thing you can use now in the modern browsers; it’s vector based. Canvas is pixel based. And so we talk about how to do gradients, how can you do transforms, you know, how do you scale things or rotate things, which is extremely useful for charts ’cause you might have text that, you know, flips up on its side for a y-axis or something like that. And you can even do direct pixel manipulation. So it’s really, really powerful. If you want to get down to the RGBA level, you can do that, and I show how to do that in the course, and then kind of wrap that section up with some animation fundamentals. [Fritz] Great. Yeah, that’s really powerful stuff for programmatically rendering data to clients and responding to user inputs. Look forward to seeing what everyone’s going to come up with building this stuff. So great. That’s — that’s HTML5 Canvas Fundamentals with Dan Wahlin. Thanks very much, Dan. [Dan] Thanks again. I appreciate it.

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• Fun with Database Mail

  - by DavidWimbush

  I just had some fun with a new server I set up. I configured Database Mail but it wouldn't send mail. In the Database Log was an error message I've never had before: The mail could not be sent to the recipients because of the mail server failure. (Sending Mail using Account 1 (2010-02-15T16:58:54). Exception Message: Could not connect to mail server. (A non-recoverable error occurred during a database lookup). ) I looked around and found this forum thread: http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=139909. I looked into the anti-virus software and firewall but neither of those helped. Then I noticed the last post where they original poster said "oops, I put an @ in the name of the SMTP server". How I laughed. What a ***! At least my problem isn't because I did something that careless. But then that little voice in my head said "Better check, just to be on the safe side". SMTP Server Name: smtp@domain. Who's the *** now? So, rbarlow, thanks very much for making the same silly mistake first so I could find the answer. (And I'm sorry for thinking you were a ***!)

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• What are the reasons why Clojure is hyped and PicoLisp widely ignored?

  - by Thorsten

  I recently discovered the Lisp family of programming languages, and it's definitely one of the more diverse and widespread families in the programming language world. I like Elisp because that most wonderful tool Emacs is an Elisp interpreter. But I was looking for one more Lisp dialect to learn and thought Clojure would be the obvious choice nowadays - until I discovered the well hidden gem PicoLisp. That must be the most intelligent programming environment I have ever seen, like taking the best ideas from Lisp and Smalltalk and adding performance and practicability - and the beauty of parsimony. There is even an Emacs-mode for it. PicoLisp must be the productivity world champion when it comes to building business applications with database and web-client - and that's a very common task. It seems that throwing more and more hardware cores at your PicoLisp application makes it faster and faster, and the database is very performant anyway. However, reactions to PicoLisp in in general mailing-lists etc. are almost hostile (envy?), and there is absolutely no hype and very little publicity (ie not one book published). Are there real justified reasons for this (except the vast amount of java-libs accessible by Clojure, I know that one)? Or is the mainstream it getting wrong again (see C vs Lisp, Java vs Smalltalk, Windows vs Linux) and will come to the conclusion 10 years later that the JVM was good as in between solution, but a really fast Lisp interpreter on multicore machines is much better and allows much cleaner concepts? PS 1: Please note: I'm not interested in Scheme or any Common Lisp dialect, although they might be fine languages. It's just PicoLisp vs Clojure. PS 2: another thing I like about PicoLisp is its similarity to Elisp in certain aspects (both are descendants from MacLisp?) - it's easier to learn two similar languages. There is so much "dynamic binding bashing" on the web, but two of the most appealing Lisp applications use it.

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• Work Item Visualizer for TFS 2010 - New Extension

  - by MikeParks

  I released another new extension to the Visual Studio Gallery again today called Work Item Visualizer for TFS 2010. I've only heard positive things about it so far, hopefully it stays that way :) Basically, it creates a diagram of all work items linked to a work item ID which the user specifies in a search box. This extension was coded using DGML (the same graph rendering language used for the Visual Studio 2010 Architecture Tools). It was pretty cool getting a chance to create something using some of the newest technology out there. Well, I just wanted to throw a blog up to get the word out on it a little more. If you're using Visual Studio 2010 with Team Foundation Server 2010, feel free to check it out! Thanks everyone. Download Link: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/a35b6010-750b-47f6-a7a5-41f0fa7294d2   What it does: ·         Creates a DGML graph to visualize linked TFS Work Items by entering a Work Item ID in the toolbar search box   How it benefits you: ·         Allows you to easily analyze the hierarchy of your TFS Work Items ·         Gain the ability to perform basic risk/impact analysis when creating or editing Work Items ·         Great for meetings in the case that you need to discuss the entire scope of linked Work Items ·         Easier project planning ·         Eliminates the need to create TFS queries or reports to view tree of Work Items ·         Easily lets you see the entire tree of work items linked to the one you’re working on   Navigation Tips: ·         Use Ctrl + Mouse Wheel Scroll to zoom in and out ·         Use Ctrl + Left Mouse click (and hold) to move document around ·         Right click on DGML area for more options (Like copy image or viewing in groups) ·         Clicking on each node highlights that node and the links connected to it ·         Colors in the legend can be changed ·         When work item nodes are deleted, the view is automatically updated ·         Double clicking on work item node will open up the Work Items URL   Try it out on work items that have several of links and let us know what you think. A big thanks goes out to everyone working on the http://visualization.codeplex.com/ project for publishing the source code on CodePlex which really helped me learn how DGML (Directed Graph Markup Language - New to Visual Studio 2010 Architecture Tools) works!    - Mike

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• C#: Adding Functionality to 3rd Party Libraries With Extension Methods

  - by James Michael Hare

  Ever have one of those third party libraries that you love but it's missing that one feature or one piece of syntactical candy that would make it so much more useful?  This, I truly think, is one of the best uses of extension methods.  I began discussing extension methods in my last post (which you find here) where I expounded upon what I thought were some rules of thumb for using extension methods correctly.  As long as you keep in line with those (or similar) rules, they can often be useful for adding that little extra functionality or syntactical simplification for a library that you have little or no control over. Oh sure, you could take an open source project, download the source and add the methods you want, but then every time the library is updated you have to re-add your changes, which can be cumbersome and error prone.  And yes, you could possibly extend a class in a third party library and override features, but that's only if the class is not sealed, static, or constructed via factories. This is the perfect place to use an extension method!  And the best part is, you and your development team don't need to change anything!  Simply add the using for the namespace the extensions are in! So let's consider this example.  I love log4net!  Of all the logging libraries I've played with, it, to me, is one of the most flexible and configurable logging libraries and it performs great.  But this isn't about log4net, well, not directly.  So why would I want to add functionality?  Well, it's missing one thing I really want in the ILog interface: ability to specify logging level at runtime. For example, let's say I declare my ILog instance like so:     using log4net;     public class LoggingTest     {         private static readonly ILog _log = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(LoggingTest));         ...     }     If you don't know log4net, the details aren't important, just to show that the field _log is the logger I have gotten from log4net. So now that I have that, I can log to it like so:     _log.Debug("This is the lowest level of logging and just for debugging output.");     _log.Info("This is an informational message.  Usual normal operation events.");     _log.Warn("This is a warning, something suspect but not necessarily wrong.");     _log.Error("This is an error, some sort of processing problem has happened.");     _log.Fatal("Fatals usually indicate the program is dying hideously."); And there's many flavors of each of these to log using string formatting, to log exceptions, etc.  But one thing there isn't: the ability to easily choose the logging level at runtime.  Notice, the logging levels above are chosen at compile time.  Of course, you could do some fun stuff with lambdas and wrap it, but that would obscure the simplicity of the interface.  And yes there is a Logger property you can dive down into where you can specify a Level, but the Level properties don't really match the ILog interface exactly and then you have to manually build a LogEvent and... well, it gets messy.  I want something simple and sexy so I can say:     _log.Log(someLevel, "This will be logged at whatever level I choose at runtime!");     Now, some purists out there might say you should always know what level you want to log at, and for the most part I agree with them.  For the most party the ILog interface satisfies 99% of my needs.  In fact, for most application logging yes you do always know the level you will be logging at, but when writing a utility class, you may not always know what level your user wants. I'll tell you, one of my favorite things is to write reusable components.  If I had my druthers I'd write framework libraries and shared components all day!  And being able to easily log at a runtime-chosen level is a big need for me.  After all, if I want my code to really be re-usable, I shouldn't force a user to deal with the logging level I choose. One of my favorite uses for this is in Interceptors -- I'll describe Interceptors in my next post and some of my favorites -- for now just know that an Interceptor wraps a class and allows you to add functionality to an existing method without changing it's signature.  At the risk of over-simplifying, it's a very generic implementation of the Decorator design pattern. So, say for example that you were writing an Interceptor that would time method calls and emit a log message if the method call execution time took beyond a certain threshold of time.  For instance, maybe if your database calls take more than 5,000 ms, you want to log a warning.  Or if a web method call takes over 1,000 ms, you want to log an informational message.  This would be an excellent use of logging at a generic level. So here was my personal wish-list of requirements for my task: Be able to determine if a runtime-specified logging level is enabled. Be able to log generically at a runtime-specified logging level. Have the same look-and-feel of the existing Debug, Info, Warn, Error, and Fatal calls.    Having the ability to also determine if logging for a level is on at runtime is also important so you don't spend time building a potentially expensive logging message if that level is off.  Consider an Interceptor that may log parameters on entrance to the method.  If you choose to log those parameter at DEBUG level and if DEBUG is not on, you don't want to spend the time serializing those parameters. Now, mine may not be the most elegant solution, but it performs really well since the enum I provide all uses contiguous values -- while it's never guaranteed, contiguous switch values usually get compiled into a jump table in IL which is VERY performant - O(1) - but even if it doesn't, it's still so fast you'd never need to worry about it. So first, I need a way to let users pass in logging levels.  Sure, log4net has a Level class, but it's a class with static members and plus it provides way too many options compared to ILog interface itself -- and wouldn't perform as well in my level-check -- so I define an enum like below.     namespace Shared.Logging.Extensions     {         // enum to specify available logging levels.         public enum LoggingLevel         {             Debug,             Informational,             Warning,             Error,             Fatal         }     } Now, once I have this, writing the extension methods I need is trivial.  Once again, I would typically /// comment fully, but I'm eliminating for blogging brevity:     namespace Shared.Logging.Extensions     {         // the extension methods to add functionality to the ILog interface         public static class LogExtensions         {             // Determines if logging is enabled at a given level.             public static bool IsLogEnabled(this ILog logger, LoggingLevel level)             {                 switch (level)                 {                     case LoggingLevel.Debug:                         return logger.IsDebugEnabled;                     case LoggingLevel.Informational:                         return logger.IsInfoEnabled;                     case LoggingLevel.Warning:                         return logger.IsWarnEnabled;                     case LoggingLevel.Error:                         return logger.IsErrorEnabled;                     case LoggingLevel.Fatal:                         return logger.IsFatalEnabled;                 }                                 return false;             }             // Logs a simple message - uses same signature except adds LoggingLevel             public static void Log(this ILog logger, LoggingLevel level, object message)             {                 switch (level)                 {                     case LoggingLevel.Debug:                         logger.Debug(message);                         break;                     case LoggingLevel.Informational:                         logger.Info(message);                         break;                     case LoggingLevel.Warning:                         logger.Warn(message);                         break;                     case LoggingLevel.Error:                         logger.Error(message);                         break;                     case LoggingLevel.Fatal:                         logger.Fatal(message);                         break;                 }             }             // Logs a message and exception to the log at specified level.             public static void Log(this ILog logger, LoggingLevel level, object message, Exception exception)             {                 switch (level)                 {                     case LoggingLevel.Debug:                         logger.Debug(message, exception);                         break;                     case LoggingLevel.Informational:                         logger.Info(message, exception);                         break;                     case LoggingLevel.Warning:                         logger.Warn(message, exception);                         break;                     case LoggingLevel.Error:                         logger.Error(message, exception);                         break;                     case LoggingLevel.Fatal:                         logger.Fatal(message, exception);                         break;                 }             }             // Logs a formatted message to the log at the specified level.              public static void LogFormat(this ILog logger, LoggingLevel level, string format,                                          params object[] args)             {                 switch (level)                 {                     case LoggingLevel.Debug:                         logger.DebugFormat(format, args);                         break;                     case LoggingLevel.Informational:                         logger.InfoFormat(format, args);                         break;                     case LoggingLevel.Warning:                         logger.WarnFormat(format, args);                         break;                     case LoggingLevel.Error:                         logger.ErrorFormat(format, args);                         break;                     case LoggingLevel.Fatal:                         logger.FatalFormat(format, args);                         break;                 }             }         }     } So there it is!  I didn't have to modify the log4net source code, so if a new version comes out, i can just add the new assembly with no changes.  I didn't have to subclass and worry about developers not calling my sub-class instead of the original.  I simply provide the extension methods and it's as if the long lost extension methods were always a part of the ILog interface! Consider a very contrived example using the original interface:     // using the original ILog interface     public class DatabaseUtility     {         private static readonly ILog _log = LogManager.Create(typeof(DatabaseUtility));                 // some theoretical method to time         IDataReader Execute(string statement)         {             var timer = new System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch();                         // do DB magic                                    // this is hard-coded to warn, if want to change at runtime tough luck!             if (timer.ElapsedMilliseconds > 5000 && _log.IsWarnEnabled)             {                 _log.WarnFormat("Statement {0} took too long to execute.", statement);             }             ...         }     }     Now consider this alternate call where the logging level could be perhaps a property of the class          // using the original ILog interface     public class DatabaseUtility     {         private static readonly ILog _log = LogManager.Create(typeof(DatabaseUtility));                 // allow logging level to be specified by user of class instead         public LoggingLevel ThresholdLogLevel { get; set; }                 // some theoretical method to time         IDataReader Execute(string statement)         {             var timer = new System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch();                         // do DB magic                                    // this is hard-coded to warn, if want to change at runtime tough luck!             if (timer.ElapsedMilliseconds > 5000 && _log.IsLogEnabled(ThresholdLogLevel))             {                 _log.LogFormat(ThresholdLogLevel, "Statement {0} took too long to execute.",                     statement);             }             ...         }     } Next time, I'll show one of my favorite uses for these extension methods in an Interceptor.

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• Slides and Samples for My TechEd / Microsoft BI Conference Talks

  - by plitwin

  I posted the slides and samples for my talks I delivered in New Orleans on June 8th at Microsoft TechEd and Business Intelligence Conference. They can be downloaded from Paul Litwin's Conference Downloads. #1 Creating Report Subscriptions with SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services at 8 AM on Tuesday. Room 241In this session, learn how to set up standard and data-driven subscriptions using Report Manager. We discuss creating file-share, email, and null subscriptions; and how to deal with potential issues with parameters and security. We also demonstrate a sophisticated Microsoft ASP.NET-based application that creates subscriptions by calling the SSRS Web Services API.  #2 ASP.NET MVC for Web Forms Programmers at 3:15 PM Tuesday. Room 391Are you comfortable creating ASP.NET Web Form applications but even a little curious about what all the fuss is about MVC and test-driven development? In this session, Web Form junkie Paul Litwin takes a critical look at the world of ASP.NET MVC, but not from any expert point of view. Instead, Paul shares his experience as a Web Form developer who decided to take a closer look at this radical new approach to ASP.NET development. Come hear what Paul learned and if he plans to employ ASP.NET MVC in his future ASP.NET applications.

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• When runs a product out of support?

  That is a question I get regularly from customers. Microsoft has a great site where you can find that information. Unfortunately this site is not easy to find, and a lot of people are not aware of this site. A good reason to promote it a little. So if you ever get a question on this topic, go to http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/Default.aspx. At that site, you can find also the details of the policy Microsoft Support Lifecycle Policy The Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy took effect in October 2002, and applies to most products currently available through retail purchase or volume licensing and most future release products. Through the policy, Microsoft will offer a minimum of: 10 years of support (5 years Mainstream Support and 5 years Extended Support) at the supported service pack level for Business and Developer products 5 years Mainstream Support at the supported service pack level for Consumer/Hardware/Multimedia products 3 years of Mainstream Support for products that are annually released (for example, Money, Encarta, Picture It!, and Streets & Trips) Phases of the Support Lifecycle Mainstream Support Mainstream Support is the first phase of the product support lifecycle. At the supported service pack level, Mainstream Support includes: Incident support (no-charge incident support, paid incident support, support charged on an hourly basis, support for warranty claims) Security update support The ability to request non-security hotfixes Please note: Enrollment in a maintenance program may be required to receive these benefits for certain products Extended Support The Extended Support phase follows Mainstream Support for Business and Developer products. At the supported service pack level, Extended Support includes: Paid support Security update support at no additional cost Non-security related hotfix support requires a separate Extended Hotfix Support Agreement to be purchased (per-fix fees also apply) Please note: Microsoft will not accept requests for warranty support, design changes, or new features during the Extended Support phase Extended Support is not available for Consumer, Hardware, or Multimedia products Enrollment in a maintenance program may be required to receive these benefits for certain products Self-Help Online Support Self-Help Online Support is available throughout a product's lifecycle and for a minimum of 12 months after the product reaches the end of its support. Microsoft online Knowledge Base articles, FAQs, troubleshooting tools, and other resources, are provided to help customers resolve common issues. Please note: Enrollment in a maintenance program may be required to receive these benefits for certain products (source: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/#tab1)

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• enable email on Godaddy when using Zerigo on Heroku hosted app

  - by joelmaranhao

  A little recap of what I have done ... and then my questions Q1, Q2 and Q3 1 - I developed a RoR app that I deployed on Heroku. biowatts.heroku.com 2 - I bought a domain name at GoDaddy: biowattsonline.com 3 - I am using Zerigo addon as for the DNS heroku addons:add custom_domains heroku addons:add zerigo_dns:basic 4 - Added my domains in Heroku heroku domains:add biowattsonline.com heroku domains:add www.biowattsonline.com and subdomains heroku domains:add calculator.biowattsonline.com Q1: Where do we configure the forward to http://biowattsonline.com/biogas_calculator ? 5 - Configured GoDaddy adding the Zerigo domains In the Nameservers section a.ns.zerigo.net b.ns.zerigo.net c.ns.zerigo.net d.ns.zerigo.net e.ns.zerigo.net The GoDaddy DNS section is empty: "Not hosted here" Ok this works all fine ... http://biowattsonline.com is correctly found 6 - Subdomain forward I want calculator.biowattsonline.com to be forwarded to biowattsonline.com/biogas_calculator Q2: So I created the forward in GoDaddy ... but is that correct? 7 - GoDaddy email Q3: I have one free email account with go GoDaddy, only now that I am using Zerigo I don't know how configure GoDaddy to make it work again?... because it work with the default values Any ideason Q1, Q2 and Q3? Thanks, Joel

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• Copyrights concerning code snippets and larger amounts of code

  - by JustcallmeDrago

  I am designing a public code repository. Users will be allowed to post and edit whatever amount of code they want, from code snippets to entire multi-file projects. I have a few major legal concerns about this: Not getting sued/shut down - I feel the site would be a much easier target than tracking down an individual user to sue. I have looked around a bit and see links to legal info in the footer of each page is common. What specific things should I do--and what does does a site such as YouTube (which I see copyrighted material on all the time) do--for protection? Citing sources and editing sourced code - If a user wants to post code that isn't theirs, what concerns/safeguards should I have? Will a link suffice, and what do I need further to allow the code to be edited (to improve it for example)? What can happen if a user posts copyrighted code without citing it? Large chunks of code - What legal differences should I look out for as the amount grows? Not having a mess of licenses for the site - I would like to have a single license (like RosettaCode) that keeps things simple for interaction on the site. I want the code to be postable and editable. I have looked into StackOverflow's CreativeCommons license a little and it says that If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one. And on RosettaCode: All software found on Rosetta Code should be considered potentially hazardous. Use at your own risk. Be aware that all code on Rosetta Code is under the GNU Free Documentation License, as are any edits made by contributors. See Rosetta Code:Copyrights for details. What other licenses are like this? Commercializing the site - In what ways can I and can't I make money off of a site that contains code like this? All code will be publicly visible. Initial thoughts are having ads or making money by charging for advanced features.

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• Android “open for embedded”? Must-read Ars Technica article

  - by terrencebarr

  A few days ago ars technica published an article “Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary”. If you are considering Android for embedded this article is a must-read to understand the severe ramifications of Google’s tight (and tightening) control on the Android technology and ecosystem. Some quotes from the ars technica article: “Android is open – except for all the good parts“ “Android actually falls into two categories: the open parts from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) … and the closed source parts, which are all the Google-branded apps” “Android open source apps … turn into abandonware by moving all continuing development to a closed source model.” “Joining the OHA requires a company to sign its life away and promise to not build a device that runs a competing Android fork.” “Google Play Services is a closed source app owned by Google … to turn the “Android App Ecosystem” into the “Google Play Ecosystem” “You’re allowed to contribute to Android and allowed to use it for little hobbies, but in nearly every area, the deck is stacked against anyone trying to use Android without Google’s blessing“ Compare this with a recent Wired article “Oracle Makes Java More Relevant Than Ever”: “Oracle has actually opened up Java even more — getting rid of some of the closed-door machinations that used to be part of the Java standards-making process. Java has been raked over the coals for security problems over the past few years, but Oracle has kept regular updates coming. And it’s working on a major upgrade to Java, due early next year.” Cheers, – Terrence Filed under: Embedded, Mobile & Embedded Tagged: Android, embedded, Java Embedded, Open Source

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• AutoScroll panel working intermittently.

  - by Edward Boyle

  I spent hours last week trying to get AutoScroll to function properly on a derived/inherited panel control I have been writing. I found no answers on my own so I posted to several forums and move onto other code while I wait for a reply. Then out of nowhere, it started working properly. Now, Today (about a week later) I notice it is no longer working again!  I go back to those old posts with hopes I will find an answer – No such luck. I Google for about two hours reading everything I come across. I was just about to write a new custom control from the ground up, perhaps use a little unmanaged code to force things to function properly. All I knew was “options in front of me = dealys”.  Just before I gave up, my head in my hands,  Jordan Sirwin’s appropriately titled blog post: “C#: Windows Panel AutoScroll Bug / Intended Suckyness” saves the day! In order for scroll bars to display, there must be at least one control in the Panel with AutoSize set to true. This is absurd… I’m not sure if this is a bug or intended, but it’s stupid. –I feel your pain. How many others have spent hours on this, or worse,  just plain given up? I want those hours back Damnit!

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• What do you do with coder's block?

  - by Garet Claborn

  Lately it has been a bit rough. I basically know all the things I need and all the avenues to get there for work. There's been no real issue of a problem with too high complexity, and performance is good. Still, after three major projects this year, my mind is behaving a little strange. It's like I'm used to working in O(1+log(N-neatTricks)) but for some reason it processes in O(N^2)! I've experienced a sort of burnout after long deadlines and drudging projects before, but when it turns into a longer experience, I haven't found the usual suspects to be helpful. Take more walks Work on other code Overdesign everything until I feel intensely driven to just make it (sorta works) How can a programmer recoup from the specific hole in your head programming leaves after being mentally ransacked by these bloody corporations and their fancy money? Hopefully some of you have some better ideas, because I could really use another round of being looted and pillaged.I've often wondered if there are special puzzles or some kind of activity that would de-stress the tangled balance of left and right braininess programmers often deal with. Do any special techniques, activities, anything seem to help with the developer's mindset especially?

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• Etch a Circuit Board using a Simple Homemade Mixture

  - by ETC

  If you’ve been dabbling in DIY electronics projects but you’re not so excited about keeping strong acids around to etch your circuit boards, this simple DIY recipe uses common household chemicals in lieu of strong acid. Electronics hobbyist Stephen Hobley wanted to see if he could create an etching solution that wasn’t as dangerous and noxious smelling at traditional muriatic acid solutions. By combining regular white vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, and table salt, he created a homemade etching solution from ingredients safe enough to store in your pantry. The only downside to his recipe is that, compared to traditional etching solutions, the process takes a little bit longer so you’ll have to leave your board in the solution longer. Not a bad trade off for the ability to skip using any oops-I-burned-my-skin-off acids. Check out the process in the video below: Hit up the link below for more information and and interesting explanation of the chemical process (he talks about not quite understanding it in the video but two chemists write in and give him the full run down). DIY Etching Solution [Stephen Hobley via Make] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Macs Don’t Make You Creative! So Why Do Artists Really Love Apple? MacX DVD Ripper Pro is Free for How-To Geek Readers (Time Limited!) HTG Explains: What’s a Solid State Drive and What Do I Need to Know? How to Get Amazing Color from Photos in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Learn To Adjust Contrast Like a Pro in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name? Etch a Circuit Board using a Simple Homemade Mixture Sync Blocker Stops iTunes from Automatically Syncing The Journey to the Mystical Forest [Wallpaper] Trace Your Browser’s Roots on the Browser Family Tree [Infographic] Save Files Directly from Your Browser to the Cloud in Chrome and Iron The Steve Jobs Chronicles – Charlie and the Apple Factory [Video]

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• JMX Based Monitoring - Part One

  - by Anthony Shorten

  In all versions of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework there is an ability to use Java Management eXtensions (JMX) to both manage and monitor the various components of the product. This means that sites can use a JSR120 compliant JMX browser or JMX console to view or manage the components of the product with little or no configuration required. In each version we have progressively added JMX capabilities to allow IT groups more detailed information. In Oracle Utilities Application Framework V2.1 and above it was possible to use JMX on the Web Application Server provided Mbeans to allow you to monitor the online component of the product as well as manage the configuration. Also with a few additional java options it is possible to get a good level of detail about the Java Virtual machine including memory and thread usage. In Oracle Utilities Application Framework V2.2 and above, we added support for Java 5 statistics (Java enabled them by default), database pool statistics and also added the ability to manage and moinitor the batch component of the architecture. Now, in Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4 and above, we added support for Java 6 MXBeans, online management of the cache using JMX, additional JVM information and Performance monitoring using JMX. JMX allows the product to be managed from a common console such as Oracle Enterprise Manager, Tivoli, HP OpenView (and a lot more). Over the next week or so I will be compiling a set of blog entries discussing what is available (in summary format) using JMX and how to get access to the JMX statistics for your version of the product.

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