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• Why is there never any controversy regarding the switch statement? [closed]

  - by Nick Rosencrantz

  We all know that the gotostatement should only be used on very rare occasions if at all. It has been discouraged to use the goto statement countless places countless times. But why it there never anything like that about the switch statement? I can understand the position that the switch statement should always be avoided since anything with switch can always be expressed by if...else... which is also more readable and the syntax of the switch statement if difficult to remember. Do you agree? What are the arguments in favor of keeping the 'switch` statement? It can also be difficult to use if what you're testing changes from say an integer to an object, then C++ or Java won't be able to perform the switch and neither C can perform switch on something like a struct or a union. And the technique of fall-through is so very rarely used that I wonder why it was never presented any regret of having switch at all? The only place I know where it is best practice is GUI code and even that switch is probably better coded in a more object-oriented way.

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• Collision detection on a 2D hexagonal grid

  - by SundayMonday

  I'm making a casual grid-based 2D iPhone game using Cocos2D. The grid is a "staggered" hex-like grid consisting of uniformly sized and spaced discs. It looks something like this. I've stored the grid in a 2D array. Also I have a concept of "surrounding" grid cells. Namely the six grid cells surrounding a particular cell (except those on the boundries which can have less than six). Anyways I'm testing some collision detection and it's not working out as well as I had planned. Here's how I currently do collision detection for a moving disc that's approaching the stationary group of discs: Calculate ij-coordinates of grid cell closest to moving cell using moving cell's xy-position Get list of surrounding grid cells using ij-coordinates Examine the surrounding cells. If they're all empty then no collision If we have some non-empty surrounding cells then compare the distance between the disc centers to some minimum distance required for a collision If there's a collision then place the moving disc in grid cell ij So this works but not too well. I've considered a potentially simpler brute force approach where I just compare the moving disc to all stationary discs at each step of the game loop. This is probably feasible in terms of performance since the stationary disc count is 300 max. If not then some space-partitioning data structure could be used however that feels too complex. What are some common approaches and best practices to collision detection in a game like this?

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• Oscillating Sprite Movement in XNA

  - by Nick Van Hoogenstyn

  I'm working on a 2d game and am looking to make a sprite move horizontally across the screen in XNA while oscillating vertically (basically I want the movement to look like a sin wave). Currently for movement I'm using two vectors, one for speed and one for direction. My update function for sprites just contains this: Position += direction * speed * (float)t.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; How could I utilize this setup to create the desired movement? I'm assuming I'd call Math.Sin or Math.Cos, but I'm unsure of where to start to make this sort of thing happened. My attempt looked like this: public override void Update(GameTime t) { double msElapsed = t.TotalGameTime.Milliseconds; mDirection.Y = (float)Math.Sin(msElapsed); if (mDirection.Y >= 0) mSpeed.Y = moveSpeed; else mSpeed.Y = -moveSpeed; base.Update(t, mSpeed, mDirection); } moveSpeed is just some constant positive integer. With this, the sprite simply just continuously moves downward until it's off screen. Can anyone give me some info on what I'm doing wrong here? I've never tried something like this so if I'm doing things completely wrong, let me know!

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• Alternatives to Professional Version Control

  - by greengit

  We're teaming up with some non programmers (writers) who need to contribute to one of our projects. Now they just don't like the idea of using Git (or anything for that matter) for version controlling their work. I think this is because they just don't find it worthwhile to wrap their heads around the twisted concepts of version control. (when I first introduced them to branching and merging -- they looked like I was offending them.) Now, we're not in a position to educate them or convince them to use it. We're just trying to find alternatives so that we get all their work versioned (which is what we need) -- and they get easy workflow and concentrate on what they do. I have come up with some ideas... tell them to save their work as a separate file every time they make some non-trivial change, and then use a diff on our side to just track changes. write a program (in Python) that implements the "milestones" in CSSEdit in some way. About the project: It is a natural language processing system (written in C + Python). We've hired some writers to prepare inputs for the system in different languages. And as we evolve the software, we'd need those writers to make changes to their inputs (articles). Sometimes the changes are very small (a word or two), and other times big. The reason we need to version control those changes is because every small/big change in the input has the potential to change the system's output dramatically.

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• Teaching myself, as a physicist, to become a better programmer

  - by user787267

  I've always liked physics, and I've always liked coding, so when I got the offer for a PhD position doing numerical physics (details are not relevant, it's mostly parallel programming for a cluster) at a university, it was a no-brainer for me. However, as most physicists, I'm self taught. I don't have broad background knowledge about how to code in an object oriented way, or the name of that specific algorithm that optimizes the search in some kD tree. Since all my work so far has been more concerned about the physics and the scientific results, I undoubtedly have some bad habits - more so because my coding is my own, and not really teamwork. I have mostly used C since it is very straightforward and "what you write is what you get" - no need for fancy abstractions. However, I have recently switched to C++ since I'd like to learn more about the power that comes with abstraction, and it's pretty C-like (syntax-wise at least). How do I teach myself to code in a good, abstract way like a graduate in computer science? I know my code is efficient, but I want it to be elegant as well, and readable. Keep in mind that I don't have time to read several 1000-page tomes about abstract programming. I need to spend time on actual, physics related research (my supervisor would laugh at me if he knew I spent time thinking about how to program elegantly). How do I assess if my work is also good from a programmer's perspective?

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• How to improve batching performance

  - by user4241

  Hello, I am developing a sprite based 2D game for mobile platform(s) and I'm using OpenGL (well, actually Irrlicht) to render graphics. First I implemented sprite rendering in a simple way: every game object is rendered as a quad with its own GPU draw call, meaning that if I had 200 game objects, I made 200 draw calls per frame. Of course this was a bad choice and my game was completely CPU bound because there is a little CPU overhead assosiacted in every GPU draw call. GPU stayed idle most of the time. Now, I thought I could improve performance by collecting objects into large batches and rendering these batches with only a few draw calls. I implemented batching (so that every game object sharing the same texture is rendered in same batch) and thought that my problems are gone... only to find out that my frame rate was even lower than before. Why? Well, I have 200 (or more) game objects, and they are updated 60 times per second. Every frame I have to recalculate new position (translation and rotation) for vertices in CPU (GPU on mobile platforms does not support instancing so I can't do it there), and doing this calculation 48000 per second (200*60*4 since every sprite has 4 vertices) simply seems to be too slow. What I could do to improve performance? All game objects are moving/rotating (almost) every frame so I really have to recalculate vertex positions. Only optimization that I could think of is a look-up table for rotations so that I wouldn't have to calculate them. Would point sprites help? Any nasty hacks? Anything else? Thanks.

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• Rasbperry Pi Mod Offers One Button Audiobook Playback

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  How do you design an audiobook player for an elderly book lover who doesn’t want to wrestle with new technology? Simple and with a single button interface is a great place to start. This clever and thoughtful build comes to us courtesy of tinker Michael Clemens. His wife’s grandmother, in her 90s, is visually impaired but still loves to take in books via audiobooks. In an effort to make modern MP3 audiobooks accessible to her, Michael built a dedicated audiobook reader based off Rasbperry Pi and programmed it to use a single button. The system boots, loads the audiobook it finds on the attached USB drive, and loads up its track position from memory. Press the button to resume play or, for a refresher, hold the button for four seconds to start the track over. While you may not be in the market for a one-button audiobook player for an elderly relative, the same simple design could be easily adopted, via new scripts, to another function. Hit up the link below to read more about the build. The One Button Audiobook Player [via Hack A Day] How To Play DVDs on Windows 8 6 Start Menu Replacements for Windows 8 What Is the Purpose of the “Do Not Cover This Hole” Hole on Hard Drives?

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• Checkers AI Algorithm

  - by John

  I am making an AI for my checkers game and I'm trying to make it as hard as possible. Here is the current criteria for a move on the hardest difficulty: 1: Look For A Block: This is when a piece is being threatened and another piece can be moved in behind it to protect it. Here is an example: Black Moves |W| |W| |W| |W| | | |W| |W| |W| |W| |W| | | |W| |W| | | | | |W| | | | | | | | | |B| | | | | |B| | | |B| |B| |B| |B| |B| |B| | | |B| |B| |B| |B| White Blocks |W| |W| |W| |W| | | |W| | | |W| |W| |W| |W| |W| |W| | | | | |W| | | | | | | | | |B| | | | | |B| | | |B| |B| |B| |B| |B| |B| | | |B| |B| |B| |B| 2: Move pieces out of danger: if any piece is being threatened, and a piece cannot block for that piece, then it will attempt to move out of the way. If the piece cannot move out of the way without still being in danger, the computer ignores the piece. 3: If the computer player owns any kings, it will attempt to 'hunt down' enemy pieces on the board, if no moves can be made that won't in danger the king or any other pieces, the computer ignores this rule. 4: Any piece that is owned by the computer that is in column 1 or 6 will attempt to go to a side. When a piece is in column 0 or 7, it is in a very strategic position because it cannot get captured while it is in either of these columns 5: It makes an educated random move, the move will not indanger the piece that is moving or any piece that is on the board. 6: If none of the above are possible it makes a random move. This question is not really specific to any language but if all examples could be in Java that would be great, considering this app is written in android. Does anyone see any room for improvement in this algorithm? Anything that would make it better at playing checkers?

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• How to restrict paddle movement using Farseer Physics engine 3.2

  - by brainydexter

  I am new to using Farseer Physics Engine 3.2(FPE), so please bear with my questions. Also, since FPE 3.2 is based on Box2D, I have been reading Box2D manual and pieces of code scattered in samples to better understand terminology and usage. Pong is usually my testbed whenever I try to do something new. Here is one of the issue I am running into: How can I restrict paddles to move only along Y axis, because the ball comes in and knocks off the paddles and everything floats in space afterwards ? (Box = Rectangle and ball = circle) I know MKS is the unit system, but is there a recommendation for sizes/position to be used ? I know this is a very generic question, but it would be good to know a simple set of values that one could use for making a game as simple as pong. Between box2d and FPE, I have some doubts: what is the recommended way of making a body in FPE ? world.CreateBody() does not exist in FPE Box2d manual recommends never to "new" body(since Box2D uses Small Object allocators), so is there a recommended way in Farseer to create a body (apart from factories) ? In box2d, it is recommended to keep a track of the body object, since it is also the parent to fixture(s). Why is it that in most of the examples, the fixture object is tracked ? Is there a reason why body is not tracked ? Thanks

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• Traffic estimation for a multiplayer flash game

  - by Steve Addington

  hey, i want to know if my rough traffic estimations are right, it would be for a pretty simple realtime flashgame in the style of haxball (but not as a soccer game) heres a video of it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_xBdFg1RcI So here comes my estimation, i dont know if they are realistic! i hope someone can help me. consider the packet attached as a typical one sent every 200ms, its 148bytes + 64 bytes of header will make around a 200bytes packet. The server will receive 200bytes x 6 players x 5 times a sec=6000bytes/s=5.85Kbytes/s=46.9kbit/s plus he has to send all back to the players, so at this point are 94Kbit/s.The server received all the information, perform the definitive calculation and send the new position to all players, in a bigger packet of around 900bytes that have to be delivered to the others 6, which makes 900bytes x 6 players x 5 times a sec=27000bytes/s=26Kbytes/s=210kbit/s. overall that would be 26kbyte per second. thats like 130mb traffic per hour for a 6player room. but somehow i think the numbers are too high? that would be really much traffic for such a simple game. did i calculate something wrong?

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• How to handle people who lie on their resume [closed]

  - by Juliet

  Moderator comment Please note that this is a two year old question that has just been migrated from Stack Overflow. Please take your time to read all the answers and ask yourself "would my answer add anything to this?". I'm conducting technical interviews to fill a few .NET positions. Many of the people I interview really do know .NET pretty well, but I find at least 90% embellish their skillset anywhere between "a little" to "quite drastically". Sometimes they fabricate skills relevant to the position they're applying for, sometimes they don't. Most of the people I interview, even the most egregious liars, are not scam artists. They just want to stand out among the crowd, so they drop a few buzzwords on their resume like "JBoss", "LINQ", "web services", "Django" or whatever just to pad their skillset and stay competitive. (You might wonder if a person that lies about those skills is just bluffing their way through a technical interview. My interviews involve a lot of hands-on coding and problem-solving – people who attempt to bluff will bomb the hands-on coding portion in the first 3 minutes.) These are two open-ended questions, but it would really help me out when I make my recommendations to the hiring managers: Regarding interviewing etiquette, should I attempt to determine whether a person really possesses all of the skills they claim to have? Can I do this without making the candidate feel uncomfortable? Regarding the final decision, should I recommend candidates who are genuinely qualified for the positions they're applying for, even if they've fabricated portions of their skillset?

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• Oracle Develop Newbies

  - by Cassandra Clark

  tweetmeme_url = 'http://blogs.oracle.com/develop/2010/06/oracle_develop_newbies.html'; Share .FBConnectButton_Small{background-position:-5px -232px !important;border-left:1px solid #1A356E;} .FBConnectButton_Text{margin-left:12px !important ;padding:2px 3px 3px !important;} There are a number of us in the Oracle Technology Network team that came over from the Sun acquisition so we are true Oracle Develop "newbies."  We are boning up on Oracle history and thought it would be fun to test your knowledge too.  Below are a few Oracle history questions.  Post your answers in the comment section of the blog and if you answer all questions correctly you will be listed in the next post as an "Oracle Genius".  Feel free to turn the tables on your fellow blog readers by posting your own Oracle history questions.  If you stump the community we'll add your question to our next post as well.  Oracle History Quiz - In 2003, what Applications rival company did Oracle acquire?In which year was JDeveloper first released?In what language was Oracle v 1.0 written?What Oracle program is designed to recognize and reward members of the Oracle Technology and Applications communities for their contributions back to the Oracle community?What party event draws in nearly 4,000 attendees every year during Oracle OpenWorld, Oracle Develop and now JavaOne?See you in September! 

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• Windows Azure ASP.NET MVC 2 Role with Silverlight

  - by GeekAgilistMercenary

  I was working through some scenarios recently with Azure and Silverlight.  I immediately decided a quick walk through for setting up a Silverlight Application running in an ASP.NET MVC 2 Application would be a cool project. This walk through I have Visual Studio 2010, Silverlight 4, and the Azure SDK all installed.  If you need to download any of those go get em? now. Launch Visual Studio 2010 and start a new project.  Click on the section for cloud templates as shown below. After you name the project, the dialog for what type of Windows Azure Cloud Service Role will display.  I selected ASP.NET MVC 2 Web Role, which adds the MvcWebRole1 Project to the Cloud Service Solution. Since I selected the ASP.NET MVC 2 Project type, it immediately prompts for a unit test project.  Because I just want to get everything running first, I will probably be unit testing the Silverlight and just using the MVC Project as a host for the Silverlight for now, and because I would prefer to just add the unit test project later, I am going to select no here. Once you've created the ASP.NET MVC 2 project to host the Silverlight, then create another new project.  Select the Silverlight section under the Installed Templates in the Add New Project dialog.  Then select Silverlight Application. The next dialog that comes up will inquire about using the existing ASP.NET MVC Application I just created, which I do want it to use that so I leave it checked.  The options section however I do not want to check RIA Web Services, do not want a test page added to the project, and I want Silverlight debugging enabled so I leave that checked.  Once those options are appropriately set, just click on OK and the Silverlight Project will be added to the overall solution. The next steps now are to get the Silverlight object appropriately embedded in the web page.  First open up the Site.Master file in the ASP.NET MVC 2 Project located under the Veiws/Shared/ location.  After you open the file review the content of the <header></header> section.  In that section add another <contentplaceholder></contentplaceholder> tag as shown in the code snippet below. <head runat="server"> <title> <asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="TitleContent" runat="server" /> </title> <link href="../../Content/Site.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="HeaderContent" runat="server" /> </head> I usually put it toward the bottom of the header section.  It just seems the <title></title> should be on the top of the section and I like to keep it that way. Now open up the Index.aspx page under the ASP.NET MVC 2 Project located in the Views/Home/ directory.  When you open up that file add a <asp:Content><asp:Content> tag as shown in the next snippet. <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="TitleContent" runat="server"> Home Page </asp:Content>   <asp:Content ID=headerContent ContentPlaceHolderID=HeaderContent runat=server>   </asp:Content>   <asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server"> <h2><%= Html.Encode(ViewData["Message"]) %></h2> <p> To learn more about ASP.NET MVC visit <a href="http://asp.net/mvc" title="ASP.NET MVC Website">http://asp.net/mvc</a>. </p> </asp:Content> In that center tag, I am now going to add what is needed to appropriately embed the Silverlight object into the page.  The first thing I needed is a reference to the Silverlight.js file. <script type="text/javascript" src="Silverlight.js"></script> After that comes a bit of nitty gritty Javascript.  I create another tag (and for those in the know, this is exactly like the generated code that is dumped into the *.html page generated with any Silverlight Project if you select to "add a test page that references the application".  The complete Javascript is below. function onSilverlightError(sender, args) { var appSource = ""; if (sender != null && sender != 0) { appSource = sender.getHost().Source; }   var errorType = args.ErrorType; var iErrorCode = args.ErrorCode;   if (errorType == "ImageError" || errorType == "MediaError") { return; }   var errMsg = "Unhandled Error in Silverlight Application " + appSource + "\n";   errMsg += "Code: " + iErrorCode + " \n"; errMsg += "Category: " + errorType + " \n"; errMsg += "Message: " + args.ErrorMessage + " \n";   if (errorType == "ParserError") { errMsg += "File: " + args.xamlFile + " \n"; errMsg += "Line: " + args.lineNumber + " \n"; errMsg += "Position: " + args.charPosition + " \n"; } else if (errorType == "RuntimeError") { if (args.lineNumber != 0) { errMsg += "Line: " + args.lineNumber + " \n"; errMsg += "Position: " + args.charPosition + " \n"; } errMsg += "MethodName: " + args.methodName + " \n"; }   throw new Error(errMsg); } I literally, since it seems to work fine, just use what is populated in the automatically generated page.  After getting the appropriate Javascript into place I put the actual Silverlight Object Embed code into the HTML itself.  Just so I know the positioning and for final verification when running the application I insert the embed code just below the Index.aspx page message.  As shown below. <asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server"> <h2> <%= Html.Encode(ViewData["Message"]) %></h2> <p> To learn more about ASP.NET MVC visit <a href="http://asp.net/mvc" title="ASP.NET MVC Website"> http://asp.net/mvc</a>. </p> <div id="silverlightControlHost"> <object data="data:application/x-silverlight-2," type="application/x-silverlight-2" width="100%" height="100%"> <param name="source" value="ClientBin/CloudySilverlight.xap" /> <param name="onError" value="onSilverlightError" /> <param name="background" value="white" /> <param name="minRuntimeVersion" value="4.0.50401.0" /> <param name="autoUpgrade" value="true" /> <a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=149156&v=4.0.50401.0" style="text-decoration: none"> <img src="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=161376" alt="Get Microsoft Silverlight" style="border-style: none" /> </a> </object> <iframe id="_sl_historyFrame" style="visibility: hidden; height: 0px; width: 0px; border: 0px"></iframe> </div> </asp:Content> I then open up the Silverlight Project MainPage.xaml.  Just to make it visibly obvious that the Silverlight Application is running in the page, I added a button as shown below. <UserControl x:Class="CloudySilverlight.MainPage" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400">   <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White"> <Button Content="Button" Height="23" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="48,40,0,0" Name="button1" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="75" Click="button1_Click" /> </Grid> </UserControl> Just for kicks, I added a message box that would popup, just to show executing functionality also. private void button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { MessageBox.Show("It runs in the cloud!"); } I then executed the ASP.NET MVC 2 and could see the Silverlight Application in page.  With a quick click of the button, I got a message box.  Success! Now the next step is getting the ASP.NET MVC 2 Project and Silverlight published to the cloud.  As of Visual Studio 2010, Silverlight 4, and the latest Azure SDK, this is actually a ridiculously easy process. Navigate to the Azure Cloud Services web site. Once that is open go back in Visual Studio and right click on the cloud project and select publish. This will publish two files into a directory.  Copy that directory so you can easily paste it into the Azure Cloud Services web site.  You'll have to click on the application role in the cloud (I will have another blog entry soon about where, how, and best practices in the cloud). In the text boxes shown, select the application package file and the configuration file and place them in the appropriate text boxes.  This is the part were it comes in handy to have copied the directory path of the file location.  That way when you click on browser you can just paste that in, then hit enter.  The two files will be listed and you can select the appropriate file. Once that is done, name the service deployment.  Then click on publish.  After a minute or so you will see the following screen. Now click on run.  Once the MvcWebRole1 goes green (the little light symbol to the left of the status) click on the Web Site URL.  Be patient during this process too, it could take a minute or two.  The Silverlight application should again come up just like you ran it on your local machine. Once staging is up and running, click on the circular icon with two arrows to move staging to production.  Once you are done make sure the green light is again go for the production deploy, then click on the Web Site URL to verify the site is working.  At this point I had a successful development, staging, and production deployment. Thanks for reading, hope this was helpful.  I have more Windows Azure and other cloud related material coming, so stay tuned. Original Entry

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• How do you prefer to handle image spriting in your web projects?

  - by Macy Abbey

  It seems like these days it is pretty much mandatory for web applications to sprite images if they want many images on their site AND a fast load time. (Spriting is the process of combining all images referenced from a style sheet into one/few image(s) with each reference containing a different background position.) I was wondering what method of implementing sprites you all prefer in your web applications, given that we are referring to non-dynamic images which are included/designed by the programming team and not images which are dynamically uploaded by a third party. 1. Add new images to an existing sprite by hand, create new css reference by hand. 2. Generate a sprite server-side from your css files which all reference single images set to be background images of an html element that is the same size of the image you are spriting once per build and update all css references programmatically. 3. Use a sprite generating program to generate a sprite image for you once per release and hand insert the new css class / image into your project. 4. Other methods? I prefer two as it requires very little hand-coding and image editing.

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• To my lola

  - by Erik Araojo

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Erik/archive/2013/06/29/153290.aspx I've been staring at the computer for a few minutes now and I honestly don't know what to write.  First I thought of writing about myself, where I was born, where I studied, where I am now... but that seems shallow.  Now that I thought about it.  I'd rather not talk about who I am because it seems irrelevant right now.  What I really want to say is..I'm sad.  Been like this for quite some time now.Nobody knows I'm sad.I tried telling my wife but I guess she didn't think it was serious.  We were having a fight when I told her so she probably thought I was just making up an excuse for my behavior.  And besides, she's not the kind of person who'd put my interests before hers especially when she's got lots of things on her mind.I'm not sad every single day.  Some days I'm perfectly fine.  I actually have no idea when I'd feel sad.  It just happens. I'd wake up cheerful and then before I go to bed I already feel depressed.  I have no idea what triggers it.  On the bed, I'd turn my back to my wife, curl up into a fetal position and start sobbing silently. Awful.  Maybe you're wondering now what's the cause of all this.My grandma passed away and I haven't completely  come to terms with that fact.  I long to see her, talk to her and hold her... but I can't do that anymore because she's gone.  I will never be able to hear her voice and feel her touch again.  To make matters worse, the only person whom I wish would stay beside me whenever I'm feeling miserable and dejected is never around.  She's either working late or out with her friends.  Such is my life at the moment.  I doubt it will improve anytime soon.

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• What are the factors affecting a new programming language?

  - by Saurav Sengupta

  I am developing a new general-purpose programming language of my own design. It's currently my own personal project. I have read of some experts saying that new languages do not usually survive (unfortunately I can't find a reference to that right now). What are the most substantial problems that a new language faces? The language syntax is similar to C/Python families, it does not use S-expressions, and it is an imperative language, but I'm doing first-class functions in it to provide the facilities of currying. In particular, I am concentrating on translating the source language to an intermediate language for execution by an interpreter, but I'm not in a position to translate to native code yet. What would be the issues with that? I've not personally used many non-native code languages, so I'm not well aware of the performance issues on today's machines. I also can't decide upon a lexer and parser generator. What would be the pros and cons of Flex and Yacc vs. hand-made? And what benefits will LLVM provide? I need to get the interpreter ready as quickly as possible. Finally, what factors will affect the language's use post release? I am planning a small library of essentials and full documentation for the first phase.

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• Why does SEO based code tips not appear to affect ranking?

  - by Ben

  I've been researching various methods for SEO where pages have precise titles, keywords are highlighted with h tags and tick the many boxes stated in good page mark up for SEO. However when looking at some top ranked search sites on google for key terms they have terrible SEO based mark up. Really long page titles, no tags, limited appearance of keywords in the text and so on. SEO analysis services rate them lower than other sites, yet these sites rank really high. Even with a low number of back-links they are high, so I don't understand how these sites earn the position when they appear inferior to those below them which have better mark up and links. I don't want to cause trouble my mentioning sites or keywords etc. but looking in google at 'executive search' the roughly 5th placed site makes no sense why it should be highly rank, especially with all the added .swfs. The same applies for the top of 'Japan Executive Search'. My main point is that these sites seem to not have all the important structural rules stated in seo page rating applications and general suggested best practice, nor do they show large back-links. It makes me feel like there is no point bothering to write decent mark up if it really doesn't matter. Can anyone explain how sites with such mark-up, and low back-links can outrank well written and structured sites with greater linkage? Sorry if this is a fuzzy question, I want to avoid singling out any sites for example, but it really has me perplexed that sites which appear to ignore the suggested best practices rank so well.

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• creating bounding box list

  - by Christian Frantz

  I'm trying to create a list of bounding boxes for each cube drawn, so I can use the boxes to intersect with a ray that my mouse position is casting, but I have no idea how. I've created a list that stores the boxes, but how am I getting the values from each box? for (int x = 0; x < mapHeight; x++) { for (int z = 0; z < mapWidth; z++) { cubes.Add(new Vector3(x, map[x, z], z), Matrix.Identity, grass); boxList.Add(something here); } } public Cube(GraphicsDevice graphicsDevice) { device = graphicsDevice; var vertices = new List<VertexPositionTexture>(); BuildFace(vertices, new Vector3(0, 0, 0), new Vector3(0, 1, 1)); BuildFace(vertices, new Vector3(0, 0, 1), new Vector3(1, 1, 1)); BuildFace(vertices, new Vector3(1, 0, 1), new Vector3(1, 1, 0)); BuildFace(vertices, new Vector3(1, 0, 0), new Vector3(0, 1, 0)); BuildFaceHorizontal(vertices, new Vector3(0, 1, 0), new Vector3(1, 1, 1)); BuildFaceHorizontal(vertices, new Vector3(0, 0, 1), new Vector3(1, 0, 0)); cubeVertexBuffer = new VertexBuffer(device, VertexPositionTexture.VertexDeclaration, vertices.Count, BufferUsage.WriteOnly); cubeVertexBuffer.SetData<VertexPositionTexture>(vertices.ToArray()); } There aren't any clearly defined variables for the bounds of each cube created, so where do I create the bounding box from?

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• VBO and shaders confusion, what's their connection?

  - by Jeffrey

  Considering OpenGL 2.1 VBOs and 1.20 GLSL shaders: When creating an entity like "Zombie", is it good to initialize just the VBO buffer with the data once and do N glDrawArrays() calls per each N zombies? Is there a more efficient way? (With a single call we cannot pass different uniforms to the shader to calculate an offset, see point 3) When dealing with logical object (player, tree, cube etc), should I always use the same shader or should I customize (or be able to customize) the shaders per each object? Considering an entity class, should I create and define the shader at object initialization? When having a movable object such as a human, is there any more powerful way to deal with its coordinates than to initialize its VBO object at 0,0 and define an uniform offset to pass to the shader to calculate its real position? Could you make an example of the Data Oriented Design on creating a generic zombie class? Is the following good? Zombielist class: class ZombieList { GLuint vbo; // generic zombie vertex model std::vector<color>; // object default color std::vector<texture>; // objects textures std::vector<vector3D>; // objects positions public: unsigned int create(); // return object id void move(unsigned int objId, vector3D offset); void rotate(unsigned int objId, float angle); void setColor(unsigned int objId, color c); void setPosition(unsigned int objId, color c); void setTexture(unsigned int, unsigned int); ... void update(Player*); // move towards player, attack if near } Example: Player p; Zombielist zl; unsigned int first = zl.create(); zl.setPosition(first, vector3D(50, 50)); zl.setTexture(first, texture("zombie1.png")); ... while (running) { // main loop ... zl.update(&p); zl.draw(); // draw every zombie }

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• How to optimise Andengine's PathModifer (with singleton or pool)?

  - by Casla

  I am trying to build a game where the character find and follows a new path when a new destination is issued by the player, kinda like how units in RTS games work. This is done on a TMX map and I am using the A Star path finder utilities in Andengine to do this.David helped me on that: How can I change the path a sprite is following in real time? At the moment, every-time a new path is issued, I have to abandon the existing PathModifer and Path instances, and create new ones, and from what I read so far, creating new objects when you could re-use existing ones are a big waste for mobile applications. This is how I coded it at the moment: private void loadPathFound() { if (mAStarPath != null) { modifierPath = new org.andengine.entity.modifier.PathModifier.Path(mAStarPath.getLength()); /* replace the first node in the path as the player's current position */ modifierPath.to(player.convertLocalToSceneCoordinates(12, 31)[Constants.VERTEX_INDEX_X]-12, player.convertLocalToSceneCoordinates(12, 31)[Constants.VERTEX_INDEX_Y]-31); for (int i=1; i<mAStarPath.getLength(); i++) { modifierPath.to(mAStarPath.getX(i)*TILE_WIDTH, mAStarPath.getY(i)*TILE_HEIGHT); /* passing in the duration depended on the length of the path, so that the animation has a constant duration for every step */ player.registerEntityModifier(new PathModifier(modifierPath.getLength()/100, modifierPath, null, mIPathModifierListener)); } } The ideal implementation will be to always have just one object of PathModifer and just reset the destination of the path. But I don't know how you can apply the singleton patther on Andengine's PathModifer, there is no method to reset attribute of the path nor the pathModifer. So without re-write the PathModifer and the Path class, or use reflection, is there any other way to implement singleton PathModifer? Thanks for your help.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, November 27, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, November 27, 2010Popular ReleasesMahTweets for Windows Phone: Nightly 69: Latest nightly for build 69XamlQuery/WPF - The Write Less, Do More, WPF Library: XamlQuery-WPF v1.2 (Runtime, Source): This is the first release of popular XamlQuery library for WPF. XamlQuery has already gained recognition among Silverlight developers.Math.NET Numerics: Beta 1: First beta of Math.NET Numerics. Only contains the managed linear algebra provider. Beta 2 will include the native linear algebra providers along with better documentation and examples.WatchersNET.SiteMap: WatchersNET.SiteMap 01.03.02: Whats NewNew Tax Filter, You can now select which Terms you want to Use.Minecraft GPS: Minecraft GPS 1.1: 1.1 Release New Features Compass! New style. Set opacity on main window to allow overlay of Minecraft.Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: Visual Studio 2010 Code Samples 2010-11-25: Code samples for Visual Studio 2010Typps (formerly jiffycms) wysiwyg rich text HTML editor for ASP.NET AJAX: Typps 2.9: -When uploading files (not images), through the file uploader and the multi-file uploader, FileUploaded and MultiFileUploaded event handlers were reporting an empty event argument, this is fixed now. -Fixed also url field not updating when uploading a file ( not image)Wii Backup Fusion: Wii Backup Fusion 0.8.5 Beta: - WBFS repair (default) options fixed - Transfer to image fixed - Settings ui widget names fixed - Some little bug fixes You need to reset the settings! Delete WiiBaFu's config file or registry entries on windows: Linux: ~/.config/WiiBaFu/wiibafu.conf Windows: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WiiBaFu\wiibafu Mac OS X: ~/Library/Preferences/com.wiibafu.wiibafu.plist Caution: This is a BETA version! Errors, crashes and data loss not impossible! Use in test environments only, not on productive syste...Minemapper: Minemapper v0.1.3: Added process count and world size calculation progress to the status bar. Added View->'Status Bar' menu item to show/hide the status bar. Status bar is automatically shown when loading a world. Added a prompt, when loading a world, to use or clear cached images.SQL Monitor: SQL Monitor 1.4: 1.added automatically load sql server instances 2.added friendly wait cursor 3.fixed problem with 4.0 fx 4.added exception handlingSexy Select: sexy select v0.4: Changes in v0.4 Added method : elements. This returns all the option elements that are currently added to the select list Added method : selectOption. This method accepts two values, the element to be modified and the selected state. (true/false)Deep Zoom for WPF: First Release: This first release of the Deep Zoom control has the same source code, binaries and demos as the CodeProject article (http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/DeepZoom.aspx).Simple Service Locator: Simple Service Locator v0.12: The Simple Service Locator is an easy-to-use Inversion of Control library that is a complete implementation of the Common Service Locator interface. It solely supports code-based configuration and is an ideal starting point for developers unfamiliar with larger IoC / DI libraries New features in this release Collections that are registered using RegisterAll<T> can now be injected using automatic constructor injection. A new RegisterAll<T>(params T[]) method overload is added that allows ea...BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.0 RC: This is a Release Candidate version for BlogEngine.NET 2.0. The most current, stable version of BlogEngine.NET is version 1.6. Find out more about the BlogEngine.NET 2.0 RC here. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. To get started, be sure to check out our installation documentation and the installation screencast. If you are upgrading from a previous version, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.0 instructions. As this ...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel Template, version 1.0.1.156: The NodeXL Excel template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 workbook. What's NewThis release adds a feature for aggregating the overall metrics in a folder full of NodeXL workbooks, adds geographical coordinates to the Twitter import features, and fixes a memory-related bug. See the Complete NodeXL Release History for details. Please Note: There is a new option in the setup program to install for "Just Me" or "Everyone." Most people...VFPX: FoxBarcode v.0.11: FoxBarcode v.0.11 - Released 2010.11.22 FoxBarcode is a 100% Visual FoxPro class that provides a tool for generating images with different bar code symbologies to be used in VFP forms and reports, or exported to other applications. Its use and distribution is free for all Visual FoxPro Community. Whats is new? Added a third parameter to the BarcodeImage() method Fixed some minor bugs History FoxBarcode v.0.10 - Released 2010.11.19 - 85 Downloads Project page: FoxBarcodeDotNetAge -a lightweight Mvc jQuery CMS: DotNetAge 1.1.0.5: What is new in DotNetAge 1.1.0.5 ?Document Library features and template added. Resolve issues of templates Improving publishing service performance Opml support added. What is new in DotNetAge 1.1 ? D.N.A Core updatesImprove runtime performance , more stabilize. The DNA core objects model added. Personalization features added that allows users create the personal website, manage their resources, store personal data DynamicUIFixed the PageManager could not move page node bug. ...ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome (jQuery Ajax helpers): 1.3.1 and demos: 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 and Pager tested on mozilla, safari, chrome, opera, ie 9b/8/7/6MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.24.6966: Fixed Updater; Fixed minor bugs;WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.1: Version: 2.0.0.1 (Milestone 1): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...New ProjectsCommunity Megaphone for Windows Phone: The Official CommunityMegaphone application for Windows Phone. Releases are in XAP format, allowing you to upload the compiled application into a device using the Windows Phone Application Deployment tool. Download the source code to learn how to build Windows Phone applications.Group positioning GPS: this is a project for a subject in the university geographic information systems, its about a group of gadjets that can know the position of the other devices in the same group.IIS HTTPS Binder: On IIS 7 that you can not create more than one HTTPS binding, even though you have more then one SSL certificate and you need HTTPS binding on different hosted websites. If you have one IP address you can bind only one SSL to chosen website. This small application can fix this.Inspired Faith Now Playing: A ClickOnce-deployed desktop application that sits in your application tray and notifies you when any of your favorite Messianic Jewish and Christian artists or songs play on the Inspired Faith online radio station (http://inspiredfaith.org)MA Manager: The goal of this software is to help manage a martial arts school through multiple clients and platforms. This allows instructors to easily track students progress overtime.MathModels: This project contains commonly used algorithm implementations in C# .netMyFlickr API: MyFlickr API is a library for developers allows them to call Flickr API from any .Net Application.NerdOnRails.DynamicProxy: a small dynamic-proxy implementation using the new dynamic object that was introduced with .Net 4.NerdOnRails.Injector: a small dependency injection framework for .netNHyperV: NHyperV is a C# Hyper-V programming model.Power Scheme Switcher: This is a very simple utility that exposes an icon in the system tray and allows you to quickly change the Power Plan Scheme from there. It is developed in c# with Vs 2010(WinForm)rcforms: Custom sharepoint forms exampleRobo Commander: This is a Lego NXT commander developed under Visual Studio. This console will have basic commands and uses the NXT++ libraries. Shared Genomics Project - Workbench Codebase: The Shared Genomics workbench enables a diverse user group of researchers to explore the associations between genetic and other factors in their datasets. It provides a graphical user interface to the analysis functions published in a sister Codeplex project i.e. MPI Codebase.SharePoint 2010 PowerShell v2 reference: This project hosts a complete PowerShell v2 reference for SharePoint 2010.Social PowerFlow: Experiments with PowerWF and the social network - integrating Windows Powershell and Windows Workflow Foundation with Facebook and TwitterTweetSayings: Twitter SayingsXamlQuery/WPF - The Write Less, Do More, WPF Library: XamlQuery/WPF is a lightweight yet powerful library that enables rapid development in WPF. It simplifies several tasks like page/window traversing; finding controls by name, type, style, property value or position in control tree; event handling; animating and much more.XmlDSigEx XML Digital Signature Library: The XmlDSigEx library is an alternative to using the SignedXml classes in the .Net Framework. It addresses some of the shortcomings of the standard types particularly in regards to canonicalisation and the enveloped transform. It is currently under development.Yoi's Online Project: This is online storage for Yovi's project?????? ???? ???: ?????? ???? ?? ????? ??? ?????? ? ??????? ?? ???? ??? ????

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• agile as our first project management methodology [closed]

  - by Hasan Khan

  we are a small web development company that has till now been working on client projects. we employed little to no project management and that has cost us a lot. we've used only the barest of tools (wireframing, prototyping etc) but no formal project management process has been put into place. we've learnt from our mistakes and want to prevent them from happening in the future. also, we are looking to develop our own products and we understand that putting in a proper project management paradigm will help. after a lot of research, we've sort of settled on agile for a few reasons: agile seems to scale well with team size. our team is small right now and we hope to grow and agile seems to be a process that we can put in place now and grow with. agile will help us with customers who just can't seem to make up their minds and keep changing requirements. we'd appreciate the community's thoughts on this. is this a correct way to think? will agile be a good system to put into place, where there has been none till now? are there any resources that may help us in our position? pretty much all of the resources that we've found start by comparing agile to x (where x = any management methodology) and why its better than x and how agile can be implemented in place of x. we're looking for resources that can help us out in our particular situation. thanks for all your help!

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• Advice: The first-time interviewer's dilemna

  - by shan23

  I've been working in my first job for about 2 years now, and I've been "asked" to interview a potential teammate (whom I might have to mentor as well) on pretty short notice (2 days from now). Initially, I had been given a free rein(or so I thought, and hence agreed), but today, I've been told "not to pose bookish questions" - implying I can only ask basic programming puzzles and stuff similar to the 'fizbuzz' question. I strongly believe that not knowing basic algorithmic notations(the haziest ideas of space/time complexities) or the tiniest idea of regular expressions would make working with the guy very difficult for anyone. I know i'm asking for a lot here, but according to you, what would be a comprehensive way to test out the absolutely basic requirements of a CS guy(he has 2 yrs of exp) without sounding too pedantic/bookish etc ? It seems it would be legit to ask C questions/simple puzzles only....but I really do want to have something a bit different from "finding loops in linked lists" that has kind of become the opening statement of most techie interviews !! This is a face-to-face interview with about an hour or more of time - I looked at Steve's basic phone-screen questions, and I was wondering if there exists a guide on "basic face-to-face interview questions" that I can use(or compile from the community's answers here). EDIT: The position is mostly for a kernel level C programming job, with some smattering of C++ required for writing the test framework.

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• Flash AS3 sidescrolling tiles optimization

  - by Galvanize

  I'm trying to make a sidescrolling game in Flash that will run on a low performance laptop. While studying the subject from Tonypa I saw that he builds a Bitmap by making copys of the BitmapData of each tile from the Tile Sheet and placing it on the bigger Bitmat with the size of the screen. But when I came to think on how to scroll my map I ran into some optimization doubts. I came up with two choices: Create a MovieClip, place a Bitmap instance for each tile that is shown on the screen + 1 row in it, then move them all. Then when the tile ran off the screen I would move it to end of the MovieClip and replace their BitmapData for the next row in my map. Use a Bitmap with copys of each tile in it (as shown in Tonypa's tutorial) but 1 extra row, move the whole Bitmap, and when it comes the time to replace rows, redraw the whole Bitmap and move it back to the origin position. The first idea is how a co-worker of mine suggested, the second one is my own, but none of us has enough technical knowledge to be sure on a technique that would be optimal in performance, can anyone help?

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• 2D non-tile based map editor

  - by Jonesy

  I am currently developing a relatively simple 2D, topdown oriented adventure game for the iPhone and was wondering what would be the easiest way to create the maps for my game. I figured I would need some kind of visual editor that would give me immediate feedback and would allow me to place all objects in the world exactly where I want them. I could then load the saved representation of the world I create in the editor in my game. So, I am looking for a simple map editor that allows me to do this. All the objects in my game are simply textured rectangles build up from two triangles. All I need to be able to do is position different rectangles/objects in the map, and give them a texture. I am using texture atlases, so it would be useful to be able to assign portions of textures to the objects. I then need to be able to extract all the objects from the saved representation of my maps, together with the name/identifier of the texture(atlas) they use, and the area of the texture atlas. I have looked at some tile-based map editors like Tiled and Ogmo, but they don't seem to be able to do what I want. Any suggestions? EDIT: a more concrete example: something like the GameMaker level editor, but then with added export functionality in a handy format.

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