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• Wrapping text and div as a unit

  - by mathee

  I have the following that I would like wrapped as units. <div class='tag-box'> <a href=#>Axe Committee</a> <div class='circle'><a href=#>x</a></div> </div> The CSS for these classes are: .tag-box { display:inline; } .circle { display:inline; padding-left:4px; padding-right:4px; background:rgb(196,15,24); /*dark red*/ -moz-border-radius:10px; -webkit-border-radius:10px; } .circle a { font-size:10px; text-decoration:none; color:#fff; position:relative; top:-2px; } I can have upwards of 20 or 30 of these tag-boxes displayed inline. The problem is that the wrapping will break the words from each other or even break the red circle from the link. This makes it hard to differentiate which circle belongs to which link. (In the future, each circle corresponds to a different action with respect to the link.) See below. How do I prevent this kind of wrapping from occurring?

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• correct way of initializing variables

  - by OVERTONE

  ok this is just a shot in the dark but it may be the cause of most of the errors ive gotten. when your initializing something. lets say a smal swing program. would it go liek this variables here { private Jlist contactList; String [] contactArray; ArrayList <String> contactArrayList; ResultSet namesList constructor here public whatever() { GridLayout aGrid = new GridLayout(2,2,10,10); contact1 = new String(); contact2 = new String(); contact3 = new String(); contactArrayList = new ArrayList<String>(); // is something supposed too go in the () of this JList? contactList = new JList(); contactArray = new String[5]; from1 =new JLabel ("From: " + contactArray[1]); gridlayout.add(components)// theres too many components to write onto SO. } // methods here public void fillContactsGui() { createConnection(); ArrayList<String> contactsArrayList = new ArrayList<String>(); while (namesList.next()) { contactArrayList.add(namesList.getString(1)); ContactArray[1] = namesList[1]; } } i know this is probably a huge beginner question but this is the code ive gotten used too. im initializing thigns three and fours times without meaning too because im not sure where they gp. can anyone shed some light on this? p.s. sorry for the messy sample code. i done my best.

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• Setting up padding for websites in mobile devices

  - by ambrelasweb

  I had finished this website a while ago but something happened to it and I've now spent all day fixing it and getting it back from scratch as my backup wasn't correctly done. I don't quite understand what it's doing as I've done this technique on many other websites with no troubles, maybe I've looked at this website too long? Here is the website. I'm wanting to put some space on the left and right hand side, however I dont just have one container as I was needing the dark grey bar at 100% of the screen and always under the banner no matter where it was. So there are 4 "containing" divs that I want to have the space. I've placed soem CSS3 media queries in but now I'm getting a gap to the right. I was thinking it was because my background mages are going all the way across but they set at 100% so I'm just not understanding whats going on. It's somethign simple, I'm not seeing it right now.. This is what I have for the media queries /* Smartphones (portrait and landscape) ----------- */ @media only screen and (min-device-width : 320px) and (max-device-width : 480px) { #header, #banner, #main, #footer-widget-area { padding: 0 2em 0 2em; } } This is what t looks like on my iPhone Any advice is helpful and appreciated.

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• Is it possible to achieve MAX(As,Ad) openGL blending?

  - by Jeff B

  I am working on a game where I want to create shadows under a series of sprites on a grid. The shadows are larger than the sprites themselves and the sprites are animated (i.e. move and rotate). I cannot simply render them into the sprite png, or the shadows will overlap adjacent sprites. I also cannot simply put shadows on a lower layer by themselves, because when they overlap, they will create dark bands at their intersection. These sprites are animated, so it is not feasible to render these en masse. Basically, I want the sprites' shadows to blend together such that they max out at a set opacity. Example: I believe this is equivalent to an openGL blending of (Rs,Gs,Bs,Max(As,Ds)), where I don't really care about R,G, and B, as it will always be the same color in src and dst. However, this is not a valid openGL blending mode. Is there an easy way to accomplish this, especially in cocos2d-iphone? I would be able to approximate this by making the shadow sprites opaque, then applying them both to a parent sprite, and making the parent sprite 40% opacity. However, the way cocos2d works, this only sets the opacity of each child to 40%, rather than the combined sprite image, which results in the same stripe.

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• JLabel transparency problem

  - by Rendicahya

  I have a dark-gray JPanel with a JLabel on it. I set new Color(0, 0, 0, .5f) (tranparent) as the background of the JLabel and I change the text several times using a button. The problem is, everytime the text is changed, the previous text still remains behind the new text. I change the text from "123456789" to "1234567", "12345" and "123". Here is the screenshot: How do I get rid of this "shadow"? Here's the code: public class TransparentJLabel extends JFrame { private int i = 0; private String[] value = {"123456789", "1234567", "12345", "123", "1"}; public TransparentJLabel() { setSize(300, 160); setDefaultCloseOperation(WindowConstants.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); setLayout(null); JPanel panel = new JPanel(); panel.setBackground(new Color(102, 102, 102)); panel.setLayout(null); panel.setBounds(0, 0, 300, 160); final JLabel label = new JLabel(); label.setText(value[0]); label.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", 1, 36)); label.setForeground(new Color(255, 255, 255)); label.setBackground(new Color(0, 0, 0, .5f)); label.setHorizontalAlignment(SwingConstants.CENTER); label.setOpaque(true); label.setBounds(10, 10, 270, 70); JButton button = new JButton(); button.setText("Change"); button.setBounds(100, 90, 90, 25); button.addActionListener(new ActionListener() { public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) { label.setText(value[++i]); } }); panel.add(label); panel.add(button); add(panel); } public static void main(String[] args) { EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() { public void run() { new TransparentJLabel().setVisible(true); } }); } }

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• Solutions to cubefarm lighting

  - by Khorkrak

  So with our recent move to the cubefarm out from our developer friendly shared office, we've altered the environment to reproduce our more programming conducive workspace as much as possible. Fortunately, we we're planted into the same aisle as QA. They're quiet and it's made it easier to pair up to review a problem. They've already unscrewed some of the fluorescent bulbs. We unscrewed the rest. Now the facilities coordinator and HR are wondering what to do. They want the office to have an open, bright and elegant feel to it as does the founder - think IKEA. Fortunately he's usually in the NYC office and rarely stops up where we work. There's some natural light from nearby windows and translucent office walls that ring the farm. So the facility coordinator doesn't understand - do you guys want incandescents overhead or... no we just don't want overhead lights. How to solve this while avoiding having a weird looking office space with a dark spot in the middle. Are there any better solutions - no we can't have an office as that's considered a management only perk.

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• Why does reusing arrays increase performance so significantly in c#?

  - by Willem

  In my code, I perform a large number of tasks, each requiring a large array of memory to temporarily store data. I have about 500 tasks. At the beginning of each task, I allocate memory for an array : double[] tempDoubleArray = new double[M]; M is a large number depending on the precise task, typically around 2000000. Now, I do some complex calculations to fill the array, and in the end I use the array to determine the result of this task. After that, the tempDoubleArray goes out of scope. Profiling reveals that the calls to construct the arrays are time consuming. So, I decide to try and reuse the array, by making it static and reusing it. It requires some additional juggling to figure out the minimum size of the array, requiring an extra pass through all tasks, but it works. Now, the program is much faster (from 80 sec to 22 sec for execution of all tasks). double[] tempDoubleArray = staticDoubleArray; However, I'm a bit in the dark of why precisely this works so well. Id say that in the original code, when the tempDoubleArray goes out of scope, it can be collected, so allocating a new array should not be that hard right? I ask this because understanding why it works might help me figuring out other ways to achieve the same effect, and because I would like to know in what cases allocation gives performance issues.

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• c# creating a database query METHOD

  - by Sinaesthetic

  I'm not sure if im delluded but what I would like to do is create a method that will return the results of a query, so that i can reuse the connection code. As i understand it, a query returns an object but how do i pass that object back? I want to send the query into the method as a string argument, and have it return the results so that I can use them. Here's what i have which was a stab in the dark, it obviously doesn't work. This example is me trying to populate a listbox with the results of a query; the sheet name is Employees and the field/column is name. The error i get is "Complex DataBinding accepts as a data source either an IList or an IListSource.". any ideas? public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); openFileDialog1.ShowDialog(); openedFile = openFileDialog1.FileName; lbxEmployeeNames.DataSource = Query("Select [name] FROM [Employees$]"); } public object Query(string sql) { System.Data.OleDb.OleDbConnection MyConnection; System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand myCommand = new System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand(); string connectionPath; //build connection string connectionPath = "provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source='" + openedFile + "';Extended Properties=Excel 8.0;"; MyConnection = new System.Data.OleDb.OleDbConnection(connectionPath); MyConnection.Open(); myCommand.Connection = MyConnection; myCommand.CommandText = sql; return myCommand.ExecuteNonQuery(); }

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• Using unions to simplify casts

  - by Steven Lu

  I realize that what I am trying to do isn't safe. But I am just doing some testing and image processing so my focus here is on speed. Right now this code gives me the corresponding bytes for a 32-bit pixel value type. struct Pixel { unsigned char b,g,r,a; }; I wanted to check if I have a pixel that is under a certain value (e.g. r, g, b <= 0x10). I figured I wanted to just conditional-test the bit-and of the bits of the pixel with 0x00E0E0E0 (I could have wrong endianness here) to get the dark pixels. Rather than using this ugly mess (*((uint32_t*)&pixel)) to get the 32-bit unsigned int value, i figured there should be a way for me to set it up so I can just use pixel.i, while keeping the ability to reference the green byte using pixel.g. Can I do this? This won't work: struct Pixel { unsigned char b,g,r,a; }; union Pixel_u { Pixel p; uint32_t bits; }; I would need to edit my existing code to say pixel.p.g to get the green color byte. Same happens if I do this: union Pixel { unsigned char c[4]; uint32_t bits; }; This would work too but I still need to change everything to index into c, which is a bit ugly but I can make it work with a macro if i really needed to.

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• Jquery gradient behavior applies to all but first URL

  - by Dustin

  I've got a page that shows my photography portfolio. I'm trying to do a jquery gradient on the text, and it's working on all but the first link. Here's the html: <h1><a href="portfolio/engagements"><span></span>engagements</a> | </h1><br> <h1><a href="portfolio/weddings"><span></span>weddings</a> | </h1> <br> <h1><a href="portfolio/bridals"><span></span>bridals</a> | </h1> <br> <h1><a href="portfolio/families"><span></span>families</a> | </h1> <br> <h1><a href="portfolio/seniors"><span></span>seniors</a> </h1> <br> And here's the jquery call: $(".jquery h1").prepend("<span></span>"); And here's the css for it: .gradient4 span { background: url(images/gradient-dark.png) repeat-x; position: absolute; bottom: -0.1em; display: inline; width: 100%; height: 29px; } The problem I'm having is that all urls but the first link (currently 'engagements'), have the gradient effect. Any ideas why the first link isn't working?

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• php memory how much is too much

  - by Rob

  I'm currently re-writing my site using my own framework (it's very simple and does exactly what I need, i've no need for something like Zend or Cake PHP). I've done alot of work in making sure everything is cached properly, caching pages in files so avoid sql queries and generally limiting the number of sql queries. Overall it looks like it's very speedy. The average time taken for the front page (taken over 100 times) is 0.046152 microseconds. But one thing i'm not sure about is whether i've done enough to reduce php memory usage. The only time i've ever encountered problems with it is when uploading large files. Using memory_get_peak_usage(TRUE), which I THINK returns the highest amount of memory used whilst the script has been running, the average (taken over 100 times) is 1572864 bytes. Is that good? I realise you don't know what it is i'm doing (it's rather simple, get the 10 latest articles, the comment count for each, get the user controls, popular tags in the sidebar etc). But would you be at all worried with a script using that sort of memory getting hit 50,000 times a day? Or once every second at peak times? I realise that this is a very open ended question. Hopefully you can understand that it's a bit of a stab in the dark and i'm really just looking for some re-assurance that it's not going to die horribly come re-launch day.

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• Canvas draw calls are rendering out of sequence

  - by Tom Murray

  I have the following code for writing draw calls to a "back buffer" canvas, then placing those in a main canvas using drawImage. This is for optimization purposes and to ensure all images get placed in sequence. Before placing the buffer canvas on top of the main one, I'm using fillRect to create a dark-blue background on the main canvas. However, the blue background is rendering after the sprites. This is unexpected, as I am making its fillRect call first. Here is my code: render: function() { this.buffer.clearRect(0,0,this.w,this.h); this.context.fillStyle = "#000044"; this.context.fillRect(0,0,this.w,this.h); for (var i in this.renderQueue) { for (var ii = 0; ii < this.renderQueue[i].length; ii++) { sprite = this.renderQueue[i][ii]; // Draw it! this.buffer.fillStyle = "green"; this.buffer.fillRect(sprite.x, sprite.y, sprite.w, sprite.h); } } this.context.drawImage(this.bufferCanvas,0,0); } This also happens when I use fillRect on the buffer canvas, instead of the main one. Changing the globalCompositeOperation between 'source-over' and 'destination-over' (for both contexts) does nothing to change this. Paradoxically, if I instead place the blue fillRect inside the nested for loops with the other draw calls, it works as expected... Thanks in advance!

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• goto was unexpected at this time

  - by SammytheNerd

  @echo off color 0a title Horror Game echo. echo. echo. echo. echo Welcome to the game echo If you get scared echo Feel free to leave echo. echo. echo You are in a dark room. echo It is cold. echo All you hear is a scratching sound echo near your feet. echo What do you do? echo. echo. echo 1.) Feel around you echo 2.) Listen for anything else set/p input = Command? if %input% == "1" goto Feel if %input% == "2" goto Listen echo. echo. :Feel echo You feel around and hear a growl. echo As you realize the scratching was echo on your leg. echo. echo You remember nothing else. pause end I am trying to make a text based game for cmd and whenever i try to enter a response is instantly closes and i can barely read out "goto was unexpected at this time"

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• Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines

  - by Eric Z Goodnight

  Want to send some Geek Love to that special someone? Why not do it with these elementary school throwback valentines, and win their heart this upcoming Valentine’s day—the geek way! Read on to see the simple method to make your own custom Valentines, as well as download a set of eleven ready-made ones any geek guy or gal should be delighted get. It’s amore! How to Make Custom Valentines A size we’ve used for all of our Valentines is a 3” x 4” at 150 dpi. This is fairly low resolution for print, but makes a great graphic to email. With your new image open, Navigate to Edit > Fill and fill your background layer with a rich, red color (or whatever appeals to you.) By setting “Use” to “Foreground color as shown above, you’ll paint whatever foreground color you have in your color picker. Press to select the text tool. Set a few text objects, using whatever fonts appeal to you. Pixel fonts, like this one, are freely downloadable, and we’ve already shared a great list of Valentines fonts. Copy an image from the internet if you’re confident your sweetie won’t mind a bit of fair use of copyrighted imagery. If they do mind, find yourself some great Creative Commons images. to do a free transform on your image, sizing it to whatever dimensions work best for your design. Right click your newly added image layer in your panel and Choose “Blending Effects” to pick a Layer Style. “Stroke” with this setting adds a black line around your image. Also turning on “Outer Glow” with this setting puts a dark black shadow around the top and bottom (and sides, although they are hidden). Add some more text. Double entendre is recommended. Click and hold down on the “Rectangle Tool” to get the “Custom Shape Tool.” The custom shape tool has useful vector shapes built into it. Find the “Shape” dropdown in the menu to find the heart image. Click and drag to create a vector heart shape in your image. Your layers panel is where you can change the color, if it happens to use the wrong one at first. Click the color swatch in your panel, highlighted in blue above. will transform your vector heart. You can also use it to rotate, if you like. Add some details, like this Power or Standby symbol, which can be found in symbol fonts, taken from images online, or drawn by hand. Your Valentine is now ready to be saved as a JPG or PNG and sent to the object of your affection! Keep reading to see a list of 11 downloadable How-To Geek Valentines, including this one and the three from the header image. Download The HTG Set of Valentines Download the HTG Geek Valentines (ZIP) Download the HTG Geek Valentines (ZIP) When he’s not wooing ladies with Valentines cards, you can email the author at [email protected] with your Photoshop and Graphics questions. Your questions may be featured in a future How-To Geek article! Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines How to Integrate Dropbox with Pages, Keynote, and Numbers on iPad RGB? CMYK? Alpha? What Are Image Channels and What Do They Mean? How to Recover that Photo, Picture or File You Deleted Accidentally How To Colorize Black and White Vintage Photographs in Photoshop How To Get SSH Command-Line Access to Windows 7 Using Cygwin How to Kid Proof Your Computer’s Power and Reset Buttons Microsoft’s Windows Media Player Extension Adds H.264 Support Back to Google Chrome Android Notifier Pushes Android Notices to Your Desktop Dead Space 2 Theme for Chrome and Iron Carl Sagan and Halo Reach Mashup – We Humans are Capable of Greatness [Video] Battle the Necromorphs Once Again on Your Desktop with the Dead Space 2 Theme for Windows 7

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• Some VS 2010 RC Updates (including patches for Intellisense and Web Designer fixes)

  - by ScottGu

  [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] We are continuing to make progress on shipping Visual Studio 2010.  I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who has downloaded and tried out the VS 2010 Release Candidate, and especially to those who have sent us feedback or reported issues with it. This data has been invaluable in helping us find and fix remaining bugs before we ship the final release. Last month I blogged about a patch we released for the VS 2010 RC that fixed a bad intellisense crash issue.  This past week we released two additional patches that you can download and apply to the VS 2010 RC to immediately fix two other common issues we’ve seen people run into: Patch that fixes crashes with Tooltip invocation and when hovering over identifiers The Visual Studio team recently released a second patch that fixes some crashes we’ve seen when tooltips are displayed – most commonly when hovering over an identifier to view a QuickInfo tooltip. You can learn more about this issue from this blog post, and download and apply the patch here. Patch that fixes issues with the Web Forms designer not correctly adding controls to the auto-generated designer files The Visual Web Developer team recently released a patch that fixes issues where web controls are not correctly added to the .designer.cs file associated with the .aspx file – which means they can’t be programmed against in the code-behind file.  This issue is most commonly described as “controls are not being recognized in the code-behind” or “editing existing .aspx files regenerates the .aspx.designer.(vb or cs) file and controls are now missing” or “I can’t embed controls within the Ajax Control Toolkit TabContainer or the <asp:createuserwizard> control”. You can learn more about the issue here, and download the patch that fixes it here. Common Cause of Intellisense and IDE sluggishness on Windows XP, Vista, Win Server 2003/2008 systems Over the last few months we’ve occasionally seen reports of people seeing tremendous slowness when typing and using intellisense within VS 2010 despite running on decent machines.  It took us awhile to track down the cause – but we have found that the common culprit seems to be that these machines don’t have the latest versions of the UIA (Windows Automation) component installed. UIA 3 ships with Windows 7, and is a recommended Windows Update patch on XP and Vista (which is why we didn’t see the problem in our tests – since our machines are patched with all recommended updates).  Many systems (especially on XP) don’t automatically install recommended updates, though, and are running with older versions of UIA. This can cause significant performance slow-downs within the VS 2010 editor when large lists are displayed (for example: with intellisense). If you are running on Windows XP, Vista, or Windows Server 2003 or 2008 and are seeing any performance issues with the editor or IDE, please install the free UIA 3 update that can be downloaded from this page.  If you scroll down the page you’ll find direct links to versions for each OS. Note that we are making improvements to the final release of VS 2010 so that we don’t have big perf issues when UIA 3 isn’t installed – and we are also adding a message within the IDE that will warn you if you don’t have UIA 3 installed and accessibility is activated. Improved Text Rendering with WPF 4 and VS 2010 We recently made some nice changes to WPF 4 which improve the text clarity and text crispness over what was in the VS 2010/.NET 4 Release Candidate.  In particular these changes improve scenarios where you have a dark background with light text. You can learn more about these improvements in this WPF Team blog post.  These changes will be in the final release of VS 2010 and .NET 4. Hope this helps, Scott

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• Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Batman

  - by Pinal Dave

  Batman is one of the darkest superheroes in the fantasy canon.  He does not come to his powers through any sort of magical coincidence or radioactive insect, but through a lot of psychological scarring caused by witnessing the death of his parents.  Despite his dark back story, he possesses a lot of admirable abilities that I feel bear comparison to developers. Batman has the distinct advantage that his alter ego, Bruce Wayne is a millionaire (or billionaire in today’s reboots).  This means that he can spend his time working on his athletic abilities, building a secret lair, and investing his money in cool tools.  This might not be true for developers (well, most developers), but I still think there are many parallels. So how are developers like Batman? Well, read on my list of reasons. Develop Skills Batman works on his skills.  He didn’t get the strength to scale Gotham’s skyscrapers by inheriting his powers or suffering an industrial accident.  Developers also hone their skills daily.  They might not be doing pull-ups and scaling buldings, but I think their skills are just as impressive. Clear Goals Batman is driven to build a better Gotham.  He knows that the criminal who killed his parents was a small-time thief, not a super villain – so he has larger goals in mind than simply chasing one villain.  He wants his city as a whole to be better.  Developers are also driven to make things better.  It can be easy to get hung up on one problem, but in the end it is best to focus on the well-being of the system as a whole. Ultimate Teamplayers Batman is the hero Gotham needs – even when that means appearing to be the bad guys.  Developers probably know that feeling well.  Batman takes the fall for a crime he didn’t commit, and developers often have to deliver bad news about the limitations of their networks and servers.  It’s not always a job filled with glory and thanks, but someone has to do it. Always Ready Batman and the Boy Scouts have this in common – they are always prepared.  Let’s add developers to this list.  Batman has an amazing tool belt with gadgets and gizmos, and let’s not even get into all the functions of the Batmobile!  Developers’ skills might be the knowledge and skills they have developed, not tools they can carry in a utility belt, but that doesn’t make them any less impressive. 100% Dedication Bruce Wayne cultivates the personality of a playboy, never keeping the same girlfriend for long and spending his time partying.  Even though he hides it, his driving force is his deep concern and love for his friends and the city as a whole.  Developers also care a lot about their company and employees – even when it is driving them crazy.  You do your best work when you care about your job on a personal level. Quality Output Batman believes the city deserves to be saved.  The citizens might have a love-hate relationship with both Batman and Bruce Wayne, and employees might not always appreciate developers.  Batman and developers, though, keep working for the best of everyone. I hope you are all enjoying reading about developers-as-superheroes as much as I am enjoying writing about them.  Please tell me how else developers are like Superheroes in the comments – especially if you know any developers who are faster than a speeding bullet and can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Developer, Superhero

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• Add Windows 7’s AeroSnap Feature to Vista and XP

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you using Windows Vista or XP and want that Windows 7 AeroSnap goodness on your own system? Then join us as we look at AeroSnap for Windows Vista and XP. Note: Requires .NET Framework 2.0 or higher (link provided at bottom of article). Setup What exactly does AeroSnap do you might ask…here is a quote directly from the website: “AeroSnap is a simple but powerful application that allows you to resize, arrange or maximize your desktop windows with just drag’n'drop. Simply drag a window to a side of your desktop to snap it or drag it to the top to maximize. When you drag it back to the last position, the last window size will be restored.” As soon as you have finished installing AeroSnap and started it for the first time the only item that will be visible is the “System Tray Icon”. Before going any further you should take a moment to view and make any desired adjustments in the “Options”. Note: AeroSnap works with multiple monitors. You may want to have AeroSnap start with Windows each time but the really nice setting to enable here is the “Snap Preview”. If you are using AeroSnap on Vista and have Aero enabled this will really be nice. The second portion may be of interest for those who would like to enable the keyboard shortcut function. One point worth noting about this screen is that the highest number of pixels from the screen’s edge that you can set AeroSnap for is 20 pixels. AeroSnap in Action AeroSnap is extremely easy to use…just grab the top of an app window and drag it to the left, right, or top of your screen. Since we installed this on Windows Vista we made certain to enable the “Snap Preview” in the “Options”.  We started off with dragging our Firefox 3.7 window towards the left…once we got close to the edge of the screen you can see that the left half of the screen temporarily “shaded over”. Note: The “Snap Preview” displays on the left and right movements but not the top movement. Releasing Firefox snapped it right into the “shaded over” part of the screen. The great thing about AeroSnap is that it is really easy to return the app window to it former size…all that you have to do is simply click on and grab the top portion of the app window. Moving Firefox towards the top of our screen and… It quickly snaps into filling the screen. One thing that we did notice is that the window did not “Maximize” as per the function for the button in the upper right corner. Dragging towards the right side now… And snap! Tucked in all nice and neat… You can minimize the app windows to the Taskbar and they will return to their previous “snap area” when “maximized” again. Conclusion If you have been wanting to add Windows 7’s AeroSnap goodness to your Vista and XP systems then you should definitely give this app a try. AeroSnap is very easy to set up and operate… Links Download AeroSnap for Windows Vista & XP Download the .NET Framework Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Windows 7 or Vista System RestoreRoundup: 16 Tweaks to Windows Vista Look & FeelSelect Files using Check Boxes in Windows VistaSpeed up Your Windows Vista Computer with ReadyBoostHow-To Geek Bounty: $103.24(Paid!) for Active Desktop for Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Add a Custom Title in IE using Spybot or Spyware Blaster When You Need to Hail a Taxi in NYC Live Map of Marine Traffic NoSquint Remembers Site Specific Zoom Levels (Firefox) New Firefox release 3.6.3 fixes 1 Critical bug Dark Side of the Moon (8-bit)

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• XNA Notes 008

  - by George Clingerman

  This week has been a rough one. I’ve been sick and then in some kind of slump for my afternoon coding sessions. It could be from the cold, could be I’m still tired from writing that Windows Phone 7 game development book (which is out now!) or it could just be I’m tired of winter and want some sunshine. All I know is that even while I’m stick, the XNA world keeps going along at it’s whirlwind pace. Below are the things I caught in between my coughing fits.. Time Critical XNA News: The 2011 MVP summit is almost here so pass along your feelings and thoughts so the MVPs can take them and share them with the team in person http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/76317/464136.aspx#464136 Dream Build Play - there’s no new announcement yet, but you can’t get much more to the end of February than this! http://www.dreambuildplay.com/Main/Home.aspx XNA Team: Dean Johnson from the XNA team shares an excellent way of handling Guide.IsTrialMode on WP7 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dejohn/archive/2011/02/21/calling-guide-istrialmode-on-windows-phone-7.aspx Nick Gravelyn tries a new tactic in deciding if there’s enough interest to develop a sequel or not. Don’t YOU want Pixel Man 2 to come out? http://nickgravelyn.com/pixelman2/ XNA MVPs: Andy “The ZMan” Dunn finally shares what he’s been secretly working on these past 4 months http://twitter.com/#!/The_Zman/status/40590269392887808 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg8Z0ZdYbvg&feature=youtu.be Joel Martinez lets developers around NYC know they should by signing up for Game Hack Day http://twitter.com/joelmartinez/statuses/41118590862102528 http://gamehackday.org/71fdk XNA Developers: Michael McLaughlin shares an XNA RenderTarget2D Sample http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/02/18/xna-rendertarget2d-sample.aspx Martin Caine starts a new series on Deferred Rendering in XNA 4.0 http://twitter.com/#!/MartinCaine/status/39735221339291648 http://martincaine.com/xna/deferred_rendering_in_xna_4_introduction ElemenyCy posts about his fun time with the IntermediateSerializer http://www.ubergamermonkey.com/xna/holy-bloated-xml-batman/ Ben Kane releases a narrated dev diary video for Project Splice. Let him know if you’d like to see more! (I know I do!) http://twitter.com/#!/benkane/status/39846959498002432 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EmziXZUo08&feature=youtu.be Jason Swearingen (of Novaleaf) posts his part 1 of Spatial Partitioning solutions http://altdevblogaday.org/2011/02/21/spatial-partitioning-part-1-survey-of-spatial-partitioning-solutions/ Brian Lawson of Dark Flow Studios shares what his been up to lately with lots of pretty screenshots and hints of announcements from Microsoft... http://www.darkflowstudios.com/entry/short-and-sweet-part-1 Luke Avery starts a new blog where he plans on making XNA tutorials for beginners (and he’s got a few started already!) http://programmingwithovery.wordpress.com/ Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): GameMarx Episode 10 http://www.gamemarx.com/video/the-show/24/ep-10-february-18-2010.aspx Minecraft clone FortressCraft coming to XBLIG http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-02-23-minecraft-clone-fortresscraft-hits-xblig ezMuze+ starts an IndieGoGo fundraiser campaign to help fund their second game and get it onto even more devices! http://www.indiegogo.com/ezmuze Gamergeddon XBLIG round up http://www.gamergeddon.com/2011/02/20/xbox-indie-game-round-up-february-20th/?utm_campaign=twitter&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitter JForce Games loses their Ego http://jforcegames.com/blog/index.php?itemid=121&catid=4 XNA Game Development: @BallerIndustry reminds all XNA developers that the Maths are important ;) http://twitter.com/#!/BallerIndustry/status/39317618280243200 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjV3XDFsjP4&feature=player_embedded#at=106 @suhinini stumbles on an older but extremely useful post on XNA Content Pipeline debugging http://twitter.com/#!/suhinini/status/39270189476352000 http://badcorporatelogo.wordpress.com/2010/10/31/xna-content-pipeline-debugging-4-0/ XNA Game Development Workshops at Singapore Universities http://innovativesingapore.com/2011/02/xna-game-development-workshops-at-singapore-universities/ Indiefreaks announces that IGF v0.3 is out with Xbox 360 support, SunBurn 2.0.12 and it’s now Open Source! http://twitter.com/#!/indiefreaks/status/39391953971982336 @liotral announces a new series on properly designing a game http://twitter.com/#!/liortal53/status/39466905081217024 http://liortalblog.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/hello-cosmos/ Indies and XNA at CodeStock 2011 http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/02/20/indies-and-xna-at-codestock-2011.aspx Train Frontier Express posts about XNA Content Hotloading http://trainfrontierexpress.blogspot.com/2011/02/xna-content-hotloading-overview.html Slyprid announces a new character editor in Transmute http://twitter.com/#!/slyprid/status/40146992818696192 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKhFAc78LDs&feature=youtu.be The XNA 2D from the ground up tutorial series http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkgenesis/archive/2011/02/23/recap-the-xna-2d-from-the-ground-up-tutorial-series.aspx Sgt.Conker posts a “Clingerman” (hey that’s me!) to stay relevant http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/02/posting-a-clingerman-to-stay-relevant/

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• Things to install on a new machine – revisited

  - by RoyOsherove

  as I prepare to get a new dev machine at work, I write the things I am going to install on it, before writing the first line of code on that machine: Control Freak Tools: Everything Search Engine – a free and amazingly fast search engine for files all over your machine. (just file names, not inside files). This is so fast I use it almost as a replacement for my start menu, but it’s also great for finding those files that get hidden and tucked away in dark places on my system. Ever had a situation where you needed to see exactly how many copies of X.dll were hiding on your machine and where? this tool is perfect for that. Google Chrome. It’s just fast. very fast. and Firefox has become the IE of alternative browsers in terms of speed and memory. Don’t even get me started on IE. TweetDeck – get a complete view of what’s up on twitter Total Commander – my still favorite file manager, over five years now. KatMouse – will scroll any window your hovering on, even if it’s not an active window, when you use scroll the wheel on it. PowerIso or Daemon Tools – for loading up ISO images of discs LogMeIn Ignition – quick access to your LogMeIn computers for online Backup: JungleDisk or BackBlaze KeePass – save important passwords MS Security Essentials – free anti virus that’s quoest and doesn’t make a mess of your system. for home: uTorrent – a torrent client that can read rss feeds (like the ones from ezrss.it ) Camtasia Studio and SnagIt – for recording and capturing the screen, and then adding cool effects on top. Foxit PDF Reader – much faster that adove reader. Toddler Keys (for home) – for when your baby wants to play with your keyboard. Live Writer – for writing blog posts for Lenovo ThinkPads – Lenovo System Update – if you have a “custom” system instead of the one that came built in, this will keep all your lenovo drivers up to date. FileZilla – for FTP stuff All the utils from sysinternals, (or try the live-links) especially: AutoRuns for deciding what’s really going to load at startup, procmon to see what’s really going on with processes in your system   Developer stuff: Reflector. Pure magic. Time saver. See source code of any compiled assembly. Resharper. Great for productivity and navigation across your source code FinalBuilder – a commercial build automation tool. Love it. much better than any xml based time hog out there. TeamCity – a great visual and friendly server to manage continuous integration. powerful features. Test Lint – a free addin for vs 2010 I helped create, that checks your unit tests for possible problems and hints you about it. TestDriven.NET – a great test runner for vs 2008 and 2010 with some powerful features. VisualSVN – a commercial tool if you use subversion. very reliable addin for vs 2008 and 2010 Beyond Compare – a powerful file and directory comparison tool. I love the fact that you can right click in windows exporer on any file and select “select left side to compare”, then right click on another file and select “compare with left side”. Great usability thought! PostSharp 2.0 – for addind system wide concepts into your code (tracing, exception management). Goes great hand in hand with.. SmartInspect – a powerful framework and viewer for tracing for your application. lots of hidden features. Crypto Obfuscator – a relatively new obfuscation tool for .NET that seems to do the job very well. Crypto Licensing – from the same company –finally a licensing solution that seems to really fit what I needed. And it works. Fiddler 2 – great for debugging and tracing http traffic to and from your app. Debugging Tools for Windows and DebugDiag  - great for debugging scenarios. still wanting more? I think this should keep you busy for a while.   Regulator and Regulazy – for testing and generating regular expressions Notepad 2 – for quick editing and viewing with syntax highlighting

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• Home Energy Management & Automation with Windows Phone 7

  A number of people at Clarity are personally interested in home energy conservation and home automation. We feel that a mobile device is a great fit for bringing this idea to fruition. While this project is merely a concept and not directly associated with Microsofts Hohm web service, it provides a great model for communicating the concept. I wanted to take the idea a step further and combine saving energy in your home with the ability to track water usage and control your home devices. I designed an application that focuses on total home control and not just energy usage. Application Overview By monitoring home consumption in real time and with yearly projections users can pinpoint vampire devices, times of high or low consumption, and wasteful patterns of energy use. Energy usage meters indicate total current consumption as well as individual device consumption. Users can then use the information to take action, make adjustments, and change their consumption behaviors. The app can be used to automate certain systems like lighting, temperature, or alarms. Other features can be turned on an off at the touch of a toggle switch on your phone, away from home. Forget to turn off the TV or shut the garage door? No problem, you can do it from your phone. Through settings you can enable and disable features of the phone that apply to your home making it a completely customized and convenient experience. To be clear, this equates to more security, big environmental impact, and even bigger savings.   Design and User Interface  Since this panorama application is designed for win phone 7 devices, it complies with the UI Design and Interaction Guide for wp7. I developed the frame and page hierarchy from existing examples. The interface takes advantage of the interactive nature of touch screens with slider controls, pivot control views, and toggle switches to turn on and off devices (not shown in mockup). I followed recommendations for text based elements and adapted the tile notifications to display the most recent user activity. For example, the mockup indicates upon launching the app that the last thing you did was program the thermostat. This model is great for quick launching common user actions. One last design feature to point out is the technical reasons for supplying both light and dark themes for the app. Since this application is targeting energy consumption it only makes sense to consider the effect of the apps background color or image on the phones energy use. When displaying darker colors like black the OLED display may use less power, extending battery life. Other Considerations For now I left out options of wind and solar powered energy options because they are not available to everyone. Renewable energy sources and new technologies associated with them are definitely ideas to keep in mind for a next iteration. Another idea to explore for such an application would be to include a savings model similar to mint.com. In addition to general energy-saving recommendations the application could recommend customized ways to save based on your current utility providers and available options in your area. If your television or refrigerator is guilty of sucking a lot of energy then you may see recommendations for energy star products that could save you even more money! Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Google TV Gets Bad Reception. Can Media Center Pull in the Signal?

  - by andrewbrust

  The news hit Monday morning that Google has decided to delay the release of its Google TV platform, and has asked its OEMs to delay any products that embed the software.  Coming just about two weeks prior to the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Google’s timing is about the worst imaginable.  CES is where the platform should have had its coming out party, especially given all the anticipation that has built up since its initial announcement came 7 months ago. At last year’s CES, it seemed every consumer electronics company had fashioned its own software stack for Internet-based video programming and applications/widgets on its TVs, optical disc players and set top boxes.  In one case, I even saw two platforms on a single TV set (one provided by Yahoo and the other one native to the TV set). The whole point of Google TV was to solve this problem and offer a standard, embeddable platform.  But that won’t be happening, at least not for a while.  Google seems unable to get it together, and more proprietary approaches, like Apple TV, don’t seem to be setting the world of TV-Internet convergence on fire, either. It seems to me, that when it comes to building a “TV operating system,” Windows Media Center is still the best of a bad bunch.  But it won’t stay so for much longer without some changes.  Will Redmond pick up the ball that Google has fumbled?  I’m skeptical, but hopeful.  Regardless, here are some steps that could help Microsoft make the most of Google’s faux pas: Introduce a new Media Center version that uses XBox 360, rather than Windows 7 (or 8), as the platform.  TV platforms should be appliance-like, not PC-like.  Combine that notion with the runaway sales numbers for Xbox 360 Kinect, and the mass appeal it has delivered for Xbox, and the switch form Windows makes even more sense. As I have pointed out before, Microsoft’s Xbox implementation of its Mediaroom platform (announced and demoed at last year’s CES) gets Redmond 80% of the way toward this goal.  Nothing stops Microsoft from going the other 20%, other than its own apathy, which I hope has dissipated. Reverse the decision to remove Drive Extender technology from Windows Home Server (WHS), and create deep integration between WHS and Media Center.  I have suggested this previously as well, but the recent announcement that Drive Extender would be dropped from WHS 2.0 creates the need for me to a) join the chorus of people urging Microsoft to reconsider and b) reiterate the importance of Media Center-WHS integration in the context of a Google compete scenario. Enable Windows Phone 7 (WP7) as a Media Center client.  This would tighten the integration loop already established between WP7, Xbox and Zune.  But it would also counter Echostar/DISH Network/Sling Media, strike a blow against Google/Android (and even Apple/iOS) and could be the final strike against TiVO. Bring the WP7 user interface to Media Center and Kinect-enable it.  This would further the integration discussed above and would be appropriate recognition of WP7’s Metro UI having been built on the heritage of the original Media Center itself.  And being able to run your DVR even if you can’t find the remote (or can’t see its buttons in the dark) could be a nifty gimmick. Microsoft can do this but its consumer-oriented organization, responsible for Xbox, Zune and WP7, has to take the reins here, or none of this will likely work.  There’s a significant chance that won’t happen, but I won’t let that stop me from hoping that it does and insisting that it must.  Honestly, this fight is Microsoft’s to lose.

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• Silverlight Cream for February 22, 2011 -- #1050

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Robby Ingebretsen, Victor Gaudioso, Andrea Boschin(-2-), Rudi Grobler(-2-), Michael Crump, Deborah Kurata, Dennis Delimarsky, Pete Vickers, Yochay Kiriaty, Peter Kuhn, WindowsPhoneGeek, and Jesse Liberty(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight Simple MVVM Printing" Deborah Kurata WP7: "Creating theme friendly UI in WP7 using OpacityMask" WindowsPhoneGeek Tools: "KAXAML v1.8" Robby Ingebretsen Shoutouts: Peter Foot posted Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit–Feb 2011 Rudi Grobler posts his top requested features for WP7, Silverlight, and WCF: vNext ... see you in Seattle, Rudi! From SilverlightCream.com: KAXAML v1.8 Robby Ingebretsen just posted KAXML v1.8 that now supports .NET 4.0, WPF, and Silferlight4 ... go grab it. Learn how to use Blend to create a Data Store, Add Properties to it, etc... Victor Gaudioso has 3 new Silverlight and/or Expression Blend video tutorials up... first is this one on Creating a Data store, adding properties to it, oh... read the title :), Next up is: Send async messages across UserControls or even applications, followed by the latest: Create a Sketchflow Animation using the Sketchflow Animation Panel A base class for threaded Application Services Andrea Boschin continues his IApplicationServices series with this one on a base class he created to develop Application Services that runs a thread. Windows Phone 7 - Part #6: Taking advantage of the phone Andrea Boschin also has part 6 of his series at SilverlightShow on WP7... this one is covering a bunch of items... Capabilities, Launchers/Choosers, and gestures... plus the source for a fun game. {homebrew} Skype for WP7 Rudi Grobler posted about the availability of (some features of) Skype for WP7 being available. The XDA guys have working contacts and the ability to chat going, plus they're looking for poeple to join in... Follow Rudi's link, and let them know you're up for it! Simple menu for your WP7 application Rudi Grobler has another post up about a very simple menu control for WP7 that he produced that is also very easy to use. Attaching a Command to the WP7 Application Bar Michael Crump shows how to bind the application bar to a Relay Command with the use of MVVMLight in 7 Easy Steps :) Silverlight Simple MVVM Printing Deborah Kurata continues her MVVM series with this one on printing what your user sees on the page... but doing so within the MVVM pattern. Enhancing the general Zune experience on Windows Phone 7 with Zune web API Dennis Delimarsky apparently likes the Zune as much as I do, and has ratted out tons of information about the Zune API for use in WP7 apps... and lots of code... Validating input forms in Windows Phone 7 Pete Vickers takes a great detailed spin through validation on the WP7... the rules have changed, but Pete explains with some code examples. Windows Phone Shake Gestures Library Yochay Kiriaty discusses Shake Gestures for the WP7 device and then describes the "Windows Phone Shake Gesture Library" that detects shake gestures in 3D space... and after a great description has the link for downloading. What difference does a sprite sheet make? Peter Kuhn is writing a series at SilverlightShow on XNA for Silverlight Devs that I've highlighted. An outshoot of that is this discussion of the use of sprite sheets and game development. Creating theme friendly UI in WP7 using OpacityMask WindowsPhoneGeek has a new post up today on using Opacity Masks in WP7 to enable using one set of icons for either the dark or light theme.. too cool, you'll wanna check this out! Linq to XML Jesse Liberty continues with Linq with regard to WP7 with this post on Linq to XML... and why XML? crap... I was just saving/loading XML today! :) Lambda–Not as weird as it sounds Jesse Liberty then jumps into Lambda expressions... maybe it's a chance for me to learn WTF the lambdas really do that I use all the time! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Scid Chess Program Compiling issue

  - by lbochitt

  First of all I would like to point that I'm new to Ubuntu so sorry if what I am asking is ridiculous. I have downloaded Scid 4.4 chess program and I have tried to compile it as it was explained on its website: 1) Initialize git. 2) Create a folder where you want to download and (?) compile the source, then cast: git init on your command line. 3) You're now ready to download the sources recall Fulvio's spell: git clone git://scid.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/scid/scid This should get you the latest Scid source. 4) You're now ready to compile Scid. In principle, all you need to do is: ./configure and then make 5) If you get stuck, you probably need to get developer versions of tcl/tk. This translates into issuing these three commands: sudo apt-get install tcl8.5-dev sudo apt-get install tk8.5-dev sudo apt-get install zlib1g -dev 6) You should now be ready to compile The problem is that when I run ./configure to start compiling the following message appears on Terminal: configure: Makefile configuration program for Scid Tcl/Tk version: 8.5 Your operating system is: Linux 3.8.0-19-generic Location of "tcl.h": /usr/include/tcl8.5 Location of "tk.h": /usr/include/tcl8.5 Location of Tcl 8.5 library: not found Location of Tk 8.5 library: not found Checking if your system already has zlib installed: yes. Using Makefile.conf. Not all settings could be determined! The default Makefile was written. You will need to edit it before you can compile Scid. What should I do? Has anybody faced this problem before? Thanks in advance I have run ls -l /usr/include/tcl8.5/tcl.h here's the result: -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 87291 abr 22 10:45 /usr/include/tcl8.5/tcl.h I have also tried what you suggested Could you run git reset --hard HEAD and git clean -d -f to clean up everything using Git? Then run ./configure again. Just a shot in the dark - I've seen some GNU automake stuff still listening to its "cached" version of the results or something. Still no solution. I don't know why it can't recognize the library though it is installed I opened configure to see where the program looked for the library. This is the code: # libraryPath: List of possible locations of Tcl/Tk library. set libraryPath { /usr/lib /usr/lib64 /usr/local/tcl/lib /usr/local/lib /usr/X11R6/lib /opt/tcltk/lib /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu } lappend libraryPath "/usr/lib/tcl${tclv}" lappend libraryPath "/usr/lib/tk${tclv}" lappend libraryPath "/usr/lib/tcl${tclv_nodot}" lappend libraryPath "/usr/lib/tk${tclv_nodot}" # Try to add tcl_library and auto_path values to libraryPath, # in case the user has a non-standard Tcl/Tk library location: if {[info exists ::tcl_library]} { lappend headerPath \ [file join [file dirname [file dirname $::tcl_library]] include] lappend libraryPath [file dirname $::tcl_library] lappend libraryPath $::tcl_library } if {[info exists ::auto_path]} { foreach name $::auto_path { lappend libraryPath $name } } if {! [info exists var(TCL_INCLUDE)]} { puts -nonewline { Location of "tcl.h": } set opt(tcl_h) [findDir "tcl.h" $headerPath "TCL_VERSION.*$tclv"] if {$opt(tcl_h) == ""} { puts "not found" set success 0 set opt(tcl_h) "$::defaultVar(TCL_INCLUDE)" } else { puts $opt(tcl_h) } } set opt(tcl_lib) "" if {! [info exists var(TCL_LIBRARY)]} { puts -nonewline " Location of Tcl $tclv library: " set opt(tcl_lib) [findDir "libtcl${tclv}.*" $libraryPath] if {$opt(tcl_lib) == ""} { set opt(tcl_lib) [findDir "libtcl${tclv_nodot}.*" $libraryPath] if {$opt(tcl_lib) == ""} { puts "not found" set success 0 set opt(tcl_lib) "$opt(tcl_h)" set opt(tcl_lib_file) "tcl\$(TCL_VERSION)" } else { set opt(tcl_lib_file) "tcl${tclv_nodot}" puts $opt(tcl_lib) } } else { set opt(tcl_lib_file) "tcl\$(TCL_VERSION)" puts $opt(tcl_lib) } } if {! [info exists var(TCL_INCLUDE)]} { set var(TCL_INCLUDE) "-I$opt(tcl_h)" } if {! [info exists var(TCL_LIBRARY)]} { set var(TCL_LIBRARY) "-L$opt(tcl_lib) -l$opt(tcl_lib_file)" } return $success So I guess (And by guess I mean i have no idea how to code) I should write somewhere in here usr/lib/tcl8.5 and usr/lib/tk8.5, am I right?

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• My Doors - Why Standards Matter to Business

  - by Brian Dayton

  "Standards save money." "Standards accelerate projects." "Standards make better solutions."   What do these statements mean to you? You buy technology solutions like Oracle Applications but you're a business person--trying to close the quarter, get performance reviews processed, negotiate a new sourcing contract, etc.   When "standards" come up in presentations and discussions do you: -          Nod your head politely -          Tune out and check your smart phone -          Turn to your IT counterpart and say "Bob's all over this standards thing, right Bob?"   Here's why standards matter. My wife wants new external doors downstairs, ones that would get more light into the rooms. Am I OK with that? "Uhh, sure...it's a little dark in the kitchen."   -          24 hours ago - wife calls to tell me that she's going to the hardware store and may look at doors -          20 hours ago - wife pulls into driveway, informs me that two doors are in the back of her station wagon, ready for me to carry -          19 hours ago - I re-discovered the fact that it's not fun to carry a solid wood door by myself -          5 hours ago - Local handyman, who was at our house anyway, tells me that the doors we bought will likely cost 2-3x the material cost in installation time and labor...the doors are standard but our doorways aren't   We could have done more research. I could be more handy. Sure. But the fact is, my 1951 house wasn't built with me in mind. They built what worked and called it a day.   The same holds true with a lot of business applications. They were designed and architected for one-time use with one use-case in mind. Today's business climate is different. If you're going to use your processes and technology to differentiate your business you should have at least a working knowledge of: -          How standards can benefit your business -          Your IT organization's philosophy around standards -          Your vendor's track-record around standards...and watch for those who pay lip-service to standards but don't follow through   The rallying cry in most IT organizations today is "learn more about the business, drop the acronyms." I'm not advocating that you go out and learn how to code in Java. But I do believe it will help your business and your decision-making process if you meet IT ½...even ¼ of the way there.   Epilogue: The door project has been put on hold and yours truly has to return the doors to the hardware store tomorrow.

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• Dissing Architects, or "What's wrong with the coffee?"

  - by Bob Rhubart

  In my conversations with people in architect roles, tales of animosity, disrespect, and outright hostility aren't uncommon. And it's clear that in more than a few organizations architects regularly face a tough uphill climb. For architects with the requisite combination of technical, organizational, and people skills, that rough treatment is grossly undeserved. But tales of unqualified people in positions up and down the IT food chain are also easy to come by. So what's the other side of the architect story? Are some architects tarnishing the role and making life miserable for their more qualified colleagues? The various quotes included below were culled from a variety of sources. The criticism is harsh, and the people behind these quotes clearly have issues with architects. Still, whether based on mere opinion or actual experience, the comments shed some light on behaviors that should raise red flags for anyone pursuing a career as an architect. If you're an architect, and you've ever noticed that your coffee tastes like window cleaner, or your car is repeatedly keyed, or no one ever holds the elevator for you, maybe you need to do a little soul searching... Those Who Can, Code; Those Who Can't, Architect | Joe Winchester [May 18, 2007] "At the moment there seems to be an extremely unhealthy obsession in software with the concept of architecture. A colleague of mine, a recent graduate, told me he wished to become a software architect. He was drawn to the glamour of being able to come up with grandiose ideas - sweeping generalized designs, creating presentations to audiences of acronym addicts, writing esoteric academic papers, speaking at conferences attended by headless engineers on company expense accounts hungrily seeking out this year's grail, and creating e-mails with huge cc lists from people whose signature footer is more interesting than the content. I tried to re-orient him into actually doing some coding, to join a team that has a good product and keen users both of whom are pushing requirements forward, to no avail. Somehow the lure of being an architecture astronaut was too strong and I lost him to the dark side." Don't Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You | Joel Spolsky [April 21, 2001] "It's very hard to get them to write code or design programs, because they won't stop thinking about Architecture. They're astronauts because they are above the oxygen level, I don't know how they're breathing. They tend to work for really big companies that can afford to have lots of unproductive people with really advanced degrees that don't contribute to the bottom line. Remember that the architecture people are solving problems that they think they can solve, not problems which are useful to solve." Non Coding Architects Suck | Richard Henderson [May 24, 2010] "If a guy with a badge saying 'system architect' looks blank on low-level issues then he is not an architect, he is a business-analyst who went on a course. He will probably wax lyrical on all things high-level and 'important.' He will produce lovely object hierarchies without a clue to implementation. He will have a moustache and play golf." Architects Play Golf | Sunir Shah [August 15, 2012] "Often arrogant architects are difficult to get a hold of during the implementation phase because they no longer feel the need to stick around. Especially around midnight when most of the poor sob [sic] developers are still banging away. After all, they've already solved the problem--the rest is just an implementation exercise." Engineer vs Architect(Part of a discussion on the IT Architect Network Group on LinkedIn) "[An] architect spends his time producing white papers full of acronyms he does not understand but that impress his boss [while the] engineer keeps his head down and does the actual job." Architects Don't Code | [Author Unknown] "Faulty belief: System Architects don't need to code anymore. They know what they are talking about by virtue of the fact that they are System Architects."

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