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• Installing CUDA on Ubuntu 12.04 with nvidia driver 295.59

  - by johnmcd

  I have been trying to get cuda to run on a nvidia gt 650m based laptop. I am running Ubuntu 12.04 with the nvidia 295.59 driver. Also, my laptop uses Optimus so I have install the driver via bumblebee. Bumblebee is not working correctly yet -- however I believe it is possible to install CUDA independently. To install CUDA I have followed the instructions detailed here: How can I get nVidia CUDA or OpenCL working on a laptop with nVidia discrete card/Intel Integrated Graphics? However I am still running into problem building the sdk. I made the changes specified at the above link in common.mk, but I got the following (snippet) from the build process: make[2]: Entering directory `/home/john/NVIDIA_GPU_Computing_SDK/C/src/fluidsGL' /usr/bin/ld: warning: libnvidia-tls.so.302.17, needed by /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so, not found (try using -rpath or -rpath-link) /usr/bin/ld: warning: libnvidia-glcore.so.302.17, needed by /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so, not found (try using -rpath or -rpath-link) /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv018tls' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv012glcore' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv017glcore' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv012tls' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv015tls' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv019tls' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv000glcore' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv017tls' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv013tls' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv013glcore' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv018glcore' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv022tls' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv007tls' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv009tls' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv020tls' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv014glcore' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv015glcore' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv016tls' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv001glcore' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv006tls' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv021tls' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv011tls' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv020glcore' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv019glcore' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv002glcore' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv021glcore' /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so: undefined reference to `_nv014tls' collect2: ld returned 1 exit status make[2]: *** [../../bin/linux/release/fluidsGL] Error 1 make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/john/NVIDIA_GPU_Computing_SDK/C/src/fluidsGL' make[1]: *** [src/fluidsGL/Makefile.ph_build] Error 2 make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/john/NVIDIA_GPU_Computing_SDK/C' make: *** [all] Error 2 The libraries that ld warns about are on my system and are installed on the system: $ locate libnvidia-tls.so.302.17 libnvidia-glcore.so.302.17 /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libnvidia-glcore.so.302.17 /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libnvidia-tls.so.302.17 /usr/lib/nvidia-current/tls/libnvidia-tls.so.302.17 /usr/lib32/nvidia-current/libnvidia-glcore.so.302.17 /usr/lib32/nvidia-current/libnvidia-tls.so.302.17 /usr/lib32/nvidia-current/tls/libnvidia-tls.so.302.17 however /usr/lib/nvidia-current and /usr/lib32/nvidia-current are not being picked up by ldconfig. I have tried adding them by adding a file to /etc/ld.so.conf.d/ which gets past this error, however now I am getting the following error: make[2]: Entering directory `/home/john/NVIDIA_GPU_Computing_SDK/C/src/deviceQueryDrv' cc1plus: warning: command line option ‘-Wimplicit’ is valid for C/ObjC but not for C++ [enabled by default] obj/x86_64/release/deviceQueryDrv.cpp.o: In function `main': deviceQueryDrv.cpp:(.text.startup+0x5f): undefined reference to `cuInit' deviceQueryDrv.cpp:(.text.startup+0x99): undefined reference to `cuDeviceGetCount' deviceQueryDrv.cpp:(.text.startup+0x10b): undefined reference to `cuDeviceComputeCapability' deviceQueryDrv.cpp:(.text.startup+0x127): undefined reference to `cuDeviceGetName' deviceQueryDrv.cpp:(.text.startup+0x16a): undefined reference to `cuDriverGetVersion' deviceQueryDrv.cpp:(.text.startup+0x1f0): undefined reference to `cuDeviceTotalMem_v2' deviceQueryDrv.cpp:(.text.startup+0x262): undefined reference to `cuDeviceGetAttribute' deviceQueryDrv.cpp:(.text.startup+0x457): undefined reference to `cuDeviceGetAttribute' deviceQueryDrv.cpp:(.text.startup+0x4bc): undefined reference to `cuDeviceGetAttribute' deviceQueryDrv.cpp:(.text.startup+0x502): undefined reference to `cuDeviceGetAttribute' deviceQueryDrv.cpp:(.text.startup+0x533): undefined reference to `cuDeviceGetAttribute' obj/x86_64/release/deviceQueryDrv.cpp.o:deviceQueryDrv.cpp:(.text.startup+0x55e): more undefined references to `cuDeviceGetAttribute' follow collect2: ld returned 1 exit status make[2]: *** [../../bin/linux/release/deviceQueryDrv] Error 1 make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/john/NVIDIA_GPU_Computing_SDK/C/src/deviceQueryDrv' make[1]: *** [src/deviceQueryDrv/Makefile.ph_build] Error 2 make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/john/NVIDIA_GPU_Computing_SDK/C' make: *** [all] Error 2 I would appreciate any help that anyone can provide me with. If I can provide any further information please let me know. Thanks.

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• ORACLE is WEB 2.0

  - by anca.rosu

  You never know what to expect in life, where it can take you and what kind of fulfillment it can offer you. It’s just like an amazing lottery with millions of winning tickets. My name is Paula, I am an Online Marketing Specialist at Oracle University and this is my story. Having graduated from a technical profile college, it seemed almost normal to follow the same career path. But I said no. I wanted to try something else, so I took an Advertising Masters Program and I really became in love with this entire industry. Advertising and the new impact of the Internet through social networking is my current fascination. I knew I had to work to incorporate both my skills intro one dream job. I want to believe that I have come to work at Oracle as part of a great plan that life has for me. It’s not the most glamorous job in advertising or in the fashion industry, but it’s everything you need to start investing in your development and to build relationships. A normal day at work begins at 9.30 at our Oracle Office in Bucharest. After a short chit-chat, coffee and some conference calls, marketing gets to work! Some of the members of my team are working besides me but others are based all over Europe. This is extremely useful when coordinating the EMEA Marketing for Oracle University, because this way it’s easier to keep an eye on these various locations. Even though it’s a team play, you need to speak up and make your mark. I am the kind of person that never stands-by and waits to be given directions, I am curious and intuitive. This makes things easier. In Oracle you really need to find your own way and to discover how to organize your time and how to get involved with people. People to people, this is the focus. But everything is up to you and it strongly depends on the type of personality that you have. I try to get involved in various activities, participate in Oracle Days Events, interact and meet all kinds of people. For those who are newly graduates or interns, Oracle has lots of trainings and webcasts you can attend to help you develop your career shape and to understand better the way the business works. You can also be awarded for ideas and setting the trends so that makes it worth it. What I like most about my job is the fact that I can come with ideas and bring them to life. For example Oracle University has a special seminar program called “Celebrity Seminars” where top industry speakers teach 1-day or 2-day condensed seminars. We thought of creating something exclusive and a video was the best idea. So my colleague and I became reporters for a day and interviewed this well-known speaker regarding his seminar. I think this is a good way to market this business. Live footage is a very good marketing tool so we are planning to use the video to target our online audiences via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. This can even go in the newsletters that marketing sends regarding the Celebrity Seminars. This is what I meant when I said Oracle is a free spirited organization and you can surely find your place here among us. The best way to describe my job is WEB 2.0. The modern online approach comes to life while we are trying to sell our business. We need to be out there and we are responsible of spreading the buzz regarding our training offerings and our official courseware materials. There are so many new ways to interact with the target audience nowadays and I am so eager to discover the best online techniques! If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact  [email protected].  You can find our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com Technorati Tags: WEB 2.0,Online Marketing,Oracle University,Bucharest,events,graduates,interns,training,webcast,seminar,newsletters,business,Facebook,Twitter,LinkedIn

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• IE9, HTML5 and truck load of other stuff happening around the web

  - by Harish Ranganathan

  First of all, I haven’t been updating this blog as regularly as it used to be.  Primarily, due to the fact was I was visiting a lot of cities talking about SharePoint, Web Matrix, IE9 and few other stuff.  IE9 is my new found love and I simply think we have done great work in improving the browser and browsing experiences for our users. This post would talk about IE, general things happening around the web and few misconceptions around IE (I had earlier written about IE8 and common myths When you think about the way web has transformed, its truly amazing.  Rewind back to late 90s and early 2000s, web was a luxury.  There were lot of desktop applications running around and web applications was starting to pick up.  Primarily reason was not a lot of folks were into web development and the areas of web were confined to HTML and JavaScript.  CSS was around here and there but no one took it so seriously.  XML, XSLT was fast picking up and contributed to decent web development techniques. So as a web developer all we had to worry about was, building good looking websites which worked well with IE6 and occasionally with Safari.  Firefox was  not even in the picture then and so was Chrome.  But with the various arms of W3C consortium and other bodies working actively on stuff like CSS, SVG and XHTML, few more areas came into picture when it comes to browsers supporting standards.  IE6 for sure wasn’t up to the speed and the main issue we were tackling then was privacy and piracy.  We did invest a lot of our efforts to curb piracy and one of the steps into it was that, IE7 the next version of IE would install only on genuine windows machines.  What this means, is that, people who were running pirated windows xp knowingly/unknowingly could not install IE7 and the limitations of IE6 really hurt them.  One more thing of importance is that, if you were running pirated windows, lots of chances that you didn’t get the security updates and thereby were vulnerable to run viruses/trojans on your system. Many of them actually block using IE in the first place and make it difficult to browse.  SP2 came as a big boon but again was there only for genuine windows machines. With Firefox coming as a free install and also heavily pushed by Google then, it was natural that people would try an alternative.  By then, we had started working on IE8 supporting the best standards (note HTML5, CSS 2.1 and other specs were then work in progress.  they are still) Later, Google in their infinite wisdom realized that with Firefox they were going nowhere and they released Chrome.  Now, they heavily push Chrome even for Firefox users, which is natural since its their browser. In the meanwhile, these browsers push their updates as mandatory and therefore have a very short lifecycle to add enhancements and support for stuff like CSS etc., Meanwhile, when IE8 came out, it really was the best standards supported browser and a lot of people saw our efforts in improving our browser. HTML5 is the buzz word in the industry and there is a lot of noise being made by many browsers claiming their support for it.  IE8 doesn’t have much support for HTML5.  But, with IE9 Beta, we have great support for many of HTML5 specifications.  Note that, HTML5 is still work under progress and one of the board of members working on the spec has mentioned that these specs might change and relying on them heavily is dangerous.  But, some of the advances such as video tag, etc., are indeed supported in IE9 Beta.  IE9 Beta also has full hardware acceleration support which other browsers don’t have. IE8 had advanced security features such as smartscreen filter, in-private browsing, anti-phishing and a lot of other stuff.  IE9 builds on top of these with the best in town security standards as well as support for HTML5, CSS3, Hardware acceleration, SVG and many other advancements in browser.  Read more at http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/#/highlights/html5  To summarize, IE9 Beta is really innovative and you should try it to believe what it provides.  You can visit http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/  to install as well as read more on this. Cheers !!!

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• Inspiring a co-worker to adopt better coding practices?

  - by Aaronaught

  In the Handling my antiquated coworker question, various people discussed strategies for dealing with coworkers who are unwilling to integrate their workflow with the team's. I'd like, if possible, to learn some strategies for "teaching" a coworker who is merely ignorant of modern techniques and tools, and possibly a little apathetic. I've started working with a programmer who until recently has been working in relative isolation, in a different part of the company. He has extensive domain knowledge and most importantly he has demonstrated good problem-solving skills, something which many candidates seem to lack. However, the actual (C#) code I've seen is a throwback to the VB6 days. Procedural structure, Hungarian notation, global variables (abuse of static), no interfaces, no tests, non-use of Generics, throwing System.Exception... you get the idea. This programmer is a fair bit older than I am and, by first impressions at least, doesn't actively seek positive change. I'm not going to say resistant to change, because I think that is largely an issue of how the topic gets broached, and I want to be prepared. Programmers tend to be stubborn people, and going in with guns blazing and instituting rip-it-to-shreds code reviews and strictly-enforced policies is very likely not going to produce the end result that I want. If this were a new hire, a junior programmer, I wouldn't think twice about taking a "mentor" stance, but I'm extremely wary of treating an experienced employee as a clueless newbie (which he's not - he just hasn't kept pace with certain advancements in the field). How might I go about raising this developer's code quality standard the Dale Carnegie way, through gentle persuasion and non-material incentives? What would be the best strategy for effecting subtle, gradual changes, without creating an adversarial situation? Have other people - especially lead developers - been in this type of situation before? Which strategies were successful at stimulating interest and creating a positive group dynamic? Which strategies weren't successful and would be better to avoid? Clarifications: I really feel that several people are answering based on personal feelings without actually reading all of the details of the question. Please note the following, which should have been implied but I am now making explicit: This coworker is only my "senior" by virtue of age. I never said that his title, sphere of influence, or years at the organization exceed mine, and in fact, none of those things are true. He's a LOB programmer who's been absorbed into the main development shop. That's it. I am not a new hire, junior programmer, or other naïve idiot with grand plans to transform the company overnight. I am basically in charge of the software process, but as many who've worked as "leads" will know, responsibilities don't always correlate precisely with the org chart. I'm not asking people how to get my way, come hell or high water. I could do that if I wanted to, with the net result being that this person would become resentful and/or quit. Please try to understand that I am looking for a social, cooperative method of driving change. The mention of "...global variables... no tests... throwing System.Exception" was intended to demonstrate that the problems are not just superficial or aesthetic. Practices that may work for relatively small CRUD apps do not necessarily work for large enterprise apps, and in fact, none of the code so far has actually passed the integration tests. Please, try to take the question at face value, accept that I actually know what I'm talking about, and either answer the question that I actually asked or move on. P.S. My sincerest gratitude to those who -did- offer constructive advice rather than arguing with the premise. I'm going to leave this open for a while longer as I'm hoping to hear more in the way of real-world experiences.

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• virtual host not working in windows7 xampp

  - by K.B Panamaldeniya-littletipz

  hi i am using windows7 and xampp , i want to create a virtual host . so i added 127.0.0.1 myawesomeproject to my C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts like this # Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp. # # This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows. # # This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each # entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should # be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name. # The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one # space. # # Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual # lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol. # # For example: # # 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server # 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host # localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself. 127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.0.1 myawesomeproject ::1 localhost and i added some lines to C:\xampp\apache\conf\extra\httpd-vhosts.conf like this # # Virtual Hosts # # If you want to maintain multiple domains/hostnames on your # machine you can setup VirtualHost containers for them. Most configurations # use only name-based virtual hosts so the server doesn't need to worry about # IP addresses. This is indicated by the asterisks in the directives below. # # Please see the documentation at # <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/vhosts/> # for further details before you try to setup virtual hosts. # # You may use the command line option '-S' to verify your virtual host # configuration. # # Use name-based virtual hosting. # NameVirtualHost *:80 # # VirtualHost example: # Almost any Apache directive may go into a VirtualHost container. # The first VirtualHost section is used for all requests that do not # match a ServerName or ServerAlias in any <VirtualHost> block. # ##<VirtualHost *:80> ##ServerAdmin [email protected] ##DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs/dummy-host.localhost" ##ServerName dummy-host.localhost ##ServerAlias www.dummy-host.localhost ##ErrorLog "logs/dummy-host.localhost-error.log" ##CustomLog "logs/dummy-host.localhost-access.log" combined ##</VirtualHost> ##<VirtualHost *:80> ##ServerAdmin [email protected] ##DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs/dummy-host2.localhost" ##ServerName dummy-host2.localhost ##ServerAlias www.dummy-host2.localhost ##ErrorLog "logs/dummy-host2.localhost-error.log" ##CustomLog "logs/dummy-host2.localhost-access.log" combined ##</VirtualHost> <VirtualHost *> DocumentRoot "C:\xampp\htdocs" ServerName localhost </VirtualHost> <VirtualHost *> <VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin [email protected] DocumentRoot c:\myawesomeproject ServerName localhost <Directory "c:\myawesomeproject"> Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> </VirtualHost> i created a folder called myawesomeproject in my c drive . when i type http://myawesomeproject it is rederecting to http://myawesomeproject/xampp i added another folder 'test' inside myawesomeproject . so the path to 'test' is C:/myawesomeproject/test . the problem is when i type http://myawesomeproject/test it gives an error. it says Object not found! The requested URL was not found on this server. If you entered the URL manually please check your spelling and try again. If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster. Error 404 myawesomeproject 8/22/2011 4:30:29 PM Apache/2.2.17 (Win32) mod_ssl/2.2.17 OpenSSL/0.9.8o PHP/5.3.4 mod_perl/2.0.4 Perl/v5.10.1 why is this . how can i create a virtual host........................ :(

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• What Counts For A DBA: ESP

  - by Louis Davidson

  Now I don’t want to get religious here, and I’m not going to, but what I’m going to describe in this ‘What Counts for a DBA’ installment sometimes feels like magic. Often  I will spend hours thinking about the solution to a design issue or coding problem, working diligently to try to come up with a solution and then finally just give up with the feeling that I’m not even qualified to be a data entry clerk, much less a data architect.  At this point I often take a walk (or sometimes a nap), and then it hits me. I realize that I have the answer just sitting in my brain, ready to implement.  This phenomenon is not limited to walks either; it can happen almost any time after I stop my obsession about a problem. I call this phenomena ESP (or Extra-Sensory Programming.)  Another term for this could be ‘sleeping on it’, and while the idiom tends to mean to let time pass to actively think about a problem, sleeping on a problem also lets you relax and let your brain do the work. I first noticed this back in my college days when I would play video games for hours on end. We would get stuck deep in some dungeon unable to find a way out, playing for days on end until we were beaten down tired. Once we gave up and walked away, the solution would usually be there waiting for one of us before we came back to play the next day.  Sometimes it would be in the form of a dream, and sometimes it would just be that the problem was now easy to solve when we started to play again.  While it worked great for video games, it never occurred when I studied English Literature for hours on end, or even when I worked for the same sort of frustrating hours attempting to solve a homework problem in Calculus.  I believe that the difference was that I was passionate about the video game, and certainly far less so about homework where people used the word “thou” instead of “you” or x to represent a number. This phenomenon occurs somewhat more often in my current work as a professional data programmer, because I am very passionate about SQL and love those aspects of my career choice.  Every day that I get to draw a new data model to solve a customer issue, or write a complex SELECT statement to ferret out the answer to a complex data question, is a great day. I hope it is the same for any reader of this blog.  But, unfortunately, while the day on a whole is great, a heck of a lot of noise is generated in work life. There are the typical project deadlines, along with the requisite project manager sitting on your shoulders shouting slogans to try to make you to go faster: Add in office politics, and the occasional family issues that permeate the mind, and you lose the ability to think deeply about any problem, not to mention occasionally forgetting your own name.  These office realities coupled with a difficult SQL problem staring at you from your widescreen monitor will slowly suck the life force out of your body, making it seem impossible to solve the problem This is when the walk starts; or a nap. Maybe you hide from the madness under your desk like George Costanza hides from Steinbrenner on Seinfeld.  Forget about the problem. Free your mind from the insanity of the problem and your surroundings. Then let your training and education deep in your brain take over and see if it will passively do the rest for you. If you don’t end up with a solution, the worst case scenario is that you have a bit of exercise or rest, and you won’t have heard the phrase “better is the enemy of good enough” even once…which certainly will do your brain some good. Once you stop expecting whipping your brain for information, inspiration may just strike and instead of a humdrum solution you find a solution you hadn’t even considered, almost magically. So, my beloved manager, next time you have an urgent deadline and you come across me taking a nap, creep away quietly because I’m working, doing some extra-sensory programming.

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• What is the SharePoint Action Framework and Why do I need it ?

  - by SAF

  For those out there that are a little curious as to whether SAF is any use to your organisation, please read this FAQ.  What is SAF ? SAF is free to use. SAF is the "SharePoint Action Framework", it was built by myself and Hugo (plus a few others along the way). SAF is written entirely in C# code available from : http://saf.codeplex.com.   SAF is a way to automate SharePoint configuration changes. An Action is a command/class/task/script written in C# that performs a unit of execution against SharePoint such as "CreateWeb"  or "AddLookupColumn". A SAF Macro is collection of one or more Actions. SAF Macro can be run from Msbuild, a Feature, StsAdm or common plain old .Net code. Parameters can be passed to a Macro at run-time from a variety of sources such as "Environment Variable", "*.config", "Msbuild Properties", Feature Properties, command line args, .net code. SAF emits lots of trace statements at run-time, these can be viewed using "DebugView". One Action can pass parameters to another Action. Parameters can be set using Expression Syntax such as "DateTime.Now".  You should consider SAF is you suffer from one of the following symptoms... "Our developers write lots of code to deploy changes at release time - it's always rushed" "I don't want my developers shelling out to Powershell or Stsadm from a Feature". "We have loads of Console applications now, I have lost track of where they are, or what they do" "We seem to be writing similar scripts against SharePoint in lots of ways, testing is hard". "My scripts often have lots of errors - they are done at the last minute". "When something goes wrong - I have no idea what went wrong or how to solve it". "Our Features get stuck and bomb out half way through - there no way to roll them back". "We have tons of Features now - I can't keep track". "We deploy Features to run one-off tasks" "We have a library of reusable scripts, but, we can only run it in one way, sometimes we want to run it from MSbuild and a Feature". "I want to automate the deployment of changes to our development environment". "I would like to run a housekeeping task on a scheduled basis"   So I like the sound of SAF - what's the problems ?  Realistically, there are few things that need to be considered: Someone on your team will need to spend a day or 2 understanding SAF and deciding exactly how you want to use it. I would suggest a Tech Lead, SysAdm or SP Architect will need to download it, try out the examples, look through the unit tests. Ask us questions. Although, SAF can be downloaded and set to go in a few minutes, you will still need to address issues such as - "Do you want to execute your Macros in MsBuild or from a Feature ?" You will need to decide who is going to do your deployments - is it each developer to themself, or do you require a dedicated Build Manager ? As most environments (Dev, QA, Live etc) require different settings (e.g. Urls, Database names, accounts etc), you will more than likely want to define these and set a properties file up for each environment. (These can then be injected into Saf at run-time). There may be no Action to solve your particular problem. If this is the case, suggest it to us - we can try and write it, or write it yourself. It's very easy to write a new Action - we have an approach to easily unit test it, document it and author it. For example, I wrote one to deploy  a WSP in 2 hours the other day. Alternatively, Saf can also call Stsadm commands and Powershell scripts.   Anyway, I do hope this helps! If you still need help, or a quick start, we can also offer consultancy around SAF. If you want to know more give us a call or drop an email to [email protected]

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• Shadows shimmer when camera moves

  - by Chad Layton

  I've implemented shadow maps in my simple block engine as an exercise. I'm using one directional light and using the view volume to create the shadow matrices. I'm experiencing some problems with the shadows shimmering when the camera moves and I'd like to know if it's an issue with my implementation or just an issue with basic/naive shadow mapping itself. Here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyprATt5BBg&feature=youtu.be Here's the code I use to create the shadow matrices. The commented out code is my original attempt to perfectly fit the view frustum. You can also see my attempt to try clamping movement to texels in the shadow map which didn't seem to make any difference. Then I tried using a bounding sphere instead, also to no apparent effect. public void CreateViewProjectionTransformsToFit(Camera camera, out Matrix viewTransform, out Matrix projectionTransform, out Vector3 position) { BoundingSphere cameraViewFrustumBoundingSphere = BoundingSphere.CreateFromFrustum(camera.ViewFrustum); float lightNearPlaneDistance = 1.0f; Vector3 lookAt = cameraViewFrustumBoundingSphere.Center; float distanceFromLookAt = cameraViewFrustumBoundingSphere.Radius + lightNearPlaneDistance; Vector3 directionFromLookAt = -Direction * distanceFromLookAt; position = lookAt + directionFromLookAt; viewTransform = Matrix.CreateLookAt(position, lookAt, Vector3.Up); float lightFarPlaneDistance = distanceFromLookAt + cameraViewFrustumBoundingSphere.Radius; float diameter = cameraViewFrustumBoundingSphere.Radius * 2.0f; Matrix.CreateOrthographic(diameter, diameter, lightNearPlaneDistance, lightFarPlaneDistance, out projectionTransform); //Vector3 cameraViewFrustumCentroid = camera.ViewFrustum.GetCentroid(); //position = cameraViewFrustumCentroid - (Direction * (camera.FarPlaneDistance - camera.NearPlaneDistance)); //viewTransform = Matrix.CreateLookAt(position, cameraViewFrustumCentroid, Up); //Vector3[] cameraViewFrustumCornersWS = camera.ViewFrustum.GetCorners(); //Vector3[] cameraViewFrustumCornersLS = new Vector3[8]; //Vector3.Transform(cameraViewFrustumCornersWS, ref viewTransform, cameraViewFrustumCornersLS); //Vector3 min = cameraViewFrustumCornersLS[0]; //Vector3 max = cameraViewFrustumCornersLS[0]; //for (int i = 1; i < 8; i++) //{ // min = Vector3.Min(min, cameraViewFrustumCornersLS[i]); // max = Vector3.Max(max, cameraViewFrustumCornersLS[i]); //} //// Clamp to nearest texel //float texelSize = 1.0f / Renderer.ShadowMapSize; //min.X -= min.X % texelSize; //min.Y -= min.Y % texelSize; //min.Z -= min.Z % texelSize; //max.X -= max.X % texelSize; //max.Y -= max.Y % texelSize; //max.Z -= max.Z % texelSize; //// We just use an orthographic projection matrix. The sun is so far away that it's rays are essentially parallel. //Matrix.CreateOrthographicOffCenter(min.X, max.X, min.Y, max.Y, -max.Z, -min.Z, out projectionTransform); } And here's the relevant part of the shader: if (CastShadows) { float4 positionLightCS = mul(float4(position, 1.0f), LightViewProj); float2 texCoord = clipSpaceToScreen(positionLightCS) + 0.5f / ShadowMapSize; float shadowMapDepth = tex2D(ShadowMapSampler, texCoord).r; float distanceToLight = length(LightPosition - position); float bias = 0.2f; if (shadowMapDepth < (distanceToLight - bias)) { return float4(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f); } } The shimmer is slightly better if I drastically reduce the view volume but I think that's mostly just because the texels become smaller and it's harder to notice them flickering back and forth. I'd appreciate any insight, I'd very much like to understand what's going on before I try other techniques.

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• Things I've noticed with DVCS

  - by Wes McClure

  Things I encourage: Frequent local commits This way you don't have to be bothered by changes others are making to the central repository while working on a handful of related tasks.  It's a good idea to try to work on one task at a time and commit all changes at partitioned stopping points.  A local commit doesn't have to build, just FYI, so a stopping point doesn't mean a build point nor a point that you can push centrally.  There should be several of these in any given day.  2 hours is a good indicator that you might not be leveraging the power of frequent local commits.  Once you have verified a set of changes works, save them away, otherwise run the risk of introducing bugs into it when working on the next task.  The notion of a task By task I mean a related set of changes that can be completed in a few hours or less.  In the same token don’t make your tasks so small that critically related changes aren’t grouped together.  Use your intuition and the rest of these principles and I think you will find what is comfortable for you. Partial commits Sometimes one task explodes or unknowingly encompasses other tasks, at this point, try to get to a stopping point on part of the work you are doing and commit it so you can get that out of the way to focus on the remainder.  This will often entail committing part of the work and continuing on the rest. Outstanding changes as a guide If you don't commit often it might mean you are not leveraging your version control history to help guide your work.  It's a great way to see what has changed and might be causing problems.  The longer you wait, the more that has changed and the harder it is to test/debug what your changes are doing! This is a reason why I am so picky about my VCS tools on the client side and why I talk a lot about the quality of a diff tool and the ability to integrate that with a simple view of everything that has changed.  This is why I love using TortoiseHg and SmartGit: they show changed files, a diff (or two way diff with SmartGit) of the current selected file and a commit message all in one window that I keep maximized on one monitor at all times. Throw away / stash commits There is extreme value in being able to throw away a commit (or stash it) that is getting out of hand.  If you do not commit often you will have to isolate the work you want to commit from the work you want to throw away, which is wasted productivity and highly prone to errors.  I find myself doing this about once a week, especially when doing exploratory re-factoring.  It's much easier if I can just revert all outstanding changes. Sync with the central repository daily The rest of us depend on your changes.  Don't let them sit on your computer longer than they have to.  Waiting increases the chances of merge conflict which just decreases productivity.  It also prohibits us from doing deploys when people say they are done but have not merged centrally.  This should be done daily!  Find a way to partition the work you are doing so that you can sync at least once daily. Things I discourage: Lots of partial commits right at the end of a series of changes If you notice lots of partial commits at the end of a set of changes, it's likely because you weren't frequently committing, nor were you watching for the size of the task expanding beyond a single commit.  Chances are this cost you productivity if you use your outstanding changes as a guide, since you would have an ever growing list of changes. Committing single files Committing single files means you waited too long and no longer understand all the changes involved.  It may mean there were overlapping changes in single files that cannot be isolated.  In either case, go back to the suggestions above to avoid this.  Committing frequently does not mean committing frequently right at the end of a day's work. It should be spaced out over the course of several tasks, not all at the end in a 5 minute window.

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• What information must never appear in logs?

  - by MainMa

  I'm about to write the company guidelines about what must never appear in logs (trace of an application). In fact, some developers try to include as many information as possible in trace, making it risky to store those logs, and extremely dangerous to submit them, especially when the customer doesn't know this information is stored, because she never cared about this and never read documentation and/or warning messages. For example, when dealing with files, some developers are tempted to trace the names of the files. For example before appending file name to a directory, if we trace everything on error, it will be easy to notice for example that the appended name is too long, and that the bug in the code was to forget to check for the length of the concatenated string. It is helpful, but this is sensitive data, and must never appear in logs. In the same way: Passwords, IP addresses and network information (MAC address, host name, etc.)¹, Database accesses, Direct input from user and stored business data must never appear in trace. So what other types of information must be banished from the logs? Are there any guidelines already written which I can use? ¹ Obviously, I'm not talking about things as IIS or Apache logs. What I'm talking about is the sort of information which is collected with the only intent to debug the application itself, not to trace the activity of untrusted entities. Edit: Thank you for your answers and your comments. Since my question is not too precise, I'll try to answer the questions asked in the comments: What I'm doing with the logs? The logs of the application may be stored in memory, which means either in plain on hard disk on localhost, in a database, again in plain, or in Windows Events. In every case, the concern is that those sources may not be safe enough. For example, when a customer runs an application and this application stores logs in plain text file in temp directory, anybody who has a physical access to the PC can read those logs. The logs of the application may also be sent through internet. For example, if a customer has an issue with an application, we can ask her to run this application in full-trace mode and to send us the log file. Also, some application may sent automatically the crash report to us (and even if there are warnings about sensitive data, in most cases customers don't read them). Am I talking about specific fields? No. I'm working on general business applications only, so the only sensitive data is business data. There is nothing related to health or other fields covered by specific regulations. But thank you to talk about that, I probably should take a look about those fields for some clues about what I can include in guidelines. Isn't it easier to encrypt the data? No. It would make every application much more difficult, especially if we want to use C# diagnostics and TraceSource. It would also require to manage authorizations, which is not the easiest think to do. Finally, if we are talking about the logs submitted to us from a customer, we must be able to read the logs, but without having access to sensitive data. So technically, it's easier to never include sensitive information in logs at all and to never care about how and where those logs are stored.

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• Production Access Denied! Who caused this rule anyways?

  - by Matt Watson

  One of the biggest challenges for most developers is getting access to production servers. In smaller dev teams of less than about 5 people everyone usually has access. Then you hire developer #6, he messes something up in production... and now nobody has access. That is how it always starts in small dev teams. I think just about every rule of life there is gets created this way. One person messes it up for the rest of us. Rules are then put in place to try and prevent it from happening again.Breaking the rules is in our nature. In this example it is for good cause and a necessity to support our applications and troubleshoot problems as they arise. So how do developers typically break the rules? Some create their own method to collect log files off servers so they can see them. Expensive log management programs can collect log files, but log files alone are not enough. Centralizing where important errors are logged to is common. Some lucky developers are given production server access by the IT operations team out of necessity. Wait. That's not fair to all developers and knowingly breaks the company rule!  When customers complain or the system is down, the rules go out the window. Commonly lead developers get production access because they are ultimately responsible for supporting the application and may be the only person who knows how to fix it. The problem with only giving lead developers production access is it doesn't scale from a support standpoint. Those key employees become the go to people to help solve application problems, but they also become a bottleneck. They end up spending up to half of their time every day helping resolve application defects, performance problems, or whatever the fire of the day is. This actually the last thing you want your lead developers doing. They should be working on something more strategic like major enhancements to the product. Having production access can actually be a curse if you are the guy stuck hunting down log files all day. Application defects are good tasks for junior developers. They can usually handle figuring out simple application problems. But nothing is worse than being a junior developer who can't figure out those problems and the back log of them grows and grows. Some of them require production server access to verify a deployment was done correctly, verify config settings, view log files, or maybe just restart an application. Since the junior developers don't have access, they end up bugging the developers who do have access or they track down a system admin to help. It can take hours or days to see server information that would take seconds or minutes if they had access of their own. It is very frustrating to the developer trying to solve the problem, the system admin being forced to help, and most importantly your customers who are not happy about the situation. This process is terribly inefficient. Production database access is also important for solving application problems, but presents a lot of risk if developers are given access. They could see data they shouldn't.  They could write queries on accident to update data, delete data, or merely select every record from every table and bring your database to its knees. Since most of the application we create are data driven, it can be very difficult to track down application bugs without access to the production databases.Besides it being against the rule, why don't all developers have access? Most of the time it comes down to security, change of control, lack of training, and other valid reasons. Developers have been known to tinker with different settings to try and solve a problem and in the process forget what they changed and made the problem worse. So it is a double edge sword. Don't give them access and fixing bugs is more difficult, or give them access and risk having more bugs or major outages being created!Matt WatsonFounder, CEOStackifyAgile Support for Agile Developers

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• If not now, then when?

  - by Chris Gardner

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/freestylecoding/archive/2013/10/25/if-not-now-then-when.aspx The time has been flying by this year. It seems like only yesterday that I mentioned the gorillagator, a simple construct of confusion to try to draw attention to my message. In reality, that message was sent over a month ago. During that time, the hours slipped to days and days to weeks. Many exciting things have happened to myself; I'm sure many exciting things have happened to you. I'm also sure that many terrifying things have happened to children and their families. 62 children enter treatment at a Children's Miracle Network Hospital every minute. That's nearly 60,000 children since I sent the last email. To put that number in perspective, that is more than the population of Greenland. If we expand that to the past year, they have been nearly 550,000 children treated. That is almost the population of Huntsville, Decatur, and all their suburbs combined. Over the past 4 years, I have raised a little more than $3,000 for Children's Hospital of Alabama. As a result, I received a call from the organizers of Extra Life thanking me for my dedicated work and informing me that I was the top supporters for Children's Hospital of Alabama ... with my measly three grand. We can do much better than that. It may sound like I'm trying to have fun by playing games for 24 hours. It is more than that. It is me using my time and body as a catalyst. It is me putting my passion to work for a cause. It is me turning my love into something tangible. I have been campaigning and fighting to give these children a chance for years. I have been asking you to help me support these children and families. I've been putting in countless hours of talking to people, impassioned emails, and carefully constructed tweets. I have been fighting with cutting edge, and sometimes expensive, technology to try to provide live streams of my marathons. I yearly put my body through 24 (and, this year, 25) hours of no sleep. I do this to represent the countless hours these families sit awake at their children's side. All I ask is a few minutes on a website and a few dollars. These few minutes and few dollars go a long way help people that are experiencing circumstances that only occur in our nightmares. I also ask that you take one extra step. Forward this plea to those that you know. I can only reach a small fraction of a percentage of the people that may be able to help. Together, we can reach the world. I raise money for Children's Hospital of Alabama. As this message branches out, people may wish to support a hospital closer to their area. I have included a link to the list of people that have dedicated their time and have received no donations. Find someone on the list supporting your local hospital and give them a donation. Let them know that their time and effort are appreciated. Together, we can do something great. Together, we can make a difference. Together, we all stand tall. Thank you. You can get more information at http://www.extra-life.org and http://childrensmiraclenetworkhospitals.org/" My donation page is http://www.extra-life.org/participant/cgardner The list of participants without donations is http://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.eventParticipantList&page=629&eventID=512

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• Three Buckets of Knowledge

  - by BuckWoody

  As I learn more and more about SQL Server every day, I divide up my information into three “buckets”: Concepts In the first bucket are the general concepts about the topic. What is it? What does it do (or sometimes, what is is supposed to do?) How does one operation flow to another? For this information I use books, magazine articles and believe it or not – Wikipedia. I don’t always trust that last source, but I do use it to see how others lay out their thoughts around a concept. I really like graphical charts that show me the process flow if I can get it, and this is an ideal place for a good presentation. In fact, this may be the only real use for a presentation – I’ll explain what I mean in a moment. Reference The references for a topic include things like Transact-SQL (T-SQL) syntax, or the screen layout on a panel, things like that. Think Dictionary. The only reference I trust for this information is Books Online – presentations are fine, but we’re talking about a dictionary. Ever go to a movie that just reads through a dictionary? Me neither. But I have gone to presentations where people try to include tons of reference materials in their slides. Even if you give me the presentation material later, it’s not really a searchable, readable medium. How To A how-to for me is an example, or even better, a tutorial about an example. Whatever it is shows me a practical use for the concepts and of course involves the syntax. The important thing here is that you need to be able to separate out the example the person is showing you from the stuff you need to know. I can’t tell you how many times folks have told me, “well, sure, if yours is red then that works. But mine is blue.” And I have to explain, “then use “blue” for the search word here.” You get the idea. No one will do your work for you – the examples are meant as a teaching tool only. I accept that, learn what I can, and then run off to create my own thing. You might think a How To works well in a presentation, and it does, for the most part. For a complex example or tutorial, I still prefer the printed word (electronic if possible) so that I can go over the example multiple times, skip around and so on.   The order here isn’t actually that important. Most of the time I start with a concept, look at an example, and then read the reference material. But sometimes I look up an example, read a little of concepts and then check the reference. The only primary thing I try to enforce is to read something from each of them. It’s dangerous to base your work on any single example, reference or concept.  Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Lead, Follow, or Get out of the way

  - by Daniel Moth

  This is one of the sayings (attributed to Thomas Paine) that totally resonated with me from the first time I heard it, which was only 3 years ago during some training course at work: "Lead, Follow, or Get out of the way" You'll find many books with this title and you'll find it quoted by politicians and other leaders in various countries at various times... the quote is open to interpretation and works on many levels. To set the tone of what this means to me, I'll use a simple micro example: In any given conversation, you are either leading it or following it, at different times/snapshots of the conversation. If you are not willing or able to lead it, and you are not willing or able to follow it, then you should depart. The bad alternative which this guidance encourages you NOT to do is to stick around and obstruct progress by not following, not leading, and simply complaining or trying to derail the discussion in no particular direction. The same pattern applies at your position/role at work. Either follow your management/leadership team, or try to lead them to what you think is a better place, or change jobs. Don't stick around complaining about the direction things are going, while not actively trying to either change things or make peace with it. In the previous paragraph you can replace the word "your management" with "the people reporting to you" and the guidance still holds. Either lead your direct reports to where you think they should go, or follow their lead, or change jobs. Complaining about folks not taking direction while doing nothing is not a maintainable state. To me this quote is not about a permanent state, it is not about some people always leading and some always following: It is about a role/hat that anybody can play/wear at any given moment. One minute I am leading you, the next I am following you, and the next we are both following someone else and so on... When there is disagreement, debate the different directions for as long as it takes for you to be comfortable that you can either follow or lead. If you don't become comfortable with either of those, get out of the way. Something to remember is that it is impossible to learn how to lead well, without learning how to follow well (probably deserves its own blog entry)... Things go wrong when someone thinks that they must always be leading, or when everybody wants to follow and nobody steps up to lead... Things go wrong when more than one person wants to lead and they don't try to reach agreement on a shared direction, stubbornly sticking to their guns pulling the rest of the team in multiple directions... Things go wrong when more than one person wants to lead and after numerous and lengthy discussions, none of them decides to follow or get out of the way... Things go wrong when people don't want to lead, don't want to follow, and insist on sticking around... While there are a few ways things that can go wrong as enumerated in the previous paragraph, the most common one in my experience is the last one I mentioned. You'll recognize these folks as the ones that always complain about everything that is wrong with their company/product but do nothing about it. Every time you hear someone giving feedback on how something is wrong or suboptimal, ask them "So now that you identified the problem, what do you think the solution is and what are you doing to drive us to that solution?" The next time things start going wrong, step up and remind everyone: Lead, Follow, or Get out of the way. For more perspectives, and for input to help you form your own interpretation, search the web for this phrase to see in what contexts it is being used (bing, google). Finally, regardless of your political views, I hope you can appreciate if only as an example this perspective of someone leading by actually getting out of the way. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Know Your Service Request Status

  - by Get Proactive Customer Adoption Team

  Untitled Document To monitor a Service Request or not to monitor a Service Request... That should never be the question Monitoring the Service Requests you create is an essential part of the process to resolve your issue when you work with a Support Engineer. If you monitor your Service Request, you know at all times where it is in the process, or to be more specific, you know at all times what action the Support Engineer has taken on your request and what the next step is. When you think about it, it is rather simple... Oracle Support is working the issue, Oracle Development is working the issue, or you are. When you check on the status, you may find that the Support Engineer has a question for you or the engineer is waiting for more information to resolve the issue. If you monitor the Service Request, and respond quickly, the process keeps moving, and you’ll get your answer more quickly. Monitoring a Service Request is easy. All you need to do is check the status codes that the Support Engineer or the system assigns to your Service Request. These status codes are not static. You will see that during the life of your Service request, it will go through a variety of status codes. The best advice I can offer you when you monitor your Service Request is to watch the codes. If the status is not changing, or if you are not getting responses back within the agreed timeframes, you should review the action plan the Support Engineer has outlined or talk about a new action plan. Here are the most common status codes: Work in Progress indicates that your Support Engineer is researching and working the issue. Development Working means that you have a code related issue and Oracle Support has submitted a bug to Development. Please pay a particular attention to the following statuses; they indicate that the Support Engineer is waiting for a response from you: Customer Working usually means that your Support Engineer needs you to collect additional information, needs you to try something or to apply a patch, or has more questions for you. Solution Offered indicates that the Support Engineer has identified the problem and has provided you with a solution. Auto-Close or Close Initiated are statuses you don’t want to see. Monitoring your Service Request helps prevent your issues from reaching these statuses. They usually indicate that the Support Engineer did not receive the requested information or action from you. This is important. If you fail to respond, the Support Engineer will attempt to contact you three times over a two-week period. If these attempts are unsuccessful, he or she will initiate the Auto-Close process. At the end of this additional two-week period, if you have not updated the Service Request, your Service Request is considered abandoned and the Support Engineer will assign a Customer Abandoned status. A Support Engineer doesn’t like to see this status, since he or she has been working to solve your issue, but we know our customers dislike it even more, since it means their issue is not moving forward. You can avoid delays in resolving your issue by monitoring your Service Request and acting quickly when you see the status change. Respond to the request from the engineer to answer questions, collect information, or to try the offered solution. Then the Support Engineer can continue working the issue and the Service Request keeps moving forward towards resolution. Keep in mind that if you take an extended period of time to respond to a request or to provide the information requested, the Support Engineer cannot take the next step. You may inadvertently send an implicit message about the problem’s urgency that may not match the Service Request priority, and your need for an answer. Help us help you. We want to get you the answer as quickly as possible so you can stay focused on your company’s objectives. Now, back to our initial question. To monitor Service Requests or not to monitor Service Requests? I think the answer is clear: yes, monitor your Service Request to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

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• Feynman's inbox

  - by user12607414

  Here is Richard Feynman writing on the ease of criticizing theories, and the difficulty of forming them: The problem is not just to say something might be wrong, but to replace it by something — and that is not so easy. As soon as any really definite idea is substituted it becomes almost immediately apparent that it does not work. The second difficulty is that there is an infinite number of possibilities of these simple types. It is something like this. You are sitting working very hard, you have worked for a long time trying to open a safe. Then some Joe comes along who knows nothing about what you are doing, except that you are trying to open the safe. He says ‘Why don’t you try the combination 10:20:30?’ Because you are busy, you have tried a lot of things, maybe you have already tried 10:20:30. Maybe you know already that the middle number is 32 not 20. Maybe you know as a matter of fact that it is a five digit combination… So please do not send me any letters trying to tell me how the thing is going to work. I read them — I always read them to make sure that I have not already thought of what is suggested — but it takes too long to answer them, because they are usually in the class ‘try 10:20:30’. (“Seeking New Laws”, page 161 in The Character of Physical Law.) As a sometime designer (and longtime critic) of widely used computer systems, I have seen similar difficulties appear when anyone undertakes to publicly design a piece of software that may be used by many thousands of customers. (I have been on both sides of the fence, of course.) The design possibilities are endless, but the deep design problems are usually hidden beneath a mass of superfluous detail. The sheer numbers can be daunting. Even if only one customer out of a thousand feels a need to express a passionately held idea, it can take a long time to read all the mail. And it is a fact of life that many of those strong suggestions are only weakly supported by reason or evidence. Opinions are plentiful, but substantive research is time-consuming, and hence rare. A related phenomenon commonly seen with software is bike-shedding, where interlocutors focus on surface details like naming and syntax… or (come to think of it) like lock combinations. On the other hand, software is easier than quantum physics, and the population of people able to make substantial suggestions about software systems is several orders of magnitude bigger than Feynman’s circle of colleagues. My own work would be poorer without contributions — sometimes unsolicited, sometimes passionately urged on me — from the open source community. If a Nobel prize winner thought it was worthwhile to read his mail on the faint chance of learning a good idea, I am certainly not going to throw mine away. (In case anyone is still reading this, and is wondering what provoked a meditation on the quality of one’s inbox contents, I’ll simply point out that the volume has been very high, for many months, on the Lambda-Dev mailing list, where the next version of the Java language is being discussed. Bravo to those of my colleagues who are surfing that wave.) I started this note thinking there was an odd parallel between the life of the physicist and that of a software designer. On second thought, I’ll bet that is the story for anybody who works in public on something requiring special training. (And that would be pretty much anything worth doing.) In any case, Feynman saw it clearly and said it well.

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• Microsoft Certifications &ndash; how to prep? and why?

  - by Kelly Jones

  I often get asked by my colleagues, “how do you prepare for Microsoft exams?” Well, the answer for me is a little complicated, so I thought I’d write up here what I do. The first thing I do is go to Microsoft’s website to find the exam that I need to take.  If you’re looking to get a particular certification, then their site lists the exam or exams that you’ll need to pass.  If you’ve already taken an exam, you can log onto the MCP website and use their certification planner.  This little tool tells you what tests you need, based on the exams you’ve already passed.  It is very helpful with the certifications that are multiple tests and especially ones that have electives. Once you’ve identified the test, you can use Microsoft’s website to see the topics that it covers.  This is a good outline to follow when you study.  I’ll keep this handy to reference back throughout my studying to make sure that I’m covering all the topics I need to know. The next step is probably where I am a little different from others.  IF the exam outline covers material that I’ve already been working with, then I’ll skip a lot of the studying and go directly to the practice tests.  However, if I’m looking at the outline and wondering how in the world do you do that? – then it’s time to hit the books. So, where to find study materials?  Try typing in the exam number into any search engine.  You’ll typically find a ton of resources.  If you’re lucky, you’ll find books that others recommend based on their studying and exam experience.  As a Sogeti employee, I have access to three really good resources: an internal company list of all of the consultants who have passed particular tests (on our Connex website), Books 24x7, and Transcender practice exams. Once my studying is done (either through books or experience), I’ll go through the practice exams.  I find them really helpful in getting my knowledge lined up to the thinking process that the exam writers use.  If I’m relying on my experience, then this really helps me to identify gaps in my knowledge that I’ll need to fill. That’s about it.  If I’m doing ok on the practice exams, then I’ll take the real thing.  I’ve found that the practice exams are usually more difficult than then real thing. Oh – one other thing I do related to Microsoft exams – I try to take any beta exams that Microsoft makes available that fall into my skill set.  Microsoft has started a blog to announce these and the seats usually fill up really quick.  The blog is at http://blogs.technet.com/betaexams/ . You don’t get your results instantly, like a normal exam, instead you have to wait for everyone to finish taking the beta exams and for Microsoft to determine which questions they are using and which they are dropping.  So, be prepared to wait six to eight weeks for your results.

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• Fun with Python

  - by dotneteer

  I am taking a class on Coursera recently. My formal education is in physics. Although I have been working as a developer for over 18 years and have learnt a lot of programming on the job, I still would like to gain some systematic knowledge in computer science. Coursera courses taught by Standard professors provided me a wonderful chance. The three languages recommended for assignments are Java, C and Python. I am fluent in Java and have done some projects using C++/MFC/ATL in the past, but I would like to try something different this time. I first started with pure C. Soon I discover that I have to write a lot of code outside the question that I try to solve because the very limited C standard library. For example, to read a list of values from a file, I have to read characters by characters until I hit a delimiter. If I need a list that can grow, I have to create a data structure myself, something that I have taking for granted in .Net or Java. Out of frustration, I switched to Python. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Python is very easy to learn. The tutorial on the official Python site has the exactly the right pace for me, someone with experience in another programming. After a couple of hours on the tutorial and a few more minutes of toying with IDEL, I was in business. I like the “battery supplied” philosophy that gives everything that I need out of box. For someone from C# or Java background, curly braces are replaced by colon(:) and tab spaces. Although I tend to miss colon from time to time, I found that the idea of tab space is actually very nice once I get use to them. I also like to feature of multiple assignment and multiple return parameters. When I need to return a by-product, I just add it to the list of returns. When would use Python? I would use Python if I need to computer anything quick. The language is very easy to use. Python has a good collection of libraries (packages). The REPL of the interpreter allows me test ideas quickly before committing them into script. Lots of computer science work have been ported from Lisp to Python. Some universities are even teaching SICP in Python. When wouldn’t I use Python? I mostly would not use it in a managed environment, such as Ironpython or Jython. Both .Net and Java already have a rich library so one has to make a choice which library to use. If we use the managed runtime library, the code will tie to the particular runtime and thus not portable. If we use the Python library, then we will face the relatively long start-up time. For this reason, I would not recommend to use Ironpython for WP7 development. The only situation that I see merit with managed Python is in a server application where I can preload Python so that the start-up time is not a concern. Using Python as a managed glue language is an over-kill most of the time. A managed Scheme could be a better glue language as it is small enough to start-up very fast.

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• The gestures of Windows 8 (Consumer preview): part 2, More about Search

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  This is part 2 of a multipart blog post about the gestures and shortcuts in Windows 8 consumer preview. Part 1 can be found here! More about the Search charm In the first installment of this series, we talked about the charms and mentioned a few gestures to display the Search charm. Search is a very central and powerful feature in Windows 8, and allows you to search in Apps, Settings, Files and within Metro applications that support the Search contract. There are a few cool features around the Search, and especially the applications associated to it. I already mentioned the keyboard shortcuts you can use: Win-C shows the Charms bar (same as swiping from the right bevel towards the center of the screen). Win-Q open the Search fly out with Apps preselected. Win-W open the Search fly out with Settings preselected. Win-F open the Search fly out with Files preselected. Searching in Metro apps In addition to these three search domains, you can also search a Metro app, as long as it supports the Search contract (check this Build video to learn more about the Search contract). These apps show up in the Search flyout as shown here: Notice the list of apps below the Files button? That’s what we are talking about. First of all, the list order changes when you search in some applications. For instance, in the image above, I had used the Store with the Search charm. This is why the store shows up as the first app. I am not 100% what algorithm is used here (sorting according to number of searches is my guess), but try it out and try to figure it out Applications that have never been searched are sorted alphabetically. Does it mean we will see cool app names like ___AAA_MyCoolApp? I certainly hope not!! Pinning You can also pin often used apps to the Search flyout. To pin an app with the mouse, right click on it in the Search flyout and select Pin from the context menu. With the keyboard, use the arrow keys to go down to the selected app, and then open the context menu. With the finger, simply tap and hold until you see a semi transparent rectangle indicating that the context menu will be shown, then release. The context menu opens up and you can select Pin. Pin context menu Pinned apps Unpinning, Hiding Using the same technique as for pinning here above, you can also unpin a pinned application. Finally, you can also choose to hide an app from the Search flyout altogether. This is a convenient way to clean up and make it easy to find stuff. Note: At this point, I am not sure how to re-add a hidden app to the Search flyout. If anyone knows, please mention it in the comments, thanks! Reordering You can also reorder pinned apps. To do this, with the finger, tap, hold and pull the app to the side, then pull it vertically to reorder it. You can also reorder with the mouse, simply by clicking on an app and pulling it vertically to the place you want to put it. I don’t think there is a way to do that with the keyboard though. That’s it for now More gestures will follow in a next installment! Have fun with Windows 8   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Controlling soft errors and false alarms in SSIS

  - by Jim Giercyk

  If you are like me, you dread the 3AM wake-up call.  I would say that the majority of the pages I get are false alarms.  The alerts that require action often require me to open an SSIS package, see where the trouble is and try to identify the offending data.  That can be very time-consuming and can take quite a chunk out of my beauty sleep.  For those reasons, I have developed a simple error handling scenario for SSIS which allows me to rest a little easier.  Let me first say, this is a high level discussion; getting into the nuts and bolts of creating each shape is outside the scope of this document, but if you have an average understanding of SSIS, you should have no problem following along. In the Data Flow above you can see that there is a caution triangle.  For the purpose of this discussion I am creating a truncation error to demonstrate the process, so this is to be expected.  The first thing we need to do is to redirect the error output.  Double-clicking on the Query shape presents us with the properties window for the input.  Simply set the columns that you want to redirect to Redirect Row in the dropdown box and hit Apply. Without going into a dissertation on error handling, I will just note that you can decide which errors you want to redirect on Error and on Truncation.  Therefore, to override this process for a column or condition, simply do not redirect that column or condition. The next thing we want to do is to add some information about the error; specifically, the name of the package which encountered the error and which step in the package wrote the record to the error table.  REMEMBER: If you redirect the error output, your package will not fail, so you will not know where the error record was created without some additional information.    I added 3 columns to my error record; Severity, Package Name and Step Name.  Severity is just a free-form column that you can use to note whether an error is fatal, whether the package is part of a test job and should be ignored, etc.  Package Name and Step Name are system variables. In my package I have created a truncation situation, where the firstname column is 50 characters in the input, but only 4 characters in the output.  Some records will pass without truncation, others will be sent to the error output.  However, the package will not fail. We can see that of the 14 input rows, 8 were redirected to the error table. This information can be used by another step or another scheduled process or triggered to determine whether an error should be sent.  It can also be used as a historical record of the errors that are encountered over time.  There are other system variables that might make more sense in your infrastructure, so try different things.  Date and time seem like something you would want in your output for example.  In summary, we have redirected the error output from an input, added derived columns with information about the errors, and inserted the information and the offending data into an error table.  The error table information can be used by another step or process to determine, based on the error information, what level alert must be sent.  This will eliminate false alarms, and give you a head start when a genuine error occurs.

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• Hijax == sneaky Javascript redirects? Will I get banned from Google?

  - by Chris Jacob

  Question Will I get penalised as "sneaky Javascript redirects" by Google if I have the following Hijax setup (which requires a JavaScript redirect on the page indexed by google). Goal I want to implement Hijax to enable AJAX content to be accessibile to non-JavaScript users and search engine crawlers. Background I'm working on a static file server (GitHub Pages). No server side tricks allowed (so Google's #! "hash bang" solution is not an option). I'm trying to keep my files DRY. I don't want to repeat the common OUTER template in all my files i.e. header, navigation menu, footer, etc They will live in the main index.html Setup the Hijax index.html page contains all OUTER html/css/js... the site's template. index.html has a <div id="content"> which defaults to containing the "homepage" html. index.html has a navigation menu, with a Hijax link to an "about" page. With JavaScript disabled (e.g. crawler) it follows link to /about.html. With JavaScript enabled (e.g. most people) the link updates the url hash fragment to /#about and jQuery replaces the <div id="content"> innerHTML with $("#content").load("about.html #inner-container");. AJAX content about.html does not contain anything extra to try an cloak content for crawlers. about.html file contains enough HTML / CSS / JavaScript to display /about.html as a standalone page with it's own META data... e.g. <html><head><title>About</title>...</head><body></body></html>. about.html has NO OUTER HTML template (i.e. header, navigation menu, footer, etc). about.html <body> contains a <div id="inner-container"> which holds the content that is injected into index.html. about.html has a <noscript> tag as the first child of <body> which explains to non-JavaScript users that they are viewing the about page "inner content" - with a link to navigate to the index.html page to get the full page layout with menu. The (Sneaky?) Redirect Google indexes the /about.html page. However when a person with JavaScript enabled visits that page there is no OUTER html template (e.g. header, navigation menu, footer, etc). So I need to do a JavaScript redirect to get the person over the /#about page (deeplinking to the "about" page "state" in index.html). I'm thinking of doing a "redirect on click or after 10 seconds". The end results is that user ends up on an "enhanced" page back on index.html with all it's OUTER template - but the core "page" content is practically identical. Known issue with inbound links e.g. Share / Bookmarking It seems that if a user shares the URL /#about on their blog, when allocating inbound links to my site Google ignores everything after the # ... it allocates value to the / page - See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5028405/hashbang-vs-hijax/5166665#5166665. I can only try an minimise this issue offering "share" buttons on the page with the appropriate urls i.e. /about.html. Duplicate Sorry. I posted this same question over on http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5561686/hijax-sneaky-javascript-redirects-will-i-get-banned-from-google ... then realised it probably belongs more on this Stack Exchange site... Not sure if I should delete the Stack Overflow question? Or just leave it on both sites? Please leave comment.

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• Setup and configure a MVC4 project for Cloud Service(web role) and SQL Azure

  - by MagnusKarlsson

  I aim at keeping this blog post updated and add related posts to it. Since there are a lot of these out there I link to others that has done kind of the same before me, kind of a blog-DRY pattern that I'm aiming for. I also keep all mistakes and misconceptions for others to see. As an example; if I hit a stacktrace I will google it if I don't directly figure out the reason for it. I will then probably take the most plausible result and try it out. If it fails because I misinterpreted the error I will not delete it from the log but keep it for future reference and for others to see. That way people that finds this blog can see multiple solutions for indexed stacktraces and I can better remember how to do stuff. To avoid my errors I recommend you to read through it all before going from start to finish.The steps:Setup project in VS2012. (msdn blog)Setup Azure Services (half of mpspartners.com blog)Setup connections strings and configuration files (msdn blog + notes)Export certificates.Create Azure package from vs2012 and deploy to staging (same steps as for production).Connections string error Set up the visual studio project:http://blogs.msdn.com/b/avkashchauhan/archive/2011/11/08/developing-asp-net-mvc4-based-windows-azure-web-role.aspx Then login in to Azure to setup the services:Stop following this guide at the "publish website" part since we'll be uploading a package.http://www.mpspartners.com/2012/09/ConfiguringandDeployinganMVC4applicationasaCloudServicewithAzureSQLandStorage/ When set up (connection strings for debug and release and all), follow this guide to set up the configuration files:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/hh369931.aspxTrying to package our application at this step will generate the following warning:3>MvcWebRole1(0,0): warning WAT170: The configuration setting 'Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString' is set up to use the local storage emulator for role 'MvcWebRole1' in configuration file 'ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg'. To access Windows Azure storage services, you must provide a valid Windows Azure storage connection string. Right click the web role under roles in solution manager and choose properties. Choose "Service configuration: Cloud". At "specify storage account credentials" we will copy/paste our account name and key from the Azure management platform.3.1 4. Right click Remote desktop Configuration and select certificate and export to file. We need to allow it in Portal manager.4.15 Now right click the cloud project and select package.5.1 Showing dialogue box. 5.2 Package success Now copy the path to the packaged file and go to management portal again. Click your web role and choose staging (or production). Upload. 5.3Tick the box about the single instance if that's what you want or you don't know what it means. Otherwise the following will happen (see image 4.6)5.4 Dialogue box When you have clicked the symbol for accept- button you will see the following screen with some green indicators down at the right corner. Click them if you want to see status.5.5 Information screen.5.6 "Failed to deploy application. The upload application has at least one role with only one instance. We recommend that you deploy at least two instances per role to ensure high availability in case one of the instances becomes unavailable. "To fix, go to step 5.4If you forgot to (or just didn't know you were supposed to) export your certificates. The following error will occur. Side note, the following thread suggests. To prevent: "Enable Remote Desktop for all roles" when right-clicking BIAB and choosing "Package". But in my case it was the not so present certificates. I fund the solution here.http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/dotnetstocktradersampleapplication/thread/0e94c2b5-463f-4209-86b9-fc257e0678cd5.75.8 Success! 5.9 Nice URL n' all. (More on that at another blog post).6. If you try to login and getWhen this error occurs many web sites suggest this is because you need:http://nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.AspNet.Providers.LocalDBOr : http://nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.AspNet.ProvidersBut it can also be that you don't have the correct setup for converting connectionstrings between your web.config to your debug.web.config(or release.web.config, whichever your using).Run as suggested in the "ordinary project in your solution. Go to the management portal and click update.

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• Graphics trouble after resuming from hibernate or suspend

  - by Voyagerfan5761

  I have a Dell Inspiron 2650 (with NVidia graphics, using nouveau drivers) that I'm using to try out Ubuntu. It's all great, except that Hibernate and Suspend aren't usable. Yes, I know that questions about power-save issues are rampant in the Linux support universe, but it seems that every time I find a solution it's for a very specific hardware combination and doesn't apply to me. So anyway, here goes. When I resume from either power-saving mode, I'll get graphics problems anywhere on the range from a few scattered random-colored pixels that won't change; all the way to full-screen patterns that don't change as I move the mouse, hit keys on the keyboard, or even bring up the shutdown dialog using the power button. Those full-screen issues (which may involve stripes with random pixels, partial black screen, or both) always end in me forcing the machine to shut down by holding the power button. I haven't done much testing yet to determine what severity level is most commonly associated with each mode, but I do avoid using either power-save option because of these issues. I'll add info on my hardware as I can gather it (no home internet connection, and this laptop is tethered to my desk by a dead battery and casing degradation). Please feel free to request something specific in the question comments. Hardware Info See this hardinfo report for my system's hardware configuration. (No, my username is not "myuser"; I sanitized hardinfo's output before publishing it.) Screenshots These screenshots are from a relatively mild occurrence, which happened after the second hibernation I took that session. The first one worked great, though I used the wireless card and Firefox heavily between the two hibernation attempts. Take a look at what happened when I opened my home directory in Nautilus and scrolled it: See below for the situations I've tested so far. The real trouble comes when the machine resumes to an unusable state; in such cases I can't even unlock the screen or properly reboot, much less take a screenshot. I have a hunch that putting a CD in the drive will cause such major failures, and I will try that at some point; see related question. Situations Tested Maverick (10.10) Suspend Seems to suspend nicely with nothing running Seems to suspend nicely with flash drive plugged in On resume from suspend with no flash drive, Terminal and gedit running: Funky graphics on top of log output, then blank screen with pixelated cursor; no response to power button (normally will shutdown 60 seconds later) Hibernate Seems to hibernate nicely with nothing running Seems to hibernate nicely with a few apps (Terminal, Mouse preferences) running Seems to not hibernate when flash drive plugged in Seems to not hibernate when System Monitor is running Have encountered failed hibernation (after several hours and one successful hibernate/thaw cycle) with no external media connected and no programs running except normal background stuff Natty LiveCD (11.04_2010-12-22) When I tested it, Natty wouldn't stay logged in. It played part of the login sound and then [ OK ] appeared in the top right corner (white-on-black terminal text) for a few seconds. Then it kicked me back to the Unlock screen. It did that four times before I gave up and just tested suspend from the Unlock screen. Suspend Resumed to vertical gray and black lines 2px (?) wide, then shifted to vertical "jail bars" of black over a black screen with above-described random pixels and mouse pointer. No apparent response to input from mouse (clicking randomly). Keyboard and touchpad unrecognized.

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• News From EAP Testing

  - by Fatherjack

  There is a phrase that goes something like “Watch the pennies and the pounds/dollars will take care of themselves”, meaning that if you pay attention to the small things then the larger things are going to fare well too. I am lucky enough to be a Friend of Red Gate and once in a while I get told about new features in their tools and have a test copy of the software to trial. I got one of those emails a week or so ago and I have been exploring the SQL Prompt 6 EAP since then. One really useful feature of long standing in SQL Prompt is the idea of a code snippet that is automatically pasted into the SSMS editor when you type a few key letters. For example I can type “ssf” and then press the tab key and the text is expanded to SELECT * FROM. There are lots of these combinations and it is possible to create your own really easily. To create your own you use the Snippet Manager interface to define the shortcut letters and the code that you want to have put in their place. Let’s look at an example. Say I am writing a blog about something and want to have the demo code create a temporary table. It might looks like this; The first time you run the code everything is fine, a lovely set of dates fill the results grid but run it a second time and this happens.   Yep, we didn’t destroy the temporary table so the CREATE statement fails when it finds the table already exists. No matter, I have a snippet created that takes care of this.   Nothing too technical here but you will see that in the Code section there is $CURSOR$, this isn’t a TSQL keyword but a marker for SQL Prompt to place the cursor in that position when the Code is pasted into the SSMS Editor. I just place my cursor above the CREATE statement and type “ifobj” – the shortcut for my code to DROP the temporary table – which has been defined in the Snippet Manager as below. This means I am right-away ready to type the name of the offending table. Pretty neat and it’s been very useful in saving me lots of time over many years.   The news for SQL Prompt 6 is that Red Gate have added a new Snippet Command of $PASTE$. Let’s alter our snippet to the following and try it out   Once again, we will type type “ifobj” in the SSMS Editor but first of all, highlight the name of the table #TestTable and copy it to your clipboard. Now type “ifobj” and press Tab… Wherever the string $PASTE$ is placed in the snippet, the contents of your clipboard are merged into the pasted TSQL. This means I don’t need to type the table name into the code snippet, it’s already there and I am seeing a fully functioning piece of TSQL ready to run. This means it is it even easier to write TSQL quickly and consistently. Attention to detail like this from Red Gate means that their developer tools stay on track to keep winning awards year after year and help take the hard work out of writing neat, accurate TSQL. If you want to try out SQL Prompt all the details are at http://www.red-gate.com/products/sql-development/sql-prompt/.

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• What are they buying &ndash; work or value?

  - by Jamie Kurtz

  When was the last time you ordered a pizza like this: “I want the high school kid in the back to do the following… make a big circle with some dough, curl up the edges, then put some sauce on it using a small ladle, then I want him to take a handful of shredded cheese from the metal container and spread it over the circle and sauce, then finally I want the kid to place 36 pieces of pepperoni over the top of the cheese” ?? Probably never. My typical pizza order usually goes more like this: “I want a large pepperoni pizza”. In the world of software development, we try so hard to be all things agile. We: Write lots of unit tests We refactor our code, then refactor it some more We avoid writing lengthy requirements documents We try to keep processes to a minimum, and give developers freedom And we are proud of our constantly shifting focus (i.e. we’re “responding to change”) Yet, after all this, we fail to really lean and capitalize on one of agile’s main differentiators (from the twelve principles behind the Agile Manifesto): “Working software is the primary measure of progress.” That is, we foolishly commit to delivering tasks instead of features and bug fixes. Like my pizza example above, we fall into the trap of signing contracts that bind us to doing tasks – rather than delivering working software. And the biggest problem here… by far the most troubling outcome… is that we don’t let working software be a major force in all the work we do. When teams manage to ruthlessly focus on the end product, it puts them on the path of true agile. It doesn’t let them accidentally write too much documentation, or spend lots of time and money on processes and fancy tools. It forces early testing that reveals problems in the feature or bug fix. And it forces lots and lots of customer interaction.  Without that focus on the end product as your deliverable… by committing to a list of tasks instead of a list features and bug fixes… you are doomed to NOT be agile. You will end up just doing stuff, spending time on the keyboard, burning time on timesheets. Doing tasks doesn’t force you to minimize documentation. It makes it much harder to respond to change. And it will eventually force you and the client into contract haggling. Because the customer isn’t really paying you to do stuff. He’s ultimately paying for features and bug fixes. And when the customer doesn’t get what they want, responding with “well, look at the contract - we did all the tasks we committed to” doesn’t typically generate referrals or callbacks. In short, if you’re trying to deliver real value to the customer by going agile, you will most certainly fail if all you commit to is a list of things you’re going to do. Give agile what it needs by committing to features and bug fixes – not a list of ToDo items. So the next time you are writing up a contract, remember that the customer should be buying this: Not this:

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