Search Results

Search found 835 results on 34 pages for 'dark falcon'.

Page 28/34 | < Previous Page | 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34  | Next Page >

• c# creating a database query METHOD

  - by Sinaesthetic

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

  Read the article

• Using unions to simplify casts

  - by Steven Lu

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

  Read the article

• Jquery gradient behavior applies to all but first URL

  - by Dustin

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

  Read the article

• php memory how much is too much

  - by Rob

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

  Read the article

• Canvas draw calls are rendering out of sequence

  - by Tom Murray

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

  Read the article

• goto was unexpected at this time

  - by SammytheNerd

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

  Read the article

• Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines

  - by Eric Z Goodnight

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

  Read the article

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

  - by ScottGu

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

  Read the article

• Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Batman

  - by Pinal Dave

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

  Read the article

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

  - by Asian Angel

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

  Read the article

• XNA Notes 008

  - by George Clingerman

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

  Read the article

• Things to install on a new machine – revisited

  - by RoyOsherove

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

  Read the article

• Home Energy Management & Automation with Windows Phone 7

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

  Read the article

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

  - by andrewbrust

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

  Read the article

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

  - by Dave Campbell

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

  Read the article

• Scid Chess Program Compiling issue

  - by lbochitt

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

  Read the article

• My Doors - Why Standards Matter to Business

  - by Brian Dayton

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

  Read the article

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

  - by Bob Rhubart

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

  Read the article

• Computing a normal matrix in conjunction with gluLookAt

  - by Chris Smith

  I have a hand-rolled camera class that converts yaw, pitch, and roll angles into a forward, side, and up vector suitable for calling gluLookAt. Using this camera class I can modify the model-view matrix to move about the 3D world just fine. However, I am having trouble when using this camera class (and associated model-view matrix) when trying to perform directional lighting in my vertex shader. The problem is that the light direction, (0, 1, 0) for example, is relative to where the 'camera is looking' and not the actual world coordinates. (Or is this eye coordinates vs. model coordinates?) I would like the light direction to be unaffected by the camera's viewing direction. For example, when the camera is looking down the Z axis the ground is lit correctly. However, if I point the camera straight at the ground, then it goes dark. This is (I think) because the light direction is parallel with the camera's 'up' vector which is perpendicular with the ground's normal vector. I tried computing the normal matrix without taking the camera's model view into account, but then none of my objects were rotated correctly. Sorry if this sounds vague. I suspect there is a straight forward answer, but I'm not 100% clear on how the normal matrix should be used for transforming vertex normals in my vertex shader. For reference, here is pseudo code for my rendering loop: pMatrix = new Matrix(); pMatrix = makePerspective(...) mvMatrix = new Matrix() camera.apply(mvMatrix); // Calls gluLookAt // Move the object into position. mvMatrix.translatev(position); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.x, 1, 0, 0); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.y, 0, 1, 0); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.z, 0, 0, 1); var nMatrix = new Matrix(); nMatrix.set(mvMatrix.get().getInverse().getTranspose()); // Set vertex shader uniforms. gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.pMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(pMatrix.getFlattened())); gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.mvMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(mvMatrix.getFlattened())); gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.nMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(nMatrix.getFlattened())); // ... gl.drawElements(gl.TRIANGLES, this.vertexIndexBuffer.numItems, gl.UNSIGNED_SHORT, 0); And the corresponding vertex shader: // Attributes attribute vec3 aVertexPosition; attribute vec4 aVertexColor; attribute vec3 aVertexNormal; // Uniforms uniform mat4 uMVMatrix; uniform mat4 uNMatrix; uniform mat4 uPMatrix; // Varyings varying vec4 vColor; // Constants const vec3 LIGHT_DIRECTION = vec3(0, 1, 0); // Opposite direction of photons. const vec4 AMBIENT_COLOR = vec4 (0.2, 0.2, 0.2, 1.0); float ComputeLighting() { vec4 transformedNormal = vec4(aVertexNormal.xyz, 1.0); transformedNormal = uNMatrix * transformedNormal; float base = dot(normalize(transformedNormal.xyz), normalize(LIGHT_DIRECTION)); return max(base, 0.0); } void main(void) { gl_Position = uPMatrix * uMVMatrix * vec4(aVertexPosition, 1.0); float lightWeight = ComputeLighting(); vColor = vec4(aVertexColor.xyz * lightWeight, 1.0) + AMBIENT_COLOR; } Note that I am using WebGL, so if the anser is use glFixThisProblem(...) any pointers on how to re-implement that on WebGL if missing would be appreciated.

  Read the article

• It's like I'm in recovery mode after update, but I'm not

  - by mawburn

  I used the Ubuntu software updater and updated to the most recent packages. After the last update today, it's like I have gone into recovery mode, but I haven't. I am running UbuntuGNOME First, everything looks like this: Switching to dark mode does nothing. Also, default applications do not work. Such as Startup and the default screenshot application. Everything was working fine before the latest software update. System Info Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Gnome-Shell 3.10.4 Kernel 3.13.0-29 I can't figure out how to get an update history, but this is almost a fresh install. It's about a week old install and this is the 3rd time I've used the Ubuntu Software Update. I am running AMD ATI HD6700 with the proprietary Catalyst drivers. I tried to provide all information that I thought would be useful, if you need any more please let me know. Edit - I believe something went wrong within these updates: Update Log: Start-Date: 2014-06-09 19:07:07 Commandline: aptdaemon role='role-commit-packages' sender=':1.68' Install: libgnome-desktop-3-10:amd64 (3.12.0-0~eugenesan~trusty2) Upgrade: gnome-session-common:amd64 (3.9.90-0ubuntu12, 3.12.0-0~eugenesan~trusty10), gnome-session-bin:amd64 (3.9.90-0ubuntu12, 3.12.0-0~eugenesan~trusty10), gir1.2-gnomedesktop-3.0:amd64 (3.8.4-0ubuntu3, 3.12.0-0~eugenesan~trusty2), gnome-session:amd64 (3.9.90-0ubuntu12, 3.12.0-0~eugenesan~trusty10), python-libxml2:amd64 (2.9.1+dfsg1-3ubuntu4.1, 2.9.1+dfsg1-3ubuntu4.2), libspice-server1:amd64 (0.12.4-0nocelt2, 0.12.4-0nocelt2.02~eugenesan~trusty1), gir1.2-mutter-3.0:amd64 (3.10.4-0ubuntu2, 3.10.4-0ubuntu2.1), xserver-xorg-video-qxl:amd64 (0.1.1-0ubuntu3, 0.1.1-0ubuntu3.01), libxml2:amd64 (2.9.1+dfsg1-3ubuntu4.1, 2.9.1+dfsg1-3ubuntu4.2), libxml2:i386 (2.9.1+dfsg1-3ubuntu4.1, 2.9.1+dfsg1-3ubuntu4.2), gnome-desktop3-data:amd64 (3.8.4-0ubuntu3, 3.12.0-0~eugenesan~trusty2), mutter:amd64 (3.10.4-0ubuntu2, 3.10.4-0ubuntu2.1), mutter-common:amd64 (3.10.4-0ubuntu2, 3.10.4-0ubuntu2.1), libxml2-utils:amd64 (2.9.1+dfsg1-3ubuntu4.1, 2.9.1+dfsg1-3ubuntu4.2), libmutter0c:amd64 (3.10.4-0ubuntu2, 3.10.4-0ubuntu2.1) End-Date: 2014-06-09 19:07:12 I also installed Citrix Receiver today, following the tutorial here: Citrix Receiver 12.1 on Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit Log Start-Date: 2014-06-09 18:59:06 Commandline: apt-get install libmotif4:i386 nspluginwrapper lib32z1 libc6-i386 libxp6:i386 libxpm4:i386 libasound2:i386 Install: libmotif-common:amd64 (2.3.4-5, automatic), libatk1.0-0:i386 (2.10.0-2ubuntu2, automatic), libxft2:i386 (2.3.1-2, automatic), libgraphite2-3:i386 (1.2.4-1ubuntu1, automatic), nspluginviewer:i386 (1.4.4-0ubuntu5, automatic), libpango-1.0-0:i386 (1.36.3-1ubuntu1, automatic), libxcursor1:i386 (1.1.14-1, automatic), libmotif4:i386 (2.3.4-5), libxm4:amd64 (2.3.4-5, automatic), libxm4:i386 (2.3.4-5, automatic), libxp6:i386 (1.0.2-1ubuntu1), libpangocairo-1.0-0:i386 (1.36.3-1ubuntu1, automatic), libxcb-render0:i386 (1.10-2ubuntu1, automatic), libthai0:i386 (0.1.20-3, automatic), libharfbuzz0b:i386 (0.9.27-1, automatic), libpixman-1-0:i386 (0.30.2-2ubuntu1, automatic), libpangoft2-1.0-0:i386 (1.36.3-1ubuntu1, automatic), libcairo2:i386 (1.13.0~20140204-0ubuntu1, automatic), lib32z1:amd64 (1.2.8.dfsg-1ubuntu1), libjasper1:i386 (1.900.1-14ubuntu3, automatic), libgtk2.0-0:i386 (2.24.23-0ubuntu1.1, automatic), nspluginwrapper:amd64 (1.4.4-0ubuntu5), libuil4:amd64 (2.3.4-5, automatic), libuil4:i386 (2.3.4-5, automatic), libxcb-shm0:i386 (1.10-2ubuntu1, automatic), libxmu6:i386 (1.1.1-1, automatic), libc6-i386:amd64 (2.19-0ubuntu6), libxinerama1:i386 (1.1.3-1, automatic), libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0:i386 (2.30.7-0ubuntu1, automatic), libxcomposite1:i386 (0.4.4-1, automatic), libmrm4:amd64 (2.3.4-5, automatic), libmrm4:i386 (2.3.4-5, automatic), libdatrie1:i386 (0.2.8-1, automatic), libxrandr2:i386 (1.4.2-1, automatic), libxpm4:i386 (3.5.10-1) End-Date: 2014-06-09 18:59:11

  Read the article

• Day 5 - Tada! My Game Menu Screen Graphics

  - by dapostolov

  So, tonight I took some time to mash up some graphics for my game menu screen. My artistic talent sucks...but here goes nothing...voila, my menu screen!! The Menu Screen The screen above is displaying 4 sprites, even though it looks like maybe 7... I guess one of the first things for me to test in the future is ... is it more memory efficient (and better frame rate) to draw one big background image OR tp paint the screen black, and place each sprite in set locations? To display the 4 sprites above, I borrowed my code from yesterday ... I know, tacky, but...I wanted to see it, feel it. Do you feel it? FEEL IT! (homer voice & shakes fist) Note: the menu items won't scale properly as it stands with this code, well pretty much they do nothing except look pretty... Paint.Net & Google Fun So how did I create that image above? Well, to create the background and 3 menu items I used Paint.Net. Basically, I scoured Google images for: a stone doorway, a stone pillar, an old book, a wizards hat, and...that's it pretty much it! I'll let you type in those searches and see if you can locate the images I used. I know, bad developer...but I figured since I modified the images considerably it doesn't count...well for a personal project it shouldn't count...*shrug* Anyhow, I extracted each key assest I wanted from each image and applied lots of matting, blurring, color changes, glow effects and such. Then, using my vivid imagination I placed / composed each of the layered assets into the mashed up the "scene" above. Pretty cool, eh? Hey, did you know, the cool mist effect is actually a fire rendition in Paint.net? I set it to black & white with opacity set next to nothing. I'm also very proud of the yellow "light" in the stone doorway. I drew that in and then applied gausian blur to it to give it the effect of light creeping out around the door and into the room...heheh. So did I achieve the dark, mysterious ritual as I stated in my design doc? I think I had a great stab at it! Maybe down the road I can get a real artist to crank out some quality graphics for the game... =) So, What's Next? Well, I don't have that animated brazier yet...however, I thought it would be even cooler if I can get that door pulsing that yellow light and it would be extremely cool to have the smoke / mist moving across the screen! Make the creative ideas stop!! (clutches head) haha! I'm having great fun working on this project =) I recommend others giving something like this a try, it's really fulfilling. OK. Tomorrow... I think I'm going to start creating some game / menu objects as per the design doc, maybe even get a custom mouse cursor up on the screen and handle a couple of mouse events, and lastly, maybe a feature to toggle a framerate display... D.

  Read the article

• links for 2010-12-23

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Oracle VM Virtualbox 4.0 extension packs (Wim Coekaerts Blog) Wim Coekaerts describes the the new extension pack in Oracle VM Virtualbox 4.0 and how it's different from 3.2 and earlier releases. (tags: oracle otn virtualization virtualbox) Oracle Fusion Middleware Security: Creating OES SM instances on 64 bit systems "I've already opened a bug on this against OES 10gR3 CP5, but in case anyone else runs into it before it gets fixed I wanted to blog it too. (NOTE: CP5 is when official support was introduced for running OES on a 64 bit system with a 64 bit JVM)" - Chris Johnson (tags: oracle otn fusionmiddleware security) Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control: Shared loader directory, RAC and WebLogic Clustering "RAC is optional. Even the load balancer is optional. The feed from the agents also goes to the load balancer on a different port and it is routed to the available management server. In normal case, this is ok." - Porus Homi Havewala (tags: WebLogic oracle otn grid clustering) Magic Web Doctor: Thought Process on Upgrading WebLogic Server to 11g "Upgrading to new versions can be challenging task, but it's done for linear scalability, continuous enhanced availability, efficient manageability and automatic/dynamic infrastructure provisioning at a low cost." - Chintan Patel (tags: oracle otn weblogic upgrading) InfoQ: Using a Service Bus to Connect the Supply Chain Peter Paul van de Beek presents a case study of using a service bus in a supply channel connecting a wholesale supplier with hundreds of retailers, the overall context and challenges faced – including the integration of POS software coming from different software providers-, the solution chosen and its implementation, how it worked out and the lessons learned along the way. (tags: ping.fm) Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0 is released! - The Fat Bloke Sings The Fat Bloke spreads the news and shares some screenshots.  (tags: oracle otn virtualization virtualbox) Leaks on Wikis: "Corporations...You're Next!" Oracle Desktop Virtualization Can Help. (Oracle's Virtualization Blog) "So what can you do to guard against these types of breaches where there is no outsider (or even insider) intrusion to detect per se, but rather someone with malicious intent is physically walking out the door with data that they are otherwise allowed to access in their daily work?" - Adam Hawley (tags: oracle otn virtualization security) OTN ArchBeat Podcast Guest Roster As the OTN ArchBeat Podcast enters its third year, it's time to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of the guests who have participated in ArchBeat programs. Check out this who's who of ArchBeat podcast panelists, with links to their respective interviews and more. (tags: oracle otn oracleace podcast archbeat) Show Notes: Architects in the Cloud (ArchBeat) Now available! Part 2 (of 4) of the ArchBeat interview with Stephen G. Bennett and Archie Reed, the authors of "Silver Clouds, Dark Linings: A Concise Guide to Cloud Computing." (tags: oracle otn podcast cloud) A Cautionary Tale About Multi-Source JNDI Configuration (Scott Nelson's Portal Productivity Ponderings) "I ran into this issue after reading that p13nDataSource and cgDataSource-NonXA should not be configured as multi-source. There were some issues changing them to use the basic JDBC connection string and when rolling back to the bad configuration the server went 'Boom.'" - Scott Nelson (tags: weblogic jdbc oracle jndi)

  Read the article

• Booting the liveCD/USB in EFI mode fails on Samsung Tablet XE700T1A

  - by F.L.

  My tablet is Samsung Series 7 Slate (XE700T1A-A02FR (French Language)). It operates an Intel Sandy Bridge architecture. The main issue about this tablet is that it ships with an installed Windows 7 in (U)EFI mode (GPT partition table, etc.), so I'd like to get an EFI dual boot with Ubuntu. But it seems I can't boot on the liveCD in EFI mode. It starts loading (up to initrd), but I then get a blank (black) screen. I've tried the nomodeset kernel option (as well as removing quiet and splash) with no luck. [2012-09-27] I have used the Ubuntu 12.04.1 Desktop ISO (I have read somewhere that it is the only one that can boot in EFI mode). I'd say this has something to do with UEFI since the LiveCD boots in bios mode but not in efi mode. Besides, I am not sure my boot info will help, since I can't boot the LiveCD in EFI mode. As a result I can't install ubuntu in EFI mode. So it would be the boot info from the liveCD boot in bios mode. This happens on a ubuntu-12.04.1-desktop-amd64 iso used on a LiveUSB. Live USB was created by dd'ing the iso onto the full disk device (i.e. /dev/sdx no number) of the Flash drive. I have also tried copying the LiveCD files on a primary GPT partition, but with no luck, I just get the grub shell, no menu, no install option. [2012-09-28] I tried today a flash drive created with Ubuntu's Startup Disk Creator and the alternate 12.04.1 64 bit ISO. I get a grub menu in text mode (which meens it did start in efi mode) with install options / test options. But when I start any of these, I simply get a black screen (no cursor, neither mouse nor text-mode cursor). I tried removing the 'quiet' option and adding nomodeset and acpi=off, but it didn't do any good. So this is the same result as for the LiveCD. [2012-10-01] I have tried with a version of the secure remix version via usb-creator-gtk. The boot on the USB key has the same symptoms. Boot in EFI mode is impossible (I have menu but whatever entry I choose, I get the blank screen problem). The boot in BIOS mode works, I did the install. Then I used boot-repair to try installing grub-efi and get a system that would boot in efi mode. But I can't boot this system, because the EFI firmware doesn't seem to detect that sda contains a valid efi partition. Here is the resulting boot-info Boot info 1253554 [2012-10-01] Today, I have reinstalled the pre-shipped version of windows 7, and then installed ubuntu from a secure-remix iso dumped on USB flash drive vie usb-creator-gtk booted in BIOS mode. When install ended, I said "continue testing" then I used boot-repair to try get the bootloader installed. Now, when I boot the tablet, I get the grub menu, it can chainload windows 7 flawlessly. But when I try to start one of the ubuntu options I get the same old blank screen. Here is the new boot-info: Boot info 1253927 [2012-10-01] I tried installing the 3.3 kernel by chrooting a live usb boot (secure remix again) into the installed system. Same symptoms. I feel the key to this is that the device's efi firmware (which is EFI v2.0) would expose the graphics hardware in a way that prevents the kernel to initialize it, and thus prevents it from booting (the kernel stops all drive access just after the screen turns kind of very dark purple). Here is some info on the UEFI firmware as given by rEFInd: EFI revision: 2.00 Platform: x86_64 (64 bit) Firmware: American Megatrends 4.635 Screen Output: Graphics Output (UEFI), 800x600 [2012-10-08] This week end I tried loading the kernel with elilo. Eventhough I didn't have more luck on booting the kernel, elilo gives more info when loading the kernel. I think the next step is trying to load a kernel with EFI stub directly.

  Read the article

• Dell 3721 Wifi problem Ubuntu 13.04

  - by Sebastian

  I have a Dell 3721 which comes original with windows 8. I managed it to install ubuntu 12.10 on this laptop, even there was no out of the box drivers. With 12.10 I was forces to install this .deb package couple of times. After installing it, it was ok for some weeks before I have to install it again. Maybe some security updates destroy something which made in necessary to install it again... http://jas.gemnetworks.com/debian/pool/main/w/wireless-bcm43142/wireless-bcm43142-dkms_6.20.55.19-1_amd64.deb My problem is, that this package isnt working with ubuntu 13.04 anymore. So I cant use Wifi now. Also my display is almost dark, I cant change the brightness level with ubuntu 13.04. Hope you can give me some advice. Dell:~$ sudo lspci -nn 00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor DRAM Controller [8086:0154] (rev 09) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0166] (rev 09) 00:14.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI Host Controller [8086:1e31] (rev 04) 00:16.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 [8086:1e3a] (rev 04) 00:1a.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 [8086:1e2d] (rev 04) 00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller [8086:1e20] (rev 04) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 [8086:1e10] (rev c4) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2 [8086:1e12] (rev c4) 00:1d.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 [8086:1e26] (rev 04) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation HM76 Express Chipset LPC Controller [8086:1e59] (rev 04) 00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation 7 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] [8086:1e03] (rev 04) 00:1f.3 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller [8086:1e22] (rev 04) 01:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller [10ec:8136] (rev 05) 02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM43142 802.11b/g/n [14e4:4365] (rev 01) @Dell:~$ lsusb Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0a5c:21d7 Broadcom Corp. Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:0129 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0c45:64ad Microdia @Dell:~$ lspci -nn | grep VGA 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0166] (rev 09) @Dell:~$ sudo lshw -class network *-network Beschreibung: Ethernet interface Produkt: RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller Hersteller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Physische ID: 0 Bus-Informationen: pci@0000:01:00.0 Logischer Name: eth0 Version: 05 Seriennummer: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Größe: 100Mbit/s Kapazität: 100Mbit/s Breite: 64 bits Takt: 33MHz Fähigkeiten: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation Konfiguration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=full firmware=rtl_nic/rtl8105e-1.fw ip=192.168.2.103 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=100Mbit/s Ressourcen: irq:42 ioport:2000(Größe=256) memory:c0404000-c0404fff memory:c0400000-c0403fff *-network UNGEFORDERT Beschreibung: Network controller Produkt: BCM43142 802.11b/g/n Hersteller: Broadcom Corporation Physische ID: 0 Bus-Informationen: pci@0000:02:00.0 Version: 01 Breite: 64 bits Takt: 33MHz Fähigkeiten: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list Konfiguration: latency=0 Ressourcen: memory:c0500000-c0507fff

  Read the article

• Is the Internet Making us Smarter or Not?

  - by BuckWoody

  I’ve been reading recently about an exchange among some very bright folks, some who posit that the Internet with its instant-on, sometimes-right, big-statement-wins mentality is making people think in a more shallow way, teaching us to rely on others as experts and diluting our logical thought process. Others state that it broadens our perspective and extends our mental reach. Whenever I see this kind of exchange on two ends of a spectrum, I begin to wonder if both sides might be correct.   I can certainly say that I have changed my way of learning, reading, and social interactions because of the Internet. And my tolerance for reading long missives has indeed gone down. I tend to (mentally and literally) “bookmark” things I never seem to have time to get back to. But I also agree that I’ve been exposed to thoughts, ideas and people I never would have encountered any other way. So how to deal with this dichotomy?   Well, I’m going to go off and think about it. No, I’m really going to go off for a full week to a cabin I’ve rented in a National Forest in the Midwest. It has no indoor plumbing, phones, Internet connections or anything else – only a bed to sleep in and a place to cook a little. I’m taking one book, some paper, and a guitar with me and that’s it. I plan to spend my days walking, reading a little, playing a little on the guitar, but mostly just thinking. Those of you who know me might find this unusual. I’m an always-on, hyper-caffeinated, overly-busy, connected person. I haven’t taken a vacation in five years, at least for more than two or three days at a time. Even then, I keep us on the move constantly – our vacations aren’t cruises or anything like that. I check e-mail, post and all that. When I’m not on vacation, I live with and leverage lots of technology, and work with those that do the same. This, however, is a really “unplugged” event, and I’m hoping that it will let me unpack the things I’ve been stuffing in my head. I plan to spend a lot of time on a single subject, writing notes, thinking, and writing more notes.   So after I post tomorrow's “quote of the day” I’ll be “going dark” for a week. No twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, e-mail, chat, none of my five blogs will get updated, and I’ll have to turn in my two articles for InformIT.com early. I won’t have access to my college class portal, so my students will be without me for a week. I will really be offline. I’ll see you in a week – hopefully a little more educated. See you then.   Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34  | Next Page >