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• How do I generate a random curve for landscape (like Worms)? [closed]

  - by Stas

  Possible Duplicate: How do I generate terrain like that of Scorched Earth? How can I generate Worms-style terrain? I must build random curve line for the 2D Game on the BitMap (like in Worms, from the side). Teacher said that I should do it using Terrain Generation through recourcy (I work in Delphi 7). I understand the main principle, but I don't know how to introduce it as code. All measurements according to the screen resolution.

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• Concept: Interpretive Spells [closed]

  - by Deathly

  The goal is to be able to create complex spells, that can manipulate the game's environment in non-preprogrammed ways, and to make the program understand spells. For example: $@ $=Big @=Fire You can probably understand what this one means. The player types, writes, or selects symbols. Of course, a spell can be only a few characters, or more sophisticated spells could potentially be hundreds or thousands of symbols long. How could something like this be accomplished?

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• Split Body and Sprite

  - by Siddharth

  I want to split the body and sprite into multiple pieces as like following link suggest: http://www.raywenderlich.com/14302/how-to-make-a-game-like-fruit-ninja-with-box2d-and-cocos2d-part-1 I try to convert the cocos2d program into AndEngine and almost done but they use PRKit named external library that type of implementation I didn't find in AndEngine. So my basic requirement you know so please suggest me some suitable answer. My current working platform is AndEngine with Box2D.

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• j2me Bitmap font

  - by user1494517

  Well i have found a tutorial how to make a bitmap font from an image. (http://devlinslab.blogspot.com/2007/11/using-custom-fonts-or-bitmap-fonts-part.html). So I have used this code in my game and the problem is that the rest of the graphics which should be seen on the screen like rectangles and etc. is invisible. Before the newly added code http://i47.tinypic.com/30wt5ad.jpg After http://i48.tinypic.com/3581k44.jpg

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• Multiple joysticks event handling

  - by hbaktir

  I want to make a game which is totally same idea with "Who pressed the button answers the question" I got 2 joysticks and both connected to a pc.My application will be Winforms and i will develop it on Visual studio 2012 . I 've used SlimDX,Sharpx so far i ' ve nothing for multiple joysticks.I can get the pressed button with timer . All i want to know is which joystick / gamepad pressed 1 button first.Then my problem will be solved Any idea how can i achive this or somebody did it before

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• calculating player experience

  - by user1765862

  very simple question, I'm trying to learn advanced principles of .net and c# and I'm in the middle of creating some simple manager game. Now I should implement some experience for players. I was thinking to implement some kind of enumerated values like this private enum ExperienceValues { FriendlyMatch = 0.1, Training = 0.15, LeagueMatch = 0.6, CupMatch = 0.85, Qualification = 1.4 } And to calculate experience by the time user spend on the field 90min * 0.6 = 54 Is this approach ok ? How can I abstract experience calculation for common sports (team sport). Thanks

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• Should I use SDL_Surface or SDL_Window? [on hold]

  - by The Light Spark

  I am making an OpenGL game basically. I have just started out on the territory. I have seen tutorials which use an SDL_Surface for rendering to while other tutorials use SDL_Window and obtain an openGL context from that and render to that, with no mention of surfaces. I understand what the differences between the two are, but is there any advantage in using one over the other? Can I use the SDL_Window technique to create high quality games or does the SDL_Surface approach get me better results?

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 21, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 21, 2012Popular ReleasesImapX 2: ImapX 2.0.0.6: An updated release of the ImapX 2 library, containing many bugfixes for both, the library and the sample application.Metodología General Ajustada - MGA: 03.05.05: Cambios John: Se modificó el Procedimiento Alamacenado PROF03ObjetivoProductoConsultarIdF03 que no incluía los campos de IdUnidadMedida y UnidadMedida, lo que generaba error en la capa de datos al leer estos campos (PasarDataSetAPROF03ObjetivoProductoInfo) y terminaba devolviendo NULL en los registros, esto no dejaba la información en la Exportación y por ende en la Importación no subían los Productos. Generación de instaladores. Soporte técnico por correo electrónico, telefónico y en sitio.WiX Toolset: WiX v3.7 RC: WiX v3.7 RC (3.7.1119.0) provides feature complete Bundle update and reference tracking plus several bug fixes. For more information see Rob's blog post about the release: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2012/11/20/WiX-v3.7-Release-Candidate-availablePicturethrill: Version 2.11.20.0: Fixed up Bing image provider on Windows 8Excel AddIn to reset the last worksheet cell: XSFormatCleaner.xla: Modified the commandbar code to use CommandBar IDs instead of English names.Json.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 11: New feature - Added ITraceWriter, MemoryTraceWriter, DiagnosticsTraceWriter New feature - Added StringEscapeHandling with options to escape HTML and non-ASCII characters New feature - Added non-generic JToken.ToObject methods New feature - Deserialize ISet<T> properties as HashSet<T> New feature - Added implicit conversions for Uri, TimeSpan, Guid New feature - Missing byte, char, Guid, TimeSpan and Uri explicit conversion operators added to JToken New feature - Special case...EntitiesToDTOs - Entity Framework DTO Generator: EntitiesToDTOs.v3.0: DTOs and Assemblers can be generated inside project folders! Choose the types you want to generate! Support for Visual Studio 2012 !!! Support for new Entity Framework EDMX (format used by VS2012) ! Support for Enum Types! Optional automatic check for updates! Added the following methods to Assemblers! IEnumerable<DTO>.ToEntities() : ICollection<Entity> IEnumerable<Entity>.ToDTOs() : ICollection<DTO> Indicate class identifier for DTOs and Assemblers! Cleaner Assemblers code....mojoPortal: 2.3.9.4: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2394-released Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0, but we recommend you to use .NET 4, we will probably drop support for .NET 3.5 once .NET 4.5 is available The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code and are not intended for use in Visual Studio. To download the source code see getting the lates...VidCoder: 1.4.6 Beta: Brought back the x264 advanced options panel due to popular demand. Thank you for all the feedback. x264 Preset/Profile/Tune/Level has been moved back to the Video tab, along with a copy of the "extra options" string. Added Fast Decode and Zero Latency checkboxes to support multiple Tunes. Added cropping option "None". Audio bitrates that are incompatible with the encoder (such as MP3 > 320 kbps) are no longer preset on the list. Fixed crash on opening VidCoder after de-selecting "re...DotNetNuke® Store: 03.01.07: What's New in this release? IMPORTANT: this version requires DotNetNuke 04.06.02 or higher! DO NOT REPORT BUGS HERE IN THE ISSUE TRACKER, INSTEAD USE THE DotNetNuke Store Forum! Bugs corrected: - Replaced some hard coded references to the default address provider classes by the corresponding interfaces to allow the creation of another address provider with a different name. New Features: - Added the 'pickup' delivery option at checkout. - Added the 'no delivery' option in the Store Admin ...Bundle Transformer - a modular extension for ASP.NET Web Optimization Framework: Bundle Transformer 1.6.10: Version: 1.6.10 Published: 11/18/2012 Now almost all of the Bundle Transformer's assemblies is signed (except BundleTransformer.Yui.dll); In BundleTransformer.SassAndScss the SassAndCoffee.Ruby library was replaced by my own implementation of the Sass- and SCSS-compiler (based on code of the SassAndCoffee.Ruby library version 2.0.2.0); In BundleTransformer.CoffeeScript added support of CoffeeScript version 1.4.0-3; In BundleTransformer.TypeScript added support of TypeScript version 0....ExtJS based ASP.NET 2.0 Controls: FineUI v3.2.0: +2012-11-18 v3.2.0 -?????????????????SelectedValueArray????????（◇?◆:）。 -???????????????????RecoverPropertiesFromJObject????（〓?〓、????、??、Vian_Pan）。 -????????????，?????????????，???SelectedValueArray???????（sam.chang）。 -??Alert.Show???????????（swtseaman）。 -???????????????，??Icon??IconUrl????（swtseaman）。 -?????????TimePicker（??）。 -?????????，??/res.axd?css=blue.css&v=1。 -????????，?????????????，???????。 -????MenuCheckBox（???????）。 -?RadioButton??AutoPostBack??。 -???????FCKEditor?????????...BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 1.2: Please read our release notes for BugNET 1.2: http://blog.bugnetproject.com/bugnet-1-2-has-been-released Please do not post questions as reviews. Questions should be posted in the Discussions tab, where they will usually get promptly responded to. If you post a question as a review, you will pollute the rating, and you won't get an answer.Paint.NET PSD Plugin: 2.2.0: Changes: Layer group visibility is now applied to all layers within the group. This greatly improves the visual fidelity of complex PSD files that have hidden layer groups. Layer group names are prefixed so that users can get an indication of the layer group hierarchy. (Paint.NET has a flat list of layers, so the hierarchy is flattened out on load.) The progress bar now reports status when saving PSD files, instead of showing an indeterminate rolling bar. Performance improvement of 1...CRM 2011 Visual Ribbon Editor: Visual Ribbon Editor (1.3.1116.7): [IMPROVED] Detailed error message descriptions for FaultException [FIX] Fixed bug in rule CrmOfflineAccessStateRule which had incorrect State attribute name [FIX] Fixed bug in rule EntityPropertyRule which was missing PropertyValue attribute [FIX] Current connection information was not displayed in status bar while refreshing list of entitiesSuper Metroid Randomizer: Super Metroid Randomizer v5: v5 -Added command line functionality for automation purposes. -Implented Krankdud's change to randomize the Etecoon's item. NOTE: this version will not accept seeds from a previous version. The seed format has changed by necessity. v4 -Started putting version numbers at the top of the form. -Added a warning when suitless Maridia is required in a parsed seed. v3 -Changed seed to only generate filename-legal characters. Using old seeds will still work exactly the same. -Files can now be saved...Caliburn Micro: WPF, Silverlight, WP7 and WinRT/Metro made easy.: Caliburn.Micro v1.4: Changes This version includes many bug fixes across all platforms, improvements to nuget support and...the biggest news of all...full support for both WinRT and WP8. Download Contents Debug and Release Assemblies Samples Readme.txt License.txt Packages Available on Nuget Caliburn.Micro – The full framework compiled into an assembly. Caliburn.Micro.Start - Includes Caliburn.Micro plus a starting bootstrapper, view model and view. Caliburn.Micro.Container – The Caliburn.Micro invers...DirectX Tool Kit: November 15, 2012: November 15, 2012 Added support for WIC2 when available on Windows 8 and Windows 7 with KB 2670838 Cleaned up warning level 4 warningsDotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.05: Major Highlights Updated the system so that it supports nested folders in the App_Code folder Updated the Global Error Handling so that when errors within the global.asax handler happen, they are caught and shown in a page displaying the original HTTP error code Fixed issue that stopped users from specifying Link URLs that open on a new window Security FixesFixed issue in the Member Directory module that could show members to non authenticated users Fixed issue in the Lists modul...fastJSON: v2.0.10: - added MonoDroid projectNew Projects1121codeplex01: Today's task is to test portal on JapaneseAgileToDo: a to do list use wpf ef sqlce!Applay: Applay is a library that allows you to wrap authorization and validation around the services of your application layer by using a dynamic proxy.ArunimaErp: Enterprise Resource Planning Software for Arunima GroupBootCMS: BootCMS makes webdevelopment easy.codeplex01: I need go out for a whileCoding4Fun's Maelstrom: Introduced at //build/ 2012, Maelstrom is Coding4Fun's latest creation. Step up to the podium and battle against your opponent in full-on stereoscopic 3D!CTCS Project 2012: 11/21/2012 @ svn repository ctodo: TODO List Management Librarydeploy-with-ease: One-click deployment tool based on DrobBox files hostingDesign Resources .NET: D-R.NET is a set of pre-built implementations of oft-recurring application designs. D-R.NET saves considerable time and money in building user-focused applications: from basic to complex. DnfWeb: dnf??Dr.Peng: dr.peng ????????。DriveKeepAlive: Managed .NET service intended to keep external hard drives "awake" for immediate access. Developed in C# with Visual Studio 2008Ecommerce Platform: Ecommerce PlatformEventManagerReset: Project created for Reset meetings.FaceComparerDistributed: project of face compare distributed versionFileSystemExplorerExample: WPF MVVM Sample applicationFinlogiK ReSharper Contrib: FinlogiK ReSharper Contrib is a plugin for ReSharper 5.1 which adds code cleanup and inspection options for static qualifiers.Gestione Lampade Votive: Gestione dei canoni annuali dei loculi cimiteriali, con stampa di comunicazioni ai contribuenti e dei bollettini di conto corrente postale (a due o tre cedole).GI_PII: HABA BABA?GIV_P2: second projectHex o'clock: Projekt kolorowego zegara.IISProcessScheduler: Schedule processes from within IIS.Image Tagger & Resizer: Resize, and text in the lower right of picture with i.e. copyright information.IT Kohvik: ITK cafe school project.jean1121codeplex01: goodKooboo3 Helper: It's a developer tutorial code for kooboo cms v3. http://kooboo.codeplex.comMAVI: mobile application for the visually impaired: bill recognition & tag and recognize objects based on a specific stickerMecanismos de Segurança Interoperáveis para Serviços Web: Esse projeto pretende desenvolver um framework que forneça requisitos de segurança de forma interoperável através de Serviços Web. Metro UI For Windows Forms: Provides a set of controls and form templates for designing user interfaces based on a similar minimalist metro style. For those who love Windows Forms.NHSmartBootstrapper: In a "fast-changing" world, your LoB application needs to be ready to change as well. The usage of NHibernate Listeners together with smart application bootstrapping, even in a complex scenario, can lead to extensible and new-feature-ready applications. Office Add-In Monitor: Office Add-in Monitor protects add-ins from being disabled.Orchard Responsive Theme Machine: A responsive version of the Orchard CMS "Theme Machine" which is commonly used as a starting point for building custom themes. Supports many resolutions.Orchard Simple Contact Form: An Orchard CMS module that provides a simple contact form that sends an email. It can be used as either a content part or widget.Peon War: Peon war is a game where peons are fighting.Project Files Linker (VS Add-In): PFL project is used to generate multiple projects with links to the same files to achieve projects for different .NET FW versions.Quibbler - Universal News Reader: Quibbler is a product designed and developed by Indigo Architects. Quibbler is a desktop application which runs on user's machine and provides a intuitive user interface for reading news in offline mode. Quibbler is developed in WPF (.Net 3.5).Samcrypt: .SenchaTest: SenchaTestShared Genomics Project - Workbench Codebase: The Shared Genomics workbench enables a diverse user group of researchers to explore the associations between genetic and other factors in their datasets. It provides a graphical user interface to the analysis functions published in a sister Codeplex project i.e. MPI Codebase.SharePoint 2013 FBA Pack: This is the home of the SharePoint 2013 FBA Pack. The FBA Pack for SharePoint 2013 is currently in development and is coming soon.SharePoint Term Store PowerShell Backup & Restore Scripts: This project is focused on development of PowerShell script tools for backup and restore of SharePoint Managed Metadata service application Term Store taxonomy.SharpPlanets: A simple game completely designed and written in C#, inspired by JPlanets.SpaceShooter: A small hobbyist game. It is similar to the 2D Arcade shooter games.Stretched Background Image jQuery plugin: jQuery plugin for adding a stretched background image for any element in a web page. Uses an absolutely positioned image at z-index -1.Stsadm Templates for Visual Studio: The Stsadm Templates for Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 support you in making command extensions for SharePoint's commnand line tool stsadm.exe.SwissPost EasyTrack API: The SwissPost EasyTrack API allows you to track your parcels or letters everytime and in every application.System.Threading.Joins: The Joins project provides asynchronous concurrency semantics based on join calculus and modeled after the Microsoft Research C? (C Omega) project.T nagu Tetris: Meie versioon tuntud mängust tetris.testdd11202012tfs01: juktestddhg11202012hg01: stesttom11202012git02: fdsfdstesttom11202012hg01: gfdTetrissimus: Tetrissimus is an open source "Tetris" alike game totally written in DHTML (JavaScript, CSS and HTML) that uses keyboard. This cross-platform and cross-browser game was tested under BeOS, Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Windows and others.Thrift Client .NET for WinRT (Windows Store Apps): thrift .net client for WinRT applicationTwitter Bootstrap for SharePoint: A Masterpage for SharePoint 2010 including the twitter bootstrap front-end frameworkTX Spell .NET ActiveX Package: TX Spell .NET ActiveX Package enables you to add high-performance spell checking capabilities to your VB6 applications.USB ACCELEROMETER: This project is a test demo for usb accelerometer. Application plays music (mp3 file) while usb acc gives high values from its coordinate between interval.VfaAccoutApps: Cash Payment Application of Vf AsiaVisualPoint Use PowerPoint inside Visual Studio: VisualPoint lets you show PowerPoint presentations from inside Visual Studio. Future release will automate walkthroughs and presentations.VS2010 Rc1 Fix: Illustrates a fix for working with the ASAP.NET Wizard control with VS2010 RC1WebSite.Request: WebSite.Request launch web request (via XMLHTTP) on website. Use, for example, to make initial request to sharepoint URL and escape "slow first request" problem.WPF Checked ListBox: This is simple implementation of WPF Checked ListBoxWPortal: doing nothing. that's it. i just want to use the subversion management. XNA Capture the Flag for the Microsoft Zune: Capture the Flag is a 2d Capture the flag game made for the Zune platform using XNA 3.0 CTP. Players choose to join or start a network session in the main menu. When in game, the player uses left or right on the DPad to choose the team on which to play with. Once sides have been chosen the party leader presses the center button on the Dpad to start the game. Teams switch between offense and defense for a total of 4 rounds in each game. When the game is over the party leader simply presses th...XPS Indexer: Xps file indexing for Google Desktop

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 11, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 11, 2011Popular ReleasesSimplePlanner: v2.0b: For 2011-2012 Sem 1 ???2011-2012 ????Econ NetVert: 2.4.2.14 Production: Many thanks to paulhickman for testing and reporting issues. - this release has lots of bugfixes in codeconversion when using NRefactory 4.0 (local) and VisualStudio Projects conversionVisual Studio 2010 Help Downloader: 1.0.0.3: Domain name support for proxy Cleanup old packages bug Writing to EventLog with UAC enabled bug Small fixes & RefactoringMedia Companion: MC 3.406b weekly: With this version change a movie rebuild is required when first run -else MC will lock up on exit. Extract the entire archive to a folder which has user access rights, eg desktop, documents etc. Refer to the documentation on this site for the Installation & Setup Guide Important! If you find MC not displaying movie data properly, please try a 'movie rebuild' to reload the data from the nfo's into MC's cache. Fixes Movies Readded movie preference to rename invalid or scene nfo's to info ext...SCCM Client Actions Tool: SCCM Client Actions Tool v0.5.1: SCCM Client Actions Tool v0.5.1 is currently the most stable version and includes all of the functionality requested so far. It comes with following changes since last version: Fixed an incorrect path to x64 client setup folder. It comes as a ZIP file that contains three files: ClientActionsTool.hta – The tool itself. Cmdkey.exe – command line tool for managing cached credentials. This is needed for alternate credentials feature when running the HTA on Windows XP. Cmdkey.exe is natively a...Windows Azure VM Assistant: AzureVMAssist V1.0.0.5: AzureVMAssist V1.0.0.5 (Debug) - Test Release VersionSizeOnDisk: 1.8.0.3: Fix (issue 317): Main window icon loading error on windows server 2003 32bit runing on x86 cpu. Bypass of the Microsoft windows comexception.NetOffice - The easiest way to use Office in .NET: NetOffice Release 0.9: Changes: - fix examples (include issue 16026) - add new examples - 32Bit/64Bit Walkthrough is now available in technical Documentation. Includes: - Runtime Binaries and Source Code for .NET Framework:......v2.0, v3.0, v3.5, v4.0 - Tutorials in C# and VB.Net:..............................................................COM Proxy Management, Events, etc. - Examples in C# and VB.Net:............................................................Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access - COMAddi...Reusable Library: V1.1.3: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developerClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.54.0: New on this release: 1) Mayor performance improvements. 2) AdjustToContents now take into account the text rotation. 3) Fixed issues 6782, 6784, 6788HTML-IDEx: HTML-IDEx .15 ALPHA: This release fixes line counting a little bit and adds the masshighlight() sub, which highlights pasted and inserted code.AutoLoL: AutoLoL v2.0.3: - Improved summoner spells are now displayed - Fixed some of the startup errors people got - Double clicking an item selects it - Some usability changes that make using AutoLoL just a little easier - Bug fixes AutoLoL v2 is not an update, but an entirely new version! Please install to a different directory than AutoLoL v1Host Profiles: Host Profiles 1.0: Host Profiles 1.0 Release Quickly modify host file Automatically flush dnsVidCoder: 0.9.2: Updated to HandBrake 4024svn. This fixes problems with mpeg2 sources: corrupted previews, incorrect progress indicators and encodes that incorrectly report as failed. Fixed a problem that prevented target sizes above 2048 MB.SharePoint Search XSL Samples: SharePoint 2010 Samples: I have updated some of the samples from the 2007 release. These all work in SharePoint 2010. I removed the Pivot on File Extension because SharePoint 2010 search has refiners that perform the same function.AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta5: ??AcDown?????????????，??????????????，????、????。?????Acfun????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??v3.0 Beta5 ?????????? ???? ?? ???????? ???"????????"?? ????????????? ????????/???? ?? ???"????"??? ?? ??????????? ?? ?? ??????????? ?? ?????????????????? ??????????????????? ???????????????? ????????????Discussions???????? ????AcDown??????????????VFPX: GoFish 4 Beta 1: Current beta is Build 144 (released 2011-06-07 ) See the GoFish4 info page for details and video link: http://vfpx.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=GoFishShowUI: Write-UI -in PowerShell: ShowUI: ShowUI is a PowerShell module to help you write rich user interfaces in script.SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack: SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack 1.0.3: Fixed User Management screen when "RequiresQuestionAndAnswer" set to true Reply to Email Address can now be customized User Management page now only displays users that reside in the membership database Web parts have been changed to inherit from System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart, so that they will display on anonymous application pages For installation and configuration steps see here.TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v2.5: Added new items associated with Terraria v1.0.3 to the character editor. Fixed multiple bugs with Piggy Bank EditoryNew Projects.NET MVC Base by OST: The OST .NET MVC project is currently in infancy but contains html helper extensions, model binders and other extensions to the mvc 3 framework. It also contains a separate project for easily consuming JQGrid requests and return the correct JSON to the jQuery plugin.Asterisk AMI Proxy suite: The AMI Proxy suite project will bridge the gap between your asterisk phone system and your windows based applications. The AMI Proxy is a service that can be used to simply proxy AMI connections to your asterisk server but also adds call stat generation and line monitors.Augusta Developers Guild: The web site for the user group Augusta Developers GuildAzure Blob Pusher: File uploader allows bulk upload of files from client to Azure blob storage. FileSystemWatcher notices new files in configured directory. SQL Express database tracks files as they are pushed up to blob storage and then processed. Local Directory is cleaned up after acknowledgement.Basic Class Library: A collection of functions created to eased up the programmers life in order to solved basic task like validation, AmountTowords, Encrypt & Decryption it also has capability to Connect and retrieve sql data just in one line of code, and some other Basic but very Important task.Basic RTS Game using RolePlayingGame Tool kit based XNA: this is a basic RTS Game. i can make it easy by using RolePlayingGame Took Kit based XNA.Batch Scheduler using .Net 4, MEF and Entity framework 4.1 (Magic Unicorn): Simple Batch Architecture written on C#. Uses the .NET 4, MEF and Entity Framework 4.1 Code First. If you dont need a scheduler, just use the sample code. Agents can be scheduled through a central database table. Plug-ins (or jobs) are launched through MEF. DropBox Linker: The goal of DropBox Linker project is to improve DropBox service client usability. It intellectually automates copying URLs to clipboard after publishing a file. Multiple files at once is supported. Additionally, it corrects URL on file rename after its link been copied.Exchange Spigot for NodeXL: Exchange Spigot for NodeXL enables Microsoft Excel plugin NodeXL to collect messaging data from the Microsoft Exchange Server and display that data as a graph. It is developed in C#.G - Low Level Graphics API: A low level graphics api, in similar style to OpenGL, but more OO. Can drastically speed up OpenGL based apps. Makes full use of Net4.0 features such as lambada expressions where useful. (C#, OpenTK powered. This is not for C++) GpgAPI - A C# Api for Gpg: GpgAPI is a C# API for Gpg. Gpg is a command line software to encrypt, decrypt files with a symmetric or assymetric key. You can also managed public keys, import keys from the web, export your public keys, etc. GpgAPI is an interface to Gpg. In C#, with a few lines, you can execute gpg to encrypt, decrypt, etc. The license of this project is "GPL v3"; it is NOT GPL v2. GPL v3 is not present in the licenses list so I had to choose GPL v2. So if use GpgAPI, you must accept the GPL v...iDreamBoard: iDreamBoard is an application to ease the process of creating and editing dreamboard themes for iOS devices. UNDER DEVELOPMENTIETouch: Use IE Touch to access multitouch events from JavaScript in IE. This project uses some of the code from Windows 7 Multitouch .NET Interop Sample Library available in http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/WindowsTouch/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=2127iMaker-Lion: Applications post installation pour Mac OS X sur PC.Informatic System Ma Chung University Alumni Center: Informatic System Ma Chung University Alumni Center is a website for alumni at Information System Faculty at Ma Chung University at Malang, IndonesiaJasc (just another script compressor): Just another script compressor, but that's by far the easiest to use! Use Jasc to merge compress your javascript (JS) and style sheets (CSS). Just drop the executable in your javascript / CSS folder and run it. Voyla! It will handle everything by itself. Compression is based on Microsoft Ajax Minifier. Jasc can handle single or multiple files, will accept regular expressions to remove specific lines from the source code, and can also optimize the results by shrinking variable names and twe...LINQ Extensions Library: A library of useful LINQ extensions allowing for arithmetic manipulation of sequences, statistical analysis, sequence generation, sequence manipulation, pattern detection and more.Mail2FotoFrame: Pulls emails from a POP3-Account, extracts picture-attachments and saves them to a SD-card, so you can view them on a fotoframe.Make web (or sharepoint) pages screenshots with Powershell: From a text file containing url, make screenshot of each page. This powershell script use iecapt.exe project. You can manage width format and delay for each captureModé Internationalé (E-Commerce Site): Mode International is a fictional clothing store, and this website project is meant to be the e-Commerce site for this store. So far, the project has been developed using Java Enterprise Edition and Sockets, but I am considering making the use of C# in ASP .NET in the future.Music House: Site dedicado a musica e afiliadosNiphor's ToolBox: ?????????Nordic nRF24L01+ .NET Micro Framework Driver: Library that enables .NET Micro Framework developers to use Nordic 2.4 GHz wireless tranceivers. This library can be used on any net mf device with SPI interface.Petey's Game Engine: Petey's Game Engine is a XNA 4.0 game engine with a featured blog describing each step of the development. This is a learning project so people may follow and learn as my project evolves.ReportGenerator: ReportGenerator converts XML reports generated by PartCover or NCover into a readable HTML report.Rise of the rabbits: Rise of the RabbitsSapaFinance: SapaFinanceSCSM Copy Object: SCSM Copy Object is a CodePlex project that enables users to select objects in the System Center Service Manager console, click a task in the task pane and create a copy of the selected object(s). Objects can also be copied from command line executables.SharePoint 2010 Language Pack Downloader: SharePoint 2010 Language Pack Downloader is a tool to quickly download multiple language pack files for the SharePoint 2010 Server platform.SharePoint XQuery Reporting Solution: My company's project needs this technology because of the current company has a lot of data is stored in SharePoint, through Infopath data collection, data storage and not all InfoPath field values ​​are saved into a database, a considerable number of data in XML File, which caused difficulties in query and print a report, need a solution. Simply explained the thinking: First step:Put SharePoint, InfoPath XML file later (I did a small tool XMLToDB) or through the Event Handle sync sav...The Pacman: A simple single player game similar to Pacman. Developed using XNA game framework and C#. Game demonstrates usage of fuzzy logic for controlling the AI ghosts. This game is developed to test the effect of fuzzy logic AI in Pacman game.TodoStrike: Todo Strike is a simple todo list keeper.WallpaperDeleter: Simple program to delete the current background wallpaper image.Windows Phone 7 Continuous Integration Testing Framework: WP7 CI is a port of the Silverlight Toolkit Test Framework with added CI support, allowing tests to be run in the emulator from the command lineWolfpack - Distributed System Monitoring: Wolfpack is an extensible, .Net windows service framework for running jobs to monitor your software, system & business KPI's. The data collected can be sent directly to Growl, Geckoboard, WCF, SQL, SQLite, NServiceBus. It comes loaded with some tasks but it's simple to implement your own!

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• Windows Server 2008 Task Scheduler Tasks Not Executing

  - by omatase

  I've been having an intermittent problem for some time now with the Windows Task Scheduler that I can't work out. I use the task scheduler to run a C# app I've written that has various plugins used to ensure production systems are working. This task scheduler itself is actually a production system so I have one simple task that executes every 8 minutes to notify an external monitoring system that the task scheduler is still up. If this external service fails to receive an "all-clear" at least once every 15 minutes (or so I don't remember the exact number right now) it will message us that the monitoring system is down. In the past we've had intermittent "down" messages from time to time and each time I've investigated the cause I was unable to find any problems. So this time I wanted to ask the StackOverflow community since it doesn't look like I'll have luck on my own. This morning at 2:32 AM the task fired (exactly 8 minutes after the previous firing) however the task didn't fire again until 3:28. There are no errors that I can see in the Event Viewer at this time. When I look at the Task Scheduler log there are no errors there either. Here is what the log looks like though: Information 6/11/2011 3:28:56 AM 102 Task completed (2) d6cf2412-269e-48bf-9f40-4a863347baad Information 6/11/2011 3:28:56 AM 201 Action completed (2) d6cf2412-269e-48bf-9f40-4a863347baad Information 6/11/2011 3:28:55 AM 129 Created Task Process Info Information 6/11/2011 3:28:55 AM 200 Action started (1) d6cf2412-269e-48bf-9f40-4a863347baad Information 6/11/2011 3:28:55 AM 100 Task Started (1) d6cf2412-269e-48bf-9f40-4a863347baad Information 6/11/2011 3:28:55 AM 319 Task Engine received message to start task (1) Information 6/11/2011 3:28:55 AM 107 Task triggered on scheduler Info d6cf2412-269e-48bf-9f40-4a863347baad Information 6/11/2011 3:28:15 AM 102 Task completed (2) b91fe5ce-39ef-42fb-adbe-bd8be012c00a Information 6/11/2011 3:28:15 AM 201 Action completed (2) b91fe5ce-39ef-42fb-adbe-bd8be012c00a Information 6/11/2011 3:28:15 AM 102 Task completed (2) 556c07dc-2724-4a21-a97e-dc4abd56f94d Information 6/11/2011 3:28:15 AM 201 Action completed (2) 556c07dc-2724-4a21-a97e-dc4abd56f94d Information 6/11/2011 3:28:15 AM 102 Task completed (2) 79328289-f742-49dd-aa0d-c3d05db50895 Information 6/11/2011 3:28:15 AM 201 Action completed (2) 79328289-f742-49dd-aa0d-c3d05db50895 Information 6/11/2011 3:28:15 AM 102 Task completed (2) 19743755-47b6-4b98-9bec-052193be9496 Information 6/11/2011 3:28:15 AM 201 Action completed (2) 19743755-47b6-4b98-9bec-052193be9496 Information 6/11/2011 3:28:15 AM 102 Task completed (2) c165754f-e3e6-4176-a327-11f9c06c39a5 Information 6/11/2011 3:28:15 AM 201 Action completed (2) c165754f-e3e6-4176-a327-11f9c06c39a5 Information 6/11/2011 3:28:15 AM 102 Task completed (2) 0e62ad3e-1f6e-40c0-9155-19f0108dee22 Information 6/11/2011 3:28:15 AM 201 Action completed (2) 0e62ad3e-1f6e-40c0-9155-19f0108dee22 Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 129 Created Task Process Info Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 200 Action started (1) 0e62ad3e-1f6e-40c0-9155-19f0108dee22 Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 129 Created Task Process Info Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 200 Action started (1) c165754f-e3e6-4176-a327-11f9c06c39a5 Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 129 Created Task Process Info Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 200 Action started (1) 19743755-47b6-4b98-9bec-052193be9496 Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 129 Created Task Process Info Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 200 Action started (1) 79328289-f742-49dd-aa0d-c3d05db50895 Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 129 Created Task Process Info Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 200 Action started (1) 556c07dc-2724-4a21-a97e-dc4abd56f94d Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 129 Created Task Process Info Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 200 Action started (1) b91fe5ce-39ef-42fb-adbe-bd8be012c00a Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 100 Task Started (1) 0e62ad3e-1f6e-40c0-9155-19f0108dee22 Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 319 Task Engine received message to start task (1) Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 100 Task Started (1) c165754f-e3e6-4176-a327-11f9c06c39a5 Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 319 Task Engine received message to start task (1) Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 100 Task Started (1) 19743755-47b6-4b98-9bec-052193be9496 Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 319 Task Engine received message to start task (1) Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 100 Task Started (1) 79328289-f742-49dd-aa0d-c3d05db50895 Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 319 Task Engine received message to start task (1) Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 100 Task Started (1) 556c07dc-2724-4a21-a97e-dc4abd56f94d Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 319 Task Engine received message to start task (1) Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 100 Task Started (1) b91fe5ce-39ef-42fb-adbe-bd8be012c00a Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 319 Task Engine received message to start task (1) Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 107 Task triggered on scheduler Info 0e62ad3e-1f6e-40c0-9155-19f0108dee22 Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 107 Task triggered on scheduler Info c165754f-e3e6-4176-a327-11f9c06c39a5 Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 107 Task triggered on scheduler Info 19743755-47b6-4b98-9bec-052193be9496 Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 107 Task triggered on scheduler Info 79328289-f742-49dd-aa0d-c3d05db50895 Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 107 Task triggered on scheduler Info 556c07dc-2724-4a21-a97e-dc4abd56f94d Information 6/11/2011 3:28:10 AM 107 Task triggered on scheduler Info b91fe5ce-39ef-42fb-adbe-bd8be012c00a Information 6/11/2011 2:32:56 AM 102 Task completed (2) 16e4f2c3-a340-410a-9c14-4bfe0861fdd5 Information 6/11/2011 2:32:56 AM 201 Action completed (2) 16e4f2c3-a340-410a-9c14-4bfe0861fdd5 Information 6/11/2011 2:32:55 AM 129 Created Task Process Info Information 6/11/2011 2:32:55 AM 200 Action started (1) 16e4f2c3-a340-410a-9c14-4bfe0861fdd5 Information 6/11/2011 2:32:55 AM 100 Task Started (1) 16e4f2c3-a340-410a-9c14-4bfe0861fdd5 Information 6/11/2011 2:32:55 AM 319 Task Engine received message to start task (1) Information 6/11/2011 2:32:55 AM 107 Task triggered on scheduler Info 16e4f2c3-a340-410a-9c14-4bfe0861fdd5 Seems kind of strange. I also have two other C# apps that run and check something each hour on the hour using task scheduler. If I look at the history for those I can see that they didn't execute at 3 AM either! They all waited until 3:28 to start as well. If I look at "tasks completed" in the Event Viewer it shows that only one task was able to run between the 2:32 AM to 3:28 AM time period. The task was "\Microsoft\Windows\RAC\RACAgent" And here's what it looked like: Information 6/11/2011 3:18:09 AM 102 Task completed (2) 00c53a85-ba20-4666-80db-fbbe2492c0ad Information 6/11/2011 3:18:09 AM 201 Action completed (2) 00c53a85-ba20-4666-80db-fbbe2492c0ad Information 6/11/2011 3:18:08 AM 129 Created Task Process Info Information 6/11/2011 3:18:08 AM 200 Action started (1) 00c53a85-ba20-4666-80db-fbbe2492c0ad Information 6/11/2011 3:18:08 AM 100 Task Started (1) 00c53a85-ba20-4666-80db-fbbe2492c0ad Information 6/11/2011 3:18:08 AM 319 Task Engine received message to start task (1) I appreciate any ideas anyone may have.

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• Applet Loading Error - Jasper Report

  - by Mihir

  I encountered very silly error , but any way i can not figure out solution.i am loading java applet which encompass a simple jasper viewer in it. when the applet is loaded it throws following exception. SEVERE: Servlet.service() for servlet JasperReportServlet threw exception java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.apache.commons.collections.ReferenceMap at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1358) at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1204) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(ClassLoader.java:320) at net.sf.jasperreports.extensions.DefaultExtensionsRegistry.<init>(DefaultExtensionsRegistry.java:96) at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:39) at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:27) at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:513) at java.lang.Class.newInstance0(Class.java:355) at java.lang.Class.newInstance(Class.java:308) at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.util.ClassUtils.instantiateClass(ClassUtils.java:59) at net.sf.jasperreports.extensions.ExtensionsEnvironment.createDefaultRegistry(ExtensionsEnvironment.java:80) at net.sf.jasperreports.extensions.ExtensionsEnvironment.<clinit>(ExtensionsEnvironment.java:68) at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.util.JRStyledTextParser.<clinit>(JRStyledTextParser.java:76) at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRBaseFiller.<init>(JRBaseFiller.java:182) at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRVerticalFiller.<init>(JRVerticalFiller.java:77) at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRVerticalFiller.<init>(JRVerticalFiller.java:87) at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRVerticalFiller.<init>(JRVerticalFiller.java:57) at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRFiller.createFiller(JRFiller.java:142) at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRFiller.fillReport(JRFiller.java:78) at net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JasperFillManager.fillReport(JasperFillManager.java:624) at com.dbhl.app.report.generator.JobUpdateGenerator.getJasperPrintObject(JobUpdateGenerator.java:279) at com.dbhl.app.report.JasperReportServlet.processJobUpdate(JasperReportServlet.java:153) at com.dbhl.app.report.JasperReportServlet.getJasperPrintObjectByLedgerType(JasperReportServlet.java:79) at com.dbhl.app.report.JasperReportServlet.service(JasperReportServlet.java:50) at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:803) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:290) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:206) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:233) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:175) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:128) at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:102) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:109) at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:263) at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.process(Http11Processor.java:844) at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol$Http11ConnectionHandler.process(Http11Protocol.java:584) at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.JIoEndpoint$Worker.run(JIoEndpoint.java:447) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619) below is my applet configuration, i am loading applet using standard java deployment toolkit. <script type="text/javascript" src="<%=basePath%>js/deployJava.js"> </script> <script> var user = '<%=request.getParameter("user")%>'; var attributes = { code : 'applet.EmbeddedViewerApplet.class', archive : '<%=basePath%>resources/appletviewer.jar,<%=basePath%>resources/jasperreports-applet-4.0.0.jar,<%=basePath%>resources/jasperreports-4.0.0.jar,<%=basePath%>resources/commons-collections-3.2.1.jar,<%=basePath%>resources/commons-logging-1.0.4.jar,<%=basePath%>resources/commons-beanutils-1.8.0.jar,<%=basePath%>resources/commons-digester-1.7.jar,<%=basePath%>resources/commons-javaflow-20060411.jar,<%=basePath%>resources/org-netbeans-core.jar', width : "100%", height : 600 }; var parameters = { fontSize : 16, REPORT_URL : '<%=basePath%>servlet/JasperReportServlet?startDate=<%=request.getParameter("startDate")%>&endDate=<%=request.getParameter("endDate")%>&user=' + user + '&reportType=<%=request.getParameter("reportType")%>' }; var version = '1.4'; deployJava.runApplet(attributes, parameters, version); </script> every jar i referred in the applet attributes exist the resource folder of my webroot, which are appletviewer.jar commons-beanutils-1.8.0.jar commons-collections-3.2.1.jar commons-digester-1.7.jar commons-javaflow-20060411.jar commons-logging-1.0.4.jar jasperreports-4.0.0.jar jasperreports-applet-4.0.0.jar org-netbeans-core.jar all the jars are signed today, so no validity expires. i have double check all the things. but it always shows the above error. in iReport i can view the report and it is compiled to jasper object with no error. the java console from control panel http://pastebin.com/Xt6303tT My question is why the classNotFound Exception happens ? i check in the temp cache that the collections file is downloaded succesfully and in the above console log it shows that the jars are successfully downloaded to the host computer. Thank You Mihir Parekh

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• iPhone App Crashes when merging managed object contexts

  - by DVG

  Short Version: Using two managed object contexts, and while the context is saving to the store the application bombs when I attempt to merge the two contexts and reload the table view. Long Version: Okay, so my application is set up as thus. 3 view controllers, all table views. Platforms View Controller - Games View Controller (Predicated upon platform selection) - Add Game View Controller I ran into a problem when Games View Controller was bombing when adding a new entry to the context, because the fetched results contorller wanted to update the view for something that didn't match the predicate. As a solution, I rebuilt the Add Controller to use a second NSManagedObject Context, called adding context, following the design pattern in the Core Data Books example. My Games List View Controller is a delegate for the add controller, to handle all the saving, so my addButtonPressed method looks like this - (IBAction) addButtonPressed: (id) sender { AddGameTableViewController *addGameVC = [[AddGameTableViewController alloc] initWithNibName:@"AddGameTableViewController" bundle:nil]; NSManagedObjectContext *aAddingContext = [[NSManagedObjectContext alloc] init]; self.addingContext = aAddingContext; [aAddingContext release]; [addingContext setPersistentStoreCoordinator:[[gameResultsController managedObjectContext] persistentStoreCoordinator]]; addGameVC.context = addingContext; addGameVC.delegate = self; addGameVC.newGame = (Game *)[NSEntityDescription insertNewObjectForEntityForName:@"Game" inManagedObjectContext:addingContext]; UINavigationController *addNavCon = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:addGameVC]; [self presentModalViewController:addNavCon animated:YES]; [addGameVC release]; [addNavCon release]; } There is also a delegate method which handles the saving. This all works swimmingly. The issue is getting the table view controller in the GameListViewController to update itself. Per the example, an observer is added to watch for the second context to be saved, and then to merge the addingContext with the primary one. So I have: - (void)addViewController:(AddGameTableViewController *)controller didFinishWithSave:(BOOL)save { if (save) { NSNotificationCenter *dnc = [NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter]; [dnc addObserver:self selector:@selector(addControllerContextDidSave:) name:NSManagedObjectContextDidSaveNotification object:addingContext]; //snip! Context Save Code [dnc removeObserver:self name:NSManagedObjectContextDidSaveNotification object:addingContext]; } self.addingContext = nil; [self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES]; } - (void)addControllerContextDidSave:(NSNotification*)saveNotification { NSManagedObjectContext *myContext = [gameResultsController managedObjectContext]; [myContext mergeChangesFromContextDidSaveNotification:saveNotification]; } So now, what happens is after save is pressed, the application hangs for a moment and then crashes. The save is processed, as the new game is present when I relaunch the application, and the application seems to be flowing as appropriate, but it bombs out for reasons that are beyond my understanding. NSLog of the saveNotification spits out this: NSConcreteNotification 0x3b557f0 {name = NSManagingContextDidSaveChangesNotification; object = <NSManagedObjectContext: 0x3b4bb90>; userInfo = { inserted = {( <Game: 0x3b4f510> (entity: Game; id: 0x3b614e0 <x-coredata://13168366-B8E7-41C8-B384-BAF14A5E08D9/Game/p2> ; data: { name = "Final Fantasy XIII"; platform = 0x3b66910 <x-coredata://13168366-B8E7-41C8-B384-BAF14A5E08D9/Platform/p20>; }) )}; updated = {( <Platform: 0x3b67650> (entity: Platform; id: 0x3b66910 <x-coredata://13168366-B8E7-41C8-B384-BAF14A5E08D9/Platform/p20> ; data: { games = ( 0x3b614e0 <x-coredata://13168366-B8E7-41C8-B384-BAF14A5E08D9/Game/p2>, 0x603a530 <x-coredata://13168366-B8E7-41C8-B384-BAF14A5E08D9/Game/p1> ); name = "Xbox 360"; }) )}; }} I've tried both a simple [self.tableView reloadData]; and the more complicated multi-method table updating structure in the Core Data Books example. Both produce the same result.

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• NINE Questions with Michelle Juett

  - by NINEQuestions

  Michelle Juett is one of the more interesting people I know, even though we’ve never met face to face. She’s part artist, part techie and all cool. We “met” via my good buddy George Clingerman and have plotting to take over the world, errr… I mean “collaborating” ever since. If you happen to live in the Seattle area, you can catch her and her work at Sakura Con on April 2-4, 2010 and various other gamer and art cons throughout the year. You can also find her on Twitter as @Shelldragon. Now that you know a little bit, I’ll let her tell you the rest of the story in these NINE Questions: 1. Where are you from? I was born in Clearwater, Florida. I like to tell people I'm from the Bermuda Triangle, it just makes explaining myself so much easier. My family moved to Washington when I was 5 and I've been in the Pacific Northwest ever since. We like to QQ about the rain but we really love the green trees and clean water. 2. What do you do? I fight evil by moonlight and win love by daylight.. or something like that.  I’ve been in quality assurance for games during the day since January 2008 and an artist for life. I currently work in QA for a really awesome game company in Bellevue.  At home, I work on personal digital art, making game assets as well as other random freelance projects as they pop up. 3. How did you get to where you are now? I'm still not where I want to be but I'm getting closer. The biggest piece of advice I can give is to work hard and never settle for the minimum required. I tend to overwork myself but I've never regretted it. You can want something really bad but if you aren't willing to work for it, then you can't expect it to just happen. I've always drawn and had an unhealthy love for video games that I was told I’d grow out of.  I knew I would not ‘grow out’ of games and that real adults make them and I could too. After I graduated, in searching for jobs, I discovered game testing. I figured this would be a good way to get my foot in the door and start networking. I’ve worked with consoles, websites and now, PC games.  I stuck with my journey, although it has been a rocky one, daylighting as a tester and moonlighting as an artist. I'm still on that journey but I wouldn't have it any other way. Test has given me a perspective that is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain any other way. It gives an unconditional respect for other hard working testers and an insight into creative problem solving. 4. So video game testing probably sounds WAY cooler than the reality. What's it like? What's a given day for you? Game testers don't get a lot of respect because of their stigmas and the fact most people don't actually know what we do.  People hear about the opening and closing disc trays all day. Many places do treat their testers like numbers. It all depends on where you work and how awesome your company is. I've had to deal with a lot of bad work situations to get to a really good one. QA exists to ensure the game is as flawless and enjoyable as it can be by the time it has to leave the nest and go out into the world. This includes everything obvious: “can I beat the level and save the princess?” to the more obscure: ‘What happens when I lose internet connection while trying to save right before falling into a pit to my death while holding the jump key then my cat pulls out my memory card and hides it in her litter box?” On the dev side, for developers, testers can be very scary people. Especially when the test team is not in house and you can’t see each other’s faces.  I've seen both sides. We don't mean to hurt your feelings. We really DO love you and want your game to be the best it can be! It can be some serious tough love. 5. You are also an accomplished artist. Got any major projects right now you'd like to talk about? LOL, I don't know if I’d say I'm an accomplished artist just yet. I’m still a long way from where I want to be. I figure that’s what makes you grow though: the desire to never stop improving. I like QA but I want to be a full time artist. I was lucky enough to register for a table at Sakura Con in the 11 second window that the tables sold out. As such, I’ll be selling my wares in the Artist Alley April 2-4th. Part of preparing for this is actually making the art to be sold there. Anime is a fun pass time but I don’t draw a whole lot of it so I’m making up for lost time. As I seem to enjoy burying myself in work, I’m an art lead for a secret project that’s so secret I might be killed tonight for even mentioning it. I also take on various freelance projects and do what I can to help out indie games. I discovered the XNA community a year and a half ago and developed a love for Indies when I was writing a weekly newsletter on XBLA news. I’m a little late to the party but I find myself in a unique position where I am an artist and also have technical skills in games. While not programmer myself, I have a lot of game sense and experience. I hope to make some awesome happen. Lastly, I have an ongoing web comic Shell’s Angels) that tends to get neglected when I get busy. I still love drawing comics and keep a little book with me to sketch down ideas as they pop into my head. I may pick it back up again as a larger project sometime in the future. 6. Can you talk about any of the other freelance projects you're doing or are you sworn to secrecy on those too? We wouldn't want a team of game developer ninjas to take you out or anything. All my projects are currently 2d. I have personal projects such as the ongoing comic as well as a graphic novel I've been picking at here and there. My main focus until April is Sakura Con, Sakura Con, Sakura Con.  I see it as a great way to get exposure and convention experience. I found out I love conventions a couple years ago and I want to get more involved in them. 7. As an artist, what is your weapon of choice? What do you use to get most of your stuff done? I am a Photoshop Hero and I have the hoodie to prove it. (http://www.pennyarcademerch.com/pah090011.html) I've dabbled in other paint programs but I always gravitate back to Photoshop. She is my one true love. I'd like to learn programs like Flash or Anime Studio when I get a bit more time because of their animation abilities. I've worked on frame by frame animation forever but I would love to learn 2d rigging. Still, nothing can compare to a simple sketchpad and a pencil. I always have one on me in case I come across or think of something interesting and can't get to a computer. If the Courier ever comes to exist it will be an ideal weapon for me. 8. You did some videos too, depicting the art creation process. What was the motivation behind those? The creative process is just as important as the final product, if not more so.  I've always loved watching speed paint videos and wanted to try it out myself. Turns out it's a lot of work and time but it's definitely fun to go back and rewatch them. Art isn't always the end result and is more often the process itself. 9. Got any interesting tattoos? Designed any for yourself or other people? Not yet, but not for lack of desire. I've toiled over what and where for years. Last year, I finally decided the back of my shoulders would be the place. Like anything permanent, I want it to have meaning. I thought of somehow incorporating games but I couldn't find something I felt would stand the test of time even with all the classic sprite games. I'm very picky so we'll see if I can get something solid decided. Come see me at Sakura Con April 2 -4!!!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, July 29, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, July 29, 2013Popular ReleasesGIS Raster Tile Normalizer for GeoServer: V110 Extended to tile DEMs: 1) Now imports large DEM datasets. They are stored as 3.25 degree tiles in GeoTIFF 32 bit single band tiles ready to be used by GeoServer. Also, parallel colorized hillshade tiles are optionally created for easy visualization in GeoServer. 2) No longer uses FWTools, but the more recent 32 bit Windows 1.9 GDAL installation from Tamas at http://www.gisinternals.com/sdk/. Also required is Python 2.7, the GDAL Python Bindings from Tamas, and the Numpy python libraries. This is because we use th...R.NET: R.NET 1.5: The major changes in v1.5 are: Initialize method must be called before using R. Settings should be passed to the method. EagerEvaluate method renamed to Evaluate (use Defer method when you want old version of Evaluate).TX264: 0.9.7: --0.9.7 -Added: Encoding time will be shown in the log -Added: 64bit FLAC.exe -Added: Tx264 will now write version info file to its own folder -Added: Option to set encoder priorties (thx to XanaMuui&Ruriko) -Fixed: A possible error where source files were deleted -Updated: x264 to rev2345 -Updated: MediaInfo to 0.7.64 -Updated: MkvToolNix to 6.3.0 -Updated: FLAC to 1.3.0 -Updated: AlphaControls to 8.42 Stable -Updated: QAAC to 2.19 -Updated: SoX build with unicode by Lord_MulderMedia Companion: Media Companion MC3.574b: Some good bug fixes been going on with the new XBMC-Link function. Thanks to all who were able to do testing and gave feedback. New:* Added some adhoc extra General movie filters, one of which is Plot = Outline (see fixes above). To see the filters, add the following line to your config.xml: <ShowExtraMovieFilters>True</ShowExtraMovieFilters>. The others are: Imdb in folder name, Imdb in not folder name & Imdb not in folder name & year mismatch. * Movie - display <tag> list on browser tab ...OfflineBrowser: Preview Release with Search: I've added search to this release.VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.46: changes FIXED LoginMath.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v2.6.0: What's New in Math.NET Numerics 2.6 - Announcement, Explanations and Sample Code. New: Linear Curve Fitting Linear least-squares fitting (regression) to lines, polynomials and linear combinations of arbitrary functions. Multi-dimensional fitting. Also works well in F# with the F# extensions. New: Root Finding Brent's method. ~Candy Chiu, Alexander Täschner Bisection method. ~Scott Stephens, Alexander Täschner Broyden's method, for multi-dimensional functions. ~Alexander Täschner ...AJAX Control Toolkit: July 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - July 2013 Release Version 7.0725July 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - Instructions for using the AJAX Control Toolkit with ASP.NET 4.5 can be found at...MJP's DirectX 11 Samples: Specular Antialiasing Sample: Sample code to complement my presentation that's part of the Physically Based Shading in Theory and Practice course at SIGGRAPH 2013, entitled "Crafting a Next-Gen Material Pipeline for The Order: 1886". Demonstrates various methods of preventing aliasing from specular BRDF's when using high-frequency normal maps. The zip file contains source code as well as a pre-compiled x64 binary.English Practice Helper: English Practice Helper Demo v1.1: Fix some bug in sentences compareKartris E-commerce: Kartris v2.5003: This fixes an issue where search engines appear to identify as IE and so trigger the noIE page if there is not a non-responsive skin specified.Blue Mercs Data Gateway: Blue Mercs Data Gateway 2.0: Changes made for major release v2.0 build in support for Microsoft Access Database build in logging support (with optional stopwatch duration) implemented thread DbContext that can be referenced to share context accross layers implented 'having' sql keyword implemented 'top(n)' and 'first' sql keywords implemented 'distinct' sql keyword implemented sql column expressions implemented CTE (common table expressions) joins are refactored allow auto join on keys when using entiti...Wix Test: WIX Test Bootstrapper (Burn): WIX Test Bootstrapper and MSI setup files. Alfa versions.ScriptZilla: ScriptZilla 1.2.5.1: New Programming Languages(C++ too !) and An Better Editor.SSISConnectionBuilder: Alpha 2: Removed SSIS SDK dependencies.VBDownloader: VBDownloader 1.0: VBDownloader v1.0 The open source solution for downloads First releasemysqllib: mysqllib 1.5: La nuova versione 1.5 vede espandersi questa libreria con nuovi metodi e nuove caratteristiche interessanti. Ecco i cambiamenti: (NEW) Aggiunta classe MySqlTable per visualizzare tutti i dettagli della tabella, tra cui una lista di dettagli delle colonne (NEW) Aggiunta classe MySqlColumn per visualizzare tutti i dettagli della colonna, tra cui una lista dei valori della colonna (NEW) Nuovi metodi GetTable(...) e GetColumn(...) per risultati dettagliati di tabelle e colonne (NEW) Nuovi met...GoAgent GUI: GoAgent GUI 1.3.5 Alpha (20130723): ????????Alpha?，???????????，?????????????。 ??????????GoAgent???（???phus lu?GitHub??????GoAgent??????，??????????????????） ????????????????????????Bug ?????????。??????????????。 ????issue????，????????，????????????????。LogicCircuit: LogicCircuit 2.13.07.22: Logic Circuit - is educational software for designing and simulating logic circuits. Intuitive graphical user interface, allows you to create unrestricted circuit hierarchy with multi bit buses, debug circuits behavior with oscilloscope, and navigate running circuits hierarchy. Changes of this versionYou can make visual elements of the circuit been visible on its symbols. This way you can build composite displays, keyboards and reuse them. Please read about displays for more details http://ww...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.08: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.New Projects#Zyan Drench, a game for Android: Zyan Drench is a simple yet very entertaining game for Android phones developed using Zyan Communication Framework: http://zyan.com.de Crzy Game Launcher: All in one game launcher and updater. Keep your game up-to-date with this simple to use launcher.Ecobee API: This project is a portable .NET Library wrapping the Ecobee Thermostat API.Fire-Fighting Kinect Game: Fire-Fighting Kinect Game A fire-fighting game that uses Vizard virtual reality software and the Microsoft Kinect to allow the player to put out virtual fires.Fish Atlantis: This is our homework.FreeBee 900 Pro - Open Source XBee® Pro Alternative: https://hg.codeplex.com/freebee900proFuelRex: FuelRex foi feito pra lhe ajudar em seu dia a dia. Facilite seus cálculos e obtenha números reais sobre o gasto de combustíveis, em um aplicativo totalmente.KbdPlayground: A collection of .NET helpers and experimentsMailChimpNET: MailChimpNET provides a .NET PCL based wrapper around the mailchimp.com web API.MVC Generator: Addin for Visual Studio that generates MVC from Entity Framework files. A Rapid Scaffolder with options.One More ENgine project: OMEN projet (One More ENgine) main objective is to provide a simple application container.Orchard Podcasts: The Orchard Podcasting module allows users to create and publish a podcast feed (Yahoo Media RSS) for consumption by users using Orchard v1.6+.Outlook 2013 Backup Add-In: Automatically backups psd-files after closing Outlook. This plugin is compatible with Outlook 2013 32/64 Bit Version. Project Emilie: A little help to make your WinRT XAML projects truly fast and fluid, based on work from two of the top Windows 8 applications.Search WPF: A small utility to browse the WPF classes and interfaces.sGaming: Silverlight 3D EngineTelerik Connect: Simple ASP.NET Project aiming to build a copy of the LinkedIn website functionality.Testing The Unittesting Tools in Visual Studio: This project is a collection of testprograms for verifying the different test adapters available for Visual Studio. TvLinks Torrent Searcher: Easy way to search Torrents for TV Series.xnaGaming: XNA game engine

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• Farseer tutorial for the absolute beginners

  - by Bil Simser

  This post is inspired (and somewhat a direct copy) of a couple of posts Emanuele Feronato wrote back in 2009 about Box2D (his tutorial was ActionScript 3 based for Box2D, this is C# XNA for the Farseer Physics Engine). Here’s what we’re building: What is Farseer The Farseer Physics Engine is a collision detection system with realistic physics responses to help you easily create simple hobby games or complex simulation systems. Farseer was built as a .NET version of Box2D (based on the Box2D.XNA port of Box2D). While the constructs and syntax has changed over the years, the principles remain the same. This tutorial will walk you through exactly what Emanuele create for Flash but we’ll be doing it using C#, XNA and the Windows Phone platform. The first step is to download the library from its home on CodePlex. If you have NuGet installed, you can install the library itself using the NuGet package that but we’ll also be using some code from the Samples source that can only be obtained by downloading the library. Once you download and unpacked the zip file into a folder and open the solution, this is what you will get: The Samples XNA WP7 project (and content) have all the demos for Farseer. There’s a wealth of info here and great examples to look at to learn. The Farseer Physics XNA WP7 project contains the core libraries that do all the work. DebugView XNA contains an XNA-ready class to let you view debug data and information in the game draw loop (which you can copy into your project or build the source and reference the assembly). The downloaded version has to be compiled as it’s only available in source format so you can do that now if you want (open the solution file and rebuild everything). If you’re using the NuGet package you can just install that. We only need the core library and we’ll be copying in some code from the samples later. Your first Farseer experiment Start Visual Studio and create a new project using the Windows Phone template can call it whatever you want. It’s time to edit Game1.cs 1 public class Game1 : Game 2 { 3 private readonly GraphicsDeviceManager _graphics; 4 private DebugViewXNA _debugView; 5 private Body _floor; 6 private SpriteBatch _spriteBatch; 7 private float _timer; 8 private World _world; 9 10 public Game1() 11 { 12 _graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this) 13 { 14 PreferredBackBufferHeight = 800, 15 PreferredBackBufferWidth = 480, 16 IsFullScreen = true 17 }; 18 19 Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; 20 21 // Frame rate is 30 fps by default for Windows Phone. 22 TargetElapsedTime = TimeSpan.FromTicks(333333); 23 24 // Extend battery life under lock. 25 InactiveSleepTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1); 26 } 27 28 protected override void LoadContent() 29 { 30 // Create a new SpriteBatch, which can be used to draw textures. 31 _spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(_graphics.GraphicsDevice); 32 33 // Load our font (DebugViewXNA needs it for the DebugPanel) 34 Content.Load<SpriteFont>("font"); 35 36 // Create our World with a gravity of 10 vertical units 37 if (_world == null) 38 { 39 _world = new World(Vector2.UnitY*10); 40 } 41 else 42 { 43 _world.Clear(); 44 } 45 46 if (_debugView == null) 47 { 48 _debugView = new DebugViewXNA(_world); 49 50 // default is shape, controller, joints 51 // we just want shapes to display 52 _debugView.RemoveFlags(DebugViewFlags.Controllers); 53 _debugView.RemoveFlags(DebugViewFlags.Joint); 54 55 _debugView.LoadContent(GraphicsDevice, Content); 56 } 57 58 // Create and position our floor 59 _floor = BodyFactory.CreateRectangle( 60 _world, 61 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(480), 62 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(50), 63 10f); 64 _floor.Position = ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(240, 775); 65 _floor.IsStatic = true; 66 _floor.Restitution = 0.2f; 67 _floor.Friction = 0.2f; 68 } 69 70 protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) 71 { 72 // Allows the game to exit 73 if (GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back == ButtonState.Pressed) 74 Exit(); 75 76 // Create a random box every second 77 _timer += (float) gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; 78 if (_timer >= 1.0f) 79 { 80 // Reset our timer 81 _timer = 0f; 82 83 // Determine a random size for each box 84 var random = new Random(); 85 var width = random.Next(20, 100); 86 var height = random.Next(20, 100); 87 88 // Create it and store the size in the user data 89 var box = BodyFactory.CreateRectangle( 90 _world, 91 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(width), 92 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(height), 93 10f, 94 new Point(width, height)); 95 96 box.BodyType = BodyType.Dynamic; 97 box.Restitution = 0.2f; 98 box.Friction = 0.2f; 99 100 // Randomly pick a location along the top to drop it from 101 box.Position = ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(random.Next(50, 400), 0); 102 } 103 104 // Advance all the elements in the world 105 _world.Step(Math.Min((float) gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds*0.001f, (1f/30f))); 106 107 // Clean up any boxes that have fallen offscreen 108 foreach (var box in from box in _world.BodyList 109 let pos = ConvertUnits.ToDisplayUnits(box.Position) 110 where pos.Y > _graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height 111 select box) 112 { 113 _world.RemoveBody(box); 114 } 115 116 base.Update(gameTime); 117 } 118 119 protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) 120 { 121 GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.FromNonPremultiplied(51, 51, 51, 255)); 122 123 _spriteBatch.Begin(); 124 125 var projection = Matrix.CreateOrthographicOffCenter( 126 0f, 127 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(_graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width), 128 ConvertUnits.ToSimUnits(_graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height), 0f, 0f, 129 1f); 130 _debugView.RenderDebugData(ref projection); 131 132 _spriteBatch.End(); 133 134 base.Draw(gameTime); 135 } 136 } 137 Lines 4: Declare the debug view we’ll use for rendering (more on that later). Lines 8: Declare _world variable of type class World. World is the main object to interact with the Farseer engine. It stores all the joints and bodies, and is responsible for stepping through the simulation. Lines 12-17: Create the graphics device we’ll be rendering on. This is an XNA component and we’re just setting it to be the same size as the phone and toggling it to be full screen (no system tray). Lines 34: We create a SpriteFont here by adding it to the project. It’s called “font” because that’s what the DebugView uses but you can name it whatever you want (and if you’re not using DebugView for your production app you might have several fonts). Lines 37-44: We create the physics environment that Farseer uses to contain all the objects by specifying it here. We’re using Vector2.UnitY*10 to represent the gravity to be used in the environment. In other words, 10 units going in a downward motion. Lines 46-56: We create the DebugViewXNA here. This is copied from the […] from the code you downloaded and provides the ability to render all entities onto the screen. In a production release you’ll be doing the rendering yourself of each object but we cheat a bit for the demo and let the DebugView do it for us. The other thing it can provide is to render out a panel of debugging information while the simulation is going on. This is useful in tracking down objects, figuring out how something works, or just keeping track of what’s in the engine. Lines 49-67: Here we create a rigid body (Farseer only supports rigid bodies) to represent the floor that we’ll drop objects onto. We create it by using one of the Farseer factories and specifying the width and height. The ConvertUnits class is copied from the samples code as-is and lets us toggle between display units (pixels) and simulation units (usually metres). We’re creating a floor that’s 480 pixels wide and 50 pixels high (converting them to SimUnits for the engine to understand). We also position it near the bottom of the screen. Values are in metres and when specifying values they refer to the centre of the body object. Lines 77-78: The game Update method fires 30 times a second, too fast to be creating objects this quickly. So we use a variable to track the elapsed seconds since the last update, accumulate that value, then create a new box to drop when 1 second has passed. Lines 89-94: We create a box the same way we created our floor (coming up with a random width and height for the box). Lines 96-101: We set the box to be Dynamic (rather than Static like the floor object) and position it somewhere along the top of the screen. And now you created the world. Gravity does the rest and the boxes fall to the ground. Here’s the result: Farseer Physics Engine Demo using XNA Lines 105: We must update the world at every frame. We do this with the Step method which takes in the time interval. [more] Lines 108-114: Body objects are added to the world but never automatically removed (because Farseer doesn’t know about the display world, it has no idea if an item is on the screen or not). Here we just loop through all the entities and anything that’s dropped off the screen (below the bottom) gets removed from the World. This keeps our entity count down (the simulation never has more than 30 or 40 objects in the world no matter how long you run it for). Too many entities and the app will grind to a halt. Lines 125-130: Farseer knows nothing about the UI so that’s entirely up to you as to how to draw things. Farseer is just tracking the objects and moving them around using the physics engine and it’s rules. You’ll still use XNA to draw items (using the SpriteBatch.Draw method) so you can load up your usual textures and draw items and pirates and dancing zombies all over the screen. Instead in this demo we’re going to cheat a little. In the sample code for Farseer you can download there’s a project called DebugView XNA. This project contains the DebugViewXNA class which just handles iterating through all the bodies in the world and drawing the shapes. So we call the RenderDebugData method here of that class to draw everything correctly. In the case of this demo, we just want to draw Shapes so take a look at the source code for the DebugViewXNA class as to how it extracts all the vertices for the shapes created (in this case simple boxes) and draws them. You’ll learn a *lot* about how Farseer works just by looking at this class. That’s it, that’s all. Simple huh? Hope you enjoy the code and library. Physics is hard and requires some math skills to really grok. The Farseer Physics Engine makes it pretty easy to get up and running and start building games. In future posts we’ll get more in-depth with things you can do with the engine so this is just the beginning. Enjoy!

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• Make your CHM Help Files show HTML5 and CSS3 content

  - by Rick Strahl

  The HTML Help 1.0 specification aka CHM files, is pretty old. In fact, it's practically ancient as it was introduced in 1997 when Internet Explorer 4 was introduced. Html Help 1.0 is basically a completely HTML based Help system that uses a Help Viewer that internally uses Internet Explorer to render the HTML Help content. Because of its use of the Internet Explorer shell for rendering there were many security issues in the past, which resulted in locking down of the Web Browser control in Windows and also the Help Engine which caused some unfortunate side effects. Even so, CHM continues to be a popular help format because it is very easy to produce content for it, using plain HTML and because it works with many Windows application platforms out of the box. While there have been various attempts to replace CHM help files CHM files still seem to be a popular choice for many applications to display their help systems. The biggest alternative these days is no system based help at all, but links to online documentation. For Windows apps though it's still very common to see CHM help files and there are still a ton of CHM help out there and lots of tools (including our own West Wind Html Help Builder) that produce output for CHM files as well as Web output. Image is Everything and you ain't got it! One problem with the CHM engine is that it's stuck with an ancient Internet Explorer version for rendering. For example if you have help content that uses HTML5 or CSS3 content you might have an HTML Help topic like the following shown here in a full Web Browser instance of Internet Explorer: The page clearly uses some CSS3 features like rounded corners and box shadows that are rendered using plain CSS 3 features. Note that I used Internet Explorer on purpose here to demonstrate that IE9 on Windows 7 can properly render this content using some of the new features of CSS, but the same is true for all other recent versions of the major browsers (FireFox 3.1+, Safari 4.5+, WebKit 9+ etc.). Unfortunately if you take this nice and simple CSS3 content and run it through the HTML Help compiler to produce a CHM file the resulting output on the same machine looks a bit less flashy: All the CSS3 styling is gone and although the page display and functionality still works, but all the extra styling features are gone. This even though I am running this on a Windows 7 machine that has IE9 that should be able to render these CSS features. Bummer. Web Browser Control - perpetually stuck in IE 7 Mode The problem is the Web Browser/Shell Components in Windows. This component is and has been part of Windows for as long as Internet Explorer has been around, but the Web Browser control hasn't kept up with the latest versions of IE. In a nutshell the control is stuck in IE7 rendering mode for engine compatibility reasons by default. However, there is at least one way to fix this explicitly using Registry keys on a per application basis. The key point from that blog article is that you can override the IE rendering engine for a particular executable by setting one (or more) registry flags that tell the Windows Shell which version of the Internet Explorer rendering engine to load. An application that wishes to use a more recent version of Internet Explorer can then register itself during installation for the specific IE version desired and from then on the application will use that version of the Web Browser component. If the application is older than the specified version it falls back to the default version (IE 7 rendering). Forcing CHM files to display with IE9 (or later) Rendering Knowing that we can force the IE usage for a given process it's also possible to affect the CHM rendering by setting same keys on the executable that's hosting the CHM file. What that executable file is depends on the type of application as there are a number of ways that can launch the help engine. hh.exeThe standalone Windows CHM Help Viewer that launches when you launch a CHM from Windows Explorer. You can manually add hh.exe to the registry keys. YourApplication.exeIf you're using .NET or any tool that internally uses the hhControl ActiveX control to launch help content your application is your host. You should add your application's exe to the registry during application startup. foxhhelp9.exeIf you're building a FoxPro application that uses the built-in help features, foxhhelp9.exe is used to actually host the help controls. Make sure to add this executable to the registry. What to set You can configure the Internet Explorer version used for an application in the registry by specifying the executable file name and a value that specifies the IE version desired. There are two different sets of keys for 32 bit and 64 bit applications. 32 bit only or 64 bit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MAIN\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION Value Key: hh.exe 32 bit on 64 bit machine: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MAIN\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION Value Key: hh.exe Note that it's best to always set both values ideally when you install your application so it works regardless of which platform you run on. The value specified is a DWORD value and the interesting values are decimal 9000 for IE9 rendering mode depending on !DOCTYPE settings or 9999 for IE 9 standards mode always. You can use the same logic for 8000 and 8888 for IE8 and the final value of 7000 for IE7 (one has to wonder what they're going todo for version 10 to perpetuate that pattern). I think 9000 is the value you'd most likely want to use. 9000 means that IE9 will be used for rendering but unless the right doctypes are used (XHTML and HTML5 specifically) IE will still fall back into quirks mode as needed. This should allow existing pages to continue to use the fallback engine while new pages that have the proper HTML doctype set can take advantage of the newest features. Here's an example of how I set the registry keys in my Tarma Installmate registry configuration: Note that I set all three values both under the Software and Wow6432Node keys so that this works regardless of where these EXEs are launched from. Even though all apps are 32 bit apps, the 64 bit (the default one shown selected) key is often used. So, now once I've set the registry key for hh.exe I can now launch my CHM help file from Explorer and see the following CSS3 IE9 rendered display: Summary It sucks that we have to go through all these hoops to get what should be natural behavior for an application to support the latest features available on a system. But it shouldn't be a surprise - the Windows Help team (if there even is such a thing) has not been known for forward looking technologies. It's a pretty big hassle that we have to resort to setting registry keys in order to get the Web Browser control and the internal CHM engine to render itself properly but at least it's possible to make it work after all. Using this technique it's possible to ship an application with a help file and allow your CHM help to display with richer CSS markup and correct rendering using the stricter and more consistent XHTML or HTML5 doctypes. If you provide both Web help and in-application help (and why not if you're building from a single source) you now can side step the issue of your customers asking: Why does my help file look so much shittier than the online help… No more!© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in HTML5  Help  Html Help Builder  Internet Explorer  Windows   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, September 07, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, September 07, 2012Popular ReleasesUmbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.9.0: Whats newThe media section has been overhauled to support HTML5 uploads, just drag and drop files in, even multiple files are supported on any HTML5 capable browser. The folder content overview is also much improved allowing you to filter it and perform common actions on your media items. The Rich Text Editor’s “Media” button now uses an embedder based on the open oEmbed standard (if you’re upgrading, enable the media button in the Rich Text Editor datatype settings and set TidyEditorConten...menu4web: menu4web 0.4.1 - javascript menu for web sites: This release is for those who believe that global variables are evil. menu4web has been wrapped into m4w singleton object. Added "Vertical Tabs" example which illustrates object notation.WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.2.1: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features AsyncUI extensions Controls and control extensions Converters Debugging helpers Imaging IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE: Namespace changes DebugConsol...iPDC - Free Phasor Data Concentrator: iPDC-v1.3.1: iPDC suite version-1.3.1, Modifications and Bug Fixed (from v 1.3.0) New User Manual for iPDC-v1.3.1 available on websites. Bug resolved : PMU Simulator TCP connection error and hang connection for client (PDC). Now PMU Simulator (server) can communicate more than one PDCs (clients) over TCP and UDP parallely. PMU Simulator is now sending the exact data frames as mentioned in data rate by user. PMU Simulator data rate has been verified by iPDC database entries and PMU Connection Tes...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks OData Feed: The AdventureWorks OData service exposes resources based on specific SQL views. The SQL views are a limited subset of the AdventureWorks database that results in several consuming scenarios: CompanySales Documents ManufacturingInstructions ProductCatalog TerritorySalesDrilldown WorkOrderRouting How to install the sample You can consume the AdventureWorks OData feed from http://services.odata.org/AdventureWorksV3/AdventureWorks.svc. You can also consume the AdventureWorks OData fe...Desktop Google Reader: 1.4.6: Sorting feeds alphabetical is now optional (see preferences window)DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.03: Major Highlights Fixed issue where mailto: links were not working when sending bulk email Fixed issue where uses did not see friendship relationships Problem is in 6.2, which does not show in the Versions Affected list above. Fixed the issue with cascade deletes in comments in CoreMessaging_Notification Fixed UI issue when using a date fields as a required profile property during user registration Fixed error when running the product in debug mode Fixed visibility issue when...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.65: Fixed null-reference error in the build task constructor.B INI Sharp Library: B INI Sharp Library v1.0.0.0 Final Realsed: The frist realsedActive Social Migrator: ActiveSocialMigrator 1.0.0 Beta: Beta release for the Active Social Migration tool.EntLib.com????????: ??????demo??-For SQL 2005-2008: EntLibShopping ???v3.0 - ??????demo??，?????SQL SERVER 2005/2008/2008 R2/2012 ??????。 ??（??）??????。 THANKS.Sistem LPK Pemkot Semarang: Panduan Penggunaan Sistem LPK: Panduan cara menggunakan Aplikasi Sistem LPK Bagian Pembangunan Kota SemarangActive Forums for DotNetNuke CMS: Active Forums 5.0.0 RC: RC release of Active Forums 5.0.Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.7 Beta: Bug in the display icon for apk's, will fix with next release Added fallback icon if unable to get the image/icon from the Cloud Service Removed some stale plugins that were either out dated or incomplete. Added handler for *.ab files for restoring backups Added plugin to create device backups Backups stored in %USERPROFILE%\Android Backups\%DEVICE_ID%\ Added custom folder icon for the android backups directory better error handling for installing an apk bug fixes for the Runn...The Visual Guide for Building Team Foundation Server 2012 Environments: Version 1: --Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v8.5: Version 8.5 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine. New features include: Built-in search engine using Lucene.NET Flood control improvements Notifications improvements: sync option and mail body View Roadmap for more details webdeploy package sha1 checksum: 961aff884a9187b6e8a86d68913cdd31f8deaf83WiX Toolset: WiX Toolset v3.6: WiX Toolset v3.6 introduces the Burn bootstrapper/chaining engine and support for Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5. Other minor functionality includes: WixDependencyExtension supports dependency checking among MSI packages. WixFirewallExtension supports more features of Windows Firewall. WixTagExtension supports Software Id Tagging. WixUtilExtension now supports recursive directory deletion. Melt simplifies pure-WiX patching by extracting .msi package content and updating .w...Iveely Search Engine: Iveely Search Engine （0.2.0）: ????ISE?0.1.0??，?????，ISE?0.2.0?????????，???????，????????20???follow?ISE，????，??ISE??????????，??????????，?????????，?????????0.2.0??????，??????????。 Iveely Search Engine ?0.2.0?????????“??????????”，??????，?????????，???????，???????????????????，????、????????????。???0.1.0????????????： 1. ??“????” ??。??????????，?????????，???????????????????。??：????????，????????????，??????????????????。??????。 2. ??“????”??。?0.1.0??????，???????，???????????????，?????????????，????????，?0.2.0?，???????...GmailDefaultMaker: GmailDefaultMaker 3.0.0.2: Add QQ Mail BugfixSmart Data Access layer: Smart Data access Layer Ver 3: In this version support executing inline query is added. Check Documentation section for detail.New ProjectsAdding 2013 Jewish Holidays for Outlook2003: Instruction: Copy the outlook.hol file to your compuer where Outlook2003 is installed. Double click the file, choose "Israel" and continue. That's it Agilcont System: Sistema de contabilidad para empresas privadas de preferencia para cajas que trabajan con efectivo en soles, dolares y con el material oroARB (A Request Broker): The idea is something like a Request Broker, but with some additional functionality.BATTLE.NET - SDK: This SDK provides the ability to use the Battle.net (Blizzard) Services for all supported Games such Diablo 3, World of Warcraft. Container Terminal System: SummaryDeclarative UX Streaming Data Language for the Cloud: Bringing a better communication paradigm for media and data..Get User Profile Information from SharePoint UserProfile Service: Used SharePoint object model to get the user profile information from the User Profile Service.Guess The City & State Windows 8 Source Code: Source code for Guess The City & State in Malaysia Windows 8 AppJquery Tree: This project is to demonstrate tree basic functionality.MCEBuddy 2.x: Convert and Remove Commercials for your Windows Media CenterMvcDesign: MvcDesign engine implementation projectMy Task Manager: This is a task manager module for DotNetNuke. I am using it to get started developing modules.MyAppwithbranches: MyAppwithbranchesProjecte prova: rpyGEO: pyGEO is a python package capable of parsing microarray data files. It also has a primitive plotting function.Scarlet Road: Scarlet Road is a top-down shooter. It's you against an unending horde of monsters.simplecounter: A simple counter, cick and counter.SiteEmpires: ????????Soundcloud Loader: Simple Tool for downloading Tracks from Soundcloud.Windows Phone Samples: Windows Phone code samples.

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• Visual Studio 2010 and CrystalReports

  - by LukePet

  I have a dll build with target framework 3.5 that manage reports; this dll use the version 10.5.3700.0 of CrystalDecisions.CrystalReports.Engine Now, I have created a new wpf application based on .NET framework 4.0 and I added the report dll reference to project. I had to install the Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2010 library (http://www.businessobjects.com/jump/xi/crvs2010/default.asp) to build the application without errors...now it builds success, but the report print don't work. It's generate an error when set datasource...the message is: Unknown Query Engine Error Error in File C:\DOCUME~1\oli15\IMPOST~1\Temp\MyReport {4E514D0E-FC2C-4440-9B3C-11D2CA74895A}.rpt: ... Source=Analysis Server ErrorCode=-2147482942 StackTrace: at CrystalDecisions.ReportAppServer.Controllers.DatabaseControllerClass.ReplaceConnection(Object oldConnection, Object newConnection, Object parameterFields, Object crDBOptionUseDefault) at CrystalDecisions.CrystalReports.Engine.Table.SetDataSource(Object val, Type type) at CrystalDecisions.CrystalReports.Engine.ReportDocument.SetDataSourceInternal(Object val, Type type) I think that it use a different version reference for CrystalDecisions.CrystalReports.Engine, it's possible? How can tell it to use the 10.5.3700.0 version?

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• 3 Ways to Make Steam Even Faster

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Have you ever noticed how slow Steam’s built-in web browser can be? Do you struggle with slow download speeds? Or is Steam just slow in general? These tips will help you speed it up. Steam isn’t a game itself, so there are no 3D settings to change to achieve maximum performance. But there are some things you can do to speed it up dramatically. Speed Up the Steam Web Browser Steam’s built-in web browser — used in both the Steam store and in Steam’s in-game overlay to provide a web browser you can quickly use within games – can be frustratingly slow on many systems. Rather than the typical speed we’ve come to expect from Chrome, Firefox, or even Internet Explorer, Steam seems to struggle. When you click a link or go to a new page, there’s a noticeable delay before the new page appears — something that doesn’t happen in desktop browsers. Many people seem to have made peace with this slowness, accepting that Steam’s built-in browser is just bad. However, there’s a trick that will eliminate this delay on many systems and make the Steam web browser fast. This problem seems to arise from an incompatibility with the Automatically Detect Proxy Settings option, which is enabled by default on Windows. This is a compatibility option that very few people should actually need, so it’s safe to disable it. To disable this option, open the Internet Options dialog — press the Windows key to access the Start menu or Start screen, type Internet Options, and click the Internet Options shortcut. Select the Connections tab in the Internet Options window and click the LAN settings button. Uncheck the Automatically detect settings option here, then click OK to save your settings. If you experienced a significant delay every time a web page loaded in Steam’s web browser, it should now be gone. In the unlikely event that you encounter some sort of problem with your network connection, you could always re-enable this option. Increase Steam’s Game Download Speed Steam attempts to automatically select the nearest download server to your location. However, it may not always select the ideal download server. Or, in the case of high-traffic events like big seasonal sales and huge game launches, you may benefit from selecting a less-congested server. To do this, open Steam’s settings by clicking the Steam menu in Steam and selecting Settings. Click over to the Downloads tab and select the closest download server from the Download Region box. You should also ensure that Steam’s download bandwidth isn’t limited from here. You may want to restart Steam and see if your download speeds improve after changing this setting. In some cases, the closest server might not be the fastest. One a bit farther away could be faster if your local server is more congested, for example. Steam once provided information about content server load, which allowed you to select a regional server that wasn’t under high-load, but this information no longer seems to be available. Steam still provides a page that shows you the amount of download activity happening in different regions, including statistics about the difference in download speeds in different US states, but this information isn’t as useful. Accelerate Steam and Your Games One way to speed up all your games — and Steam itself —  is by getting a solid-state drive and installing Steam to it. Steam allows you to easily move your Steam folder — at C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam by default — to another hard drive. Just move it like you would any other folder. You can then launch the Steam.exe program as if you had never moved Steam’s files. Steam also allows you to configure multiple game library folders. This means that you can set up a Steam library folder on a solid-state drive and one on your larger magnetic hard drive. Install your most frequently played games to the solid-state drive for maximum speed and your less frequently played ones to the slower magnetic hard drive to save SSD space. To set up additional library folders, open Steam’s Settings window and click the Downloads tab. You’ll find the Steam Library Folders option here. Click the Add Library Folder button and create a new game library on another hard drive. When you install a game in Steam, you’ll be asked which library folder you want to install it to. With the proxy compatibility option disabled, the correct download server chosen, and Steam installed to a fast SSD, it should be a speed demon. There’s not much more you can do to speed up Steam, short of upgrading other hardware like your computer’s CPU. Image Credit: Andrew Nash on Flickr     

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• Rails Foreign key setup question.

  - by James P. Wright

  I'm just (re)starting playing around with Rails and I'm making a little card game app. I cannot seem to figure out my Foreign Key setups. Say I have 4 objects: - Game - Player - Hand - Card A Game has many Players, which have many Hands which have many Cards. But the cards are also independent of a Hand, Player and Game. For example, I have 6 Cards in my database (1 to 6). It is possible that Card 3 could be in 2 Players Hands in the same Game. How can I set up my keys for this? Should I just create another object for "CardInHand" to simplify it?

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• How to Play PC Games on Your TV

  - by Chris Hoffman

  No need to wait for Valve’s Steam Machines — connect your Windows gaming PC to your TV and use powerful PC graphics in the living room today. It’s easy — you don’t need any unusual hardware or special software. This is ideal if you’re already a PC gamer who wants to play your games on a larger screen. It’s also convenient if you want to play multiplayer PC games with controllers in your living rom. HDMI Cables and Controllers You’ll need an HDMI cable to connect your PC to your television. This requires a TV with HDMI-in, a PC with HDMI-out, and an HDMI cable. Modern TVs and PCs have had HDMI built in for years, so you should already be good to go. If you don’t have a spare HDMI cable lying around, you may have to buy one or repurpose one of your existing HDMI cables. Just don’t buy the expensive HDMI cables — even a cheap HDMI cable will work just as well as a more expensive one. Plug one end of the HDMI cable into the HDMI-out port on your PC and one end into the HDMI-In port on your TV. Switch your TV’s input to the appropriate HDMI port and you’ll see your PC’s desktop appear on your TV.  Your TV becomes just another external monitor. If you have your TV and PC far away from each other in different rooms, this won’t work. If you have a reasonably powerful laptop, you can just plug that into your TV — or you can unplug your desktop PC and hook it up next to your TV. Now you’ll just need an input device. You probably don’t want to sit directly in front of your TV with a wired keyboard and mouse! A wireless keyboard and wireless mouse can be convenient and may be ideal for some games. However, you’ll probably want a game controller like console players use. Better yet, get multiple game controllers so you can play local-multiplayer PC games with other people. The Xbox 360 controller is the ideal controller for PC gaming. Windows supports these controllers natively, and many PC games are designed specifically for these controllers. Note that Xbox One controllers aren’t yet supported on Windows because Microsoft hasn’t released drivers for them. Yes, you could use a third-party controller or go through the process of pairing a PlayStation controller with your PC using unofficial tools, but it’s better to get an Xbox 360 controller. Just plug one or more Xbox controllers into your PC’s USB ports and they’ll work without any setup required. While many PC games to support controllers, bear in mind that some games require a keyboard and mouse. A TV-Optimized Interface Use Steam’s Big Picture interface to more easily browse and launch games. This interface was designed for using on a television with controllers and even has an integrated web browser you can use with your controller. It will be used on the Valve’s Steam Machine consoles as the default TV interface. You can use a mouse with it too, of course. There’s also nothing stopping you from just using your Windows desktop with a mouse and keyboard — aside from how inconvenient it will be. To launch Big Picture Mode, open Steam and click the Big Picture button at the top-right corner of your screen. You can also press the glowing Xbox logo button in the middle of an Xbox 360 Controller to launch the Big Picture interface if Steam is open. Another Option: In-Home Streaming If you want to leave your PC in one room of your home and play PC games on a TV in a different room, you can consider using local streaming to stream games over your home network from your gaming PC to your television. Bear in mind that the game won’t be as smooth and responsive as it would if you were sitting in front of your PC. You’ll also need a modern router with fast wireless network speeds to keep up with the game streaming. Steam’s built-in In-Home Streaming feature is now available to everyone. You could plug a laptop with less-powerful graphics hardware into your TV and use it to stream games from your powerful desktop gaming rig. You could also use an older desktop PC you have lying around. To stream a game, log into Steam on your gaming PC and log into Steam with the same account on another computer on your home network. You’ll be able to view the library of installed games on your other PC and start streaming them. NVIDIA also has their own GameStream solution that allows you to stream games from a PC with powerful NVIDIA graphics hardware. However, you’ll need an NVIDIA Shield handheld gaming console to do this. At the moment, NVIDIA’s game streaming solution can only stream to the NVIDIA Shield. However, the NVIDIA Shield device can be connected to your TV so you can play that streaming game on your TV. Valve’s Steam Machines are supposed to bring PC gaming to the living room and they’ll do it using HDMI cables, a custom Steam controller, the Big Picture interface, and in-home streaming for compatibility with Windows games. You can do all of this yourself today — you’ll just need an Xbox 360 controller instead of the not-yet-released Steam controller. Image Credit: Marco Arment on Flickr, William Hook on Flickr, Lewis Dowling on Flickr

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• How to convert a plist file from mac os project to iphone project?

  - by Tom Pace

  I am developing an app for the iPhone OS devices, and am using a third-party engine which is not well documented but I've made great progress with it anyway. The problem: The engine's developer strongly urges extending from the existing template projects bundled with the engine, but the engine's plist files are Mac OSX project plist files. This is an iPhone engine, and so I cannot understand why the plist file is structured to take keys for Mac OS apps, but that's how it is. I did a FileMerge comparison to ensure there was nothing within the file itself that defined its use for one OS or the other, so I guess it's defined somewhere in the project settings.

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• Problem with between join for sqlalchemy orm relation.

  - by Gary van der Merwe

  I'm trying to create a relation that has a between join. Here is a shortish example of what I'm trying to do: #!/usr/bin/env python import sqlalchemy as sa from sqlalchemy import orm from sqlalchemy.engine.base import Engine from sqlalchemy.ext.declarative import declarative_base metadata = sa.MetaData() Base = declarative_base(metadata=metadata) engine = sa.create_engine('sqlite:///:memory:') class Network(Base): __tablename__ = "network" id = sa.Column(sa.Integer, primary_key=True) ip_net_addr_db = sa.Column('ip_net_addr', sa.Integer, index=True) ip_broadcast_addr_db = sa.Column('ip_broadcast_addr', sa.Integer, index=True) # This can be determined from the net address and the net mask, but we store # it in the db so that we can join with the address table. ip_net_mask_len = sa.Column(sa.SmallInteger) class Address(Base): __tablename__ = "address" ip_addr_db = sa.Column('ip_addr', sa.Integer, primary_key=True, index=True, unique=True) Network.addresses = orm.relation(Address, primaryjoin=Address.ip_addr_db.between( Network.ip_net_addr_db, Network.ip_broadcast_addr_db), foreign_keys=[Address.ip_addr_db]) metadata.create_all(engine) Session = orm.sessionmaker(bind=engine) Network() I you run this, you get this error: ArgumentError: Could not determine relation direction for primaryjoin condition 'address.ip_addr BETWEEN network.ip_net_addr AND network.ip_broadcast_addr', on relation Network.addresses. Do the columns in 'foreign_keys' represent only the 'foreign' columns in this join condition ? The answer to that question is Yes, but I cant figure out how to tell it that

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• Knowing your user is key--Part 1: Motivation

  - by erikanollwebb

  I was thinking where the best place to start in this blog would be and finally came back to a theme that I think is pretty critical--successful gamification in the enterprise comes down to knowing your user.  Lots of folks will say that gamification is about understanding that everyone is a gamer.  But at least in my org, that argument won't play for a lot of people.  Pun intentional.  It's not that I don't see the attraction to the idea--really, very few people play no games at all.  If they don't play video games, they might play solitaire on their computer.  They may play card games, or some type of sport.  Mario Herger has some great facts on how much game playing there is going on at his Enterprise-Gamification.com website. But at the end of the day, I can't sell that into my organization well.  We are Oracle.  We make big, serious software designed run your whole business.  We don't make Angry Birds out of your financial reporting tools.  So I stick with the argument that works better.  Gamification techniques are really just good principals of user experience packaged a little differently.  Feedback?  We already know feedback is important when using software.  Progress indicators?  Got that too.  Game mechanics may package things in a more explicit way but it's not really "new".  To know how to use game mechanics, and what a user experience team is important for, is totally understanding who our users are and what they are motivated by. For several years, I taught college psychology courses, including Motivation.  Motivation is generally broken down into intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.  There's intrinsic, which comes from within the individual.  And there's extrinsic, which comes from outside the individual.  Intrinsic motivation is that motivation that comes from just a general sense of pleasure in the doing of something.  For example, I like to cook.  I like to cook a lot.  The kind of cooking I think is just fun makes other people--people who don't like to cook--cringe.  Like the cake I made this week--the star-spangled rhapsody from The Cake Bible: two layers of meringue, two layers of genoise flavored with a raspberry eau de vie syrup, whipped cream with berries and a mousseline buttercream, also flavored with raspberry liqueur and topped with fresh raspberries and blueberries. I love cooking--I ask for cooking tools for my birthday and Christmas, I take classes like sushi making and knife skills for fun.  I like reading about you can make an emulsion of egg yolks, melted butter and lemon, cook slowly and transform them into a sauce hollandaise (my use of all the egg yolks that didn't go into the aforementioned cake).  And while it's nice when people like what I cook, I don't do it for that.  I do it because I think it's fun.  My former boss, Ultan Ó Broin, loves to fish in the sea off the coast of Ireland.  Not because he gets prizes for it, or awards, but because it's fun.  To quote a note he sent me today when I asked if having been recently ill kept him from the beginning of mackerel season, he told me he had already been out and said "I can fish when on a deathbed" (read more of Ultan's work, see his blogs on User Assistance and Translation.). That's not the kind of intensity you get about something you don't like to do.  I'm sure you can think of something you do just because you like it. So how does that relate to gamification?  Gamification in the enterprise space is about uncovering the game within work.  Gamification is about tapping into things people already find motivating.  But to do that, you need to know what that user is motivated by. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is one of those areas where over-the-top gamification seems to work (not to plug a competitor in this space, but you can search on what Bunchball* has done with a company just a little north of us on 101 for the CRM crowd).  Sales people are naturally competitive and thrive on that plus recognition of their sales work.  You can use lots of game mechanics like leaderboards and challenges and scorecards with this type of user and they love it.  Show my whole org I'm leading in sales for the quarter?  Bring it on!  However, take the average accountant and show how much general ledger activity they have done in the last week and expose it to their whole org on a leaderboard and I think you'd see a lot of people looking for a new job.  Why?  Because in general, accountants aren't extraverts who thrive on competition in their work.  That doesn't mean there aren't game mechanics that would work for them, but they won't be the same game mechanics that work for sales people.  It's a different type of user and they are motivated by different things. To break this up, I'll stop here and post now.  I'll pick this thread up in the next post. Thoughts? Questions? *Disclosure: To my knowledge, Oracle has no relationship with Bunchball at this point in time.

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• What is "src" directory created by Eclipse?

  - by Roman

  I just installed Eclipse. The Eclipse created the "workspace" folder. In this folder I created a "game" sub-folder (for my class called "game"). I have already .java files for that project (I wrote them in a text editor before I started to use Eclipse). I put all my .java file into the "game" directory. In Eclipse I created a "New Java Project" from existing code. What wanders me is that the Eclipse create a "src" sub-folder into my "game" folder. As far as I understand "src" stands for "source". But my source (.java files) is in the "game" (by the construction). Am I doing something wrong?

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