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• Superpower Your Touchpad Computer with Scrybe

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you looking for a way to help your Touchpad computer make you more productive?  Here’s a quick look at Scrybe, a new application from Synaptics that lets you superpower it. Touchpad devices have become increasingly more interesting as they’ve included support for multi-touch gestures.  Scrybe takes it to the next level and lets you use your touchpad as an application launcher.  You can launch any application, website, or complete many common commands on your computer with a simple gesture.  Scrybe works with most modern Synaptics touchpads, which are standard on most laptops and netbooks.  It is optimized for newer multi-touch touchpads, but can also work with standard single-touch touchpads.  It works on Windows 7, Vista, and XP, so chances are it will work with your laptop or netbook. Get Started With Scrybe Head over to the Scrybe website and download the latest version (link below).  You are asked to enter your email address, name, and information about your computer…but you actually only have to enter your email address.  Click Download when finished. Run the installer when it’s download.  It will automatically download the latest Synaptics driver for your touchpad and any other components needed for Scrybe.  Note that the Scrybe installer will ask to install the Yahoo! toolbar, so uncheck this to avoid adding this worthless browser toolbar. Using Scrybe To open an application or website with a gesture, press 3 fingers on your touchpad at once, or if your touchpad doesn’t support multi-touch gestures, then press Ctrl+Alt and press 1 finger on your touchpad.  This will open the Scrype input pane; start drawing a gesture, and you’ll see it on the grey square.  The input pane shows some default gestures you can try. Here we drew an “M”, which opens our default Music player.  As soon as you finish the gesture and lift up your finger, Scrybe will open the application or website you selected. A notification balloon will let you know what gesture was preformed. When you’re entering your gesture, the input pane will show white “ink”.  The “ink” will turn blue if the command is recognized, but will turn red if it isn’t.  If Scrybe doesn’t recognize your command, press 3 fingers and try again. Scrybe Control Panel You can open the Scrybe Control panel to enter or change commands by entering a box-like gesture, or right-clicking the Scrybe icon in your system tray and selecting “Scrybe Control Panel”. Scrybe has many pre-configured gestures that you can preview and even practice. All of the gestures in the Popular tab are preset and cannot be changed.  However, the ones in the favorites tab can be edited.  Select the gesture you wish to edit, and click the gear icon to change it.  Here we changed the email gesture to open Hotmail instead of the default Yahoo Mail. Scrybe can also help you perform many common Windows commands such as Copy and Undo.  Select the Tools tab to see all of these commands.   Scrybe has many settings you may wish to change.  Select the Preferences button in the Control Panel to change these.  Here’s some of the settings we changed. Uncheck “Display a message” to turn off the tooltip notifications when you enter a gesture Uncheck “Show symbol hints” to turn off the sidebar on the input pane Select the search engine you want to open with the Search Gesture.  The default is Yahoo, but you can choose your favorite. Adding a new Scrybe Gesture The default Scrybe options are useful, but the best part is that you can assign gestures to your own programs or websites.  Open the Scrybe control panel, and click the plus sign on the bottom left corner.  Enter a name for your gesture, and then choose if it is for a website or an application. If you want the gesture to open a website, enter the address in the box. Alternately, if you want your gesture to open an application, select Launch Application and then either enter the path to the application, or click the button beside the Launch field and browse to it. Now click the down arrow on the blue box and choose one of the gestures for your application or website. Your new gesture will show up under the Favorites tab in the Scrybe control panel, and you can use it whenever you want from Scrybe, or practice the gesture by selecting the Practice button. Conclusion If you enjoy multi-touch gestures, you may find Scrybe very useful on your laptop or netbook.  Scrybe recognizes gestures fairly easily, even if you don’t enter them perfectly correctly.  Just like pinch-to-zoom and two-finger scroll, Scrybe can quickly become something you miss on other laptops. Download Scrybe (registration required) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Fixing Firefox Scrolling Problems with Dell Synaptics TouchpadRemove Synaptics Touchpad Icon from System TrayRoll Back Troublesome Device Drivers in Windows VistaChange Your Computer Name in Windows 7 or VistaLet Somebody Use Your Computer Without Logging Off in Ubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Fun with 47 charts and graphs Tomorrow is Mother’s Day Check the Average Speed of YouTube Videos You’ve Watched OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott

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• Goto for the Java Programming Language

  - by darcy

  Work on JDK 8 is well-underway, but we thought this late-breaking JEP for another language change for the platform couldn't wait another day before being published. Title: Goto for the Java Programming Language Author: Joseph D. Darcy Organization: Oracle. Created: 2012/04/01 Type: Feature State: Funded Exposure: Open Component: core/lang Scope: SE JSR: 901 MR Discussion: compiler dash dev at openjdk dot java dot net Start: 2012/Q2 Effort: XS Duration: S Template: 1.0 Reviewed-by: Duke Endorsed-by: Edsger Dijkstra Funded-by: Blue Sun Corporation Summary Provide the benefits of the time-testing goto control structure to Java programs. The Java language has a history of adding new control structures over time, the assert statement in 1.4, the enhanced for-loop in 1.5,and try-with-resources in 7. Having support for goto is long-overdue and simple to implement since the JVM already has goto instructions. Success Metrics The goto statement will allow inefficient and verbose recursive algorithms and explicit loops to be replaced with more compact code. The effort will be a success if at least twenty five percent of the JDK's explicit loops are replaced with goto's. Coordination with IDE vendors is expected to help facilitate this goal. Motivation The goto construct offers numerous benefits to the Java platform, from increased expressiveness, to more compact code, to providing new programming paradigms to appeal to a broader demographic. In JDK 8, there is a renewed focus on using the Java platform on embedded devices with more modest resources than desktop or server environments. In such contexts, static and dynamic memory footprint is a concern. One significant component of footprint is the code attribute of class files and certain classes of important algorithms can be expressed more compactly using goto than using other constructs, saving footprint. For example, to implement state machines recursively, some parties have asked for the JVM to support tail calls, that is, to perform a complex transformation with security implications to turn a method call into a goto. Such complicated machinery should not be assumed for an embedded context. A better solution is just to expose to the programmer the desired functionality, goto. The web has familiarized users with a model of traversing links among different HTML pages in a free-form fashion with some state being maintained on the side, such as login credentials, to effect behavior. This is exactly the programming model of goto and code. While in the past this has been derided as leading to "spaghetti code," spaghetti is a tasty and nutritious meal for programmers, unlike quiche. The invokedynamic instruction added by JSR 292 exposes the JVM's linkage operation to programmers. This is a low-level operation that can be leveraged by sophisticated programmers. Likewise, goto is a also a low-level operation that should not be hidden from programmers who can use more efficient idioms. Some may object that goto was consciously excluded from the original design of Java as one of the removed feature from C and C++. However, the designers of the Java programming languages have revisited these removals before. The enum construct was also left out only to be added in JDK 5 and multiple inheritance was left out, only to be added back by the virtual extension method methods of Project Lambda. As a living language, the needs of the growing Java community today should be used to judge what features are needed in the platform tomorrow; the language should not be forever bound by the decisions of the past. Description From its initial version, the JVM has had two instructions for unconditional transfer of control within a method, goto (0xa7) and goto_w (0xc8). The goto_w instruction is used for larger jumps. All versions of the Java language have supported labeled statements; however, only the break and continue statements were able to specify a particular label as a target with the onerous restriction that the label must be lexically enclosing. The grammar addition for the goto statement is: GotoStatement: goto Identifier ; The new goto statement similar to break except that the target label can be anywhere inside the method and the identifier is mandatory. The compiler simply translates the goto statement into one of the JVM goto instructions targeting the right offset in the method. Therefore, adding the goto statement to the platform is only a small effort since existing compiler and JVM functionality is reused. Other language changes to support goto include obvious updates to definite assignment analysis, reachability analysis, and exception analysis. Possible future extensions include a computed goto as found in gcc, which would replace the identifier in the goto statement with an expression having the type of a label. Testing Since goto will be implemented using largely existing facilities, only light levels of testing are needed. Impact Compatibility: Since goto is already a keyword, there are no source compatibility implications. Performance/scalability: Performance will improve with more compact code. JVMs already need to handle irreducible flow graphs since goto is a VM instruction.

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• Some non-generic collections

  - by Simon Cooper

  Although the collections classes introduced in .NET 2, 3.5 and 4 cover most scenarios, there are still some .NET 1 collections that don't have generic counterparts. In this post, I'll be examining what they do, why you might use them, and some things you'll need to bear in mind when doing so. BitArray System.Collections.BitArray is conceptually the same as a List<bool>, but whereas List<bool> stores each boolean in a single byte (as that's what the backing bool[] does), BitArray uses a single bit to store each value, and uses various bitmasks to access each bit individually. This means that BitArray is eight times smaller than a List<bool>. Furthermore, BitArray has some useful functions for bitmasks, like And, Xor and Not, and it's not limited to 32 or 64 bits; a BitArray can hold as many bits as you need. However, it's not all roses and kittens. There are some fundamental limitations you have to bear in mind when using BitArray: It's a non-generic collection. The enumerator returns object (a boxed boolean), rather than an unboxed bool. This means that if you do this: foreach (bool b in bitArray) { ... } Every single boolean value will be boxed, then unboxed. And if you do this: foreach (var b in bitArray) { ... } you'll have to manually unbox b on every iteration, as it'll come out of the enumerator an object. Instead, you should manually iterate over the collection using a for loop: for (int i=0; i<bitArray.Length; i++) { bool b = bitArray[i]; ... } Following on from that, if you want to use BitArray in the context of an IEnumerable<bool>, ICollection<bool> or IList<bool>, you'll need to write a wrapper class, or use the Enumerable.Cast<bool> extension method (although Cast would box and unbox every value you get out of it). There is no Add or Remove method. You specify the number of bits you need in the constructor, and that's what you get. You can change the length yourself using the Length property setter though. It doesn't implement IList. Although not really important if you're writing a generic wrapper around it, it is something to bear in mind if you're using it with pre-generic code. However, if you use BitArray carefully, it can provide significant gains over a List<bool> for functionality and efficiency of space. OrderedDictionary System.Collections.Specialized.OrderedDictionary does exactly what you would expect - it's an IDictionary that maintains items in the order they are added. It does this by storing key/value pairs in a Hashtable (to get O(1) key lookup) and an ArrayList (to maintain the order). You can access values by key or index, and insert or remove items at a particular index. The enumerator returns items in index order. However, the Keys and Values properties return ICollection, not IList, as you might expect; CopyTo doesn't maintain the same ordering, as it copies from the backing Hashtable, not ArrayList; and any operations that insert or remove items from the middle of the collection are O(n), just like a normal list. In short; don't use this class. If you need some sort of ordered dictionary, it would be better to write your own generic dictionary combining a Dictionary<TKey, TValue> and List<KeyValuePair<TKey, TValue>> or List<TKey> for your specific situation. ListDictionary and HybridDictionary To look at why you might want to use ListDictionary or HybridDictionary, we need to examine the performance of these dictionaries compared to Hashtable and Dictionary<object, object>. For this test, I added n items to each collection, then randomly accessed n/2 items: So, what's going on here? Well, ListDictionary is implemented as a linked list of key/value pairs; all operations on the dictionary require an O(n) search through the list. However, for small n, the constant factor that big-o notation doesn't measure is much lower than the hashing overhead of Hashtable or Dictionary. HybridDictionary combines a Hashtable and ListDictionary; for small n, it uses a backing ListDictionary, but switches to a Hashtable when it gets to 9 items (you can see the point it switches from a ListDictionary to Hashtable in the graph). Apart from that, it's got very similar performance to Hashtable. So why would you want to use either of these? In short, you wouldn't. Any gain in performance by using ListDictionary over Dictionary<TKey, TValue> would be offset by the generic dictionary not having to cast or box the items you store, something the graphs above don't measure. Only if the performance of the dictionary is vital, the dictionary will hold less than 30 items, and you don't need type safety, would you use ListDictionary over the generic Dictionary. And even then, there's probably more useful performance gains you can make elsewhere.

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• Drawing on a webpage – HTML5 - IE9

  - by nmarun

  So I upgraded to IE9 and continued exploring HTML5. Now there’s this ‘thing’ called Canvas in HTML5 with which you can do some cool stuff. Alright what IS this Canvas thing anyways? The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group says this: “The canvas element provides scripts with a resolution-dependent bitmap canvas, which can be used for rendering graphs, game graphics, or other visual images on the fly.” The Canvas element has two only attributes – width and height and when not specified they take up the default values of 300 and 150 respectively. Below is what my HTML file looks like: 1: <!DOCTYPE html> 2: <html lang="en-US"> 3: <head> 4: <script type="text/javascript" src="CustomScript.js"></script> 5: <script src="jquery-1.4.4.js" type="text/javascript"></script 6:  7: <title>Draw on a webpage</title> 8: </head> 9: <body> 10: <canvas id="canvas" width="500" height="500"></canvas> 11: <br /> 12: <input type="submit" id="submit" value="Clear" /> 13: <h4 id="currentPosition"> 14: 0, 0 15: </h4> 16: <div id="mousedownCoords"></div> 17: </body> 18: </html> In case you’re wondering, this is not a MVC or any kind of web application. This is plain ol’ HTML even though I’m writing all this in VS 2010. You see this is a very simple, ‘gimmicks-free’ html page. I have declared a Canvas element on line 10 and a button on line 11 to clear the drawing board. I’m using jQuery / JavaScript show the current position of the mouse on the screen. This will get updated in the ‘currentPosition’ <h4> tag and I’m using the ‘mousedownCoords’ to write all the places where the mouse was clicked. This is what my page renders as: The rectangle with a background is our canvas. The coloring is due to some javascript (which we’ll see in a moment). Now let’s get to our CustomScript.js file. 1: jQuery(document).ready(function () { 2: var isFirstClick = true; 3: var canvas = document.getElementById("canvas"); 4: // getContext: Returns an object that exposes an API for drawing on the canvas 5: var canvasContext = canvas.getContext("2d"); 6: fillBackground(); 7:  8: $("#submit").click(function () { 9: clearCanvas(); 10: fillBackground(); 11: }); 12:  13: $(document).mousemove(function (e) { 14: $('#currentPosition').html(e.pageX + ', ' + e.pageY); 15: }); 16: $(document).mouseup(function (e) { 17: // on the first click 18: // set the moveTo 19: if (isFirstClick == true) { 20: canvasContext.beginPath(); 21: canvasContext.moveTo(e.pageX - 7, e.pageY - 7); 22: isFirstClick = false; 23: } 24: else { 25: // on subsequent clicks, draw a line 26: canvasContext.lineTo(e.pageX - 7, e.pageY - 7); 27: canvasContext.stroke(); 28: } 29:  30: $('#mousedownCoords').text($('#mousedownCoords').text() + '(' + e.pageX + ',' + e.pageY + ')'); 31: }); 32:  33: function fillBackground() { 34: canvasContext.fillStyle = '#a1b1c3'; 35: canvasContext.fillRect(0, 0, 500, 500); 36: canvasContext.fill(); 37: } 38:  39: function clearCanvas() { 40: // wipe-out the canvas 41: canvas.width = canvas.width; 42: // set the isFirstClick to true 43: // so the next shape can begin 44: isFirstClick = true; 45: // clear the text 46: $('#mousedownCoords').text(''); 47: } 48: })   The script only looks long and complicated, but is not. I’ll go over the main steps. Get a ‘hold’ of your canvas object and retrieve the ‘2d’ context out of it. On mousemove event, write the current x and y coordinates to the ‘currentPosition’ element. On mouseup event, check if this is the first time the user has clicked on the canvas. The coloring of the canvas is done in the fillBackground() function. We first need to start a new path. This is done by calling the beginPath() function on our context. The moveTo() function sets the starting point of our path. The lineTo() function sets the end point of the line to be drawn. The stroke() function is the one that actually draws the line on our canvas. So if you want to play with the demo, here’s how you do it. First click on the canvas (nothing visible happens on the canvas). The second click draws a line from the first click to the current coordinates and so on and so forth. Click on the ‘Clear’ button, to reset the canvas and to give your creativity a clean slate. Here’s a sample output: Happy drawing! Verdict: HTML5 and IE9 – I think we’re on to something big and great here!

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• Namespaces are obsolete

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  To those of us who have been around for a while, namespaces have been part of the landscape. One could even say that they have been defining the large-scale features of the landscape in question. However, something happened fairly recently that I think makes this venerable structure obsolete. Before I explain this development and why it’s a superior concept to namespaces, let me recapitulate what namespaces are and why they’ve been so good to us over the years… Namespaces are used for a few different things: Scope: a namespace delimits the portion of code where a name (for a class, sub-namespace, etc.) has the specified meaning. Namespaces are usually the highest-level scoping structures in a software package. Collision prevention: name collisions are a universal problem. Some systems, such as jQuery, wave it away, but the problem remains. Namespaces provide a reasonable approach to global uniqueness (and in some implementations such as XML, enforce it). In .NET, there are ways to relocate a namespace to avoid those rare collision cases. Hierarchy: programmers like neat little boxes, and especially boxes within boxes within boxes. For some reason. Regular human beings on the other hand, tend to think linearly, which is why the Windows explorer for example has tried in a few different ways to flatten the file system hierarchy for the user. 1 is clearly useful because we need to protect our code from bleeding effects from the rest of the application (and vice versa). A language with only global constructs may be what some of us started programming on, but it’s not desirable in any way today. 2 may not be always reasonably worth the trouble (jQuery is doing fine with its global plug-in namespace), but we still need it in many cases. One should note however that globally unique names are not the only possible implementation. In fact, they are a rather extreme solution. What we really care about is collision prevention within our application. What happens outside is irrelevant. 3 is, more than anything, an aesthetical choice. A common convention has been to encode the whole pedigree of the code into the namespace. Come to think about it, we never think we need to import “Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Agent” and that would be very hard to remember. What we want to do is bring nHibernate into our app. And this is precisely what you’ll do with modern package managers and module loaders. I want to take the specific example of RequireJS, which is commonly used with Node. Here is how you import a module with RequireJS: var http = require("http"); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } This is of course importing a HTTP stack module into the code. There is no noise here. Let’s break this down. Scope (1) is provided by the one scoping mechanism in JavaScript: the closure surrounding the module’s code. Whatever scoping mechanism is provided by the language would be fine here. Collision prevention (2) is very elegantly handled. Whereas relocating is an afterthought, and an exceptional measure with namespaces, it is here on the frontline. You always relocate, using an extremely familiar pattern: variable assignment. We are very much used to managing our local variable names and any possible collision will get solved very easily by picking a different name. Wait a minute, I hear some of you say. This is only taking care of collisions on the client-side, on the left of that assignment. What if I have two libraries with the name “http”? Well, You can better qualify the path to the module, which is what the require parameter really is. As for hierarchical organization, you don’t really want that, do you? RequireJS’ module pattern does elegantly cover the bases that namespaces used to cover, but it also promotes additional good practices. First, it promotes usage of self-contained, single responsibility units of code through the closure-based, stricter scoping mechanism. Namespaces are somewhat more porous, as using/import statements can be used bi-directionally, which leads us to my second point… Sane dependency graphs are easier to achieve and sustain with such a structure. With namespaces, it is easy to construct dependency cycles (that’s bad, mmkay?). With this pattern, the equivalent would be to build mega-components, which are an easier problem to spot than a decay into inter-dependent namespaces, for which you need specialized tools. I really like this pattern very much, and I would like to see more environments implement it. One could argue that dependency injection has some commonalities with this for example. What do you think? This is the half-baked result of some morning shower reflections, and I’d love to read your thoughts about it. What am I missing?

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• Why do we use Pythagoras in game physics?

  - by Starkers

  I've recently learned that we use Pythagoras a lot in our physics calculations and I'm afraid I don't really get the point. Here's an example from a book to make sure an object doesn't travel faster than a MAXIMUM_VELOCITY constant in the horizontal plane: MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = <any number>; SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = MAXIMUM_VELOCITY * MAXIMUM_VELOCITY; function animate(){ var squared_horizontal_velocity = (x_velocity * x_velocity) + (z_velocity * z_velocity); if( squared_horizontal_velocity <= SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY ){ scalar = squared_horizontal_velocity / SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY; x_velocity = x_velocity / scalar; z_velocity = x_velocity / scalar; } } Let's try this with some numbers: An object is attempting to move 5 units in x and 5 units in z. It should only be able to move 5 units horizontally in total! MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = 5; SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = 5 * 5; SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = 25; function animate(){ var x_velocity = 5; var z_velocity = 5; var squared_horizontal_velocity = (x_velocity * x_velocity) + (z_velocity * z_velocity); var squared_horizontal_velocity = 5 * 5 + 5 * 5; var squared_horizontal_velocity = 25 + 25; var squared_horizontal_velocity = 50; // if( squared_horizontal_velocity <= SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY ){ if( 50 <= 25 ){ scalar = squared_horizontal_velocity / SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY; scalar = 50 / 25; scalar = 2.0; x_velocity = x_velocity / scalar; x_velocity = 5 / 2.0; x_velocity = 2.5; z_velocity = z_velocity / scalar; z_velocity = 5 / 2.0; z_velocity = 2.5; // new_horizontal_velocity = x_velocity + z_velocity // new_horizontal_velocity = 2.5 + 2.5 // new_horizontal_velocity = 5 } } Now this works well, but we can do the same thing without Pythagoras: MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = 5; function animate(){ var x_velocity = 5; var z_velocity = 5; var horizontal_velocity = x_velocity + z_velocity; var horizontal_velocity = 5 + 5; var horizontal_velocity = 10; // if( horizontal_velocity >= MAXIMUM_VELOCITY ){ if( 10 >= 5 ){ scalar = horizontal_velocity / MAXIMUM_VELOCITY; scalar = 10 / 5; scalar = 2.0; x_velocity = x_velocity / scalar; x_velocity = 5 / 2.0; x_velocity = 2.5; z_velocity = z_velocity / scalar; z_velocity = 5 / 2.0; z_velocity = 2.5; // new_horizontal_velocity = x_velocity + z_velocity // new_horizontal_velocity = 2.5 + 2.5 // new_horizontal_velocity = 5 } } Benefits of doing it without Pythagoras: Less lines Within those lines, it's easier to read what's going on ...and it takes less time to compute, as there are less multiplications Seems to me like computers and humans get a better deal without Pythagoras! However, I'm sure I'm wrong as I've seen Pythagoras' theorem in a number of reputable places, so I'd like someone to explain me the benefit of using Pythagoras to a maths newbie. Does this have anything to do with unit vectors? To me a unit vector is when we normalize a vector and turn it into a fraction. We do this by dividing the vector by a larger constant. I'm not sure what constant it is. The total size of the graph? Anyway, because it's a fraction, I take it, a unit vector is basically a graph that can fit inside a 3D grid with the x-axis running from -1 to 1, z-axis running from -1 to 1, and the y-axis running from -1 to 1. That's literally everything I know about unit vectors... not much :P And I fail to see their usefulness. Also, we're not really creating a unit vector in the above examples. Should I be determining the scalar like this: // a mathematical work-around of my own invention. There may be a cleverer way to do this! I've also made up my own terms such as 'divisive_scalar' so don't bother googling var divisive_scalar = (squared_horizontal_velocity / SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY); var divisive_scalar = ( 50 / 25 ); var divisive_scalar = 2; var multiplicative_scalar = (divisive_scalar / (2*divisive_scalar)); var multiplicative_scalar = (2 / (2*2)); var multiplicative_scalar = (2 / 4); var multiplicative_scalar = 0.5; x_velocity = x_velocity * multiplicative_scalar x_velocity = 5 * 0.5 x_velocity = 2.5 Again, I can't see why this is better, but it's more "unit-vector-y" because the multiplicative_scalar is a unit_vector? As you can see, I use words such as "unit-vector-y" so I'm really not a maths whiz! Also aware that unit vectors might have nothing to do with Pythagoras so ignore all of this if I'm barking up the wrong tree. I'm a very visual person (3D modeller and concept artist by trade!) and I find diagrams and graphs really, really helpful so as many as humanely possible please!

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• Rules for Naming

  - by PointsToShare

  © 2011 By: Dov Trietsch. All rights reserved Naming Documents (or is it “Document, Naming”?) Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name And for that name which is no part of thee Take all myself.  Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet Act II, Scene 2 We normally only use the bold portion of the famous Shakespearean quote above, but it is really out of context. As the play unfolds, we learn that a name is all too powerful. Indeed it is because of their names that the doomed lovers die. There might be life and death in a name (BTW, when I wrote this monogram, I was in Hatfield, PA. Remember the Hatfields and the McCoys?) This is a bit extreme, but in the field of Knowledge Management (KM) names are of the utmost importance as well. When I write an article about managing SharePoint sites, how should I name it? “Managing a site” or “Site, managing”? Nine times out of ten I’d opt for the latter. Almost everything we do is “Managing” so to make life easier for a person looking for meaningful content, we title our articles starting with the differentiator rather than the common factor. As a rule of thumb, we start the name with the noun rather than the verb. It is not what we do that is the primary key; it is what we do it to. So, answer this – is it a “rule of thumb” or a “thumb rule?” This is tough. A lot of what we do when naming is a judgment call. Both thumb and rule are nouns, albeit concrete and abstract (more about this later), but to most people “thumb rule” is meaningless while “rule of thumb” is an idiom. The difference between knowledge and information is that knowledge is meaningful information placed in context. Thus I elect the “rule of thumb”. It is the more meaningful title. Abstract and Concrete are relative terms. Many nouns (and verbs) that are abstract to a commoner, are concrete to a practitioner of one profession or another and may even have different concrete meanings in different professional jargons. Think about “running”. To an executive it means running a business, to a marathoner its meaning is much more literal. Generally speaking, we store and disseminate knowledge within a practice more than we do it in general. Even dictionaries encyclopedias define terms as they apply to different audiences. The rule of thumb is to put the more concrete first, but within the audience’s jargon. Even the title of this monogram is a question. Do I name it “Naming Documents” or “Documents, Naming”? Well, my own rule of thumb (“Here he goes again!?”) states that the latter is better because it starts with a noun, but this is a document about naming more than it about documents. The rules of naming also apply to graphs and charts, excel spreadsheets, and so on. Thus, I vote for the former.  A better title could have been “Naming Objects” only the word “Object” is a bit too abstract. How about just “Naming” or “Naming, rules of”? You get the drift. One of the ways to resolve all of this is to store the documents in Knowledge-Bases, which may become the subjects of a future punditry. Knowledge bases use keywords to describe their content.  Use a Metadata store for the keywords to at least attempt some common grounds. Here is another general rule (rule of thumb?!!) – put at least the one keyword in the title. Use subtitles. Here is an example: Migrating documents – Screening, cleaning, and organizing our knowledge. The main keyword is “documents”, next is “migrating”, other keywords also appear in the subtitle. They are “screening”, “cleaning”, and “organizing”. Any questions? Send me an amply named document by email: [email protected]

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• Why do we use the Pythagorean theorem in game physics?

  - by Starkers

  I've recently learned that we use Pythagorean theorem a lot in our physics calculations and I'm afraid I don't really get the point. Here's an example from a book to make sure an object doesn't travel faster than a MAXIMUM_VELOCITY constant in the horizontal plane: MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = <any number>; SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = MAXIMUM_VELOCITY * MAXIMUM_VELOCITY; function animate(){ var squared_horizontal_velocity = (x_velocity * x_velocity) + (z_velocity * z_velocity); if( squared_horizontal_velocity <= SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY ){ scalar = squared_horizontal_velocity / SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY; x_velocity = x_velocity / scalar; z_velocity = x_velocity / scalar; } } Let's try this with some numbers: An object is attempting to move 5 units in x and 5 units in z. It should only be able to move 5 units horizontally in total! MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = 5; SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = 5 * 5; SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = 25; function animate(){ var x_velocity = 5; var z_velocity = 5; var squared_horizontal_velocity = (x_velocity * x_velocity) + (z_velocity * z_velocity); var squared_horizontal_velocity = 5 * 5 + 5 * 5; var squared_horizontal_velocity = 25 + 25; var squared_horizontal_velocity = 50; // if( squared_horizontal_velocity <= SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY ){ if( 50 <= 25 ){ scalar = squared_horizontal_velocity / SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY; scalar = 50 / 25; scalar = 2.0; x_velocity = x_velocity / scalar; x_velocity = 5 / 2.0; x_velocity = 2.5; z_velocity = z_velocity / scalar; z_velocity = 5 / 2.0; z_velocity = 2.5; // new_horizontal_velocity = x_velocity + z_velocity // new_horizontal_velocity = 2.5 + 2.5 // new_horizontal_velocity = 5 } } Now this works well, but we can do the same thing without Pythagoras: MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = 5; function animate(){ var x_velocity = 5; var z_velocity = 5; var horizontal_velocity = x_velocity + z_velocity; var horizontal_velocity = 5 + 5; var horizontal_velocity = 10; // if( horizontal_velocity >= MAXIMUM_VELOCITY ){ if( 10 >= 5 ){ scalar = horizontal_velocity / MAXIMUM_VELOCITY; scalar = 10 / 5; scalar = 2.0; x_velocity = x_velocity / scalar; x_velocity = 5 / 2.0; x_velocity = 2.5; z_velocity = z_velocity / scalar; z_velocity = 5 / 2.0; z_velocity = 2.5; // new_horizontal_velocity = x_velocity + z_velocity // new_horizontal_velocity = 2.5 + 2.5 // new_horizontal_velocity = 5 } } Benefits of doing it without Pythagoras: Less lines Within those lines, it's easier to read what's going on ...and it takes less time to compute, as there are less multiplications Seems to me like computers and humans get a better deal without Pythagorean theorem! However, I'm sure I'm wrong as I've seen Pythagoras' theorem in a number of reputable places, so I'd like someone to explain me the benefit of using Pythagorean theorem to a maths newbie. Does this have anything to do with unit vectors? To me a unit vector is when we normalize a vector and turn it into a fraction. We do this by dividing the vector by a larger constant. I'm not sure what constant it is. The total size of the graph? Anyway, because it's a fraction, I take it, a unit vector is basically a graph that can fit inside a 3D grid with the x-axis running from -1 to 1, z-axis running from -1 to 1, and the y-axis running from -1 to 1. That's literally everything I know about unit vectors... not much :P And I fail to see their usefulness. Also, we're not really creating a unit vector in the above examples. Should I be determining the scalar like this: // a mathematical work-around of my own invention. There may be a cleverer way to do this! I've also made up my own terms such as 'divisive_scalar' so don't bother googling var divisive_scalar = (squared_horizontal_velocity / SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY); var divisive_scalar = ( 50 / 25 ); var divisive_scalar = 2; var multiplicative_scalar = (divisive_scalar / (2*divisive_scalar)); var multiplicative_scalar = (2 / (2*2)); var multiplicative_scalar = (2 / 4); var multiplicative_scalar = 0.5; x_velocity = x_velocity * multiplicative_scalar x_velocity = 5 * 0.5 x_velocity = 2.5 Again, I can't see why this is better, but it's more "unit-vector-y" because the multiplicative_scalar is a unit_vector? As you can see, I use words such as "unit-vector-y" so I'm really not a maths whiz! Also aware that unit vectors might have nothing to do with Pythagorean theorem so ignore all of this if I'm barking up the wrong tree. I'm a very visual person (3D modeller and concept artist by trade!) and I find diagrams and graphs really, really helpful so as many as humanely possible please!

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• Rush Hour - Solving the game

  - by Rubys

  Rush Hour if you're not familiar with it, the game consists of a collection of cars of varying sizes, set either horizontally or vertically, on a NxM grid that has a single exit. Each car can move forward/backward in the directions it's set in, as long as another car is not blocking it. You can never change the direction of a car. There is one special car, usually it's the red one. It's set in the same row that the exit is in, and the objective of the game is to find a series of moves (a move - moving a car N steps back or forward) that will allow the red car to drive out of the maze. I've been trying to think how to solve this problem computationally, and I can really not think of any good solution. I came up with a few: Backtracking. This is pretty simple - Recursion and some more recursion until you find the answer. However, each car can be moved a few different ways, and in each game state a few cars can be moved, and the resulting game tree will be HUGE. Some sort of constraint algorithm that will take into account what needs to be moved, and work recursively somehow. This is a very rough idea, but it is an idea. Graphs? Model the game states as a graph and apply some sort of variation on a coloring algorithm, to resolve dependencies? Again, this is a very rough idea. A friend suggested genetic algorithms. This is sort of possible but not easily. I can't think of a good way to make an evaluation function, and without that we've got nothing. So the question is - How to create a program that takes a grid and the vehicle layout, and outputs a series of steps needed to get the red car out? Sub-issues: Finding some solution. Finding an optimal solution (minimal number of moves) Evaluating how good a current state is Example: How can you move the cars in this setting, so that the red car can "exit" the maze through the exit on the right?

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• Floating point vs integer calculations on modern hardware

  - by maxpenguin

  I am doing some performance critical work in C++, and we are currently using integer calculations for problems that are inherently floating point because "its faster". This causes a whole lot of annoying problems and adds a lot of annoying code. Now, I remember reading about how floating point calculations were so slow approximately circa the 386 days, where I believe (IIRC) that there was an optional co-proccessor. But surely nowadays with exponentially more complex and powerful CPUs it makes no difference in "speed" if doing floating point or integer calculation? Especially since the actual calculation time is tiny compared to something like causing a pipeline stall or fetching something from main memory? I know the correct answer is to benchmark on the target hardware, what would be a good way to test this? I wrote two tiny C++ programs and compared their run time with "time" on Linux, but the actual run time is too variable (doesn't help I am running on a virtual server). Short of spending my entire day running hundreds of benchmarks, making graphs etc. is there something I can do to get a reasonable test of the relative speed? Any ideas or thoughts? Am I completely wrong? The programs I used as follows, they are not identical by any means: #include <iostream> #include <cmath> #include <cstdlib> #include <time.h> int main( int argc, char** argv ) { int accum = 0; srand( time( NULL ) ); for( unsigned int i = 0; i < 100000000; ++i ) { accum += rand( ) % 365; } std::cout << accum << std::endl; return 0; } Program 2: #include <iostream> #include <cmath> #include <cstdlib> #include <time.h> int main( int argc, char** argv ) { float accum = 0; srand( time( NULL ) ); for( unsigned int i = 0; i < 100000000; ++i ) { accum += (float)( rand( ) % 365 ); } std::cout << accum << std::endl; return 0; } Thanks in advance!

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• Data aggregation mongodb vs mysql

  - by Dimitris Stefanidis

  I am currently researching on a backend to use for a project with demanding data aggregation requirements. The main project requirements are the following. Store millions of records for each user. Users might have more than 1 million entries per year so even with 100 users we are talking about 100 million entries per year. Data aggregation on those entries must be performed on the fly. The users need to be able to filter on the entries by a ton of available filters and then present summaries (totals , averages e.t.c) and graphs on the results. Obviously I cannot precalculate any of the aggregation results because the filter combinations (and thus the result sets) are huge. Users are going to have access on their own data only but it would be nice if anonymous stats could be calculated for all the data. The data is going to be most of the time in batch. e.g the user will upload the data every day and it could like 3000 records. In some later version there could be automated programs that upload every few minutes in smaller batches of 100 items for example. I made a simple test of creating a table with 1 million rows and performing a simple sum of 1 column both in mongodb and in mysql and the performance difference was huge. I do not remember the exact numbers but it was something like mysql = 200ms , mongodb = 20 sec. I have also made the test with couchdb and had much worse results. What seems promising speed wise is cassandra which I was very enthusiastic about when I first discovered it. However the documentation is scarce and I haven't found any solid examples on how to perform sums and other aggregate functions on the data. Is that possible ? As it seems from my test (Maybe I have done something wrong) with the current performance its impossible to use mongodb for such a project although the automated sharding functionality seems like a perfect fit for it. Does anybody have experience with data aggregation in mongodb or have any insights that might be of help for the implementation of the project ? Thanks, Dimitris

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• How to designing a generic databse whos layout may change over time?

  - by mawg

  Here's a tricky one - how do I programatically create and interrogate a database who's contents I can't really foresee? I am implementing a generic input form system. The user can create PHP forms with a WYSIWYG layout and use them for any purpose he wishes. He can also query the input. So, we have three stages: a form is designed and generated. This is a one-off procedure, although the form can be edited later. This designs the database. someone or several people make use of the form - say for daily sales reports, stock keeping, payroll, etc. Their input to the forms is written to the database. others, maybe management, can query the database and generate reports. Since these forms are generic, I can't predict the database structure - other than to say that it will reflect HTML form fields and consist of a the data input from collection of edit boxes, memos, radio buttons and the like. Questions and remarks: A) how can I best structure the database, in terms of tables and columns? What about primary keys? My first thought was to use the control name to identify each column, then I realized that the user can edit the form and rename, so that maybe "name" becomes "employee" or "wages" becomes ":salary". I am leaning towards a unique number for each. B) how best to key the rows? I was thinking of a timestamp to allow me to query and a column for the row Id from A) C) I have to handle column rename/insert/delete. Foe deletion, I am unsure whether to delete the data from the database. Even if the user is not inputting it from the form any more he may wish to query what was previously entered. Or there may be some legal requirements to retain the data. Any gotchas in column rename/insert/delete? D) For the querying, I can have my PHP interrogate the database to get column names and generate a form with a list where each entry has a database column name, a checkbox to say if it should be used in the query and, based on column type, some selection criteria. That ought to be enough to build searches like "position = 'senior salesman' and salary 50k". E) I probably have to generate some fancy charts - graphs, histograms, pie charts, etc for query results of numerical data over time. I need to find some good FOSS PHP for this. F) What else have I forgotten? This all seems very tricky to me, but I am database n00b - maybe it is simple to you gurus?

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• XY-Scatter Chart In SSRS Won't Display Points

  - by Dalin Seivewright

  I'm a bit confused with this one. I have a Dataset with a BackupDate and a BackupTime as well as a BackupType. The BackupDate is comprised of 12 characters from the left of a datetime string within a table. The BackupTime is comprised of 8 characters from the right of that same datetime string. So for example: BackupDate would be 'December 12 2008' and the BackupTime would be '12:53PM.' I have added an XY-scatter chart to the report. I've added a 'series' value for the BackupType (so one can distinguish between a Full/Incr/Log backup). I've added a category value of BackupDate and set the Scale for the X-axis from the Min of BackupDate to the Max of BackupDate. I've then added an item to the Values with the Y variable set to BackupTime and the X variable set to BackupDate. The interval for the Y-axis is 12:00AM to 11:59PM and the formatting for the labels is 'hh:mmtt'. The BackupTime matches the format of the Y-axis. The BackupDate matches the format of the X-axis. 10 entries are retrieved by my Dataset and the Legend is properly populated by the BackupType field. No points are being plotted on the graph and no markers/pointers are shown if they are enabled. There should be a point on the graph for every point in time of each day there is a backup of a specific type. Am I missing something? Does anyone know of a good tutorial dealing specifically with XY-scatter graphs and using them in a way I intend? I am using the 2005 version of SSRS rather than the 2008 version. Screenshot of what my chart currently looks like: In case it could be dataset related: SELECT TOP (10) backup_type, LTRIM(RTRIM(LEFT(backup_finish_date, 12))) AS BackupDate, LTRIM(RTRIM(RIGHT(backup_finish_date, 8))) AS BackupTime FROM DBARepository.Backup_History As requested, here are the results of this query. There is a Where clause to constrain the results to a specific database of a specific server that was not included in the above SQL Query. Log Dec 26 2008 12:00PM Log Dec 27 2008 4:00AM Log Dec 27 2008 8:00AM Log Dec 27 2008 12:00PM Log Dec 27 2008 4:00PM Log Dec 27 2008 8:00PM Database Dec 27 2008 10:01PM Log Dec 28 2008 12:00AM Log Dec 28 2008 4:00AM Log Dec 28 2008 8:00AM

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• What is causing this SQL 2005 Primary Key Deadlock between two real-time bulk upserts?

  - by skimania

  Here's the scenario: I've got a table called MarketDataCurrent (MDC) that has live updating stock prices. I've got one process called 'LiveFeed' which reads prices streaming from the wire, queues up inserts, and uses a 'bulk upload to temp table then insert/update to MDC table.' (BulkUpsert) I've got another process which then reads this data, computes other data, and then saves the results back into the same table, using a similar BulkUpsert stored proc. Thirdly, there are a multitude of users running a C# Gui polling the MDC table and reading updates from it. Now, during the day when the data is changing rapidly, things run pretty smoothly, but then, after market hours, we've recently started seeing an increasing number of Deadlock exceptions coming out of the database, nowadays we see 10-20 a day. The imporant thing to note here is that these happen when the values are NOT changing. Here's all the relevant info: Table Def: CREATE TABLE [dbo].[MarketDataCurrent]( [MDID] [int] NOT NULL, [LastUpdate] [datetime] NOT NULL, [Value] [float] NOT NULL, [Source] [varchar](20) NULL, CONSTRAINT [PK_MarketDataCurrent] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ( [MDID] ASC )WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY] ) ON [PRIMARY] - stackoverflow wont let me post images until my reputation goes up to 10, so i'll add them as soon as you bump me up, hopefully as a result of this question. ![alt text][1] [1]: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4049/4690759452_6b94ff7b34.jpg I've got a Sql Profiler Trace Running, catching the deadlocks, and here's what all the graphs look like. stackoverflow wont let me post images until my reputation goes up to 10, so i'll add them as soon as you bump me up, hopefully as a result of this question. ![alt text][2] [2]: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4035/4690125231_78d84c9e15_b.jpg Process 258 is called the following 'BulkUpsert' stored proc, repeatedly, while 73 is calling the next one: ALTER proc [dbo].[MarketDataCurrent_BulkUpload] @updateTime datetime, @source varchar(10) as begin transaction update c with (rowlock) set LastUpdate = getdate(), Value = t.Value, Source = @source from MarketDataCurrent c INNER JOIN #MDTUP t ON c.MDID = t.mdid where c.lastUpdate < @updateTime and c.mdid not in (select mdid from MarketData where LiveFeedTicker is not null and PriceSource like 'LiveFeed.%') and c.value <> t.value insert into MarketDataCurrent with (rowlock) select MDID, getdate(), Value, @source from #MDTUP where mdid not in (select mdid from MarketDataCurrent with (nolock)) and mdid not in (select mdid from MarketData where LiveFeedTicker is not null and PriceSource like 'LiveFeed.%') commit And the other one: ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[MarketDataCurrent_LiveFeedUpload] AS begin transaction -- Update existing mdid UPDATE c WITH (ROWLOCK) SET LastUpdate = t.LastUpdate, Value = t.Value, Source = t.Source FROM MarketDataCurrent c INNER JOIN #TEMPTABLE2 t ON c.MDID = t.mdid; -- Insert new MDID INSERT INTO MarketDataCurrent with (ROWLOCK) SELECT * FROM #TEMPTABLE2 WHERE MDID NOT IN (SELECT MDID FROM MarketDataCurrent with (NOLOCK)) -- Clean up the temp table DELETE #TEMPTABLE2 commit To clarify, those Temp Tables are being created by the C# code on the same connection and are populated using the C# SqlBulkCopy class. To me it looks like it's deadlocking on the PK of the table, so I tried removing that PK and switching to a Unique Constraint instead but that increased the number of deadlocks 10-fold. I'm totally lost as to what to do about this situation and am open to just about any suggestion. HELP!!

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• Finding contained bordered regions from Excel imports.

  - by dmaruca

  I am importing massive amounts of data from Excel that have various table layouts. I have good enough table detection routines and merge cell handling, but I am running into a problem when it comes to dealing with borders. Namely performance. The bordered regions in some of these files have meaning. Data Setup: I am importing directly from Office Open XML using VB6 and MSXML. The data is parsed from the XML into a dictionary of cell data. This wonks wonderfully and is just as fast as using docmd.transferspreadsheet in Access, but returns much better results. Each cell contains a pointer to a style element which contains a pointer to a border element that defines the visibility and weight of each border (this is how the data is structured inside OpenXML, also). Challenge: What I'm trying to do is find every region that is enclosed inside borders, and create a list of cells that are inside that region. What I have done: I initially created a BFS(breadth first search) fill routine to find these areas. This works wonderfully and fast for "normal" sized spreadsheets, but gets way too slow for imports into the thousands of rows. One problem is that a border in Excel could be stored in the cell you are checking or the opposing border in the adjacent cell. That's ok, I can consolidate that data on import to reduce the number of checks needed. One thing I thought about doing is to create a separate graph that outlines the cells using the borders as my edges and using a graph algorithm to find regions that way, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to implement the algorithm. I've used Dijkstra in the past and thought I could do similar with this. So I can span out using no endpoint to search the entire graph, and if I encounter a closed node I know that I just found an enclosed region, but how can I know if the route I've found is the optimal one? I guess I could flag that to run a separate check for the found closed node to the previous node ignoring that one edge. This could work, but wouldn't be much better performance wise on dense graphs. Can anyone else suggest a better method? Thanks for taking the time to read this.

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• Problem with OOP Class Definitions

  - by oben

  Hi, this is Oben from Turkey. I work for my homework in C++ and i have some problems with multiply definitions. My graph class ; class Graph{ private: string name; //Graph name fstream* graphFile; //Graph's file protected: string opBuf; //Operations buffer int containsNode(string); //Query if a node is present Node* nodes; //Nodes in the graph int nofNodes; //Number of nodes in the graph public: static int nOfGraphs; //Number of graphs produced Graph(); //Constructors and destructor Graph(int); Graph(string); Graph(const Graph &); ~Graph(); string getGraphName(); //Get graph name bool addNode(string); //add a node to the graph bool deleteNode(string); //delete a node from the graph bool addEdge(string,string); //add an edge to the graph bool deleteEdge(string,string); //delete an edge from the graph void intersect(const Graph&); //intersect the graph with the <par> void unite(const Graph&); //intersect the graph with the <par> string toString(); //get string representation of the graph void acceptTraverse(BreadthFirst*); void acceptTraverse(DepthFirst *); }; and my traversal class; class Traversal { public: string *visitedNodes; virtual string traverse (const Graph & ); }; class BreadthFirst : public Traversal { public : BreadthFirst(); string traverse(); }; class DepthFirst : public Traversal { public : DepthFirst(); string traverse(); }; My problem is in traversal class , i need to declare Graph class at the same time , in graph class i need traversal class to declare. I have big problems with declerations :) Could you please help me ?

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• CTE Join query issues

  - by Lee_McIntosh

  Hi everyone, this problem has me head going round in circles at the moment and i wondering if anyone could give any pointers as to where im going wrong. Im trying to produce a SPROC that produces a dataset to be called by SSRS for graphs spanning the last 6 months. The data for example purposes uses three tables (theres more but the it wont change the issue at hand) and are as follows: tbl_ReportList: Report Site ---------------- North abc North def East bbb East ccc East ddd South poa South pob South poc South pod West xyz tbl_TicketsRaisedThisMonth: Date Site Type NoOfTickets --------------------------------------------------------- 2010-07-01 00:00:00.000 abc Support 101 2010-07-01 00:00:00.000 abc Complaint 21 2010-07-01 00:00:00.000 def Support 6 ... 2010-12-01 00:00:00.000 abc Support 93 2010-12-01 00:00:00.000 xyz Support 5 tbl_FeedBackRequests: Date Site NoOfFeedBackR ---------------------------------------------------------------- 2010-07-01 00:00:00.000 abc 101 2010-07-01 00:00:00.000 def 11 ... 2010-12-01 00:00:00.000 abc 63 2010-12-01 00:00:00.000 xyz 4 I'm using CTE's to simplify the code, which is as follows: DECLARE @ReportName VarChar(200) SET @ReportName = 'North'; WITH TicketsRaisedThisMonth AS ( SELECT [Date], Site, SUM(NoOfTickets) AS NoOfTickets FROM tbl_TicketsRaisedThisMonth WHERE [Date] >= DATEADD(mm, DATEDIFF(m,0,GETDATE())-6,0) GROUP BY [Date], Site ), FeedBackRequests AS ( SELECT [Date], Site, SUM(NoOfFeedBackR) AS NoOfFeedBackR FROM tbl_FeedBackRequests WHERE [Date] >= DATEADD(mm, DATEDIFF(m,0,GETDATE())-6,0) GROUP BY [Date], Site ), SELECT trtm.[Date] SUM(trtm.NoOfTickets) AS NoOfTickets, SUM(fbr.NoOfFeedBackR) AS NoOfFeedBackR, FROM Reports rpts LEFT OUTER JOIN TotalIncidentsDuringMonth trtm ON rpts.Site = trtm.Site LEFT OUTER JOIN LoggedComplaints fbr ON rpts.Site = fbr.Site WHERE rpts.report = @ReportName GROUP BY trtm.[Date] And the output when the sproc is pass a parameter such as 'North' to be as follows: Date NoOfTickets NoOfFeedBackR ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2010-07-01 00:00:00.000 128 112 2010-08-01 00:00:00.000 <data for that month> <data for that month> 2010-09-01 00:00:00.000 <data for that month> <data for that month> 2010-10-01 00:00:00.000 <data for that month> <data for that month> 2010-11-01 00:00:00.000 <data for that month> <data for that month> 2010-12-01 00:00:00.000 122 63 The issue I'm having is that when i execute the query I'm given a repeated list of values of each month, such as 128 will repeat 6 times then another value for the next months value repeated 6 times, etc. argh!

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• .Net Custom Components "disappear" after file save

  - by EatATaco

  I might have a hard time explaining this because I am at a total loss for what is happening so I am just looking for some guidance. I might be a bit wordy because I don't know exactly what is the relevant information. I am developing a GUI for a project that I am working on in using .Net (C#) Part of the interface mimics, exactly, what we do in another product. For consistency reasons, my boss wants me to make it look the same way. So I got the other software and basically copied and pasted the components into my new GUI. This required me to introduce a component library (the now defunct Graphics Server GSNet, so I can't go to them for help) so I could implement some simple graphs and temperature/pressure "widgets." The components show up fine, and when I compile, everything seems to work fine. However, at some point during my programming it just breaks. Sometimes the tab that these components are on starts throwing exceptions when I view the designer page (A missing method exception) so it won't display. Sometimes JUST those components from the GSNet library don't show up. Sometimes, if I try to run it, I get a not-instantiated exception on one of their lines of code in the designer code file. Sometimes I can't view the designer at all. No matter what I do I can't reverse it. Even if I undo what I just did it won't fix it. If it happens, I have to revert to a backup and start over again. So I started to backup pretty much every step. I compile it and it works. I comment out a line of code, save it, and then uncomment that same line of code (so I am working with the same exact code) and the components all disappear. It doesn't matter what line of code I actually comment out, as long as it is in the same project that these components are being used. I pretty much have to use the components. . . so does anyone have any suggestion or where I can look to debug this?

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• DFS Backtracking with java

  - by Cláudio Ribeiro

  I'm having problems with DFS backtracking in an adjacency matrix. Here's my code: (i added the test to the main in case someone wants to test it) public class Graph { private int numVertex; private int numEdges; private boolean[][] adj; public Graph(int numVertex, int numEdges) { this.numVertex = numVertex; this.numEdges = numEdges; this.adj = new boolean[numVertex][numVertex]; } public void addEdge(int start, int end){ adj[start-1][end-1] = true; adj[end-1][start-1] = true; } List<Integer> visited = new ArrayList<Integer>(); public Integer DFS(Graph G, int startVertex){ int i=0; if(pilha.isEmpty()) pilha.push(startVertex); for(i=1; i<G.numVertex; i++){ pilha.push(i); if(G.adj[i-1][startVertex-1] != false){ G.adj[i-1][startVertex-1] = false; G.adj[startVertex-1][i-1] = false; DFS(G,i); break; }else{ visited.add(pilha.pop()); } System.out.println("Stack: " + pilha); } return -1; } Stack<Integer> pilha = new Stack(); public static void main(String[] args) { Graph g = new Graph(6, 9); g.addEdge(1, 2); g.addEdge(1, 5); g.addEdge(2, 4); g.addEdge(2, 5); g.addEdge(2, 6); g.addEdge(3, 4); g.addEdge(3, 5); g.addEdge(4, 5); g.addEdge(6, 4); g.DFS(g, 1); } } I'm trying to solve the euler path problem. the program solves basic graphs but when it needs to backtrack, it just does not do it. I think the problem might be in the stack manipulations or in the recursive dfs call. I've tried a lot of things, but still can't seem to figure out why it does not backtrack. Can somebody help me ?

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• prolog sets problem, stack overflow

  - by garm0nboz1a

  Hi. I'm gonna show some code and ask, what could be optimized and where am I sucked? sublist([], []). sublist([H | Tail1], [H | Tail2]) :- sublist(Tail1, Tail2). sublist(H, [_ | Tail]) :- sublist(H, Tail). less(X, X, _). less(X, Z, RelationList) :- member([X,Z], RelationList). less(X, Z, RelationList) :- member([X,Y], RelationList), less(Y, Z, RelationList), \+less(Z, X, RelationList). lessList(X, LessList, RelationList) :- findall(Y, less(X, Y, RelationList), List), list_to_set(List, L), sort(L, LessList), !. list_mltpl(List1, List2, List) :- findall(X, ( member(X, List1), member(X, List2)), List). chain([_], _). chain([H,T | Tail], RelationList) :- less(H, T, RelationList), chain([T|Tail], RelationList), !. have_inf(X1, X2, RelationList) :- lessList(X1, X1_cone, RelationList), lessList(X2, X2_cone, RelationList), list_mltpl(X1_cone, X2_cone, Cone), chain(Cone, RelationList), !. relations(List, E) :- findall([X1,X2], (member(X1, E), member(X2, E), X1 =\= X2), Relations), sublist(List, Relations). semilattice(List, E) :- forall( (member(X1, E), member(X2, E), X1 < X2), have_inf(X1, X2, List) ). main(E) :- relations(X, E), semilattice(X, E). I'm trying to model all possible graph sets of N elements. Predicate relations(List, E) connects list of possible graphs(List) and input set E. Then I'm describing semilattice predicate to check relations' List for some properties. So, what I have. 1) semilattice/2 is working fast and clear ?- semilattice([[1,3],[2,4],[3,5],[4,5]],[1,2,3,4,5]). true. ?- semilattice([[1,3],[1,4],[2,3],[2,4],[3,5],[4,5]],[1,2,3,4,5]). false. 2) relations/2 is working not well ?- findall(X, relations(X,[1,2,3,4]), List), length(List, Len), writeln(Len),fail. 4096 false. ?- findall(X, relations(X,[1,2,3,4,5]), List), length(List, Len), writeln(Len),fail. ERROR: Out of global stack ^ Exception: (11) setup_call_catcher_cleanup('$bags':'$new_findall_bag'(17852886), '$bags':fa_loop(_G263, user:relations(_G263, [1, 2, 3, 4|...]), 17852886, _G268, []), _G835, '$bags':'$destroy_findall_bag'(17852886)) ? abort % Execution Aborted 3) Mix of them to finding all possible semilattice does not work at all. ?- main([1,2]). ERROR: Out of local stack ^ Exception: (15) setup_call_catcher_cleanup('$bags':'$new_findall_bag'(17852886), '$bags':fa_loop(_G41, user:less(1, _G41, [[1, 2], [2, 1]]), 17852886, _G52, []), _G4767764, '$bags':'$destroy_findall_bag'(17852886)) ?

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• Why is the page still caching even after the no-cache headers have been sent?

  - by Matthew Grasinger

  I've done a ton of research on this and have asked many people with help and still no success. Here are the details... I'm involved in developing a website that pulls data from various data files, combines them in a temp .csv file, and then is graphed using a popular graphing library: dygraphs. The bulk of the website is written in PHP. The parameters that determine the data that is graphed are stored in the users session, the .csv is named after the users session and available for download, and then the .csv file is written in a script that passes it to the dygraphs object. And we've found, even with the no-cache headers sent: header("Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate"); header("Expires: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT"); Many users experience in the middle of a session, (if enough different graphs are generated) the page displaying an older, static rendering of the page (data they had graphed earlier in the session) as if it were cached and loaded instead of getting a new request. It only gets weirder though: I've checked using developer tools in both Firefox and Chrome and both browsers are receiving the no-cache headers just fine; Even when the problem occurs if you view the page source, the source is the correct content (a table/legend is also dynamically created using php, the source shows the correct table, but what is rendered is older content); the page begins to render correctly until the graph is about to be display, and then shows the older content; the older content displays as if it were a completely static overlay--the cached graph does not have the same dynamic features (roll over data point display, zoom and pan, etc.) And it is as if the correct page were somewhere beneath it (the download button for the csv file moves depending on how large the table is. The older, static page does nothing if you click the download .csv button, but if you can manage to find the one in the page beneath it you can click and still download the .csv. The data in the .csv is correct) It is one of the strangest things I've seen in development thus far. Some other relevant facts are that all the problems I've personally experience occurred while I was using Chrome. Non of these symptoms have been reported by Firefox users. IE users have had the same problems (IE users are forced to use chrome frame). I'm at my wits end at this point. We've sent the php headers; we've tried setting the cache profile for php on IIS as "DisableCache" (or whatever); we've tried sending a random query string to the results page; we've tried all the appropriate meta tags--all with no success.

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• Why does Cacti keep waiting for dead poller processes?

  - by Oliver Salzburg

  sorry for the length I am currently setting up a new Debian (6.0.5) server. I put Cacti (0.8.7g) on it yesterday and have been battling with it ever since. Initial issue The initial issue I was observing, was that my graphs weren't updating. So I checked my cacti.log and found this concerning message: POLLER: Poller[0] Maximum runtime of 298 seconds exceeded. Exiting. That can't be good, right? So I went checking and started poller.php myself (via sudo -u www-data php poller.php --force). It will pump out a lot of message (which all look like what I would expect) and then hang for a minute. After that 1 minute, it will loop the following message: Waiting on 1 of 1 pollers. This goes on for 4 more minutes until the process is forcefully ended for running longer than 300s. So far so good I went on for a good hour trying to determine what poller might still be running, until I got to the conclusion that there simply is no running poller. Debugging I checked poller.php to see how that warning is issued and why. On line 368, Cacti will retrieve the number of finished processes from the database and use that value to calculate how many processes are still running. So, let's see that value! I added the following debug code into poller.php: print "Finished: " . $finished_processes . " - Started: " . $started_processes . "\n"; Result This will print the following within seconds of starting poller.php: Finished: 0 - Started: 1 Waiting on 1 of 1 pollers. Finished: 1 - Started: 1 So the values are being read and are valid. Until we get to the part where it keeps looping: Finished: - Started: 1 Waiting on 1 of 1 pollers. Suddenly, the value is gone. Why? Putting var_dump() in there confirms the issue: NULL Finished: - Started: 1 Waiting on 1 of 1 pollers. The return value is NULL. How can that be when querying SELECT COUNT()...? (SELECT COUNT() should always return one result row, shouldn't it?) More debugging So I went into lib\database.php and had a look at that db_fetch_cell(). A bit of testing confirmed, that the result set is actually empty. So I added my own database query code in there to see what that would do: $finished_processes = db_fetch_cell("SELECT count(*) FROM poller_time WHERE poller_id=0 AND end_time>'0000-00-00 00:00:00'"); print "Finished: " . $finished_processes . " - Started: " . $started_processes . "\n"; $mysqli = new mysqli("localhost","cacti","cacti","cacti"); $result = $mysqli->query("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM poller_time WHERE poller_id=0 AND end_time>'0000-00-00 00:00:00';"); $row = $result->fetch_assoc(); var_dump( $row ); This will output Finished: - Started: 1 array(1) { ["COUNT(*)"]=> string(1) "2" } Waiting on 1 of 1 pollers. So, the data is there and can be accessed without any problems, just not with the method Cacti is using? Double-check that! I enabled MySQL logging to make sure I'm not imagining things. Sure enough, when the error message is looped, the cacti.log reads as if it was querying like mad: 06/29/2012 08:44:00 PM - CMDPHP: Poller[0] DEVEL: SQL Cell: "SELECT count(*) FROM cacti.poller_time WHERE poller_id=0 AND end_time>'0000-00-00 00:00:00'" 06/29/2012 08:44:01 PM - CMDPHP: Poller[0] DEVEL: SQL Cell: "SELECT count(*) FROM cacti.poller_time WHERE poller_id=0 AND end_time>'0000-00-00 00:00:00'" 06/29/2012 08:44:02 PM - CMDPHP: Poller[0] DEVEL: SQL Cell: "SELECT count(*) FROM cacti.poller_time WHERE poller_id=0 AND end_time>'0000-00-00 00:00:00'" But none of these queries are logged my MySQL. Yet, when I add my own database query code, it shows up just fine. What the heck is going on here?

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• Custom SNMP Cacti Data Source fails to update

  - by Andrew Wilkinson

  I'm trying to create a custom SNMP datasource for Cacti but despite everything I can check being correct, it is not creating the rrd file, or updating it even when I create it. Other, standard SNMP sources are working correctly so it's not SNMP or permissions that are the problem. I've created a new Data Query, which when I click on "Verbose Query" on the device screen returns the following: + Running data query [10]. + Found type = '3' [SNMP Query]. + Found data query XML file at '/volume1/web/cacti/resource/snmp_queries/syno_volume_stats.xml' + XML file parsed ok. + missing in XML file, 'Index Count Changed' emulated by counting oid_index entries + Executing SNMP walk for list of indexes @ '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.3' Index Count: 8 + Index found at OID: '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.3.1' value: 'Physical memory' + Index found at OID: '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.3.3' value: 'Virtual memory' + Index found at OID: '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.3.6' value: 'Memory buffers' + Index found at OID: '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.3.7' value: 'Cached memory' + Index found at OID: '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.3.10' value: 'Swap space' + Index found at OID: '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.3.31' value: '/' + Index found at OID: '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.3.32' value: '/volume1' + Index found at OID: '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.3.33' value: '/opt' + index_parse at OID: '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.3.1' results: '1' + index_parse at OID: '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.3.3' results: '3' + index_parse at OID: '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.3.6' results: '6' + index_parse at OID: '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.3.7' results: '7' + index_parse at OID: '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.3.10' results: '10' + index_parse at OID: '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.3.31' results: '31' + index_parse at OID: '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.3.32' results: '32' + index_parse at OID: '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.3.33' results: '33' + Located input field 'index' [walk] + Executing SNMP walk for data @ '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.3' + Found item [index='Physical memory'] index: 1 [from value] + Found item [index='Virtual memory'] index: 3 [from value] + Found item [index='Memory buffers'] index: 6 [from value] + Found item [index='Cached memory'] index: 7 [from value] + Found item [index='Swap space'] index: 10 [from value] + Found item [index='/'] index: 31 [from value] + Found item [index='/volume1'] index: 32 [from value] + Found item [index='/opt'] index: 33 [from value] + Located input field 'volsizeunit' [walk] + Executing SNMP walk for data @ '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.4' + Found item [volsizeunit='1024 Bytes'] index: 1 [from value] + Found item [volsizeunit='1024 Bytes'] index: 3 [from value] + Found item [volsizeunit='1024 Bytes'] index: 6 [from value] + Found item [volsizeunit='1024 Bytes'] index: 7 [from value] + Found item [volsizeunit='1024 Bytes'] index: 10 [from value] + Found item [volsizeunit='4096 Bytes'] index: 31 [from value] + Found item [volsizeunit='4096 Bytes'] index: 32 [from value] + Found item [volsizeunit='4096 Bytes'] index: 33 [from value] + Located input field 'volsize' [walk] + Executing SNMP walk for data @ '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.5' + Found item [volsize='1034712'] index: 1 [from value] + Found item [volsize='3131792'] index: 3 [from value] + Found item [volsize='1034712'] index: 6 [from value] + Found item [volsize='775904'] index: 7 [from value] + Found item [volsize='2097080'] index: 10 [from value] + Found item [volsize='612766'] index: 31 [from value] + Found item [volsize='1439812394'] index: 32 [from value] + Found item [volsize='1439812394'] index: 33 [from value] + Located input field 'volused' [walk] + Executing SNMP walk for data @ '.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.6' + Found item [volused='1022520'] index: 1 [from value] + Found item [volused='1024096'] index: 3 [from value] + Found item [volused='32408'] index: 6 [from value] + Found item [volused='775904'] index: 7 [from value] + Found item [volused='1576'] index: 10 [from value] + Found item [volused='148070'] index: 31 [from value] + Found item [volused='682377865'] index: 32 [from value] + Found item [volused='682377865'] index: 33 [from value] AS you can see it appears to be returning the correct data. I've also set up data templates and graph templates to display the data. The create graphs for a device screen shows the correct data, and when selecting one row can clicking create a new data source and graph are created. Unfortunately the data source is never updated. Increasing the poller log level shows that it appears to not even be querying the data source, despite it being used? What should my next steps to debug this issue be?

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• ESXI guests not using available CPU resources

  - by Alan M

  I have a VMWare ESXI 5.0.0 (it's a bit old, I know) host with three guest VMs on it. For reasons unknown, the guests will not use much of the availble CPU resources. I have all three guests in a single pool, with the hosts all configured to use the same amount of resource shares, so they're basically 33% each. The three guests are basically identically configured as far as their VM resources go. So the problem is, even when the guests are performing what should be very 'busy' activitites, such as at bootup, the actual host CPU consumed is something tiny, like 33mhz, when seen via vSphere console's "Virtual Machines" tab when viewing properties for the pool. And of course, the performance of the guest VMs is terrible. The host has plenty of CPU to spare. I've tried tinkering with individual guest VM resource settings; cranking up the reservation, etc. No matter. The guests just refuse to make use of the abundant CPU available to them, and insist on using a sliver of the available resources. Any suggestions? Update after reading various comments below Per the suggestions below, I did remove the guests from the application pool; this didn't make any difference. I do understand that the guests are not going to consume resources they do not need. I have tried to do a remote perfmon on the guest which is experiencing long boot times, but I cannot connect to the guest remotely with perfmon (guest is w2k8r2 server). Host graphs for CPU, Mem, Disk are basically flatlining; very little demand. Same is true for the guest stats; while the guest itself seems to be crawling, the guest resource graphing shows very little activity across CPU, Mem, Disk. Host is a Dell PowerEdge 2900, has 2 physical CPU,20gb RAM. (it's a test/dev environment using surplus gear) Guest1 has: VM ver. 7, 2vCPU, 4gb RAM, 140gb storage which lives on a RAID-5 array on the host. Guest2 has: VM ver. 7, 2vCPU, 4gb RAM, 140gb storage which lives on a RAID-5 array on the host. Guest3 has: VM ver. 7, 1vCPU, 2gb RAM, 2tb storage which lives on a RAID-5 ISCSI NAS box Perhaps I am making a false assumption that if a guest has a demand for CPU (e.g. Windows Task Manager shows 100% CPU), the host would supply the guest with more CPU (mem, disk) on demand. Another Update After checking the stats, it would appear that the host is indeed not busy at all, neither is the guest. I believe I have a good idea on the issue, though; a messed-up VMWare Tools install. The guest has VMware Tools on it, but the host says it does not. VMWare Tools refuses to uninstall, refuses to be upgraded, refuses to be recognized. While I cannot say with authority, this would appear to be something worth investigation. I do not know the origin of the guest itself, nor the specifics on the original VMWare Tools install. Following various bits of googling, I did come up with a few suggestions that went nowhere. To that end, I was going to delete this question, but was prompted not to do so since so many folks answered. My suspicion right now is; the problem truly is the guest; the guest is not making a demand on the host, and as a natural result, the host is treating the guest accordingly. My Final Update I am 99% certain the guest VM had something fundamentally wrong with it re VMWare Tools. I created a clone of a different VM with a near-identical OS config, but a properly working install of VMWare tools. The guest runs just great, and takes up it's allotment of resources when it needs to; e.g. it eats up about 850mhz CPU during startup, then ticks down to idle once the guest OS is stable.

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• Tools to Help Post Content On Your WordPress Blog

  - by Matthew Guay

  Now that you’ve got a nice blog, you want to do more with it and start posting content.  Here we look at some tools that will allow you to post directly to your WordPress blog. Writing a new blog post is easy with WordPress as we saw in our previous post about Starting your own WordPress blog.  The web editor gives you a lot of features and even lets you edit your post’s source code if you enjoy hacking HTML.  There are other tools that will allow you to post content, here we look at how you can post with dedicated apps, browser plugins, and even by email. Windows Live Writer Windows Live Writer (part of the Windows Live Essentials Suite) is a great app for posting content to your blog.  This free program for Microsoft lets you post content to a variety of blogging services, including Blogger, Typepad, LiveJournal, and of course WordPress.  You can write blog posts directly from its Word-like editor, complete with pictures and advanced formatting.  Even if you’re offline, you can still write posts and save them for when you’re online again. For more information about installing Live writer, check out our article on how to Install Windows Live Essentials In Windows 7. Once Live Writer is installed, open it to add your blog.  If you already had Live Writer installed and configured for a blog, you can add your new blog, too.  Just click your blog’s name in the top right corner, and select “Add blog account”. Select “Other blog service” to add your WordPress blog to Writer, and click Next.   Enter your blog’s web address, and your username and password.  Check Remember my password so you don’t have to enter it every time you write something. Writer will analyze your blog and setup your account. During the setup process it may ask to post a temporary post.  This will let you preview blog posts using your blog’s real theme, which is helpful, so click Yes. Finally, add your Blog’s name, and click Finish. You can now use the rich editor to write and add content to a new blog post.   Select the Preview tab to see how your post will look on your blog… Or, if you’re a HTML geek, select the Source tab to edit the code of your blog post. From the bottom of the window, you can choose categories, insert tags, and even schedule the post to publish on a different day.  Live Writer is fully integrated with WordPress; you’re not missing anything by using the desktop editor. If you want to edit a post you’ve already published, click the Open button and select the post.  You can chose and edit any post, including ones you published via the web interface or other editors. Add Multimedia Content to your Posts with Live Writer Back in the Edit tab, you can add pictures, videos and more from the sidebar.  Select what you want to insert. Pictures If you insert a picture, you can add many nice borders and designs to it. Or, you can even add artistic effects from the Effects tab in the sidebar. Photo Gallery If you want to post several pictures, say some of your vacation shots, then inserting a picture gallery may be the best option.  Select Insert Photo Gallery in the sidebar, and then choose the pictures you want in the gallery. Once the gallery is inserted, you can choose from several styles to showcase your pictures. When you post the blog, you will be asked to sign in with your Windows Live ID as the gallery pictures will be stored in the free Skydrive storage service. Your blog readers can see the preview of your pictures directly on your blog, and then can view each individual picture, download them, or see a slideshow online via the link. Video If you want to add a video to your blog post, select Video from the sidebar as above.  You can select a video that’s already online, or you can choose a new video from file and upload it via YouTube directly from Windows Live Writer.   Note that you will have to sign in with your YouTube account to upload videos to YouTube, so if you’re not logged in you’ll be prompted to do so when you click Insert. Geek Tip:  If you ever want to copy your Live Writer settings to another computer, check out our article on how to Backup Your Windows Live Writer Settings. Microsoft Office Word Word 2007 and 2010 also let you post content directly to your blog.  This is especially nice if you’ve already typed up a document and think it would be good on your Blog as well.  Check out our in-depth tutorial on posting blog posts via Word 2007 using Word 2007 as a blogging tool. This works in Word 2010 too, except the Office Orb has been replaced by the new Backstage view.  So, in Word 2010, to start a new blog post, click File \ New then select Blog post.  Proceed as you would in Word 2007 to add your blog settings and post the content you want. Or, if you’ve already written a document and want to post it, select File \ Share (or Save and Send in the final version of Word 2010), and then click Publish as Blog Post.  If you haven’t setup your blog account yet, set it up as shown in the Word 2007 article. Post Via Email Most of us use email daily, and already have our favorite email app or service.  Whether on your desktop or mobile phone, it’s easy to create rich emails and add content.  WordPress lets you generate a unique email address that you can use to easily post content and email to your blog.  Just compose your email with the subject as the title of your post, and send it to this unique address.  Your new post will be up in minutes. To active this feature, click the My Account button in the top menu bar in your WordPress.com account, and select My Blogs. Click the Enable button under Post by Email beside your blog’s name.   Now you’ll have a private email you can use to post to your blog.  Anything you send to this email will be posted as a new post.  If you think your email may be compromised, click Regenerate to get a new publishing email address. Any email program or webapp now is a blog post editor.  Feel free to use rich formatting or insert pictures; it all comes through great.  This is also a great way to post to your blog from your mobile device.  Whether you’re using webmail or a dedicated email client on your phone, you can now blog from anywhere.   Mobile Applications WordPress also offer dedicated applications for blogging directly from your mobile device.  You can write new posts, edit existing ones, and manage comments all from your Smartphone.  Currently they offer apps for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.  Check them out at the link below. Conclusion Whether you want to write from your browser or email a post to your blog, WordPress is flexible enough to work right along with your preferences.  However you post, you can be sure that it will look professional and be easily accessible with your WordPress blog. Download Windows Live Writer Download WordPress apps for your mobile device Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Quick Tip: Set a Future Date for a Post in WordPressAdd Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress BlogFuture Date a Post in Windows Live WriterHow To Start Your Own Professional Blog with WordPressUsing Word 2007 as a Blogging Tool TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Fun with 47 charts and graphs Tomorrow is Mother’s Day Check the Average Speed of YouTube Videos You’ve Watched OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott

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