Search Results

Search found 537 results on 22 pages for 'bryan williams'.

Page 3/22 | < Previous Page | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | Next Page >

Almost time to hit the road again

- by Chris Williams

I’ve had a few months of not much traveling, but now that the weather is improving… conference season is starting up again. That means it’s time for me to start hitting the road. In June, I have Tech Ed 2010 in New Orleans, LA. I lived in New Orleans for several years, both as military and civilian and I have a few friends still down there. I haven’t been there since before Hurricane Katrina, so I have mixed feelings about returning… but I am still looking forward to it. Also in June, I have Codestock in Knoxville, TN. Codestock is one of my favorite events, primarily because of the excellent people that speak there and also attend sessions. It’s a great mix of people and technologies. Sometime in July or August, I’m headed to Austin, TX for a couple days. I don’t know the exact date yet, but if you have an event down there in that timeframe, let me know and maybe we can sort something out. In September, I’m heading to Seattle for my first PAX (Penny Arcade Expo.) I’m going strictly as an attendee and it looks like a LOT of fun. Really excited to check it out. Also in September, I’m headed to Omaha for the Heartland Developers Conference. This is a FANTASTIC event, and certainly one of my local favorites. (I guess local is relative, it’s about a 6 hour drive.) In addition to speaking on WP7, I’ll be doing a series of hands on labs on XNA they day before the conference starts, so that should be a lot of fun as well. In addition to all this stuff, I have my own XNA User Group to take care of. In August, Andy “The Z-Man” Dunn is coming to speak and check out the various food on a stick offerings at the Minnesota State Fair!

Read the article
INETA NorAm Component Code Challenge

- by Chris Williams

Want to win a trip to TechEd 2011? INETA NorAm is hosting a contest with our partners to see who can build an .NET application making effective use of reusable components to solve a problem. The Rules: Any .NET Application (WinForms, ASP.NET, WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, etc.) built in the last year (since 1/1/2010) using at least 1 component from at least 1 approved vendor. Then make a 3 - 5 minute Camtasia video showing your entry and describing what component(s) you used and why your application is cool. Our judges will review the submissions and the best two will win a scholarship to Tech·Ed 2011, May 16-19 in Atlanta GA including airfare, hotel, and conference pass. The Judging: Entries will be judged on four criteria: Effective use of a component to solve a problem/display data Innovative use of components Impact using components (i.e. reduction in lines of code written, increased productivity, etc.) Most creative use of a component. Timeline: Hurry! The submission deadline is March 15, 2011 at Midnight Eastern Standard Time. More information can be found on the INETA Component Code Challenge page: http://ineta.org/CodeChallenge/Default.aspx

Read the article
Hide Grub menu and keystroke to reveal

- by Logan Williams

How do you have the grub appear on a key combination, but have windows boot default. I'm running ubuntu 11.10 and grub 2.0. Here is my current /etc/default/grub # If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update # /boot/grub/grub.cfg. # For full documentation of the options in this file, see: # info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration' GRUB_DEFAULT=0 GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0 GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true GRUB_TIMEOUT=10 GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian` GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=" quiet vga=769" Thanks! And here is my /boot/grub/grub.cfg http://pastebin.com/HbDBe8xz

Read the article
Learning Electronics & the Arduino Microcontroller

- by Chris Williams

Lately, I've had a growing interest in Electronics & Microcontrollers. I'm a loyal reader of Make Magazine and thoroughly enjoy seeing all the various projects in each issue, even though I rarely try to make any of them. I've been reading and watching videos about the Arduino, which is an open source Microcontroller and software project that the people at Make (and a lot of other folks) are pretty hot about. Even the prebuilt hardware is remarkably inexpensive , although there are kits available to build one from the base components. (Full disclosure: I bought my first soldering iron... EVER... just last week, so I fully acknowledge the likelihood of making some mistakes. That's why I'm not trying to do the "build it yourself" kit just yet. It's also another reason to be happy the hardware is so cheap.) There are a number of different Arduino boards available, but the two that have really piqued my interest are the Arduino UNO and the NETduino. The UNO is a very popular board, with a number of features and is under $35 which means I won't hurl myself off a bridge when I inevitably destroy it. The NETduino is very similar to the Arduino UNO and has the added advantage of being programmable with... you guessed it... C#. I'm actually ordering both boards and some miscellaneous other doodads to go with them. There are a few good websites for this sort of thing, including www.makershed.com and www.adafruit.com. The price difference is negligible, so in my case, I'm ordering from Maker Shed (the Make Magazine people) because I want to support them. :) I've also picked up a few O'Reilly books on the subject which I am looking forward to reading & reviewing: Make: Electronics, Arduino: A Quick Start Guide and Getting Started With Arduino (all three of which arrived on my doorstep today.) This ties in with my "learn more about robotics" goals as well, since I'll need a good understanding of Electronics if I want to move past Lego Mindstorms eventually.

Read the article
Dark Sun Dispatch 001.5 (a review of City Under The Sand)

- by Chris Williams

City Under The Sand - a review I'm moderately familiar with the Dark Sun setting. I've read the other Dark Sun novels, ages ago and I recently started running a D&D 4.0 campaign in the Dark Sun world, so I picked up this book to help re-familiarize myself with the setting. Overall, it did accomplish that, in a limited way. The book takes place in Nibenay and a neighboring expanse of desert that includes a formerly buried city, a small town and a bandit outpost. The book does a more interesting job of describing Nibenese politics and the court of the ruling Sorcerer King, his templars and the expected jockeying for position that occurs between the Templar Wives. There is a fair amount of combat, which was interesting and fairly well detailed. The ensemble cast is introduced and eventually brought together over the first few chapters. Not a lot of backstory on most of the characters, but you get a feel for them fairly quickly. The storyline was somewhat predictable after the first third of the book. Some of the reviews on Amazon complain about the 2-dimensional characterizations, and yes there were some... but it's easy to ignore because there is a lot going on in the book... several interwoven plotlines that all eventually converge. Where the book falls short... First, it appears to have been edited by a 4th grader who knows how to use spellcheck but lacks the attention to detail to notice the frequent occurence of incorrect words that often don't make sense or change the context of the entire sentence. It happened just enough to be distracting, and honestly I expect better from WOTC. Second, there is a lot of buildup to the end of the story... the big fight, the confrontation between good and evil, etc... which is handled in just a few pages and then the story basically just ends. Kind of a letdown, honestly. There wasn't a big finish, and it wasn't a cliffhanger, it just wraps up neatly and ends. It felt pretty rushed. Overall, aside from the very end, I enjoyed it. I really liked the insight into that region of Athas and it gave me some good ideas for fleshing out my own campaign. In that sense, the book served its purpose for me. If you're looking for a light read (got a 5-6 hour flight somewhere?) or you want to learn more about the Dark Sun setting, then I'd recommend this book.

Read the article
Developing For Windows Phone 7 Series with XNA 4.0

- by Chris Williams

I have a talk submitted to the Heartland Developers Conference. It's called: Developing For Windows Phone 7 Series with XNA 4.0 Here's a description: Forget Droid, Windows Phone 7 Series is the iPhone killer. If you want to learn to build killer touch-based apps for this next generation mobile device then this is the session for you. We’ll go over phone specific features and how to leverage those features with XNA 4.0 and C# I need your votes in order to give this talk. Please go here: http://www.heartlanddc.com/?p=273 and give the talk a nice high rating to indicate interest. Thanks a bunch!!

Read the article
Collision detection with entities/AI

- by James Williams

I'm making my first game in Java, a top down 2D RPG. I've handled basic collision detection, rendering and have added an NPC, but I'm stuck on how to handle interaction between the player and the NPC. Currently I'm drawing out my level and then drawing characters, NPCs and animated tiles on top of this. The problem is keeping track of the NPCs so that my Character class can interact with methods in the NPC classes on collision. I'm not sure my method of drawing the level and drawing everything else on top is a good one - can anyone shed any light on this topic?

Read the article
My First 5K

- by Chris Williams

So… yesterday I registered for my first 5K event. It’s in Eden Prairie this weekend. It’s a pretty major milestone for me, especially since I absolutely hate running with a passion. Still, I have to admit I’m rather excited about it. Given that this is my first event, I have no illusions about winning. My immediate goal is simple… don’t come in last. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Read the article
My First 5K, the recap.

- by Chris Williams

It was a nice day to be outside (and trust me, those aren't words you'll hear from me often.) I got to the site around 7:45, hit the pre-reg table and got my number along with a goody bag full of coupons for racing gear, a water bottle and a tshirt. Oh and a map. Stashed all that stuff in the jeep, emptied my pockets of everything but my iPhone and my jeep key, and proceeded to walk around for a bit as people started showing up and signing in. It was fairly breezy, and there was definitely a storm coming... but it was anyone's guess on when it would actually arrive. It was interesting to see everyone who was participating. If I had to guess, I would say the event was 60-70% women, with a pretty broad distribution of age... as young as 13 to well over 60 (in both genders.) I don't know exactly how many folks were there, but it was well over 300. Eventually it was time to kick things off, and everyone made their way to the start line. All of the 5k and 10k runners were mixed together, starting at the same time. All the walkers and the people with strollers or dogs were in the back. It was pretty chaotic at first, once things started, but it thinned out fairly quickly. The 10k people and the hardcore runners sped ahead of everyone else and the walkers gradually lagged behind. The 5K course was pretty nice, winding around a lake down in Eden Prairie. The 10K course overlapped most of ours, but branched off a couple times too. I didn't run the whole time, but I started the race running and I ended it running, and did a mix of walking and running along the way. I met my goals, which were a) don't ever stop and b) don't be last. The weather managed to hold out for the entire race. It never got too hot, there was a nice breeze and it was mostly overcast. Pretty much perfect in my book. About 20-30 minutes after I left, the rain came down pretty hard. I had a good time, and will most likely do more of them. We'll see.

Read the article
Thoughts (on Windows Phone 7) from the MVP Summit

- by Chris Williams

Last week I packed off to Redmond, WA for my annual pilgrimage to Microsoft's MVP Summit. I'll spare you all the silly taunting about knowing stuff I can't talk about, etc... and just get to the point. I'm a XNA/DirectX MVP, an ASP Insider and a Languages (VB) Insider... so I actually had access to a pretty broad spectrum of information over the last week. Most of my time was focused on Windows Phone 7 related sessions, and while I can't dig deep into specifics, I can say that Microsoft is definitely not out of the fight for Mobile. The things I saw tell me that Microsoft is listening and paying attention to feedback, looking at what works & what doesn't and they are working their collective asses off to close the gap between Google and Apple. Anyone who has been in this industry for a while can tell you Microsoft does their best work when they are the underdog. They are currently behind, and have a lot of work ahead of them, but this is when they bring all their resources together to solve a problem. After the week I spent in Redmond, and the feedback I heard from other MVPs, and the technological previews I saw... I feel confident in betting heavily on Microsoft to pull this off.

Read the article
Travelling at Magenic

- by Chris G. Williams

I occasionally get asked if we travel "a lot" at Magenic. Sometimes the question comes from job candidates. Other times it's clients, recruiters or friends. To give a simple yes or no answer would be a disservice to the person asking the question. So here is my standard answer:It depends.(That was the short version. Here's the long version...)We do have some guys that are more "national" in focus, and they can travel a fair amount. They also receive a little extra in compensation for doing so. It's a balancing act, and not necessarily a one-size-fits-all situation. Not everyone is well suited to constant travel. Some folks enjoy it and some folks hate it.With our local guys, our general policy is to TRY and keep them close to home whenever possible, but sometimes the needs of the client will dictate otherwise. (As Spock would say... the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.)In most cases though, we really do try to avoid sending our guys on extended travel gigs (i.e. every week for 6 months) when a simple kickoff trip and occasional visit will do. This depends on the nature of the gig, of course. Some types of work lend themselves to this model better than others. Additionally, this can and does vary by office. If one office is having trouble staffing a gig (not enough available bodies) and another office has a few too many folks on the bench, well... you can connect the dots. But again, we try to keep that to a minimum.Lastly, we all have our own thresholds for what we consider "a lot" of travel. There are two parts to this threshold:Half of it is whatever you're accustomed to already. The other half is being honest with yourself about how much you [like/hate] dealing with airports, car rentals, taxis, hotels, disruptions to your workout schedule, time away from friends/family, etc.Knowing a bit about yourself will definitely help you decide how much travel is too much for you.

Read the article
Where is he now?

- by Chris G. Williams

A couple months ago, I announced I was leaving Magenic in order to take a break from consulting. I figured I'd post an update as to what I'm doing now, since I haven't exactly been slacking off.1) I accepted a position as a Lead Developer with RealPage. I work on a number of internal use applications for a subsidiary known as LevelOne. The majority of my work is in ASP.NET, a surprising amount of VB.NET, some C# and I'm picking up a few new tools for my belt... specifically Python, MongoDB and Perl.2) I am still the owner of Big Robot Games, a retail game store / coffee shop in the South Carolina upstate region. I'm not as involved in the day to day activity as I was, but I'm there most nights and weekends, when I'm not off doing other things, like #3.3) I am on the staff of Rock Revolt Magazine as a journalist, covering live performances as well as interviewing bands, providing album & video game reviews, fixing the website and the occasional prison ink. (Just kidding on that last one.)4) In whatever time is leftover, I still manage to bang out a little code on Heroic Adventure! (aka HA!) and talk about Windows Phone, XNA and whatever else suits me, wherever they'll let me.I guess that's about it.

Read the article
Intentionally breaking iPhone + Exchange communication [closed]

- by Stafford Williams

I've (accidently) found a way to construct an email that will cause an iPhone to be unable to download any emails from the Exchange folder this email is present in. The only way to fix this issue, is to go the account outside the phone (web/outlook) and delete the email. I've tested this against windows and android phones, and they are not affected. When trying to determine what was the cause of this issue I found several posts like this one offering possible resolutions, but they did not seem to be related to this specific issue (I also tried most of the solutions, including some from apple, but none of them fixed the issue) Should I report this issue and how its recreated to someone? If so, who/where?

Read the article
We really only have ONE rule...

- by Chris G. Williams

Had to show someone the door today... bummer. At Big Robot Games we really only have one rule and it's not all that complex: If you're going to hang out here all day, you should satisfy AT LEAST one of the following criteria: 1) You buy some food and/or drinks. 2) You occasionally buy product. 3) You play as part of a sanctioned tournaent or gaming group. 4) You act like you have some sense (i.e. have manners.) We would love it if you manage to do all of the above, of course, but we're really perfectly content to settle for only getting a 1-2 of them at a time. We don't have a problem with people bringing food in, and we understand that you aren't going to buy a game every time you come here. And yes, we know that people enjoy hanging out here with their friends. We can even overlook your odd quirks and personality issues, provided you're spending a little money once in a while (this IS a BUSINESS, after all.) However... if you can't manage to do ANY of the things I listed above, and then you get lippy with me about it, well... it's time to say goodbye.

Read the article
Wrong download of Ubuntu 13.10 desktop: AMD instead of wanted Intel [duplicate]

- by L. Williams

This question already has an answer here: Difference between the i386 download and the amd64? 5 answers My PCs are Intel CPUs e.g. Core2 Quad, 64 bit, no AMD in network, but from ubuntu.com/download site, selecting 13.10 Desktop for 64 bit, it repeatedly only offers *AMD.ISO version, which of course fails to install on my Intel (or Atom) based PCs. Wuzzup, and what URL has a download for the Intel CPU systems? Rem: this is for Saucy 13.10 Desktop 64 OS ISO. TIA.

Read the article
Use DataSource in DataFormWebPart

- by Bryan Shen

I'm writing a custom web part that extends DataFormWebPart. public class MyCustomWebPart : DataFormWebPart{ // other methods public override void DataBind() { XmlDataSource source = new XmlDataSource() { Data = @" <Person> <name cap='true'>Bryan</name> <occupation>student</occupation> </Person> " }; DataSources.Add(source); base.DataBind(); } } The only noticeable thing I do is overriding the DataBind() method, where I use xml as the data source. After I deploy the web part, I set the following XSL to it: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/> <xsl:template match="/"> <xmp> <xsl:copy-of select="*"/> </xmp> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> This xsl will surround the input xml with a tag . So I expected the web part to display the original xml data as I wrote in C# code behind. But what shows up in the web part is this: <Person> <name cap="true" /> <occupation /> </Person> All the values within the inner-most tags disappear. What's going on? Can anybody help me? Thanks.

Read the article
How to Use DataSource Property in DataFormWebPart

- by Bryan Shen

I'm writing a custom web part that extends DataFormWebPart. public class MyCustomWebPart : DataFormWebPart{ // other methods public override void DataBind() { XmlDataSource source = new XmlDataSource() { Data = @" <Person> <name cap='true'>Bryan</name> <occupation>student</occupation> </Person> " }; DataSources.Add(source); base.DataBind(); } } The only noticeable thing I do is overriding the DataBind() method, where I use xml as the data source. After I deploy the web part, I set the following XSL to it: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/> <xsl:template match="/"> <xmp> <xsl:copy-of select="*"/> </xmp> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> This xsl will surround the input xml with a tag . So I expected the web part to display the original xml data as I wrote in C# code behind. But what shows up in the web part is this: <Person> <name cap="true" /> <occupation /> </Person> All the values within the inner-most tags disappear. What's going on? Can anybody help me? Thanks.

Read the article
Detect Autocomplete

- by Bryan Marble

Hello, I have some forms that have inlined labels. I have some javascript (jQuery) that detects when focus has changed or when a user is entering text that changes the class so that the inlined label disappears and isn't blocking the user's view of their entered text. The problem I'm having occurs when the browser autocompletes the form. None of the conditions below are triggered so I can't clear out the inlined label. How can I detect the fact that text has been entered via autocomplete so that I can clear the labels? The js I'm using (from http://www.zurb.com/playground/inline-form-labels): $( document ).ready( function() { $( "label.inlined + .input-text" ).each( function( type ) { $( this ).focus( function() { $( this ).prev( "label.inlined" ).addClass( "focus" ); } ); $( this ).keypress( function() { $( this ).prev( "label.inlined" ).addClass( "has-text" ) .removeClass( "focus" ); } ); $( this ).blur( function() { if( $( this ).val() == "" ) { $( this ).prev( "label.inlined" ).removeClass( "has-text" ) .removeClass( "focus" ); } } ); } ); } ); Thanks! Bryan

Read the article
entity framework POCO template in a n-tiers design question

- by bryan

HI all I was trying to follow the POCO Template walkthrough . And now I am having problems using it in n-tiers design. By following the article, I put my edmx model, and the template generated context.tt in my DAL project, and moved the generated model.tt entity classes to my Business Logic layer (BLL) project. By doing this, I could use those entities inside my BLL without referencing the DAL, I guess that is the idea of PI; without knowing anything about the data source. Now, I want to extend the entities (inside the model.tt) to perform some CUD action in the BLL project,so I added a new partial class same name as the one generated from template, public partial class Company { public static IEnumerable AllCompanies() { using(var context = new Entities()){ var q = from p in context.Companies select p; return q.ToList(); } } } however visual studio won't let me do that, and I think it was because the context.tt is in the DAL project, and the BLL project could not add a reference to the DAL project as DAL has already reference to the BLL. So I tried to added this class to the DAL and it compiled, but intelisense won't show up the BLL.Company.AllCompanies() in my web service method from my webservice project which has reference to my BLL project. What should I do now? I want to add CUD methods to the template generated entities in my BLL project, and call them in my web services from another project. I have been looking for this answer a few days already, and I really need some guides from here please. Bryan

Read the article
Why is my Android app camera preview running out of memory on my AVD?

- by Bryan

I have yet to try this on an actual device, but expect similar results. Anyway, long story short, whenever I run my app on the emulator, it crashes due to an out of memory exception. My code really is essentially the same as the camera preview API demo from google, which runs perfectly fine. The only file in the app (that I created/use) is as below- package berbst.musicReader; import java.io.IOException; import android.app.Activity; import android.content.Context; import android.hardware.Camera; import android.os.Bundle; import android.view.SurfaceHolder; import android.view.SurfaceView; /********************************* * Music Reader v.0001 * Still VERY under construction. * @author Bryan * *********************************/ public class MusicReader extends Activity { private MainScreen main; @Override //Begin activity public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); main = new MainScreen(this); setContentView(main); } class MainScreen extends SurfaceView implements SurfaceHolder.Callback { SurfaceHolder sHolder; Camera cam; MainScreen(Context context) { super(context); //Set up SurfaceHolder sHolder = getHolder(); sHolder.addCallback(this); sHolder.setType(SurfaceHolder.SURFACE_TYPE_PUSH_BUFFERS); } public void surfaceCreated(SurfaceHolder holder) { // Open the camera and start viewing cam = Camera.open(); try { cam.setPreviewDisplay(holder); } catch (IOException exception) { cam.release(); cam = null; } } public void surfaceDestroyed(SurfaceHolder holder) { // Kill all our crap with the surface cam.stopPreview(); cam.release(); cam = null; } public void surfaceChanged(SurfaceHolder holder, int format, int w, int h) { // Modify parameters to match size. Camera.Parameters params = cam.getParameters(); params.setPreviewSize(w, h); cam.setParameters(params); cam.startPreview(); } } }

Read the article
How to make dynamically generated .net service client read configuration from another location than

- by Bryan

Hi, I've currently written code to use the ServiceContractGenerator to generate web service client code based on a wsdl, and then compile it into an assembly in memory using the code dom. I'm then using reflection to set up the binding, endpoint, service values/types, and then ultimately invoke the web service method based on xml configuration that can be altered at run time. This all currently works fine. However, the problem I'm currently running into, is that I'm hitting several exotic web services that require lots of custom binding/security settings. This is forcing me to add more and more configuration into my custom xml configurations, as well as the corresponding updates to my code to interpret and set those binding/security settings in code. Ultimately, this makes adding these 'exotic' services slower, and I can see myself eventually reimplementing the 'system.serviceModel' section of the web or app.config file, which is never a good thing. My question is, and this is where my lack of experience .net and C# shows, is there a way to define the configuration normally found in the web.config or app.config 'system.serviceModel' section somewhere else, and at run time supply this to configuration to the web service client? Is there a way to attach an app.config directly to an assembly as a resource or any other way to supply this configuration to the client? Basically, I'd like attach an app.config only containing a 'system.serviceModel' to the assembly containing a web service client so that it can use its configuration. This way I wouldn't need to handle every configuration under the sun, I could let .net do it for me. Fyi, it's not an option for me to put the configuration for every service in the app.config for the running application. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! Bryan

Read the article
Efficient alternative to merge() when building dataframe from json files with R?

- by Bryan

I have written the following code which works, but is painfully slow once I start executing it over thousands of records: require("RJSONIO") people_data <- data.frame(person_id=numeric(0)) json_data <- fromJSON(json_file) n_people <- length(json_data) for(lender in 1:n_people) { person_dataframe <- as.data.frame(t(unlist(json_data[[person]]))) people_data <- merge(people_data, person_dataframe, all=TRUE) } output_file <- paste("people_data",".csv") write.csv(people_data, file=output_file) I am attempting to build a unified data table from a series of json-formated files. The fromJSON() function reads in the data as lists of lists. Each element of the list is a person, which then contains a list of the attributes for that person. For example: [[1]] person_id name gender hair_color [[2]] person_id name location gender height [[...]] structure(list(person_id = "Amy123", name = "Amy", gender = "F", hair_color = "brown"), .Names = c("person_id", "name", "gender", "hair_color")) structure(list(person_id = "matt53", name = "Matt", location = structure(c(47231, "IN"), .Names = c("zip_code", "state")), gender = "M", height = 172), .Names = c("person_id", "name", "location", "gender", "height")) The end result of the code above is matrix where the columns are every person-attribute that appears in the structure above, and the rows are the relevant values for each person. As you can see though, some data is missing for some of the people, so I need to ensure those show up as NA and make sure things end up in the right columns. Further, location itself is a vector with two components: state and zip_code, meaning it needs to be flattened to location.state and location.zip_code before it can be merged with another person record; this is what I use unlist() for. I then keep the running master table in people_data. The above code works, but do you know of a more efficient way to accomplish what I'm trying to do? It appears the merge() is slowing this to a crawl... I have hundreds of files with hundreds of people in each file. Thanks! Bryan

Read the article
Abstraction: The War between solving the problem and a general solution.

- by Bryan Harrington

As a programmer, I find myself in the dilemma where I want make my program as abstract and as general as possible. Doing so usually would allow me to reuse my code and have a more general solution for a problem that might (or might not) come up again. Then this voice in my head says, just solve the problem dummy its that easy! Why spend more time than you have to? We all have indeed faced this question where Abstraction is on your right shoulder and Solve-it-stupid sits on the left. Which to listen to and how often? What is your strategy for this? Should you abstract everything?

Read the article
Why is Farseer not working in Windows Phone 7/8?

- by Bryan

I created a new Windows Phone Game (4.0) project in Visual Studio Express 2012 and added the Farseer project to the solution explorer. But adding a reference to the Farseer project is not working. I always get this error message: A reference to 'Farseer Physics XNA WP7' could not be added. References with different refresh levels are not supported. What is wrong? How can I use Farseer in Windows Phone 7/8? I uploaded the two projects on pastebin. Farseer project: pastebin.com/uyRusHxM Windows Phone project: pastebin.com/s74Gr66y

Read the article
Can't remove Ubuntu Desktop from dropdown menu on logon screen

- by Bryan

Hello All, I'm running Ubuntu on an Eee PC with the Netbook interface. I installed Ubuntu Desktop via Aptitude to see how well it works on the Eee PC, and after a while I wanted to rid myself of it. So, I purged it using Aptitude, but it still shows up as an option in the dropdown menu on the login screen. Is there any way I can remove the Ubuntu Desktop option from the dropdown menu? It's not a big deal I guess... I'm just curious now how to do it. :)

Read the article

< Previous Page | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | Next Page >