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• Another big year for the ADF EMG at OOW12

  - by Chris Muir

  Oracle Open World 2012 has only just started, but in one way it's just finished!  All the ADF EMG's OOW content is over for another year! The unique highlight this year for me was the first ever ADF EMG social night held on Saturday, where I finally had the chance to meet so many ADF community members who I've known over the internet, but never met in person.  What?  You didn't get an invite?  Oh well, better luck next year ;-) Seriously our budget was limited, so in the happy-dictatorship sort of way I had to limit RSVPs to just 40 people.  Hopefully next year we can do something bigger and better for the wider community. Following directly on from the Saturday social night the ADF EMG ran a full day of sessions at the user group Sunday.  I wont go over the content again, but to say thank you very much to all our presenters and helpers, including Gert Poel, Pitier Gillis, Aino Andriessen, Simon Haslam, Ken Mizuta, Lucas Jellema and the FMW roadshow team, Ronald van Luttikhuizen, Guido Schmutz, Luc Bors, Aino Andriessen and Lonneke Dikmans. Also special thanks must go to Doug Cockroft and Bambi Price for their time and effort in organizing the ADF EMG room behind the scenes via the APOUC. To be blunt Doug and Bambi really do deserve serious thanks because they had to wear a lot of Oracle politics behind the scenes to get the rooms organized (oh, and deal with me fretting too! ;-). Finally thanks to all the members and OOW delegates for turning up and supporting the group on the day.  In the end the ADF EMG exists for you, and I hope you found it worthwhile. Onto 2013 (oh, and the rest of OOW12 ;-) 

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• How To Use Flash on Any Website in Modern Internet Explorer 10

  - by Chris Hoffman

  The modern (or “Metro”) version of Internet Explorer in Windows 8 supports Flash, but only for some Microsoft-approved websites. You can add your own favorite websites to Microsoft’s whitelist to view Flash on any website. The desktop version of IE supports Flash on every website, but you don’t have to leave the new Windows 8 user interface if you don’t want to. This trick works on both Windows 8 and Windows RT. What Is the Purpose of the “Do Not Cover This Hole” Hole on Hard Drives? How To Log Into The Desktop, Add a Start Menu, and Disable Hot Corners in Windows 8 HTG Explains: Why You Shouldn’t Use a Task Killer On Android

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• Character movement on a 2D tile map

  - by Chris Morris

  I'm working at making a HTML5 game. Top down, closest thing I can equate it to is the gameboy zeldas, but open world and no rooms. What I have so far is a procedurally generated map in a multi dimensional array. And a starting position on the map. Along with this I have an array of movable and non movable tile ID's. I also have a class for my player and have him being rendered out in the center of the starting tile. My problem however is getting the movement sorted out for the player. I want to be able to have the character free move around the map (pixel by pixel essentially) ontop of this 2D generated world. Ideally this would allow the user to move around the walk able area of the canvas. this is simple enough for me to do, but I am having problems now moving the world. If the user is 20% from the edge of the screen i want the world to start panning in the direction the player is heading. But I'm rather lacking in ideas of how to do this. I've looked around for some tutorials, but am coming up blank on ideas of how to generate the playable area (zoomed in) and to then move this generated area under the player when they reach near the end of the screen. My current idea was to generate a certain amount of tiles full size to fill the screen and place the player i the middle. Then when the user approaches the edge of the screen start generating the tiles offset by the distance moved and the direction. I can kind of see this working but I really have no idea if this is the best or easiest to code of methods for generating the world. sorry for the lack of code but I'm still just in the theory stages of working this all out.

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• Secure Your Wireless Router: 8 Things You Can Do Right Now

  - by Chris Hoffman

  A security researcher recently discovered a backdoor in many D-Link routers, allowing anyone to access the router without knowing the username or password. This isn’t the first router security issue and won’t be the last. To protect yourself, you should ensure that your router is configured securely. This is about more than just enabling Wi-Fi encryption and not hosting an open Wi-Fi network. Disable Remote Access Routers offer a web interface, allowing you to configure them through a browser. The router runs a web server and makes this web page available when you’re on the router’s local network. However, most routers offer a “remote access” feature that allows you to access this web interface from anywhere in the world. Even if you set a username and password, if you have a D-Link router affected by this vulnerability, anyone would be able to log in without any credentials. If you have remote access disabled, you’d be safe from people remotely accessing your router and tampering with it. To do this, open your router’s web interface and look for the “Remote Access,” “Remote Administration,” or “Remote Management” feature. Ensure it’s disabled — it should be disabled by default on most routers, but it’s good to check. Update the Firmware Like our operating systems, web browsers, and every other piece of software we use, router software isn’t perfect. The router’s firmware — essentially the software running on the router — may have security flaws. Router manufacturers may release firmware updates that fix such security holes, although they quickly discontinue support for most routers and move on to the next models. Unfortunately, most routers don’t have an auto-update feature like Windows and our web browsers do — you have to check your router manufacturer’s website for a firmware update and install it manually via the router’s web interface. Check to be sure your router has the latest available firmware installed. Change Default Login Credentials Many routers have default login credentials that are fairly obvious, such as the password “admin”. If someone gained access to your router’s web interface through some sort of vulnerability or just by logging onto your Wi-Fi network, it would be easy to log in and tamper with the router’s settings. To avoid this, change the router’s password to a non-default password that an attacker couldn’t easily guess. Some routers even allow you to change the username you use to log into your router. Lock Down Wi-Fi Access If someone gains access to your Wi-Fi network, they could attempt to tamper with your router — or just do other bad things like snoop on your local file shares or use your connection to downloaded copyrighted content and get you in trouble. Running an open Wi-Fi network can be dangerous. To prevent this, ensure your router’s Wi-Fi is secure. This is pretty simple: Set it to use WPA2 encryption and use a reasonably secure passphrase. Don’t use the weaker WEP encryption or set an obvious passphrase like “password”. Disable UPnP A variety of UPnP flaws have been found in consumer routers. Tens of millions of consumer routers respond to UPnP requests from the Internet, allowing attackers on the Internet to remotely configure your router. Flash applets in your browser could use UPnP to open ports, making your computer more vulnerable. UPnP is fairly insecure for a variety of reasons. To avoid UPnP-based problems, disable UPnP on your router via its web interface. If you use software that needs ports forwarded — such as a BitTorrent client, game server, or communications program — you’ll have to forward ports on your router without relying on UPnP. Log Out of the Router’s Web Interface When You’re Done Configuring It Cross site scripting (XSS) flaws have been found in some routers. A router with such an XSS flaw could be controlled by a malicious web page, allowing the web page to configure settings while you’re logged in. If your router is using its default username and password, it would be easy for the malicious web page to gain access. Even if you changed your router’s password, it would be theoretically possible for a website to use your logged-in session to access your router and modify its settings. To prevent this, just log out of your router when you’re done configuring it — if you can’t do that, you may want to clear your browser cookies. This isn’t something to be too paranoid about, but logging out of your router when you’re done using it is a quick and easy thing to do. Change the Router’s Local IP Address If you’re really paranoid, you may be able to change your router’s local IP address. For example, if its default address is 192.168.0.1, you could change it to 192.168.0.150. If the router itself were vulnerable and some sort of malicious script in your web browser attempted to exploit a cross site scripting vulnerability, accessing known-vulnerable routers at their local IP address and tampering with them, the attack would fail. This step isn’t completely necessary, especially since it wouldn’t protect against local attackers — if someone were on your network or software was running on your PC, they’d be able to determine your router’s IP address and connect to it. Install Third-Party Firmwares If you’re really worried about security, you could also install a third-party firmware such as DD-WRT or OpenWRT. You won’t find obscure back doors added by the router’s manufacturer in these alternative firmwares. Consumer routers are shaping up to be a perfect storm of security problems — they’re not automatically updated with new security patches, they’re connected directly to the Internet, manufacturers quickly stop supporting them, and many consumer routers seem to be full of bad code that leads to UPnP exploits and easy-to-exploit backdoors. It’s smart to take some basic precautions. Image Credit: Nuscreen on Flickr     

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• DotNetNuke is switching to C#, uh oh

  - by Chris Hammond

  If you didn’t see Shaun’s blog post earlier this week you should give it a good read through . The post announced the fact that starting with Version 6.0 (targeted for Q2 2011) DotNetNuke will no longer be developed/released as a VB.NET Application. All development of the core platform will be in C# (this does not mean that the community modules for the platform will change languages). Most of the feedback I have seen so far has been rather positive, most folks who use DotNetNuke on a regular basis...(read more)

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• Antenna Aligner part 2: Finding the right direction

  - by Chris George

  Last time I managed to get "my first app(tm)" built, published and running on my iPhone. This was really cool, a piece of my code running on my very own device. Ok, so I'm easily pleased! The next challenge was actually trying to determine what it was I wanted this app to do, and how to do it. Reverting back to good old paper and pen, I started sketching out designs for the app. I knew I wanted it to get a list of transmitters, then clicking on a transmitter would display a compass type view, with an arrow pointing the right way. I figured there would not be much point in continuing until I know I could do the graphical part of the project, i.e. the rotating compass, so armed with that reasoning (plus the fact I just wanted to get on and code!), I once again dived into visual studio. Using my friend (google) I found some example code for getting the compass data from the phone using the PhoneGap framework. // onSuccess: Get the current heading // function onSuccess(heading) {    alert('Heading: ' + heading); } navigator.compass.getCurrentHeading(onSuccess, onError); Using the ripple mobile emulator this showed that it was successfully getting the compass heading. But it didn't work when uploaded to my phone. It turns out that the examples I had been looking at were for PhoneGap 1.0, and Nomad uses PhoneGap 1.4.1. In 1.4.1, getCurrentHeading provides a compass object to onSuccess, not just a numeric value, so the code now looks like // onSuccess: Get the current magnetic heading // function onSuccess(heading) {    alert('Heading: ' + heading.magneticHeading); }; navigator.compass.getCurrentHeading(onSuccess, onError); So the lesson learnt from this... read the documentation for the version you are actually using! This does, however, lead to compatibility problems with ripple as it only supports 1.0 which is a real pain. I hope that the ripple system is updated sometime soon.

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• Patches and translations

  - by Chris Wilson

  When changing a string of text as a part of a patch, how should the translation in the .po files be handled? For example, a recent paper cut I've worked on involved changing the string "Reboot Anyway" to "Restart Anyway" when gnome-session detected applications still running during restart. When I greped for the offending string, I found not only the string on the Gtk button, but identical strings in a long list of .po files which I later learned contained translations. The format of these translations of along the lines of msgid:Reboot Anyway <translated text> Changing the text of only the button would results in a discrepancy between the text on the English button and the translation, and changing the msgid line would result in a similar situation. How should I raise the issue that new translations are needed? I know this is a trivial problem in this example, but there are other such bugs that involve rewriting entire paragraphs of text.

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• HTG Explains: How Windows Uses The Task Scheduler for System Tasks

  - by Chris Hoffman

  While you can use the Windows Task Scheduler to schedule your own automatic tasks, Windows also uses it behind the scenes to perform many system tasks – defragmenting your hard disks when you’re not using your computer, for example. You can even modify these system tasks to tweak Windows to your liking – for example, you can change how often Windows creates system restore points. Third-party programs also often use the Task Scheduler for their own tasks. HTG Explains: Why Do Hard Drives Show the Wrong Capacity in Windows? Java is Insecure and Awful, It’s Time to Disable It, and Here’s How What Are the Windows A: and B: Drives Used For?

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• HTG Explains: Do You Really Need to Safely Remove USB Sticks?

  - by Chris Hoffman

  You’ve probably heard that you always need to use the Safely Remove Hardware icon before unplugging a USB device. However, there’s also a good chance that you’ve unplugged a USB device without using this option and everything worked fine. Windows itself tells you that you don’t need to use the Safely Remove Hardware option if you use certain settings – the default settings – but the advice Windows provides is misleading. How to Use an Xbox 360 Controller On Your Windows PC Download the Official How-To Geek Trivia App for Windows 8 How to Banish Duplicate Photos with VisiPic

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• Web Hosting Checklist

  - by Chris

  Hello, I am a web developer that is starting to look into hosting his own website. I would like to showcase my programming skills (PHP, MySQl, C#, Wordpress). My knowledge of languages I am OK with but the actually hosting site is where my knowledge starts to get a little shaky. I know the basics (bandwidth, sub-domains, re-write rules) but I would love your input, to help me formulate a check list of certain web-hosting services that I should be on the look-out for. Also I was wondering if there were any reliable hosting providers who give you the option to host both c# code-behinds and PHP code. As I would like to have two versions of my site, one in C# and one in PHP the hope is that if I need to look for another job this website will help me show possible employers my server side knowledge. I hope this is enough info, I did some researching online but found a bunch of unless articles and I've always have had luck on the StackExchange sites. So hopefully you, can help me. Thanks alot.

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• How to Quickly Resize, Convert & Modify Images from the Linux Terminal

  - by Chris Hoffman

  ImageMagick is a suite of command-line utilities for modifying and working with images. ImageMagick can quickly perform operations on an image from a terminal, perform batch processing of many images, or be integrated into a bash script. ImageMagick can perform a wide variety of operations. This guide will introduce you to ImageMagick’s syntax and basic operations and show you how to combine operations and perform batch processing of many images. The HTG Guide to Hiding Your Data in a TrueCrypt Hidden Volume Make Your Own Windows 8 Start Button with Zero Memory Usage Reader Request: How To Repair Blurry Photos

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• How can I calibrate my printer using the LaTeX test page?

  - by Chris

  I am trying to print a LaTeX compiled document but my printer doesn't print the top part. It seems that the top part is outside of the printing range. To debug this problem I have printed the LaTeX test page (/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex/base/testpage.tex) and it turns out that my printer is placing the content about 4.5mm closer to the top of the page than it should. How can I calibrate my printer/driver so that it will place the content where it is supposed to go? I am using an HP OfficetJet 7300 printer with hplip.

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• How To Easily Send Emails From The Windows Task Scheduler

  - by Chris Hoffman

  The Windows Task Scheduler can automatically send email at a specific time or in response to a specific event, but its integrated email feature won’t work very well for most users. Instead of using the Task Scheduler’s email feature to send emails, you can use the SendEmail utility. It allows you to construct a single-line command that authenticates with an SMTP server and sends an email. How To Create a Customized Windows 7 Installation Disc With Integrated Updates How to Get Pro Features in Windows Home Versions with Third Party Tools HTG Explains: Is ReadyBoost Worth Using?

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• Texture2D.GetData fails to return pixel colour data

  - by Chris Charabaruk

  Because I'm using sprite sheets instead of an individual texture per sprite, I need to pass in a Rectangle when calling Texture2D.GetData() in my collision detection for per-pixel tests. Unfortunately, without fail I get an ArgumentException percolated down from an internal method inside the Texture (not Texture2D) class. My code for getting the texture data looks like this: public override Color[] GetPixelData() { Color[] data = new Color[(int)size.Product()]; Rectangle rect = new Rectangle(hframe * (int)size.X, vframe * (int)size.Y, (int)size.X, (int)size.Y); #if DEBUG if (sprite.Bounds.Contains(rect) && sprite.Format == SurfaceFormat.Color) #endif sprite.GetData(0, rect, data, 0, 1); return data; } Even with the check to ensure I'm grabbing a valid rectangle and that the texture format matches what I'm trying to get, I still get that exception, claiming "The size of the data passed in is too large or too small for this resource." Unfortunately, the debugger won't let me check the locals within the Texture.ValidateTotalSize() method where the exception originates. Has anyone else had this problem and knows how to fix it? I'm relying on AABB testing only for now, but that doesn't really work for some of my game's entities due to odd shapes, rotation and scaling.

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• Should Exterrnal USB hard drive auto mount Ubuntu 12.04.01 LTS

  - by Chris Good

  I want to have external USB hard drives automatically mounted when plugged in. I have 2 drives exactly the same except for volume label. They both have the same UUID. I want to be easily able to swap them as I'm using them for backups and want to keep 1 at home for off site backup. I've set up the /etc/fstab so they should mount at different places based on their volume label: /etc/fstab : LABEL=Passport1 /media/Passport1 ntfs defaults,windows_names,locale=en_US.utf8 0 0 LABEL=Passport2 /media/Passport2 ntfs defaults,windows_names,locale=en_US.utf8 0 0 blkid shows : ... /dev/sdc1: LABEL="Passport2" UUID="4E1AEA7B1AEA6007" TYPE="ntfs" /dev/sdd1: LABEL="Passport1" UUID="4E1AEA7B1AEA6007" TYPE="ntfs" They both mount automatically during reboot but do not mount when just plugged in to a running system. I've read lots of stuff about this, much of it is old so I'm not sure if it applies. I've read some stuff that says the mounts should happen automatically when plugged in, and lots of other stuff that says you have to install other software to make this happen, although much of it just seems to set up the fstab. What's the real story? Here is /var/log/syslog when drive is plugged in: Dec 14 11:22:58 ausyvutims1 kernel: [66221.300196] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 6 using ehci_hcd Dec 14 11:22:58 ausyvutims1 mtp-probe: checking bus 1, device 6: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:11.0/0000:02:03.0/usb1/1-1" Dec 14 11:22:58 ausyvutims1 mtp-probe: bus: 1, device: 6 was not an MTP device Dec 14 11:22:58 ausyvutims1 kernel: [66221.656020] scsi7 : usb-storage 1-1:1.0 Dec 14 11:22:59 ausyvutims1 kernel: [66222.661534] scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access WD My Passport 0748 1016 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6 Dec 14 11:22:59 ausyvutims1 kernel: [66222.666466] scsi 7:0:0:1: Enclosure WD SES Device 1016 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6 Dec 14 11:22:59 ausyvutims1 kernel: [66222.667739] sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0 Dec 14 11:22:59 ausyvutims1 kernel: [66222.667913] ses 7:0:0:1: Attached Enclosure device Dec 14 11:22:59 ausyvutims1 kernel: [66222.668047] ses 7:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 13 Dec 14 11:22:59 ausyvutims1 kernel: [66222.678473] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] 1953458176 512-byte logical blocks: (1.00 TB/931 GiB) Dec 14 11:22:59 ausyvutims1 kernel: [66222.687700] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off Dec 14 11:22:59 ausyvutims1 kernel: [66222.687705] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 47 00 10 08 Dec 14 11:22:59 ausyvutims1 kernel: [66222.701076] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] No Caching mode page present Dec 14 11:22:59 ausyvutims1 kernel: [66222.701081] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through Dec 14 11:22:59 ausyvutims1 kernel: [66222.738062] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] No Caching mode page present Dec 14 11:22:59 ausyvutims1 kernel: [66222.738068] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through Dec 14 11:22:59 ausyvutims1 kernel: [66222.754558] sdc: sdc1 Dec 14 11:22:59 ausyvutims1 kernel: [66222.792006] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] No Caching mode page present Dec 14 11:22:59 ausyvutims1 kernel: [66222.792012] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through Dec 14 11:22:59 ausyvutims1 kernel: [66222.792016] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI disk Dec 14 11:22:59 ausyvutims1 ata_id[16971]: HDIO_GET_IDENTITY failed for '/dev/sdc': Invalid argument Thanks for any help offered

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• ImageResizer - AzureReader2 with Azure SDK 2.2

  - by Chris Skardon

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/cskardon/archive/2013/10/29/imageresizer---azurereader2-with-azure-sdk-2.2.aspxSo Azure SDK 2.2 came out recently, which means I can open my azure projects in VS 2013 (yay), so I decided to do an upgrade of my MVC4 project to MVC5, I followed this link on how to do the upgrade, and generally things went ok. I fire up my app, and run into a ‘binding’ issue, that AzureReader2 was trying to use Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Storage, Version=2.1.0.0 but alas, it couldn’t find it. I am not the only one (see stackoverflow), and one solution is to run ‘Add-BindingRedirect’ from the Package Manager Console, but that didn’t solve the problem for me, as it didn’t pick up on the Azure stuff, so I resorted to adding the redirect manually. So, in short, to get AzureReader2 to work with Azure SDK 2.2, you need to add the following to your web.config: <runtime> <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1"> <!-- Other bindings here! --> <dependentAssembly> <assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Storage" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" culture="neutral"/> <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-2.1.0.3" newVersion="2.1.0.3"/> </dependentAssembly> </assemblyBinding>

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• HTG Explains: Why Deleted Files Can Be Recovered and How You Can Prevent It

  - by Chris Hoffman

  When you a delete a file, it isn’t really erased – it continues existing on your hard drive, even after you empty it from the Recycle Bin. This allows you (and other people) to recover files you’ve deleted. If you’re not careful, this will also allow other people to recover your confidential files, even if you think you’ve deleted them. This is a particularly important concern when you’re disposing of a computer or hard drive. Image Credit: Norlando Pobre on Flickr 8 Deadly Commands You Should Never Run on Linux 14 Special Google Searches That Show Instant Answers How To Create a Customized Windows 7 Installation Disc With Integrated Updates

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• “It’s only test code…”

  - by Chris George

  “Let me hack this in, it’s only test code”, “Don’t worry about getting it reviewed, it’s only test code”, “It doesn’t have to be elegant or efficient, it’s only test code”… do these phrases sound familiar? Chances are if you’ve working with test automation, at one point or other you will have heard these phrases, you have probably even used them yourself! What is certain is that code written under this “it’s only test code” mantra will come back and bite you in the arse! I’ve recently encountered a case where a test was giving a false positive, therefore hiding a real product bug because that test code was very badly written. Firstly it was very difficult to understand what the test was actually trying to achieve let alone how it was doing it, and this complexity masked a simple logic error. These issues are real and they do happen. Let’s take a step back from this and look at what we are trying to do. We are writing test code that tests product code, and we do this to create a suite of tests that will help protect our software against regressions. This test code is making sure that the product behaves as it should by employing some sort of expected result verification. The simple cases of these are generally not a problem. However, automation allows us to explore more complex scenarios in many more permutations. As this complexity increases then so does the complexity of the test code. It is at this point that code which has not been architected properly will cause problems.   Keep your friends close… So, how do we make sure we are doing it right? The development teams I have worked on have always had Test Engineers working very closely with their Software Engineers. This is something that I have always tried to take full advantage of. They are coding experts! So run your ideas past them, ask for advice on how to structure your code, help you design your data structures. This may require a shift in your teams viewpoint, as contrary to this section title and folklore, Software Engineers are not actually the mortal enemy of Test Engineers. As time progresses, and test automation becomes more and more ingrained in what we do, the two roles are converging more than ever. Over the 16 years I have spent as a Test Engineer, I have seen the grey area between the two roles grow significantly larger. This serves to strengthen the relationship and common bond between the two roles which helps to make test code activities so much easier!   Pair for the win Possibly the best thing you could do to write good test code is to pair program on the task. This will serve a few purposes. you will get the benefit of the Software Engineers knowledge and experience the Software Engineer will gain knowledge on the testing process. Sharing the love is a wonderful thing! two pairs of eyes are always better than one… And so are two brains. Between the two of you, I will guarantee you will derive more useful test cases than if it was just one of you.   Code reviews Another policy which certainly pays dividends is the practice of code reviews. By having one of your peers review your code before you commit it serves two purposes. Firstly, it forces you to explain your code. Just the act of doing this will often pick up errors in your code. Secondly, it gets yet another pair of eyes on your code! I cannot stress enough how important code reviews are. The benefits they offer apply as much to product code as test code. In short, Software and Test Engineers should all be doing them! It can be extended even further by getting test code reviewed by a Software Engineer and a Test Engineer, and likewise product code. This serves to keep both functions in the loop with changes going on within your code base.   Learn from your devs I briefly touched on this earlier but I’d like to go into more detail here. Pairing with your Software Engineers when writing your test code is such an amazing opportunity to improve your coding skills. As I sit here writing this article waiting to be called into court for jury service, it reminds me that it takes a lot of patience to be a Test Engineer, almost as much as it takes to be a juror! However tempting it is to go rushing in and start writing your automated tests, resist that urge. Discuss what you want to achieve then talk through the approach you’re going to take. Then code it up together. I find it really enlightening to ask questions like ‘is there a better way to do this?’ Or ‘is this how you would code it?’ The latter question, especially, is where I learn the most. I’ve found that most Software Engineers will be reluctant to show you the ‘right way’ to code something when writing tests because they perceive the ‘right way’ to be too complicated for the Test Engineer (e.g. not mentioning LINQ and instead doing something verbose). So by asking how THEY would code it, it unleashes their true dev-ness and advanced code usually ensues! I would like to point out, however, that you don’t have to accept their method as the final answer. On numerous occasions I have opted for the more simple/verbose solution because I found the code written by the Software Engineer too advanced and therefore I would find it unreadable when I return to the code in a months’ time! Always keep the target audience in mind when writing clever code, and in my case that is mostly Test Engineers.  

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• Extra Life 2012

  - by Chris Gardner

  Greetings, It's that time of year again. The time when I beg you for money for charity. See, unlike those bell ringers outside Wal-Mart, I don't do it when you have ten bazillion holiday obligations... Once again, I will be enduring a 24-hour marathon of gaming to raise money for Children Hospital in Birmingham. All the money goes straight to them, and you get to tell Uncie Samual that you're good for that money. I'd REALLY like to break $1000 this year, as I have come REALLY close for the past 2 year to doing so. Don't live near me? Live closer to a children's hospital in the Children's Miracle Network? It's OK. Go find a participant that is working for your hospital and hook them up. Just left me know, I will will join in with the karmic love you will already receive. This year, the event will take place on October 20th, beginning at 8 A.M. Once again, I will try to provide some web streams, etc, if you want to point and laugh (especially if I have to result to playing Dance Central at 4 AM to stay awake for the last part.) Look at it this way, I'm going to badger you about this for the next month. You might as well donate some money so you can righteously tell me to shut the Smurf up. You can place your bid at the link below. Feel free to spread the word to anyone and everyone. I thank you. The children thank you. Several breeds of feral platypus thank you. Maybe, just maybe, doing so will will help you feel the love felt by re-fried beans when lovingly hugged in a warm tortilla. Enjoy your burrito. http://www.extra-life.org/participant/cgardner

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• Antenna Aligner Part 6: Little Robots

  - by Chris George

  A week ago I took temporary ownership of a HTC Desire S so that I could start testing my app under Android. Support for Android was not in my original plan, but when Nomad added support for it recently, I starting thinking why not! So with some trepidation, I clicked the Build for Android button on the Nomad toolbar... nothing. Hmm... that's not right, I was expecting something to build. After a bit of faffing around I finally realised that I hadn't read the text on the Android setup page properly (yes that's right, RTFM!), and I needed a two-part application identifier, separated by a dot. I did this (not sure what the two part thing is all about, that one my list to investigate!) After making the change, the Android build worked and created the apk file. I uploaded this to the device and nervously ran it... it worked!!!  Well, more or less! So, there was not splash screen, but this was no surprise because I only have the iOS icons and splash screen in my project at the moment. What was more concerning was the compass update didn't seem to be working. I suspect this is a result of using an iOS specific option in the Phonegap compass watcher. Another thing to investigate. I've also just noticed that the css gradient background hasn't worked either... These issues aside, it was actually more successful than I was expecting, so happy days! Right, lets get Googling...   Next time: Preparing for submission to the App Store! :-)

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

  - by Chris Jacob

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

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• 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.

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• Breaking 1NF to model subset constraints. Does this sound sane?

  - by Chris Travers

  My first question here. Appologize if it is in the wrong forum but this seems pretty conceptual. I am looking at doing something that goes against conventional wisdom and want to get some feedback as to whether this is totally insane or will result in problems, so critique away! I am on PostgreSQL 9.1 but may be moving to 9.2 for this part of this project. To re-iterate: Does it seem sane to break 1NF in this way? I am not looking for debugging code so much as where people see problems that this might lead. The Problem In double entry accounting, financial transactions are journal entries with an arbitrary number of lines. Each line has either a left value (debit) or a right value (credit) which can be modelled as a single value with negatives as debits and positives as credits or vice versa. The sum of all debits and credits must equal zero (so if we go with a single amount field, sum(amount) must equal zero for each financial journal entry). SQL-based databases, pretty much required for this sort of work, have no way to express this sort of constraint natively and so any approach to enforcing it in the database seems rather complex. The Write Model The journal entries are append only. There is a possibility we will add a delete model but it will be subject to a different set of restrictions and so is not applicable here. If and when we allow deletes, we will probably do them using a simple ON DELETE CASCADE designation on the foreign key, and require that deletes go through a dedicated stored procedure which can enforce the other constraints. So inserts and selects have to be accommodated but updates and deletes do not for this task. My Proposed Solution My proposed solution is to break first normal form and model constraints on arrays of tuples, with a trigger that breaks the rows out into another table. CREATE TABLE journal_line ( entry_id bigserial primary key, account_id int not null references account(id), journal_entry_id bigint not null, -- adding references later amount numeric not null ); I would then add "table methods" to extract debits and credits for reporting purposes: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION debits(journal_line) RETURNS numeric LANGUAGE sql IMMUTABLE AS $$ SELECT CASE WHEN $1.amount < 0 THEN $1.amount * -1 ELSE NULL END; $$; CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION credits(journal_line) RETURNS numeric LANGUAGE sql IMMUTABLE AS $$ SELECT CASE WHEN $1.amount > 0 THEN $1.amount ELSE NULL END; $$; Then the journal entry table (simplified for this example): CREATE TABLE journal_entry ( entry_id bigserial primary key, -- no natural keys :-( journal_id int not null references journal(id), date_posted date not null, reference text not null, description text not null, journal_lines journal_line[] not null ); Then a table method and and check constraints: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION running_total(journal_entry) returns numeric language sql immutable as $$ SELECT sum(amount) FROM unnest($1.journal_lines); $$; ALTER TABLE journal_entry ADD CONSTRAINT CHECK (((journal_entry.running_total) = 0)); ALTER TABLE journal_line ADD FOREIGN KEY journal_entry_id REFERENCES journal_entry(entry_id); And finally we'd have a breakout trigger: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION je_breakout() RETURNS TRIGGER LANGUAGE PLPGSQL AS $$ BEGIN IF TG_OP = 'INSERT' THEN INSERT INTO journal_line (journal_entry_id, account_id, amount) SELECT NEW.id, account_id, amount FROM unnest(NEW.journal_lines); RETURN NEW; ELSE RAISE EXCEPTION 'Operation Not Allowed'; END IF; END; $$; And finally CREATE TRIGGER AFTER INSERT OR UPDATE OR DELETE ON journal_entry FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE_PROCEDURE je_breaout(); Of course the example above is simplified. There will be a status table that will track approval status allowing for separation of duties, etc. However the goal here is to prevent unbalanced transactions. Any feedback? Does this sound entirely insane? Standard Solutions? In getting to this point I have to say I have looked at four different current ERP solutions to this problems: Represent every line item as a debit and a credit against different accounts. Use of foreign keys against the line item table to enforce an eventual running total of 0 Use of constraint triggers in PostgreSQL Forcing all validation here solely through the app logic. My concerns are that #1 is pretty limiting and very hard to audit internally. It's not programmer transparent and so it strikes me as being difficult to work with in the future. The second strikes me as being very complex and required a series of contraints and foreign keys against self to make work, and therefore it strikes me as complex, hard to sort out at least in my mind, and thus hard to work with. The fourth could be done as we force all access through stored procedures anyway and this is the most common solution (have the app total things up and throw an error otherwise). However, I think proof that a constraint is followed is superior to test cases, and so the question becomes whether this in fact generates insert anomilies rather than solving them. If this is a solved problem it isn't the case that everyone agrees on the solution....

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• ADF is YouTubed

  - by Chris Muir

  A blog post along the lines of "your wishes are our command". ADF developers are hopefully aware of our ADF Insider Essentials recordings, a page full of presentations from small to large topics on all-things-ADF.  A couple of customers have pointed out these recordings aren't accessible via the iPad and other Apple OSX devices thanks to the recordings being wrapped in an Adobe Flash applet. To satisfy this need we've now uploaded all of the videos as MP4s to our ADF Insider Essentials YouTube channel for your iPad viewing pleasure.  So now regardless if you're sitting at your PC or on the couch with your iPad, you can enjoy my horrible Aussie accent amongst the more professional ADF presentations from my colleagues ;-) Make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel to receive notifications of newly uploaded content. 

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• How to Sync Files Between Computers Without Storing Them in the Cloud

  - by Chris Hoffman

  So you have multiple computers and you want to keep your files in sync, but you don’t want to store them on someone else’s servers. You’ll want a service that synchronizes files directly between your computers. With such a service, you can synchronize an unlimited amount of files and people can’t gain access to your files just by gaining access to an account on a server and viewing the files via the web interface. We’re focused on syncing files over the network here — either over a local network or the Internet. We’re looking for Dropbox-style solutions that don’t store files on a central server like Dropbox does.    

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