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• Integrate Google Wave With Your Windows Workflow

  - by Matthew Guay

  Have you given Google Wave a try, only to find it difficult to keep up with?  Here’s how you can integrate Google Wave with your desktop and workflow with some free and simple apps. Google Wave is an online web app, and unlike many Google services, it’s not easily integrated with standard desktop applications.  Instead, you’ll have to keep it open in a browser tab, and since it is one of the most intensive HTML5 webapps available today, you may notice slowdowns in many popular browsers.  Plus, it can be hard to stay on top of your Wave conversations and collaborations by just switching back and forth between the website and whatever else you’re working on.  Here we’ll look at some tools that can help you integrate Google Wave with your workflow, and make it feel more native in Windows. Use Google Wave Directly in Windows What’s one of the best ways to make a web app feel like a native application?  By making it into a native application, of course!  Waver is a free Air powered app that can make the mobile version of Google Wave feel at home on your Windows, Mac, or Linux desktop.  We found it to be a quick and easy way to keep on top of our waves and collaborate with our friends. To get started with Waver, open their homepage on the Adobe Air Marketplace (link below) and click Download From Publisher. Waver is powered by Adobe Air, so if you don’t have Adobe Air installed, you’ll need to first download and install it. After clicking the link above, Adobe Air will open a prompt asking what you wish to do with the file.  Click Open, and then install as normal. Once the installation is finished, enter your Google Account info in the window.   After a few moments, you’ll see your Wave account in miniature, running directly in Waver.  Click a Wave to view it, or click New wave to start a new Wave message.  Unfortunately, in our tests the search box didn’t seem to work, but everything else worked fine. Google Wave works great in Waver, though all of the Wave features are not available since it is running the mobile version of Wave. You can still view content from plugins, including YouTube videos, directly in Waver.   Get Wave Notifications From Your Windows Taskbar Most popular email and Twitter clients give you notifications from your system tray when new messages come in.  And with Google Wave Notifier, you can now get the same alerts when you receive a new Wave message. Head over to the Google Wave Notifier site (link below), and click the download link to get started.  Make sure to download the latest Binary zip, as this one will contain the Windows program rather than the source code. Unzip the folder, and then run GoogleWaveNotifier.exe. On first run, you can enter your Google Account information.  Notice that this is not a standard account login window; you’ll need to enter your email address in the Username field, and then your password below it. You can also change other settings from this dialog, including update frequency and whether or not to run at startup.  Click the value, and then select the setting you want from the dropdown menu. Now, you’ll have a new Wave icon in your system tray.  When it detects new Waves or unread updates, it will display a popup notification with details about the unread Waves.  Additionally, the icon will change to show the number of unread Waves.  Click the popup to open Wave in your browser.  Or, if you have Waver installed, simply open the Waver window to view your latest Waves. If you ever need to change settings again in the future, right-click the icon and select Settings, and then edit as above. Get Wave Notifications in Your Email  Most of us have Outlook or Gmail open all day, and seldom leave the house without a Smartphone with push email.  And thanks to a new Wave feature, you can still keep up with your Waves without having to change your workflow. To activate email notifications from Google Wave, login to your Wave account, click the arrow beside your Inbox, and select Notifications. Select how quickly you want to receive notifications, and choose which email address you wish to receive the notifications.  Click Save when you’re finished. Now you’ll receive an email with information about new and updated Waves in your account.  If there were only small changes, you may get enough info directly in the email; otherwise, you can click the link and open that Wave in your browser. Conclusion Google Wave has great potential as a collaboration and communications platform, but by default it can be hard to keep up with what’s going on in your Waves.  These apps for Windows help you integrate Wave with your workflow, and can keep you from constantly logging in and checking for new Waves.  And since Google Wave registration is now open for everyone, it’s a great time to give it a try and see how it works for yourself. Links Signup for Google Wave (Google Account required) Download Waver from the Adobe Air Marketplace Download Google Wave Notifier Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips We Have 20 Google Wave Invites. Want One?Tired of Waiting for Google Wave? Try ShareFlow NowIntegrate Google Docs with Outlook the Easy WayAwesome Desktop Wallpapers: The Windows 7 EditionWeek in Geek: The Stupid Geek Tricks to Hide Extra Windows Edition 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 HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Default Programs Editor – One great tool for Setting Defaults Convert BMP, TIFF, PCX to Vector files with RasterVect Free Identify Fonts using WhatFontis.com Windows 7’s WordPad is Actually Good Greate Image Viewing and Management with Zoner Photo Studio Free Windows Media Player Plus! – Cool WMP Enhancer

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• T-SQL Tuesday #21 - Crap!

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  Adam Machanic's (blog | twitter) ever popular T-SQL Tuesday series is being held on Wednesday this time, and the topic is… SHIT CRAP. No, not fecal material.  But crap code.  Crap SQL.  Crap ideas that you thought were good at the time, or were forced to do due (doo-doo?) to lack of time. The challenge for me is to look back on my SQL Server career and find something that WASN'T crap.  Well, there's a lot that wasn't, but for some reason I don't remember those that well.  So the additional challenge is to pick one particular turd that I really wish I hadn't squeezed out.  Let's see if this outline fits the bill: An ETL process on text files; That had to interface between SQL Server and an AS/400 system; That didn't use SSIS (should have) or BizTalk (ummm, no) but command-line scripting, using Unix utilities(!) via: xp_cmdshell; That had to email reports and financial data, some of it sensitive Yep, the stench smell is coming back to me now, as if it was yesterday… As to why SSIS and BizTalk were not options, basically I didn't know either of them well enough to get the job done (and I still don't).  I also had a strict deadline of 3 days, in addition to all the other responsibilities I had, so no time to learn them.  And seeing how screwed up the rest of the process was: Payment files from multiple vendors in multiple formats; Sent via FTP, PGP encrypted email, or some other wizardry; Manually opened/downloaded and saved to a particular set of folders (couldn't change this); Once processed, had to be placed BACK in the same folders with the original archived; x2 divisions that had to run separately; Plus an additional vendor file in another format on a completely different schedule; So that they could be MANUALLY uploaded into the AS/400 system (couldn't change this either, even if it was technically possible) I didn't feel so bad about the solution I came up with, which was naturally: Copy the payment files to the local SQL Server drives, using xp_cmdshell Run batch files (via xp_cmdshell) to parse the different formats using sed, a Unix utility (this was before Powershell) Use other Unix utilities (join, split, grep, wc) to process parsed files and generate metadata (size, date, checksum, line count) Run sqlcmd to execute a stored procedure that passed the parsed file names so it would bulk load the data to do a comparison bcp the compared data out to ANOTHER text file so that I could grep that data out of the original file Run another stored procedure to import the matched data into SQL Server so it could process the payments, including file metadata Process payment batches and log which division and vendor they belong to Email the payment details to the finance group (since it was too hard for them to run a web report with the same data…which they ran anyway to compare the emailed file against…which always matched, surprisingly) Email another report showing unmatched payments so they could manually void them…about 3 months afterward All in "Excel" format, using xp_sendmail (SQL 2000 system) Copy the unmatched data back to the original folder locations, making sure to match the file format exactly (if you've ever worked with ACH files, you'll understand why this sucked) If you're one of the 10 people who have read my blog before, you know that I love the DOS "for" command.  Like passionately.  Like fairy-tale love.  So my batch files were riddled with for loops, nested within other for loops, that called other batch files containing for loops.  I think there was one section that had 4 or 5 nested for commands.  It was wrong, disturbed, and completely un-maintainable by anyone, even myself.  Months, even a year, after I left the company I got calls from someone who had to make a minor change to it, and they called me to talk them out of spraying the office with an AK-47 after looking at this code.  (for you Star Trek TOS fans) The funniest part of this, well, one of the funniest, is that I made the deadline…sort of, I was only a day late…and the DAMN THING WORKED practically unchanged for 3 years.  Most of the problems came from the manual parts of the overall process, like forgetting to decrypt the files, or missing/late files, or saved to the wrong folders.  I'm definitely not trying to toot my own horn here, because this was truly one of the dumbest, crappiest solutions I ever came up with.  Fortunately as far as I know it's no longer in use and someone has written a proper replacement.  Today I would knuckle down and do it in SSIS or Powershell, even if it took me weeks to get it right. The real lesson from this crap code is to make things MAINTAINABLE and UNDERSTANDABLE.  sed scripting regular expressions doesn't fit that criteria in any way.  If you ever find yourself under pressure to do something fast at all costs, DON'T DO IT.  Stop and consider long-term maintainability, not just for yourself but for others on your team.  If you can't explain the basic approach in under 5 minutes, it ultimately won't succeed.  And while you may love to leave all that crap behind, it may follow you anyway, and you'll step in it again.   P.S. - if you're wondering about all the manual stuff that couldn't be changed, it was because the entire process had gone through Six Sigma, and was deemed the best possible way.  Phew!  Talk about stink!

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• My Right-to-Left Foot (T-SQL Tuesday #13)

  - by smisner

  As a business intelligence consultant, I often encounter the situation described in this month's T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Steve Jones ( Blog | Twitter) – “What the Business Says Is Not What the  Business Wants.” Steve posed the question, “What issues have you had in interacting with the business to get your job done?” My profession requires me to have one foot firmly planted in the technology world and the other foot planted in the business world. I learned long ago that the business never says exactly what the business wants because the business doesn't have the words to describe what the business wants accurately enough for IT. Not only do technological-savvy barriers exist, but there are also linguistic barriers between the two worlds. So how do I cope? The adage "a picture is worth a thousand words" is particularly helpful when I'm called in to help design a new business intelligence solution. Many of my students in BI classes have heard me explain ("rant") about left-to-right versus right-to-left design. To understand what I mean about these two design options, let's start with a picture: When we design a business intelligence solution that includes some sort of traditional data warehouse or data mart design, we typically place the data sources on the left, the new solution in the middle, and the users on the right. When I've been called in to help course-correct a failing BI project, I often find that IT has taken a left-to-right approach. They look at the data sources, decide how to model the BI solution as a _______ (fill in the blank with data warehouse, data mart, cube, etc.), and then build the new data structures and supporting infrastructure. (Sometimes, they actually do this without ever having talked to the business first.) Then, when they show what they've built to the business, the business says that is not what we want. Uh-oh. I prefer to take a right-to-left approach. Preferably at the beginning of a project. But even if the project starts left-to-right, I'll do my best to swing it around so that we’re back to a right-to-left approach. (When circumstances are beyond my control, I carry on, but it’s a painful project for everyone – not because of me, but because the approach just doesn’t get to what the business wants in the most effective way.) By using a right to left approach, I try to understand what it is the business is trying to accomplish. I do this by having them explain reports to me, and explaining the decision-making process that relates to these reports. Sometimes I have them explain to me their business processes, or better yet show me their business processes in action because I need pictures, too. I (unofficially) call this part of the project "getting inside the business's head." This is starting at the right side of the diagram above. My next step is to start moving leftward. I do this by preparing some type of prototype. Depending on the nature of the project, this might mean that I simply mock up some data in a relational database and build a prototype report in Reporting Services. If I'm lucky, I might be able to use real data in a relational database. I'll either use a subset of the data in the prototype report by creating a prototype database to hold the sample data, or select data directly from the source. It all depends on how much data there is, how complex the queries are, and how fast I need to get the prototype completed. If the solution will include Analysis Services, then I'll build a prototype cube. Analysis Services makes it incredibly easy to prototype. You can sit down with the business, show them the prototype, and have a meaningful conversation about what the BI solution should look like. I know I've done a good job on the prototype when I get knocked out of my chair so that the business user can explore the solution further independently. (That's really happened to me!) We can talk about dimensions, hierarchies, levels, members, measures, and so on with something tangible to look at and without using those terms. It's not helpful to use sample data like Adventure Works or to use BI terms that they don't really understand. But when I show them their data using the BI technology and talk to them in their language, then they truly have a picture worth a thousand words. From that, we can fine tune the prototype to move it closer to what they want. They have a better idea of what they're getting, and I have a better idea of what to build. So right to left design is not truly moving from the right to the left. But it starts from the right and moves towards the middle, and once I know what the middle needs to look like, I can then build from the left to meet in the middle. And that’s how I get past what the business says to what the business wants.

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• Get Information to Your Blog with Microsoft Broadcaster

  - by Matthew Guay

  Do you often have people ask you for advice about technology, or do you write tech-focused blog or newsletter?  Here’s how you can get information to share with your readers about Microsoft technology with Microsoft Broadcaster. Microsoft Broadcaster is a new service from Microsoft to help publishers, bloggers, developers, and other IT professionals find relevant information and resources from Microsoft.  You can use it to help discover things to write about, or simply discover new information about the technology you use.  Broadcaster will also notify you when new resources are available about the topics that interest you.  Let’s look at how you could use this to expand your blog and help your users. Getting Started Head over to the Microsoft Broadcaster site (link below), and click Join to get started. Sign in with your Windows Live ID, or create a new account if you don’t already have one. Near the bottom of the page, add information about your blog, newsletter, or group that you want to share Broadcaster information with.  Click Add when you’re done entering information.  You can enter as many sites or groups as you wish. When you’ve entered all of your information, click the Apply button at the bottom of the page.  Broadcaster will then let you know your information has been submitted, but you’ll need to wait several days to see if you are approved or not. Our application was approved about 2 days after applying, though this may vary.  When you’re approved, you’ll receive an email letting you know.  Return to the Broadcaster website (link below), but this time, click Sign in. Accept the terms of use by clicking I Accept at the bottom of the page. Confirm that your information entered previously is correct, and then click Configure my keywords at the bottom of the page. Now you can pick the topics you want to stay informed about.  Type keywords in the textbox, and it will bring up relevant topics with IntelliSense. Here we’ve added several topics to keep up with. Next select the Microsoft Products you want to keep track of.  If the product you want to keep track of is not listed, make sure to list it in the keywords section as above. Finally, select the types of content you wish to see, including articles, eBooks, webcasts, and more. Finally, when everything’s entered, click Configure My Alerts at the bottom of the page. Broadcaster can automatically email you when new content is found.  If you would like this, click Subscribe.  Otherwise, simply click Access Dashboard to go ahead and find your personalized content. If you choose to receive emails of new content, you’ll have to configure it with Windows Live Alerts.  Click Continue to set this up. Select if you want to receive Messenger alerts, emails, and/or text messages when new content is available.  Click Save when you’re finished. Finally, select how often you want to be notified, and then click Access Dashboard to view the content currently available. Finding Content For Your Blog, Site, or Group Now you can find content specified for your interests from the dashboard.  To access the dashboard in the future, simply go to the Broadcaster site and click Sign In. Here you can see available content, and can search for different topics or customize the topics shown. You’ll see snippets of information from various Microsoft videos, articles, whitepapers, eBooks, and more, depending on your settings.  Click the link at the top of the snippet to view the content, or right-click and copy the link to use in emails or on social networks like Twitter. If you’d like to add this snippet to your website or blog, click the Download content link at the bottom.   Now you can preview what the snippet will look like on your site, and change the width or height to fit your site.  You can view and edit the source code of the snippet from the box at the bottom, and then copy it to use on your site. Copy the code, and paste it in the HTML of a blog post, email, webpage, or anywhere else you wish to share it.  Here we’re pasting it into the HTML editor in Windows Live Writer so we can post it to a blog. After adding a title and opening paragraph, we have a nice blog post that only took a few minutes to put together but should still be useful for our readers.  You can check out the blog post we created at the link below. Readers can click on the links, which will direct them to the content on Microsoft’s websites. Conclusion If you frequently need to find educational and informative content about Microsoft products and services, Broadcaster can be a great service to keep you up to date.  The service worked quite good in our tests, and generally found relevant content to our keywords.  We had difficulty embedding links to eBooks that were listed by Broadcaster, but everything else worked for us.  Now you can always have high quality content to help your customers, coworkers, friends, and more, and you just might find something that will help you, too! Link Microsoft Broadcaster (registration required) Example Post at Techinch.com with Content from Microsoft Broadcaster Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Create An Electronic Business Card In Outlook 2007Mysticgeek Blog: A Look at Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 on Windows XPAnnouncing the How-To Geek BlogsNew Vista Syntax for Opening Control Panel Items from the Command-lineHow To Create and Publish Blog Posts in Word 2010 & 2007 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 HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Fix Common Inkjet Printer Errors Dual Boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 What is HTML5? Default Programs Editor – One great tool for Setting Defaults Convert BMP, TIFF, PCX to Vector files with RasterVect Free Identify Fonts using WhatFontis.com

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• Sliding collision response

  - by dbostream

  I have been reading plenty of tutorials about sliding collision responses yet I am not able to implement it properly in my project. What I want to do is make a puck slide along the rounded corner boards of a hockey rink. In my latest attempt the puck does slide along the boards but there are some strange velocity behaviors. First of all the puck slows down a lot pretty much right away and then it slides for awhile and stops before exiting the corner. Even if I double the speed I get a similar behavior and the puck does not make it out of the corner. I used some ideas from this document http://www.peroxide.dk/papers/collision/collision.pdf. This is what I have: Update method called from the game loop when it is time to update the puck (I removed some irrelevant parts). I use two states (current, previous) which are used to interpolate the position during rendering. public override void Update(double fixedTimeStep) { /* Acceleration is set to 0 for now. */ Acceleration.Zero(); PreviousState = CurrentState; _collisionRecursionDepth = 0; CurrentState.Position = SlidingCollision(CurrentState.Position, CurrentState.Velocity * fixedTimeStep + 0.5 * Acceleration * fixedTimeStep * fixedTimeStep); /* Should not this be affected by a sliding collision? and not only the position. */ CurrentState.Velocity = CurrentState.Velocity + Acceleration * fixedTimeStep; Heading = Vector2.NormalizeRet(CurrentState.Velocity); } private Vector2 SlidingCollision(Vector2 position, Vector2 velocity) { if(_collisionRecursionDepth > 5) return position; bool collisionFound = false; Vector2 futurePosition = position + velocity; Vector2 intersectionPoint = new Vector2(); Vector2 intersectionPointNormal = new Vector2(); /* I did not include the collision detection code, if a collision is detected the intersection point and normal in that point is returned. */ if(!collisionFound) return futurePosition; /* If no collision was detected it is safe to move to the future position. */ /* It is not exactly the intersection point, but slightly before. */ Vector2 newPosition = intersectionPoint; /* oldVelocity is set to the distance from the newPosition(intersection point) to the position it had moved to had it not collided. */ Vector2 oldVelocity = futurePosition - newPosition; /* Project the distance left to move along the intersection normal. */ Vector2 newVelocity = oldVelocity - intersectionPointNormal * oldVelocity.DotProduct(intersectionPointNormal); if(newVelocity.LengthSq() < 0.001) return newPosition; /* If almost no speed, no need to continue. */ _collisionRecursionDepth++; return SlidingCollision(newPosition, newVelocity); } What am I doing wrong with the velocity? I have been staring at this for very long so I have gone blind. I have tried different values of recursion depth but it does not seem to make it better. Let me know if you need more information. I appreciate any help. EDIT: A combination of Patrick Hughes' and teodron's answers solved the velocity problem (I think), thanks a lot! This is the new code: I decided to use a separate recursion method now too since I don't want to recalculate the acceleration in each recursion. public override void Update(double fixedTimeStep) { Acceleration.Zero();// = CalculateAcceleration(fixedTimeStep); PreviousState = new MovingEntityState(CurrentState.Position, CurrentState.Velocity); CurrentState = SlidingCollision(CurrentState, fixedTimeStep); Heading = Vector2.NormalizeRet(CurrentState.Velocity); } private MovingEntityState SlidingCollision(MovingEntityState state, double timeStep) { bool collisionFound = false; /* Calculate the next position given no detected collision. */ Vector2 futurePosition = state.Position + state.Velocity * timeStep; Vector2 intersectionPoint = new Vector2(); Vector2 intersectionPointNormal = new Vector2(); /* I did not include the collision detection code, if a collision is detected the intersection point and normal in that point is returned. */ /* If no collision was detected it is safe to move to the future position. */ if (!collisionFound) return new MovingEntityState(futurePosition, state.Velocity); /* Set new position to the intersection point (slightly before). */ Vector2 newPosition = intersectionPoint; /* Project the new velocity along the intersection normal. */ Vector2 newVelocity = state.Velocity - 1.90 * intersectionPointNormal * state.Velocity.DotProduct(intersectionPointNormal); /* Calculate the time of collision. */ double timeOfCollision = Math.Sqrt((newPosition - state.Position).LengthSq() / (futurePosition - state.Position).LengthSq()); /* Calculate new time step, remaining time of full step after the collision * current time step. */ double newTimeStep = timeStep * (1 - timeOfCollision); return SlidingCollision(new MovingEntityState(newPosition, newVelocity), newTimeStep); } Even though the code above seems to slide the puck correctly please have a look at it. I have a few questions, if I don't multiply by 1.90 in the newVelocity calculation it doesn't work (I get a stack overflow when the puck enters the corner because the timeStep decreases very slowly - a collision is found early in every recursion), why is that? what does 1.90 really do and why 1.90? Also I have a new problem, the puck does not move parallell to the short side after exiting the curve; to be more exact it moves outside the rink (I am not checking for any collisions with the short side at the moment). When I perform the collision detection I first check that the puck is in the correct quadrant. For example bottom-right corner is quadrant four i.e. circleCenter.X < puck.X && circleCenter.Y puck.Y is this a problem? or should the short side of the rink be the one to make the puck go parallell to it and not the last collision in the corner? EDIT2: This is the code I use for collision detection, maybe it has something to do with the fact that I can't make the puck slide (-1.0) but only reflect (-2.0): /* Point is the current position (not the predicted one) and quadrant is 4 for the bottom-right corner for example. */ if (GeometryHelper.PointInCircleQuadrant(circleCenter, circleRadius, state.Position, quadrant)) { /* The line is: from = state.Position, to = futurePosition. So a collision is detected when from is inside the circle and to is outside. */ if (GeometryHelper.LineCircleIntersection2d(state.Position, futurePosition, circleCenter, circleRadius, intersectionPoint, quadrant)) { collisionFound = true; /* Set the intersection point to slightly before the real intersection point (I read somewhere this was good to do because of floting point precision, not sure exactly how much though). */ intersectionPoint = intersectionPoint - Vector2.NormalizeRet(state.Velocity) * 0.001; /* Normal at the intersection point. */ intersectionPointNormal = Vector2.NormalizeRet(circleCenter - intersectionPoint) } } When I set the intersection point, if I for example use 0.1 instead of 0.001 the puck travels further before it gets stuck, but for all values I have tried (including 0 - the real intersection point) it gets stuck somewhere (but I necessarily not get a stack overflow). Can something in this part be the cause of my problem? I can see why I get the stack overflow when using -1.0 when calculating the new velocity vector; but not how to solve it. I traced the time steps used in the recursion (initial time step is always 1/60 ~ 0.01666): Recursion depth Time step next recursive call [Start recursion, time step ~ 0.016666] 0 0,000985806527246773 [No collision, stop recursion] [Start recursion, time step ~ 0.016666] 0 0,0149596704364629 1 0,0144883449376379 2 0,0143155612984837 3 0,014224925727213 4 0,0141673917461608 5 0,0141265435314026 6 0,0140953966184117 7 0,0140704653746625 ...and so on. As you can see the collision is detected early in every recursive call which means the next time step decreases very slowly thus the recursion depth gets very big - stack overflow.

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• Having a hard time having consecutive animations for an attack

  - by Kelby Styler

  So I've been trying to figure this out for about 8 hours now...It's driving me nuts because I am pretty sure that it is something dead simple that I am just not understanding. I had everything working fine when I was just cycling through the animation: Idle - Attack - Attack 1 - Attack 2. Just in an infinite loop. The problem now is that I want it to go Attack - check if x time passes if ctrl pressed before x passes move to Attack 1, if not move back to Idle - Then either Attack 1 or Idle depending on how long has passed. I've almost gotten it a few time, but something always happens where it falls apart if I press ctrl too fast or after multiple cycles of the animation. Any help would be appreciated, I'm just at my wits end on this one. I've been looking at this so long that I just don't know where to go anymore. Code is below, here is the controller using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; public class MeleeAttack : MonoBehaviour { public int damage; public bool Attack; public bool Attack1; public bool Attack2; public bool Idle; private Animator animator; private int attnum = 0; private float count = 2f; private float timeLeft; //Gives value to damage output void MAttackDmg () { if (Input.GetKeyDown (KeyCode.RightControl) || Input.GetKeyDown (KeyCode.LeftControl)) { switch (attnum) { case (0): Attack = true; damage = 2; animator.SetBool ("Attack", Attack); attnum++; Idle = false; animator.SetBool ("Idle", Idle); timeLeft = count; break; case (1): Attack1 = true; damage = 2; animator.SetBool ("Attack1", Attack1); attnum++; Idle = false; animator.SetBool ("Idle", Idle); timeLeft = count; break; case (2): Attack2 = true; damage = 2; animator.SetBool ("Attack2", Attack2); attnum = 0; Idle = false; animator.SetBool ("Idle", Idle); timeLeft = count; break; } } if (Input.GetKeyUp (KeyCode.RightControl) || Input.GetKeyUp (KeyCode.LeftControl)) { switch (attnum) { case (0): Debug.Log ("false"); damage = 0; if (timeLeft <= 0f) { Attack2 = false; animator.SetBool ("Attack2", Attack2); Debug.Log ("t1"); Idle = true; animator.SetBool ("Idle", Idle); attnum = 0; timeLeft = count; } break; case (1): Debug.Log ("false1"); damage = 0; if (timeLeft <= 0f) { Debug.Log ("t2"); Attack = false; animator.SetBool ("Attack", Attack); Idle = true; animator.SetBool ("Idle", Idle); attnum = 0; timeLeft = count; } break; case (2): Debug.Log ("false2"); damage = 0; if (timeLeft <= 0f) { Attack1 = false; animator.SetBool ("Attack1", Attack1); Debug.Log ("t3"); Idle = true; animator.SetBool ("Idle", Idle); attnum = 0; timeLeft = count; } break; } } } // Use this for initialization void Awake () { animator = GetComponent<Animator> (); } // Update is called once per frame void Update () { timeLeft -= Time.deltaTime;; MAttackDmg (); } void Start (){ timeLeft = count; } }

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• Wireless Problem on Acer Aspire 5610z

  - by Ugur Can Yalaki

  I installed ubuntu 12.04 on my machine, but I can't get wireless connection to work. My computer is Acer Aspire 5610z. I found that some other people that have same computer, face the same problem. Here is some information about it: ****** info trace ****** * uname -a * Linux ucy-Aspire-5610Z 3.8.0-32-generic #47~precise1-Ubuntu SMP Wed Oct 2 16:22:28 UTC 2013 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux * lsb_release * Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS Release: 12.04 Codename: precise * lspci * 05:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN [14e4:4311] (rev 01) Subsystem: AMBIT Microsystem Corp. Device [1468:0422] Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge 06:01.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX [14e4:170c] (rev 02) Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0090] Kernel driver in use: b44 * lsusb * Bus 001 Device 004: ID 04e8:6863 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd Bus 001 Device 002: ID 5986:0100 Acer, Inc Orbicam Bus 002 Device 002: ID 046d:c52f Logitech, Inc. Wireless Mouse M305 Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub * PCMCIA Card Info * PRODID_1="" PRODID_2="" PRODID_3="" PRODID_4="" MANFID=0000,0000 FUNCID=255 * iwconfig * * rfkill * 0: acer-wireless: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no * lsmod * ssb_hcd 12781 0 ssb 51554 2 ssb_hcd,b44 * nm-tool * NetworkManager Tool State: connected (global) Device: usb0 [Wired connection 2] ------------------------------------------- Type: Wired Driver: rndis_host State: connected Default: yes HW Address: Capabilities: Carrier Detect: yes Wired Properties Carrier: on IPv4 Settings: Address: 192.168.42.7 Prefix: 24 (255.255.255.0) Gateway: 192.168.42.129 DNS: 192.168.42.129 IPv6 Settings: Address: ::a05d:a1ff:fea4:1738 Prefix: 64 Gateway: fe80::504d:76ff:fe86:db04 Address: fe80::a05d:a1ff:fea4:1738 Prefix: 64 Gateway: fe80::504d:76ff:fe86:db04 DNS: fe80::504d:76ff:fe86:db04 Device: eth2 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Type: Wired Driver: b44 State: unavailable Default: no HW Address: Capabilities: Carrier Detect: yes Wired Properties Carrier: off * NetworkManager.state * [main] NetworkingEnabled=true WirelessEnabled=true WWANEnabled=true WimaxEnabled=true * NetworkManager.conf * [main] plugins=ifupdown,keyfile dns=dnsmasq [ifupdown] managed=false * interfaces * auto lo iface lo inet loopback * iwlist * * resolv.conf * nameserver 127.0.0.1 * blacklist * [/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ath_pci.conf] blacklist ath_pci [/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-bcm43.conf] blacklist b43 blacklist b43legacy blacklist ssb blacklist bcm43xx blacklist brcm80211 blacklist brcmfmac blacklist brcmsmac blacklist bcma [/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf] blacklist evbug blacklist usbmouse blacklist usbkbd blacklist eepro100 blacklist de4x5 blacklist eth1394 blacklist snd_intel8x0m blacklist snd_aw2 blacklist i2c_i801 blacklist prism54 blacklist bcm43xx blacklist garmin_gps blacklist asus_acpi blacklist snd_pcsp blacklist pcspkr blacklist amd76x_edac * modinfo * filename: /lib/modules/3.8.0-32-generic/kernel/drivers/usb/host/ssb-hcd.ko license: GPL description: Common USB driver for SSB Bus author: Hauke Mehrtens srcversion: E127A51EDC8F44D2C2A8F15 alias: ssb:v4243id0819rev* alias: ssb:v4243id0817rev* alias: ssb:v4243id0808rev* depends: ssb intree: Y vermagic: 3.8.0-32-generic SMP mod_unload modversions 686 filename: /lib/modules/3.8.0-32-generic/kernel/drivers/ssb/ssb.ko license: GPL description: Sonics Silicon Backplane driver srcversion: 14621F6EC014F731244437C alias: pci:v000014E4d00004350sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v000014E4d0000432Csv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v000014E4d0000432Bsv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v000014E4d00004329sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v000014E4d00004328sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v000014E4d00004325sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v000014E4d00004324sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v000014E4d0000A8D6sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v000014E4d00004322sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v000014E4d00004321sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v000014E4d00004320sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v000014E4d00004319sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v000014A4d00004318sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v000014E4d00004318sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v000014E4d00004315sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v000014E4d00004312sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v000014E4d00004311sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v000014E4d00004307sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v000014E4d00004306sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v000014E4d00004301sv*sd*bc*sc*i* depends: intree: Y vermagic: 3.8.0-32-generic SMP mod_unload modversions 686 * udev rules * PCI device 0x14e4:/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1e.0/0000:06:01.0/ssb1:0 (b44) SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth0" PCI device 0x14e4:/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1e.0/0000:06:01.0/ssb2:0 (b44) SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth1" PCI device 0x14e4:/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1e.0/0000:06:01.0/ssb3:0 (b44) SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth2" * dmesg * [ 2.385241] ssb: Found chip with id 0x4311, rev 0x01 and package 0x00 [ 2.385256] ssb: Core 0 found: ChipCommon (cc 0x800, rev 0x11, vendor 0x4243) [ 2.385266] ssb: Core 1 found: IEEE 802.11 (cc 0x812, rev 0x0A, vendor 0x4243) [ 2.385276] ssb: Core 2 found: USB 1.1 Host (cc 0x817, rev 0x03, vendor 0x4243) [ 2.385286] ssb: Core 3 found: PCI-E (cc 0x820, rev 0x01, vendor 0x4243) [ 2.448147] ssb: Sonics Silicon Backplane found on PCI device 0000:05:00.0 [ 2.468112] ssb: Found chip with id 0x4401, rev 0x02 and package 0x00 [ 2.468124] ssb: Core 0 found: Fast Ethernet (cc 0x806, rev 0x07, vendor 0x4243) [ 2.468132] ssb: Core 1 found: V90 (cc 0x807, rev 0x03, vendor 0x4243) [ 2.468140] ssb: Core 2 found: PCI (cc 0x804, rev 0x0A, vendor 0x4243) [ 2.508230] ssb: Sonics Silicon Backplane found on PCI device 0000:06:01.0 [ 2.528620] b44 ssb1:0 eth0: Broadcom 44xx/47xx 10/100 PCI ethernet driver ******** done ******** Thank you already for your help.

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• Amanda Todd&ndash;What Parents Can Learn From Her Story

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  Amanda Todd was a bullied teenager who committed suicide this week. Her story has become headline news due in part to her You Tube video she posted telling her story:   The story is heartbreaking for so many reasons, but I wanted to talk about what we as parents can learn from this. Being the dad to two girls, one that’s 10, I’m very aware of the dangers that the internet holds. When I saw her story, one thing jumped out at me – unmonitored internet access at an early age. My daughter (then 9) came home from a friends place once and asked if she could be in a YouTube video with her friend. Apparently this friend was allowed to do whatever she wanted on the internet, including posting goofy videos. This set off warning bells and we ensured our daughter realized the dangers and that she was not to ever post videos of herself. In looking at Amanda’s story, the access to unmonitored internet time along with just being a young girl and being flattered by an online predator were the key events that ultimately led to her suicide. Yes, the reaction of her classmates and “friends” was horrible as well, I’m not diluting that. But our youth don’t fully understand yet that what they do on the internet today will follow them potentially forever. And the people they meet online aren’t necessarily who they claim to be. So what can we as parents learn from Amanda’s story? Parents Shouldn’t Feel Bad About Being Internet Police Our job as parents is in part to protect our kids and keep them safe, even if they don’t like our measures. This includes monitoring, supervising, and restricting their internet activities. In our house we have a family computer in the living room that the kids can watch videos and surf the web. It’s in plain view of everyone, so you can’t hide what you’re looking at. If our daughter goes to a friend’s place, we ask about what they did and what they played. If the computer comes up, we ask about what they did on it. Luckily our daughter is very up front and honest in telling us things, so we have very open discussions. Parents Need to Be Honest About the Dangers of the Internet I’m sure every generation says that “kids grow up so fast these days”, but in our case the internet really does push our kids to be exposed to things they otherwise wouldn’t experience. One wrong word in a Google search, a click of a link in a spam email, or just general curiosity can expose a child to things they aren’t ready for or should never be exposed to (and I’m not just talking about adult material – have you seen some of the graphic pictures from war zones posted on news sites recently?). Our stance as parents has been to be open about discussing the dangers with our kids before they encounter any content – be proactive instead of reactionary. Part of this is alerting them to the monsters that lurk on the internet as well. As kids explore the world wide web, they’re eventually going to encounter some chat room or some Facebook friend invite or other personal connection with someone. More than ever kids need to be educated on the dangers of engaging with people online and sharing personal information. You can think of it as an evolved discussion that our parents had with us about using the phone: “Don’t say ‘I’m home alone’, don’t say when mom or dad get home, don’t tell them any information, etc.” Parents Need to Talk Self Worth at Home Katie makes the point better than I ever could (one bad word towards the end): Our children need to understand their value beyond what the latest issue of TigerBeat says, or the media who continues flaunting physical attributes over intelligence and character, or a society that puts focus on status and wealth. They also have to realize that just because someone pays you a compliment, that doesn’t mean you should ignore personal boundaries and limits. What does this have to do with the internet? Well, in days past if you wanted to be social you had to go out somewhere. Now you can video chat with any number of people from the comfort of wherever your laptop happens to be – and not just text but full HD video with sound! While innocent children head online in the hopes of meeting cool people, predators with bad intentions are heading online too. As much as we try to monitor their online activity and be honest about the dangers of the internet, the human side of our kids isn’t something we can control. But we can try to influence them to see themselves as not needing to search out the acceptance of complete strangers online. Way easier said than done, but ensuring self-worth is something discussed, encouraged, and celebrated is a step in the right direction. Parental Wake Up Call This post is not a critique of Amanda’s parents. The reality is that cyber bullying/abuse is happening every day, and there are millions of parents that have no clue its happening to their children. Amanda’s story is a wake up call that our children’s online activities may be putting them in danger. My heart goes out to the parents of this girl. As a father of daughters, I can’t imagine what I would do if I found my daughter having to hide in a ditch to avoid a mob or call 911 to report my daughter had attempted suicide by drinking bleach or deal with a child turning to drugs/alcohol/cutting to cope. It would be horrendous if we as parents didn’t re-evaluate our family internet policies in light of this event. And in the end, Amanda’s video was meant to bring attention to her plight and encourage others going through the same thing. We may not be kids, but we can still honour her memory by helping safeguard our children.

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• Windows Azure Recipe: Enterprise LOBs

  - by Clint Edmonson

  Enterprises are more and more dependent on their specialized internal Line of Business (LOB) applications than ever before. Naturally, the more software they leverage on-premises, the more infrastructure they need manage. It’s frequently the case that our customers simply can’t scale up their hardware purchases and operational staff as fast as internal demand for software requires. The result is that getting new or enhanced applications in the hands of business users becomes slower and more expensive every day. Being able to quickly deliver applications in a rapidly changing business environment while maintaining high standards of corporate security is a challenge that can be met right now by moving enterprise LOBs out into the cloud and leveraging Azure’s Access Control services. In fact, we’re seeing many of our customers (both large and small) see huge benefits from moving their web based business applications such as corporate help desks, expense tracking, travel portals, timesheets, and more to Windows Azure. Drivers Cost Reduction Time to market Security Solution Here’s a sketch of how many Windows Azure Enterprise LOBs are being architected and deployed: Ingredients Web Role – this will host the core of the application. Each web role is a virtual machine hosting an application written in ASP.NET (or optionally php, or node.js). The number of web roles can be scaled up or down as needed to handle peak and non-peak traffic loads. Many Java based applications are also being deployed to Windows Azure with a little more effort. Database – every modern web application needs to store data. SQL Azure databases look and act exactly like their on-premise siblings but are fault tolerant and have data redundancy built in. Access Control – this service is necessary to establish federated identity between the cloud hosted application and an enterprise’s corporate network. It works in conjunction with a secure token service (STS) that is hosted on-premises to establish the corporate user’s identity and credentials. The source code for an on-premises STS is provided in the Windows Azure training kit and merely needs to be customized for the corporate environment and published on a publicly accessible corporate web site. Once set up, corporate users see a near seamless single sign-on experience. Reporting – businesses live and die by their reports and SQL Azure Reporting, based on SQL Server Reporting 2008 R2, can serve up reports with tables, charts, maps, gauges, and more. These reports can be accessed from the Windows Azure Portal, through a web browser, or directly from applications. Service Bus (optional) – if deep integration with other applications and systems is needed, the service bus is the answer. It enables secure service layer communication between applications hosted behind firewalls in on-premises or partner datacenters and applications hosted inside Windows Azure. The Service Bus provides the ability to securely expose just the information and services that are necessary to create a simpler, more secure architecture than opening up a full blown VPN. Data Sync (optional) – in cases where the data stored in the cloud needs to be shared internally, establishing a secure one-way or two-way data-sync connection between the on-premises and off-premises databases is a perfect option. It can be very granular, allowing us to specify exactly what tables and columns to synchronize, setup filters to sync only a subset of rows, set the conflict resolution policy for two-way sync, and specify how frequently data should be synchronized Training Labs These links point to online Windows Azure training labs where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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• Einladung zur Oracle SE University am 13./14. Dezember 2011

  - by A&C Redaktion

  Sehr geehrte Oracle Partner, die erste Oracle SE University wird von Azlan und Oracle gemeinsam ins Leben gerufen, dazu laden wir Sie herzlich ein. Zielgruppe sind die technischen Ansprechpartner aller Oracle Partner. Wir bieten Ihnen in Fulda einen umfassenden Überblick über aktuelle Technologien, Produkte und Dienstleistungen mit den Schwerpunkten Oracle on Oracle, Positionierung und Architektur. Dabei werden sowohl bewährte Software-Produktbereiche wie Datenbank und Fusion Middleware beleuchtet, als auch klassische Hardware-Themen wie Systems, Storage und Virtualisierung. Die Agenda finden Sie hier. Top-Referenten garantieren Ihnen qualitativ hochwertige und technisch anspruchsvolle Vorträge.  Projektberichte aus der Praxis bringen Ihnen Kernthemen näher, um mit diesem Wissen zusätzlichen Umsatz zu generieren. Nutzen Sie darüber hinaus die Möglichkeiten zum Networking, die im täglichen Geschäft Gold wert sind.Logistische Informationen: Termin: 13. - 14. Dezember 2011 Ort: Fulda - bietet als die Barockstadt Deutschlands einen reizvollen Kontrast zu unseren technischen Themen. Aber vor allem liegt Fulda fast genau in der geographischen Mitte Deutschlands und ist via einem modernen ICE-Bahnhof bestens von ganz Deutschland aus zu erreichen. Hotel Esperanto Kongress- und Kulturzentrum Fulda: Vom Bahnhof aus gehen Sie gemütliche zwei Minuten um die Ecke und kommen direkt ins Hotel. Für PKW Fahrer sind ausreichend Parkplätze direkt am Hotel vorhanden. Zielgruppe: SEs, technischer Vertrieb, technische Consultants Normal 0 21 false false false DE X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} Konzept der Oracle SE University: Plenum Sessions und Keynote mit strategischen Übersichtsthemen Break Out Sessions (4 Sessions parallel) mit technischem Tiefgang Technologie, Projekterfahrungen, Architekturen, Lösungsszenarien u.v.m. Networking: bei einem gemeinsamen Abendessen am 13.12., ab 19.00 Uhr. Im hauseigenen Grill-Restaurant "El Toro Nero" gibt es die brasilianische Spezialität "Rodizio". Die Teilnahme zur Oracle SE University inklusive dem gemeinsamen Abendessen ist für Sie kostenfrei, die Übernachtungskosten werden von Ihnen selbst getragen. Melden Sie sich bitte bis spätestens 30.11. zur Oracle SE University hier an. Wir haben ein Zimmer-Kontingent reserviert, die Buchung bitten wir Sie online selbst vorzunehmen. Bitte geben Sie bei der Buchung das Stichwort „Oracle SE Uni“ an, damit erhalten Sie den Sonderpreis von 102,- Euro inklusive Frühstück. Wir freuen uns, Sie in Fulda zu begrüßen! Joachim Hissmann Birgit Nehring Normal 0 21 false false false DE X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Manager Key Partner HW Normal 0 21 false false false DE X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Direktor Software & Solution Normal 0 21 false false false DE X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Oracle Deutschland Tech Data/Azlan ================================================================= Kontakte Azlan:Peter MosbauerTel.: 089 [email protected] Robert BacciTel.: 089 4700-3018 [email protected] Oracle:Regina SteyerTel.: 0211 [email protected]

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• External drive hanging, load average through the roof

  - by Paul Tomblin

  I have an external USB drive, and I run an hourly rsync to it as a backup. This has been working fine for years. This weekend, I got two new 2Tb internal drives, and decided it was time to re-install Ubuntu from scratch to clear out all the old cruft. About once a day since the re-install, the backup script hangs hard, usually in the "rm -rf" I do before the rsync. By the time I notice the problem, my load average is in the stratosphere and climbing fast (one time, it was over 150), but anything that doesn't touch the drive seems to be running fine. One thing that I find suspicious is that something, I don't know what, is doing a "smartctl" and a "hdparm" command on the USB drive. I'm pretty sure smartctl isn't supposed to run on external drives. I can't figure out what's doing it, either. Here's part of ps auwwfx when it's hung: root 7310 0.0 0.0 4248 352 ? D 20:15 0:00 /sbin/hdparm -C /dev/sdd root 7808 0.0 0.0 17372 1632 ? D 20:15 0:00 /usr/sbin/smartctl -a -n standby -A -i /dev/sdd root 8427 0.0 0.0 4248 356 ? D 20:20 0:00 /sbin/hdparm -C /dev/sdd root 8925 0.0 0.0 17372 1628 ? D 20:20 0:00 /usr/sbin/smartctl -a -n standby -A -i /dev/sdd root 9529 0.0 0.0 4248 356 ? D 20:25 0:00 /sbin/hdparm -C /dev/sdd root 10026 0.0 0.0 17372 1628 ? D 20:25 0:00 /usr/sbin/smartctl -a -n standby -A -i /dev/sdd root 10655 0.0 0.0 4248 356 ? D 20:30 0:00 /sbin/hdparm -C /dev/sdd root 11151 0.0 0.0 17372 1632 ? D 20:30 0:00 /usr/sbin/smartctl -a -n standby -A -i /dev/sdd root 11774 0.0 0.0 4248 356 ? D 20:35 0:00 /sbin/hdparm -C /dev/sdd root 12271 0.0 0.0 17372 1628 ? D 20:35 0:00 /usr/sbin/smartctl -a -n standby -A -i /dev/sdd root 12878 0.0 0.0 4248 352 ? D 20:40 0:00 /sbin/hdparm -C /dev/sdd root 13374 0.0 0.0 17372 1632 ? D 20:40 0:00 /usr/sbin/smartctl -a -n standby -A -i /dev/sdd root 14011 0.0 0.0 4248 352 ? D 20:45 0:00 /sbin/hdparm -C /dev/sdd root 14507 0.0 0.0 17372 1628 ? D 20:45 0:00 /usr/sbin/smartctl -a -n standby -A -i /dev/sdd root 15116 0.0 0.0 4248 352 ? D 20:50 0:00 /sbin/hdparm -C /dev/sdd root 15612 0.0 0.0 17372 1632 ? D 20:50 0:00 /usr/sbin/smartctl -a -n standby -A -i /dev/sdd root 16223 0.0 0.0 4248 352 ? D 20:55 0:00 /sbin/hdparm -C /dev/sdd root 16734 0.0 0.0 17372 1632 ? D 20:55 0:00 /usr/sbin/smartctl -a -n standby -A -i /dev/sdd root 17345 0.0 0.0 4248 352 ? D 21:00 0:00 /sbin/hdparm -C /dev/sdd root 17842 0.0 0.0 17372 1628 ? D 21:00 0:00 /usr/sbin/smartctl -a -n standby -A -i /dev/sdd root 18463 0.0 0.0 4248 352 ? D 21:05 0:00 /sbin/hdparm -C /dev/sdd root 18960 0.0 0.0 17372 1628 ? D 21:05 0:00 /usr/sbin/smartctl -a -n standby -A -i /dev/sdd root 19598 0.0 0.0 4248 356 ? D 21:10 0:00 /sbin/hdparm -C /dev/sdd root 20096 0.0 0.0 17372 1628 ? D 21:10 0:00 /usr/sbin/smartctl -a -n standby -A -i /dev/sdd root 21280 0.0 0.0 4244 356 ? D 21:15 0:00 /sbin/hdparm -C /dev/sdd root 21784 0.0 0.0 17372 1632 ? D 21:15 0:00 /usr/sbin/smartctl -a -n standby -A -i /dev/sdd root 22414 0.0 0.0 4244 356 ? D 21:20 0:00 /sbin/hdparm -C /dev/sdd root 22912 0.0 0.0 17372 1628 ? D 21:20 0:00 /usr/sbin/smartctl -a -n standby -A -i /dev/sdd root 23541 0.0 0.0 4244 356 ? D 21:25 0:00 /sbin/hdparm -C /dev/sdd root 24038 0.0 0.0 17372 1632 ? D 21:25 0:00 /usr/sbin/smartctl -a -n standby -A -i /dev/sdd root 24658 0.0 0.0 4244 356 ? D 21:30 0:00 /sbin/hdparm -C /dev/sdd root 25157 0.0 0.0 17372 1628 ? D 21:30 0:00 /usr/sbin/smartctl -a -n standby -A -i /dev/sdd Why is this happening, and how can I stop it?

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• PASS Summit 2011 &ndash; Part III

  - by Tara Kizer

  Well we’re about a month past PASS Summit 2011, and yet I haven’t finished blogging my notes! Between work and home life, I haven’t been able to come up for air in a bit.  Now on to my notes… On Thursday of the PASS Summit 2011, I attended Klaus Aschenbrenner’s (blog|twitter) “Advanced SQL Server 2008 Troubleshooting”, Joe Webb’s (blog|twitter) “SQL Server Locking & Blocking Made Simple”, Kalen Delaney’s (blog|twitter) “What Happened? Exploring the Plan Cache”, and Paul Randal’s (blog|twitter) “More DBA Mythbusters”.  I think my head grew two times in size from the Thursday sessions.  Just WOW! I took a ton of notes in Klaus' session.  He took a deep dive into how to troubleshoot performance problems.  Here is how he goes about solving a performance problem: Start by checking the wait stats DMV System health Memory issues I/O issues I normally start with blocking and then hit the wait stats.  Here’s the wait stat query (Paul Randal’s) that I use when working on a performance problem.  He highlighted a few waits to be aware of such as WRITELOG (indicates IO subsystem problem), SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD (indicates CPU problem), and PAGEIOLATCH_XX (indicates an IO subsystem problem or a buffer pool problem).  Regarding memory issues, Klaus recommended that as a bare minimum, one should set the “max server memory (MB)” in sp_configure to 2GB or 10% reserved for the OS (whichever comes first).  This is just a starting point though! Regarding I/O issues, Klaus talked about disk partition alignment, which can improve SQL I/O performance by up to 100%.  You should use 64kb for NTFS cluster, and it’s automatic in Windows 2008 R2. Joe’s locking and blocking presentation was a good session to really clear up the fog in my mind about locking.  One takeaway that I had no idea could be done was that you can set a timeout in T-SQL code view LOCK_TIMEOUT.  If you do this via the application, you should trap error 1222. Kalen’s session went into execution plans.  The minimum size of a plan is 24k.  This adds up fast especially if you have a lot of plans that don’t get reused much.  You can use sys.dm_exec_cached_plans to check how often a plan is being reused by checking the usecounts column.  She said that we can use DBCC FLUSHPROCINDB to clear out the stored procedure cache for a specific database.  I didn’t know we had this available, so this was great to hear.  This will be less intrusive when an emergency comes up where I’ve needed to run DBCC FREEPROCCACHE. Kalen said one should enable “optimize for ad hoc workloads” if you have an adhoc loc.  This stores only a 300-byte stub of the first plan, and if it gets run again, it’ll store the whole thing.  This helps with plan cache bloat.  I have a lot of systems that use prepared statements, and Kalen says we simulate those calls by using sp_executesql.  Cool! Paul did a series of posts last year to debunk various myths and misconceptions around SQL Server.  He continues to debunk things via “DBA Mythbusters”.  You can get a PDF of a bunch of these here.  One of the myths he went over is the number of tempdb data files that you should have.  Back in 2000, the recommendation was to have as many tempdb data files as there are CPU cores on your server.  This no longer holds true due to the numerous cores we have on our servers.  Paul says you should start out with 1/4 to 1/2 the number of cores and work your way up from there.  BUT!  Paul likes what Bob Ward (twitter) says on this topic: 8 or less cores –> set number of files equal to the number of cores Greater than 8 cores –> start with 8 files and increase in blocks of 4 One common myth out there is to set your MAXDOP to 1 for an OLTP workload with high CXPACKET waits.  Instead of that, dig deeper first.  Look for missing indexes, out-of-date statistics, increase the “cost threshold for parallelism” setting, and perhaps set MAXDOP at the query level.  Paul stressed that you should not plan a backup strategy but instead plan a restore strategy.  What are your recoverability requirements?  Once you know that, now plan out your backups. As Paul always does, he talked about DBCC CHECKDB.  He said how fabulous it is.  I didn’t want to interrupt the presentation, so after his session had ended, I asked Paul about the need to run DBCC CHECKDB on your mirror systems.  You could have data corruption occur at the mirror and not at the principal server.  If you aren’t checking for data corruption on your mirror systems, you could be failing over to a corrupt database in the case of a disaster or even a planned failover.  You can’t run DBCC CHECKDB against the mirrored database, but you can run it against a snapshot off the mirrored database.

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• Getting a handle on mobile data

  - by Eric Jensen

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} written by Ashok Joshi The proliferation of mobile devices in the corporate world is both a blessing as well as a challenge.  Mobile devices improve productivity and the velocity of business for the end users; on the other hand, IT departments need to manage the corporate data and applications that run on these devices. Oracle Database Mobile Server (DMS for short) provides a simple and effective way to deal with the management challenge.  DMS supports data synchronization between a central Oracle database server and data on mobile devices.  It also provides authentication, encryption and application and device management.  Finally, DMS is a highly scalable solution that can be used to manage hundreds of thousands of devices.   Here’s a simplified outline of how such a solution might work. Each device runs local sync and mgmt agents that handle bidirectional data flow with an Oracle enterprise backend, run remote commands, and provide status to the management console. For example, mobile admins could monitor multiple networks of mobile devices, upgrade their software remotely, and even destroy the local database on a compromised device. DMS supports either Oracle Berkeley DB or SQLite for device-local storage, and runs on a wide variety of mobile platforms. The schema for the device-local database is pretty simple – it contains the name of the application that’s installed on the device as well as details such as product name, version number, time of last access etc. Each mobile user has an account on the monitoring system.  DMS supports authentication via the Oracle database authentication mechanisms or alternately, via an external authentication server such as Oracle Identity Management. DMS also provides the option of encrypting the data on disk as well as while it is being synchronized. Whenever a device connects with DMS, it sends the list of all local application changes to the server; the server updates the central repository with this information.  Synchronization can be triggered on-demand, whenever there’s a change on the device (e.g. new application installed or an existing application removed) or via a rule-based schedule (e.g. every Saturday). Synchronization is very fast and efficient, since only the changes are propagated.  This includes resume capability; should synchronization be interrupted for any reason, the next synchronization will resume where the previous synchronization was interrupted. If the device should be lost or stolen, DMS has the capability to remove the applications and/or data from the device. This ability to control access to sensitive data and applications is critical in the corporate environment. The central repository also allows the IT manager to track the kinds of applications that mobile users use and recommend patches and upgrades, while still allowing the mobile user full control over what applications s/he downloads and uses on the device.  This is useful since most devices are used for corporate as well as personal information. In certain restricted use scenarios, the IT manager can also control whether a certain application can be installed on a mobile device.  Should an unapproved application be installed, it can easily be removed the next time the device connects with the central server. Oracle Database mobile server provides a simple, effective and highly secure and scalable solution for managing the data and applications for the mobile workforce.

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• Adventures in Windows 8: Understanding and debugging design time data in Expression Blend

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  One of my favorite features in Expression Blend is the ability to attach a Visual Studio debugger to Blend. First let’s start by answering the question: why exactly do you want to do that? Note: If you are familiar with the creation and usage of design time data, feel free to scroll down to the paragraph titled “When design time data fails”. Creating design time data for your app When a designer works on an app, he needs to see something to design. For “static” UI such as buttons, backgrounds, etc, the user interface elements are going to show up in Blend just fine. If however the data is fetched dynamically from a service (web, database, etc) or created dynamically, most probably Blend is going to show just an empty element. The classical way to design at that stage is to run the application, navigate to the screen that is under construction (which can involve delays, need to log in, etc…), to measure what is on the screen (colors, margins, width and height, etc) using various tools, going back to Blend, editing the properties of the elements, running again, etc. Obviously this is not ideal. The solution is to create design time data. For more information about the creation of design time data by mocking services, you can refer to two talks of mine “Deep dive MVVM” and “MVVM Applied From Silverlight to Windows Phone to Windows 8”. The source code for these talks is here and here. Design time data in MVVM Light One of the main reasons why I developed MVVM Light is to facilitate the creation of design time data. To illustrate this, let’s create a new MVVM Light application in Visual Studio. Install MVVM Light from here: http://mvvmlight.codeplex.com (use the MSI in the Download section). After installing, make sure to read the Readme that opens up in your favorite browser, you will need one more step to install the Project Templates. Start Visual Studio 2012. Create a new MvvmLight (Win8) app. Run the application. You will see a string showing “Welcome to MVVM Light”. In the Solution explorer, right click on MainPage.xaml and select Open in Blend. Now you should see “Welcome to MVVM Light [Design]” What happens here is that Expression Blend runs different code at design time than the application runs at runtime. To do this, we use design-time detection (as explained in a previous article) and use that information to initialize a different data service at design time. To understand this better, open the ViewModelLocator.cs file in the ViewModel folder and see how the DesignDataService is used at design time, while the DataService is used at runtime. In a real-life applicationm, DataService would be used to connect to a web service, for instance. When design time data fails Sometimes however, the creation of design time data fails. It can be very difficult to understand exactly what is happening. Expression Blend is not giving a lot of information about what happened. Thankfully, we can use a trick: Attaching a debugger to Expression Blend and debug the design time code. In WPF and Silverlight (including Windows Phone 7), you could simply attach the debugger to Blend.exe (using the “Managed (v4.5, v4.0) code” option even for Silverlight!!) In Windows 8 however, things are just a bit different. This is because the designer that renders the actual representation of the Windows 8 app runs in its own process. Let’s illustrate that: Open the file DesignDataService in the Design folder. Modify the GetData method to look like this: public void GetData(Action<DataItem, Exception> callback) { throw new Exception(); // Use this to create design time data var item = new DataItem("Welcome to MVVM Light [design]"); callback(item, null); } Go to Blend and build the application. The build succeeds, but now the page is empty. The creation of the design time data failed, but we don’t get a warning message. We need to investigate what’s wrong. Close MainPage.xaml Go to Visual Studio and select the menu Debug, Attach to Process. Update: Make sure that you select “Managed (v4.5, v4.0) code” in the “Attach to” field. Find the process named XDesProc.exe. You should have at least two, one for the Visual Studio 2012 designer surface, and one for Expression Blend. Unfortunately in this screen it is not obvious which is which. Let’s find out in the Task Manager. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del and select Task Manager Go to the Details tab and sort the processes by name. Find the one that says “Blend for Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 XAML UI Designer” and write down the process ID. Go back to the Attach to Process dialog in Visual Studio. sort the processes by ID and attach the debugger to the correct instance of XDesProc.exe. Open the MainViewModel (in the ViewModel folder) Place a breakpoint on the first line of the MainViewModel constructor. Go to Blend and open the MainPage.xaml again. At this point, the debugger breaks in Visual Studio and you can execute your code step by step. Simply step inside the dataservice call, and find the exception that you had placed there. Visual Studio gives you additional information which helps you to solve the issue. More info and Conclusion I want to thank the amazing people on the Expression Blend team for being very fast in guiding me in that matter and encouraging me to blog about it. More information about the XDesProc.exe process can be found here. I had to work on a Windows 8 app for a few days without design time data because of an Exception thrown somewhere in the code, and it was really painful. With the debugger, finding the issue was a simple matter of stepping into the code until it threw the exception.   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• How to Play PC Games on Your TV

  - by Chris Hoffman

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

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• A little primer on using TFS with a small team

  - by johndoucette

  The scenario; A small team of 3 developers mostly in maintenance mode with traditional ASP.net, classic ASP, .Net integration services and utilities with the company’s third party packages, and a bunch of java-based Coldfusion web applications all under Visual Source Safe (VSS). They are about to embark on a huge SharePoint 2010 new construction project and wanted to use subversion instead VSS. TFS was a foreign word and smelled of “high cost” and of an “over complicated process”. Since they had no preconditions about the old TFS versions (‘05 & ‘08), it was fun explaining how simple it was to install a TFS server and get the ball rolling, with or without all the heavy stuff one sometimes associates with such a huge and powerful application management lifecycle product. So, how does a small team begin using TFS? 1. Start by using source control and migrate current VSS source trees into TFS. You can take the latest version or migrate the entire version history. It’s up to you on whether you want a clean start or need quick access to all the version notes and history of the bits. 2. Since most shops are mainly in maintenance mode with existing applications, begin using bug workitems for everything. When you receive an issue/bug from your current tracking system, manually enter the workitem in TFS right through Visual Studio. You can automate the integration to the current tracking system later or replace it entirely. Believe me, this thing is powerful and can handle even the largest of help desks. 3. With new construction, begin work with requirements and task workitems and follow the traditional sprint-based development lifecycle. Obviously, some minor training will be needed, but don’t fear, this is very intuitive and MSDN has a ton of lesson based labs and videos. 4. For the java developers, use the new Team Explorer Everywhere 2010 plugin (recently known as Teamprise). There is a seamless interface in Eclipse, but also a good command-line utility for other environments such as Dreamweaver. 5. Wait to fully integrate the whole workitem/project management/testing process until your team is familiar with the integrated workitems for bugs and code. After a while, you will see the team wanting more transparency into the work they are all doing and naturally, everyone will want workitems to help them organize the chaos! 6. Management will be limited in the value of the reports until you have a fully blown implementation of project planning, construction, build, deployment and testing. However, there are some basic “bug rate” reports and current backlog listings that can provide good information. Some notable explanations of TFS; Work Item Tracking and Project Management - A workitem represents the unit of work within the system which enables tracking of all activities produced by a user, whether it is a developer, business user, project manager or tester. The properties of a workitem such as linked changesets (checked-in code), who updated the data and when, the states and reasons for change, are all transitioned to a data warehouse within TFS for reporting purposes. A workitem can be defines as a "bug", "requirement", test case", or a "change request". They drive the work effort by the individual assigned to it and also provide a key role in defining what needs to be done. Workitems are the things the team needs to do to accomplish a goal. Test Case Management - Starting with a workitem known as a "test case", a tester (or developer) can now author and manage test cases within a formal test plan subsystem. Although TFS supports the test case workitem type, there is a new product known as the VS Test Professional 2010 which allows a tester to facilitate manual tests including fast forwarding steps in the process to arrive at the assertion point quickly. This repeatable process provides quick regression tests and can be conducted by the business user to ensure completeness during UAT. In addition, developers no longer can provide a response to a bug with the line "cannot reproduce". With every test run, attachments including the recorded session, captured environment configurations and settings, screen shots, intellitrace (debugging history), and in some cases if the lab manager is being used, a snapshot of the tested environment is available. Version Control - A modern system allowing shared check-in/check-out, excellent merge conflict resolution, Shelvesets (personal check-ins), branching/merging visualization, public workspaces, gated check-ins, security hierarchy capabilities, and changeset/workitem tracking. Knowing what was done with the code by any developer has become much easier to picture and resolve issues. Team Build - Automate the compilation process whether you need it to be whenever a developer checks-in code, periodically such as nightly builds for testers in the morning, or manual builds to be deployed into production. Each build can run through pre-determined tests, perform code analysis to see if the developer conforms to the team standards, and reject the build if either fails. Project Portal & Reporting - Provide management with a dashboard with insight into the project(s). "Where are we" in each step of the way including past iterations and the current burndown rate. Enabling this feature is easy as it seamlessly interfaces with existing SharePoint implementations.

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• A Gentle Introduction to NuGet

  - by Joe Mayo

  Not too long ago, Microsoft released, NuGet, an automated package manager for Visual Studio.  NuGet makes it easy to download and install assemblies, and their references, into a Visual Studio project.  These assemblies, which I loosely refer to as packages, are often open source, and include projects such as LINQ to Twitter. In this post, I'll explain how to get started in using NuGet with your projects to include: installng NuGet, installing/uninstalling LINQ to Twitter via console command, and installing/uninstalling LINQ to Twitter via graphical reference menu. Installing NuGet The first step you'll need to take is to install NuGet.  Visit the NuGet site, at http://nuget.org/, click on the Install NuGet button, and download the NuGet.Tools.vsix installation file, shown below. Each browser is different (i.e. FireFox, Chrome, IE, etc), so you might see options to run right away, save to a location, or access to the file through the browser's download manager.  Regardless of how you receive the NuGet installer, execute the downloaded NuGet.Tools.vsix to install Nuget into visual Studio. The NuGet Footprint When you open visual Studio, observe that there is a new menu option on the Tools menu, titled Library Package Manager; This is where you use NuGet.  There are two menu options, from the Library Package Manager Menu that you can use: Package Manager Console and Package Manager Settings.  I won't discuss Package Manager Settings in this post, except to give you a general idea that, as one of a set of capabilities, it manages the path to the NuGet server, which is already set for you. Another menu, added by the NuGet installer, is Add Library Package Reference, found by opening the context menu for either a Solution Explorer project or a project's References folder or via the Project menu.  I'll discuss how to use this later in the post. The following discussion is concerned with the other menu option, Package Manager Console, which allows you to manage NuGet packages. Gettng a NuGet Package Selecting Tools -> Library Package Manager -> Package Manager Console opens the Package Manager Console.  As you can see, below, the Package Manager Console is text-based and you'll need to type in commands to work with packages. In this post, I'll explain how to use the Package Manager Console to install LINQ to Twitter, but there are many more commands, explained in the NuGet Package Manager Console Commands documentation.  To install LINQ to Twitter, open your current project where you want LINQ to Twitter installed, and type the following at the PM> prompt: Install-Package linqtotwitter If all works well, you'll receive a confirmation message, similar to the following, after a brief pause: Successfully installed 'linqtotwitter 2.0.20'. Successfully added 'linqtotwitter 2.0.20' to NuGetInstall. Also, observe that a reference to the LinqToTwitter.dll assembly was added to your current project. Uninstalling a NuGet Package I won't be so bold as to assume that you would only want to use LINQ to Twitter because there are other Twitter libraries available; I recommend Twitterizer if you don't care for LINQ to Twitter.  So, you might want to use the following command at the PM> prompt to remove LINQ to Twitter from your project: Uninstall-Package linqtotwitter After a brief pause, you'll see a confirmation message similar to the following: Successfully removed 'linqtotwitter 2.0.20' from NuGetInstall. Also, observe that the LinqToTwitter.dll assembly no longer appears in your project references list. Sometimes using the Package Manager Console is required for more sophisticated scenarios.  However, LINQ to Twitter doesn't have any dependencies and is a very simple install, so you can use another method of installing graphically, which I'll show you next. Graphical Installations As explained earlier, clicking Add Library Package Reference, from the context menu for either a Solution Explorer project or a project's References folder or via the Project menu opens the Add Library Package Reference window. This window will allow you to add a reference a NuGet package in your project. To the left of the window are a few accordian folders to help you find packages that are either on-line or already installed.  Just like the previous section, I'll assume you are installing LINQ to Twitter for the first time, so you would select the Online folder and click All.  After waiting for package descriptions to download, you'll notice that there are too many to scroll through in a short period of time, over 900 as I write this.  Therefore, use the search box located at the top right corner of the window and type LINQ to Twitter as I've done in the previous figure. You'll see LINQ to Twitter appear in the list. Click the Install button on the LINQ to Twitter entry. If the installation was successful, you'll see a message box display and disappear quickly (or maybe not if your machine is very fast or you blink at that moment). Then you'll see a reference to the LinqToTwitter.dll assembly in your project's references list. Note: While running this demo, I ran into an issue where VS had created a file lock on an installation folder without releasing it, causing an error with "packagename already exists. Skipping..." and then an error describing that it couldn't write to a destination folder.  I resolved the problem by closing and reopening VS. If you open the Add a Library Package Reference window again, you'll see LINQ to Twitter listed in the Recent packages folder. Summary You can install NuGet via the on-line home page with a click of a button.  Nuget provides two ways to work with packages, via console or graphical window.  While the graphical window is easiest, the console window is more powerful. You can now quickly add project references to many available packages via the NuGet service. Joe

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• Silverlight Cream Monday WP7 App Review # 1

  - by Dave Campbell

  I'm going to try something here... if it seems useful, I'll continue, if it doesn't, I'll stop... so give me feedback! There are *lots* of Apps in the WP7 Marketplace, and heaven help me, but the Marketplace sucks for finding stuff. I won't rehash what's already been said in the blogs, but I agree with one and all. I went out last Saturday to find 2 apps that I knew were released, and couldn't do so on my device. Even in the Zune app, it took quite a while to find them... ok, I'll back off a bit, because I just found out I can do 'Search' now if I know the name... I didn't think that was working before. So my thought is on Monday (like today), I will post a review of 5 apps/games I either use or have played with on my device. These are strictly my opinions, you understand, but hey... it's better than a poke in the eye with an iPhone! A few disclaimers:     Feel free to write me about your app and tell me about it. While it would be very cool to receive a whole bunch of xap files to review, at this point, for technical reasons, I'm unable to side-load my device. Since I plan on only doing this one day a week, and only 5, I may never get caught up, so if you send me some info, be patient. Re: games ... remember I'm old... I'm from the era of Colossal Cave and Zork. Duke-Nukem 2D and Captain Comic were awesome. I don't own an XBOX or any other game system, so take game reviews from my perspective -- who knows, it may be refreshing :) I won't pay for an app or game just to try it. If you expect me to test-drive your app, it's going to have to have a Free Trial. In this Issue:   Jingo! is the first app I bought, just to see what the experience was like. It's very much like a game we used to play in school in the Army in 1971 on paper we passed around. Sort of a cross between hangman and Mastermind, you try to figure out the hidden word in 5 tries. You get really good at 5-letter words after a while. I like this because you have to think, and you're not pressured by a clock Jingo! is by James Furdell and is $1.99 I reviewed René Schulte's Pictures Lab a while back, and have not changed my mind. This is an excellent app for playing with any photo on your device... one you've just taken, one you've synced from your PC, or one you've saved from email. I like this because you can get some cool effects for your photos, and it just works. Pictures Lab is by Schulte Software Development and is $1.99 Since I work as a consultant, and from home, I wanted something I could track my time with. I've test-driven all the contenders I could find so far on the phone, and so far I like ONTRACK! the best. If asked, I have some suggestions, but it's probably just the way I work or think. What I do like is I can tap a project to start/stop/restart a counter, and at the end of the day it shows me how much time I've been working. If there's a way to make an adjustment in case you forget to tap the counter, I don't know how to do it, and that's my biggest complaint. I like this because you can get a daily readout which you can also email as a spreadsheet. The daily results display is very good. ONTRACK! is by Qmino and is $2.99 Remember Item 4 above... I've been playing guitar for 48 years... obviously since before the invention of 'tuners', so I'm not as dependent upon these as some folks are. I've tried some in the past and have always felt I can do just as good by ear (I have perfect relative pitch). So, I gave this app by András Velvárt a dance just to see how it works, and it is surprisingly good. If you're used to one of the stage tuners this may take a little getting used to, but it does the job. The difference with this one is there is no real 'null' point inside which you can think your guitar is in tune. The soundwave stays visible on the device, and if it's moving to the right, your string is flat, if it's moving to the left, your string is sharp. Getting it exact might be tricky, but it is exact! If you need to rely on a tuner, this is a good choice in my opinion, exactly because of the sensitivity.. tune up with this and you're dead-on. Guitar Tuner is by Kinabalu Innovation Limited and is $0.99 Popper 2 is the WP7 version of a wildly popular game by Bill Reiss named Dr. Popper. You can get a trial, or you can now get a free lite version of the game. Popper 2 is a fast-paced bubble breaker game. I find it something fun to play when I just want to buzz out, but maybe the best review is that my daughter didn't want to give my phone back when I showed it to her, and always wants to grab my phone to play 'that game'. A fun distraction with great graphics and a great price Popper 2 is by Blue Rose Systems, LLC and is $1.29 Let me know what you think of the idea of doing reviews, or the layout/whatever, and Stay in the 'Light!   Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• How do I do JavaScript Array Animation

  - by Henry

  I'm making a game but don't know how to do Array Animation with the png Array and game Surface that I made below. I'm trying to make it so that when the Right arrow key is pressed, the character animates as if it is walking to the right and when the Left arrow key is pressed it animates as if it is walking to the left (kind of like Mario). I put everything on a surface instead of the canvas. Everything is explained in the code below. I couldn't find help on this anywhere. I hope what I got below makes sense. I'm basically a beginner with JavaScript. I'll be back if more is needed: <!doctype html5> <html> <head></head> <script src="graphics.js"></script> <script src="object.js"></script> <body onkeydown ="keyDown(event)" onkeyup ="keyUp(event)" ></body> <script> //"Surface" is where I want to display my animation. It's like the HTML // canvas but it's not that. It's just the surface to where everything in the //game and the game itself will be displayed. var Surface = new Graphics(600, 400, "skyblue"); //here's the array that I want to use for animation var player = new Array("StandsRight.png", "WalksRight.png", "StandsLeft.png","WalksLeft.png" ); //Here is the X coordinate, Y coordinate, the beginning png for the animation, //and the object's name "player." I also turned the array into an object (but //I don't know if I was supposed to do that or not). var player = new Object(50, 100, 40, 115, "StandsRight.png","player"); //When doing animation I know that it requires a "loop", but I don't // know how to connect it so that it works with the arrays so that //it could animate. var loop = 0; //this actually puts "player" on screen. It makes player visible and //it is where I would like the animation to occur. Surface.drawObject(player); //this would be the key that makes "player" animation in the righward direction function keyDown(e) { if (e.keyCode == 39); } //this would be the key that makes "player" animation in the leftward direction function keyUp(e){ if (e.keyCode == 39); } //this is the Mainloop where the game will function MainLoop(); //the mainloop functionized function MainLoop(){ //this is how fast or slow I could want the entire game to go setTimeout(MainLoop, 10); } </script> </html> From here, are the "graphic.js" and the "object.js" files below. In this section is the graphics.js file. This graphics.js part below is linked to the: script src="graphics.js" html script section that I wrote above. Basically, below is a seperate file that I used for Graphics, and to run the code above, make this graphics.js code that I post below here, a separate filed called: graphics.js function Graphics(w,h,c) { document.body.innerHTML += "<table style='position:absolute;font- size:0;top:0;left:0;border-spacing:0;border- width:0;width:"+w+";height:"+h+";background-color:"+c+";' border=1><tr><td> </table>\n"; this.drawRectangle = function(x,y,w,h,c,n) { document.body.innerHTML += "<div style='position:absolute;font-size:0;left:" + x + ";top:" + y + ";width:" + w + ";height:" + h + ";background-color:" + c + ";' id='" + n + "'></div>\n"; } this.drawTexture = function(x,y,w,h,t,n) { document.body.innerHTML += "<img style='position:absolute;font-size:0;left:" + x + ";top:" + y + ";width:" + w + ";height:" + h + ";' id='" + n + "' src='" + t + "'> </img>\n"; } this.drawObject = function(o) { document.body.innerHTML += "<img style='position:absolute;font-size:0;left:" + o.X + ";top:" + o.Y + ";width:" + o.Width + ";height:" + o.Height + ";' id='" + o.Name + "' src='" + o.Sprite + "'></img>\n"; } this.moveGraphic = function(x,y,n) { document.getElementById(n).style.left = x; document.getElementById(n).style.top = y; } this.removeGraphic = function(n){ document.getElementById(n).parentNode.removeChild(document.getElementById(n)); } } Finally, is the object.js file linked to the script src="object.js"" in the html game file above the graphics.js part I just wrote. Basically, this is a separate file too, so thus, in order to run or test the html game code in the very first section I wrote, a person has to also make this code below a separate file called: object.js I hope this helps: function Object(x,y,w,h,t,n) { this.X = x; this.Y = y; this.Velocity_X = 0; this.Velocity_Y = 0; this.Previous_X = 0; this.Previous_Y = 0; this.Width = w; this.Height = h; this.Sprite = t; this.Name = n; this.Exists = true; } In all, this game is made based on a tutorial on youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2kUzgFM4lY&feature=relmfu I'm just trying to learn how to add animations with it now. I hope the above helps. If not, let me know. Thanks

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• A deadlock was detected while trying to lock variables in SSIS

  Error: 0xC001405C at SQL Log Status: A deadlock was detected while trying to lock variables "User::RowCount" for read/write access. A lock cannot be acquired after 16 attempts. The locks timed out. Have you ever considered variable locking when building your SSIS packages? I expect many people haven’t just because most of the time you never see an error like the one above. I’ll try and explain a few key concepts about variable locking and hopefully you never will see that error. First of all, what is all this variable locking all about? Put simply SSIS variables have to be locked before they can be accessed, and then of course unlocked once you have finished with them. This is baked into SSIS, presumably to reduce the risk of race conditions, but with that comes some additional overhead in that you need to be careful to avoid lock conflicts in some scenarios. The most obvious place you will come across any hint of locking (no pun intended) is the Script Task or Script Component with their ReadOnlyVariables and ReadWriteVariables properties. These two properties allow you to enter lists of variables to be used within the task, or to put it another way, these lists of variables to be locked, so that they are available within the task. During the task pre-execute phase the variables and locked, you then use them during the execute phase when you code is run, and then unlocked for you during the post-execute phase. So by entering the variable names in one of the two list, the locking is taken care of for you, and you just read and write to the Dts.Variables collection that is exposed in the task for the purpose. As you can see in the image above, the variable PackageInt is specified, which means when I write the code inside that task I don’t have to worry about locking at all, as shown below. public void Main() { // Set the variable value to something new Dts.Variables["PackageInt"].Value = 199; // Raise an event so we can play in the event handler bool fireAgain = true; Dts.Events.FireInformation(0, "Script Task Code", "This is the script task raising an event.", null, 0, ref fireAgain); Dts.TaskResult = (int)ScriptResults.Success; } As you can see as well as accessing the variable, hassle free, I also raise an event. Now consider a scenario where I have an event hander as well as shown below. Now what if my event handler uses tries to use the same variable as well? Well obviously for the point of this post, it fails with the error quoted previously. The reason why is clearly illustrated if you consider the following sequence of events. Package execution starts Script Task in Control Flow starts Script Task in Control Flow locks the PackageInt variable as specified in the ReadWriteVariables property Script Task in Control Flow executes script, and the On Information event is raised The On Information event handler starts Script Task in On Information event handler starts Script Task in On Information event handler attempts to lock the PackageInt variable (for either read or write it doesn’t matter), but will fail because the variable is already locked. The problem is caused by the event handler task trying to use a variable that is already locked by the task in Control Flow. Events are always raised synchronously, therefore the task in Control Flow that is raising the event will not regain control until the event handler has completed, so we really do have un-resolvable locking conflict, better known as a deadlock. In this scenario we can easily resolve the problem by managing the variable locking explicitly in code, so no need to specify anything for the ReadOnlyVariables and ReadWriteVariables properties. public void Main() { // Set the variable value to something new, with explicit lock control Variables lockedVariables = null; Dts.VariableDispenser.LockOneForWrite("PackageInt", ref lockedVariables); lockedVariables["PackageInt"].Value = 199; lockedVariables.Unlock(); // Raise an event so we can play in the event handler bool fireAgain = true; Dts.Events.FireInformation(0, "Script Task Code", "This is the script task raising an event.", null, 0, ref fireAgain); Dts.TaskResult = (int)ScriptResults.Success; } Now the package will execute successfully because the variable lock has already been released by the time the event is raised, so no conflict occurs. For those of you with a SQL Engine background this should all sound strangely familiar, and boils down to getting in and out as fast as you can to reduce the risk of lock contention, be that SQL pages or SSIS variables. Unfortunately we cannot always manage the locking ourselves. The Execute SQL Task is very often used in conjunction with variables, either to pass in parameter values or get results out. Either way the task will manage the locking for you, and will fail when it cannot lock the variables it requires. The scenario outlined above is clear cut deadlock scenario, both parties are waiting on each other, so it is un-resolvable. The mechanism used within SSIS isn’t actually that clever, and whilst the message says it is a deadlock, it really just means it tried a few times, and then gave up. The last part of the error message is actually the most accurate in terms of the failure, A lock cannot be acquired after 16 attempts. The locks timed out.  Now this may come across as a recommendation to always manage locking manually in the Script Task or Script Component yourself, but I think that would be an overreaction. It is more of a reminder to be aware that in high concurrency scenarios, especially when sharing variables across multiple objects, locking is important design consideration. Update – Make sure you don’t try and use explicit locking as well as leaving the variable names in the ReadOnlyVariables and ReadWriteVariables lock lists otherwise you’ll get the deadlock error, you cannot lock a variable twice!

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• Can Kind People Finish First?

  - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies

  by Jim Lein, Oracle Midsize Programs In an earlier post, I expressed my undying love for KIND Snacks' products. This month's Oracle Profit magazine features an interview with KIND Healthy Snacks Founder and CEO Daniel Lubetzky entitled "Better Business". Lubetzky expresses his vision for making KIND a "not for profit only" company.  All great companies start with a good idea. In this case, that one great idea was to offer a healthy snack with ingredients you can "see and pronounce". That's one of things I really like about this company--that coupled with the fact that their snacks taste great. They compete in an over crowded playing field but I've found that it's rare to find an energy snack that both tastes good and is good for you.  A couple of interesting facts I learned from reading this article: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} 9 out of 10 consumers who try a KIND bar will purchase a KIND product again and recommend it to others KIND has the highest Net Promoter Score among the top 10 brands in the nutritional bar category (I confess I've never heard about this rating before but now that I have it's pretty cool) KIND's coporate mantra, "Do the Kind Thing" both encourages people to do random acts of kindness and provides easy mechanisms for doing so. Not coincidentally, I think, KIND is indeed a story about how nice guys can finish first. KIND has doubled in size every year for the last ten  years and now employees over 300 people, with sales exceeding $120M annually. Growth Applies Pressures One thing I know for certain from interacting our with fast growing customers over the last fifteen years is that growth applies myriad pressures across the organization--resources, processes, technology systems, and leadership agility. And it's easy to forget that Oracle was once an entrepreneurial startup and experienced all those same pressures that other growing companies are experiencing today. When asked by Profit Editor in Chief Aaron Lazenby, " What sort of pressure does KIND"s growth and success place on operations?", Lubetzky responded, "We have a demand planning process right now that is manual to a significant extent, and it just takes so much management time. It takes us days and sometimes weeks to produce information that is critical to our business—and by the time we get the results, we need revised data. Our sales leadership could go out selling, but instead they’re talking to our team about forecasts." Hitching Your Wagon to Oracle Lubetzky and his team selected Oracle for what I believe is our company's greatest strength: hitch your wagon to Oracle and you can trust that we will be there for the long run with the solutions you need and financial staying power. In Lubetzky's words, "The KIND philosophy requires you to have a long-term view of things; taking shortcuts may be the fastest way to get things done, but in the long term that can come back and bite you. Oracle is the type of company—and has the kind of platform—that is here for the long term. It’s not going to go away tomorrow. And Oracle is going to invest all the necessary resources into staying ahead of the game and improving." o next time you're in the supermarket or an REI (my favorite store in the world) or any of the other 80,000 locations that carry KIND, give one a try. Maybe some day you'll want to become a KIND Brand Ambassador.   Looking for more news and information about Oracle Solutions for Midsize Companies? Read the latest Oracle for Midsize Companies Newsletter Sign-up to receive the latest communications from Oracle’s industry leaders and experts Jim Lein I evangelize Oracle's enterprise solutions for growing midsize companies. I recently celebrated 15 years with Oracle, having joined JD Edwards in 1999. I'm based in Evergreen, Colorado and love relating stories about creativity and innovation whether they be about software, live music, or the mountains. The views expressed here are my own, and not necessarily those of Oracle.

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• My vertex shader doesn't affect texture coords or diffuse info but works for position

  - by tina nyaa

  I am new to 3D and DirectX - in the past I have only used abstractions for 2D drawing. Over the past month I've been studying really hard and I'm trying to modify and adapt some of the shaders as part of my personal 'study project'. Below I have a shader, modified from one of the Microsoft samples. I set diffuse and tex0 vertex shader outputs to zero, but my model still shows the full texture and lighting as if I hadn't changed the values from the vertex buffer. Changing the position of the model works, but nothing else. Why is this? // // Skinned Mesh Effect file // Copyright (c) 2000-2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. // float4 lhtDir = {0.0f, 0.0f, -1.0f, 1.0f}; //light Direction float4 lightDiffuse = {0.6f, 0.6f, 0.6f, 1.0f}; // Light Diffuse float4 MaterialAmbient : MATERIALAMBIENT = {0.1f, 0.1f, 0.1f, 1.0f}; float4 MaterialDiffuse : MATERIALDIFFUSE = {0.8f, 0.8f, 0.8f, 1.0f}; // Matrix Pallette static const int MAX_MATRICES = 100; float4x3 mWorldMatrixArray[MAX_MATRICES] : WORLDMATRIXARRAY; float4x4 mViewProj : VIEWPROJECTION; /////////////////////////////////////////////////////// struct VS_INPUT { float4 Pos : POSITION; float4 BlendWeights : BLENDWEIGHT; float4 BlendIndices : BLENDINDICES; float3 Normal : NORMAL; float3 Tex0 : TEXCOORD0; }; struct VS_OUTPUT { float4 Pos : POSITION; float4 Diffuse : COLOR; float2 Tex0 : TEXCOORD0; }; float3 Diffuse(float3 Normal) { float CosTheta; // N.L Clamped CosTheta = max(0.0f, dot(Normal, lhtDir.xyz)); // propogate scalar result to vector return (CosTheta); } VS_OUTPUT VShade(VS_INPUT i, uniform int NumBones) { VS_OUTPUT o; float3 Pos = 0.0f; float3 Normal = 0.0f; float LastWeight = 0.0f; // Compensate for lack of UBYTE4 on Geforce3 int4 IndexVector = D3DCOLORtoUBYTE4(i.BlendIndices); // cast the vectors to arrays for use in the for loop below float BlendWeightsArray[4] = (float[4])i.BlendWeights; int IndexArray[4] = (int[4])IndexVector; // calculate the pos/normal using the "normal" weights // and accumulate the weights to calculate the last weight for (int iBone = 0; iBone < NumBones-1; iBone++) { LastWeight = LastWeight + BlendWeightsArray[iBone]; Pos += mul(i.Pos, mWorldMatrixArray[IndexArray[iBone]]) * BlendWeightsArray[iBone]; Normal += mul(i.Normal, mWorldMatrixArray[IndexArray[iBone]]) * BlendWeightsArray[iBone]; } LastWeight = 1.0f - LastWeight; // Now that we have the calculated weight, add in the final influence Pos += (mul(i.Pos, mWorldMatrixArray[IndexArray[NumBones-1]]) * LastWeight); Normal += (mul(i.Normal, mWorldMatrixArray[IndexArray[NumBones-1]]) * LastWeight); // transform position from world space into view and then projection space //o.Pos = mul(float4(Pos.xyz, 1.0f), mViewProj); o.Pos = mul(float4(Pos.xyz, 1.0f), mViewProj); o.Diffuse.x = 0.0f; o.Diffuse.y = 0.0f; o.Diffuse.z = 0.0f; o.Diffuse.w = 0.0f; o.Tex0 = float2(0,0); return o; } technique t0 { pass p0 { VertexShader = compile vs_3_0 VShade(4); } } I am currently using the SlimDX .NET wrapper around DirectX, but the API is extremely similar: public void Draw() { var device = vertexBuffer.Device; device.Clear(ClearFlags.Target | ClearFlags.ZBuffer, Color.White, 1.0f, 0); device.SetRenderState(RenderState.Lighting, true); device.SetRenderState(RenderState.DitherEnable, true); device.SetRenderState(RenderState.ZEnable, true); device.SetRenderState(RenderState.CullMode, Cull.Counterclockwise); device.SetRenderState(RenderState.NormalizeNormals, true); device.SetSamplerState(0, SamplerState.MagFilter, TextureFilter.Anisotropic); device.SetSamplerState(0, SamplerState.MinFilter, TextureFilter.Anisotropic); device.SetTransform(TransformState.World, Matrix.Identity * Matrix.Translation(0, -50, 0)); device.SetTransform(TransformState.View, Matrix.LookAtLH(new Vector3(-200, 0, 0), Vector3.Zero, Vector3.UnitY)); device.SetTransform(TransformState.Projection, Matrix.PerspectiveFovLH((float)Math.PI / 4, (float)device.Viewport.Width / device.Viewport.Height, 10, 10000000)); var material = new Material(); material.Ambient = material.Diffuse = material.Emissive = material.Specular = new Color4(Color.White); material.Power = 1f; device.SetStreamSource(0, vertexBuffer, 0, vertexSize); device.VertexDeclaration = vertexDeclaration; device.Indices = indexBuffer; device.Material = material; device.SetTexture(0, texture); var param = effect.GetParameter(null, "mWorldMatrixArray"); var boneWorldTransforms = bones.OrderedBones.OrderBy(x => x.Id).Select(x => x.CombinedTransformation).ToArray(); effect.SetValue(param, boneWorldTransforms); effect.SetValue(effect.GetParameter(null, "mViewProj"), Matrix.Identity);// Matrix.PerspectiveFovLH((float)Math.PI / 4, (float)device.Viewport.Width / device.Viewport.Height, 10, 10000000)); effect.SetValue(effect.GetParameter(null, "MaterialDiffuse"), material.Diffuse); effect.SetValue(effect.GetParameter(null, "MaterialAmbient"), material.Ambient); effect.Technique = effect.GetTechnique(0); var passes = effect.Begin(FX.DoNotSaveState); for (var i = 0; i < passes; i++) { effect.BeginPass(i); device.DrawIndexedPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleList, 0, 0, skin.Vertices.Length, 0, skin.Indicies.Length / 3); effect.EndPass(); } effect.End(); } Again, I set diffuse and tex0 vertex shader outputs to zero, but my model still shows the full texture and lighting as if I hadn't changed the values from the vertex buffer. Changing the position of the model works, but nothing else. Why is this? Also, whatever I set in the bone transformation matrices doesn't seem to have an effect on my model. If I set every bone transformation to a zero matrix, the model still shows up as if nothing had happened, but changing the Pos field in shader output makes the model disappear. I don't understand why I'm getting this kind of behaviour. Thank you!

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• Normal map applied as diffuse textures looks wrong

  - by KaiserJohaan

  Diffuse textures works fine, but I am having problem with normal maps, so I thought I'd tried to apply the normal maps as the diffuse map in my fragment shader so I could see everything is OK. I comment-out my normal map code and just set the diffuse map to the normal map and I get this: http://postimg.org/image/j9gudjl7r/ Looks like a smurf! This is the actual normal map of the main body: http://postimg.org/image/sbkyr6fg9/ Here is my fragment shader, notice I commented out normal map code so I could debug the normal map as a diffuse texture "#version 330 \n \ \n \ layout(std140) uniform; \n \ \n \ const int MAX_LIGHTS = 8; \n \ \n \ struct Light \n \ { \n \ vec4 mLightColor; \n \ vec4 mLightPosition; \n \ vec4 mLightDirection; \n \ \n \ int mLightType; \n \ float mLightIntensity; \n \ float mLightRadius; \n \ float mMaxDistance; \n \ }; \n \ \n \ uniform UnifLighting \n \ { \n \ vec4 mGamma; \n \ vec3 mViewDirection; \n \ int mNumLights; \n \ \n \ Light mLights[MAX_LIGHTS]; \n \ } Lighting; \n \ \n \ uniform UnifMaterial \n \ { \n \ vec4 mDiffuseColor; \n \ vec4 mAmbientColor; \n \ vec4 mSpecularColor; \n \ vec4 mEmissiveColor; \n \ \n \ bool mHasDiffuseTexture; \n \ bool mHasNormalTexture; \n \ bool mLightingEnabled; \n \ float mSpecularShininess; \n \ } Material; \n \ \n \ uniform sampler2D unifDiffuseTexture; \n \ uniform sampler2D unifNormalTexture; \n \ \n \ in vec3 frag_position; \n \ in vec3 frag_normal; \n \ in vec2 frag_texcoord; \n \ in vec3 frag_tangent; \n \ in vec3 frag_bitangent; \n \ \n \ out vec4 finalColor; " " \n \ \n \ void CalcGaussianSpecular(in vec3 dirToLight, in vec3 normal, out float gaussianTerm) \n \ { \n \ vec3 viewDirection = normalize(Lighting.mViewDirection); \n \ vec3 halfAngle = normalize(dirToLight + viewDirection); \n \ \n \ float angleNormalHalf = acos(dot(halfAngle, normalize(normal))); \n \ float exponent = angleNormalHalf / Material.mSpecularShininess; \n \ exponent = -(exponent * exponent); \n \ \n \ gaussianTerm = exp(exponent); \n \ } \n \ \n \ vec4 CalculateLighting(in Light light, in vec4 diffuseTexture, in vec3 normal) \n \ { \n \ if (light.mLightType == 1) // point light \n \ { \n \ vec3 positionDiff = light.mLightPosition.xyz - frag_position; \n \ float dist = max(length(positionDiff) - light.mLightRadius, 0); \n \ \n \ float attenuation = 1 / ((dist/light.mLightRadius + 1) * (dist/light.mLightRadius + 1)); \n \ attenuation = max((attenuation - light.mMaxDistance) / (1 - light.mMaxDistance), 0); \n \ \n \ vec3 dirToLight = normalize(positionDiff); \n \ float angleNormal = clamp(dot(normalize(normal), dirToLight), 0, 1); \n \ \n \ float gaussianTerm = 0.0; \n \ if (angleNormal > 0.0) \n \ CalcGaussianSpecular(dirToLight, normal, gaussianTerm); \n \ \n \ return diffuseTexture * (attenuation * angleNormal * Material.mDiffuseColor * light.mLightIntensity * light.mLightColor) + \n \ (attenuation * gaussianTerm * Material.mSpecularColor * light.mLightIntensity * light.mLightColor); \n \ } \n \ else if (light.mLightType == 2) // directional light \n \ { \n \ vec3 dirToLight = normalize(light.mLightDirection.xyz); \n \ float angleNormal = clamp(dot(normalize(normal), dirToLight), 0, 1); \n \ \n \ float gaussianTerm = 0.0; \n \ if (angleNormal > 0.0) \n \ CalcGaussianSpecular(dirToLight, normal, gaussianTerm); \n \ \n \ return diffuseTexture * (angleNormal * Material.mDiffuseColor * light.mLightIntensity * light.mLightColor) + \n \ (gaussianTerm * Material.mSpecularColor * light.mLightIntensity * light.mLightColor); \n \ } \n \ else if (light.mLightType == 4) // ambient light \n \ return diffuseTexture * Material.mAmbientColor * light.mLightIntensity * light.mLightColor; \n \ else \n \ return vec4(0.0); \n \ } \n \ \n \ void main() \n \ { \n \ vec4 diffuseTexture = vec4(1.0); \n \ if (Material.mHasDiffuseTexture) \n \ diffuseTexture = texture(unifDiffuseTexture, frag_texcoord); \n \ \n \ vec3 normal = frag_normal; \n \ if (Material.mHasNormalTexture) \n \ { \n \ diffuseTexture = vec4(normalize(texture(unifNormalTexture, frag_texcoord).xyz * 2.0 - 1.0), 1.0); \n \ // vec3 normalTangentSpace = normalize(texture(unifNormalTexture, frag_texcoord).xyz * 2.0 - 1.0); \n \ //mat3 tangentToWorldSpace = mat3(normalize(frag_tangent), normalize(frag_bitangent), normalize(frag_normal)); \n \ \n \ // normal = tangentToWorldSpace * normalTangentSpace; \n \ } \n \ \n \ if (Material.mLightingEnabled) \n \ { \n \ vec4 accumLighting = vec4(0.0); \n \ \n \ for (int lightIndex = 0; lightIndex < Lighting.mNumLights; lightIndex++) \n \ accumLighting += Material.mEmissiveColor * diffuseTexture + \n \ CalculateLighting(Lighting.mLights[lightIndex], diffuseTexture, normal); \n \ \n \ finalColor = pow(accumLighting, Lighting.mGamma); \n \ } \n \ else { \n \ finalColor = pow(diffuseTexture, Lighting.mGamma); \n \ } \n \ } \n"; Here is my wrapper around a texture OpenGLTexture::OpenGLTexture(const std::vector<uint8_t>& textureData, uint32_t textureWidth, uint32_t textureHeight, TextureFormat textureFormat, TextureType textureType, Logger& logger) : mLogger(logger), mTextureID(gNextTextureID++), mTextureType(textureType) { glGenTextures(1, &mTexture); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, mTexture); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); GLint glTextureFormat = (textureFormat == TextureFormat::TEXTURE_FORMAT_RGB ? GL_RGB : textureFormat == TextureFormat::TEXTURE_FORMAT_RGBA ? GL_RGBA : GL_RED); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, glTextureFormat, textureWidth, textureHeight, 0, glTextureFormat, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, &textureData[0]); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); glGenerateMipmap(GL_TEXTURE_2D); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); } OpenGLTexture::~OpenGLTexture() { glDeleteBuffers(1, &mTexture); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); } And here is the sampler I create which is shared between Diffuse and normal textures // texture sampler setup glGenSamplers(1, &mTextureSampler); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); glSamplerParameteri(mTextureSampler, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); glSamplerParameteri(mTextureSampler, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); glSamplerParameteri(mTextureSampler, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_REPEAT); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); glSamplerParameteri(mTextureSampler, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_REPEAT); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); glSamplerParameterf(mTextureSampler, GL_TEXTURE_MAX_ANISOTROPY_EXT, mCurrentAnisotropy); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); glUniform1i(glGetUniformLocation(mDefaultProgram.GetHandle(), "unifDiffuseTexture"), OpenGLTexture::TEXTURE_UNIT_DIFFUSE); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); glUniform1i(glGetUniformLocation(mDefaultProgram.GetHandle(), "unifNormalTexture"), OpenGLTexture::TEXTURE_UNIT_NORMAL); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); glBindSampler(OpenGLTexture::TEXTURE_UNIT_DIFFUSE, mTextureSampler); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); glBindSampler(OpenGLTexture::TEXTURE_UNIT_NORMAL, mTextureSampler); CHECK_GL_ERROR(mLogger); SetAnisotropicFiltering(mCurrentAnisotropy); The diffuse textures looks like they should, but the normal looks so wierd. Why is this?

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• Thought Oracle Usability Advisory Board Was Stuffy? Wrong. Justification for Attending OUAB: ROI

  - by ultan o'broin

  Looking for reasons tell your boss why your organization needs to join the Oracle Usability Advisory Board or why you need approval to attend one of its meetings (see the requirements)? Try phrases such as "Continued Return on Investment (ROI)", "Increased Productivity" or "Happy Workers". With OUAB your participation is about realizing and sustaining ROI across the entire applications life-cycle from input to designs to implementation choices and integration, usage and performance and on measuring and improving the onboarding and support experience. If you think this is a boring meeting of middle-aged people sitting around moaning about customizing desktop forms and why the BlackBerry is here to stay, think again! How about this for a rich agenda, all designed to engage the audience in a thought-provoking and feedback-illiciting day of swirling interactions, contextual usage, global delivery, mobility, consumerizationm, gamification and tailoring your implementation to reflect real users doing real work in real environments.  Foldable, rollable ereader devices provide a newspaper-like UK for electronic news. Or a way to wrap silicon chips, perhaps. Explored at the OUAB Europe Meeting (photograph from Terrace Restaurant in TVP. Nom.) At the 7 December 2012 OUAB Europe meeting in Oracle Thames Valley Park, UK, Oracle partners and customers stepped up to the mic and PPT decks with a range of facts and examples to astound any UX conference C-level sceptic. Over the course of the day we covered much ground, but it was all related in a contextual, flexibile, simplication, engagement way aout delivering results for business: that means solving problems. This means being about the user and their tasks and how to make design and technology transforms work into a productive activity that users and bean counters will be excited by. The sessions really gelled for me: 1. Mobile design patterns and the powerful propositions for customers and partners offered by using the design guidance with Oracle ADF Mobile. Customers' and partners' developers existing ADF developers are now productive, efficient ADF Mobile developers applying proven UX guidance using ADF Mobile components and other Oracle Fusion Middleware in the development toolkit. You can find the Mobile UX Design Patterns and Guidance on Building Mobile Apps on OTN. 2. Oracle Voice and Apps. How this medium offers so much potentual in the enterprise and offers a window in Fusion Apps cloud webservices, Oracle RightNow NLP and Nuance technology. Exciting stuff, demoed live on a mobile phone. Stay tuned for more features and modalities and how you can tailor your own apps experience.  3. Oracle RightNow Natural Language Processing (NLP) Virtual Assistant technology (Ella): how contextual intervention and learning from users sessions delivers a great personalized UX for users interacting with Ella, a fifth generation VA to solve problems and seek knowledge. 4. BYOD Keynote: A balanced keynote address contrasting Fujitsu's explaining of the conceprt, challenges, and trends and setting the expectation that BYOD must be embraced in a flexible way,  with the resolute, crafted high security enterprise requirements that nuancing the BYOD concept and proposals with the realities of their world of water tight information and device sharing policies. Fascinating stuff, as well providing anecdotes to make us thing about out own DYOD Deployments. One size does not fit all. 5. Icon Cultural Surveys Results and Insights Arising: Ever wondered about the cultural appropriateness of icons used in software UIs and how these icons assessed for global use? Or considered that social media "Like" icons might be  unacceptable hand gestures in culture or enterprise? Or do the old world icons like Save floppy disk icons still find acceptable? Well the survey results told you. Challenges must be tested, over time, and context of use is critical now, including external factors such as the internet and social media adoption. Indeed the fears about global rejection of the face and hand icons was not borne out, and some of the more anachronistic icons (checkbooks, microphones, real-to-real tape decks, 3.5" floppies for "save") have become accepted metaphors for current actions. More importantly the findings brought into focus the reason for OUAB - engage with and illicit feedback though working groups before we build anything. 6. EReaders and Oracle iBook: What is the uptake and trends of ereaders? And how about a demo of an iBook with enterprise apps content?  Well received by the audience, the session included a live running poll of ereader usage. 7. Gamification Design Jam: Fun, hands on event for teams of Oracle staff, partners and customers, actually building gamified flows, a practice that can be applied right away by customers and partners.  8. UX Direct: A new offering of usability best practices, coming to an external website for you in 2013. FInd a real user, observe their tasks, design and approve, build and measure. Simple stuff to improve apps implications no end. 9. FUSE (an internal term only, basically Fusion Simplified Experience): demo of the new Face of Fusion Applications: inherently mobile, simple to use, social, personalizable and FAST, three great demos from the HCM, CRM and ICT world on how these UX designs can be used in different ways. So, a powerful breadth and depth of UX solutions and opporunities for customers and partners to engage with and explore how they can make their users happy and benefit their business reaping continued ROI from those apps investments. Find out more about the OUAB and how to get involved here ... 

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• The Linux powered LAN Gaming House

  - by sachinghalot

  LAN parties offer the enjoyment of head to head gaming in a real-life social environment. In general, they are experiencing decline thanks to the convenience of Internet gaming, but Kenton Varda is a man who takes his LAN gaming very seriously. His LAN gaming house is a fascinating project, and best of all, Linux plays a part in making it all work.Varda has done his own write ups (short, long), so I'm only going to give an overview here. The setup is a large house with 12 gaming stations and a single server computer.The client computers themselves are rack mounted in a server room, and they are linked to the gaming stations on the floor above via extension cables (HDMI for video and audio and USB for mouse and keyboard). Each client computer, built into a 3U rack mount case, is a well specced gaming rig in its own right, sporting an Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce 560 along with a 60GB SSD drive.Originally, the client computers ran Ubuntu Linux rather than Windows and the games executed under WINE, but Varda had to abandon this scheme. As he explains on his site:"Amazingly, a majority of games worked fine, although many had minor bugs (e.g. flickering mouse cursor, minor rendering artifacts, etc.). Some games, however, did not work, or had bad bugs that made them annoying to play."Subsequently, the gaming computers have been moved onto a more conventional gaming choice, Windows 7. It's a shame that WINE couldn't be made to work, but I can sympathize as it's rare to find modern games that work perfectly and at full native speed. Another problem with WINE is that it tends to suffer from regressions, which is hardly surprising when considering the difficulty of constantly improving the emulation of the Windows API. Varda points out that he preferred working with Linux clients as they were easier to modify and came with less licensing baggage.Linux still runs the server and all of the tools used are open source software. The hardware here is a Intel Xeon E3-1230 with 4GB of RAM. The storage hanging off this machine is a bit more complex than the clients. In addition to the 60GB SSD, it also has 2x1TB drives and a 240GB SDD.When the clients were running Linux, they booted over PXE using a toolchain that will be familiar to anyone who has setup Linux network booting. DHCP pointed the clients to the server which then supplied PXELINUX using TFTP. When booted, file access was accomplished through network block device (NBD). This is a very easy to use system that allows you to serve the contents of a file as a block device over the network. The client computer runs a user mode device driver and the device can be mounted within the file system using the mount command.One snag with offering file access via NBD is that it's difficult to impose any security restrictions on different areas of the file system as the server only sees a single file. The advantage is perfomance as the client operating system simply sees a block device, and besides, these security issues aren't relevant in this setup.Unfortunately, Windows 7 can't use NBD, so, Varda had to switch to iSCSI (which works in both server and client mode under Linux). His network cards are not compliant with this standard when doing a netboot, but fortunately, gPXE came to the rescue, and he boostraps it over PXE. gPXE is also available as an ISO image and is worth knowing about if you encounter an awkward machine that can't manage a network boot. It can also optionally boot from a HTTP server rather than the more traditional TFTP server.According to Varda, booting all 12 machines over the Gigabit Ethernet network is surprisingly fast, and once booted, the machines don't seem noticeably slower than if they were using local storage. Once loaded, most games attempt to load in as much data as possible, filling the RAM, and the the disk and network bandwidth required is small. It's worth noting that these are aspects of this project that might differ from some other thin client scenarios.At time of writing, it doesn't seem as though the local storage of the client machines is being utilized. Instead, the clients boot into Windows from an image on the server that contains the operating system and the games themselves. It uses the copy on write feature of LVM so that any writes from a client are added to a differencing image allocated to that client. As the administrator, Varda can log into the Linux server and authorize changes to the master image for updates etc.SummaryOverall, Varda estimates the total cost of the project at about $40,000, and of course, he needed a property that offered a large physical space in order to house the computers and the gaming workstations. Obviously, this project has stark differences to most thin client projects. The balance between storage, network usage, GPU power and security would not be typical of an office installation, for example. The only letdown is that WINE proved to be insufficiently compatible to run a wide variety of modern games, but that is, perhaps, asking too much of it, and hats off to Varda for trying to make it work.

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