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• Quickly Preview Songs in Windows Media Center 12 in Windows 7

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Do you ever wish you could quickly preview a song without having to play it? Today we look at a quick and easy way to do that in Windows Media Player 12. Open Windows Media Player in Library Mode and select your Music library. Hover your cursor over the Title of the song and a Preview pop-up window will appear after a few seconds.    Click on the Preview in the pop-up window and the song will begin to play. As the preview begins to play, you will see the Skip link and a song timer. Click on Skip to jump ahead 15 seconds in the song. When you are finished previewing the song, simply move your mouse away from the preview window to stop playback. Automatically Preview Songs You can adjust settings in Windows Media Player to automatically preview songs when you hover your cursor over the title. Select Tools  from the menu and click Options. On the Options window, select the Library tab and click on Automatically preview songs on title hover. Click OK.   Now when you simply hover your cursor over the song title the preview window will appear and playback will begin automatically. This feature works just as well in Details view as it does in Expanded Tile view. Would you like to stream your music to other computers on your network? Check out our article on how to stream media to other Windows 7 computers. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Add Color Coding to Windows 7 Media Center Program GuideSchedule Updates for Windows Media CenterIntegrate Hulu Desktop and Windows Media Center in Windows 7Integrate Boxee with Media Center in Windows 7 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites

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• TFS API-Process Template currently applied to the Team Project

  - by Tarun Arora

  Download Demo Solution - here In this blog post I’ll show you how to use the TFS API to get the name of the Process Template that is currently applied to the Team Project. You can also download the demo solution attached, I’ve tested this solution against TFS 2010 and TFS 2011.    1. Connecting to TFS Programmatically I have a blog post that shows you from where to download the VS 2010 SP1 SDK and how to connect to TFS programmatically. private TfsTeamProjectCollection _tfs; private string _selectedTeamProject;   TeamProjectPicker tfsPP = new TeamProjectPicker(TeamProjectPickerMode.SingleProject, false); tfsPP.ShowDialog(); this._tfs = tfsPP.SelectedTeamProjectCollection; this._selectedTeamProject = tfsPP.SelectedProjects[0].Name; 2. Programmatically get the Process Template details of the selected Team Project I’ll be making use of the VersionControlServer service to get the Team Project details and the ICommonStructureService to get the Project Properties. private ProjectProperty[] GetProcessTemplateDetailsForTheSelectedProject() { var vcs = _tfs.GetService<VersionControlServer>(); var ics = _tfs.GetService<ICommonStructureService>(); ProjectProperty[] ProjectProperties = null; var p = vcs.GetTeamProject(_selectedTeamProject); string ProjectName = string.Empty; string ProjectState = String.Empty; int templateId = 0; ProjectProperties = null; ics.GetProjectProperties(p.ArtifactUri.AbsoluteUri, out ProjectName, out ProjectState, out templateId, out ProjectProperties); return ProjectProperties; } 3. What’s the catch? The ProjectProperties will contain a property “Process Template” which as a value has the name of the process template. So, you will be able to use the below line of code to get the name of the process template. var processTemplateName = processTemplateDetails.Where(pt => pt.Name == "Process Template").Select(pt => pt.Value).FirstOrDefault();   However, if the process template does not contain the property “Process Template” then you will need to add it. So, the question becomes how do i add the Name property to the Process Template. Download the Process Template from the Process Template Manager on your local        Once you have downloaded the Process Template to your local machine, navigate to the Classification folder with in the template       From the classification folder open Classification.xml        Add a new property <property name=”Process Template” value=”MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0” />           4. Putting it all together… using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Data; using System.Drawing; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Windows.Forms; using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client; using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client; using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Server; using System.Diagnostics; using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client; namespace TfsAPIDemoProcessTemplate { public partial class Form1 : Form { public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); } private TfsTeamProjectCollection _tfs; private string _selectedTeamProject; private void btnConnect_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { TeamProjectPicker tfsPP = new TeamProjectPicker(TeamProjectPickerMode.SingleProject, false); tfsPP.ShowDialog(); this._tfs = tfsPP.SelectedTeamProjectCollection; this._selectedTeamProject = tfsPP.SelectedProjects[0].Name; var processTemplateDetails = GetProcessTemplateDetailsForTheSelectedProject(); listBox1.Items.Clear(); listBox1.Items.Add(String.Format("Team Project Selected => '{0}'", _selectedTeamProject)); listBox1.Items.Add(Environment.NewLine); var processTemplateName = processTemplateDetails.Where(pt => pt.Name == "Process Template") .Select(pt => pt.Value).FirstOrDefault(); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(processTemplateName)) { listBox1.Items.Add(Environment.NewLine); listBox1.Items.Add(String.Format("Process Template Name: {0}", processTemplateName)); } else { listBox1.Items.Add(String.Format("The Process Template does not have the 'Name' property set up")); listBox1.Items.Add(String.Format("***TIP: Download the Process Template and in Classification.xml add a new property Name, update the template then you will be able to see the Process Template Name***")); listBox1.Items.Add(String.Format(" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -")); } } private ProjectProperty[] GetProcessTemplateDetailsForTheSelectedProject() { var vcs = _tfs.GetService<VersionControlServer>(); var ics = _tfs.GetService<ICommonStructureService>(); ProjectProperty[] ProjectProperties = null; var p = vcs.GetTeamProject(_selectedTeamProject); string ProjectName = string.Empty; string ProjectState = String.Empty; int templateId = 0; ProjectProperties = null; ics.GetProjectProperties(p.ArtifactUri.AbsoluteUri, out ProjectName, out ProjectState, out templateId, out ProjectProperties); return ProjectProperties; } } } Thank you for taking the time out and reading this blog post. If you enjoyed the post, remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Have you come across a better way of doing this, please share your experience here. Questions/Feedback/Suggestions, etc please leave a comment. Thank You! Share this post : CodeProject

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• Problem to match font size to the screen resolution in libgdx

  - by Iñaki Bedoya

  I'm having problems to show text on my game at same size on different screens, and I did a simple test. This test consists to show a text fitting at the screen, I want the text has the same size independently from the screen and from DPI. I've found this and this answer that I think should solve my problem but don't. In desktop the size is ok, but in my phone is too big. This is the result on my Nexus 4: (768x1280, 2.0 density) And this is the result on my MacBook: (480x800, 0.6875 density) I'm using the Open Sans Condensed (link to google fonts) As you can see on desktop looks good, but on the phone is so big. Here the code of my test: public class TextTest extends ApplicationAdapter { private static final String TAG = TextTest.class.getName(); private static final String TEXT = "Tap the screen to start"; private OrthographicCamera camera; private Viewport viewport; private SpriteBatch batch; private BitmapFont font; @Override public void create () { Gdx.app.log(TAG, "Screen size: "+Gdx.graphics.getWidth()+"x"+Gdx.graphics.getHeight()); Gdx.app.log(TAG, "Density: "+Gdx.graphics.getDensity()); camera = new OrthographicCamera(); viewport = new ExtendViewport(Gdx.graphics.getWidth(), Gdx.graphics.getWidth(), camera); batch = new SpriteBatch(); FreeTypeFontGenerator generator = new FreeTypeFontGenerator(Gdx.files.internal("fonts/OpenSans-CondLight.ttf")); font = createFont(generator, 64); generator.dispose(); } private BitmapFont createFont(FreeTypeFontGenerator generator, float dp) { FreeTypeFontGenerator.FreeTypeFontParameter parameter = new FreeTypeFontGenerator.FreeTypeFontParameter(); int fontSize = (int)(dp * Gdx.graphics.getDensity()); parameter.size = fontSize; Gdx.app.log(TAG, "Font size: "+fontSize+"px"); return generator.generateFont(parameter); } @Override public void render () { Gdx.gl.glClearColor(1, 1, 1, 1); Gdx.gl.glClear(GL20.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); int w = -(int)(font.getBounds(TEXT).width / 2); batch.setProjectionMatrix(camera.combined); batch.begin(); font.setColor(Color.BLACK); font.draw(batch, TEXT, w, 0); batch.end(); } @Override public void resize(int width, int height) { viewport.update(width, height); } @Override public void dispose() { font.dispose(); batch.dispose(); } } I'm trying to find a neat way to fix this. What I'm doing wrong? is the camera? the viewport? UPDATE: What I want is to keep the same margins in proportion, independently of the screen size or resolution. This image illustrates what I mean.

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• Improving CSS With .LESS

  Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, is a syntax used to describe the look and feel of the elements in a web page. CSS allows a web developer to separate the document content - the HTML, text, and images - from the presentation of that content. Such separation makes the markup in a page easier to read, understand, and update; it can result in reduced bandwidth as the style information can be specified in a separate file and cached by the browser; and makes site-wide changes easier to apply. For a great example of the flexibility and power of CSS, check out CSS Zen Garden. This website has a single page with fixed markup, but allows web developers from around the world to submit CSS rules to define alternate presentation information. Unfortunately, certain aspects of CSS's syntax leave a bit to be desired. Many style sheets include repeated styling information because CSS does not allow the use of variables. Such repetition makes the resulting style sheet lengthier and harder to read; it results in more rules that need to be changed when the website is redesigned to use a new primary color. Specifying inherited CSS rules, such as indicating that a elements (i.e., hyperlinks) in h1 elements should not be underlined, requires creating a single selector name, like h1 a. Ideally, CSS would allow for nested rules, enabling you to define the a rules directly within the h1 rules. .LESS is a free, open-source port of Ruby's LESS library. LESS (and .LESS, by extension) is a parser that allows web developers to create style sheets using new and improved language features, including variables, operations, mixins, and nested rules. Behind the scenes, .LESS converts the enhanced CSS rules into standard CSS rules. This conversion can happen automatically and on-demand through the use of an HTTP Handler, or done manually as part of the build process. Moreover, .LESS can be configured to automatically minify the resulting CSS, saving bandwidth and making the end user's experience a snappier one. This article shows how to get started using .LESS in your ASP.NET websites. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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• Oracle AutoVue Key Highlights from Oracle OpenWorld 2012

  - by Celine Beck

  We closed another successful Oracle Open World for AutoVue. Thanks to everyone who joined us this year. As usual, from customer presentations to evening networking activities, there was enough to keep us busy during the entire event. Here is a summary of some of the key highlights of the conference: Sessions:We had two AutoVue-specific sessions during Oracle Open World this year. The first session was part of the Product Lifecycle Management track and covered how AutoVue can be used to help drive effective decision making and streamline design for manufacturing processes. Attendees had the opportunity to learn from customer speaker GLOBALFOUNDRIES how they have been leveraging Oracle AutoVue within Agile PLM to enable high degree of collaboration during the exceptionally creative phases of their product development processes, securely, without risking valuable intellectual property. If you are interested, you can actually download the presentation by visiting launch.oracle.com/?plmopenworld2012.AutoVue was also featured as part of the Utilities track. This session focused on how visualization solutions play a critical role in effective plant optimization and configuration strategies defined by owners and operators of power generation facilities. Attendees learnt how integrated with document management systems, and enterprise applications like Oracle Primavera and Asset Lifecycle Management, AutoVue improves change management processes; minimizes risks by providing access to accurate engineering drawings which capture and reflect the as-maintained status of assets; and allows customers to drive complex maintenance projects to successful completion.Augmented Business Visualization for Agile PLMDuring Oracle Open World, we also showcased an Augmented Business Visualization-based solution for Oracle Agile PLM. An Augmented Business Visualization (ABV) solution is one where your structured data (from Oracle Agile PLM for instance) and your unstructured data (documents, designs, 3D models, etc) come together to allow you to make better decisions (check out our blog posts on the topic: Augment the Value of Your Data (or Time to replace the “attach” button) and Context is Everything ). As part of the Agile PLM, the idea is to support more effective decision-making by turning 3D assemblies into color-coded reports, and streamlining business processes like Engineering Change Management by enabling the automatic creation of engineering change requests in Agile PLM directly from documents being viewed in AutoVue. More on this coming soon...probably during the Oracle Value Chain Summit to be held in San Francisco, from Feb. 4-6, 2013 in San Francisco! Mark your calendars and stay tuned for more information! And thanks again for joining us at Oracle OpenWorld!

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• Personal search – the future of search

  - by jamiet

  [Four months ago I wrote a meandering blog post on another blogging site entitled Personal search – the future of search. The points I made therein are becoming more relevant to what I'm reading about and hoping to get involved in in the future so I'm re-posting here to a wider audience to hopefully get some more feedback and guage reaction to it. This has been prompted by the book Pull by David Siegel that is forming my current holiday reading (recommended to me by a commenter on my previous post Interesting things – Twitter annotations and your phone as a web server) and in particular by Siegel's notion of us all in the future having a personal online data vault.] My one-time colleague Paul Dawson recently wrote an article called The Future of Search and in it he proposed some interesting ideas. Some choice quotes: The growth of Chinese search giant Baidu is an indicator that fully localised and tailored content and offerings have great traction with local audiences This trend is already driving an increase in the use of specialist searches … Look at how Farecast is now integrated into Bing for example, or how Flightstats is now integrated into Google. Search does not necessarily have to begin with a keyword, but could start instead with a click or a touch. Take a look at Retrievr. Start drawing a picture in the box and see what happens. This is certainly search without the need for typing in keywords search technology has advanced greatly in recent years. The recent launch of Microsoft Live Labs’ Pivot has given us a taste of what we can expect to see in the future This really got me thinking about where search might go in the future and as my mind wandered I realised that as the amount of data that we collect about ourselves increases so too will the need and the desire to search it. The amount of electronic data that exists about each and every person is increasing and in the near future I fully expect that we are going to be able to store personal data such as: A history of our location (in fact Google Latitude already offers this facility) Recordings of all our phone conversations Health information history (weight, blood pressure etc…) Energy usage Spending history What films we watch, what radio stations we listen to Voting history Of course, most of this stuff is already stored somewhere but crucially we don’t have easy access to it. My utilities supplier knows how much electricity I’m using but if I want to know for myself I have to go and dig through my statements (assuming I have kept them). Similarly my doctor probably has ready access to all of my health records, my bank knows exactly what I have spent my money on, my cable supplier knows what I watch on TV and my mobile phone supplier probably knows exactly where I am and where I’ve been for the past few years. Strange then that none of this electronic information is available to me in a way that I can really make use of it; after all, its MY information. Its MY data. I created it. That is set to change. As technologies mature and customers become more technically cognizant they will demand more access to the data that companies hold about them. The companies themselves will realise the benefit that they derive from giving users what they want and will embrace ways of providing it. As a result the amount of data that we store about ourselves is going to increase exponentially and the desire to search and derive value from that data is going to grow with it; we are about to enter the era of the “personal datastore” and we will want, and need, to search through it in order to make sense of it all. Its interesting then that today when we think of search we think of search engines and yet in these personal datastores we’re referring to data that search engines can’t touch because WE own it and we (hopefully) choose to keep it private. Someone, I know not who, is going to lead in this space by making it easy for us to search our data and retrieve information that we have either forgotten or maybe didn’t even know in the first place. We will learn new things about ourselves and about our habits; we will share these findings with whomever we choose; we will compare what we discover with others; we will collaborate for mutual benefit and, most of all, we will educate ourselves as to how to live our lives better. Search will be the means to that end, it will enable us to make sense of the wealth of information that we will collect day in day out. The future of search is personal, why would we be interested in anything else? @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• How big can my SharePoint 2010 installation be?

  - by Sahil Malik

  Ad:: SharePoint 2007 Training in .NET 3.5 technologies (more information). 3 years ago, I had published “How big can my SharePoint 2007 installation be?” Well, SharePoint 2010 has significant under the covers improvements. So, how big can your SharePoint 2010 installation be? There are three kinds of limits you should know about Hard limits that cannot be exceeded by design. Configurable that are, well configurable – but the default values are set for a pretty good reason, so if you need to tweak, plan and understand before you tweak. Soft limits, you can exceed them, but it is not recommended that you do. Before you read any of the limits, read these two important disclaimers - 1. The limit depends on what you’re doing. So, don’t take the below as gospel, the reality depends on your situation. 2. There are many additional considerations in planning your SharePoint solution scalability and performance, besides just the below. So with those in mind, here goes.   Hard Limits - Zones per web app 5 RBS NAS performance Time to first byte of any response from NAS must be less than 20 milliseconds List row size 8000 bytes driven by how SP stores list items internally Max file size 2GB (default is 50MB, configurable). RBS does not increase this limit. Search metadata properties 10,000 per item crawled (pretty damn high, you’ll never need to worry about it). Max # of concurrent in-memory enterprise content types 5000 per web server, per tenant Max # of external system connections 500 per web server PerformancePoint services using Excel services as a datasource No single query can fetch more than 1 million excel cells Office Web Apps Renders One doc per second, per CPU core, per Application server, limited to a maximum of 8 cores.   Configurable Limits - Row Size Limit 6, configurable via SPWebApplication.MaxListItemRowStorage property List view lookup 8 join operations per query Max number of list items that a single operation can process at one time in normal hours 5000 Configurable via SPWebApplication.MaxItemsPerThrottledOperation   Also you get a warning at 3000, which is configurable via SPWebApplication.MaxItemsPerThrottledOperationWarningLevel   In addition, throttle overrides can be requested, throttle overrides can be disabled, and time windows can be set when throttle is disabled. Max number of list items for administrators that a single operation can process at one time in normal hours 20000 Configurable via SPWebApplication.MaxItemsPerThrottledOperationOverride Enumerating subsites 2000 Word and Powerpoint co-authoring simultaneous editors 10 (Hard limit is 99). # of webparts on a page 25 Search Crawl DBs per search service app 10 Items per crawl db 25 million Search Keywords 200 per site collection. There is a max limit of 5000, which can then be modified by editing the web.config/client.config. Concurrent # of workflows on a content db 15. Workflows running in the timer service are not counted in this limit. Further workflows are queued. Can be configured via the Set-SPFarmConfig powershell commandlet. Number of events picked by the workflow timer job and delivered to workflows 100. You can increase this limit by running additional instances of the workflow timer service. Visio services file size 50MB Visio web drawing recalculation timeout 120 seconds Configurable via – Powershell commandlet Set-SPVisioPerformance Visio services minimum and maximum cache age for data connected diagrams 0 to 24 hours. Default is 60 minutes. Configurable via – Powershell commandlet Set-SPVisioPerformance   Soft Limits - Content Databases 300 per web app Application Pools 10 per web server Managed Paths 20 per web app Content Database Size 200GB per Content DB Size of 1 site collection 100GB # of sites in a site collection 250,000 Documents in a library 30 Million, with nesting. Depends heavily on type and usage and size of documents. Items 30 million. Depends heavily on usage of items. SPGroups one SPUser can be in 5000 Users in a site collection 2 million, depends on UI, nesting, containers and underlying user store AD Principals in a SPGroup 5000 SPGroups in a site collection 10000 Search Service Instances 20 Indexed Items in Search 100 million Crawl Log entries 100 million Search Alerts 1 million per search application Search Crawled Properties 1/2 million URL removals in search 100 removals per operation User Profiles 2 million per service application Social Tags 500 million per social database Comment on the article ....

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• Silverlight Cream for February 23, 2011 -- #1051

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Ian T. Lackey, Kevin Hoffman, Kunal Chowdhury, Jesse Liberty(-2-), Page Brooks, Deborah Kurata(-2-), and Paul Sheriff. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Building a Radar Control in Silverlight–Part 2" Page Brooks WP7: "Reactive Drag and Drop Part 2" Jesse Liberty Expression Blend: "Simple RadioButtonList and / or CheckBoxList in Silverlight Using a Behavior" Ian T. Lackey Shoutouts: Kunal Chowdhury delivered a full day session on Silverlight at the Microsoft Imagine Cup Championship event in Mumbai... you can Download Microsoft Imagine Cup Session PPT on Silverlight Dennis Doomen has appeared in my blog any number of times... he's looking for some assistance: Get me on stage on the Developer Days 2011 Steve Wortham posted An Interview with Jeff Wilcox From SilverlightCream.com: Simple RadioButtonList and / or CheckBoxList in Silverlight Using a Behavior Ian T. Lackey bemoans the lack of a RadioButtonList or CheckBoxList, and jumps into Blend to show us how to make one using a behavior... and the code is available too! WP7 for iPhone and Android Developers - Introduction to XAML and Silverlight Continuing his series at SilvelightShow for iPhone and Android devs, Kevin Hoffman has part 2 up getting into the UI with an intro to XAML and Silverlight. Day 1: Working with Telerik Silverlight RadControls Kunal Chowdhury kicked my tires that I had missed his Telerik control series... He's detailing his experience getting up to speed with the Silverlight RadControls. Day 1 is intro, what there is, installing, stuff like that. Part 2 continues: Day 2: Working with BusyIndicator of Telerik Silverlight RadControls, followed (so far) by part 3: Day 3: Working with Masked TextBox of Telerik Silverlight RadControls Reactive Drag and Drop Part 2 Jesse Liberty has his 7th part about Rx up ... and the 2nd part of Reactive Drag and Drop, and oh yeah... it's for WP7 as well! Yet Another Podcast #25–Glenn Block / WCF Next Jesse Liberty has Glenn Block on stage for his Yet Another Podcast number 25... talking WCF with Glenn. Building a Radar Control in Silverlight–Part 2 Page Brooks has part 2 of his 'radar' control for Silverlight up... I don't know where I'd use this, but it's darned cool... and the live demo is amazing. Silverlight Charting: Setting Colors Deborah Kurata is looking at the charting controls now, and how to set colors. She begins with a previous post on charts and adds color definitions to that post. Silverlight Charting: Setting the Tooltip Deborah Kurata next gets into formatting the tooltip you can get when the user hovers over a chart to make it make more sense to your user 'Content' is NOT 'Text' in XAML Paul Sheriff discusses the Content property of XAML controls and how it can be pretty much any other XAML you want it to be, then goes on to show some nice examples. 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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• Create Custom Sized Thumbnail Images with Simple Image Resizer [Cross-Platform]

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you looking for an easy way to create custom sized thumbnail images for use in blog posts, photo albums, and more? Whether is it a single image or a CD full, Simple Image Resizer is the right app to get the job done for you. To add the new PPA for Simple Image Resizer open the Ubuntu Software Center, go to the Edit Menu, and select Software Sources. Access the Other Software Tab in the Software Sources Window and add the first of the PPAs shown below (outlined in red). The second PPA will be automatically added to your system. Once you have the new PPAs set up, go back to the Ubuntu Software Center and click on the PPA listing for Rafael Sachetto on the left (highlighted with red in the image). The listing for Simple Image Resizer will be right at the top…click Install to add the program to your system. After the installation is complete you can find Simple Image Resizer listed as Sir in the Graphics sub-menu. When you open Simple Image Resizer you will need to browse for the directory containing the images you want to work with, select a destination folder, choose a target format and prefix, enter the desired pixel size for converted images, and set the quality level. Convert your image(s) when ready… Note: You will need to determine the image size that best suits your needs before-hand. For our example we chose to convert a single image. A quick check shows our new “thumbnailed” image looking very nice. Simple Image Resizer can convert “into and from” the following image formats: .jpeg, .png, .bmp, .gif, .xpm, .pgm, .pbm, and .ppm Command Line Installation Note: For older Ubuntu systems (9.04 and previous) see the link provided below. sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rsachetto/ppa sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install sir Links Note: Simple Image Resizer is available for Ubuntu, Slackware Linux, and Windows. Simple Image Resizer PPA at Launchpad Simple Image Resizer Homepage Command Line Installation for Older Ubuntu Systems Bonus The anime wallpaper shown in the screenshots above can be found here: The end where it begins [DesktopNexus] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Macs Don’t Make You Creative! So Why Do Artists Really Love Apple? MacX DVD Ripper Pro is Free for How-To Geek Readers (Time Limited!) HTG Explains: What’s a Solid State Drive and What Do I Need to Know? How to Get Amazing Color from Photos in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Learn To Adjust Contrast Like a Pro in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name? Create Shortcuts for Your Favorite or Most Used Folders in Ubuntu Create Custom Sized Thumbnail Images with Simple Image Resizer [Cross-Platform] Etch a Circuit Board using a Simple Homemade Mixture Sync Blocker Stops iTunes from Automatically Syncing The Journey to the Mystical Forest [Wallpaper] Trace Your Browser’s Roots on the Browser Family Tree [Infographic]

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• Make Chrome’s New Tab Page More Useful and Artistic

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you tired of the default New Tab Page in Google Chrome and want something more useful and artistic? Then join us as we look at the Incredible StartPage extension. Before Here is the default “New Tab Page” in our Chrome Browser…it looks rather plain and boring. How about something better? Incredible StartPage in Action This is what our “New Tab Page” looked like after installing the extension. As you can see there is a “Note Section”, “Closed Tabs Section”, “All Bookmarks Section”, and a “Bookmarks Toolbar (links only) Section”. Note: Clicking on links in Incredible StartPage will open them in the current tab. If you want you can easily modify how Incredible StartPage looks using the “Options” in the upper right corner. After only a couple of minutes our “New Tab Page” was looking nice…new background color, image, and altered note. A very useful feature of the “Note Section” is that you can add your notes to an e-mail by clicking on the “Post to Gmail Link” just below the note. Note: Special “Chrome Pages” (i.e. Extensions) will not open from the “Closed Tabs Section”. When you click on “Post to Gmail” a new tab will be opened with your notes pre-pasted into the main letter body. All that is left for you to do is select the appropriate e-mail address(es) and to make any desired modifications to the “Subject & Letter”. Going back to the “New Tab Page” you can trade bookmarks back and forth between the “All Bookmarks Section” and the “Bookmarks Toolbar Section”. Simply drag-and-drop as desired…but keep in mind that any changes made here will also be reflected in your “Bookmarks Toolbar & Other Bookmarks”. There is our bookmark freshly traded over to the “Bookmarks Toolbar Section”…looking very nice. Conclusion If you are tired of the default “New Tab Page” in Google Chrome then the Incredible StartPage extension will make for a refreshing change. Links Download the Incredible StartPage extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Turn Chrome’s New Tab Page into a Google Tasks PageAccess Google Chrome’s Special Pages the Easy WayReplace Google Chrome’s New Tab Page with Speed DialRegistry Hack to Set Internet Explorer Start PageMake iGoogle Your Startup Page in Microsoft Outlook 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Get Better Windows Search With UltraSearch Scan News With NY Times Article Skimmer SpeedyFox Claims to Speed up your Firefox Beware Hover Kitties Test Drive Mobile Phones Online With TryPhone Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, 3/23/10

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• Using SurfaceFormat.Single and HLSL for GPGPU with XNA

  - by giancarlo todone

  I'm trying to implement a so-called ping-pong technique in XNA; you basically have two RenderTarget2D A and B and at each iteration you use one as texture and the other as target - and vice versa - for a quad rendered through an HLSL pixel shader. step1: A--PS--B step2: B--PS--A step3: A--PS--B ... In my setup, both RenderTargets are SurfaceFormat.Single. In my .fx file, I have a tachnique to do the update, and another to render the "current buffer" to the screen. Before starting the "ping-pong", buffer A is filled with test data with SetData<float>(float[]) function: this seems to work properly, because if I render a quad on the screen through the "Draw" pixel shader, i do see the test data being correctly rendered. However, if i do update buffer B, something does not function proerly and the next rendering to screen will be all black. For debug purposes, i replaced the "Update" HLSL pixel shader with one that should simply copy buffer A into B (or B into A depending on which among "ping" and "pong" phases we are...). From some examples i found on the net, i see that in order to correctly fetch a float value from a texture sampler from HLSL code, i should only need to care for the red channel. So, basically the debug "Update" HLSL function is: float4 ComputePS(float2 inPos : TEXCOORD0) : COLOR0 { float v1 = tex2D(bufSampler, inPos.xy).r; return float4(v1,0,0,1); } which still doesn't work and results in a all-zeroes ouput. Here's the "Draw" function that seems to properly display initial data: float4 DrawPS(float2 inPos : TEXCOORD0) : COLOR0 { float v1 = tex2D(bufSampler, inPos.xy).r; return float4(v1,v1,v1,1); } Now: playing around with HLSL doesn't change anything, so maybe I'm missing something on the c# side of this, so here's the infamous Update() function: _effect.Parameters["bufTexture"].SetValue(buf[_currentBuf]); _graphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(buf[1 - _currentBuf]); _graphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Black); // probably not needed since RenderTargetUsage is DiscardContents _effect.CurrentTechnique = _computeTechnique; _computeTechnique.Passes[0].Apply(); _quadRender.Render(); _graphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(null); _currentBuf = 1 - _currentBuf; Any clue?

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• Personal search – the future of search

  - by jamiet

  [Four months ago I wrote a meandering blog post on another blogging site entitled Personal search – the future of search. The points I made therein are becoming more relevant to what I'm reading about and hoping to get involved in in the future so I'm re-posting here to a wider audience to hopefully get some more feedback and guage reaction to it. This has been prompted by the book Pull by David Siegel that is forming my current holiday reading (recommended to me by a commenter on my previous post Interesting things – Twitter annotations and your phone as a web server) and in particular by Siegel's notion of us all in the future having a personal online data vault.] My one-time colleague Paul Dawson recently wrote an article called The Future of Search and in it he proposed some interesting ideas. Some choice quotes: The growth of Chinese search giant Baidu is an indicator that fully localised and tailored content and offerings have great traction with local audiences This trend is already driving an increase in the use of specialist searches … Look at how Farecast is now integrated into Bing for example, or how Flightstats is now integrated into Google. Search does not necessarily have to begin with a keyword, but could start instead with a click or a touch. Take a look at Retrievr. Start drawing a picture in the box and see what happens. This is certainly search without the need for typing in keywords search technology has advanced greatly in recent years. The recent launch of Microsoft Live Labs’ Pivot has given us a taste of what we can expect to see in the future This really got me thinking about where search might go in the future and as my mind wandered I realised that as the amount of data that we collect about ourselves increases so too will the need and the desire to search it. The amount of electronic data that exists about each and every person is increasing and in the near future I fully expect that we are going to be able to store personal data such as: A history of our location (in fact Google Latitude already offers this facility) Recordings of all our phone conversations Health information history (weight, blood pressure etc…) Energy usage Spending history What films we watch, what radio stations we listen to Voting history Of course, most of this stuff is already stored somewhere but crucially we don’t have easy access to it. My utilities supplier knows how much electricity I’m using but if I want to know for myself I have to go and dig through my statements (assuming I have kept them). Similarly my doctor probably has ready access to all of my health records, my bank knows exactly what I have spent my money on, my cable supplier knows what I watch on TV and my mobile phone supplier probably knows exactly where I am and where I’ve been for the past few years. Strange then that none of this electronic information is available to me in a way that I can really make use of it; after all, its MY information. Its MY data. I created it. That is set to change. As technologies mature and customers become more technically cognizant they will demand more access to the data that companies hold about them. The companies themselves will realise the benefit that they derive from giving users what they want and will embrace ways of providing it. As a result the amount of data that we store about ourselves is going to increase exponentially and the desire to search and derive value from that data is going to grow with it; we are about to enter the era of the “personal datastore” and we will want, and need, to search through it in order to make sense of it all. Its interesting then that today when we think of search we think of search engines and yet in these personal datastores we’re referring to data that search engines can’t touch because WE own it and we (hopefully) choose to keep it private. Someone, I know not who, is going to lead in this space by making it easy for us to search our data and retrieve information that we have either forgotten or maybe didn’t even know in the first place. We will learn new things about ourselves and about our habits; we will share these findings with whomever we choose; we will compare what we discover with others; we will collaborate for mutual benefit and, most of all, we will educate ourselves as to how to live our lives better. Search will be the means to that end, it will enable us to make sense of the wealth of information that we will collect day in day out. The future of search is personal, why would we be interested in anything else? @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Use Drive Mirroring for Instant Backup in Windows 7

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  Even with the best backup solution, a hard drive crash means you’ll lose a few hours of work. By enabling drive mirroring in Windows 7, you’ll always have an up-to-date copy of your data. Windows 7’s mirroring – which is only available in Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions – is a software implementation of RAID 1, which means that two or more disks are holding the exact same data. The files are constantly kept in sync, so that if one of the disks fails, you won’t lose any data. Note that mirroring is not technically a backup solution, because if you accidentally delete a file, it’s gone from both hard disks (though you may be able to recover the file). As an additional caveat, having mirrored disks requires changing them to “dynamic disks,” which can only be read within modern versions of Windows (you may have problems working with a dynamic disk in other operating systems or in older versions of Windows). See this Wikipedia page for more information. You will need at least one empty disk to set up disk mirroring. We’ll show you how to mirror an existing disk (of equal or lesser size) without losing any data on the mirrored drive, and how to set up two empty disks as mirrored copies from the get-go. Mirroring an Existing Drive Click on the start button and type partitions in the search box. Click on the Create and format hard disk partitions entry that shows up. Alternatively, if you’ve disabled the search box, press Win+R to open the Run window and type in: diskmgmt.msc The Disk Management window will appear. We’ve got a small disk, labeled OldData, that we want to mirror in a second disk of the same size. Note: The disk that you will use to mirror the existing disk must be unallocated. If it is not, then right-click on it and select Delete Volume… to mark it as unallocated. This will destroy any data on that drive. Right-click on the existing disk that you want to mirror. Select Add Mirror…. Select the disk that you want to use to mirror the existing disk’s data and press Add Mirror. You will be warned that this process will change the existing disk from basic to dynamic. Note that this process will not delete any data on the disk! The new disk will be marked as a mirror, and it will starting copying data from the existing drive to the new one. Eventually the drives will be synced up (it can take a while), and any data added to the E: drive will exist on both physical hard drives. Setting Up Two New Drives as Mirrored If you have two new equal-sized drives, you can format them to be mirrored copies of each other from the get-go. Open the Disk Management window as described above. Make sure that the drives are unallocated. If they’re not, and you don’t need the data on either of them, right-click and select Delete volume…. Right-click on one of the unallocated drives and select New Mirrored Volume…. A wizard will pop up. Click Next. Click on the drives you want to hold the mirrored data and click Add. Note that you can add any number of drives. Click Next. Assign it a drive letter that makes sense, and then click Next. You’re limited to using the NTFS file system for mirrored drives, so enter a volume label, enable compression if you want, and then click Next. Click Finish to start formatting the drives. You will be warned that the new drives will be converted to dynamic disks. And that’s it! You now have two mirrored drives. Any files added to E: will reside on both physical disks, in case something happens to one of them. Conclusion While the switch from basic to dynamic disks can be a problem for people who dual-boot into another operating system, setting up drive mirroring is an easy way to make sure that your data can be recovered in case of a hard drive crash. Of course, even with drive mirroring, we advocate regular backups to external drives or online backup services. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Rebit Backup Software [Review]Disabling Instant Search in Outlook 2007Restore Files from Backups on Windows Home ServerSecond Copy 7 [Review]Backup Windows Home Server Folders to an External Hard Drive 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 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010

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• Friday Fun: Games that Look Like Productivity Apps

  - by Mysticgeek

  We’ve been showing you fun flash games to play during company time on a Friday afternoon. Hopefully while playing them, you haven’t received a “talking to”. Today we show you some cool games to play that look like productivity apps, so the boss will be none the wiser. The website cantyouseeimbusy.com has developed some very neat little games that look like productivity apps like Word and Excel. These apps look exactly like some project you would be working on, but are really neat little games. Here we take a look at three cool ones on the site called Breakdown, Leadership, and Cost Cutter. Leadership Leadership is a cool game that looks like something you would be working in Excel and is a spin off of the classic game Moon Lander. You navigate your ship through a variety of challenging line graphs. Breakdown This one is a knock off of the classic game Break Out. Use your mouse to scroll the racket at the bottom and bounce the ball off of the text in the document. Press the space bar to pause the game and the elements will disappear…good for when the boss comes around. Cost Cutter This one is a puzzle game where it looks like your working on some bar charts in Excel. You need to click combinations of two or more blocks that are the same color. Again, hit the spacebar and the game elements will disappear. If you’re looking for a way to goof off with some simple games without the boss knowing, these will definitely do the trick. Another cool game along these lines is Excit! which we covered previously. Play Cost Cutter, Breakdown, and Leadership at cantyouseeimbusy.com Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Friday Fun: Get Your Mario OnFriday Fun: Bricks Breaking & Cube CrashFriday Fun: Fancy Pants AdventuresFriday Fun: GemCraft is a Totally Addictive Tower Defense GameFriday Fun: Five More Time Wasting Online Games 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Download Microsoft Office Help tab The Growth of Citibank Quickly Switch between Tabs in IE Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI

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• How to stream H264 Video from camera over FTP?

  - by Jay

  I bought a h264 security camera system last year and set it up to ftp video to my computer. I was able to get the video to play (even though it played a little fast) on Ubuntu 11.04 using mplayer. A few months ago, I did a fresh install of 12.04 and I cannot seem to get the video to play with mplayer, smplayer or VLC. I have the restricted formats video packages installed and when playing with any of the players, all I get is a gray video. When calling mplayer from the command line to play the video with no options, I get a lot of these errors: [h264 @ 0x7f278c61f280]concealing 1320 DC, 1320 AC, 1320 MV errors No pts value from demuxer to use for frame! pts after filters MISSING I'm not a video expert and have been coming up with a lot of dead ends when Googling for this. Could someone offer some advice about how to play these videos? Here is the output of mediainfo for a sample file. mediainfo -f sec-cam01-m-20120921-212454.h264 General Count : 278 Count of stream of this kind : 1 Kind of stream : General Kind of stream : General Stream identifier : 0 Count of video streams : 1 Video_Format_List : AVC Video_Format_WithHint_List : AVC Codecs Video : AVC Complete name : sec-cam01-m-20120921-212454.h264 File name : sec-cam01-m-20120921-212454 File extension : h264 Format : AVC Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format/Url : http://developers.videolan.org/x264.html Format/Extensions usually used : avc h264 Commercial name : AVC Internet media type : video/H264 Codec : AVC Codec : AVC Codec/Info : Advanced Video Codec Codec/Url : http://developers.videolan.org/x264.html Codec/Extensions usually used : avc h264 File size : 1097315 File size : 1.05 MiB File size : 1 MiB File size : 1.0 MiB File size : 1.05 MiB File size : 1.046 MiB File last modification date : UTC 2012-09-22 01:27:12 File last modification date (local) : 2012-09-21 21:27:12 Video Count : 205 Count of stream of this kind : 1 Kind of stream : Video Kind of stream : Video Stream identifier : 0 Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format/Url : http://developers.videolan.org/x264.html Commercial name : AVC Format profile : [email protected] Format settings : 1 Ref Frames Format settings, CABAC : No Format settings, CABAC : No Format settings, ReFrames : 1 Format settings, ReFrames : 1 frame Format settings, GOP : M=1, N=3 Internet media type : video/H264 Codec : AVC Codec : AVC Codec/Family : AVC Codec/Info : Advanced Video Codec Codec/Url : http://developers.videolan.org/x264.html Codec profile : [email protected] Codec settings : 1 Ref Frames Codec settings, CABAC : No Codec_Settings_RefFrames : 1 Width : 704 Width : 704 pixels Height : 480 Height : 480 pixels Pixel aspect ratio : 1.000 Display aspect ratio : 1.467 Display aspect ratio : 3:2 Standard : NTSC Resolution : 8 Resolution : 8 bits Colorimetry : 4:2:0 Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 Bit depth : 8 bits Scan type : Progressive Scan type : Progressive Interlacement : PPF Interlacement : Progressive Edit: Here is a sample video using the same encoding: https://www.dropbox.com/s/l5acwzy8rtqn9xe/sec-cam08-m-20121118-105815.h264 (not the same video as mediainfo output)

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• Now Shipping! NetAdvantage for .NET 2010 Volume 3!

  The new NetAdvantage Ultimate includes all four Line of Business user interface control sets for ASP .NET, Windows Forms, WPF and Silverlight plus two advanced Data Visualization UI control sets for WPF and Silverlight. With six NetAdvantage products in one robust package, Infragistics® gives you hundreds of controls and infinite development possibilities. Unified XAML Product Strategy-Share Code, Get More Controls In the 10.3 release, Infragistics continues to deliver code parity between the XAML platforms, WPF and Silverlight. In the line of business toolsets, Infragistics introduces the new xamSchedule™, full-featured, Outlook® 2010-style schedule controls, and the new xamDataTree™, a data bound tree view that comfortably handles tens of thousands of tree nodes. Mimicking our Silverlight Drag and Drop Framework, the WPF Drag and Drop Framework CTP empowers you to add your own rich touches to your applications. Track Users' Behaviors New to all NetAdvantage Silverlight controls is the Infragistics Analytics Framework (IGAF), which empowers you to track user behavior in RIAs running on Silverlight 4. Building on the Microsoft® Silverlight Analytics Framework, with IGAF you can analyze the user's behaviors to ensure the experience you want to deliver. NetAdvantage for Windows Forms--New Office® 2010 Ribbon and Application Menu 2010 Create new experiences with Windows Forms. Now with Office 2010 styling, NetAdvantage for Windows Forms has new features such as Microsoft® Office 2010 ribbon and enhanced Infragistics.Excel to export the contents of the high performance WinGrid™ into Microsoft Excel® 2010. The new Windows Message Support enables Infragistics standalone editor controls to process numerous Windows® OS messages, allowing them to respond just like native controls to changes in the Windows environment. Create Faster Web 2.0 Experiences with NetAdvantage for ASP .NET Infragistics continues to push the envelope to deliver the fastest ASP .NET WebForms controls available on the market. Our lightning fast ASP .NET grids are now enhanced with XPS/PDF Exporting and Summary Rows. This release also includes support for jQuery Templating (as a CTP) within our WebDataGrid™ and WebDataTree™ controls allowing you to quickly cut down overall page size. Deliver Business Intelligence with Power, Flexibility and the Office 2010 Experience NetAdvantage for WPF Data Visualization and NetAdvantage for Silverlight Data Visualization help you deliver flexible, powerful and usable end user experiences in Business Intelligence applications. Both suites include the Pivot Grid that delivers the full power of online analytical processing (OLAP) to present multi-dimensional data, sliced and diced in cross-tabulated form for end users to drill down into, interact with and easily extract meaning from the data. Mapping Made Easy 10.3 marks the official release of the WPF Data Visualization xamMap™ control to map anything and everything from geographic to geo-spacial mapping data. Map layers allow you to add successive levels of detail, navigational panes for panning in all directions, color swatch panes that facilitate value scales like Choropleth shading, and scale panes allowing users to zoom-in and out. Both toolsets introduce the first of many relationship maps! With the xamOrgChart™ CTP you can map out organizational charts of up to 50K employees, competitive brackets (think World Cup) and any other relational, organizational map your application needs. http://www.infragistics.com span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• Silverlight Cream for April 26, 2010 -- #848

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Viktor Larsson, Mike Snow(-2-), Jeff Brand, Marlon Grech(-2-, -3-), Jonathan van de Veen, Phil Middlemiss. Shoutout: Justin Angel wants everyone to know he is Joining the Vertigo Team!... congratulations, Justin! From SilverlightCream.com: Learning Silverlight – Advanced Color Animations Viktor Larsson is demonstrating small pieces of Silverlight he's picked upon in the course of his work project. This first one is on ColorAnimations using KeyFrames Silverlight Tip of the Day #4 – Enabling Out of Browser Applications Mike Snow has Tip #4 up and it's all about OOB... from what you have to do to what your user sees, including how to check to see if you're running OOB... source project included. Silverlight Tip of the Day #5 – Debugging Out of Browser Applications Following a fine tradition he started with his first series, Mike Snow is putting out more than one Tip per day :) ... Number 5 is up and is all about debugging OOB apps. Simplifying Page Transitions in Windows Phone 7 Silverlight Applications Jeff Brand has a WP7 post up discussing Page Transitions. He first discusses the most common brute-force method, then moves into the TransitioningContentControl from the Toolkit. An introduction to MEFedMVVM – PART 1 Marlon Grech, Peter O’Hanlon, and Glenn Block worked together to produce an MEF and MVVM library that works for WPF and Silverlight and allows Design-time goodness and a loosely-coupled bridge between the View and ViewModel ... and it's on CodePlex ... they're also looking for comments/additions, so check it out. Leveraging MEFedMVVM ExportViewModel – MEFedMVVM Part 2 In Part 2, Marlon Grech demonstrates using MEFedMVVM and shows off some of the basics such as Importing services, Design-Time data and DataContextAware ViewModels IContextAware services to bridge the gap between the View and the ViewModel – MEFedMVVM Part 3 Marlon Grech's 3rd post about MEFedMVVM is about IContextAwareService -- bridging the gap betwen the View and ViewModel -- a service that knows about it's context. Building a Web Setup that configures your Silverlight application Jonathan van de Veen has a post up at SilverlightShow on using a Web Setup Project to configure your Silverlight when things startup... if you're not familiar with doing this... take note! A Chrome and Glass Theme - Part 4 Phil Middlemiss has part 4 of his great tutorial series up on creating a theme in Expression Blend ... this time tackling the listbox. 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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• Superpower Your Touchpad Computer with Scrybe

  - by Matthew Guay

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

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• Reasons to Use a VM For Development

  - by George Stocker

  Background: I work at a start-up company, where one team uses Virtual Machines to connect to a remote server to do their development, and another team (the team I'm on) uses local IIS/SQL Server 2005/Visual Studio installations to conduct work. Team VM is located about 1000 miles from Team Non-VM, and the servers the VMs run off of are located near Team VM (Latency, for those that are wondering, is about 50ms). A person high in the company is pushing for Team Non-VM to use virtual machines for programming, development, and testing. The latter point we agree on -- we want Virtual Machines to test configurations and various aspects of the web application in a 'clean' state. The Problem: What we don't agree on is having developers using RDP to connect to a desktop remotely that contains Visual Studio, SQL Server, and IIS to do the same development we could do locally on our laptops. I've tried the VM set-up, and besides the color issue, there is a latency issue that is rather noticeable, not to mention that since we're a start-up, a good number of employees work from home on occasion with our work laptops, and this move would cut off the laptops. They'd be turned in. Reasons to Use Remote VMs for Development (Not Testing!): Here are the stated reasons that this person wants us to use VMs: They work for TeamVM. They keep the source code "safe". If we want to work from home, we could just use our home PCs. Licenses (I don't know what the argument is, only that it's been used). Reasons not to use Remote VMs for Development: Here are the stated reasons why we don't want to use VMs: We like working from home. We get a lot done on our own time. We're not going to use our Home PCs to do work related stuff. The Latency is noticeable. Support for the VMs (if they go down, or if we need a new VM) takes a while. We don't have administrative privileges on the VM, and are unable to change settings as needed. What I'm looking for from the community is this: What reasons would you give for not using VMs for development? Keep in mind these are remote VMs -- this isn't a VM running on a local desktop. It's using the laptop (or a desktop) as a thin client for a remote VM. Also, on the other side of the coin: Is there something we're missing that makes VMs more palatable for development? Edit: I think 'safe' is used in term of corporate espionage, or more correctly if the Laptop gets stolen, the person who stole would have access to our source code. The former (as we've pointed out, is always going to be a possibility -- companies stop that with litigation, there isn't a technical solution (so far as I can see)). The latter point is ( though I don't know its usefulness in a corporate scenario) mitigated by Truecrypt'ing the entire volume.

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• OpenGL - Cascaded shadow mapping - Texture lookup

  - by Silverlan

  I'm trying to implement cascaded shadow mapping in my engine, but I'm somewhat stuck at the last step. For testing purposes I've made sure all cascades encompass my entire scene. The result is currently this: The different intensity of the cascades is not on purpose, it's actually the problem. This is how I do the texture lookup for the shadow maps inside the fragment shader: layout(std140) uniform CSM { vec4 csmFard; // far distances for each cascade mat4 csmVP[4]; // View-Projection Matrix int numCascades; // Number of cascades to use. In this example it's 4. }; uniform sampler2DArrayShadow csmTextureArray; // The 4 shadow maps in vec4 csmPos[4]; // Vertex position in shadow MVP space float GetShadowCoefficient() { int index = numCascades -1; vec4 shadowCoord; for(int i=0;i<numCascades;i++) { if(gl_FragCoord.z < csmFard[i]) { shadowCoord = csmPos[i]; index = i; break; } } shadowCoord.w = shadowCoord.z; shadowCoord.z = float(index); shadowCoord.x = shadowCoord.x *0.5f +0.5f; shadowCoord.y = shadowCoord.y *0.5f +0.5f; return shadow2DArray(csmTextureArray,shadowCoord).x; } I then use the return value and simply multiply it with the diffuse color. That explains the different intensity of the cascades, since I'm grabbing the depth value directly from the texture. I've tried to do a depth comparison instead, but with limited success: [...] // Same code as above shadowCoord.w = shadowCoord.z; shadowCoord.z = float(index); shadowCoord.x = shadowCoord.x *0.5f +0.5f; shadowCoord.y = shadowCoord.y *0.5f +0.5f; float z = shadow2DArray(csmTextureArray,shadowCoord).x; if(z < shadowCoord.w) return 0.25f; return 1.f; } While this does give me the same shadow value everywhere, it only works for the first cascade, all others are blank: (I colored the cascades because otherwise the transitions wouldn't be visible in this case) What am I missing here?

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• Towards Database Continuous Delivery – What Next after Continuous Integration? A Checklist

  - by Ben Rees

  .dbd-banner p{ font-size:0.75em; padding:0 0 10px; margin:0 } .dbd-banner p span{ color:#675C6D; } .dbd-banner p:last-child{ padding:0; } @media ALL and (max-width:640px){ .dbd-banner{ background:#f0f0f0; padding:5px; color:#333; margin-top: 5px; } } -- Database delivery patterns & practices STAGE 4 AUTOMATED DEPLOYMENT If you’ve been fortunate enough to get to the stage where you’ve implemented some sort of continuous integration process for your database updates, then hopefully you’re seeing the benefits of that investment – constant feedback on changes your devs are making, advanced warning of data loss (prior to the production release on Saturday night!), a nice suite of automated tests to check business logic, so you know it’s going to work when it goes live, and so on. But what next? What can you do to improve your delivery process further, moving towards a full continuous delivery process for your database? In this article I describe some of the issues you might need to tackle on the next stage of this journey, and how to plan to overcome those obstacles before they appear. Our Database Delivery Learning Program consists of four stages, really three – source controlling a database, running continuous integration processes, then how to set up automated deployment (the middle stage is split in two – basic and advanced continuous integration, making four stages in total). If you’ve managed to work through the first three of these stages – source control, basic, then advanced CI, then you should have a solid change management process set up where, every time one of your team checks in a change to your database (whether schema or static reference data), this change gets fully tested automatically by your CI server. But this is only part of the story. Great, we know that our updates work, that the upgrade process works, that the upgrade isn’t going to wipe our 4Tb of production data with a single DROP TABLE. But – how do you get this (fully tested) release live? Continuous delivery means being always ready to release your software at any point in time. There’s a significant gap between your latest version being tested, and it being easily releasable. Just a quick note on terminology – there’s a nice piece here from Atlassian on the difference between continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous deployment. This piece also gives a nice description of the benefits of continuous delivery. These benefits have been summed up by Jez Humble at Thoughtworks as: “Continuous delivery is a set of principles and practices to reduce the cost, time, and risk of delivering incremental changes to users” There’s another really useful piece here on Simple-Talk about the need for continuous delivery and how it applies to the database written by Phil Factor – specifically the extra needs and complexities of implementing a full CD solution for the database (compared to just implementing CD for, say, a web app). So, hopefully you’re convinced of moving on the the next stage! The next step after CI is to get some sort of automated deployment (or “release management”) process set up. But what should I do next? What do I need to plan and think about for getting my automated database deployment process set up? Can’t I just install one of the many release management tools available and hey presto, I’m ready! If only it were that simple. Below I list some of the areas that it’s worth spending a little time on, where a little planning and prep could go a long way. It’s also worth pointing out, that this should really be an evolving process. Depending on your starting point of course, it can be a long journey from your current setup to a full continuous delivery pipeline. If you’ve got a CI mechanism in place, you’re certainly a long way down that path. Nevertheless, we’d recommend evolving your process incrementally. Pages 157 and 129-141 of the book on Continuous Delivery (by Jez Humble and Dave Farley) have some great guidance on building up a pipeline incrementally: http://www.amazon.com/Continuous-Delivery-Deployment-Automation-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321601912 For now, in this post, we’ll look at the following areas for your checklist: You and Your Team Environments The Deployment Process Rollback and Recovery Development Practices You and Your Team It’s a cliché in the DevOps community that “It’s not all about processes and tools, really it’s all about a culture”. As stated in this DevOps report from Puppet Labs: “DevOps processes and tooling contribute to high performance, but these practices alone aren’t enough to achieve organizational success. The most common barriers to DevOps adoption are cultural: lack of manager or team buy-in, or the value of DevOps isn’t understood outside of a specific group”. Like most clichés, there’s truth in there – if you want to set up a database continuous delivery process, you need to get your boss, your department, your company (if relevant) onside. Why? Because it’s an investment with the benefits coming way down the line. But the benefits are huge – for HP, in the book A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development: How HP Transformed LaserJet FutureSmart Firmware, these are summarized as: -2008 to present: overall development costs reduced by 40% -Number of programs under development increased by 140% -Development costs per program down 78% -Firmware resources now driving innovation increased by a factor of 8 (from 5% working on new features to 40% But what does this mean? It means that, when moving to the next stage, to make that extra investment in automating your deployment process, it helps a lot if everyone is convinced that this is a good thing. That they understand the benefits of automated deployment and are willing to make the effort to transform to a new way of working. Incidentally, if you’re ever struggling to convince someone of the value I’d strongly recommend just buying them a copy of this book – a great read, and a very practical guide to how it can really work at a large org. I’ve spoken to many customers who have implemented database CI who describe their deployment process as “The point where automation breaks down. Up to that point, the CI process runs, untouched by human hand, but as soon as that’s finished we revert to manual.” This deployment process can involve, for example, a DBA manually comparing an environment (say, QA) to production, creating the upgrade scripts, reading through them, checking them against an Excel document emailed to him/her the night before, turning to page 29 in his/her notebook to double-check how replication is switched off and on for deployments, and so on and so on. Painful, error-prone and lengthy. But the point is, if this is something like your deployment process, telling your DBA “We’re changing everything you do and your toolset next week, to automate most of your role – that’s okay isn’t it?” isn’t likely to go down well. There’s some work here to bring him/her onside – to explain what you’re doing, why there will still be control of the deployment process and so on. Or of course, if you’re the DBA looking after this process, you have to do a similar job in reverse. You may have researched and worked out how you’d like to change your methodology to start automating your painful release process, but do the dev team know this? What if they have to start producing different artifacts for you? Will they be happy with this? Worth talking to them, to find out. As well as talking to your DBA/dev team, the other group to get involved before implementation is your manager. And possibly your manager’s manager too. As mentioned, unless there’s buy-in “from the top”, you’re going to hit problems when the implementation starts to get rocky (and what tool/process implementations don’t get rocky?!). You need to have support from someone senior in your organisation – someone you can turn to when you need help with a delayed implementation, lack of resources or lack of progress. Actions: Get your DBA involved (or whoever looks after live deployments) and discuss what you’re planning to do or, if you’re the DBA yourself, get the dev team up-to-speed with your plans, Get your boss involved too and make sure he/she is bought in to the investment. Environments Where are you going to deploy to? And really this question is – what environments do you want set up for your deployment pipeline? Assume everyone has “Production”, but do you have a QA environment? Dedicated development environments for each dev? Proper pre-production? I’ve seen every setup under the sun, and there is often a big difference between “What we want, to do continuous delivery properly” and “What we’re currently stuck with”. Some of these differences are: What we want What we’ve got Each developer with their own dedicated database environment A single shared “development” environment, used by everyone at once An Integration box used to test the integration of all check-ins via the CI process, along with a full suite of unit-tests running on that machine In fact if you have a CI process running, you’re likely to have some sort of integration server running (even if you don’t call it that!). Whether you have a full suite of unit tests running is a different question… Separate QA environment used explicitly for manual testing prior to release “We just test on the dev environments, or maybe pre-production” A proper pre-production (or “staging”) box that matches production as closely as possible Hopefully a pre-production box of some sort. But does it match production closely!? A production environment reproducible from source control A production box which has drifted significantly from anything in source control The big question is – how much time and effort are you going to invest in fixing these issues? In reality this just involves figuring out which new databases you’re going to create and where they’ll be hosted – VMs? Cloud-based? What about size/data issues – what data are you going to include on dev environments? Does it need to be masked to protect access to production data? And often the amount of work here really depends on whether you’re working on a new, greenfield project, or trying to update an existing, brownfield application. There’s a world if difference between starting from scratch with 4 or 5 clean environments (reproducible from source control of course!), and trying to re-purpose and tweak a set of existing databases, with all of their surrounding processes and quirks. But for a proper release management process, ideally you have: Dedicated development databases, An Integration server used for testing continuous integration and running unit tests. [NB: This is the point at which deployments are automatic, without human intervention. Each deployment after this point is a one-click (but human) action], QA – QA engineers use a one-click deployment process to automatically* deploy chosen releases to QA for testing, Pre-production. The environment you use to test the production release process, Production. * A note on the use of the word “automatic” – when carrying out automated deployments this does not mean that the deployment is happening without human intervention (i.e. that something is just deploying over and over again). It means that the process of carrying out the deployment is automatic in that it’s not a person manually running through a checklist or set of actions. The deployment still requires a single-click from a user. Actions: Get your environments set up and ready, Set access permissions appropriately, Make sure everyone understands what the environments will be used for (it’s not a “free-for-all” with all environments to be accessed, played with and changed by development). The Deployment Process As described earlier, most existing database deployment processes are pretty manual. The following is a description of a process we hear very often when we ask customers “How do your database changes get live? How does your manual process work?” Check pre-production matches production (use a schema compare tool, like SQL Compare). Sometimes done by taking a backup from production and restoring in to pre-prod, Again, use a schema compare tool to find the differences between the latest version of the database ready to go live (i.e. what the team have been developing). This generates a script, User (generally, the DBA), reviews the script. This often involves manually checking updates against a spreadsheet or similar, Run the script on pre-production, and check there are no errors (i.e. it upgrades pre-production to what you hoped), If all working, run the script on production.* * this assumes there’s no problem with production drifting away from pre-production in the interim time period (i.e. someone has hacked something in to the production box without going through the proper change management process). This difference could undermine the validity of your pre-production deployment test. Red Gate is currently working on a free tool to detect this problem – sign up here at www.sqllighthouse.com, if you’re interested in testing early versions. There are several variations on this process – some better, some much worse! How do you automate this? In particular, step 3 – surely you can’t automate a DBA checking through a script, that everything is in order!? The key point here is to plan what you want in your new deployment process. There are so many options. At one extreme, pure continuous deployment – whenever a dev checks something in to source control, the CI process runs (including extensive and thorough testing!), before the deployment process keys in and automatically deploys that change to the live box. Not for the faint hearted – and really not something we recommend. At the other extreme, you might be more comfortable with a semi-automated process – the pre-production/production matching process is automated (with an error thrown if these environments don’t match), followed by a manual intervention, allowing for script approval by the DBA. One he/she clicks “Okay, I’m happy for that to go live”, the latter stages automatically take the script through to live. And anything in between of course – and other variations. But we’d strongly recommended sitting down with a whiteboard and your team, and spending a couple of hours mapping out “What do we do now?”, “What do we actually want?”, “What will satisfy our needs for continuous delivery, but still maintaining some sort of continuous control over the process?” NB: Most of what we’re discussing here is about production deployments. It’s important to note that you will also need to map out a deployment process for earlier environments (for example QA). However, these are likely to be less onerous, and many customers opt for a much more automated process for these boxes. Actions: Sit down with your team and a whiteboard, and draw out the answers to the questions above for your production deployments – “What do we do now?”, “What do we actually want?”, “What will satisfy our needs for continuous delivery, but still maintaining some sort of continuous control over the process?” Repeat for earlier environments (QA and so on). Rollback and Recovery If only every deployment went according to plan! Unfortunately they don’t – and when things go wrong, you need a rollback or recovery plan for what you’re going to do in that situation. Once you move in to a more automated database deployment process, you’re far more likely to be deploying more frequently than before. No longer once every 6 months, maybe now once per week, or even daily. Hence the need for a quick rollback or recovery process becomes paramount, and should be planned for. NB: These are mainly scenarios for handling rollbacks after the transaction has been committed. If a failure is detected during the transaction, the whole transaction can just be rolled back, no problem. There are various options, which we’ll explore in subsequent articles, things like: Immediately restore from backup, Have a pre-tested rollback script (remembering that really this is a “roll-forward” script – there’s not really such a thing as a rollback script for a database!) Have fallback environments – for example, using a blue-green deployment pattern. Different options have pros and cons – some are easier to set up, some require more investment in infrastructure; and of course some work better than others (the key issue with using backups, is loss of the interim transaction data that has been added between the failed deployment and the restore). The best mechanism will be primarily dependent on how your application works and how much you need a cast-iron failsafe mechanism. Actions: Work out an appropriate rollback strategy based on how your application and business works, your appetite for investment and requirements for a completely failsafe process. Development Practices This is perhaps the more difficult area for people to tackle. The process by which you can deploy database updates is actually intrinsically linked with the patterns and practices used to develop that database and linked application. So you need to decide whether you want to implement some changes to the way your developers actually develop the database (particularly schema changes) to make the deployment process easier. A good example is the pattern “Branch by abstraction”. Explained nicely here, by Martin Fowler, this is a process that can be used to make significant database changes (e.g. splitting a table) in a step-wise manner so that you can always roll back, without data loss – by making incremental updates to the database backward compatible. Slides 103-108 of the following slidedeck, from Niek Bartholomeus explain the process: https://speakerdeck.com/niekbartho/orchestration-in-meatspace As these slides show, by making a significant schema change in multiple steps – where each step can be rolled back without any loss of new data – this affords the release team the opportunity to have zero-downtime deployments with considerably less stress (because if an increment goes wrong, they can roll back easily). There are plenty more great patterns that can be implemented – the book Refactoring Databases, by Scott Ambler and Pramod Sadalage is a great read, if this is a direction you want to go in: http://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Databases-Evolutionary-paperback-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321774515 But the question is – how much of this investment are you willing to make? How often are you making significant schema changes that would require these best practices? Again, there’s a difference here between migrating old projects and starting afresh – with the latter it’s much easier to instigate best practice from the start. Actions: For your business, work out how far down the path you want to go, amending your database development patterns to “best practice”. It’s a trade-off between implementing quality processes, and the necessity to do so (depending on how often you make complex changes). Socialise these changes with your development group. No-one likes having “best practice” changes imposed on them, so good to introduce these ideas and the rationale behind them early.   Summary The next stages of implementing a continuous delivery pipeline for your database changes (once you have CI up and running) require a little pre-planning, if you want to get the most out of the work, and for the implementation to go smoothly. We’ve covered some of the checklist of areas to consider – mainly in the areas of “Getting the team ready for the changes that are coming” and “Planning our your pipeline, environments, patterns and practices for development”, though there will be more detail, depending on where you’re coming from – and where you want to get to. This article is part of our database delivery patterns & practices series on Simple Talk. Find more articles for version control, automated testing, continuous integration & deployment.

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• using isight camera in macbookpro(8,2) on ubuntu 12.04 virtualbox VM

  - by Kurt Spindler

  I'm having a lot of trouble using the built-in isight camera on my macbookpro8,2 (early 2011) from an ubuntu 12.04 virtual machine, run inside VirtualBox. The following is the log I get when I try to run guvcview ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ guvcview guvcview 1.5.3 ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.rear ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.center_lfe ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.side ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.surround71 ALSA lib setup.c:565:(add_elem) Cannot obtain info for CTL elem (MIXER,'IEC958 Playback Default',0,0,0): No such file or directory ALSA lib setup.c:565:(add_elem) Cannot obtain info for CTL elem (MIXER,'IEC958 Playback Default',0,0,0): No such file or directory ALSA lib setup.c:565:(add_elem) Cannot obtain info for CTL elem (MIXER,'IEC958 Playback Default',0,0,0): No such file or directory ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.hdmi ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.hdmi ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.modem ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.modem ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.phoneline ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.phoneline ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5) ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5) ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5) ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5) ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:957:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) The dmix plugin supports only playback stream Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory Cannot connect to server socket jack server is not running or cannot be started video device: /dev/video0 Init. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in) (location: usb-0000:00:0b.0-1) { pixelformat = 'YUYV', description = 'YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV)' } { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 1/10, { pixelformat = 'MJPG', description = 'MJPEG' } { discrete: width = 960, height = 540 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 576 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { pixelformat = 'RGB3', description = 'RGB3' } { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 960, height = 540 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 576 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { pixelformat = 'BGR3', description = 'BGR3' } { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 960, height = 540 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 576 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { pixelformat = 'YU12', description = 'YU12' } { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 960, height = 540 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 576 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { pixelformat = 'YV12', description = 'YV12' } { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 960, height = 540 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 576 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, vid:05ac pid:8509 driver:uvcvideo checking format: 1196444237 VIDIOC_G_COMP:: Invalid argument compression control not supported fps is set to 1/25 drawing controls no codec detected for H264 no codec detected for MP3 - (lavc) Checking video mode 960x540@32bpp : OK Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable write /home/ubuntu/.guvcviewrc OK free controls cleaned allocations - 100% Closing portaudio ...OK Closing GTK... OK ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ Any help would be greatly appreciated. Only clue I have is that I initially was having problems, tried using the old method of fixing isights (involving installing isight-firmware-tools) before realizing that I just hadn't turned on the VM setting to allow the VM to access the webcam. :) Anyway, I wonder if installing that messed something up. However, I think this is a red herring because I've: shut down and turned back on the Mac, restarted the VM, tried a different VM (for which I never installed isight-firmware-tools, and created an entirely new ubuntu vm. All instances have had this problem. Similarly, other viewers, such as cheese, avplay, avconv have had all various kinds of errors.

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• Away3D & Directional Light w/ Rotating Meshes

  - by seethru

  This is likely a stupid error but I can't seem to find what I've done wrong. I've got a simple scene with 10 cylinders rotating at a default speed. If I grab one of these cylinders I can rotate it in the opposite direction or at a greater speed. I have a single directional light in the scene. It would appear that the directional light is only calculated at initialization and not on further frames. The shadow created by the light rotates with the cylinder giving the impression that the light is rotating when it isn't. Camera & Light Initialization _view = new View3D(); addChild(_view); _view.antiAlias = 4; _view.backgroundColor = 0xFFFFFF; _view.camera.z = -850; _view.camera.y = 0; _view.camera.x = 0; _view.camera.lookAt(new Vector3D()); _view.camera.lens = new PerspectiveLens(15); _view.mousePicker = PickingType.RAYCAST_BEST_HIT; _light = new DirectionalLight(); _light.z = -850; _light.direction = new Vector3D(1, 1, 1); _light.color = 0xFFFFFF; _light.ambient = 0.1; _light.diffuse = 0.7; _view.scene.addChild(_light); Mesh and Material creation var material:TextureMaterial = new TextureMaterial(createPow2Texture(sprite, _colors[i]) , true, false, true); material.animateUVs = true; material.lightPicker = _lightPicker; cylinder = new Mesh(new CylinderGeometry(radius, radius, 13, 70, 1, true, true), material); cylinder.subMeshes[0].scaleU = spriteWidth / sprite.width; cylinder.y = y; cylinder.mouseEnabled = true; cylinder.pickingCollider = PickingColliderType.AS3_BEST_HIT; cylinder.addEventListener(MouseEvent3D.MOUSE_OVER, onMouseOverMesh); cylinder.addEventListener(MouseEvent3D.MOUSE_MOVE, onMouseOverMesh); cylinder.addEventListener(MouseEvent3D.MOUSE_OUT, onMouseOutMesh); _cylinders.push(cylinder); Frame private function onEnterFrame(event:Event):void { for each (var mesh:Mesh in _cylinders) { if (mesh == _mouseOverMesh) continue; mesh.rotationY += 0.25; } _view.render(); }

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• problem with loading in .FBX meshes in DirectX 10

  - by N0xus

  I'm trying to load in meshes into DirectX 10. I've created a bunch of classes that handle it and allow me to call in a mesh with only a single line of code in my main game class. How ever, when I run the program this is what renders: In the debug output window the following errors keep appearing: D3D10: ERROR: ID3D10Device::DrawIndexed: Input Assembler - Vertex Shader linkage error: Signatures between stages are incompatible. The reason is that Semantic 'TEXCOORD' is defined for mismatched hardware registers between the output stage and input stage. [ EXECUTION ERROR #343: DEVICE_SHADER_LINKAGE_REGISTERINDEX ] D3D10: ERROR: ID3D10Device::DrawIndexed: Input Assembler - Vertex Shader linkage error: Signatures between stages are incompatible. The reason is that the input stage requires Semantic/Index (POSITION,0) as input, but it is not provided by the output stage. [ EXECUTION ERROR #342: DEVICE_SHADER_LINKAGE_SEMANTICNAME_NOT_FOUND ] The thing is, I've no idea how to fix this. The code I'm using does work and I've simply brought all of that code into a new project of mine. There are no build errors and this only appears when the game is running The .fx file is as follows: float4x4 matWorld; float4x4 matView; float4x4 matProjection; struct VS_INPUT { float4 Pos:POSITION; float2 TexCoord:TEXCOORD; }; struct PS_INPUT { float4 Pos:SV_POSITION; float2 TexCoord:TEXCOORD; }; Texture2D diffuseTexture; SamplerState diffuseSampler { Filter = MIN_MAG_MIP_POINT; AddressU = WRAP; AddressV = WRAP; }; // // Vertex Shader // PS_INPUT VS( VS_INPUT input ) { PS_INPUT output=(PS_INPUT)0; float4x4 viewProjection=mul(matView,matProjection); float4x4 worldViewProjection=mul(matWorld,viewProjection); output.Pos=mul(input.Pos,worldViewProjection); output.TexCoord=input.TexCoord; return output; } // // Pixel Shader // float4 PS(PS_INPUT input ) : SV_Target { return diffuseTexture.Sample(diffuseSampler,input.TexCoord); //return float4(1.0f,1.0f,1.0f,1.0f); } RasterizerState NoCulling { FILLMODE=SOLID; CULLMODE=NONE; }; technique10 Render { pass P0 { SetVertexShader( CompileShader( vs_4_0, VS() ) ); SetGeometryShader( NULL ); SetPixelShader( CompileShader( ps_4_0, PS() ) ); SetRasterizerState(NoCulling); } } In my game, the .fx file and model are called and set as follows: Loading in shader file //Set the shader flags - BMD DWORD dwShaderFlags = D3D10_SHADER_ENABLE_STRICTNESS; #if defined( DEBUG ) || defined( _DEBUG ) dwShaderFlags |= D3D10_SHADER_DEBUG; #endif ID3D10Blob * pErrorBuffer=NULL; if( FAILED( D3DX10CreateEffectFromFile( TEXT("TransformedTexture.fx" ), NULL, NULL, "fx_4_0", dwShaderFlags, 0, md3dDevice, NULL, NULL, &m_pEffect, &pErrorBuffer, NULL ) ) ) { char * pErrorStr = ( char* )pErrorBuffer->GetBufferPointer(); //If the creation of the Effect fails then a message box will be shown MessageBoxA( NULL, pErrorStr, "Error", MB_OK ); return false; } //Get the technique called Render from the effect, we need this for rendering later on m_pTechnique=m_pEffect->GetTechniqueByName("Render"); //Number of elements in the layout UINT numElements = TexturedLitVertex::layoutSize; //Get the Pass description, we need this to bind the vertex to the pipeline D3D10_PASS_DESC PassDesc; m_pTechnique->GetPassByIndex( 0 )->GetDesc( &PassDesc ); //Create Input layout to describe the incoming buffer to the input assembler if (FAILED(md3dDevice->CreateInputLayout( TexturedLitVertex::layout, numElements,PassDesc.pIAInputSignature, PassDesc.IAInputSignatureSize, &m_pVertexLayout ) ) ) { return false; } model loading: m_pTestRenderable=new CRenderable(); //m_pTestRenderable->create<TexturedVertex>(md3dDevice,8,6,vertices,indices); m_pModelLoader = new CModelLoader(); m_pTestRenderable = m_pModelLoader->loadModelFromFile( md3dDevice,"armoredrecon.fbx" ); m_pGameObjectTest = new CGameObject(); m_pGameObjectTest->setRenderable( m_pTestRenderable ); // Set primitive topology, how are we going to interpet the vertices in the vertex buffer md3dDevice->IASetPrimitiveTopology( D3D10_PRIMITIVE_TOPOLOGY_TRIANGLELIST ); if ( FAILED( D3DX10CreateShaderResourceViewFromFile( md3dDevice, TEXT( "armoredrecon_diff.png" ), NULL, NULL, &m_pTextureShaderResource, NULL ) ) ) { MessageBox( NULL, TEXT( "Can't load Texture" ), TEXT( "Error" ), MB_OK ); return false; } m_pDiffuseTextureVariable = m_pEffect->GetVariableByName( "diffuseTexture" )->AsShaderResource(); m_pDiffuseTextureVariable->SetResource( m_pTextureShaderResource ); Finally, the draw function code: //All drawing will occur between the clear and present m_pViewMatrixVariable->SetMatrix( ( float* )m_matView ); m_pWorldMatrixVariable->SetMatrix( ( float* )m_pGameObjectTest->getWorld() ); //Get the stride(size) of the a vertex, we need this to tell the pipeline the size of one vertex UINT stride = m_pTestRenderable->getStride(); //The offset from start of the buffer to where our vertices are located UINT offset = m_pTestRenderable->getOffset(); ID3D10Buffer * pVB=m_pTestRenderable->getVB(); //Bind the vertex buffer to input assembler stage - md3dDevice->IASetVertexBuffers( 0, 1, &pVB, &stride, &offset ); md3dDevice->IASetIndexBuffer( m_pTestRenderable->getIB(), DXGI_FORMAT_R32_UINT, 0 ); //Get the Description of the technique, we need this in order to loop through each pass in the technique D3D10_TECHNIQUE_DESC techDesc; m_pTechnique->GetDesc( &techDesc ); //Loop through the passes in the technique for( UINT p = 0; p < techDesc.Passes; ++p ) { //Get a pass at current index and apply it m_pTechnique->GetPassByIndex( p )->Apply( 0 ); //Draw call md3dDevice->DrawIndexed(m_pTestRenderable->getNumOfIndices(),0,0); //m_pD3D10Device->Draw(m_pTestRenderable->getNumOfVerts(),0); } Is there anything I've clearly done wrong or are missing? Spent 2 weeks trying to workout what on earth I've done wrong to no avail. Any insight a fresh pair eyes could give on this would be great.

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• How to structure game states in an entity/component-based system

  - by Eva

  I'm making a game designed with the entity-component paradigm that uses systems to communicate between components as explained here. I've reached the point in my development that I need to add game states (such as paused, playing, level start, round start, game over, etc.), but I'm not sure how to do it with my framework. I've looked at this code example on game states which everyone seems to reference, but I don't think it fits with my framework. It seems to have each state handling its own drawing and updating. My framework has a SystemManager that handles all the updating using systems. For example, here's my RenderingSystem class: public class RenderingSystem extends GameSystem { private GameView gameView_; /** * Constructor * Creates a new RenderingSystem. * @param gameManager The game manager. Used to get the game components. */ public RenderingSystem(GameManager gameManager) { super(gameManager); } /** * Method: registerGameView * Registers gameView into the RenderingSystem. * @param gameView The game view registered. */ public void registerGameView(GameView gameView) { gameView_ = gameView; } /** * Method: triggerRender * Adds a repaint call to the event queue for the dirty rectangle. */ public void triggerRender() { Rectangle dirtyRect = new Rectangle(); for (GameObject object : getRenderableObjects()) { GraphicsComponent graphicsComponent = object.getComponent(GraphicsComponent.class); dirtyRect.add(graphicsComponent.getDirtyRect()); } gameView_.repaint(dirtyRect); } /** * Method: renderGameView * Renders the game objects onto the game view. * @param g The graphics object that draws the game objects. */ public void renderGameView(Graphics g) { for (GameObject object : getRenderableObjects()) { GraphicsComponent graphicsComponent = object.getComponent(GraphicsComponent.class); if (!graphicsComponent.isVisible()) continue; GraphicsComponent.Shape shape = graphicsComponent.getShape(); BoundsComponent boundsComponent = object.getComponent(BoundsComponent.class); Rectangle bounds = boundsComponent.getBounds(); g.setColor(graphicsComponent.getColor()); if (shape == GraphicsComponent.Shape.RECTANGULAR) { g.fill3DRect(bounds.x, bounds.y, bounds.width, bounds.height, true); } else if (shape == GraphicsComponent.Shape.CIRCULAR) { g.fillOval(bounds.x, bounds.y, bounds.width, bounds.height); } } } /** * Method: getRenderableObjects * @return The renderable game objects. */ private HashSet<GameObject> getRenderableObjects() { return gameManager.getGameObjectManager().getRelevantObjects( getClass()); } } Also all the updating in my game is event-driven. I don't have a loop like theirs that simply updates everything at the same time. I like my framework because it makes it easy to add new GameObjects, but doesn't have the problems some component-based designs encounter when communicating between components. I would hate to chuck it just to get pause to work. Is there a way I can add game states to my game without removing the entity-component design? Does the game state example actually fit my framework, and I'm just missing something? EDIT: I might not have explained my framework well enough. My components are just data. If I was coding in C++, they'd probably be structs. Here's an example of one: public class BoundsComponent implements GameComponent { /** * The position of the game object. */ private Point pos_; /** * The size of the game object. */ private Dimension size_; /** * Constructor * Creates a new BoundsComponent for a game object with initial position * initialPos and initial size initialSize. The position and size combine * to make up the bounds. * @param initialPos The initial position of the game object. * @param initialSize The initial size of the game object. */ public BoundsComponent(Point initialPos, Dimension initialSize) { pos_ = initialPos; size_ = initialSize; } /** * Method: getBounds * @return The bounds of the game object. */ public Rectangle getBounds() { return new Rectangle(pos_, size_); } /** * Method: setPos * Sets the position of the game object to newPos. * @param newPos The value to which the position of the game object is * set. */ public void setPos(Point newPos) { pos_ = newPos; } } My components do not communicate with each other. Systems handle inter-component communication. My systems also do not communicate with each other. They have separate functionality and can easily be kept separate. The MovementSystem doesn't need to know what the RenderingSystem is rendering to move the game objects correctly; it just need to set the right values on the components, so that when the RenderingSystem renders the game objects, it has accurate data. The game state could not be a system, because it needs to interact with the systems rather than the components. It's not setting data; it's determining which functions need to be called. A GameStateComponent wouldn't make sense because all the game objects share one game state. Components are what make up objects and each one is different for each different object. For example, the game objects cannot have the same bounds. They can have overlapping bounds, but if they share a BoundsComponent, they're really the same object. Hopefully, this explanation makes my framework less confusing.

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