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• App Stores&ndash;In All Things, Its Quality Over Quantity

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  Everybody has an opinion about Windows 8. People love it, people hate it, people are meh about it, people are apparently buying it from Microsoft stores in NYC as if it was water before a natural disaster…if there’s one thing that Microsoft product launches do well, its the ability to bring out strong emotional responses. Over at eweek.com, Don Reisinger wrote about 5 good and bad things about Windows 8. Yes, another opinion piece on WIndows 8. I figured since this one had good and bad it might be worthwhile to read. I then came across #10 on his list, and figured “What the hell…might as well post a bit of a rant on Windows 8 myself!” Here’s #10: 10. Bad: Too few apps Unfortunately, Microsoft wasn’t able to get too many developers to start producing applications for its Windows 8 Store. Microsoft hasn’t yet released official numbers, but some have said that the marketplace has less than 8,000 programs. Considering Apple’s App Store has 100 times that, it’s about time Microsoft starts leaning on developers to get more programs into its store. Believe me, Microsoft *has* been leaning on developers to get apps into the store. I’ve been asked at least 5 or 6 times from 5 or 6 different friends at Microsoft about whether I was going to write a Windows 8 app. I think Microsoft felt they had to try and address the number of apps available in their marketplace, since some people (like Don) would draw comparisons to the number of apps in the Apple marketplace. I feel for Microsoft in this, since the number of apps in a marketplace are an empty stat. Quality of Quantity I have an iPad that my family (wife, 10yo daughter, 3yo daughter) use. We all have our own apps installed on it. In addition, my wife has an iPhone 4S that she also installs apps on. As someone who gets asked by his kids often whether they can buy/download an app, the vast majority of the vast catalogue of iOS marketplace apps are crap! Do you realize how many “free” games are out there, only to really be not-free because you have to purchase in-game content to make the game actually playable? And how about searching – with such a vast array of apps and such high numbers of craptastic ones, trying to find something is incredibly difficult and can be frustrating. I would rather see that Microsoft has 8000 high quality apps in their store at launch, instead of 800000 that were mostly junk. Too Few Apps?! And seriously, 8000 is not a small number. How many iOS apps have I actually bought between the iPad and iPhone? I’ll be generous and say 30…heck, let’s round it up to 40. It’s not like I have 10,000 apps installed on my iPad, nor will that ever happen! So if people have, at the *launch* of a new platform ecosystem, EIGHT THOUSAND apps to choose from, I don’t see that as a fail at all! It should be noted that most of the most common apps (Netflix, Skype, etc.) are available for Windows 8 at launch – I guess I’ll have to wait a few weeks for My Pony Ranch and all its clones to start showing up; pity. Let’s Check Back in a Year So look, let’s check back in a year’s time and see what the app store looks like. My hope is that Microsoft doesn’t continue to push quantity over quality. Even knowing the optics that # of apps in the store carries and the pressure to catch Apple and Android marketplaces, I hope Microsoft avoids the scenario where there’s a good percentage of apps in the Windows Store that are utter rubbish and finding the gems will be cumbersome. But if that happens, we can thank guys like Dan who raised the false issue of app count at the launch for it.

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• XNA RenderTarget2D Sample

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  I remember being scared of render targets when I first started with XNA. They seemed like weird magic and I didn’t understand them at all. There’s nothing to be frightened of, though, and they are pretty easy to learn how to use. The first thing you need to know is that when you’re drawing in XNA, you aren’t actually drawing to the screen. Instead you’re drawing to this thing called the “back buffer”. Internally, XNA maintains two sections of graphics memory. Each one is exactly the same size as the other and has all the same properties (such as surface format, whether there’s a depth buffer and/or a stencil buffer, and so on). XNA flips between these two sections of memory every update-draw cycle. So while you are drawing to one, it’s busy drawing the other one on the screen. Then the current update-draw cycle ends, it flips, and the section you were just drawing to gets drawn to the screen while the one that was being drawn to the screen before is now the one you’ll be drawing on. This is what’s meant by “double buffering”. If you drew directly to the screen, the player would see all of those draws taking place as they happened and that would look odd and not very good at all. Those two sections of graphics memory are render targets. All a render target is, is a section of graphics memory to which things can be drawn. In addition to the two that XNA maintains automatically, you can also create and set your own using RenderTarget2D and GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget. Using render targets lets you do all sorts of neat post-processing effects (like bloom) to make your game look cooler. It also just lets you do things like motion blur and lets you create mirrors in 3D games. There are quite a lot of things that render targets let you do. To go along with this post, I wrote up a simple sample for how to create and use a RenderTarget2D. It’s available under the terms of the Microsoft Public License and is available for download on my website here: http://www.bobtacoindustries.com/developers/utils/RenderTarget2DSample.zip . Other than the ‘using’ statements, every line is commented in detail so that it should (hopefully) be easy to follow along with and understand. If you have any questions, leave a comment here or drop me a line on Twitter. One last note. While creating the sample I came across an interesting quirk. If you start by creating a Windows Game, and then make a copy for Windows Phone 7, the drop-down that lets you choose between drawing to a WP7 device and the WP7 emulator stays grayed-out. To resolve this, you need to right click on the Windows Phone 7 version in the Solution Explorer, and choose “Set as StartUp Project”. The bar will then become active, letting you change the target you which to deploy to. If you want another version to be the one that starts up when you press F5 to start debugging, just go and right-click on that version and choose “Set as StartUp Project” for it once you’ve set the WP7 target (device or emulator) that you want.

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• What You Can Learn from the NFL Referee Lockout

  - by Christina McKeon

  American football is a lot like religion. The fans are devoted followers that take brand loyalty to a whole new level. These fans that worship their teams each week showed that they are powerful customers whose voice has an impact. Yesterday, these fans proved that their opinion could force the hand of a large and powerful institution. With a three-month NFL referee lockout that seemed like it was nowhere close to resolution, the Green Bay Packers and the Seattle Seahawks competed last Monday night. For those of you that might have been out of the news cycle the past few days, Green Bay lost the game due to a controversial call that many experts and analysts agree should have resulted in Green Bay winning the game. Outrage ensued. The NFL had pulled replacement referees from the high school ranks, and these replacements did not have the knowledge and experience to handle high intensity NFL games. Fans protested about their customer experience. Their anger-filled rants were heard in social media, in the headlines of newspapers, on radio, and on national TV. Suddenly, the NFL was moved to reach an agreement with the referees. That agreement was reached late in the night on Wednesday with many believing that the referees had the upper hand forcing the owners into submission. Some might argue that the referees benefited, not the fans. Since the fans wanted qualified and competent referees, I would say the fans did benefit. The referees are scheduled to return to the field this Sunday, so the fans got what they wanted. What can you learn from this negative customer experience? Customers are in control. NFL owners thought they were controlling this situation with the upper hand over referees. The owners figured out they weren’t in control when their fans reacted negatively. Customers can make or break you more now than ever before, which is why it is more important to connect with them, engage them in a personal manner, and create rewarding relationships. Protect your brand. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, the NFL put their brand and each team’s brand at risk with replacement referees. Think about each business decision you make, and how it may impact your brand at different points in time. A decision that results in a gain today could result in a larger loss down the road. Customer experience matters. The NFL likely foresaw declining revenues in ticket sales, merchandising, advertising, and other areas if the lockout continued. While fans primarily spoke with their minds in the days following the Green Bay debacle, their wallets would be the next things to speak. Customer experience directly affects your success and is one of the few areas where you can differentiate your business. What would you do if your brand got such negative attention? Would you be prepared to navigate such stormy waters? Would you be able to prevent such a fiasco? If you don’t have a good answer to these questions, consider joining us October 3-5, 2012 at the Oracle Customer Experience Summit in San Francisco. You’ll have the opportunity to learn even more about customer experience from industry experts such as best-selling author Seth Godin, Paul Hagen and Kerry Bodine from Forrester Research, Inc., George Kembel from the Stanford d.School, Bruce Temkin of The Temkin Group, and Gene Alvarez from Gartner Inc.. There will also be plenty of your peers and customer experience experts available for networking and discussions.

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• Personal Financial Management – The need for resuscitation

  - by Salil Ravindran

  Until a year or so ago, PFM (Personal Financial Management) was the blue eyed boy of every channel banking head. In an age when bank account portability is still fiction, PFM was expected to incentivise customers to switch banks. It still is, in some emerging economies, but if the state of PFM in matured markets is anything to go by, it is in a state of coma and badly requires resuscitation. Studies conducted around the year show an alarming decline and stagnation in PFM usage in mature markets. A Sept 2012 report by Aite Group – Strategies for PFM Success shows that 72% of users hadn’t used PFM and worse, 58% of them were not kicked about using it. Of the rest who had used it, only half did on a bank site. While there are multiple reasons for this lack of adoption, some are glaringly obvious. While pretty graphs and pie charts are important to provide a visual representation of my income and expense, it is simply not enough to encourage me to return. Static representation of data without any insightful analysis does not help me. Budgeting and Cash Flow is important but when I have an operative account, a couple of savings accounts, a mortgage loan and a couple of credit cards help me with what my affordability is in specific contexts rather than telling me I just busted my budget. Help me with relative importance of each budget category so that I know it is fine to go over budget on books for my daughter as against going over budget on eating out. Budget over runs and spend analysis are post facto and I am informed of my sins only when I return to online banking. That too, only if I decide to come to the PFM area. Fundamentally, PFM should be a part of my banking engagement rather than an analysis tool. It should be contextual so that I can make insight based decisions. So what can be done to resuscitate PFM? Amalgamation with banking activities – In most cases, PFM tools are integrated into online banking pages and they are like chapter 37 of a long story. PFM needs to be a way of banking rather than a tool. Available balances should shift to Spendable Balances. Budget and goal related insights should be integrated with transaction sessions to drive pre-event financial decisions. Personal Financial Guidance - Banks need to think ground level and see if their PFM offering is really helping customers achieve self actualisation. Banks need to recognise that most customers out there are non-proficient about making the best value of their money. Customers return when they know that they are being guided rather than being just informed on their finance. Integrating contextual financial offers and financial planning into PFM is one way ahead. Yet another way is to help customers tag unwanted spending thereby encouraging sound savings habits. Mobile PFM – Most banks have left all those numbers on online banking. With access mostly having moved to devices and the success of apps, moving PFM on to devices will give it a much needed shot in the arm. This is not only about presenting the same wine in a new bottle but also about leveraging the power of the device in pushing real time notifications to make pre-purchase decisions. The pursuit should be to analyse spend, budgets and financial goals real time and push them pre-event on to the device. So next time, I should know that I have over run my eating out budget before walking into that burger joint and not after. Increase participation and collaboration – Peer group experiences and comments are valued above those offered by the bank. Integrating social media into PFM engagement will let customers share and solicit their financial management experiences with their peer group. Peer comparisons help benchmark one’s savings and spending habits with those of the peer group and increases stickiness. While mature markets have gone through this learning in some way over the last one year, banks in maturing digital banking economies increasingly seem to be falling into this trap. Best practices lie in profiling and segmenting customers, being where they are and contextually guiding them to identify and achieve their financial goals. Banks could look at the likes of Simple and Movenbank to draw inpiration from.

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• Deliberate Practice

  - by Jeff Foster

  It’s easy to assume, as software engineers, that there is little need to “practice” writing code. After all, we write code all day long! Just by writing a little each day, we’re constantly learning and getting better, right? Unfortunately, that’s just not true. Of course, developers do improve with experience. Each time we encounter a problem we’re more likely to avoid it next time. If we’re in a team that deploys software early and often, we hone and improve the deployment process each time we practice it. However, not all practice makes perfect. To develop true expertise requires a particular type of practice, deliberate practice, the only goal of which is to make us better programmers. Everyday software development has other constraints and goals, not least the pressure to deliver. We rarely get the chance in the course of a “sprint” to experiment with potential solutions that are outside our current comfort zone. However, if we believe that software is a craft then it’s our duty to strive continuously to raise the standard of software development. This requires specific and sustained efforts to get better at something we currently can’t do well (from Harvard Business Review July/August 2007). One interesting way to introduce deliberate practice, in a sustainable way, is the code kata. The term kata derives from martial arts and refers to a set of movements practiced either solo or in pairs. One of the better-known examples is the Bowling Game kata by Bob Martin, the goal of which is simply to write some code to do the scoring for 10-pin bowling. It sounds too easy, right? What could we possibly learn from such a simple example? Trust me, though, that it’s not as simple as five minutes of typing and a solution. Of course, we can reach a solution in a short time, but the important thing about code katas is that we explore each technique fully and in a controlled way. We tackle the same problem multiple times, using different techniques and making different decisions, understanding the ramifications of each one, and exploring edge cases. The short feedback loop optimizes opportunities to learn. Another good example is Conway’s Game of Life. It’s a simple problem to solve, but try solving it in a functional style. If you’re used to mutability, solving the problem without mutating state will push you outside of your comfort zone. Similarly, if you try to solve it with the focus of “tell-don’t-ask“, how will the responsibilities of each object change? As software engineers, we don’t get enough opportunities to explore new ideas. In the middle of a development cycle, we can’t suddenly start experimenting on the team’s code base. Code katas offer an opportunity to explore new techniques in a safe environment. If you’re still skeptical, my challenge to you is simply to try it out. Convince a willing colleague to pair with you and work through a kata or two. It only takes an hour and I’m willing to bet you learn a few new things each time. The next step is to make it a sustainable team practice. Start with an hour every Friday afternoon (after all who wants to commit code to production just before they leave for the weekend?) for month and see how that works out. Finally, consider signing up for the Global Day of Code Retreat. It’s like a daylong code kata, it’s on December 8th and there’s probably an event in your area!

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• Passed: Exam 70-480: Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3

  First off: Mission accomplished successfully. And it was fun! Using the resources listed in my previous article about Learning Content, I'd like to thank Microsoft Technical Evangelists Jeremy Foster and Michael Palermo for their excellent jump start videos on Channel 9, and the various authors at Pluralsight. Local Prometric testing centre Back in November I chose a local testing centre which was the easiest to access from my office despite the horrible traffic you might experience here on the island. Actually, it was not the closest one. But due to their website, their awards as Microsoft Learning Center, and my general curiosity about the premises, I gave FRCI my priority. Boy, how should I regret this decision this morning... The official Prometric exam guide asks any attendee to show up at least 30 minutes prior to the scheduled time of the test. Well, this should have been the easier part but unfortunately due to heavier traffic than usual I arrived only 20 minutes before time. Not too bad but more to come. The building called 'le Hub' is nicely renovated and provides the right environment for an IT group of companies like FRCI. I think they have currently 5 independent IT departments over there. Even the handling at the reception was straight forward, welcoming and at my ease. But then... first shock: "We don't have any exam registration for today." - Hm, that's nice... Here's my mail confirmation from Prometric. First attack successfully handled and the lady went off again to check their records. Next shock: A couple of minutes later, another guy tries to explain me that "the staff of the testing centre is already on vacation and the centre is officially closed." - Are you kidding me? Here's the official confirmation by Prometric, and I don't find it funny that I take a day off today only to hear this kind of blubbering nonsense. I thought that I'll be on the safe side choosing a company with a good reputation here on the island. Another 40 (!) minutes later, they finally come back to the waiting area with a pre-filled form about the test appointment. And finally, after an hour of waiting, discussing, restarting the testing PC, and lots of talk, I am allowed to sit down and take the exam. Exam details Well, you know the rules. Signing an NDA doesn't allow me to provide you any details about the questions or topics that have been covered. Please check out the official exam description, and you're on the right way. Sorry, guys... ;-) The result "Congratulations! You have passed this Microsoft Certification exam." - In general, I have to admit that the parts on HTML5 and CSS3 were the easiest after all, and that I have to get myself a little bit more familiar with certain Javascript features like class definitions, inheritance and data security. Anyway, exam passed - who cares about the details? Next goal Of course, the journey to Microsoft Certifications continues and my next goal is to pass exams 70-481 - Essentials of Developing Windows Store Apps using HTML5 and JavaScript and 70-482 - Advanced Windows Store App Development using HTML5 and JavaScript. This would allow me to achieve the certification of MCSD: Windows Store Apps using HTML5. I guess, during 2013 I'll be busy with various learning and teaching lessons.

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• Working Towards Specialization? Your VAD Can Help You Score!

  - by Kristin Rose

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} TOUCH DOWN! That’s right folks, football is in full swing and what better way to kickoff football season than with a great Oracle play? Partners can now score big by side passing the ball to their VADs, enabling them to help in the process of becoming a Specialized partner. With the new functionality now available on the OPN Competency Center, Partner PRM Administrators can grant access to their VADs and have them assist in achieving their Specialization requirements. Here are the rules of the game: Partner Administrator must provide authorization Details do not include individual users data Access can be removed anytime Follow the steps below to grant your VAD access to your company Specialization progress reports. It’s as simple as 1,2,3…Go team go! Login to the OPN Competency Center and go to “My Preferences” on the top right corner of the screen. Under “My VAD”, select your Region, Country and Value Added Distributor name, then simple click in “ADD VAD”. Your VAD can now access your Specialization Tracker report! For those MVP’s who want to learn more, be sure to watch this 3 minute play by play video on the new OPN Competency Center VAD/VAR Specialization Tracker below, and click here before game day! Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Are You Ready For Some Oracle Football? The OPN Communications Team Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

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• Learn Many Languages

  - by Jeff Foster

  My previous blog, Deliberate Practice, discussed the need for developers to “sharpen their pencil” continually, by setting aside time to learn how to tackle problems in different ways. However, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, a contested and somewhat-controversial concept from language theory, seems to hold reasonably true when applied to programming languages. It states that: “The structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers conceptualize their world.” If you’re constrained by a single programming language, the one that dominates your day job, then you only have the tools of that language at your disposal to think about and solve a problem. For example, if you’ve only ever worked with Java, you would never think of passing a function to a method. A good developer needs to learn many languages. You may never deploy them in production, you may never ship code with them, but by learning a new language, you’ll have new ideas that will transfer to your current “day-job” language. With the abundant choices in programming languages, how does one choose which to learn? Alan Perlis sums it up best. “A language that doesn‘t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing“ With that in mind, here’s a selection of languages that I think are worth learning and that have certainly changed the way I think about tackling programming problems. Clojure Clojure is a Lisp-based language running on the Java Virtual Machine. The unique property of Lisp is homoiconicity, which means that a Lisp program is a Lisp data structure, and vice-versa. Since we can treat Lisp programs as Lisp data structures, we can write our code generation in the same style as our code. This gives Lisp a uniquely powerful macro system, and makes it ideal for implementing domain specific languages. Clojure also makes software transactional memory a first-class citizen, giving us a new approach to concurrency and dealing with the problems of shared state. Haskell Haskell is a strongly typed, functional programming language. Haskell’s type system is far richer than C# or Java, and allows us to push more of our application logic to compile-time safety. If it compiles, it usually works! Haskell is also a lazy language – we can work with infinite data structures. For example, in a board game we can generate the complete game tree, even if there are billions of possibilities, because the values are computed only as they are needed. Erlang Erlang is a functional language with a strong emphasis on reliability. Erlang’s approach to concurrency uses message passing instead of shared variables, with strong support from both the language itself and the virtual machine. Processes are extremely lightweight, and garbage collection doesn’t require all processes to be paused at the same time, making it feasible for a single program to use millions of processes at once, all without the mental overhead of managing shared state. The Benefits of Multilingualism By studying new languages, even if you won’t ever get the chance to use them in production, you will find yourself open to new ideas and ways of coding in your main language. For example, studying Haskell has taught me that you can do so much more with types and has changed my programming style in C#. A type represents some state a program should have, and a type should not be able to represent an invalid state. I often find myself refactoring methods like this… void SomeMethod(bool doThis, bool doThat) { if (!(doThis ^ doThat)) throw new ArgumentException(“At least one arg should be true”); if (doThis) DoThis(); if (doThat) DoThat(); } …into a type-based solution, like this: enum Action { DoThis, DoThat, Both }; void SomeMethod(Action action) { if (action == Action.DoThis || action == Action.Both) DoThis(); if (action == Action.DoThat || action == Action.Both) DoThat(); } At this point, I’ve removed the runtime exception in favor of a compile-time check. This is a trivial example, but is just one of many ideas that I’ve taken from one language and implemented in another.

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• Make the Time

  - by WonderOfItAll

  Took the little one to the pool tonight for swim lessons. Okay, Okay. They're not really lessons so much as they are "Hey, here's a few bucks, let me rent out a small section of your pool to swim around with my little one" Saw a dad at the pool. Bluetooth on, iPad in hand, and two year old somewhere around there. Saw a mom at the pool. Arguing with her five year old to NOT take a shower after swimming. Bluetooth on, iPad in hand, work laptop open on stadium seats. Her reasoning for not wanting the child to shower "Look, I have to get this stuff to the office by 6:30, we don't have time for you to shower. Let's go" Wait, isn't the whole point of this little experience called Mommy and Me (or, as in my case, Daddy and Me). Wherein Mommy/Daddy is supposed to spend time with little one. Not with the Bluetooth. Not with the work laptop. Dad (yeah, the same dad from earlier), in the pool. Bluetooth off (it's not waterproof or I'm sure he would've had it on), two year old in hand and iPad somewhere put away. Getting frustrated with kid because he won't 'perform' on command. Here's a little exchange Kid: "I don't wanna get in the water" Dad: "Well, we're here for 30 minutes, get in the water" Kid: "No, don't wanna" Dad: "Fine, I'm getting in" and, true to his word, in he goes, off to swim. Kid: Crying Dad: "Well, c'mon" Kid: Walking to stands Dad: Ignoring kid Kid: At stands Dad: Out of pool, drying off. Frustrated. Grabs bag, grabs kid, leaves How sad. It really seems like I am living in a generation of parents who view their children as one big scheduled distraction to another. It's almost like the dad was saying "Look, little 2 year old boy, I have a busy scheduled. Right now my Outlook Calendar tells me that I have 30 mins to spend with you, so, let's go kid: PERFORM because I have the time" Really? Can someone please tell me when the hell this happened? When did spending time with your kid, spending time with your family, spending time with your spouse, etc... become a distraction? I've seen people at work all day Tweeting throughout the day, checked in with Four Square, IM up and running constantly so they can 'stay in touch' only to see these same folks come home and be irritated because their kids or their spouse wants to connect with the. I've seen these very same people leave the house, go to the corner bar/store/you-name-the-place to be 'alone' only to find them there, plugged in, tweeting away, etc, etc, etc I LOVE technology. I love working with technology. But I also know that I am a human being. A person who, by very definition, is a social being. I needed social interactions and contact--and, no, I'm not talking about the Social Graph kind of connections, I'm talking about those interactions which, *GASP* involve eye to eye contact and human contact. A recent study found that the number one complaint of kids is that they feel they have to compete with technology for their parents time and attention. The number one wish from high school kids? That there parents would turn off the computer/tv/cell phone at dinner. This, coming from high school kids. Shouldn't that tell you a whole helluva lot? So, do yourself a favor tomorrow. Plug into technology all day. Throw yourself into it. Be passionate about what you do. When you walk through the door to your family, turn it all off for 30 mins and be there with your loved ones. If you can manage to play Angry Birds, I'm sure you can handle being disconnected for 30 minutes. Make the time

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• Delegates: A Practical Understanding

  - by samerpaul

  It's been a while since I have written on this blog, and I'm planning on reviving it this summer, since I have more time to do so again.I've also recently started working on the iPhone platform, so I haven't been as busy in .NET as before.In either case, today's blog post applies to both C# and Objective-C, because it's more about a practical understanding of delegates than it is about code. When I was learning coding, I felt like delegates was one of the hardest things to conceptually understand, and a lot of books don't really do a good job (in my opinion) of explaining it. So here's my stab at it.A Real Life Example of DelegatesLet's say there are three of you. You, your friend, and your brother. You're each in a different room in your house so you can't hear each other, even if you shout. 1)You are playing a computer game2) Friend is building a puzzle3) Brother is nappingNow, you three are going to stay in your room but you want to be informed if anything interesting is happening to the one of you. Let's say you (playing the computer game) want to know when your brother wakes up.You could keep walking to the room, checking to see if he's napping, and then walking back to your room. But that would waste a lot of time / resources, and what if you miss when he's awake before he goes back to sleep? That would be bad.Instead, you hand him a 2-way radio that works between your room and his room. And you inform him that when he wakes up, he should press a button on the radio and say "I'm awake". You are going to be listening to that radio, waiting for him to say he's awake. This, in essence, is how a delegate works.You're creating an "object" (the radio) that allows you to listen in on an event you specify. You don't want him to send any other messages to you right now, except when he wakes up. And you want to know immediately when he does, so you can go over to his room and say hi. (the methods that are called when a delegate event fires). You're also currently specifying that only you are listening on his radio.Let's say you want your friend to come into the room at the same time as you, and do something else entirely, like fluff your brother's pillow. You will then give him an identical radio, that also hooks into your brother's radio, and inform him to wait and listen for the "i'm awake" signal.Then, when your brother wakes up, he says "I'm awake!" and both you and your friend walk into the room. You say hi, and your friend fluffs the pillow, then you both exit.Later, if you decide you don't care to say hi anymore, you turn off your radio. Now, you have no idea when your brother is awake or not, because you aren't listening anymore.So again, you are each classes in this example, and each of you have your own methods. You're playing a computer game (PlayComputerGame()), your friend is building a puzzle (BuildPuzzle()) and your brother is napping (Napping()). You create a delegate (ImAwake) that you set your brother to do, when he wakes up. You listen in on that delegate (giving yourself a radio and turning it on), and when you receive the message, you fire a new method called SayHi()). Your friend is also wired up to the same delegate (using an identical radio) and fires the method FluffPillow().Hopefully this makes sense, and helps shed some light on how delegates operate. Let me know! Feel free to drop me a line at Twitter (preferred method of contact) here: samerabousalbi

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• Gomoku array-based AI-algorithm?

  - by Lasse V. Karlsen

  Way way back (think 20+ years) I encountered a Gomoku game source code in a magazine that I typed in for my computer and had a lot of fun with. The game was difficult to win against, but the core algorithm for the computer AI was really simply and didn't account for a lot of code. I wonder if anyone knows this algorithm and has some links to some source or theory about it. The things I remember was that it basically allocated an array that covered the entire board. Then, whenever I, or it, placed a piece, it would add a number of weights to all locations on the board that the piece would possibly impact. For instance (note that the weights are definitely wrong as I don't remember those): 1 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 3 444 1234X4321 3 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 Then it simply scanned the array for an open location with the lowest or highest value. Things I'm fuzzy on: Perhaps it had two arrays, one for me and one for itself and there was a min/max weighting? There might've been more to the algorithm, but at its core it was basically an array and weighted numbers Does this ring a bell with anyone at all? Anyone got anything that would help?

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• XNA vs SlimDX for offscreen renderer

  - by Groky

  Hello, I realise there are numerous questions on here asking about choosing between XNA and SlimDX, but these all relate to game programming. A little background: I have an application that renders scenes from XML descriptions. Currently I am using WPF 3D and this mostly works, except that WPF has no way to render scenes offscreen (i.e. on a server, without displaying them in a window), and also rendering to a bitmap causes WPF to fallback to software rendering. So I'm faced with having to write my own renderer. Here are the requirements: Mix of 3D and 2D elements. Relatively few elements per scene (tens of meshes, tens of 2D elements). Large scenes (up to 3000px square for print). Only a single frame will be rendered (i.e. FPS is not an issue). Opacity masks. Pixel shaders. Software fallback (servers may or may not have a decent gfx card). Possibility of being rendered offscreen. As you can see it's pretty simple stuff and WPF can manage it quite nicely except for the not-being-able-to-export-the-scene problem. In particular I don't need many of the things usually needed in game development. So bearing that in mind, would you choose XNA or SlimDX? The non-rendering portion of the code is already written in C#, so want to stick with that.

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• C#: Delegate syntax?

  - by Rosarch

  I'm developing a game. I want to have game entities each have their own Damage() function. When called, they will calculate how much damage they want to do: public class CombatantGameModel : GameObjectModel { public int Health { get; set; } /// <summary> /// If the attack hits, how much damage does it do? /// </summary> /// <param name="randomSample">A random value from [0 .. 1]. Use to introduce randomness in the attack's damage.</param> /// <returns>The amount of damage the attack does</returns> public delegate int Damage(float randomSample); public CombatantGameModel(GameObjectController controller) : base(controller) {} } public class CombatantGameObject : GameObjectController { private new readonly CombatantGameModel model; public new virtual CombatantGameModel Model { get { return model; } } public CombatantGameObject() { model = new CombatantGameModel(this); } } However, when I try to call that method, I get a compiler error: /// <summary> /// Calculates the results of an attack, and directly updates the GameObjects involved. /// </summary> /// <param name="attacker">The aggressor GameObject</param> /// <param name="victim">The GameObject under assault</param> public void ComputeAttackUpdate(CombatantGameObject attacker, CombatantGameObject victim) { if (worldQuery.IsColliding(attacker, victim, false)) { victim.Model.Health -= attacker.Model.Damage((float) rand.NextDouble()); // error here Debug.WriteLine(String.Format("{0} hits {1} for {2} damage", attacker, victim, attackTraits.Damage)); } } The error is: 'Damage': cannot reference a type through an expression; try 'HWAlphaRelease.GameObject.CombatantGameModel.Damage' instead What am I doing wrong?

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• What's a good way to teach my son to program Java

  - by Software Monkey

  OK, so I've read through various posts about teaching beginner's to program, and there were some helpful things I will look at more closely. But what I want to know is whether there are any effective tools out there to teach a kid Java specifically? I want to teach him Java specifically because (a) with my strong background in C I feel that's too complex, (b) Java is the other language I know extremely well and therefore I can assist meaningfully without needing to teach myself a new but (to me) useless language, and (c) I feel that managed languages are the future, and lastly (d) Java is one of the simplest of all the languages I know well (aside from basic). I learned in basic, and I am open to teaching that first, but I am unaware of a decent free basic shell for Windows (though I haven't really searched, yet since it's not my first choice), and would anyway want to progress quickly to Java. My son is 8, so that's a couple of years earlier than I started - but he has expressed an interest in learning to program (possibly because I work from home a lot and he sees me programming all the time). If no-one can suggest a tool designed for this purpose, I will probably start him off with text/console based apps to teach the basics, and then progress to GUI building. Oh, one last thing, I am not a fan of IDE's (old school text editor type), so I would not be put off at all by a system that has him typing real code, and would likely prefer that to a toy drag/drop system. EDIT: Just to clarify; I really am specifically after ways to teach him Java; there are already a good many posts with good answers for other language alternatives - but that's not what I am looking for here. EDIT: What about Java frameworks for 2D video games - can anyone recommend any of them from personal experience? I like the idea of him starting with the mechanics in place (main game loop, scoring, etc) and adding the specifics for a game of his own imagining - that's what I did, though for me it was basic on a Commodore VIC-20 and a Sinclair ZX-81.

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• Rails: Single Table Inheritance and models subdirectories

  - by Chris

  I have a card-game application which makes use of Single Table Inheritance. I have a class Card, and a database table cards with column type, and a number of subclasses of Card (including class Foo < Card and class Bar < Card, for the sake of argument). As it happens, Foo is a card from the original printing of the game, which Bar is a card from an expansion. In an attempt to rationalise my models, I have created a directory structure like so: app/ + models/ + card.rb + base_game/ + foo.rb + expansion/ + bar.rb And modified environment.rb to contain: Rails::Initializer.run do |config| config.load_paths += Dir["#{RAILS_ROOT}/app/models/**"] end However, when my reads a card from the database, Rails throws the following exception: ActiveRecord::SubclassNotFound (The single-table inheritance mechanism failed to locate the subclass: 'Foo'. This error is raised because the column 'type' is reserved for storing the class in case of inheritance. Please rename this column if you didn't intend it to be used for storing the inheritance class or overwrite Card.inheritance_column to use another column for that information.) Is it possible to make this work, or am I doomed to a flat directory structure?

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• Bluetooth development on Windows mobile 6 C#

  - by cheesebunz

  Hi everyone, i recently started on a project which is a puzzle slider game. This application will be using the Bluetooth, and i'm working on the mobile,Samsung omnia i900. This is how my application will work. Any user with this Samsung device plays the game and starts sliding the tiles. There is an option to search and connect to other users with the same device and application, so that they can solve the puzzle together. Right now, i'm working on the Bluetooth Part but am still new to the API. I'm using the 32feet.NET inthehandpersonal.net class library while encountering much difficulties. I am able to search for devices by using: private void btnSearch_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { BluetoothRadio.PrimaryRadio.Mode = RadioMode.Discoverable; BluetoothRadio myRadio = BluetoothRadio.PrimaryRadio; lblSearch.Text = "" + myRadio.LocalAddress.ToString(); bluetoothClient = new BluetoothClient(); Cursor.Current = Cursors.WaitCursor; BluetoothDeviceInfo[] bluetoothDeviceInfo = { }; bluetoothDeviceInfo = bluetoothClient.DiscoverDevices(10); comboBox1.DataSource = bluetoothDeviceInfo; comboBox1.DisplayMember = "DeviceName"; comboBox1.ValueMember = "DeviceAddress"; comboBox1.Focus(); Cursor.Current = Cursors.Default; } Well, to be honest this is a rip off from some sources i found on the internet but i do understand this part. Next i went on to trying to sending a simple "testing.txt" file and i'm stucked at it. I think i will be using something like the OBEX and Obexwebrequest, obexwebresponse, Uri etc. Could anyone explain it in simple terms for me so that i could understand what they are so that i could continue pairing and etc on Bluetooth development. Sorry making it this long, really appreciate if anyone did waste some time reading it :). Hope alanM sees this :) i'm using their bluetooth library.

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• Should I use OpenGL for chess with animations?

  - by fhucho

  At the moment I am experimenting with SurfaceView for my chess game with animations. I am getting only about 8 FPS in the emulator. I draw a chess board and 32 chess pieces and rotate everything (to see how smooth it is), I am using antialiasing. On the Droid I'm getting about 20FPS, so it's not very smooth. Is it possible to implement a game with very scarce and simple animations without having to use OpenGL? This is what I do every frame: // scale and rotate matrix.setScale(scale, scale); rotation += 3; matrix.postRotate(rotation, 152, 152); canvas = surfaceHolder.lockCanvas(); canvas.setDrawFilter(new PaintFlagsDrawFilter(0, Paint.FILTER_BITMAP_FLAG)); canvas.setMatrix(matrix); canvas.drawARGB(255, 255, 255, 255); // fill the canvas with white for (int i = 0; i < sprites.size(); i++) { sprites.get(i).draw(canvas); // draws chessboard and chess pieces }

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• Differing paths for lua script and app

  - by Person

  My problem is that I'm having trouble specifying paths for Lua to look in. For example, in my script I have a require("someScript") line that works perfectly (it is able to use functions from someScript when the script is run standalone. However, when I run my app, the script fails. I believe this is because Lua is looking in a location relative to the application rather than relative to the script. Hardcoding the entire path down to the drive isn't an option since people can download the game wherever they like so the highest I can go is the root folder for the game. We have XML files to load in information on objects. In them, when we specify the script the object uses, we only have to do something like Content\Core\Scripts\someScript.lua where Content is in the same directory as Debug and the app is located inside Debug. If I try putting that (the Content\Core...) in Lua's package.path I get errors when I try to run the script standalone. I'm really stuck, and am not sure how to solve this. Any help is appreciated. Thanks. P.S. When I print out the default package.path in the app I see syntax like ;.\?.lua in a sequence like... ;.\?.lua;c:...(long file path)\Debug\?.lua; I assume the ; means the end of the path, but I have no idea what the .\?.lua means. Any Lua file in the directory?

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• Constant NSDictionary/NSArray for class methods.

  - by Jeff B

  I am trying to code a global lookup table of sorts. I have game data that is stored in character/string format in a plist, but which needs to be in integer/id format when it is loaded. For instance, in the level data file, a "p" means player. In the game code a player is represented as the integer 1. This let's me do some bitwise operations, etc. I am simplifying greatly here, but trying to get the point across. Also, there is a conversion to coordinates for the sprite on a sprite sheet. Right now this string-integer, integer-string, integer-coordinate, etc. conversion is taking place in several places in code using a case statement. This stinks, of course, and I would rather do it with a dictionary lookup. I created a class called levelInfo, and want to define the dictionary for this conversion, and then class methods to call when I need to do a conversion, or otherwise deal with level data. NSString *levelObjects = @"empty,player,object,thing,doohickey"; int levelIDs[] = [0,1,2,4,8]; // etc etc @implementation LevelInfo +(int) crateIDfromChar: (char) crateChar { int idx = [[crateTypes componentsSeparatedByString:@","] indexOfObject: crateChar]; return levelIDs[idx]; } +(NSString *) crateStringFromID: (int) crateID { return [[crateTypes componentsSeparatedByString:@","] objectAtIndex: crateID]; } @end Is there a better way to do this? It feels wrong to basically build these temporary arrays, or dictionaries, or whatever for each call to do this translation. And I don't know of a way to declare a constant NSArray or NSDictionary. Please, tell me a better way....

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• Groovy XmlSlurper

  - by Langali

  I am trying to parse a html file using Groovy XmlSlurper. <div id="users"> <h1>Name: Joe Doe</h1> <div id="user"> <div id="user_summary">Game: 1</div> <object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/DApLO_HDhD0&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/DApLO_HDhD0&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object> </div> <div id="user"> <div id="user_summary">Game: 2</div> ... </div> <div id="user"> .... </div> </div> <div id="featured_users"> <div id="user"> ... </div> <div id="user"> .... </div> </div> I need to grab each user (and not featured user) with his name, summary and object tag (which the video embed code). Anybody wanna give it a shot? Here's a start: def parser =new XmlSlurper(new org.ccil.cowan.tagsoup.Parser()) def response = parser.parseText(htmlString) def users = response.depthFirst().collect { it }.findAll { it.@id == "users" } users.each { ...... } I cant seem to be able to get much further:

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• Javascript :(….. Oh!! So its jquery? Now what?? I’m a C# Guy

  - by Shekhar_Pro

  Hi guys I want you to Guide me here. This other day I was working out some AJAX for my ASP.Net website and handling client side code in Java was taking the hell out of me. Then I got my hands on this Book jQuery In Action 2nd Edition and solved my problem with the help of Example code in the book. Now as I checked the contents I got an overview that whatever I had ever thought of doing can be done by this jQuery so easily and quite cleanly. I am actually pretty new to web development (say abt 4months ) and from C# world where we have cool libraries and Simple and Elegant coding style. (yeah including those generic, Ienumerable, lambadas, chained statements.. you got it…) and you know what you’re doing when writing some code. And we have so great IntelliSense to care., and above all we have everything Strongly Typed. But in Javascript everything is so messy.. . (and I don’t know why they are not properly indented.. see page source ) Now tell me what should I do, go straight with jQuery or should I first learn Javascript (like a disciplined boy…I even have a book for that too… got in gift :) …. ) I have seen Is it a good idea to learn JavaScript before learning jQuery? but remember I have already got a project on my hand…

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• WinForms Application Form "Shakes" When Audio Playing

  - by ikurtz

  I have a C# game program that i'm developing. it uses sound samples and winsock. when i test run the game most of the audio works fine but from time to time if it is multiple samples being played sequentially the application form shakes a little bit and then goes back to its old position. how do i go about debugging this or present it to you folks in a manageable manner? i'm sure no one is going to want the whole app code in fear of virus attacks. please guide me.. EDIT: i have not been able to pin down any code section that produces this result. it just does and i cannot explain it. EDIT: no the x/y position are not changing. the window like shakes around a few pixels and then goes back to the position were it was before the shake. if (audio) { Stream stream; SoundPlayer player; stream = Properties.Resources.ResourceManager.GetStream("_home"); player = new System.Media.SoundPlayer(stream); player.PlaySync(); player.Dispose(); string ShipID = fireResult.DestroyedShipType.ToString(); stream = Properties.Resources.ResourceManager.GetStream("_" + ShipID); player = new System.Media.SoundPlayer(stream); player.PlaySync(); player.Dispose(); stream = Properties.Resources.ResourceManager.GetStream("_destroyed"); player = new System.Media.SoundPlayer(stream); player.PlaySync(); player.Dispose(); } can you see anything in the above code that would produce this shake?

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• Simple way to decrease values without making a new attribute?

  - by Jam

  I'm making a program where you're firing a 'blaster', and I have 5 ammo. I'm blasting an alien who has 5 health. At the end I instantiate the player and make him blast 6 times to check that the program works correctly. But the way I've done it makes it so that the amount won't decrease. Is there an easy fix to this, or do I just have to make a new attribute for ammo and health? Here's what I have: class Player(object): """ A player in a shooter game. """ def blast(self, enemy, ammo=5): if ammo>=1: ammo-=1 print "You have blasted the alien." print "You have", ammo, "ammunition left." enemy.die(5) else: print "You are out of ammunition!" class Alien(object): """ An alien in a shooter game. """ def die(self, health=5): if health>=1: health-=1 print "The alien is wounded. He now has", health, "health left." elif health==0: health-=1 print "The alien gasps and says, 'Oh, this is it. This is the big one. \n" \ "Yes, it's getting dark now. Tell my 1.6 million larvae that I loved them... \n" \ "Good-bye, cruel universe.'" else: print "The alien's corpse sits up momentarily and says, 'No need to blast me, I'm dead already!" # main print "\t\tDeath of an Alien\n" hero = Player() invader = Alien() hero.blast(invader) hero.blast(invader) hero.blast(invader) hero.blast(invader) hero.blast(invader) hero.blast(invader) raw_input("\n\nPress the enter key to exit.")

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• jeditable not working

  - by zurna

  I did not make any changes on the code. I dont receive any errors but its not working. I must be missing something very very simple here. Any suggestion appreciated... Test link. http://www.aslanyurek.com/inner.asp?Section=commentary&CommentaryID=1 $('.GameStory').editable('content/commentary/index.cs.asp?Process=EditLiveCommentary&CommentaryID=<%=Request.QueryString("CommentaryID")%>', { type : 'textarea', id : 'elementid', name : 'CommentaryDesc', cancel : 'Cancel', submit : 'OK', indicator : '<img src="img/indicator.gif">', tooltip : 'Click to edit...', cssclass : 'someclass' }); <div class="GameStory"> <p><span class="minute">36'</span>Here comes the pressure as Chelsea suddenly begin to up the tempo and Bolton can't keep the ball or clear it out of their own half.</p> <p><span class="minute">34'</span>Yuri Zhirkov, despite his head wound, is having a really good game and seems to be enjoying the freedom that he has been given to attack from his left back berth tonight.</p> <p><span class="minute">27'</span>Drogba whips in a free-kick that Jaaskelainen, for some reason, decides to punch straight into the face of Salomon Kalou who watches on as the ball rolls agonisingly of the post. Scare for Bolton.</p> <p><span class="minute">4'</span>Chelsea face Bolton at 8pm on Tuesday, April 13th.</p> <p><span class="minute">3'</span>Lively start at the Bridge with both sides looking to attack - it is by no means a defensive lineup from Owen Coyle so this could be an interesting game.</p> <p><span class="minute">0'</span>Nicolas Anelka gets the first shot of the match in on goal but its very tamely struck and Jaaskelainen gathers easily.</p> </div>

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• Java & Maven generating -and using- my own archetype

  - by Random

  Hello again! I have been busy in my project creating a webapp (in struts) that manages maven, using maven-2.2.1-uber.jar link text. The problem comes when the boss says it has to use some archetypes the company has created (so no predefined archetypes for you naughty boy!). So ok, I use the -DarchetypeRepository option (with ServletWrapper I get my complete web direction, becouse the repository will be inside the app), and the log seems to find it, but then the build fails -miserably- with this little text 'Build Failure - The defined artifact is not an archetype' as simple as that. Of course I have a lot of INFO lines that say abslutily nothig related. I have read the maven definitive guide searching for some kind of help, but it has been disapointing at best. My thoughts are thatmaybe I am missing in somewhere of all the folders tree some xml that actually sais maven that my pom.xml is an archetype not a project. But I really, really, can't find anything on the net or in the manuals that explains easy-handed how the archetype:generate (with special parameters) works and where I have to put every folder and/or file. So just to say my thoughts aloud (and hopefully you understand what I am trying to ask): I have a template where I do some xml changes (variables, etc...), then I have to call maen and do an archetype:generate with a variable project. The problem seems to be that my actual confuguration doesn't like what I am doing. After the generation of the archetype, witch luckly will create some directory trees and leave me a POM.xml somewhere I still have to do some variable changes and more xml manage stuff, so it whould be very kind from maven to don't destroy anything in this process. Any ideas why this maven-thing is not happly-ever-after asuming that my archetype is defintly an archetype? Allthought I think the code is ok, it could be wrong, as I am using maven-ubber and I call the actual CSMavenCli.main(String[, ClassWorld), I don't think it is the case this time. Thanks and all! :) Random.

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