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• DAQ Triggers in Matlab

  - by RidePlanet

  I'm writing a program that detects the speed of a object by hall effect sensors that are run into MATLAB through a DAQ (MCC USB-1408FS) The problem that has arisen is that I'm using a non-stop scan technique to detect the state of one of 3 sensors. Unfortunately this means that unless the object is rotating past each sensor at the exact rate the program runs, I will see an instantaneous speed (done by comparing the time between two sensors) of zero. I need the sensors to signal the program to count when they are hit, instead of constantly scanning for the signal. How can this be done?

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• Understanding memory leak in Android app.

  - by sat

  After going through few articles about performance, Not able to get this statement exactly. "When a Drawable is attached to a view, the view is set as a callback on the drawable" Soln: "Setting the stored drawables’ callbacks to null when the activity is destroyed." What does that mean, e.g. In my app , I initialize an imageButton in onCreate() like this, imgButton= (ImageButton) findViewById(R.id.imagebtn); At later stage, I get an image from an url, get the stream and convert that to drawable, and set image btn like this, imgButton.setImageDrawable(drawable); According to the above statement, when I am exiting my app, say in onDestroy() I have to set stored drawables’ callbacks to null, not able to understand this part ! In this simple case what I have to set as null ? I am using Android 2.2 Froyo, whether this technique is required, or not necessary.

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• Python - read numbers from text file and put into list

  - by user1647372

  So like the title says im starting to learn some python and im having trouble picking up on this technique. What I need to accomplish is to read in some numbers and store them in a list. The text file looks like the following: 0 0 3 50 50 100 4 20 Basically these are coordinates and directions to be used for python's turtle to make shapes. I got that part down the only problem is getting them in a correct format. So what I can not figure out is how to get those numbers from the file into [ [0, 0, 3, 50], [50, 100, 4, 20] ] A list, with each four coordinates being a list in that one big list. Heres my attempt but it as I said I need some help - thank you. polyShape=[] infile = open(name,"r") num = int(infile.readline(2)) while num != "": polyShape.append(num) num = int(infile.readline(2)) infile.close()

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• How to get parameter from url iframe in php?

  - by Sovanrith Prak

  I use anchor tag to pass url and parameter to iframe <a href="?test=3" target="iframeTest">Test</a> <iframe src="" name="iframeTest" style="display:none;"></iframe> I see that iframe can get this url with parameter. I want to get the parameter (test) from iframe and echo with PHP. So could you tell me some technique to get value of parameter from iframe? Or we can't get value of parameter from iframe?

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• Having two backgrounds for an active menu item?

  - by HollerTrain

  Hi I have a dynamic menu where the ul li items change in width depending on the text set in the CMS (Joomla). They want the menu item, on mouse over, to both have 1. a repeated background image and 2. an image placed at the top (http://screencast.com/t/Zjk4YTJmNGQ). Now, I'm great with doing the repeated background image on a mouse over and that would be great, but I am not sure how to get both of these images in one css declaration. Any help would be greatly appreciated, as I haven't learned this technique yet :(

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• Microsoft SQL Server xml data

  - by cf_PhillipSenn

  This site has a technique to pass xml data around in Microsoft SQL Server: DECLARE @productIds xml SET @productIds ='<Products><id>3</id><id>6</id><id>15</id></Products>' SELECT ParamValues.ID.value('.','VARCHAR(20)') FROM @productIds.nodes('/Products/id') as ParamValues(ID) But what is the syntax if I add another field? The following does NOT work: DECLARE @productIds xml SET @productIds ='<Products><id>3</id><descr>Three</descr><id>6</id><descr>six</descr><id>15</id><descr>Fifteen</descr></Products>' SELECT ParamValues.ID.value('.','VARCHAR(20)') ,ParamValues.descr.value('.','VARCHAR(20)') FROM @productIds.nodes('/Products/id') as ParamValues(ID) Note: Maybe I've constructed my xml wrong.

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• Two pass blur shader using libgdx tile map renderer

  - by Alexandre GUIDET

  I am trying to apply the following technique: blur effect using two pass shader to my libgdx game using the OrthogonalTiledMapRenderer. The idea is to blur the background wich is also a tilemap but rendered with another camera with a different zoom applied. Here is a screen capture without effect: Using the OrthogonalTiledMapRenderer sprite batch like this: backgroundMapRenderer.getSpriteBatch().setShader(shaderBlurX); backgroundMapRenderer.render(layerBackground); I get the following render: Wich is ok for X blur pass. I then try using frame buffer object like in this example. But the effect seems to be too much zoomed: I may be messing up with the camera and the zoom factor. Here is the code: private ShaderProgram shaderBlurX; private ShaderProgram shaderBlurY; private int FBO_SIZE = 800; private FrameBuffer targetA; private FrameBuffer targetB; targetA = new FrameBuffer(Pixmap.Format.RGBA8888, FBO_SIZE, FBO_SIZE, false); targetB = new FrameBuffer(Pixmap.Format.RGBA8888, FBO_SIZE, FBO_SIZE, false); targetA.begin(); Gdx.gl.glClearColor(1, 1, 1, 0); Gdx.gl.glClear(GL10.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); backgroundMapRenderer.render(layerBackground); targetA.end(); targetB.begin(); Gdx.gl.glClearColor(1, 1, 1, 0); Gdx.gl.glClear(GL10.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); backgroundMapRenderer.getSpriteBatch().setShader(shaderBlurX); backgroundMapRenderer.render(layerBackground); targetB.end(); TextureRegion back = new TextureRegion(targetB.getColorBufferTexture()); back.flip(false, true); backgroundMapRenderer.getSpriteBatch() .setProjectionMatrix(backgroundCamera.combined); backgroundMapRenderer.getSpriteBatch().setShader(shaderBlurY); backgroundMapRenderer.getSpriteBatch().begin(); backgroundMapRenderer.getSpriteBatch().draw(back, 0, 0); backgroundMapRenderer.getSpriteBatch().end(); I know I am making something the wrong way, but I can't find any resources about applying two passes shader using tile map renderer. Does someone know how to achieve this?

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• Fixing Robocopy for SQL Server Jobs

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  Robocopy is one of, if not the, best life-saving/greatest-thing-since-sliced-bread command line utilities ever to come from Microsoft.  If you're not using it already, what are you waiting for? Of course, being a Microsoft product, it's not exactly perfect. ;)  Specifically, it sets the ERRORLEVEL to a non-zero value even if the copy is successful.  This causes a problem in SQL Server job steps, since non-zero ERRORLEVELs report as failed. You can work around this by having your SQL job go to the next step on failure, but then you can't determine if there was a genuine error.  Plus you still see annoying red X's in your job history.  One way I've found to avoid this is to use a batch file that runs Robocopy, and I add some commands after it (in red): robocopy d:\backups \\BackupServer\BackupFolder *.bak rem suppress successful robocopy exit statuses, only report genuine errors (bitmask 16 and 8 settings)set/A errlev="%ERRORLEVEL% & 24" rem exit batch file with errorlevel so SQL job can succeed or fail appropriatelyexit/B %errlev% (The REM statements are simply comments and don't need to be included in the batch file) The SET command lets you use expressions when you use the /A switch.  So I set an environment variable "errlev" to a bitwise AND with the ERRORLEVEL value. Robocopy's exit codes use a bitmap/bitmask to specify its exit status.  The bits for 1, 2, and 4 do not indicate any kind of failure, but 8 and 16 do.  So by adding 16 + 8 to get 24, and doing a bitwise AND, I suppress any of the other bits that might be set, and allow either or both of the error bits to pass. The next step is to use the EXIT command with the /B switch to set a new ERRORLEVEL value, using the "errlev" variable.  This will now return zero (unless Robocopy had real errors) and allow your SQL job step to report success. This technique should also work for other command-line utilities.  The only issues I've found is that it requires the commands to be part of a batch file, so if you use Robocopy directly in your SQL job step you'd need to place it in a batch.  If you also have multiple Robocopy calls, you'll need to place the SET/A command ONLY after the last one.  You'd therefore lose any errors from previous calls, unless you use multiple "errlev" variables and AND them together. (I'll leave this as an exercise for the reader) The SET/A syntax also permits other kinds of expressions to be calculated.  You can get a full list by running "SET /?" on a command prompt.

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• Dynamic Unpivot : SSIS Nugget

  - by jamiet

  A question on the SSIS forum earlier today asked: I need to dynamically unpivot some set of columns in my source file. Every month there is one new column and its set of Values. I want to unpivot it without editing my SSIS packages that is deployed Let’s be clear about what we mean by Unpivot. It is a normalisation technique that basically converts columns into rows. By way of example it converts something like this: AccountCode Jan Feb Mar AC1 100.00 150.00 125.00 AC2 45.00 75.50 90.00 into something like this: AccountCode Month Amount AC1 Jan 100.00 AC1 Feb 150.00 AC1 Mar 125.00 AC2 Jan 45.00 AC2 Feb 75.50 AC2 Mar 90.00 The Unpivot transformation in SSIS is perfectly capable of carrying out the operation defined in this example however in the case outlined in the aforementioned forum thread the problem was a little bit different. I interpreted it to mean that the number of columns could change and in that scenario the Unpivot transformation (and indeed the SSIS dataflow in general) is rendered useless because it expects that the number of columns will not change from what is specified at design-time. There is a workaround however. Assuming all of the columns that CAN exist will appear at the end of the rows, we can (1) import all of the columns in the file as just a single column, (2) use a script component to loop over all the values in that “column” and (3) output each one as a column all of its own. Let’s go over that in a bit more detail.   I’ve prepared a data file that shows some data that we want to unpivot which shows some customers and their mythical shopping lists (it has column names in the first row): We use a Flat File Connection Manager to specify the format of our data file to SSIS: and a Flat File Source Adapter to put it into the dataflow (no need a for a screenshot of that one – its very basic). Notice that the values that we want to unpivot all exist in a column called [Groceries]. Now onto the script component where the real work goes on, although the code is pretty simple: Here I show a screenshot of this executing along with some data viewers. As you can see we have successfully pulled out all of the values into a row all of their own thus accomplishing the Dynamic Unpivot that the forum poster was after. If you want to run the demo for yourself then I have uploaded the demo package and source file up to my SkyDrive: http://cid-550f681dad532637.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/BlogShare/20100529/Dynamic%20Unpivot.zip Simply extract the two files into a folder, make sure the Connection Manager is pointing to the file, and execute! Hope this is useful. @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• How To Disconnect Non-Mapped UNC Path “Drives” in Windows

  - by The Geek

  Have you ever browsed over to another PC on your network using “network neighborhood”, and then connected to one of the file shares? Without a drive letter, how do you disconnect yourself once you’ve done so? Really confused as to what I’m talking about? Let’s walk through the process. First, imagine that you browse through and connect to a share, entering your username and password to gain access. The problem is that you stay connected, and there’s no visible way to disconnect yourself. If you try and shut down the other PC, you’ll receive a message that users are still connected. So let’s disconnect! Open up a command prompt, and then type in the following: net use This will give you a list of the connected drives, including the ones that aren’t actually mapped to a drive letter. To disconnect one of the connections, you can use the following command: net use /delete \\server\sharename For example, in this instance we’d disconnect like so: net use /delete \\192.168.1.205\root$ Now when you run the “net use” command again, you’ll see that you’ve been properly disconnected. If you wanted to actually connect to a share without mapping a drive letter, you can do the following: net use /user:Username \\server\sharename Password You could then just pop \\server\sharename into a Windows Explorer window and browse the files that way. Note that this technique should work exactly the same in any version of windows. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Remove "Map Network Drive" Menu Item from Windows Vista or XPDisable the Annoying "This page has an unspecified potential security risk" When Using Files on a Network ShareCopy Path of a File to the Clipboard in Windows 7 or VistaMap a Network Drive from XP to Windows 7Defrag Multiple Hard Drives At Once In Windows 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 Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily

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• PERT shows relationships between defined tasks in a project without taking into consideration a time line

  The program evaluation and review technique (PERT) shows relationships between defined tasks in a project without taking into consideration a time line. This chart is an excellent way to identify dependencies of tasks based on other tasks. This chart allows project managers to identify the critical path of a project to minimize any time delays to the project. According to Craig Borysowich in his article “Pros & Cons of the PERT/CPM Method stated the following advantages and disadvantages: “PERT/CPM has the following advantages: A PERT/CPM chart explicitly defines and makes visible dependencies (precedence relationships) between the WBS elements, PERT/CPM facilitates identification of the critical path and makes this visible, PERT/CPM facilitates identification of early start, late start, and slack for each activity, PERT/CPM provides for potentially reduced project duration due to better understanding of dependencies leading to improved overlapping of activities and tasks where feasible.  PERT/CPM has the following disadvantages: There can be potentially hundreds or thousands of activities and individual dependency relationships, The network charts tend to be large and unwieldy requiring several pages to print and requiring special size paper, The lack of a timeframe on most PERT/CPM charts makes it harder to show status although colors can help (e.g., specific color for completed nodes), When the PERT/CPM charts become unwieldy, they are no longer used to manage the project.” (Borysowich, 2008) Traditionally PERT charts are used in the initial planning of a project like in a project that is utilizing the waterfall approach. Once the chart was created then project managers could further analyze this data to determine the earliest start time for each stage in the project. This is important because this information can be used to help forecast resource needs during a project and where in the project. However, the agile environment can approach this differently because of their constant need to be in contact with the client and the other stakeholders.  The PERT chart can also be used during project iteration to determine what is to be worked on next, such as a prioritized To-Do list a wife would give her husband at the start of a weekend. In my personal opinion, the COTS-centric environment would not really change how a company uses a PERT chart in their day to day work. The only thing I can is that there would be less tasks to include in the chart because the functionally milestones are already completed when the components are purchased. References: http://www.netmba.com/operations/project/pert/ http://web2.concordia.ca/Quality/tools/20pertchart.pdf http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/enterprise-solutions/pros-cons-of-the-pertcpm-method-22221

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• So it comes to PASS…

  - by Tony Davis

  How does your company gauge the benefit of attending a technical conference? What's the best change you made as a direct result of attendance? It's time again for the PASS Summit and I, like most people go with a set of general goals for enhancing technical knowledge; to learn more about PowerShell, to drill into SQL Server performance tuning techniques, and so on. Most will write up a brief report on the event for the rest of the team. Ideally, however, it will go a bit further than that; each conference should result in a specific improvement to one of your systems, or in the way you do your job. As co-editor of Simple-talk.com, and responsible for the majority of our SQL books, my “high level” goals don't vary much from conference to conference. I'm always on the lookout for good new authors. I target interesting new technologies and tools and try to learn more. I return with a list of actions, new articles to commission, and potential new authors. Three years ago, however, I started setting myself the goal of implementing “one new thing” after each conference. After one, I adopted Kanban for managing my workload, a technique that places strict limits on “work in progress” and makes the overall workload, and backlog, highly visible. After another I trialled a community book project. At PASS 2010, one of my general goals was to delve deeper into SQL Server transaction log mechanics, but on top of that, I set a specific goal of writing something useful on the topic. I started a Stairway series and, ultimately, it's turned into a book! If you're attending the PASS Summit this year, take some time to consider what specific improvement or change you'll implement as a result. Also, try to drop by the Red Gate booth (#101). During the Vendor event on Wednesday evening, Gail Shaw and I will be there to discuss, and hand out copies of the book. Cheers, Tony.  

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• Asp.net session on browser close

  - by budugu

  Note: Cross posted from Vijay Kodali's Blog. Permalink How to capture logoff time when user closes browser? Or How to end user session when browser closed? These are some of the frequently asked questions in asp.net forums. In this post I'll show you how to do this when you're building an ASP.NET web application. Before we start, one fact: There is no full-proof technique to catch the browser close event for 100% of time. The trouble lies in the stateless nature of HTTP. The Web server is out of the picture as soon as it finishes sending the page content to the client. After that, all you can rely on is a client side script. Unfortunately, there is no reliable client side event for browser close. Solution: The first thing you need to do is create the web service. I've added web service and named it AsynchronousSave.asmx.    Make this web service accessible from Script, by setting class qualified with the ScriptServiceAttribute attribute...  Add a method (SaveLogOffTime) marked with [WebMethod] attribute. This method simply accepts UserId as a string variable and writes that value and logoff time to text file. But you can pass as many variables as required. You can then use this information for many purposes. To end user session, you can just call Session.Abandon() in the above web method. To enable web service to be called from page’s client side code, add script manager to page. Here i am adding to SessionTest.aspx page When the user closes the browser, onbeforeunload event fires on the client side. Our final step is adding a java script function to that event, which makes web service calls. The code is simple but effective My Code HTML:( SessionTest.aspx ) C#:( SessionTest.aspx.cs ) That’s’ it. Run the application and after browser close, open the text file to see the log off time. The above code works well in IE 7/8. If you have any questions, leave a comment.

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• Asp.net session on browser close

  - by budugu

  Note: Cross posted from Vijay Kodali's Blog. Permalink How to capture logoff time when user closes browser? Or How to end user session when browser closed? These are some of the frequently asked questions in asp.net forums. In this post I'll show you how to do this when you're building an ASP.NET web application. Before we start, one fact: There is no full-proof technique to catch the browser close event for 100% of time. The trouble lies in the stateless nature of HTTP. The Web server is out of the picture as soon as it finishes sending the page content to the client. After that, all you can rely on is a client side script. Unfortunately, there is no reliable client side event for browser close. Solution: The first thing you need to do is create the web service. I've added web service and named it AsynchronousSave.asmx.    Make this web service accessible from Script, by setting class qualified with the ScriptServiceAttribute attribute...  Add a method (SaveLogOffTime) marked with [WebMethod] attribute. This method simply accepts UserId as a string variable and writes that value and logoff time to text file. But you can pass as many variables as required. You can then use this information for many purposes. To end user session, you can just call Session.Abandon() in the above web method. To enable web service to be called from page’s client side code, add script manager to page. Here i am adding to SessionTest.aspx page When the user closes the browser, onbeforeunload event fires on the client side. Our final step is adding a java script function to that event, which makes web service calls. The code is simple but effective My Code HTML:( SessionTest.aspx ) C#:( SessionTest.aspx.cs ) That’s’ it. Run the application and after browser close, open the text file to see the log off time. The above code works well in IE 7/8. If you have any questions, leave a comment.

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• Dynamic meta description and keyword tags for your MasterPages

  - by Aamir Hasan

   Today we're going to look at a technique for dynamically inserting meta tags into your master pages. By taking control of the head tag and inserting your own HtmlMeta you can easily customise these tags.Might have noticed that when you create a new master page in visual studio your <head> tag gets decorated with a runat="server" attribute.Asp.net doesn't add this kind of decoration to any other html tags (although you are free to add it if you want). So what makes the head tag special?By adding the runat="server" you're giving actually converting the control into a HtmlHead control. That doesn't particularly matter for this tutorial other than to note that given a reference to the head control you get all the extras that come with asp.net controls such as access to its controls collection.The HtmlMeta control lets us wrap up <meta> tags via asp.net code. To add a meta description we need to create an instance, set the name property, the content property, and then add it to the head: asp.net using (C#)protected void Page_Init(object sender, EventArgs e){  // Add meta description tag  HtmlMeta metaDescription = new HtmlMeta();  metaDescription.Name = "Description";  metaDescription.Content = "Short, unique and keywords rich page description.";  Page.Header.Controls.Add(metaDescription);   // Add meta keywords tag  HtmlMeta metaKeywords = new HtmlMeta();  metaKeywords.Name = "Keywords";  metaKeywords.Content = "selected,page,keywords";  Page.Header.Controls.Add(metaKeywords);}asp.net ( VB.NET )Protected Sub Page_Init(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Init  ' Add meta description tag  Dim metaDescription As HtmlMeta = New HtmlMeta()  metaDescription.Name = "Description"  metaDescription.Content = "Short, unique and keywords rich page description."  Page.Header.Controls.Add(metaDescription)   ' Add meta keywords tag  Dim metaKeywords As HtmlMeta = New HtmlMeta()  metaKeywords.Name = "Keywords"  metaKeywords.Content = "selected,page,keywords"  Page.Header.Controls.Add(metaKeywords)End Sub

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• Silverlight Cream for May 05, 2010 -- #856

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Jeremy Alles(-2-), Kunal Chowdhury, anand iyer, Yochay Kiriaty(-2-, -3-), Max Paulousky, David Kelley, smartyP, Tim Heuer, and Dan Wahlin. Shoutout: Tim Heuer provides links for all the Ways to give feedback on Silverlight From SilverlightCream.com: [WP7] Bug when using NavigationService in Windows Phone 7 Jeremy Alles has blogged about a bug he found using the Navigation service in WP7. He gives the steps to reproduce and a couple possible workarounds. [WP7] Using the camera in the emulator Jeremy Alles is also digging into the camera functionality in the emulator. He has code demonstrating launching a camera task, and a list of other tasks available. Silverlight Tutorials Chapter 3: Introduction to Panels Kunal Chowdhury has Chapter 3 of his Silverlight 4 Tutorial series up and he's talking about Panels this time out. Push Notifications in Windows Phone 7 developer tools CTP April Refresh anand iyer is discussing the Push Notifications, only from a code perspective. Good information and good additional links to follow. Windows Phone Application Life Cycle Yochay Kiriaty talks with Tudor Toma and Jaime Rodriguez about the WP7 application lifecycle on Channel 9. Understanding Microsoft Push Notifications for Windows Phones Yochay Kiriaty has a 2-part post up on WP7 Push Notifications. The first part is explaining what Push Notifications are and why we need them... as a developer and as an end user viewing Toast or Tile notifications. Understanding How Microsoft Push Notification Works – Part 2 In the 2nd part of his Push Notification series, Yochay Kiriaty discusses how the Push Notification works under the covers. To Remember: Deployment of Silverlight Applications With Wcf Ria Services Max Paulousky has a post up for reference on what to look into when you get "Load Operation Failed" in WCF RIA services. Launching a URL from an OOB Silverlight Application David Kelley has a quick post up on launching URLs from an OOB app. If you haven't tried it, you may be surprised as he was at first. Creating a Windows Phone 7 XNA Game in Landscape Orientation smartyP is looking at recreating a landscape WP7 game in XNA and is detailing some of the issues he's been dealing with, and is also sharing a project file. New Silverlight 4 Themes available–get the raw bits Tim Heuer provided 'raw' versions of 3 new themes. Read his post to see exactly what he means by 'raw' ... they're definitely good looking, and are going to get a lot of play. Handling WCF Service Paths in Silverlight 4 – Relative Path Support Dan Wahlin shares his technique for avoiding the pain involved with ServiceReferences.ClientConfig by using Silverlight 4 relative path support. 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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• CodeStock 2012 Review: Michael Eaton( @mjeaton ) - 3 Simple Things for Increased Productivity

  3 Simple Things for Increased ProductivitySpeaker: Michael EatonTwitter: @mjeatonBlog: http://mjeaton.net/blog This was the first time I had seen Michael Eaton speak but have hear a lot of really good things about his speaking abilities. Needless to say I was really looking forward to his session. He basically addressed the topic of distractions and how they can decrease or increase your productivity as a developer. He makes the case that in order to become more productive you must block/limit all distractions. For example, he covered his top distractions as a developer. Top Distractions Social Media(Twitter, Reddit, Facebook) Wiki sites Phone Email Video Games Coworkers, Friends, Family Michael stated that he uses various types of music to help him block out these distractions in order for him to get into his coding zone. While he states that music works for him, he also notes that he knows of others that cannot really work with music. I have to say I am in the latter group because I require a quiet environment in order to work. A few session attendees also recommended listening to really loud white noise or music in another language other than your own. This allows for less focus to be placed on words being sung compared to the rhythmic beats being played. I have to say that I have not tried these suggestions yet but will in the near future. However, distractions can be very beneficial to productivity in that they give your mind a chance to relax and not think about the issues at hand. He spoke highly of taking vacations, and setting boundaries at work so that develops prevent the problem of burnout. One way he suggested that developer’s combat distractions is to use the Pomodoro technique. In his example he selects one task to do for 20 minutes and he can only do that task during that time. He ignores all other distractions until this task or time limit is complete. After it is completed he allows himself to relax and distract himself for another 5- 10 minutes before his next Pomodoro. This allows him to stay completely focused on a task and when the time is up he can then focus on other things.

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• Watching Green Day and discovering Sitecore, priceless.

  - by jonel

  I’m feeling inspired and I’d like to share a technique we’ve implemented in Sitecore to address a URL mapping from our legacy site that we wanted to carry over to the new beautiful Littelfuse.com. The challenge is to carry over all of our series URLs that have been published in our datasheets, we currently have a lot of series and having to create a manual mapping for those could be really tedious. It has the format of http://www.littelfuse.com/series/series-name.html, for instance, http://www.littelfuse.com/series/flnr.html. It would have been easier if we have our information architecture defined like this but that would have been too easy. I took a solution that is 2-fold. First, I need to create a URL rewrite rule using the IIS URL Rewrite Module 2.0. Secondly, we need to implement a handler that will take care of the actual lookup of the actual series. It will be amazing after we’ve gone over the details. Let’s start with the URL rewrite. Create a new blank rule, you can name it with anything you wish. The key part here to talk about is the Pattern and the Action groups. The Pattern is nothing but regex. Basically, I’m telling it to match the regex I have defined. In the Action group, I am telling it what to do, in this case, rewrite to the redirect.aspx webform. In this implementation, I will be using Rewrite instead of redirect so the URL sticks in the browser. If you opt to use Redirect, then the URL bar will display the new URL our webform will redirect to. Let me explain one small thing, the (\w+) in my Pattern group’s regex, will actually translate to {R:1} in my Action’s group. This is where the magic begins. Now let’s see what our Redirect.aspx contains. Remember our {R:1} above which becomes the query string variable s? This are basic .Net code. The only thing that you will probably ask is the LFSearch class. It’s our own implementation of addressing finding items by using a field search, we supply the fieldname, the value of the field, the template name of the item we are after, and the value of true or false if we want to do an exact search, or not. If eureka, then redirect to that item’s Path (Url). If not, tell the user tough luck, here’s the 404 page as a consolation. Amazing, ain’t it?

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• Does Scrum turn active developers into passive developers?

  - by Saeed Neamati

  I'm a web developer working in a team of three developers and one designer. It's now about five months that we've implemented the agile scrum software development methodology. But I have a weird feeling I just wanted to share in this site. One important factor in human life is decision-making process. However, there is a big difference in decisions you make. Some decisions are just the outcome of an internal or external force, while other decisions are completely based on your free will, and some decisions are simply something in between. The more freedom you have in making decisions, the more self-driven your work would become. This seems to be a rule. Because we tend to shape our lives ourselves. There is a big difference between you deciding what to do, or being told what to do. Before scrum, I felt like having more freedom in making the decisions which were related to development, analysis, prioritizing implementation, etc. I had more feeling like I'm deciding what I'm doing. However, due to the scrum methodology, now many decisions simply come from the product owner. He prioritizes PBIs, he analyzes how the software should work, even sometimes how the UI and functionality should be implemented. I know that this is part of the scrum methodology, and I also know that this may result in better sales of product in future. However, I now feel like I'm always getting told to do something, instead of deciding to do something. This syndrome now has made me more passive towards the work. I tend to search less to find a better solution, approach, or technique I don't wake up in the morning expecting to get to an enjoyable work. Rather, I feel like being forced to work in order to live I have more hunger to work on my own hobby projects after work I won't push the team anymore to get to the higher technological levels I spend more time now on dinner, or tea-times and have less enthusiasm to get back to work I'm now willing more for the work to finish sooner, so that I can get home The big problem is, I see and diagnose this behavior in my colleagues too. Is it the outcome of scrum? Does scrum really makes the development team feel like they have no part in forming the overall software, thus making the passive to the project? How can I overcome this feeling?

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• Miracle Growth Of Organs From Our Own Cells

  - by Rekha

  At the current situation, there is a shortage of healthy organs. The donor and patient also have to be closely matched and there are chances for the patient’s immune system may reject the transplant. Right now, researchers are seriously involved in a new kind of solution: "bioartifical" organs are being grown from the patient’s own cells. There are a few people who have already received lab-grown bladders. Bladder technique was developed by Anthony Atala of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The healthy cells from the patient’s diseased bladder is taken and cause them to multiply profusely in petri dishes. The muscle cells go on the outside, urothelial cells on the inside by layering the cells one layer at a time. The bladder-to-be is then incubated at body temperature until the cells form functioning tissue. This process could take six to eight months. Organs with lots of blood vessels, such as kidneys or livers, are harder to grow than hollow ones like bladders. Atala’s group works on 22 organs and tissues including ears, recently made a functioning piece of human liver. Others in the list includes:  Columbia University – Jawbone, Yale University – Lung, University of Minnesota – Rat heart, University of Michigan – Artificial Kidney There are possibilities that growing a copy of patient’s organ is not always possible – for instance, when the original is completely damaged by cancer. By using stem cell bank collected without harming human embryos from amniotic fluid in the womb, those cells are coaxed into becoming heart, liver and other organ cells. A bank of 1,00,000 stem cell samples would have enough genetic variety to match nearly any patient. Surgeons can order organs grown as needed instead of waiting for the perfect donor. "There are few things as devastating for a surgeon as knowing you have to replace the tissue and you’re doing something that’s not ideal," says Atala, a urologic surgeon himself. "Wouldn’t it be great if they had their own organ?" Great for the patient especially, he means. Via National Geographic  and cc image credit This article titled,Miracle Growth Of Organs From Our Own Cells, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• CodeStock 2012 Review: Michael Eaton( @mjeaton ) - 3 Simple Things for Increased Productivity

  3 Simple Things for Increased ProductivitySpeaker: Michael EatonTwitter: @mjeatonBlog: http://mjeaton.net/blog This was the first time I had seen Michael Eaton speak but have hear a lot of really good things about his speaking abilities. Needless to say I was really looking forward to his session. He basically addressed the topic of distractions and how they can decrease or increase your productivity as a developer. He makes the case that in order to become more productive you must block/limit all distractions. For example, he covered his top distractions as a developer. Top Distractions Social Media(Twitter, Reddit, Facebook) Wiki sites Phone Email Video Games Coworkers, Friends, Family Michael stated that he uses various types of music to help him block out these distractions in order for him to get into his coding zone. While he states that music works for him, he also notes that he knows of others that cannot really work with music. I have to say I am in the latter group because I require a quiet environment in order to work. A few session attendees also recommended listening to really loud white noise or music in another language other than your own. This allows for less focus to be placed on words being sung compared to the rhythmic beats being played. I have to say that I have not tried these suggestions yet but will in the near future. However, distractions can be very beneficial to productivity in that they give your mind a chance to relax and not think about the issues at hand. He spoke highly of taking vacations, and setting boundaries at work so that develops prevent the problem of burnout. One way he suggested that developer’s combat distractions is to use the Pomodoro technique. In his example he selects one task to do for 20 minutes and he can only do that task during that time. He ignores all other distractions until this task or time limit is complete. After it is completed he allows himself to relax and distract himself for another 5- 10 minutes before his next Pomodoro. This allows him to stay completely focused on a task and when the time is up he can then focus on other things.

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• Simple tips to design a Customer Journey Map

  - by Isabel F. Peñuelas

  “A model can abstract to a level that is comprehensible to humans, without getting lost in details.” -The Unified Modeling Language Reference Manual. Inception using Post-it, StoryBoards, Lego or Mindmaping Techniques The first step in a Customer Experience project is to describe customer interactions creating a customer journey map. Modeling is never easy, so to succeed on this effort, it is very convenient that your CX´s team have some “abstract thinking” skills. Besides is very helpful to consult a Business Service Design offered by an Interactive Agency to lead your inception process. Initially, you may start by a free discussion using post-it cards; storyboards; even lego or any other brainstorming technique you like. This will help you to get your mind into the path followed by the customer to purchase your product or to consume any business service you actually offer to your customers, or plan to offer in the near future. (from www.servicedesigntools.org) Colorful Mind Maps are very useful to document and share meeting ideas. Some Mind Maps software providers as ThinkBuzzan provide trial versions, and you will find more mindmapping options on this post by Mashable. Finally to produce a quick one, I do recommend Wise, an entirely online mindmaping service. On my view the best results in terms of communication will always come for an artistic hand-made drawing. Customer Experience Mind Map Example Making your first Customer Journey Map To add some more formalization to your thoughts, there is a wide offering for designing Customer Journey Maps. A Customer Map can be represented as an oriented graph in which another follows each step. The one below is the most simple Customer Journey you can draw. Nothing more than a couple of pictures, numbers and lines to design the customer steps sequence in the purchase process. Very simple Customer Journey for Social Mobile Shopping There are a lot of Customer Journey templates much more sophisticated available  in the Web using a variety of styles, as per example this one with a focus on underlining emotional experience, or this other worksheet template. Representing different interaction devices on the vertical axis, and touchpoints / requirements and existing gaps horizontally  is today´s most common format for Customer Journeys. From Customer Journey Maps to CX Technology Adoption Plans Once you have your map ready, you can start to identify the IT infrastructure requirements for your CXProject. By analyzing customer problems and improvement opportunities with maps, you will then identify the technology gaps and the new investment requirements in your IT infrastructure. Deeping step by step from the more abstract to the more concrete is the best guarantee to take the right IT investment decisions.  ¡Remember to keep your initial customer journey safe on your pocket in every one of your CX´s project meetings- that´s you map to success!

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• ASP.Net MVC - how to post values to the server that are not in an input element

  - by David Carter

  Problem As was mentioned in a previous blog I am building a web page that allows the user to select dates in a calendar and then shows the dates in an unordered list. The problem now is that those dates need to be sent to the server on page submit so that they can be saved to the database. If I was storing the dates in an input element, say a textbox, that wouldn't be an issue but because they are in an html element whose contents are not posted to the server an alternative strategy needs to be developed. Solution The approach that I took to solve this problem is as follows: 1. Place a hidden input field on the form <input id="hiddenDates" name="hiddenDates" type="hidden" value="" /> ASP.Net MVC has an Html helper with a method called Hidden() that will do this for you @Html.Hidden("hiddenDates"). 2. Copy the values from the html element to the hidden input field before submitting the form The following javascript is added to the page:        $(function () {          $('#formCreate').submit(function () {               PopulateHiddenDates();          });        });            function PopulateHiddenDates() {          var dateValues = '';          $($('#dateList').children('li')).each(function(index) {             dateValues += $(this).attr("id") + ",";          });          $('#hiddenDates').val(dateValues);        } I'm using jQuery to bind to the form submit event so that my method to populate the hidden field gets called before the form is submitted. The dateList element is an unordered list and by using the jQuery each function I can itterate through all the <li> items that it contains, get each items id attribute (to which I have assigned the value of the date in millisecs) and write them to the hidden field as a comma delimited string. 3. Process the dates on the server        [HttpPost]         public ActionResult Create(string hiddenDates, string utcOffset)         {            List<DateTime> dates = GetDates(hiddenDates, utcOffset);         }         private List<DateTime> GetDates(string hiddenDates, int utcOffset)         {             List<DateTime> dates = new List<DateTime>();             var values = hiddenDates.Split(",".ToCharArray(),StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);             foreach (var item in values)             {                 DateTime newDate = new DateTime(1970, 1, 1).AddMilliseconds(double.Parse(item)).AddMinutes(utcOffset*-1);                 dates.Add(newDate);                }             return dates;         } By declaring a parameter with the same name as the hidden field ASP.Net will take care of finding the corresponding entry in the form collection posted back to the server and binding it to the hiddenDates parameter! Excellent! I now have my dates the user selected and I can save them to the database. I have also used the same technique to pass back a utcOffset so that I know what timezone the user is in and I can show the dates correctly to users in other timezones if necessary (this isn't strictly necessary at the moment but I plan to introduce times later), Saving multiple dates from an unordered list - DONE!

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• Monogame/SharpDX - Shader parameters missing

  - by Layoric

  I am currently working on a simple game that I am building in Windows 8 using MonoGame (develop3d). I am using some shader code from a tutorial (made by Charles Humphrey) and having an issue populating a 'texture' parameter as it appears to be missing. Edit I have also tried 'Texture2D' and using it with a register(t0), still no luck I'm not well versed writing shaders, so this might be caused by a more obvious problem. I have debugged through MonoGame's Content processor to see how this shader is being parsed, all the non 'texture' parameters are there and look to be loading correctly. Edit This seems to go back to D3D compiler. Shader code below: #include "PPVertexShader.fxh" float2 lightScreenPosition; float4x4 matVP; float2 halfPixel; float SunSize; texture flare; sampler2D Scene: register(s0){ AddressU = Clamp; AddressV = Clamp; }; sampler Flare = sampler_state { Texture = (flare); AddressU = CLAMP; AddressV = CLAMP; }; float4 LightSourceMaskPS(float2 texCoord : TEXCOORD0 ) : COLOR0 { texCoord -= halfPixel; // Get the scene float4 col = 0; // Find the suns position in the world and map it to the screen space. float2 coord; float size = SunSize / 1; float2 center = lightScreenPosition; coord = .5 - (texCoord - center) / size * .5; col += (pow(tex2D(Flare,coord),2) * 1) * 2; return col * tex2D(Scene,texCoord); } technique LightSourceMask { pass p0 { VertexShader = compile vs_4_0 VertexShaderFunction(); PixelShader = compile ps_4_0 LightSourceMaskPS(); } } I've removed default values as they are currently not support in MonoGame and also changed ps and vs to v4 instead of 2. Could this be causing the issue? As I debug through 'DXConstantBufferData' constructor (from within the MonoGameContentProcessing project) I find that the 'flare' parameter does not exist. All others seem to be getting created fine. Any help would be appreciated. Update 1 I have discovered that SharpDX D3D compiler is what seems to be ignoring this parameter (perhaps by design?). The ConstantBufferDescription.VariableCount seems to be not counting the texture variable. Update 2 SharpDX function 'GetConstantBuffer(int index)' returns the parameters (minus textures) which is making is impossible to set values to these variables within the shader. Any one know if this is normal for DX11 / Shader Model 4.0? Or am I missing something else?

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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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