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  • Reuseable Platform For Custom Board Game

    - by George Bailey
    Is there a generic platform to allow me to customize the rules to a board game. The board game uses a square grid, similar to Checkers or Chess. I was hoping to take some of the work out of creating this computer opponent, by reusing what is already written. I would think that there would be a pre-written routine for deciding which moves would lead to the best outcome, and all that I would need to program is the pieces, legal moves, what layout constitutes a win/lose or draw, and perhaps some kind of scoring for value of pieces. I have seen chess programs that appear to use a recursive routine, so they think anywhere from 2 to 20 moves ahead to create varying degrees of difficulty. I have noticed this on chess.com. The game I am programming will not be as complex. Is there a platform designed to be re-used for different grid/piece based games. JavaScript would be preferable, but Java or Perl would be acceptable.

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  • What are functional-programming ways of implementing Conway's Game of Life

    - by George Mauer
    I recently implemented for fun Conway's Game of Life in Javascript (actually coffeescript but same thing). Since javascript can be used as a functional language I was trying to stay to that end of the spectrum. I was not happy with my results. I am a fairly good OO programmer and my solution smacked of same-old-same-old. So long question short: what is the (pseudocode) functional style of doing it? Here is Pseudocode for my attempt: class Node update: (board) -> get number_of_alive_neighbors from board get this_is_alive from board if this_is_alive and number_of_alive_neighbors < 2 then die if this_is_alive and number_of_alive_neighbors > 3 then die if not this_is_alive and number_of_alive_neighbors == 3 then alive class NodeLocations at: (x, y) -> return node value at x,y of: (node) -> return x,y of node class Board getNeighbors: (node) -> use node_locations to check 8 neighbors around node and return count nodes = for 1..100 new Node state = new NodeState(nodes) locations = new NodeLocations(nodes) board = new Board(locations, state) executeRound: state = clone state accumulated_changes = for n in nodes n.update(board) apply accumulated_changes to state board = new Board(locations, state)

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  • Why does my display keep turning off every 10 minutes?

    - by George Edison
    I have installed Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric) in VirtualBox as well as virtualbox-guest-additions . The display resolution adapts to the size of the window as expected, but the display turns off after 10 minutes of inactivity. Thinking there was some sort of power management issue at play, I went to Power in the settings dialog: There doesn't really seem to be anything there that mentions "turn off display after xxx minutes" so I assume everything is configured correctly there. Next I went to Screen and found an option there "Turn off after:". Aha! I thought. Now I have found the option - but alas: even after setting it to "never" and restarting multiple times, the display still shuts off after 10 minutes. What am I missing? What option am I overlooking?

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  • Is there a variable width font that does not change width when adding effects like bold, italic?

    - by George Bailey
    NetBeans has a word wrap feature now - but if the font changes width when bold then it gets all jumpy and sometimes hard to work with. Edit: It turns out that even with Courier New that NetBeans word wrap still jumps up and down lines at a time at random. I guess that this question no longer cares for an answer. However,, it seems that there is no answer. (at least nobody has brought one up yet) I am currently using Comic Sans MS which gets wider when bold.

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  • MVVM Properties with Resharper

    - by George Evjen
    Read this early this morning and it is simple since we have all probably put together a code snippet. With the projects that we do at ArchitectNow we write alot of new custom views and view models, which results in having to write repetitive property code. We changed the context of the code a bit to suit our infrastructure but the idea is to have these properties created quickly. thanks to sparky dasrath for reminding us how easy this is to do sdasrath.blogspot.com/2011/02/20110221-resharper-c-snippet-for-mvvm.html

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  • Goodbye my beloved Nexus One, hello Windows Phone 7

    - by George Clingerman
    Last night my wife’s Nexus One finally bit the dust. You may not know but I’ve been nursing her Nexus One one along for quite a while after her screen shattered. I was able to replace it on my own (go me!) but little quirks have been popping up and the phone was quickly deteriorating. Lately it’s been the power button. Wifey would often have to press the power button several times to get her phone to turn on and last night it just wouldn’t wake up again. I took it apart and tried my best to see if I could somehow make it live once again but no luck this time. It was finally ready to retire. We looked at first for a replacement phone for her but she wasn’t really seeing anything she liked. So I decided to make the ultimate sacrifice and offer up my much loved Nexus One and I would then get a new Windows Phone 7 device. I love T-Mobile for my service so my choices were immediately limited to basically just a single phone. The HTC HD7. I read reviews and they were all over the board from people loving to people hating the phone but I decided, hey, why not, let’s take this plunge. And I did. I’ve only had the phone for about two days now so below is my list of first reaction pros/cons. These are basically things I’ve missed or things I’ve noticed that I really like about my new Windows Phone. Cons: * No Google Talk – I used this a LOT on my Nexus. I’ve found an application called “Flory” but it’s just an ok substitute, not the same as the full featured GTalk I had on my Nexus. * Seesmic is limited– I loved the way Seesmic worked on my Nexus. It was my mobile twitter client of choice. Everything about it worked really well. On Windows Phone 7 it’s just ok. I don’t get notification of new tweets, it’s several clicks to even see a new tweet. It’s definitely got some more development before it has the same features as it did on my Nexus. * Buttons don’t give great feedback – I’d read this on the reviews about the HTC HD7 and I’m finding it true myself. Pressing the buttons on the side of the phone and the power button on the top is finicky and I have to be looking at my phone to make sure I actually got them to press. * Web browsing is slow – I’m not sure what’s up with this, I’m connected to my wireless network at my house but it’s noticeably slower on my WP7 device than my Nexus. I even switched back to verify and it’s definitely true. Retrieving tweets, hitting up the XNA forums and just general web activities are all much slower on my WP7. I can’t think of any reason this would be true but it almost seems like it’s not using my wireless for everything.   Pros: * It’s pretty – the phone is really gorgeous. I loved the form of my Nexus One by the HTC HD7 is just as pretty, maybe even prettier! It’s got a nice large, bright screen. It feels good in my hand. And it even has a little kickstand to set the phone up for movie watching. Definitely a gorgeous phone. * LIVE integration – I lost a lot of nice integration with Google services but I gained a lot of integration with LIVE services that I also use. Now I can see when I get new GMail messages AND Hotmail messages. And having the Xbox LIVE integration is admittedly cool as well. * Tile notification rock – The Windows Phone 7 commercials are TRYING to get this message out but they’re doing a really poor job of this. Tile notifications really do save you from your phone. I have a whole little mini-informational dashboard at a glance. I unlock my phone and at a glace I can see new IMs, new mail messages, software updates etc. All just letting me know in the tiles I have arranged. That’s pretty cool. * The interface works really well – I feel super hip and cool swiping and sliding things around on my Windows Phone 7. Everything works that way and it’s great and fast and really good looking. I’m all about me feeling cool. * I’m gaming more – I had gotten a few games on my Nexus One but there really weren’t a lot of good developers flocking to the service. Just browsing through the Windows Phone 7 marketplace I’m already seeing a ton of games I want to try and buy. And I sat down and bet Pixel Man 0 just yesterday on my phone. I’m already gaming more than I did on my Nexus One. * Netflix integration is fantastic - It works just like it does on my Xbox 360 and I love having this feature on my phone. * It’s basically a Zune – I’ve been taking my Zune to work and listening to music off of that while I code. I no longer need to take it with me, now I just sync songs onto my phone and it’s my new Zune. I freaking love that. One less device to carry around.   All in all my cons have really little to do with the phone (just the buttons and the web browsing) and more to do with the applications needing to catch up a bit to what I’m used to. And the Pros are things that ARE phone specific so I’m seeing that as a good sign that I’m going to be very happy with my Windows Phone 7. So Wifey is happy having her Nexus One again, I’m happy with my new Windows Phone 7. Life is good. Now I just need to make a game to pay for it….

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  • Antenna Aligner Part 4: Role'ing in the deep

    - by Chris George
    Since last time I've been trying to sort out the general workflow of the app. It's fundamentally not hard, there is a list of transmitters, you select a transmitter and it shows the compass view. Having done quite a bit of ajax/asp.net/html in the past, I immediately started off by creating two divs within my 'page', one for the list, one for the compass. Then using the onClick event in the list, this will switch the display attribute on the divs. This seemed to work, but did lead to some dodgy transitional redrawing artefacts which I was not happy with. So after some Googling I realised I was doing it all wrong! JQuery mobile has the concept of giving an object in html a data-role. By giving a div the attribute data-role="page" it is then treated as a separate page on the mobile device. Within the code, this is referenced like a html anchor in the form #mypage. Using this system, page transitions such as fade or slide are automatically applied which adds to the whole authenticity of the app! Here is a simple example: . <a href="#'compasspage">compass</a> . <div data-role="page" id="compasspage" data-add-back-btn="true"> But I don't want just a static link, I want to dynamically create my list, and get each list elements to switch to the compass page with the right information. So here is the jquery that I used to dynamically inject new <li> rows into the <ul> block. $('ul').append($('<li/>', {    //here appendin `<li>`     'data-role': "list-divider" }).append($('<a/>', {    //here appending `<a>` into `<li>`     'href': '#compasspage',     'data-transition': 'none',     'onclick': 'selectTx(' + i + ')',     'html': buttonHtml }))); $('ul').listview('refresh'); This is called within a for loop so the first 5 appropriate transmitters are used. There are several things of interest to note here. Firstly, I could not find a more elegant way to tell the target page which transmitter I've clicked on, so I have used the onclick event as well as the href attribute. The onclick event fires 'selectTx' which simply sets a global member variable to the specific index number I've clicked on. Yes it's not nice, but it works. Secondly, the data-transition attribute is set to 'none'. I wanted the transition between the pages to be a whooshy slidey effect. However this worked going to the compass page, but returning to the list page gave some undesirable visual artefacts (flickering, redrawing etc.). So I decided to remove the transitions all together, which was a shame. Thirdly, rather than embedding loads of html into the append command, I removed this out into a variable 'buttonHtml'. Doing this really tidied up my code. Until next time!

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  • Antenna Aligner Part 7: Connecting the dots

    - by Chris George
    The app is basically ready, so I eagerly started to sort out creating the application entry in iTunes Connect. It's mostly intuitive actually, although I did have to create yet another icon for iTunes sized 512x512 pixels, damn lucky I did the original graphics as vector! It took me longer to write the application description than anything else, I'm so not a tech author! I didn't like the way you have to 'make up' an SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) number. I have to do some googling to find out that it really doesn't matter what it is! It should be more obvious what to do from the actual website itself. That aside, the rest of it was actually fairly straightforward. As well as the details of the application, iPhone and iPad screenshots were also required. This posed somewhat of a problem. The iPhone ones were easy (as I have one!), but I do not (yet) own an iPad . So I thought I'd leave the iPad screenshots out for now. Once the application details were sorted, I moved onto the rights and pricing. At the start of the project I had made the decision that I wouldn't charge any more than the lowest amount £0.59. I believe there is a market for this, but as my first foray into app development I didn't want to take the mick. I did realise, however, that I had built my app with a developer certificate and provisioning profile. This was fairly quickly corrected, and again Nomad made this very easy to switch over to the distribution certificate and provisioning profile. With a sense of excitement I cracked open iTunes connect and clicked the upload button ... ...slight snag... . when the Nomad project was started, Apple allowed uploads of these binaries via iTunes Connect. But this is no longer possible, the only upload path is via the Application Loader available from the Apple Developer program. This itself has one limitation, it only runs on a mac! D'OH!!!  Actually my language was somewhat more colourful when this fact came to light. After picking my laptop up off the floor and putting it back together... ok only joking, but I did nearly throw it out of frustration!... I started to consider the options; I briefly entertained the idea of buying a cheap mac from ebay... no, that defeats the whole object of what I'm doing, plus my wife wouldn't be impressed there are some guys out there in the interweb who will upload your app for a small fee...but I don't really like the idea of giving some faceless email address my apple developer login details, as well as my app binary! find some willing friend with a mac who would kindly let me use it... obviously this is the only sensible option. In the meantime, I informed the Nomad team about this slight 'issue' and they are currently investigating possible solutions...

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  • How will Qt 5.0 be packaged for Raring?

    - by George Edison
    Note: as per the FAQ, "Issues with the next version of Ubuntu" may not be asked as questions here but in my opinion, this is not an issue but merely a question asking about policy. If you feel this question is off-topic, please leave a comment explaining why or open a question on Meta.AU. How will Qt 5.0 be packaged for Ubuntu when it is released? Currently, the name of the package for installing the Qt 4.8 core libraries is: libqt4-core Will the equivalent package for the next version of Qt (5.0) be named libqt5-core? If not, what will the package be named? Will the existing Qt 4.8 libraries coexist with the Qt 5.0 equivalents for the foreseeable future or will they be removed? The Qt 5.0 beta 2 PPA contains a lot of packages - few of which seem to correspond with existing package names. If someone can provide me with a link to a policy outlining the Qt 5.0 migration plan, that would be awesome.

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  • Antenna Aligner Part 5: Devil is in the detail

    - by Chris George
    "The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time and the last 10% takes the another 200%"  (excerpt from onista) Now that I have a working app (more or less), it's time to make it pretty and slick. I can't stress enough how useful it is to get other people using your software, and my simple app is no exception. I handed my iPhone to a couple of my colleagues at Red Gate and asked them to use it and give me feedback. Immediately it became apparent that the delay between the list page being shown and the list being drawn was too long, and everyone who tried the app clicked on the "Recalculate" button before it had finished. Similarly, selecting a transmitter heralded a delay before the compass page appeared with similar consequences. All users expected there to be some sort of feedback/spinny etc. to show them it is actually doing something. In a similar vein although for opposite reasons, clicking the Recalculate button did indeed recalculate the available transmitters and redraw them, but it did this too fast! One or two users commented that they didn't know if it had done anything. All of these issues resulted in similar solutions; implement a waiting spinny. Thankfully, jquery mobile has one built in, primarily used for ajax operations. Not wishing to bore you with the many many iterations I went through trying to get this to work, I'll just give you my solution! (Seriously, I was working on this most evenings for at least a week!) The final solution for the recalculate problem came in the form of the code below. $(document).on("click", ".show-page-loading-msg", function () {            var $this = $(this),                theme = $this.jqmData("theme") ||                        $.mobile.loadingMessageTheme;            $.mobile.showPageLoadingMsg(theme, "recalculating", false);            setTimeout(function ()                           { $.mobile.hidePageLoadingMsg(); }, 2000);            getLocationData();        })        .on("click", ".hide-page-loading-msg", function () {              $.mobile.hidePageLoadingMsg();        }); The spinny is activated by setting the class of a button (for example) to the 'show-page-loading-msg' class. Recalculate This means the code above is fired, calling the showPageLoadingMsg on the document.mobile object. Then, after a 2 second timeout, it calls the hidePageLoadingMsg() function. Supposedly, it should show "recalculating" underneath the spinny, but I've not got that to work. I'm wondering if there is a problem with the jquery mobile implementation. Anyway, it doesn't really matter, it's the principle I'm after, and I now have spinnys!

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  • yield – Just yet another sexy c# keyword?

    - by George Mamaladze
    yield (see NSDN c# reference) operator came I guess with .NET 2.0 and I my feeling is that it’s not as wide used as it could (or should) be.   I am not going to talk here about necessarity and advantages of using iterator pattern when accessing custom sequences (just google it).   Let’s look at it from the clean code point of view. Let's see if it really helps us to keep our code understandable, reusable and testable.   Let’s say we want to iterate a tree and do something with it’s nodes, for instance calculate a sum of their values. So the most elegant way would be to build a recursive method performing a classic depth traversal returning the sum.           private int CalculateTreeSum(Node top)         {             int sumOfChildNodes = 0;             foreach (Node childNode in top.ChildNodes)             {                 sumOfChildNodes += CalculateTreeSum(childNode);             }             return top.Value + sumOfChildNodes;         }     “Do One Thing” Nevertheless it violates one of the most important rules “Do One Thing”. Our  method CalculateTreeSum does two things at the same time. It travels inside the tree and performs some computation – in this case calculates sum. Doing two things in one method is definitely a bad thing because of several reasons: ·          Understandability: Readability / refactoring ·          Reuseability: when overriding - no chance to override computation without copying iteration code and vice versa. ·          Testability: you are not able to test computation without constructing the tree and you are not able to test correctness of tree iteration.   I want to spend some more words on this last issue. How do you test the method CalculateTreeSum when it contains two in one: computation & iteration? The only chance is to construct a test tree and assert the result of the method call, in our case the sum against our expectation. And if the test fails you do not know wether was the computation algorithm wrong or was that the iteration? At the end to top it all off I tell you: according to Murphy’s Law the iteration will have a bug as well as the calculation. Both bugs in a combination will cause the sum to be accidentally exactly the same you expect and the test will PASS. J   Ok let’s use yield! That’s why it is generally a very good idea not to mix but isolate “things”. Ok let’s use yield!           private int CalculateTreeSumClean(Node top)         {             IEnumerable<Node> treeNodes = GetTreeNodes(top);             return CalculateSum(treeNodes);         }             private int CalculateSum(IEnumerable<Node> nodes)         {             int sumOfNodes = 0;             foreach (Node node in nodes)             {                 sumOfNodes += node.Value;             }             return sumOfNodes;         }           private IEnumerable<Node> GetTreeNodes(Node top)         {             yield return top;             foreach (Node childNode in top.ChildNodes)             {                 foreach (Node currentNode in GetTreeNodes(childNode))                 {                     yield return currentNode;                 }             }         }   Two methods does not know anything about each other. One contains calculation logic another jut the iteration logic. You can relpace the tree iteration algorithm from depth traversal to breath trevaersal or use stack or visitor pattern instead of recursion. This will not influence your calculation logic. And vice versa you can relace the sum with product or do whatever you want with node values, the calculateion algorithm is not aware of beeng working on some tree or graph.  How about not using yield? Now let’s ask the question – what if we do not have yield operator? The brief look at the generated code gives us an answer. The compiler generates a 150 lines long class to implement the iteration logic.       [CompilerGenerated]     private sealed class <GetTreeNodes>d__0 : IEnumerable<Node>, IEnumerable, IEnumerator<Node>, IEnumerator, IDisposable     {         ...        150 Lines of generated code        ...     }   Often we compromise code readability, cleanness, testability, etc. – to reduce number of classes, code lines, keystrokes and mouse clicks. This is the human nature - we are lazy. Knowing and using such a sexy construct like yield, allows us to be lazy, write very few lines of code and at the same time stay clean and do one thing in a method. That's why I generally welcome using staff like that.   Note: The above used recursive depth traversal algorithm is possibly the compact one but not the best one from the performance and memory utilization point of view. It was taken to emphasize on other primary aspects of this post.

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  • Antenna Aligner Part 8: It's Alive!!!

    - by Chris George
    Finally the day has come, Antenna Aligner v1.0.1 has been uploaded to the AppStore and . "Waiting for review" .. . fast forward 7 days and much checking of emails later WOO HOO! Now what? So I set my facebook page to go live  https://www.facebook.com/AntennaAligner, and started by sending messages to my mates that have iphones! Amazingly a few of them bought it! Similarly some of my colleagues were also kind enough to support me and downloaded it too! Unfortunately the only way I knew they had bought is was from them telling me, as the iTunes connect data is only updated daily at about midday GMT. This is a shame, surely they could provide more granular updates throughout the day? Although I suppose once an app has been out in the wild for a while, daily updates are enough. It would, however, be nice to get a ping when you make your first sale! I would have expected more feedback on my facebook page as well, maybe I'm just expecting too much, or perhaps I've configured the page wrong. The new facebook timeline layout is just confusing, and I'm not sure it's all public, I'll check that! So please take a look and see what you think! I would love to get some more feedback/reviews/suggestions... Oh and watch out for the Android version coming soon!

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  • How to make local apache server public/visible ? [closed]

    - by George
    Hello. I am running an Apache2 server on a Fedora 13. I'd like to make it publicly accessible(visible).For example I'd like when somebody types http://my.ip.numbes/ that they would see what I have in my document root folder. Just for a presentation of a course work at university. Permissions are set to 755. User owning the document root is apache. SELinux is temporarily disabled. But port 80 is closed. I tried to open it by adding an entry to iptables and restarting them, no change. I guess I am missing something big here. Help would be greatly appreciated.

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  • Where can I find Cinema4D for game development tutorials ?

    - by George Profenza
    Hi, I started to learn Cinema 4D. I've noticed it's really easy to use for motion graphics, but I want to use it for modeling for games/realtime 3d engines. Before I used 3dsmax and it was easy to estimate how a model would look/behave in a 3d engine. The two main things I did was displaying Polygon triangles and displaying the Polygon Count. I've found the Total Polygons tick in HUD settings in Cinema 4D, but I can't find any display mode that will show triangles. Is there there a way to display triangle faces/not quads in Cinema4D ? If so how ? There is a Triangulate function, but I'd rather not Triangulate/Untriangulate all the time, especially since it's converting back and forth between the two doesn't always produce the same result. I imagine I'm asking for old school techniques, but I plan to use these to make low poly models for web(canvas/webGL) and mobile.

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  • Agile Testing Days 2012 – My First Conference!

    - by Chris George
    I’d like to give you a bit of background first… so please bear with me! In 1996, whilst studying for my final year of my degree, I applied for a job as a C++ Developer at a small software house in Hertfordshire  After bodging up the technical part of the interview I didn’t get the job, but was offered a position as a QA Engineer instead. The role sounded intriguing and the pay was pretty good so in the absence of anything else I took it. Here began my career in the world of software testing! Back then, testing/QA was often an afterthought, something that was bolted on to the development process and very much a second class citizen. Test automation was rare, and tools were basic or non-existent! The internet was just starting to take off, and whilst there might have been testing communities and resources, we were certainly not exposed to any of them. After 8 years I moved to another small company, and again didn’t find myself exposed to any of the changes that were happening in the industry. It wasn’t until I joined Red Gate in 2008 that my view of testing and software development as a whole started to expand. But it took a further 4 years for my view of testing to be totally blown open, and so the story really begins… In May 2012 I was fortunate to land the role of Head of Test Engineering. Soon after, I received an email with details for the “Agile Testi However, in my new role, I decided that it was time to bite the bullet and at least go to one conference. Perhaps I could get some new ideas to supplement and support some of the ideas I already had.ng Days” conference in Potsdam, Germany. I looked over the suggested programme and some of the talks peeked my interest. For numerous reasons I’d shied away from attending conferences in the past, one of the main ones being that I didn’t see much benefit in attending loads of talks when I could just read about stuff like that on the internet. So, on the 18th November 2012, myself and three other Red Gaters boarded a plane at Heathrow bound for Potsdam, Germany to attend Agile Testing Days 2012. Tutorial Day – “Software Testing Reloaded” We chose to do the tutorials on the 19th, I chose the one titled “Software Testing Reloaded – So you wanna actually DO something? We’ve got just the workshop for you. Now with even less powerpoint!”. With such a concise and serious title I just had to see what it was about! I nervously entered the room to be greeted by tables, chairs etc all over the place, not set out and frankly in one hell of a mess! There were a few people in there playing a game with dice. Okaaaay… this is going to be a long day! Actually the dice game was an exercise in deduction and simplification… I found it very interesting and is certainly something I’ll be using at work as a training exercise! (I won’t explain the game here cause I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag…) The tutorial consisted of several games, exploring different aspects of testing. They were all practical yet required a fair amount of thin king. Matt Heusser and Pete Walen were running the tutorial, and presented it in a very relaxed and light-hearted manner. It was really my first experience of working in small teams with testers from very different backgrounds, and it was really enjoyable. Matt & Pete were very approachable and offered advice where required whilst still making you work for the answers! One of the tasks was to devise several strategies for testing some electronic dice. The premise was that a Vegas casino wanted to use the dice to appeal to the twenty-somethings interested in tech, but needed assurance that they were as reliable and random as traditional dice. This was a very interesting and challenging exercise that forced us to challenge various assumptions, determine/clarify requirements but most of all it was frustrating because the dice made a very very irritating beeping noise. Multiple that by at least 12 dice and I was dreaming about them all that night!! Some of the main takeaways that were brilliantly demonstrated through the games were not to make assumptions, challenge requirements, and have fun testing! The tutorial lasted the whole day, but to be honest the day went very quickly! My introduction into the conference experience started very well indeed, and I would talk to both Matt and Pete several times during the 4 days. Days 1,2 & 3 will be coming soon…  

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  • Algorithm for dynamically calculating a level based on experience points?

    - by George
    One of the struggles I've always had in game development is deciding how to implement experience points attributed to gaining a level. There doesn't seem to be a pattern to gaining a level in many of the games I've played, so I assume they have a static dictionary table which contains experience points vs. the level. e.g. Experience Level 0 1 100 2 175 3 280 4 800 5 ...There isn't a rhyme or reason why 280 points is equal to level 4, it just is. I'm not sure how those levels are decided, but it certainly wouldn't be dynamic. I've also thought about the possibility of exponential levels, as not to have to keep a separate lookup table, e.g. Experience Level 0 1 100 2 200 3 400 4 800 5 1600 6 3200 7 6400 8 ...but that seems like it would grow out of control rather quickly, as towards the upper levels, the enemies in the game would have to provide a whopping amount of experience to level -- and that would be to difficult to control. Leveling would become an impossible task. Does anyone have any pointers, or methods they use to decide how to level a character based on experience? I want to be fair in leveling and I want to stay ahead of the players as not to worry about constantly adding new experience/level lookups.

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  • Silverlight Relay Commands

    - by George Evjen
    v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-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:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} I am fairly new at Silverlight development and I usually have an issue that needs research every day. Which I enjoy, since I like the idea of going into a day knowing that I am  going to learn something new. The issue that I am currently working on centers around relay commands. I have a pretty good handle on Relay Commands and how we use them within our applications. <Button Command="{Binding ButtonCommand}" CommandParameter="NewRecruit" Content="New Recruit" /> Here in our xaml we have a button. The button has a Command and a CommandParameter. The command binds to the ButtonCommand that we have in our ViewModel RelayCommand _buttonCommand;         /// <summary>         /// Gets the button command.         /// </summary>         /// <value>The button command.</value>         public RelayCommand ButtonCommand         {             get             {                 if (_buttonCommand == null)                 {                     _buttonCommand = new RelayCommand(                         x => x != null && x.ToString().Length > 0 && CheckCommandAvailable(x.ToString()),                         x => ExecuteCommand(x.ToString()));                 }                 return _buttonCommand;             }         }   In our relay command we then do some checks with a lambda expression. We check if the command  parameter is null, is the length greater than 0 and we have a CheckCommandAvailable method that will tell  us if the button is even enabled. After we check on these three items we then pass the command parameter to an action method. This is all pretty straight forward, the issue that we solved a few days ago centered around having a control that needed to use a Relay Command and this control was a nested control and was using a different DataContext. The example below illustrates how we handled this scenario. In our xaml usercontrol we had to set a name to this control. <Controls3:RadTileViewItem x:Class="RecruitStatusTileView"     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"     xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"     xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"     xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"      xmlns:Controls1="clr-namespace:Telerik.Windows.Controls;assembly=Telerik.Windows.Controls"      xmlns:Controls2="clr-namespace:Telerik.Windows.Controls;assembly=Telerik.Windows.Controls.Input"      xmlns:Controls3="clr-namespace:Telerik.Windows.Controls;assembly=Telerik.Windows.Controls.Navigation"      mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignHeight="400" d:DesignWidth="800" Header="{Binding Title,Mode=TwoWay}" MinimizedHeight="100"                             x:Name="StatusView"> Here we are using a telerik RadTileViewItem. We set the name of this control to “StatusView”. In our button control we set our command parameters and commands different than the example above. <HyperlinkButton Content="{Binding BigBoardButtonText, Mode=TwoWay}" CommandParameter="{Binding 'Position.PositionName'}" Command="{Binding ElementName=StatusView, Path=DataContext.BigBoardCommand, Mode=TwoWay}" /> This hyperlink button lives in a ListBox control and this listbox has an ItemSource of PositionSelectors. The Command Parameter is binding to the Position.Position property of that PositionSelectors object. This again is pretty straight forward again. What gets a bit tricky is the Command property in the hyperlink. It is binding to the element name we created in the user control (StatusView) Because this hyperlink is in a listbox and is in the item template it doesn’t have a direct handle on the DataContext that the RadTileViewItem has so we have to make sure it does. We do that by binding to the element name of status view then set the path to DataContext.BigBoardCommand. BigBoardCommand is the name of the RelayCommand in the view model. private RelayCommand _bigBoardCommand = null;         /// <summary>         /// Gets the big board command.         /// </summary>         /// <value>The big board command.</value>         public RelayCommand BigBoardCommand         {             get             {                 if (_bigBoardCommand == null)                 {                     _bigBoardCommand = new RelayCommand(x => true, x => AddToBigBoard(x.ToString()));                 }                 return _bigBoardCommand;             }         } From there we check for true again and then call the action and pass in the parameter that we had as the command parameter. What we are working on now is a bit trickier than this second example. In the above example we are only creating this TileViewItem with this name “StatusView” once. In another part of our application we are generating multiple TileViewItems, so we cannot set the name in the control as we cant have multiple controls with the same name. When we run the application we get an error that reads that the value is out of expected range. My searching has led me to think we cannot have multiple controls with the same name. This is today’s problem and Ill post the solution to this once it is found.

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  • How can a usb be detected but not show up anywhere?

    - by George Mauer
    I started the morning by trying to create a bootable usb using a 2gb stick and the startup disk creator. It seemed to run through the whole process just fine until it got to a screen that read something like "Creating memory partion" and which sat on 100% for about 45 minutes before I hit cancel and removed the usb stick. Now the usb stick is not being detected as storage or...anything (even on my windows pc) though it does show up in the syslog. Allow me to demonstrate. We start with the usb not plugged in: [georgemauer@ubuntu:~]$ sudo fdisk -l (04-04 16:01) Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x994bdc0f Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 2048 27650047 13824000 27 Hidden NTFS WinRE /dev/sda2 * 27650048 27854847 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda3 27854848 976771119 474458136 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT I plug in the usb: [georgemauer@ubuntu:~]$ tail -f /var/log/syslog ***Snip*** Apr 4 15:01:18 ubuntu wpa_supplicant[1136]: WPA: Group rekeying completed with 00:24:36:ad:e7:3f [GTK=TKIP] Apr 4 15:02:29 wpa_supplicant[1136]: last message repeated 3 times Apr 4 15:02:29 ubuntu kernel: [22122.788133] usb 2-1: new high speed USB device number 13 using ehci_hcd Apr 4 15:02:29 ubuntu kernel: [22122.923873] scsi10 : usb-storage 2-1:1.0 Apr 4 15:02:29 ubuntu mtp-probe: checking bus 2, device 13: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:13.2/usb2/2-1" Apr 4 15:02:30 ubuntu mtp-probe: bus: 2, device: 13 was not an MTP device Apr 4 15:02:30 ubuntu kernel: [22123.926154] scsi 10:0:0:0: Direct-Access GENERIC USB Mass Storage 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 Apr 4 15:02:30 ubuntu kernel: [22124.105118] sd 10:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0 Apr 4 15:02:30 ubuntu kernel: [22124.108212] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk but then: [georgemauer@ubuntu:~]$ ls /mnt -alF (04-04 16:02) total 8 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2011-04-21 12:51 ./ drwxr-xr-x 26 root root 4096 2012-03-31 13:16 ../ [georgemauer@ubuntu:~]$ ls /media -alF (04-04 16:03) total 8 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2012-04-04 12:18 ./ drwxr-xr-x 26 root root 4096 2012-03-31 13:16 ../ What could be going on and how do I recover my usb key?

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  • Negamax implementation doesn't appear to work with tic-tac-toe

    - by George Jiglau
    I've implemented Negamax as it can be found on wikipedia, which includes alpha/beta pruning. However, it seems to favor a losing move, which should be an invalid result. The game is Tic-Tac-Toe, I've abstracted most of the game play so it should be rather easy to spot an error within the algorithm. Here is the code, nextMove, negamax or evaluate are probably the functions that contain the fault: #include <list> #include <climits> #include <iostream> //#define DEBUG 1 using namespace std; struct Move { int row, col; Move(int row, int col) : row(row), col(col) { } Move(const Move& m) { row = m.row; col = m.col; } }; struct Board { char player; char opponent; char board[3][3]; Board() { } void read(istream& stream) { stream >> player; opponent = player == 'X' ? 'O' : 'X'; for(int row = 0; row < 3; row++) { for(int col = 0; col < 3; col++) { char playa; stream >> playa; board[row][col] = playa == '_' ? 0 : playa == player ? 1 : -1; } } } void print(ostream& stream) { for(int row = 0; row < 3; row++) { for(int col = 0; col < 3; col++) { switch(board[row][col]) { case -1: stream << opponent; break; case 0: stream << '_'; break; case 1: stream << player; break; } } stream << endl; } } void do_move(const Move& move, int player) { board[move.row][move.col] = player; } void undo_move(const Move& move) { board[move.row][move.col] = 0; } bool isWon() { if (board[0][0] != 0) { if (board[0][0] == board[0][1] && board[0][1] == board[0][2]) return true; if (board[0][0] == board[1][0] && board[1][0] == board[2][0]) return true; } if (board[2][2] != 0) { if (board[2][0] == board[2][1] && board[2][1] == board[2][2]) return true; if (board[0][2] == board[1][2] && board[1][2] == board[2][2]) return true; } if (board[1][1] != 0) { if (board[0][1] == board[1][1] && board[1][1] == board[2][1]) return true; if (board[1][0] == board[1][1] && board[1][1] == board[1][2]) return true; if (board[0][0] == board[1][1] && board[1][1] == board[2][2]) return true; if (board[0][2] == board [1][1] && board[1][1] == board[2][0]) return true; } return false; } list<Move> getMoves() { list<Move> moveList; for(int row = 0; row < 3; row++) for(int col = 0; col < 3; col++) if (board[row][col] == 0) moveList.push_back(Move(row, col)); return moveList; } }; ostream& operator<< (ostream& stream, Board& board) { board.print(stream); return stream; } istream& operator>> (istream& stream, Board& board) { board.read(stream); return stream; } int evaluate(Board& board) { int score = board.isWon() ? 100 : 0; for(int row = 0; row < 3; row++) for(int col = 0; col < 3; col++) if (board.board[row][col] == 0) score += 1; return score; } int negamax(Board& board, int depth, int player, int alpha, int beta) { if (board.isWon() || depth <= 0) { #if DEBUG > 1 cout << "Found winner board at depth " << depth << endl; cout << board << endl; #endif return player * evaluate(board); } list<Move> allMoves = board.getMoves(); if (allMoves.size() == 0) return player * evaluate(board); for(list<Move>::iterator it = allMoves.begin(); it != allMoves.end(); it++) { board.do_move(*it, -player); int val = -negamax(board, depth - 1, -player, -beta, -alpha); board.undo_move(*it); if (val >= beta) return val; if (val > alpha) alpha = val; } return alpha; } void nextMove(Board& board) { list<Move> allMoves = board.getMoves(); Move* bestMove = NULL; int bestScore = INT_MIN; for(list<Move>::iterator it = allMoves.begin(); it != allMoves.end(); it++) { board.do_move(*it, 1); int score = -negamax(board, 100, 1, INT_MIN + 1, INT_MAX); board.undo_move(*it); #if DEBUG cout << it->row << ' ' << it->col << " = " << score << endl; #endif if (score > bestScore) { bestMove = &*it; bestScore = score; } } if (!bestMove) return; cout << bestMove->row << ' ' << bestMove->col << endl; #if DEBUG board.do_move(*bestMove, 1); cout << board; #endif } int main() { Board board; cin >> board; #if DEBUG cout << "Starting board:" << endl; cout << board; #endif nextMove(board); return 0; } Giving this input: O X__ ___ ___ The algorithm chooses to place a piece at 0, 1, causing a guaranteed loss, do to this trap(nothing can be done to win or end in a draw): XO_ X__ ___ Perhaps it has something to do with the evaluation function? If so, how could I fix it?

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  • Antenna Aligner Part 3: Kaspersky

    - by Chris George
    Quick one today. Since starting this project, I've been encountering times where Nomad fails to build my app. It would then take repeated attempts at building to then see a build go through successfully. Rob, who works on Nomad at Red Gate, investigated this and it showed that certain parts of the message required to trigger the 'cloud build' were not getting through to the Nomad app, causing the HTTP connection to stall until timeout. After much scratching heads, it turns out that the Kaspersky Internet Security system I have installed on my laptop at home, was being very aggressive and was causing the problem. Perhaps it's trying to protect me from myself? Anyway, we came up with an interim solution why the Nomad guys investigate with Kaspersky by setting Visual Studio to be a trusted application with the Kaspersky settings and setting it to not scan network traffic. Hey presto! This worked and I have not had a single build problem since (other than losing internet connection, or that embarrassing moment when you blame everyone else then realise you've accidentally switched off your wireless on the laptop).

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  • Cookbook: SES and UCM setup

    - by George Maggessy
    The purpose of this post is to guide you setting up the integration between UCM and SES. On my next post I’ll show different approaches to integrate WebCenter Portal, UCM and SES based on some common scenarios. Let’s get started. WebCenter Content Configuration WebCenter Content has a component that adds functionality to the content server to allow it to be searched via the Oracle SES. To enable the component installation, go to Administration -&gt; Admin Server and select SESCrawlerExport. Click the update button and restart UCM_server1 managed server. Once the managed server is back, we’ll configure the component. In the menu, under Administration you should see SESCrawlerExport. Click on the link. You’ll see the window below. Click on Configure SESCrawlerExport. Configure the values below: Hostname: SES hostname. Feed Location: Directory where data feeds will be saved. Metadata List: List of metadata that will be searchable by SES. After updating the values click on the Update button. Come back to the SESCrawlerExport Administration UI and click on Take Snapshot button. It will create the data feeds in the specified Feed Location. To check if the correct configuration was done, please access the following URL http://&lt;ucm_server&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/cs/idcplg?IdcService=SES_CRAWLER_DOWLOAD_CONFIG&amp;source=default. It should download config file in the format below: &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt; &lt;rsscrawler xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/search/rsscrawlerconfig"&gt; &lt;feedLocation&gt;&lt;![CDATA[http://adc6160699.us.oracle.com:16200/cs/idcplg?IdcService=SES_CRAWLER_DOWNLOAD_CONTROL&amp;source=default]]&gt;&lt;/feedLocation&gt; &lt;errorFileLocation&gt;&lt;![CDATA[http://adc6160699.us.oracle.com:16200/cs/idcplg?IdcService=SES_CRAWLER_STATUS&amp;IsJava=1&amp;source=default&amp;StatusFeed=]]&gt;&lt;/errorFileLocation&gt; &lt;feedType&gt;controlFeed&lt;/feedType&gt; &lt;sourceName&gt;default&lt;/sourceName&gt; &lt;securityType&gt;attributeBased&lt;/securityType&gt; &lt;securityAttribute name="Account" grant="true"/&gt; &lt;securityAttribute name="DocSecurityGroup" grant="true"/&gt; &lt;securityAttribute name="Collab" grant="true"/&gt; &lt;/rsscrawler&gt; Make sure Account and DocSecurityGroup values are true. SES Configuration Let’s start by configuring the Identity Plug-ins in SES. Go to Global Settings -&gt; System -&gt; Identity Management Setup. Select Oracle Content Server and click the Activate button. We’ll populate the following values: HTTP endpoint for authentication: URL to WebCenter Content. Notice that /cs/idcplg was added at the end of the URL. Admin User: UCM Admin user. This user must have access to all CPOE content. Password: Password to Admin user. Authentication Type: NATIVE. Go back to the Home tab and click on Sources on the top left. Select Oracle Content Server on the right and click the Create button. Configuration URL: URL that point to the configuration file. Example: http://&lt;ucm_hostname&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/cs/idcplg?IdcService=SES_CRAWLER_DOWNLOAD_CONFIG&amp;source=default. User ID: UCM Admin user. Password: Password to Admin user. Click on the Authorization tab and add the appropriate values to the fields below. Make sure you see the ACCOUNT and DOCSECURITYGROUP security attributes at the end of the page. HTTP endpoint for authorization: http://&lt;ucm_hostname&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/cs/idcplg. Display URL prefix: http://&lt;ucm_hostname&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/cs. Administrator user: UCM Admin user. Administrator password. On the Document Types tab, add the documents that should be indexed by SES. As our last step, we’ll configure the Federation Trusted Entities under Global Settings. Entity Name: The user must be present in both the identity management server configured for your WebCenter application and the identity management server configured for Oracle SES. For instance, I used weblogic in my sample. Password: Entity user password.\ Now you are ready to test the integration on the SES UI: http://&lt;ses hostname&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/search/query/.

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  • XNADevelopment.com : Would you like my Input?

    - by George Clingerman
    I’ve created a new sample called “Would you like my Input” for XNADevelopment.com. This sample demonstrates a simple yet effective input wrapper to be used in your game. If your game requires input (and which game doesn’t?) then at some point you’re going to want to create an input wrapper. Hopefully this sample helps demonstrate how to go about that or at least gives you one that you can use in your own game. I always appreciate feedback (even if it’s just a simple Thank you!) so don’t be bashful about emailing or leaving a comment.

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  • Logic that can traverse all possible layouts, but not checking every combination of identical pieces?

    - by George Bailey
    Suppose we have a grid of arbitrary size, which is filled by blocks of various widths and heights. There are many 2x2 blocks (meaning they take a total of 4 cells in the grid) and many 3x3 blocks, as well as some 5x4, 4x5, 2x3, etc. I was hoping I could set up a program that would look at all possible layouts, and rank them, and find the best one. Simply it would look at all possible positions of these blocks, and see what setup is the best rank. (the rank based on how many of these can be connected by a roadway system of 1x1 road blocks, and how many squares can be left empty after this is done. - wanting to fit the most blocks as possible with the least roads.) My question, is how should I traverse all the possibilities? I could take all the blocks and try them one at a time, but since all 2x2 blocks are equal, and there are a couple dozen of them, there is no point in trying every combination there, as in the following AA BBB AA BBB CCBBB CCEEE DD EEE DD EEE is exactly the same as CC EEE CC EEE AAEEE AABBB DD BBB DD BBB You notice that there are 2 3x3 blocks and 3 2x2 blocks in my two examples. Based on the model I have now, the computer would try both of these combinations, as well as many others. The problem is that it is going to try every single possible variation of my couple dozen 2x2 blocks. And that is sorely inefficient. Is there a reasonable way to take out this duplicated work, somehow getting the computer program to treat all 2x2 blocks as equal/identical, instead of one requiring rearranging/swapping of these identical blocks? Can this be done?

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  • Is there a keybind to minimize all windows, without a toggle?

    - by George Marian
    I know about the show desktop keybind (default Ctrl+Alt+D), which I use often enough. However, I'm looking for a way to minimize all windows without activating "show desktop". I'm on a default install (i.e Gnome, Metacity & Compiz). I've looked through all the locations to configure keybinds, that I know. I've also looked at the default keybind list in the Ubuntu wiki and in the Compiz wiki. (Not to mention, searching here.) I'm interested in knowing where it is available, if not in Gnome/Metacity/Compiz, or some other way to accomplish this with a keybind.

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  • Antenna Aligner part 1: In the beginning.

    - by Chris George
    Picture the scene, it's 9pm, I'm in my caravan (yes I know, I've heard all the jokes!) with my family and I'm trying to tune the tv by moving the aerial, retuning, moving the aerial again, retuning... 45 mins and much cursing later I succeed. Surely there must be an easier way than this? Aha, an app; there must be an app for that? So I search in the AppStore for such an app, but curiously drew a blank. Then the seeds of the idea started to grow. I can code, I work in a software house with lots of very clever people, surely I can make an app that points to the nearest digital tv transmitter! Not having looked into app development before, I investigated how one goes about making an iPhone app and was quickly greeted by a now familiar answer "Buy a mac!". That was not an option for many reasons, mostly wife related! My dreams were starting to fade until one of my colleagues pointed out that within Red Gate, the very company I work for, there was on-going development on a piece of software that would allow me to write an app using Visual Studio on a Windows machine, Nomad! Once I signed up for the beta program I got to work learning the Jquery mobile / Phonegap framework. Within a couple of hours I had written (in Visual Studio), built in the cloud (using Nomad) and published (via TestFlight) my first iPhone app onto my iPhone ! It didn't do much, but it was a step in the right direction. To be continued...

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