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  • Simulate Golf Game Strategy

    - by Mitchel Sellers
    I am working on what at best could be considered a "primitive" golf game, where after a certain bit of randomness is introduced I need to play out a hole of golf. The hole is static and I am not concerned about the UI aspect as I just have to draw a line on a graphic of the hole after the ball has been hit showing where it traveled. I'm looking for input on thoughts of how to manage the "logic" side of the puzzle, below are some of my thoughts on the matter, input, suggestions, or references are greatly appreciated. Map out the hole into an array with a specific amount of precision, noting the type of surface: out of bounds, fairway, rough, green, sand, water, and most important the hole. Map out "regions" and if the ball is contained inside one of these regions setup parameters for "maximum" angle of departure. (For example the first part of the hole the shot must be between certain angles Using the current placement of the ball, and the region contained in #2, define a routine to randomly select the shooting angle, and power then move the ball, adjust the trajectory and move again. I know this isn't the "most elegant" solution, but in reality, we are looking for a quick and dirty solution, as I just have to do this a few times, set it and forget it afterward. From a languages perspective I'll be using ASP.NET and C# to get this done.

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  • Python OOP - object has no attribute

    - by user1744269
    I am attempting to learn how to program. I really do want to learn how to program; I love the building and design aspect of it. However, in Java and Python, I have tried and failed with programs as they pertain to objects, classes, methods.. I am trying to develop some code for a program, but im stumped. I know this is a simple error. However I am lost! I am hoping someone can guide me to a working program, but also help me learn (criticism is not only expected, but APPRECIATED). class Converter: def cTOf(self, numFrom): numFrom = self.numFrom numTo = (self.numFrom * (9/5)) + 32 print (str(numTo) + ' degrees Farenheit') return numTo def fTOc(self, numFrom): numFrom = self.numFrom numTo = ((numFrom - 32) * (5/9)) return numTo convert = Converter() numFrom = (float(input('Enter a number to convert.. '))) unitFrom = input('What unit would you like to convert from.. ') unitTo = input('What unit would you like to convert to.. ') if unitFrom == ('celcius'): convert.cTOf(numFrom) print(numTo) input('Please hit enter..') if unitFrom == ('farenheit'): convert.fTOc(numFrom) print(numTo) input('Please hit enter..')

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  • New Computer Build Questions

    - by MJ
    I'm in the process of gathering parts and specs for a new machine. I wear many hats, so the machine needs to do a lot. I need at least 2 monitor support, if not three. I also play many online MMOs (wow, aion, war hammer, etc), along with some freelance programming projects. I already have a case which is very large, so it will fit anything. I have 2 other SATA HDs. They are more for storage and basic programs. I feel that the best improvement could be done with a solid state HD, true or not? I'm more of a software/programming guy, so ANY input at all on improving this system build would be appreciated. I have a few questions with this list. AMD or Intel? I don't know enough about either to choose what would best fit me. Thanks! **EDIT: Thanks for the input everyone! Here are some answers: I do a lot of programming and gaming, so I do need things for both. The newer video card covers the gaming aspect, as well as allowing me to have many monitors. (hopefully upgrade to dual 30' or more) I don't need any additional HDs at this time. I have a SATA 160g and 120g from my previous computer, and a NAS system with over 2TB of storage on the homenetwork. I just wanted a fast HD for OS/programs/games. With the memory. I have used G.SKILL before in 2 system builds. It's done excellent for me in them. Very stable. **EDIT2: Made some additional changes. Lowered the power supply down to 750, which saves me more $$. Also changed the SSD to 2 WD 650G HDs. Thinking of doing a CPU upgrade to the 3.4GHZ AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz System Specs - Budget:$1500 CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz MB: GIGABYTE GA-MA790GPT-UD3H AM3 AMD 790GX HDMI ATX Memory: G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 1066 Video: DIAMOND 5870PE51G Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT) 1GB 256-bit GD Power Supply: XCLIO GREATPOWER 1000W ATX12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready HD:Intel X25-M Mainstream SSDSA2MH080G2C1 2.5" 80GB SATA II MLC Changes: Power Supply: CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V HD: 2x Western Digital Caviar Blue WD6400AAKS 640GB CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz

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  • Squid 2.7.STABLE3-4.1 as a transparent proxy on Ubuntu Server 9.04

    - by E3 Group
    Can't get this to work at all! I'm trying to get this linux box to act as a transparent proxy and, with the help of DHCP, force everyone on the network to gate into the proxy. I have two ethernet connections, both to the same switch. And I'm trying to get 192.168.1.234 to become the default gateway. The actual WAN connection is to a gateway 192.168.1.1. eth0 is 192.168.1.234 eth1 is 192.168.1.2 Effectively I'm trying to make eth0 a LAN only interface and eth1 a WAN interface. I've oi should set the gateway for eth1 to point to 192.168.1.234 my squid.conf file has the following directives added at the bottom: nly set eth0 to have a gateway address in /etc/network/interfaces I'm not sure whether http_port 3128 transparent acl lan src 192.168.1.0/24 acl lh src 127.0.0.1/255.255.255.0 http_access allow lan http_access allow lh i've added the following routing commands: iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.1.2:3128 iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth1 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 3128 I set a computer with TCP settings 192.168.1.234 as the gateway and opened up google.com, but it comes up with a request error. Any ideas why this isn't working? :( Been searching continuously for a solution to no avail. ----------------------------- EDIT ------------------------------- Managed to get it to route properly to the squid, here's the error I get in the browser: ERROR The requested URL could not be retrieved While trying to process the request: GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: www.google.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Accept-Language: en-gb,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive: 300 Connection: keep-alive Cache-Control: max-age=0 The following error was encountered: * Invalid Request Some aspect of the HTTP Request is invalid. Possible problems: * Missing or unknown request method * Missing URL * Missing HTTP Identifier (HTTP/1.0) * Request is too large * Content-Length missing for POST or PUT requests * Illegal character in hostname; underscores are not allowed Your cache administrator is webmaster. Generated Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:41:15 GMT by mjolnir.lloydharrington.local (squid/2.7.STABLE3)

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  • Apache2 cgi's crash on odbc db access (but run fine from shell)

    - by Martin
    Problem overview (details below): I'm having an apache2 + ruby integration problem when trying to connect to an ODBC data source. The main problem boils down to the fact that scripts that run fine from an interactive shell crash ruby on the database connect line when run as a cgi from apache2. Ruby cgi's that don't try to access the ODBC datasource work fine. And (again) ruby scripts that connect to a database with ODBC do fine when executed from the command line (or cron). This behavior is identical when I use perl instead of ruby. So, the issue seems to be with the environment provided for ruby (perl) by apache2, but I can't figure out what is wrong or what to do about it. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get these cgi scripts to work properly? I've tried many different things to get this to work, and I'm happy to provide more detail of any aspect if that will help. Details: Mac OS X Server 10.5.8 Xserve 2 x 2.66 Dual-Core Intel Xeon (12 GB) Apache 2.2.13 ruby 1.8.6 (2008-08-11 patchlevel 287) [universal-darwin9.0] ruby-odbc 0.9997 dbd-odbc (0.2.5) dbi (0.4.3) mod_ruby 1.3.0 Perl -- 5.8.8 DBI -- 1.609 DBD::ODBC -- 1.23 odbc driver: DataDirect SequeLink v5.5 (/Library/ODBC/SequeLink.bundle/Contents/MacOS/ivslk20.dylib) odbc datasource: FileMaker Server 10 (v10.0.2.206) ) a minimal version of a script (anonymized) that will crash in apache but run successfully from a shell: #!/usr/bin/ruby require 'cgi' require 'odbc' cgi = CGI.new("html3") aConnection = ODBC::connect('DBFile', "username", 'password') aQuery = aConnection.prepare("SELECT zzz_kP_ID FROM DBTable WHERE zzz_kP_ID = 81044") aQuery.execute aRecord = aQuery.fetch_hash.inspect aQuery.drop aConnection.disconnect # aRecord = '{"zzz_kP_ID"=>81044.0}' cgi.out{ cgi.html{ cgi.body{ "<pre>Primary Key: #{aRecord}</pre>" } } } Example of running this from a shell: gamma% ./minimal.rb (offline mode: enter name=value pairs on standard input) Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 134 <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN"><HTML><BODY><pre>Primary Key: {"zzz_kP_ID"=>81044.0}</pre></font></BODY></HTML>% gamma% ) typical crash log lines: Dec 22 14:02:38 gamma ReportCrash[79237]: Formulating crash report for process perl[79236] Dec 22 14:02:38 gamma ReportCrash[79237]: Saved crashreport to /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/perl_2009-12-22-140237_HTCF.crash using uid: 0 gid: 0, euid: 0 egid: 0 Dec 22 14:03:13 gamma ReportCrash[79256]: Formulating crash report for process perl[79253] Dec 22 14:03:13 gamma ReportCrash[79256]: Saved crashreport to /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/perl_2009-12-22-140311_HTCF.crash using uid: 0 gid: 0, euid: 0 egid: 0

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  • iPhone 3G refuses to transfer purchased apps to iTunes

    - by andynormancx
    My iPhone 3G refuses to transfer purchased apps to iTunes. This is causing me major problems with syncing. Whenever I attempt to transfer apps from the iPhone to iTunes it goes through the motions, but never actually transfers anything. It displays the various apps in the info area at the top of the screen, but the progress bar never advances. In comparison when I sync other iPhones, using the same install of iTunes, the progress bar advances and apps are transferred. The same also happens on clean installs of iTunes on other computers, it seems to be my iPhone that is the common factor. I have tried restoring the phone from a backup, which makes no difference. This started happening months ago and the phone has since been upgraded to 3.0 and 3.1, but the problem still persists. Originally it was just a minor irritation, but I made and attempt to fix it which has made things worse. I deleted all the apps from with iTunes and then did "Transfer purchases" in the hope that it might fix something. It didn't fix anything. Also, I cannot now sync at all. If I do sync iTunes now does "transferring purchases", fails to transfer and then deletes all the apps (and data) from my iPhone. It also means I can't sync music, podcasts or anything else. I can't sync anything else, because I can't temporarily turn off app syncing because then iTunes warns that the apps on the iPhone will be deleted. I also tried de-authorising and re-authorising. What can I do to get app syncing working again ? P.S. I have considered deleting all the apps and reinstalling them one by one, in the hope that it will fix the problem. However I don't really want to embark on doing that for 55+ apps and re-entering login details etc for the apps that need them, especially as I might then find out it didn't solve the problem. Update: The latest update to iTunes 9 has improved things in one key aspect. If I let a sync run to completion iTunes no longer deletes all the apps from my phone. So I can now sync all my other data, even if I still can't sync my apps. Resolved: See my answer to the question for how I finally resolved the problem.

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  • Squid 2.7.STABLE3-4.1 as a transparent proxy on Ubuntu Server 9.04

    - by LOGIC9
    Can't get this to work at all! I'm trying to get this linux box to act as a transparent proxy and, with the help of DHCP, force everyone on the network to gate into the proxy. I have two ethernet connections, both to the same switch. And I'm trying to get 192.168.1.234 to become the default gateway. The actual WAN connection is to a gateway 192.168.1.1. eth0 is 192.168.1.234 eth1 is 192.168.1.2 Effectively I'm trying to make eth0 a LAN only interface and eth1 a WAN interface. I've oi should set the gateway for eth1 to point to 192.168.1.234 my squid.conf file has the following directives added at the bottom: nly set eth0 to have a gateway address in /etc/network/interfaces I'm not sure whether http_port 3128 transparent acl lan src 192.168.1.0/24 acl lh src 127.0.0.1/255.255.255.0 http_access allow lan http_access allow lh i've added the following routing commands: iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.1.2:3128 iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth1 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 3128 I set a computer with TCP settings 192.168.1.234 as the gateway and opened up google.com, but it comes up with a request error. Any ideas why this isn't working? :( Been searching continuously for a solution to no avail. ----------------------------- EDIT ------------------------------- Managed to get it to route properly to the squid, here's the error I get in the browser: ERROR The requested URL could not be retrieved While trying to process the request: GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: www.google.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Accept-Language: en-gb,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive: 300 Connection: keep-alive Cache-Control: max-age=0 The following error was encountered: * Invalid Request Some aspect of the HTTP Request is invalid. Possible problems: * Missing or unknown request method * Missing URL * Missing HTTP Identifier (HTTP/1.0) * Request is too large * Content-Length missing for POST or PUT requests * Illegal character in hostname; underscores are not allowed Your cache administrator is webmaster. Generated Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:41:15 GMT by mjolnir.lloydharrington.local (squid/2.7.STABLE3)

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  • Ubuntu Server 10.04 Heavy Network Traffic causes disconnect

    - by K Vaughan
    I'm currently running a headless Ubuntu 10.04 server. Installed is the LAMP stack, Joomla, Virtualbox, phpvirtualbox, webmin and proFTP.. It resolves the IP address so I can access it remotely (either the apache2 webserver or the FTP) using DDClient. Any packages installed have been installed using apt-get. Webmin, although discouraged in Ubuntu Server, is used mostly to administer the webserver aspect. This issue also appeared when I was using Ubuntu Server 10.10. After periods of heavy network traffic, whether local or remote, the connect drops. I'm talking specifically about the transfer of files via FTP, SCP or Samba (the latter of which I seldom use). There is no response to ping or ssh. I can't FTP to the server nor can I load the website. There are times when the server has been on for a few days and everything runs fine because I haven't accessed it much, if at all (thus not much network traffic). I've gone through a few hardware changes although I don't believe this has cause the issue: this has been happening long before I made any changes. At first I thought it was my ISP-provided router blocking traffic because of some kind of misconfiguration (perhaps assuming it was some kind of DoS attack). I've changed routers and still found no success. I've checked syslog, dmesg and kern.log for warnings but have uncovered none. I've ran memtest via the GRUB2 menu at boot and once it turned up 4 errors. I ran again with individual sticks of RAM in various slots and everything turned up fine. I've looked through the BIOS settings and everything looks fine. I've tried unplugging unnecessary pieces of hardware (other internal hard drives, CD drives, floppy, PCI cards, etc). Any help or tips on how I can even begin to troubleshoot this would be very much appreciated. Please note that i've only started playing with servers as a hobby so my knowledge wouldn't be the most refined. I'm comfortable with command line and have the initiative to know how to look up something I can't do. Unfortunately I can't seem to find any issues like this. Additionally: If a solution can't be found some assistance to write a script that will cause the server to reboot automatically if, after x minutes, it gets no response to pinging somewhere like google. Admittedly that's not the cleanest solution should my internet end up going down but I can't think of what else to do.

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  • DCHP and Router load testing

    - by John H
    I manage a campground wifi network with an average of 10 - 60 active users. I have encountered issues where the router starts acting flaky (failing to assign DHCP or failing to pass traffic) without any clear warning (low cpu utilization, etc). I upgraded the router a couple times and ended up with a Netgear ProSafe VPN router that seems to be handling the traffic. The interesting thing is that the Netgear has lower specs than the Buffalo router it replaced, indicating the issue is with the DD-WRT firmware. While I'll be pursuing this issue on the dd-wrt forums, I need a way to test routers. My vision is having 1-2 computers connected on the LAN side and 1-2 computers connected on the WAN side. I want the LAN computers to be generating various type of traffic and connections, as well as requesting DCHP addresses. A few notes: The wireless aspect should be a non-issue. Most clients would connect to a wireless bridge and come into the router through a network cable. I had a monitoring server with Nagios running check_dhcp against the router. This server was connected directly by a network cable, eliminating wifi bridges and other devices from the equation. This question is somewhat related, but not exactly: Load testing wireless LANs I am going to look at IxChariot. While I'd ideally like to use a 1 computer on each side running Linux and preferably free software, I can entertain running Windows, multiple computers, or non-free software. Total bandwidth doesn't seem to be the issue. I can transfer large files all day. Even on the busiest days, the users seemed to only pull ~5Mbps. There is very little "LAN to LAN traffic" and most of it might never have reached the main router. The issue I need to test for seems to be tied to active users, or more appropriately, active sessions. I know active users or active clients is a meaningless term from a router standpoint and wouldn't mind having more appropriate terms to use. Summary: I need a way to test a routers ability in handling traffic from a large number of clients. My current strategy is to purchase a router, deploy it, and see how it fails in the live environment.

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  • What are incentives (if any) to use WinRT instead of .Net?

    - by Ark-kun
    Let's compare WinRT with .Net .Net .Net is the 13+ years evolution of COM. Three main parts of .Net are execution environment, standard libraries and supported languages. CLR is the native-code execution environment based on COM .Net Framework has a big set of standard libraries (implemented using managed and native code) that can be used from all .Net languages. There are .Net classes that allow using OS APIs. WPF or Silverlight provide a XAML-based UI framework .Net can be used with C++, C#, Javascript, Python, Ruby, VB, LISP, Scheme and many other languages. C++/.Net is a variation of the C++ language that allows interaction with .Net objects. .Net supports inheritance, generics, operator and method overloading and many other features. .Net allows creating apps that run on Windows (XP, 7, 8 Pro (Desktop and Metro), RT, CE, etc), Mac OS, Linux (+ other *nix); iOS, Android, Windows Phone (7, 8); Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox; XBox 360, Playstation Suite; raw microprocessors. There is support for creating games (2D/3D) using any managed language or C++. Created by Developer Division WinRT WinRT is based on COM. Three main parts of WinRT are execution environment, standard libraries and supported languages. WinRT has a native-code execution environment based on COM WinRT has a set of standard libraries that more or less can be used from WinRT languages. There are WinRT classes that allow using OS APIs. Unnamed Silverlight clone provides a XAML-based UI framework WinRT can be used with C++, C#, Javascript, VB. C++/CX is a variation of the C++ language that allows interaction with WinRT objects. Custom WinRT components don't support inheritance (classes must be sealed), generics, operator overloading and many other features. WinRT allows creating apps that run on Windows 8 Pro and RT (Metro only); Windows Phone 8 (limited). There is support for creating games (2D/3D) using C++ only. Ordered by Windows Team I think that all the aspects except the last ones are very important for developers. On the other hand it seems that the most important aspect for Microsoft is the last one. So, given the above comparison of conceptually identical technologies, what are incentives (if any) to use WinRT instead of .Net?

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  • Looking for personal scheduling software / todo list with rather particular requirements

    - by Cthulhu
    I've been scouring the web for a couple of (my boss') hours, looking for a piece of software that can organize my tasks in two ways. First, I have a list of bullet points / todo items I can do at any given time. Think of stuff like solve issue X, ask X about Y, write documentation about Z, etcetera. Second, I have a number of running projects I'd like to organize better, as in schedule for a certain part of a day of the week. Ideally (I think), my day would be organized as 50% spent on projects and 50% on the other small things. Now, I don't like most calendar applications (such as Outlook & friends), their UI is too 'official', not really easy to move stuff around (in my experience). I don't like most todo lists either, too static and things. I like new, fast and hip software. I've looked at GTD versions of Tiddlywiki, and I like mGSD for one particular feature. You can make lists of tasks and basically give them one of three statusses - Now (nothing required, you can do it right away), Waiting (you need someone or something before you can work on this), or the most gratifying of all, Done. I like that feature because it's a simple todo list, but indicates more accurately the things you can do right now and the things you depend on someone else for to do. Anyways, that's just a small aspect of that program - most of the other things in there I can't find a particularly good use for. If there's something like that (maybe something that works even snappier, cleaner UI), combined with an easy to use bit of scheduling software (optionally separated into two applications, but preferrably not), I think I'd like that. (Besides something like that, I also use several instances of Trac to monitor tasks and bugs and things for the various clients and projects I have to serve, and TaskCoach to monitor the amount of time I spend on each task / each client. An easy / low-maintenance time tracking software would be neat too) Of course, the software has to be free to use. I don't like shareware, trials, limited software and the like. I could develop my own too, but I'm lazy like that and there's a dozen other projects I'd like to do in my free time (neither of which I actually do). Edit: I like David Seah's printable CEO stuff, if something like that (with some video game / instant achievement / gratification) exists in software, it'd be awesome.

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  • What happens to missed writes after a zpool clear?

    - by Kevin
    I am trying to understand ZFS' behaviour under a specific condition, but the documentation is not very explicit about this so I'm left guessing. Suppose we have a zpool with redundancy. Take the following sequence of events: A problem arises in the connection between device D and the server. This causes a large number of failures and ZFS therefore faults the device, putting the pool in degraded state. While the pool is in degraded state, the pool is mutated (data is written and/or changed.) The connectivity issue is physically repaired such that device D is reliable again. Knowing that most data on D is valid, and not wanting to stress the pool with a resilver needlessly, the admin instead runs zpool clear pool D. This is indicated by Oracle's documentation as the appropriate action where the fault was due to a transient problem that has been corrected. I've read that zpool clear only clears the error counter, and restores the device to online status. However, this is a bit troubling, because if that's all it does, it will leave the pool in an inconsistent state! This is because mutations in step 2 will not have been successfully written to D. Instead, D will reflect the state of the pool prior to the connectivity failure. This is of course not the normative state for a zpool and could lead to hard data loss upon failure of another device - however, the pool status will not reflect this issue! I would at least assume based on ZFS' robust integrity mechanisms that an attempt to read the mutated data from D would catch the mistakes and repair them. However, this raises two problems: Reads are not guaranteed to hit all mutations unless a scrub is done; and Once ZFS does hit the mutated data, it (I'm guessing) might fault the drive again because it would appear to ZFS to be corrupting data, since it doesn't remember the previous write failures. Theoretically, ZFS could circumvent this problem by keeping track of mutations that occur during a degraded state, and writing them back to D when it's cleared. For some reason I suspect that's not what happens, though. I'm hoping someone with intimate knowledge of ZFS can shed some light on this aspect.

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  • How to sort my paws?

    - by Ivo Flipse
    In my previous question I got an excellent answer that helped me detect where a paw hit a pressure plate, but now I'm struggling to link these results to their corresponding paws: I manually annotated the paws (RF=right front, RH= right hind, LF=left front, LH=left hind). As you can see there's clearly a pattern repeating pattern and it comes back in aknist every measurement. Here's a link to a presentation of 6 trials that were manually annotated. My initial thought was to use heuristics to do the sorting, like: There's a ~60-40% ratio in weight bearing between the front and hind paws; The hind paws are generally smaller in surface; The paws are (often) spatially divided in left and right. However, I’m a bit skeptical about my heuristics, as they would fail on me as soon as I encounter a variation I hadn’t thought off. They also won’t be able to cope with measurements from lame dogs, whom probably have rules of their own. Furthermore, the annotation suggested by Joe sometimes get's messed up and doesn't take into account what the paw actually looks like. Based on the answers I received on my question about peak detection within the paw, I’m hoping there are more advanced solutions to sort the paws. Especially because the pressure distribution and the progression thereof are different for each separate paw, almost like a fingerprint. I hope there's a method that can use this to cluster my paws, rather than just sorting them in order of occurrence. So I'm looking for a better way to sort the results with their corresponding paw. For anyone up to the challenge, I have pickled a dictionary with all the sliced arrays that contain the pressure data of each paw (bundled by measurement) and the slice that describes their location (location on the plate and in time). To clarfiy: walk_sliced_data is a dictionary that contains ['ser_3', 'ser_2', 'sel_1', 'sel_2', 'ser_1', 'sel_3'], which are the names of the measurements. Each measurement contains another dictionary, [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10] (example from 'sel_1') which represent the impacts that were extracted. Also note that 'false' impacts, such as where the paw is partially measured (in space or time) can be ignored. They are only useful because they can help recognizing a pattern, but won't be analyzed. And for anyone interested, I’m keeping a blog with all the updates regarding the project!

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  • fit a ellipse in Python given a set of points xi=(xi,yi)

    - by Gianni
    I am computing a series of index from a 2D points (x,y). One index is the ratio between minor and major axis. To fit the ellipse i am using the following post when i run these function the final results looks strange because the center and the axis length are not in scale with the 2D points center = [ 560415.53298363+0.j 6368878.84576771+0.j] angle of rotation = (-0.0528033467597-5.55111512313e-17j) axes = [0.00000000-557.21553487j 6817.76933256 +0.j] thanks in advance for help import numpy as np from numpy.linalg import eig, inv def fitEllipse(x,y): x = x[:,np.newaxis] y = y[:,np.newaxis] D = np.hstack((x*x, x*y, y*y, x, y, np.ones_like(x))) S = np.dot(D.T,D) C = np.zeros([6,6]) C[0,2] = C[2,0] = 2; C[1,1] = -1 E, V = eig(np.dot(inv(S), C)) n = np.argmax(np.abs(E)) a = V[:,n] return a def ellipse_center(a): b,c,d,f,g,a = a[1]/2, a[2], a[3]/2, a[4]/2, a[5], a[0] num = b*b-a*c x0=(c*d-b*f)/num y0=(a*f-b*d)/num return np.array([x0,y0]) def ellipse_angle_of_rotation( a ): b,c,d,f,g,a = a[1]/2, a[2], a[3]/2, a[4]/2, a[5], a[0] return 0.5*np.arctan(2*b/(a-c)) def ellipse_axis_length( a ): b,c,d,f,g,a = a[1]/2, a[2], a[3]/2, a[4]/2, a[5], a[0] up = 2*(a*f*f+c*d*d+g*b*b-2*b*d*f-a*c*g) down1=(b*b-a*c)*( (c-a)*np.sqrt(1+4*b*b/((a-c)*(a-c)))-(c+a)) down2=(b*b-a*c)*( (a-c)*np.sqrt(1+4*b*b/((a-c)*(a-c)))-(c+a)) res1=np.sqrt(up/down1) res2=np.sqrt(up/down2) return np.array([res1, res2]) if __name__ == '__main__': points = [(560036.4495758876, 6362071.890493258), (560036.4495758876, 6362070.890493258), (560036.9495758876, 6362070.890493258), (560036.9495758876, 6362070.390493258), (560037.4495758876, 6362070.390493258), (560037.4495758876, 6362064.890493258), (560036.4495758876, 6362064.890493258), (560036.4495758876, 6362063.390493258), (560035.4495758876, 6362063.390493258), (560035.4495758876, 6362062.390493258), (560034.9495758876, 6362062.390493258), (560034.9495758876, 6362061.390493258), (560032.9495758876, 6362061.390493258), (560032.9495758876, 6362061.890493258), (560030.4495758876, 6362061.890493258), (560030.4495758876, 6362061.390493258), (560029.9495758876, 6362061.390493258), (560029.9495758876, 6362060.390493258), (560029.4495758876, 6362060.390493258), (560029.4495758876, 6362059.890493258), (560028.9495758876, 6362059.890493258), (560028.9495758876, 6362059.390493258), (560028.4495758876, 6362059.390493258), (560028.4495758876, 6362058.890493258), (560027.4495758876, 6362058.890493258), (560027.4495758876, 6362058.390493258), (560026.9495758876, 6362058.390493258), (560026.9495758876, 6362057.890493258), (560025.4495758876, 6362057.890493258), (560025.4495758876, 6362057.390493258), (560023.4495758876, 6362057.390493258), (560023.4495758876, 6362060.390493258), (560023.9495758876, 6362060.390493258), (560023.9495758876, 6362061.890493258), (560024.4495758876, 6362061.890493258), (560024.4495758876, 6362063.390493258), (560024.9495758876, 6362063.390493258), (560024.9495758876, 6362064.390493258), (560025.4495758876, 6362064.390493258), (560025.4495758876, 6362065.390493258), (560025.9495758876, 6362065.390493258), (560025.9495758876, 6362065.890493258), (560026.4495758876, 6362065.890493258), (560026.4495758876, 6362066.890493258), (560026.9495758876, 6362066.890493258), (560026.9495758876, 6362068.390493258), (560027.4495758876, 6362068.390493258), (560027.4495758876, 6362068.890493258), (560027.9495758876, 6362068.890493258), (560027.9495758876, 6362069.390493258), (560028.4495758876, 6362069.390493258), (560028.4495758876, 6362069.890493258), (560033.4495758876, 6362069.890493258), (560033.4495758876, 6362070.390493258), (560033.9495758876, 6362070.390493258), (560033.9495758876, 6362070.890493258), (560034.4495758876, 6362070.890493258), (560034.4495758876, 6362071.390493258), (560034.9495758876, 6362071.390493258), (560034.9495758876, 6362071.890493258), (560036.4495758876, 6362071.890493258)] a_points = np.array(points) x = a_points[:, 0] y = a_points[:, 1] from pylab import * plot(x,y) show() a = fitEllipse(x,y) center = ellipse_center(a) phi = ellipse_angle_of_rotation(a) axes = ellipse_axis_length(a) print "center = ", center print "angle of rotation = ", phi print "axes = ", axes from pylab import * plot(x,y) plot(center[0:1],center[1:], color = 'red') show() each vertex is a xi,y,i point plot of 2D point and center of fit ellipse

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  • How to generate and encode (for use in GA), random, strict, binary rooted trees with N leaves?

    - by Peter Simon
    First, I am an engineer, not a computer scientist, so I apologize in advance for any misuse of nomenclature and general ignorance of CS background. Here is the motivational background for my question: I am contemplating writing a genetic algorithm optimizer to aid in designing a power divider network (also called a beam forming network, or BFN for short). The BFN is intended to distribute power to each of N radiating elements in an array of antennas. The fraction of the total input power to be delivered to each radiating element has been specified. Topologically speaking, a BFN is a strictly binary, rooted tree. Each of the (N-1) interior nodes of the tree represents the input port of an unequal, binary power splitter. The N leaves of the tree are the power divider outputs. Given a particular power divider topology, one is still free to map the power divider outputs to the array inputs in an arbitrary order. There are N! such permutations of the outputs. There are several considerations in choosing the desired ordering: 1) The power ratio for each binary coupler should be within a specified range of values. 2) The ordering should be chosen to simplify the mechanical routing of the transmission lines connecting the power divider. The number of ouputs N of the BFN may range from, say, 6 to 22. I have already written a genetic algorithm optimizer that, given a particular BFN topology and desired array input power distribution, will search through the N! permutations of the BFN outputs to generate a design with compliant power ratios and good mechanical routing. I would now like to generalize my program to automatically generate and search through the space of possible BFN topologies. As I understand it, for N outputs (leaves of the binary tree), there are $C_{N-1}$ different topologies that can be constructed, where $C_N$ is the Catalan number. I would like to know how to encode an arbitrary tree having N leaves in a way that is consistent with a chromosomal description for use in a genetic algorithm. Also associated with this is the need to generate random instances for filling the initial population, and to implement crossover and mutations operators for this type of chromosome. Any suggestions will be welcome. Please minimize the amount of CS lingo in your reply, since I am not likely to be acquainted with it. Thanks in advance, Peter

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  • XPath query returning 'false' in SimpleXML

    - by Drew
    Hi all, I have an xml fragment as such: <meta_tree type="root"> <meta_data> <meta_cat>Content Provider</meta_cat> <data>Mammoth</data> </meta_data> <meta_data> <meta_cat>Genre</meta_cat> <data>Games</data> </meta_data> <meta_data> <meta_cat>Channel Name</meta_cat> <data>Games Trailers</data> </meta_data> <meta_data> <meta_cat>Collection</meta_cat> <data>Strategy</data> </meta_data> <meta_data> <meta_cat>Custom 1</meta_cat> <data>PC</data> </meta_data> <meta_data> <meta_cat>DRM Protected</meta_cat> <data>N</data> </meta_data> <meta_data> <meta_cat>Aspect Ratio</meta_cat> <data>16:9</data> </meta_data> <meta_data> <meta_cat>Streaming Type</meta_cat> <data>VOD</data> </meta_data> </meta_tree> which I garnered from the snippet of $meta_tree->asXML(). So given that, I need to have an xpath query for each element, so I'm using: $meta_tree->xpath("/meta_data[meta_cat='Content Provider']"); but this returns false. I have tried: "/meta_tree/meta_data[meta_cat='Content Provider']" "//meta_data[meta_cat='Content Provider']" I've been using AquaPath, which validates my query, so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Anyone got any ideas? DJS.

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  • OpenGL Coordinate system confusion

    - by user146780
    Maybe I set up GLUT wrong. Basically I want verticies to be reletive to their size in pixels. Ex:right now if I create a hexagon, it hakes up the whole screen even though the units are 6. #include <iostream> #include <stdlib.h> //Needed for "exit" function #include <cmath> //Include OpenGL header files, so that we can use OpenGL #ifdef __APPLE__ #include <OpenGL/OpenGL.h> #include <GLUT/glut.h> #else #include <GL/glut.h> #endif using namespace std; //Called when a key is pressed void handleKeypress(unsigned char key, //The key that was pressed int x, int y) { //The current mouse coordinates switch (key) { case 27: //Escape key exit(0); //Exit the program } } //Initializes 3D rendering void initRendering() { //Makes 3D drawing work when something is in front of something else glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); } //Called when the window is resized void handleResize(int w, int h) { //Tell OpenGL how to convert from coordinates to pixel values glViewport(0, 0, w, h); glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION); //Switch to setting the camera perspective //Set the camera perspective glLoadIdentity(); //Reset the camera gluPerspective(45.0, //The camera angle (double)w / (double)h, //The width-to-height ratio 1.0, //The near z clipping coordinate 200.0); //The far z clipping coordinate } //Draws the 3D scene void drawScene() { //Clear information from last draw glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); glLoadIdentity(); //Reset the drawing perspective glPolygonMode(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_FILL); glBegin(GL_POLYGON); //Begin quadrilateral coordinates //Trapezoid glColor3f(255,0,0); for(int i = 0; i < 6; ++i) { glVertex2d(sin(i/6.0*2* 3.1415), cos(i/6.0*2* 3.1415)); } glEnd(); //End quadrilateral coordinates glutSwapBuffers(); //Send the 3D scene to the screen } int main(int argc, char** argv) { //Initialize GLUT glutInit(&argc, argv); glutInitDisplayMode(GLUT_DOUBLE | GLUT_RGBA | GLUT_DEPTH); glutInitWindowSize(400, 400); //Set the window size //Create the window glutCreateWindow("Basic Shapes - videotutorialsrock.com"); initRendering(); //Initialize rendering //Set handler functions for drawing, keypresses, and window resizes glutDisplayFunc(drawScene); glutKeyboardFunc(handleKeypress); glutReshapeFunc(handleResize); glutMainLoop(); //Start the main loop. glutMainLoop doesn't return. return 0; //This line is never reached } How can I make it so that a polygon of 0,0 10,0 10,10 0,10 defines a polygon starting at the top left of the screen and is a width and height of 10 pixels? Thanks

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  • proper fill an image larger than screen

    - by madcat
    what I wanted to achieve here is simply fit the image width to the screen on both orientations and use UIScrollView to just allow scroll vertically to see the whole image. both viewController and view are created pragmatically. the image loaded is larger than screen on both width and height. here is the related code in my viewController: - (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation { return YES; } - (void)loadView { UIScreen *screen = [UIScreen mainScreen]; CGRect rect = [screen applicationFrame]; self.view = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:rect]; self.view.contentMode = UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFill; self.view.autoresizingMask = UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth | UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleHeight; UIImage *img=[[UIImage alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"image" ofType:@"png"]]; UIImageView *imgView =[[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:img]; [img release]; imgView.contentMode = UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFill; imgView.autoresizingMask = UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth | UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleHeight; [self.view addSubview:imgView]; [imgView release]; } tried all combinations for both contentMode above, did not give me correct result. the most close I am getting now: I manually resize imgView in loadView, portrait mode would display correctly since app always starts with portrait mode, but in landscape mode, the width fits correctly, but image is centered vertically rather than top aligned. if I add the imgView to a scrollView, in landscape mode it looks like contentSize is not set to full image size. but when I scroll bounce I can see the image is there in full size. question: why I need to resize it manually? in landscape mode how and where I can 'move' the imgView, so imgView.frame.origin is (0,0) and works correctly with a scroll view? Thanks! UPDATE: I added: imgView.clipsToBounds = YES; and find out in landscape mode the image bounds is smaller than screen in height. so the question becomes how to have the image view keeps original ratio (thus shows the full image always) when rotated to landscape? do I need to manually resize it after rotation again?

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  • OpenGL ES Polygon with Normals rendering (Note the 'ES!')

    - by MarqueIV
    Ok... imagine I have a relatively simple solid that has six distinct normals but actually has close to 48 faces (8 faces per direction) and there are a LOT of shared vertices between faces. What's the most efficient way to render that in OpenGL? I know I can place the vertices in an array, then use an index array to render them, but I have to keep breaking my rendering steps down to change the normals (i.e. set normal 1... render 8 faces... set normal 2... render 8 faces, etc.) Because of that I have to maintain an array of index arrays... one for each normal! Not good! The other way I can do it is to use separate normal and vertex arrays (or even interleave them) but that means I need to have a one-to-one ratio for normals to vertices and that means the normals would be duplicated 8 times more than they need to be! On something with a spherical or even curved surface, every normal most likely is different, but for this, it really seems like a waste of memory. In a perfect world I'd like to have my vertex and normal arrays have different lengths, then when I go to draw my triangles or quads To specify the index to each array for that vertex. Now the OBJ file format lets you specify exactly that... a vertex array and a normal array of different lengths, then when you specify the face you are rendering, you specify a vertex and a normal index (as well as a UV coord if you are using textures too) which seems like the perfect solution! 48 vertices but only 8 normals, then pairs of indexes defining the shapes' faces. But I'm not sure how to render that in OpenGL ES (again, note the 'ES'.) Currently I have to 'denormalize' (sorry for the SQL pun there) the normals back to a 1-to-1 with the vertex array, then render. Just wastes memory to me. Anyone help? I hope I'm missing something very simple here. Mark

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  • Oracle OpenWorld Preview: Real World Perspectives from Oracle WebCenter Customers

    - by Christie Flanagan
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} If you frequent the Oracle WebCenter blog you’ve probably read a lot about the customer experience revolution over the last few months.  An important aspect of the customer experience revolution is the increasing role that peers play in influencing how others perceive a product, brand or solution, simply by sharing their own, real-world experiences.  Think about it, who do you trust more -- marketers and sales people pitching polished messages or peers with similar roles and similar challenges to the ones you face in your business every day? With this spirit in mind, this polished marketer personally invites you to hear directly from Oracle WebCenter customers about their real-life experiences during our customer panel sessions at Oracle OpenWorld next week.  If you’re currently using WebCenter, thinking about it, or just want to find out more about best practices in social business, next-generation portals, enterprise content management or web experience management, be sure to attend these sessions: CON8899 - Becoming a Social Business: Stories from the Front Lines of Change Wednesday, Oct 3, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM - Moscone West - 3000Priscilla Hancock - Vice President/CIO, University of Louisville Kellie Christensen - Director of Information Technology, Banner EngineeringWhat does it really mean to be a social business? How can you change your organization to embrace social approaches? What pitfalls do you need to avoid? In this lively panel discussion, customer and industry thought leaders in social business explore these topics and more as they share their stories of the good, the bad, and the ugly that can happen when embracing social methods and technologies to improve business success. Using moderated questions and open Q&A from the audience, the panel discusses vital topics such as the critical factors for success, the major issues to avoid, how to gain senior executive support for social efforts, how to handle undesired behavior, and how to measure business impact. This session will take a thought-provoking look at becoming a social business from the inside. CON8900 - Building Next-Generation Portals: An Interactive Customer Panel DiscussionWednesday, Oct 3, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Moscone West - 3000Roberts Wayne - Director, IT, Canadian Partnership Against CancerMike Beattie - VP Application Development, Aramark Uniform ServicesJohn Chen - Utilities Services Manager 6, Los Angeles Department of Water & PowerJörg Modlmayr - Head of Product Managment, Siemens AGSocial and collaborative technologies have changed how people interact, learn, and collaborate, and providing a modern, social Web presence is imperative to remain competitive in today’s market. Can your business benefit from a more collaborative and interactive portal environment for employees, customers, and partners? Attend this session to hear from Oracle WebCenter Portal customers as they share their strategies and best practices for providing users with a modern experience that adapts to their needs and includes personalized access to content in context. The panel also addresses how customers have benefited from creating next-generation portals by migrating from older portal technologies to Oracle WebCenter Portal. CON8898 - Land Mines, Potholes, and Dirt Roads: Navigating the Way to ECM NirvanaThursday, Oct 4, 12:45 PM - 1:45 PM - Moscone West - 3001Stephen Madsen - Senior Management Consultant, Alberta Agriculture and Rural DevelopmentHimanshu Parikh - Sr. Director, Enterprise Architecture & Middleware, Ross Stores, Inc.Ten years ago, people were predicting that by this time in history, we’d be some kind of utopian paperless society. As we all know, we're not there yet, but are we getting closer? What is keeping companies from driving down the road to enterprise content management bliss? Most people understand that using ECM as a central platform enables organizations to expedite document-centric processes, but most business processes in organizations are still heavily paper-based. Many of these processes could be automated and improved with an ECM platform infrastructure. In this panel discussion, you’ll hear from Oracle WebCenter customers that have already solved some of these challenges as they share their strategies for success and roads to avoid along your journey. CON8897 - Using Web Experience Management to Drive Online Marketing SuccessThursday, Oct 4, 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM - Moscone West - 3001Blane Nelson - Chief Architect, Ancestry.comMike Remedios - CIO, ArbonneCaitlin Scanlon - Product Manager, Monster WorldwideEvery year, the online channel becomes more imperative for driving organizational top-line revenue, but for many companies, mastering how to best market their products and services in a fast-evolving online world with high customer expectations for personalized experiences can be a complex proposition. Come to this panel discussion, and hear directly from customers on how they are succeeding today by using Web experience management to drive marketing success, using capabilities such as targeting and optimization, user-generated content, mobile site publishing, and site visitor personalization to deliver engaging online experiences. Your Handy Guide to WebCenter at Oracle OpenWorld Want a quick and easy guide to all the keynotes, demos, hands-on labs and WebCenter sessions you definitely don't want to miss at Oracle OpenWorld? Download this handy guide, Focus on WebCenter. More helpful links: * Oracle OpenWorld* Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld* Oracle OpenWorld on Facebook * Oracle OpenWorld on Twitter* Oracle OpenWorld on LinkedIn* Oracle OpenWorld Blog

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  • Algorithmia Source Code released on CodePlex

    - by FransBouma
    Following the release of our BCL Extensions Library on CodePlex, we have now released the source-code of Algorithmia on CodePlex! Algorithmia is an algorithm and data-structures library for .NET 3.5 or higher and is one of the pillars LLBLGen Pro v3's designer is built on. The library contains many data-structures and algorithms, and the source-code is well documented and commented, often with links to official descriptions and papers of the algorithms and data-structures implemented. The source-code is shared using Mercurial on CodePlex and is licensed under the friendly BSD2 license. User documentation is not available at the moment but will be added soon. One of the main design goals of Algorithmia was to create a library which contains implementations of well-known algorithms which weren't already implemented in .NET itself. This way, more developers out there can enjoy the results of many years of what the field of Computer Science research has delivered. Some algorithms and datastructures are known in .NET but are re-implemented because the implementation in .NET isn't efficient for many situations or lacks features. An example is the linked list in .NET: it doesn't have an O(1) concat operation, as every node refers to the containing LinkedList object it's stored in. This is bad for algorithms which rely on O(1) concat operations, like the Fibonacci heap implementation in Algorithmia. Algorithmia therefore contains a linked list with an O(1) concat feature. The following functionality is available in Algorithmia: Command, Command management. This system is usable to build a fully undo/redo aware system by building your object graph using command-aware classes. The Command pattern is implemented using a system which allows transparent undo-redo and command grouping so you can use it to make a class undo/redo aware and set properties, use its contents without using commands at all. The Commands namespace is the namespace to start. Classes you'd want to look at are CommandifiedMember, CommandifiedList and KeyedCommandifiedList. See the CommandQueueTests in the test project for examples. Graphs, Graph algorithms. Algorithmia contains a sophisticated graph class hierarchy and algorithms implemented onto them: non-directed and directed graphs, as well as a subgraph view class, which can be used to create a view onto an existing graph class which can be self-maintaining. Algorithms include transitive closure, topological sorting and others. A feature rich depth-first search (DFS) crawler is available so DFS based algorithms can be implemented quickly. All graph classes are undo/redo aware, as they can be set to be 'commandified'. When a graph is 'commandified' it will do its housekeeping through commands, which makes it fully undo-redo aware, so you can remove, add and manipulate the graph and undo/redo the activity automatically without any extra code. If you define the properties of the class you set as the vertex type using CommandifiedMember, you can manipulate the properties of vertices and the graph contents with full undo/redo functionality without any extra code. Heaps. Heaps are data-structures which have the largest or smallest item stored in them always as the 'root'. Extracting the root from the heap makes the heap determine the next in line to be the 'maximum' or 'minimum' (max-heap vs. min-heap, all heaps in Algorithmia can do both). Algorithmia contains various heaps, among them an implementation of the Fibonacci heap, one of the most efficient heap datastructures known today, especially when you want to merge different instances into one. Priority queues. Priority queues are specializations of heaps. Algorithmia contains a couple of them. Sorting. What's an algorithm library without sort algorithms? Algorithmia implements a couple of sort algorithms which sort the data in-place. This aspect is important in situations where you want to sort the elements in a buffer/list/ICollection in-place, so all data stays in the data-structure it already is stored in. PropertyBag. It re-implements Tony Allowatt's original idea in .NET 3.5 specific syntax, which is to have a generic property bag and to be able to build an object in code at runtime which can be bound to a property grid for editing. This is handy for when you have data / settings stored in XML or other format, and want to create an editable form of it without creating many editors. IEditableObject/IDataErrorInfo implementations. It contains default implementations for IEditableObject and IDataErrorInfo (EditableObjectDataContainer for IEditableObject and ErrorContainer for IDataErrorInfo), which make it very easy to implement these interfaces (just a few lines of code) without having to worry about bookkeeping during databinding. They work seamlessly with CommandifiedMember as well, so your undo/redo aware code can use them out of the box. EventThrottler. It contains an event throttler, which can be used to filter out duplicate events in an event stream coming into an observer from an event. This can greatly enhance performance in your UI without needing to do anything other than hooking it up so it's placed between the event source and your real handler. If your UI is flooded with events from data-structures observed by your UI or a middle tier, you can use this class to filter out duplicates to avoid redundant updates to UI elements or to avoid having observers choke on many redundant events. Small, handy stuff. A MultiValueDictionary, which can store multiple unique values per key, instead of one with the default Dictionary, and is also merge-aware so you can merge two into one. A Pair class, to quickly group two elements together. Multiple interfaces for helping with building a de-coupled, observer based system, and some utility extension methods for the defined data-structures. We regularly update the library with new code. If you have ideas for new algorithms or want to share your contribution, feel free to discuss it on the project's Discussions page or send us a pull request. Enjoy!

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  • Visualising data a different way with Pivot collections

    - by Rob Farley
    Roger’s been doing a great job extending PivotViewer recently, and you can find the list of LobsterPot pivots at http://pivot.lobsterpot.com.au Many months back, the TED Talk that Gary Flake did about Pivot caught my imagination, and I did some research into it. At the time, most of what we did with Pivot was geared towards what we could do for clients, including making Pivot collections based on students at a school, and using it to browse PDF invoices by their various properties. We had actual commercial work based on Pivot collections back then, and it was all kinds of fun. Later, we made some collections for events that were happening, and even got featured in the TechEd Australia keynote. But I’m getting ahead of myself... let me explain the concept. A Pivot collection is an XML file (with .cxml extension) which lists Items, each linking to an image that’s stored in a Deep Zoom format (this means that it contains tiles like Bing Maps, so that the browser can request only the ones of interest according to the zoom level). This collection can be shown in a Silverlight application that uses the PivotViewer control, or in the Pivot Browser that’s available from getpivot.com. Filtering and sorting the items according to their facets (attributes, such as size, age, category, etc), the PivotViewer rearranges the way that these are shown in a very dynamic way. To quote Gary Flake, this lets us “see patterns which are otherwise hidden”. This browsing mechanism is very suited to a number of different methods, because it’s just that – browsing. It’s not searching, it’s more akin to window-shopping than doing an internet search. When we decided to put something together for the conferences such as TechEd Australia 2010 and the PASS Summit 2010, we did some screen-scraping to provide a different view of data that was already available online. Nick Hodge and Michael Kordahi from Microsoft liked the idea a lot, and after a bit of tweaking, we produced one that Michael used in the TechEd Australia keynote to show the variety of talks on offer. It’s interesting to see a pattern in this data: The Office track has the most sessions, but if the Interactive Sessions and Instructor-Led Labs are removed, it drops down to only the sixth most popular track, with Cloud Computing taking over. This is something which just isn’t obvious when you look an ordinary search tool. You get a much better feel for the data when moving around it like this. The more observant amongst you will have noticed some difference in the collection that Michael is demonstrating in the picture above with the screenshots I’ve shown. That’s because it’s been extended some more. At the SQLBits conference in the UK this year, I had some interesting discussions with the guys from Xpert360, particularly Phil Carter, who I’d met in 2009 at an earlier SQLBits conference. They had got around to producing a Pivot collection based on the SQLBits data, which we had been planning to do but ran out of time. We discussed some of ways that Pivot could be used, including the ways that my old friend Howard Dierking had extended it for the MSDN Magazine. I’m not suggesting I influenced Xpert360 at all, but they certainly inspired us with some of their posts on the matter So with LobsterPot guys David Gardiner and Roger Noble both having dabbled in Pivot collections (and Dave doing some for clients), I set Roger to work on extending it some more. He’s used various events and so on to be able to make an environment that allows us to do quick deployment of new collections, as well as showing the data in a grid view which behaves as if it were simply a third view of the data (the other two being the array of images and the ‘histogram’ view). I see PivotViewer as being a significant step in data visualisation – so much so that I feature it when I deliver talks on Spatial Data Visualisation methods. Any time when there is information that can be conveyed through an image, you have to ask yourself how best to show that image, and whether that image is the focal point. For Spatial data, the image is most often a map, and the map becomes the central mode for navigation. I show Pivot with postcode areas, since I can browse the postcodes based on their data, and many of the images are recognisable (to locals of South Australia). Naturally, the images could link through to the map itself, and so on, but generally people think of Spatial data in terms of navigating a map, which doesn’t always gel with the information you’re trying to extract. Roger’s even looking into ways to hook PivotViewer into the Bing Maps API, in a similar way to the Deep Earth project, displaying different levels of map detail according to how ‘zoomed in’ the images are. Some of the work that Dave did with one of the schools was generating the Deep Zoom tiles “on the fly”, based on images stored in a database, and Roger has produced a collection which uses images from flickr, that lets you move from one search term to another. Pulling the images down from flickr.com isn’t particularly ideal from a performance aspect, and flickr doesn’t store images in a small-enough format to really lend itself to this use, but you might agree that it’s an interesting concept which compares nicely to using Maps. I’m looking forward to future versions of the PivotViewer control, and hope they provide many more events that can be used, and even more hooks into it. Naturally, LobsterPot could help provide your business with a PivotViewer experience, but you can probably do a lot of it yourself too. There’s a thorough guide at getpivot.com, which is how we got into it. For some examples of what we’ve done, have a look at http://pivot.lobsterpot.com.au. I’d like to see PivotViewer really catch on a data visualisation tool.

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  • Messaging Systems – Handshaking, Reconciliation and Tracking for Data Transparency

    - by Ahsan Alam
    As many corporations build business partnerships with other organizations, the need to share information becomes necessary. Large amount of data sharing using snail mail, email and/or fax are quickly becoming a thing of the past. More and more organizations are relying heavily on Ftp and/or Web Service to exchange data. Corporations apply wide range of technologies and techniques based on available resources and data transfer needs. Sometimes, it involves simple home-grown applications. Other times, large investments are made on products like BizTalk, TIBCO etc. Complexity of information management also varies significantly from one organizations to another. Some may deal with handful of simple steps to process and manage shared data; whereas others may rely on fairly complex processes with heavy interaction with internal and external systems in order to serve the business needs. It is not surprising that many of these systems end up becoming black boxes over a period of time. Consequently, people and business start to rely more and more on developers and support personnel just to extract simple information adding to the loss of productivity. One of the most important factor in any business is transparency to data irrespective of technology preferences and the complexity of business processes. Not knowing the state of data could become very costly to the business. Being involved in messaging systems for some time now, I have heard the same type of questions over and over again. Did we transmit messages successfully? Did we get responses back? What is the expected turn-around-time? Did the system experience any errors? When one company transmits data to one or more company, it may invoke a set of processes that could complete in matter of seconds, or it could days. As data travels from one organizations to another, the uncertainty grows, and the longer it takes to track uncertain state of the data the costlier it gets for the business, So, in every business scenario, it's extremely important to be aware of the state of the data.   Architects of messaging systems can take several steps to aid with data transparency. Some forms of data handshaking and reconciliation mechanism as well as extensive data tracking can be incorporated into the system to provide clear visibility to the data. What do I mean by handshaking and reconciliation? Some might consider these to be a single concept; however, I like to consider them in two unique categories. Handshaking serves as message receipts or acknowledgment. When one transmits messages to another, the receiver must acknowledge each message by sending immediate responses for each transaction. Whenever we use Web Services, handshaking is often achieved utilizing request/reply pattern. Similarly, if Ftp is used, a receiver can acknowledge by dropping messages for the sender as soon as the files are picked up. These forms of handshaking or acknowledgment informs the message sender and receiver that a successful transaction has occurred. I have mentioned earlier that it could take anywhere from a few seconds to a number of days before shared data is completely processed. In addition, whenever a batched transaction is used, processing time for each data element inside the batch could also vary significantly. So, in order to successfully manage data processing, reconciliation becomes extremely important; otherwise it may result into data loss or in some cases hefty penalty. Reconciliation can be done in many ways. Partner organizations can share and compare ad hoc reports to achieve reconciliation. On the other hand, partners can agree on some type of systematic reconciliation messages. Systems within responsible parties can trigger messages to partners as soon as the data process completes.   Next step in the data transparency is extensive data tracking. Some products such as BizTalk and TIBCO provide built-in functionality for data tracking; however, built-in functionality may not always be adequate. Sometimes additional tracking system (or databases) needs to be built in order monitor all types of data flow including, message transactions, handshaking, reconciliation, system errors and many more. If these types of data are captured, then these can be presented to business users in any forms or fashion. When business users are empowered with such information, then the reliance on developers and support teams decreases dramatically.   In today's collaborative world of information sharing, data transparency is key to the success of every business. The state of business data will constantly change. However, when people have easier access to various states of data, it allows them to make better and quicker decisions. Therefore, I feel that data handshaking, reconciliation and tracking is very important aspect of messaging systems.

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  • The way I think about Diagnostic tools

    - by Daniel Moth
    Every software has issues, or as we like to call them "bugs". That is not a discussion point, just a mere fact. It follows that an important skill for developers is to be able to diagnose issues in their code. Of course we need to advance our tools and techniques so we can prevent bugs getting into the code (e.g. unit testing), but beyond designing great software, diagnosing bugs is an equally important skill. To diagnose issues, the most important assets are good techniques, skill, experience, and maybe talent. What also helps is having good diagnostic tools and what helps further is knowing all the features that they offer and how to use them. The following classification is how I like to think of diagnostics. Note that like with any attempt to bucketize anything, you run into overlapping areas and blurry lines. Nevertheless, I will continue sharing my generalizations ;-) It is important to identify at the outset if you are dealing with a performance or a correctness issue. If you have a performance issue, use a profiler. I hear people saying "I am using the debugger to debug a performance issue", and that is fine, but do know that a dedicated profiler is the tool for that job. Just because you don't need them all the time and typically they cost more plus you are not as familiar with them as you are with the debugger, doesn't mean you shouldn't invest in one and instead try to exclusively use the wrong tool for the job. Visual Studio has a profiler and a concurrency visualizer (for profiling multi-threaded apps). If you have a correctness issue, then you have several options - that's next :-) This is how I think of identifying a correctness issue Do you want a tool to find the issue for you at design time? The compiler is such a tool - it gives you an exact list of errors. Compilers now also offer warnings, which is their way of saying "this may be an error, but I am not smart enough to know for sure". There are also static analysis tools, which go a step further than the compiler in identifying issues in your code, sometimes with the aid of code annotations and other times just by pointing them at your raw source. An example is FxCop and much more in Visual Studio 11 Code Analysis. Do you want a tool to find the issue for you with code execution? Just like static tools, there are also dynamic analysis tools that instead of statically analyzing your code, they analyze what your code does dynamically at runtime. Whether you have to setup some unit tests to invoke your code at runtime, or have to manually run your app (and interact with it) under the tool, or have to use a script to execute your binary under the tool… that varies. The result is still a list of issues for you to address after the analysis is complete or a pause of the execution when the first issue is encountered. If a code path was not taken, no analysis for it will exist, obviously. An example is the GPU Race detection tool that I'll be talking about on the C++ AMP team blog. Another example is the MSR concurrency CHESS tool. Do you want you to find the issue at design time using a tool? Perform a code walkthrough on your own or with colleagues. There are code review tools that go beyond just diffing sources, and they help you with that aspect too. For example, there is a new one in Visual Studio 11 and searching with my favorite search engine yielded this article based on the Developer Preview. Do you want you to find the issue with code execution? Use a debugger - let’s break this down further next. This is how I think of debugging: There is post mortem debugging. That means your code has executed and you did something in order to examine what happened during its execution. This can vary from manual printf and other tracing statements to trace events (e.g. ETW) to taking dumps. In all cases, you are left with some artifact that you examine after the fact (after code execution) to discern what took place hoping it will help you find the bug. Learn how to debug dump files in Visual Studio. There is live debugging. I will elaborate on this in a separate post, but this is where you inspect the state of your program during its execution, and try to find what the problem is. More from me in a separate post on live debugging. There is a hybrid of live plus post-mortem debugging. This is for example what tools like IntelliTrace offer. If you are a tools vendor interested in the diagnostics space, it helps to understand where in the above classification your tool excels, where its primary strength is, so you can market it as such. Then it helps to see which of the other areas above your tool touches on, and how you can make it even better there. Finally, see what areas your tool doesn't help at all with, and evaluate whether it should or continue to stay clear. Even though the classification helps us think about this space, the reality is that the best tools are either extremely excellent in only one of this areas, or more often very good across a number of them. Another approach is to offer a toolset covering all areas, with appropriate integration and hand off points from one to the other. Anyway, with that brain dump out of the way, in follow-up posts I will dive into live debugging, and specifically live debugging in Visual Studio - stay tuned if that interests you. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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  • Weekend With #iPad

    - by andrewbrust
    Saturday morning, I got up, got dressed and took a 7-minute walk up to the Apple Store in New York’s Meatpacking District to pick up my reserved iPad.  This precinct, which borders Greenwich Village (where I live and grew up) was, when I was a kid, a very industrial and smelly neighborhood during the day  and a rough neighborhood at night.  So imagine my sense of irony as I walked up Hudson Street towards 14th Street, to go wait in line with a bunch of hipsters to buy an iPad on launch day. Numerous blue T-shirt-clad Apple store workers were on hand to check people in to the line specifically identified for people who had reserved an iPad.  Others workers passed out water and all of them, I kid you not, applauded people as they got their chance to go into the store and buy their devices.  They also cheered people and yelled “congratulations” as they left.  The event had all the charm of a mass wedding officiated by Reverend Sung Myung Moon.  Once inside, a nice dude named Trey, with lots of tattoos on his calves, helped me and I acquired my device in short order.  Another guy helped me activate the device, which was comical, because that has to be done through iTunes, which I hadn’t logged into in a while. Turns out my user id was my email address from the company I sold 5 1/2 years ago.  Who knew?  Regardless, I go the device working, packed up and left the store, shuddering as I was cheered and congratulated.  By this time (about 10:30am) the line for reserved units and even walk-ins, was gone.  The iPhone launch this was not. As much as I detested the Apple Store experience, I must say the device is really nice.  the screen is bright, the colors are bold, and the experience is ultra-smooth.  I quickly tested Safari, YouTube, Google Maps, and then installed a few apps, including the New York Times Editors’ Choice and a couple of Twitter clients. Some initial raves: Google Maps and Street View on the iPad is just amazing.  The screen is full-size like a PC or Mac, but it’s right in front of you and responding to taps and flicks and pinches and it’s really engulfing.  Video and photos are really nice on this device, despite the fact that 16:9 and anamorphic aspect ration content is letter boxed.  It still looks amazing.  And apps that are designed especially for the iPad, including The Weather Channel and Gilt and Kayak just look stunning.  The richness, the friendly layout, the finger-friendly UIs, and the satisfaction of not having a keyboard between you and the information you’re managing, while you sit on a couch or an easy chair, is just really a beautiful thing.  The mere experience of seeing these apps’ splash screens causes a shiver and Goosebumps.  Truly.  The iPad is not a desktop machine, and it’s not pocket device.  That doesn’t mean it’s useless though.  It’s the perfect “couchtop” computer. Now some downsides: the WiFi radio seems a bit flakey.  More than a few times, I have had to toggle the WiFi off and back on to get it to connect properly.  Worse yet, the iPad is totally bamboozled by the fact that I have four WiFi access points in my house, each with the same SSID.  My laptops are smart enough to roam from one to the other, but the iPad seems to maintain an affinity for the downstairs access point, even if I’m turning it on two flights up.  Telling the iPad to “forget” my WiFi network and then re-associate with it doesn’t help. More downers: as you might expect, there are far more applications developed for the iPhone than the iPad.  And although iPhone apps run on the iPad, that provides about the same experience as watching standard def on a big HD flat panel, complete with the lousy choice of thick black borders or zooming the picture in to fill the screen.  And speaking of iPhone Apps, I can’t get the Sonos one to work.  Ideally, they’d have a dedicated iPad app and it would work on the first try.  And the iPad is just as bad as any netbook when it comes to being a magnet for fingerprints.  The lack of multi-tasking is quite painful too – truly, I don’t mind if only one app can be active at once, but the lack of ability to switch between apps, and the requirement to return to the home screen and re-launch a previous app to switch back, is already old and I’ve had the thing less than 48 hours. These are just initial impressions.  I’ll have a fuller analysis soon, after I’ve had some more break-in time with my new toy.  I’ll be thinking not just about the iPad and iPhone but also about Android, the 2.1 update for which was pushed to my Droid today, and Windows Phone 7, whose “hub” concept I now understand the value of.  This has been a great year for alternative computing devices, and I see no net downside for Apple, Google or Microsoft.  Exciting times.

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