Search Results

Search found 14745 results on 590 pages for 'setting'.

Page 536/590 | < Previous Page | 532 533 534 535 536 537 538 539 540 541 542 543  | Next Page >

  • Event Logging in LINQ C# .NET

    The first thing you'll want to do before using this code is to create a table in your database called TableHistory: CREATE TABLE [dbo].[TableHistory] (     [TableHistoryID] [int] IDENTITY NOT NULL ,     [TableName] [varchar] (50) NOT NULL ,     [Key1] [varchar] (50) NOT NULL ,     [Key2] [varchar] (50) NULL ,     [Key3] [varchar] (50) NULL ,     [Key4] [varchar] (50) NULL ,     [Key5] [varchar] (50) NULL ,     [Key6] [varchar] (50)NULL ,     [ActionType] [varchar] (50) NULL ,     [Property] [varchar] (50) NULL ,     [OldValue] [varchar] (8000) NULL ,     [NewValue] [varchar] (8000) NULL ,     [ActionUserName] [varchar] (50) NOT NULL ,     [ActionDateTime] [datetime] NOT NULL ) Once you have created the table, you'll need to add it to your custom LINQ class (which I will refer to as DboDataContext), thus creating the TableHistory class. Then, you'll need to add the History.cs file to your project. You'll also want to add the following code to your project to get the system date: public partial class DboDataContext{ [Function(Name = "GetDate", IsComposable = true)] public DateTime GetSystemDate() { MethodInfo mi = MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod() as MethodInfo; return (DateTime)this.ExecuteMethodCall(this, mi, new object[] { }).ReturnValue; }}private static Dictionary<type,> _cachedIL = new Dictionary<type,>();public static T CloneObjectWithIL<t>(T myObject){ Delegate myExec = null; if (!_cachedIL.TryGetValue(typeof(T), out myExec)) { // Create ILGenerator DynamicMethod dymMethod = new DynamicMethod("DoClone", typeof(T), new Type[] { typeof(T) }, true); ConstructorInfo cInfo = myObject.GetType().GetConstructor(new Type[] { }); ILGenerator generator = dymMethod.GetILGenerator(); LocalBuilder lbf = generator.DeclareLocal(typeof(T)); //lbf.SetLocalSymInfo("_temp"); generator.Emit(OpCodes.Newobj, cInfo); generator.Emit(OpCodes.Stloc_0); foreach (FieldInfo field in myObject.GetType().GetFields( System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Public | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.NonPublic)) { // Load the new object on the eval stack... (currently 1 item on eval stack) generator.Emit(OpCodes.Ldloc_0); // Load initial object (parameter) (currently 2 items on eval stack) generator.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_0); // Replace value by field value (still currently 2 items on eval stack) generator.Emit(OpCodes.Ldfld, field); // Store the value of the top on the eval stack into // the object underneath that value on the value stack. // (0 items on eval stack) generator.Emit(OpCodes.Stfld, field); } // Load new constructed obj on eval stack -> 1 item on stack generator.Emit(OpCodes.Ldloc_0); // Return constructed object. --> 0 items on stack generator.Emit(OpCodes.Ret); myExec = dymMethod.CreateDelegate(typeof(Func<t,>)); _cachedIL.Add(typeof(T), myExec); } return ((Func<t,>)myExec)(myObject);}I got both of the above methods off of the net somewhere (maybe even from CodeProject), but it's been long enough that I can't recall where I got them.Explanation of the History ClassThe History class records changes by creating a TableHistory record, inserting the values for the primary key for the table being modified into the Key1, Key2, ..., Key6 columns (if you have more than 6 values that make up a primary key on any table, you'll want to modify this), setting the type of change being made in the ActionType column (INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE), old value and new value if it happens to be an update action, and the date and Windows identity of the user who made the change.Let's examine what happens when a call is made to the RecordLinqInsert method:public static void RecordLinqInsert(DboDataContext dbo, IIdentity user, object obj){ TableHistory hist = NewHistoryRecord(obj); hist.ActionType = "INSERT"; hist.ActionUserName = user.Name; hist.ActionDateTime = dbo.GetSystemDate(); dbo.TableHistories.InsertOnSubmit(hist);}private static TableHistory NewHistoryRecord(object obj){ TableHistory hist = new TableHistory(); Type type = obj.GetType(); PropertyInfo[] keys; if (historyRecordExceptions.ContainsKey(type)) { keys = historyRecordExceptions[type].ToArray(); } else { keys = type.GetProperties().Where(o => AttrIsPrimaryKey(o)).ToArray(); } if (keys.Length > KeyMax) throw new HistoryException("object has more than " + KeyMax.ToString() + " keys."); for (int i = 1; i <= keys.Length; i++) { typeof(TableHistory) .GetProperty("Key" + i.ToString()) .SetValue(hist, keys[i - 1].GetValue(obj, null).ToString(), null); } hist.TableName = type.Name; return hist;}protected static bool AttrIsPrimaryKey(PropertyInfo pi){ var attrs = from attr in pi.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(ColumnAttribute), true) where ((ColumnAttribute)attr).IsPrimaryKey select attr; if (attrs != null && attrs.Count() > 0) return true; else return false;}RecordLinqInsert takes as input a data context which it will use to write to the database, the user, and the LINQ object to be recorded (a single object, for instance, a Customer or Order object if you're using AdventureWorks). It then calls the NewHistoryRecord method, which uses LINQ to Objects in conjunction with the AttrIsPrimaryKey method to pull all the primary key properties, set the Key1-KeyN properties of the TableHistory object, and return the new TableHistory object. The code would be called in an application, like so: Continue span.fullpost {display:none;}

    Read the article

  • Bullet physics debug drawing not working

    - by Krishnabhadra
    Background I am following on from this question, which isn't answered yet. Basically I have a cube and a UVSphere in my scene, with UVSphere on the top of the cube without touching the cube. Both exported from blender. When I run the app The UVSphere does circle around the cube for 3 or 4 times and jump out of the scene. What I actually expect was the sphere to fall on top of the cube. What this question about From the comment to the linked question, I got to know about bullet debug drawing, which helps in debugging by drawing outline of physics bodies which are normally invisible. I did some research on that and came up with the code given below. From whatever I have read, below code should work, but it doesn't. My Code My bullet initialization code. -(void) initializeScene { /*Setup physics world*/ _physicsWorld = [[CC3PhysicsWorld alloc] init]; [_physicsWorld setGravity:0 y:-9.8 z:0]; /*Setting up debug draw*/ MyDebugDraw *draw = new MyDebugDraw; draw->setDebugMode(draw->getDebugMode() | btIDebugDraw::DBG_DrawWireframe ); _physicsWorld._discreteDynamicsWorld->setDebugDrawer(draw); /*Setup camera and lamb*/ ………….. //This simpleCube.pod contains the cube [self addContentFromPODFile: @"simpleCube.pod"]; //This file contains sphere [self addContentFromPODFile: @"SimpleSphere.pod"]; [self createGLBuffers]; CC3MeshNode* cubeNode = (CC3MeshNode*)[self getNodeNamed:@"Cube"]; CC3MeshNode* sphereNode = (CC3MeshNode*)[self getNodeNamed:@"Sphere"]; // both cubeNode and sphereNode are not nil from this point float *cVertexData = (float*)((CC3VertexArrayMesh*)cubeNode.mesh) .vertexLocations.vertices; int cVertexCount = ((CC3VertexArrayMesh*)cubeNode.mesh) .vertexLocations.vertexCount; btTriangleMesh* cTriangleMesh = new btTriangleMesh(); int offset = 0; for (int i = 0; i < (cVertexCount / 3); i++) { unsigned int index1 = offset; unsigned int index2 = offset+6; unsigned int index3 = offset+12; cTriangleMesh->addTriangle( btVector3(cVertexData[index1], cVertexData[index1+1], cVertexData[index1+2]), btVector3(cVertexData[index2], cVertexData[index2+1], cVertexData[index2+2]), btVector3(cVertexData[index3], cVertexData[index3+1], cVertexData[index3+2])); offset += 18; } [self releaseRedundantData]; /*Create a triangle mesh from the vertices*/ btBvhTriangleMeshShape* cTriMeshShape = new btBvhTriangleMeshShape(cTriangleMesh,true); btCollisionShape *sphereShape = new btSphereShape(1); gTriMeshObject = [_physicsWorld createPhysicsObjectTrimesh:cubeNode shape:cTriMeshShape mass:0 restitution:1.0 position:cubeNode.location]; sphereObject = [_physicsWorld createPhysicsObject:sphereNode shape:sphereShape mass:1 restitution:0.1 position:sphereNode.location]; sphereObject.rigidBody->setDamping(0.1,0.8); /*Enable debug drawing*/ _physicsWorld._discreteDynamicsWorld->debugDrawWorld(); } And My btIDebugDraw implementation (MyDebugDraw.h) //MyDebugDraw.h class MyDebugDraw: public btIDebugDraw{ int m_debugMode; public: virtual void drawLine(const btVector3& from,const btVector3& to ,const btVector3& color); virtual void drawContactPoint(const btVector3& PointOnB ,const btVector3& normalOnB,btScalar distance ,int lifeTime,const btVector3& color); virtual void reportErrorWarning(const char* warningString); virtual void draw3dText(const btVector3& location ,const char* textString); virtual void setDebugMode(int debugMode); virtual int getDebugMode() const; }; void MyDebugDraw::drawLine(const btVector3& from,const btVector3& to ,const btVector3& color){ LogInfo(@"Works!!"); glPushMatrix(); glColor4f(color.getX(), color.getY(), color.getZ(), 1.0); const GLfloat line[] = { from.getX()*1, from.getY()*1, from.getZ()*1, //point A to.getX()*1, to.getY()*1,to.getZ()*1 //point B }; glVertexPointer( 3, GL_FLOAT, 0, &line ); glPointSize( 5.0f ); glDrawArrays( GL_POINTS, 0, 2 ); glDrawArrays( GL_LINES, 0, 2 ); glPopMatrix(); } void MyDebugDraw::drawContactPoint(const btVector3 &PointOnB ,const btVector3 &normalOnB, btScalar distance ,int lifeTime, const btVector3 &color){ } void MyDebugDraw::reportErrorWarning(const char *warningString){ } void MyDebugDraw::draw3dText(const btVector3 &location , const char *textString){ } void MyDebugDraw::setDebugMode(int debugMode){ } int MyDebugDraw::getDebugMode() const{ return DBG_DrawWireframe; } My Problem The drawLine method is getting called. I can see the cube and sphere in place. Sphere again does some circling around the cube before jumping off. No debug lines are getting drawn.

    Read the article

  • Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition Recap and Photos

    - by Brian Jackett
    If you’ve noticed my blogging activity has reduced in frequency and technical content lately it’s primarily due to all of the conferences I’ve been attending, speaking at, or planning in the past few months.  This past Friday myself and six other dedicated individuals put on Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition as the culmination of a few months of hard work.  For those unfamiliar, Stir Trek is a web developer conference that was founded last year as an event to showcase content from Microsoft’s MIX conference and end the day with a private showing of the then just-released Star Trek movie.  This year’s conference expanded from 2 to 4 content tracks and upped the number of tickets from 350 to 600.  Even more amazing was the fact that we had 592 people show up day of the event for the lowest drop-off percentage of any conference I’ve been to before.   Nerd Dinner and Swag Bags     The night before Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition we hosted a nerd dinner at the Polaris Shopping mall food court with about 30 in attendance.  Nerd dinners are a great time to meet others passionate about technology and socialize before the whirlwind of the conference hits.  After the nerd dinner 20+ volunteers headed to the conference location and helped us stuff swag bags.  This in and of itself was a monumental task of putting together 600 swag bags with numerous leaflets, sponsor items, and t-shirts.  A big thanks goes out to all who assisted us that night so that we could finish in just under 2 hours instead of taking all night.  My sleep schedule also thanks you. Morning of Stir Trek     After getting a decent amount of sleep I arrived at Marcus Crosswoods theater at 6am to begin setting up for the day.  Myself and Jody Morgan were in charge of registration so we got tables set up, laid out swag bags, and organized our volunteer crew to assist with checking-in attendees.  Despite having 600+ people registration went fairly smoothly and got the day off to a great start.  I especially appreciated the 3+ cups of coffee from Crimson Cup, a local coffee shop.  For any of you that know me you’ll know that I rarely drink coffee except a few times a year when I really need the energy, so that says a lot about how good their coffee is.   Conference Starts     Once registration was completed the day kicked off with Molly Holzschlag keynoting.  Unfortunately Molly suffered from an ear infection and wasn’t able to fly so she had a virtual keynote and a session later in the day.  I was working behind the scenes on various tasks so I was only able to drop in very briefly on the keynote and rest of the morning sessions.  Throughout the day I tried to grab at least 1 or 2 pics of each presenter.  See my album below for the full set of pics.      For lunch we ordered around 150 pizzas from Mellow Mushroom, a local pizza place (notice the theme of supporting local businesses.)  Early on we were concerned about Mellow Mushroom being able to supply that many pizzas and get them delivered (still hot) to the theater, but they did an excellent job day of the event.  I wish I had gotten some pictures of the old school VW van they delivered the pizza in, but I was just a bit busy running around trying to get theaters ready for lunch.  We had attendees from last year who specifically requested that we have Mellow Mushroom supply lunch this year and I’m glad everything worked out being able to use them again.     During the afternoon I was able to attend a few sessions and hear some great content from various speakers.  It was also nice to just sit down and get off my feet for a bit.  After the last sessions the day concluded with a raffle.  There were a few logistical and technical issues that hampered our ability to smoothly conduct the raffle.  To those of you that agree the raffle wasn’t the smoothest experience I would like to say that the Stir Trek planning committee has already begun meeting to discuss ways of improving the conference for next year.  We are also accepting feedback (both positive and negative) at the following link: click here.  If you don’t wish to use the Joind In site you can also email me directly and I’ll be sure to pass along the feedback.   Iron Man 2 Movie     Last but not least, what Stir Trek event would be complete without the feature movie.  This year’s movie was Iron Man 2.  The theater had some really cool props and promotions (see pic below) for the movie.  I really enjoyed Iron Man 2, but I would recommend brushing up on the Iron Man comics and Marvel’s plans for future movies to understand some of the plot elements that come up.  Also make sure you stay through to the end of the movie credits to see a sneak peak of something special, that’s all I’ll say. Conclusion     Again a big thanks goes out to all of the speakers, sponsors, attendees, movie theater staff, volunteers, and everyone else involved in making this event great.  Also big thanks to my fellow Stir Trek planning committee members: Jeff Blankenburg, Matt Casto, Carey Payette, Jody Morgan, Rick Kierner, and Sarah Dutkiewitcz.  I am grateful for everything I learned while helping plan this event and look forward to being involved again next year.  For those interested we are currently targeting Thor as our movie theme for 2011 and then The Avengers for 2012.  These are tentative based on release dates that could shift as we get closer, but for now look solid.   Photos Pics on Facebook (includes tagging)     Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition photos on Facebook Pics on Live site (higher res)      View Full Album         -Frog Out

    Read the article

  • Implementing an Interceptor Using NHibernate’s Built In Dynamic Proxy Generator

    - by Ricardo Peres
    NHibernate 3.2 came with an included proxy generator, which means there is no longer the need – or the possibility, for that matter – to choose Castle DynamicProxy, LinFu or Spring. This is actually a good thing, because it means one less assembly to deploy. Apparently, this generator was based, at least partially, on LinFu. As there are not many tutorials out there demonstrating it’s usage, here’s one, for demonstrating one of the most requested features: implementing INotifyPropertyChanged. This interceptor, of course, will still feature all of NHibernate’s functionalities that you are used to, such as lazy loading, and such. We will start by implementing an NHibernate interceptor, by inheriting from the base class NHibernate.EmptyInterceptor. This class does not do anything by itself, but it allows us to plug in behavior by overriding some of its methods, in this case, Instantiate: 1: public class NotifyPropertyChangedInterceptor : EmptyInterceptor 2: { 3: private ISession session = null; 4:  5: private static readonly ProxyFactory factory = new ProxyFactory(); 6:  7: public override void SetSession(ISession session) 8: { 9: this.session = session; 10: base.SetSession(session); 11: } 12:  13: public override Object Instantiate(String clazz, EntityMode entityMode, Object id) 14: { 15: Type entityType = Type.GetType(clazz); 16: IProxy proxy = factory.CreateProxy(entityType, new _NotifyPropertyChangedInterceptor(), typeof(INotifyPropertyChanged)) as IProxy; 17: 18: _NotifyPropertyChangedInterceptor interceptor = proxy.Interceptor as _NotifyPropertyChangedInterceptor; 19: interceptor.Proxy = this.session.SessionFactory.GetClassMetadata(entityType).Instantiate(id, entityMode); 20:  21: this.session.SessionFactory.GetClassMetadata(entityType).SetIdentifier(proxy, id, entityMode); 22:  23: return (proxy); 24: } 25: } Then we need a class that implements the NHibernate dynamic proxy behavior, let’s place it inside our interceptor, because it will only need to be used there: 1: class _NotifyPropertyChangedInterceptor : NHibernate.Proxy.DynamicProxy.IInterceptor 2: { 3: private PropertyChangedEventHandler changed = delegate { }; 4:  5: public Object Proxy 6: { 7: get; 8: set;} 9:  10: #region IInterceptor Members 11:  12: public Object Intercept(InvocationInfo info) 13: { 14: Boolean isSetter = info.TargetMethod.Name.StartsWith("set_") == true; 15: Object result = null; 16:  17: if (info.TargetMethod.Name == "add_PropertyChanged") 18: { 19: PropertyChangedEventHandler propertyChangedEventHandler = info.Arguments[0] as PropertyChangedEventHandler; 20: this.changed += propertyChangedEventHandler; 21: } 22: else if (info.TargetMethod.Name == "remove_PropertyChanged") 23: { 24: PropertyChangedEventHandler propertyChangedEventHandler = info.Arguments[0] as PropertyChangedEventHandler; 25: this.changed -= propertyChangedEventHandler; 26: } 27: else 28: { 29: result = info.TargetMethod.Invoke(this.Proxy, info.Arguments); 30: } 31:  32: if (isSetter == true) 33: { 34: String propertyName = info.TargetMethod.Name.Substring("set_".Length); 35: this.changed(this.Proxy, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName)); 36: } 37:  38: return (result); 39: } 40:  41: #endregion 42: } What this does for every interceptable method (those who are either virtual or from the INotifyPropertyChanged) is: For methods that came from the INotifyPropertyChanged interface, add_PropertyChanged and remove_PropertyChanged (yes, events are methods ), we add an implementation that adds or removes the event handlers to the delegate which we declared as changed; For all the others, we direct them to the place where they are actually implemented, which is the Proxy field; If the call is setting a property, it fires afterwards the PropertyChanged event. In order to use this, we need to add the interceptor to the Configuration before building the ISessionFactory: 1: using (ISessionFactory factory = cfg.SetInterceptor(new NotifyPropertyChangedInterceptor()).BuildSessionFactory()) 2: { 3: using (ISession session = factory.OpenSession()) 4: using (ITransaction tx = session.BeginTransaction()) 5: { 6: Customer customer = session.Get<Customer>(100); //some id 7: INotifyPropertyChanged inpc = customer as INotifyPropertyChanged; 8: inpc.PropertyChanged += delegate(Object sender, PropertyChangedEventArgs e) 9: { 10: //fired when a property changes 11: }; 12: customer.Address = "some other address"; //will raise PropertyChanged 13: customer.RecentOrders.ToList(); //will trigger the lazy loading 14: } 15: } Any problems, questions, do drop me a line!

    Read the article

  • Understanding each other in web development

    - by Pete Hotchkin
    During my career I have been lucky enough to work in several different roles within web development with many extremely talented people, from incredible designers who were passionate about the placement of every pixel right through to server administrators and DBAs who were always measuring the improvements they were making to their queries in the smallest possible unit. The problem I always faced was that more often than not I was stuck in the middle trying to mediate between these different functions and enable each side to understand the other’s point of view. The main areas of contention that there have always been between these functional groups in my experience have been at 2 key points: during the build phase and then when there is a problem post-build. During both of these times it is often easier for someone to pass the buck onto someone else than spend the time to understand the other person’s perspective. Below is a quick look at two upcoming tools that will not only speed up the build phase for each function, but  also help when it comes to the issues faced once a site has been pushed live. In my experience a web project goes through several phases of development. The first of these is design, generally handled as Photoshop files which are then passed onto a front-end developer. This is the first point at which heated discussions can arise. One problem I’ve seen several times is that the designer doesn’t fully understand the platform constraints that need to be considered, and as a result has designed something that does not translate very well or is simply not possible. Working at Red Gate, I am lucky enough to be able to meet some amazing people and this happened just the other day when I was introduced to Neil Kinnish and Pete Nelson, the creators of what I believe could be a great asset in this designer-developer relationship, Mixture. Mixture allows the front end developer to quickly prototype a web page with built-in frameworks such as bootstrap. It’s not an IDE however, it just sits there in the background and monitors the project files in the background so every time you save a file from your favorite IDE, it will compile things like LESS, compact your JavaScript and the automatically refresh your test browser so you can see the changes instantly. I think one of the best parts of this however is a single button that pushes the changed files up to the web so the designer can instantly see how far the developer has got and the problem that he is facing at that time without the need to spend time setting up a remote server. I can see this being a real asset to remote teams where there needs to be a compromise between the designer and the front-end developer, or just to allow the designer to see how the build is progressing and suggest small alterations. Once the design has been built into the front end the designer’s job is generally done and there are no other points of contention between the designer and the other functions involved in building these web projects. As the project moves into the stage of integrating it into the back end and deploying it to the production server other functions start to be pulled in and other issues arise such as the back-end developer understanding the frameworks that they are using such as the routes that are in place in an MVC application or the number of database calls that the ORM layer is actually making. There are many tools out there that can actually help with these problems such as mini profiler that gives you a quick snapshot of what is going on directly in the browser. For a slightly more in-depth look at what is happening and to gain a deeper understanding of an application you may be working on though, you may want to consider Glimpse. Created by Nik and Anthony, it is an application that sits at the bottom of your browser (installed via NuGet) which can show you information about how your application is pieced together and how the information on screen is being delivered as it happens. With a wealth of community-built plugins such as one for nHibernate and linq2SQL (full list of plugins on NuGet). It can be customized directly to your own setup to truly delve into the code to see what is happening, and can help to reduce the number of confusing moments about whether it is your code that is going wrong or whether there is something more sinister happening directly on the server. All the tools that I have mentioned in this post help to do one thing above all, and that is to ease the barrier of understanding between the different functions that are involved in building and maintaining a web application. In my experience it is very easy to say “Well, that’s not my problem”, simply because the two functions involved don’t truly understand the other’s point of view. Software should not only be seen as a way to streamline our own working process or as a debugging tool but also a communication aid to improve the entire lifecycle of a web project. Glimpse is actually the project that I am the designer on and I would love to get your feedback if you do decide to try it out or if you would like to share your own experiences of working on web projects please fill in your details at https://www.surveymk.com/s/joinGlimpse  or add a comment below and I will get in touch with you.

    Read the article

  • XNA Notes 002

    - by George Clingerman
    This past week (much like every week in the XNA community) was filled with things happening and people doing cool things (and getting noticed for doing cool things!). You can definitely tell there are some Xbox LIVE Indie game developers starting to make some names for themselves. Can’t wait to name drop them at bars. Me- “Oh you played Game X? Yeah, I know the guy that made that. Pretty cool guy.” Yeah, I’ll be THAT guy.   Time Critical XNA News 30 days left to submit XBLIGs made in XNA Game Studio 3.1 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/01/08/30-days-left-to-submit-xna-gs-3-1-games-to-app-hub.aspx Jeromy Walsh wants you to know his XNA 4.0 Winter Workshop starting soon, go get signed up! And the forum is now LIVE on GameDev.net http://gamedevelopedia.com/ http://tinyurl.com/4gg2cfv The XNA Team Per Nick Gravelyn, Aaron Stebner’s blog post is a must read for icons on Windows Phone http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/72022/439597.aspx#439597 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/archive/2010/10/01/10070507.aspx Shawn Hargreaves writes about Sprite Billboards in a 3D world http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/01/12/spritebatch-billboards-in-a-3d-world.aspx XNA MVPs Andy “The ZMan” Dunn wants YOU to come to the MVP Summit and run a 5K http://www.indiegameguy.com/blogs/zman/archive/2010/12/26/come-to-the-mvp-summit-and-run-a-5k-yes-you.aspx Jim Perry updates his forum signature just to make it clear that he’s not speaking for Microsoft or giving official information (LOL, thanks Jim, now if only people will take the time to read that...) XNA MVP | Please use the Forum Search and read the Forum FAQs | My posts are not official info http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/70849/439613.aspx#439613 XNA Developers Robert Boyd (@werezombie) working hard at converting his RPG engine used to make Breath of Death VII and Chtulu Saves the World to XNA 4.0. If you haven’t done the upgrade yet yourself, might be useful to read back through his tweets and recent forum posts to see the problems/solutions he’s encountered. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/71834/438099.aspx#438099 http://www.twitter.com/werezompire SpynDoctorGames is in the final phase before the release of Your Doodles are Bugged for the PC! Going to be interesting to watch as more XNA game developers explore the PC game market for their games. http://twitter.com/SpynDoctorGames/statuses/24503173217521664 http://www.spyn-doctor.de @DrMistry shares some details of his next title YoYoYo http://www.mstargames.co.uk/mistryblogmain/35-genblog/177-a-new-year-a-new-game-and-maybe-a-new-approach.html Travis Woodward (@RabidLionGames) has a blog post coming this weekend on Farseer and Mario-like platformer movement. http://twitter.com/RabidLionGames/statuses/24992762021548032 http://www.rabidlion.com/ S4G Interview with Radiangames http://n4g.com/news/679492/s4g-interview-with-radiangames XBLAratings.com interviews Steve Flores (@DragonDivide) developer of Alpha Squad http://www.xblaratings.com/developer-qaa/3621-alpha-squad-developer-interview XBox LIVE Indie Games If you haven’t been reading the roundups on IndieGames by NaviFairy on GayGamer, you’ve been missing out! http://gaygamer.net/2011/01/xbox_indie_review_roundup_1112.html Armless Octopus posts the Top 20 Games of 2010 Part 1 http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/10/top-20-xbox-live-indie-games-of-2010-part-1/ Armless Octopus posts the Top 20 Games of 2010 Part 2 http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/12/top-20-xbox-live-indie-games-of-2010-%E2%80%93-part-2/ Xbox LIVE Indie Game Reviews http://www.gamemarx.com/ Don’t forget to be following @XboxHornet . That’s a great way to snag free copies of Xbox LIVE Indie Games http://twitter.com/XboxHornet/statuses/24471103808208896 http://www.xboxhornet.com/wordpress/ Xbox LIVE Indie Game Review posts the top 20 Xbox 360 LIVE Indie Games of 2010 http://www.xbox-360-community-games-reviews.com/top-20-best-xbox-360-live-indie-games-of-2010/ VVGtv to Stream #XBLIG Again! Help out if you can. http://vvgtv.com/2011/01/07/vvgtv-to-stream-xblig-again/ Indie Gamer Magazine Issue 14 has a look at the Xbox LIVE Winter Indie Game Uprisiing http://www.indiegamemag.com/issue14/ XNA Game Development Andrew Russell announced and asked for help in his development of ExEn: XNA for iPhone, Android and Silverlight http://rockethub.com/projects/752-exen-xna-for-iphone-android-and-silverlight App Hub forums letting you down? Don’t forget about StackOverflow and the game development specific version gamedev.stackexchange http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/xna http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/xna Transmute gets an update from Aaron Foley (@slyprid) and you can now add and visually edit parallax layers to your 2D tile game. http://twitpic.com/3nudj0 http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/23418379574448128 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/Transmute/default.html Webcomics Weekly #75 touches on some feelings I’ve seen people try to express (myself included) when talking about game development and what types of games should be released for XBLIG http://www.pvponline.com/2011/01/05/webcomics-weekly-75-sour-oats/ Setting up a new PC for XNA development? Here’s a site that helps you quickly build a installer for all the most common applications developers use. http://ninite.com/ Fun wew thread on the XNA forums asking XBLIG/XNA developers just what their Top 10 favorite video games of all time are. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/107.aspx Christopher Hill (@Xalterax) stumbled across an entire community that does nothing but create box art. This is a great potential resource for Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers to get some awesome box art for their games. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/46582/441451.aspx#441451 http://www.vgboxart.com/browse/plat/360/ Don’t forget about the XNA Wiki, fantastic community resource (and roll up those sleeves and contribute already!) http://xnawiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

    Read the article

  • Big Data – Various Learning Resources – How to Start with Big Data? – Day 20 of 21

    - by Pinal Dave
    In yesterday’s blog post we learned how to become a Data Scientist for Big Data. In this article we will go over various learning resources related to Big Data. In this series we have covered many of the most essential details about Big Data. At the beginning of this series, I have encouraged readers to send me questions. One of the most popular questions is - “I want to learn more about Big Data. Where can I learn it?” This is indeed a great question as there are plenty of resources out to learn about Big Data and it is indeed difficult to select on one resource to learn Big Data. Hence I decided to write here a few of the very important resources which are related to Big Data. Learn from Pluralsight Pluralsight is a global leader in high-quality online training for hardcore developers.  It has fantastic Big Data Courses and I started to learn about Big Data with the help of Pluralsight. Here are few of the courses which are directly related to Big Data. Big Data: The Big Picture Big Data Analytics with Tableau NoSQL: The Big Picture Understanding NoSQL Data Analysis Fundamentals with Tableau I encourage all of you start with this video course as they are fantastic fundamentals to learn Big Data. Learn from Apache Resources at Apache are single point the most authentic learning resources. If you want to learn fundamentals and go deep about every aspect of the Big Data, I believe you must understand various concepts in Apache’s library. I am pretty impressed with the documentation and I am personally referencing it every single day when I work with Big Data. I strongly encourage all of you to bookmark following all the links for authentic big data learning. Haddop - The Apache Hadoop® project develops open-source software for reliable, scalable, distributed computing. Ambari: A web-based tool for provisioning, managing, and monitoring Apache Hadoop clusters which include support for Hadoop HDFS, Hadoop MapReduce, Hive, HCatalog, HBase, ZooKeeper, Oozie, Pig and Sqoop. Ambari also provides a dashboard for viewing cluster health such as heat maps and ability to view MapReduce, Pig and Hive applications visually along with features to diagnose their performance characteristics in a user-friendly manner. Avro: A data serialization system. Cassandra: A scalable multi-master database with no single points of failure. Chukwa: A data collection system for managing large distributed systems. HBase: A scalable, distributed database that supports structured data storage for large tables. Hive: A data warehouse infrastructure that provides data summarization and ad hoc querying. Mahout: A Scalable machine learning and data mining library. Pig: A high-level data-flow language and execution framework for parallel computation. ZooKeeper: A high-performance coordination service for distributed applications. Learn from Vendors One of the biggest issues with about learning Big Data is setting up the environment. Every Big Data vendor has different environment request and there are lots of things require to set up Big Data framework. Many of the users do not start with Big Data as they are afraid about the resources required to set up framework as well as a time commitment. Here Hortonworks have created fantastic learning environment. They have created Sandbox with everything one person needs to learn Big Data and also have provided excellent tutoring along with it. Sandbox comes with a dozen hands-on tutorial that will guide you through the basics of Hadoop as well it contains the Hortonworks Data Platform. I think Hortonworks did a fantastic job building this Sandbox and Tutorial. Though there are plenty of different Big Data Vendors I have decided to list only Hortonworks due to their unique setup. Please leave a comment if there are any other such platform to learn Big Data. I will include them over here as well. Learn from Books There are indeed few good books out there which one can refer to learn Big Data. Here are few good books which I have read. I will update the list as I will learn more. Ethics of Big Data Balancing Risk and Innovation Big Data for Dummies Head First Data Analysis: A Learner’s Guide to Big Numbers, Statistics, and Good Decisions If you search on Amazon there are millions of the books but I think above three books are a great set of books and it will give you great ideas about Big Data. Once you go through above books, you will have a clear idea about what is the next step you should follow in this series. You will be capable enough to make the right decision for yourself. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will wrap up this series of Big Data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

    Read the article

  • Mocking successive calls of similar type via sequential mocking

    - by mehfuzh
    In this post , i show how you can benefit from  sequential mocking feature[In JustMock] for setting up expectations with successive calls of same type.  To start let’s first consider the following dummy database and entity class. public class Person {     public virtual string Name { get; set; }     public virtual int Age { get; set; } }   public interface IDataBase {     T Get<T>(); } Now, our test goal is to return different entity for successive calls on IDataBase.Get<T>(). By default, the behavior in JustMock is override , which is similar to other popular mocking tools. By override it means that the tool will consider always the latest user setup. Therefore, the first example will return the latest entity every-time and will fail in line #12: Person person1 = new Person { Age = 30, Name = "Kosev" }; Person person2 = new Person { Age = 80, Name = "Mihail" };   var database = Mock.Create<IDataBase>();   Queue<Person> queue = new Queue<Person>();   Mock.Arrange(() => database.Get<Person>()).Returns(() => queue.Dequeue()); Mock.Arrange(() => database.Get<Person>()).Returns(person2);   // this will fail Assert.Equal(person1.GetHashCode(), database.Get<Person>().GetHashCode());   Assert.Equal(person2.GetHashCode(), database.Get<Person>().GetHashCode()); We can solve it the following way using a Queue and that removes the item from bottom on each call: Person person1 = new Person { Age = 30, Name = "Kosev" }; Person person2 = new Person { Age = 80, Name = "Mihail" };   var database = Mock.Create<IDataBase>();   Queue<Person> queue = new Queue<Person>();   queue.Enqueue(person1); queue.Enqueue(person2);   Mock.Arrange(() => database.Get<Person>()).Returns(queue.Dequeue());   Assert.Equal(person1.GetHashCode(), database.Get<Person>().GetHashCode()); Assert.Equal(person2.GetHashCode(), database.Get<Person>().GetHashCode()); This will ensure that right entity is returned but this is not an elegant solution. So, in JustMock we introduced a  new option that lets you set up your expectations sequentially. Like: Person person1 = new Person { Age = 30, Name = "Kosev" }; Person person2 = new Person { Age = 80, Name = "Mihail" };   var database = Mock.Create<IDataBase>();   Mock.Arrange(() => database.Get<Person>()).Returns(person1).InSequence(); Mock.Arrange(() => database.Get<Person>()).Returns(person2).InSequence();   Assert.Equal(person1.GetHashCode(), database.Get<Person>().GetHashCode()); Assert.Equal(person2.GetHashCode(), database.Get<Person>().GetHashCode()); The  “InSequence” modifier will tell the mocking tool to return the expected result as in the order it is specified by user. The solution though pretty simple and but neat(to me) and way too simpler than using a collection to solve this type of cases. Hope that helps P.S. The example shown in my blog is using interface don’t require a profiler  and you can even use a notepad and build it referencing Telerik.JustMock.dll, run it with GUI tools and it will work. But this feature also applies to concrete methods that includes JM profiler and can be implemented for more complex scenarios.

    Read the article

  • Autoscaling in a modern world&hellip;. Part 2

    - by Steve Loethen
    When we last left off, we had a web application spinning away in the cloud, and a local console application watching it and reacting to changes in demand.  Reactions that were specified by a set of rules.  Let’s talk about those rules. Constraints.  The first set of rules this application answered to were the constraints. Here is what they looked like: <constraintRules> <rule name="default" enabled="true" rank="1" description="The default constraint rule"> <actions> <range min="1" max="4" target="AutoscalingApplicationRole"/> </actions> </rule> </constraintRules> Pretty basic.  We have one role, the “AutoscalingApplicationRole”, and we have decided to have it live within a range of 1 to 4.  This rule does not adjust, but instead, set’s limits on what other rules can do.  It has a rank, so you can have you can specify other sets of constraints, perhaps based on time or date, to allow for deviations from this set.  But for now, let’s keep it simple.  In the real world, you would probably use the minimum to set a lower end SLA.  A common value might be a 2, to prevent the reactive rules from ever taking you down to 1 role.  The maximum is often used to keep a rule from driving the cost up, setting an upper limit to prevent you waking up one morning and find a bill for hundreds of instances you didn’t expect.  So, here we have the range we want our application to live inside.  This is good for our investigation and testing.  Next, let’s take a look at the reactive rules.  These rules are what you use to react (hence reactive rules) to changing demands on your application.  The HOL has two simple rules.  One that looks at a queue depth, and one that looks at a performance counter that reports cpu utilization.  the XML in the rules file looks like this: <reactiveRules> <rule name="ScaleUp" rank="10" description="Scale Up the web role" enabled="true"> <when> <any> <greaterOrEqual operand="Length_05_holqueue" than="10"/> <greaterOrEqual operand="CPU_05_holwebrole" than="65"/> </any> </when> <actions> <scale target="AutoscalingApplicationRole" by="1"/> </actions> </rule> <rule name="ScaleDown" rank="10" description="Scale down the web role" enabled="true"> <when> <all> <less operand="Length_05_holqueue" than="5"/> <less operand="CPU_05_holwebrole" than="40"/> </all> </when> <actions> <scale target="AutoscalingApplicationRole" by="-1"/> </actions> </rule> </reactiveRules> <operands> <performanceCounter alias="CPU_05_holwebrole" performanceCounterName="\Processor(_Total)\% Processor Time" source="AutoscalingApplicationRole" timespan="00:05:00" aggregate="Average" /> <queueLength alias="Length_05_holqueue" queue="hol-queue" timespan="00:05:00" aggregate="Average"/> </operands> These rules are currently contained in a file called rules.xml, that is in the root of the console application.  The console app, starts up, grabs the rules and starts watching the 2 operands.  When it detects a rule has been satisfied, it performs the desired action.  (here, scale up or down my 1). But I want to host the autoscaler  in the cloud.  For my first trick, I will move the rules (and another file called services.xml) to azure blob storage.  Look for part 3.

    Read the article

  • ct.sym steals the ASM class

    - by Geertjan
    Some mild consternation on the Twittersphere yesterday. Marcus Lagergren not being able to find the ASM classes in JDK 8 in NetBeans IDE: And there's no such problem in Eclipse (and apparently in IntelliJ IDEA). Help, does NetBeans (despite being incredibly awesome) suck, after all? The truth of the matter is that there's something called "ct.sym" in the JDK. When javac is compiling code, it doesn't link against rt.jar. Instead, it uses a special symbol file lib/ct.sym with class stubs. Internal JDK classes are not put in that symbol file, since those are internal classes. You shouldn't want to use them, at all. However, what if you're Marcus Lagergren who DOES need these classes? I.e., he's working on the internal JDK classes and hence needs to have access to them. Fair enough that the general Java population can't access those classes, since they're internal implementation classes that could be changed anytime and one wouldn't want all unknown clients of those classes to start breaking once changes are made to the implementation, i.e., this is the rt.jar's internal class protection mechanism. But, again, we're now Marcus Lagergen and not the general Java population. For the solution, read Jan Lahoda, NetBeans Java Editor guru, here: https://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=186120 In particular, take note of this: AFAIK, the ct.sym is new in JDK6. It contains stubs for all classes that existed in JDK5 (for compatibility with existing programs that would use private JDK classes), but does not contain implementation classes that were introduced in JDK6 (only API classes). This is to prevent application developers to accidentally use JDK's private classes (as such applications would be unportable and may not run on future versions of JDK). Note that this is not really a NB thing - this is the behavior of javac from the JDK. I do not know about any way to disable this except deleting ct.sym or the option mentioned above. Regarding loading the classes: JVM uses two classpath's: classpath and bootclasspath. rt.jar is on the bootclasspath and has precedence over anything on the "custom" classpath, which is used by the application. The usual way to override classes on bootclasspath is to start the JVM with "-Xbootclasspath/p:" option, which prepends the given jars (and presumably also directories) to bootclasspath. Hence, let's take the first option, the simpler one, and simply delete the "ct.sym" file. Again, only because we need to work with those internal classes as developers of the JDK, not because we want to hack our way around "ct.sym", which would mean you'd not have portable code at the end of the day. Go to the JDK 8 lib folder and you'll find the file: Delete it. Start NetBeans IDE again, either on JDK 7 or JDK 8, doesn't make a difference for these purposes, create a new Java application (or use an existing one), make sure you have set the JDK above as the JDK of the application, and hey presto: The above obviously assumes you have a build of JDK 8 that actually includes the ASM package. And below you can see that not only are the classes found but my build succeeded, even though I'm using internal JDK classes. The yellow markings in the sidebar mean that the classes are imported but not used in the code, where normally, if I hadn't removed "ct.sym", I would have seen red error marking instead, and the code wouldn't have compiled. Note: I've tried setting "-XDignore.symbol.file" in "netbeans.conf" and in other places, but so far haven't got that to work. Simply deleting the "ct.sym" file (or back it up somewhere and put it back when needed) is quite clearly the most straightforward solution. Ultimately, if you want to be able to use those internal classes while still having portable code, do you know what you need to do? You need to create a JDK bug report stating that you need an internal class to be added to "ct.sym". Probably you'll get a motivation back stating WHY that internal class isn't supposed to be used externally. There must be a reason why those classes aren't available for external usage, otherwise they would have been added to "ct.sym". So, now the only remaining question is why the Eclipse compiler doesn't hide the internal JDK classes. Apparently the Eclipse compiler ignores the "ct.sym" file. In other words, at the end of the day, far from being a bug in NetBeans... we have now found a (pretty enormous, I reckon) bug in Eclipse. The Eclipse compiler does not protect you from using internal JDK classes and the code that you create in Eclipse may not work with future releases of the JDK, since the JDK team is simply going to be changing those classes that are not found in the "ct.sym" file while assuming (correctly, thanks to the presence of "ct.sym" mechanism) that no code in the world, other than JDK code, is tied to those classes.

    Read the article

  • 3 Ways to Make Steam Even Faster

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Have you ever noticed how slow Steam’s built-in web browser can be? Do you struggle with slow download speeds? Or is Steam just slow in general? These tips will help you speed it up. Steam isn’t a game itself, so there are no 3D settings to change to achieve maximum performance. But there are some things you can do to speed it up dramatically. Speed Up the Steam Web Browser Steam’s built-in web browser — used in both the Steam store and in Steam’s in-game overlay to provide a web browser you can quickly use within games – can be frustratingly slow on many systems. Rather than the typical speed we’ve come to expect from Chrome, Firefox, or even Internet Explorer, Steam seems to struggle. When you click a link or go to a new page, there’s a noticeable delay before the new page appears — something that doesn’t happen in desktop browsers. Many people seem to have made peace with this slowness, accepting that Steam’s built-in browser is just bad. However, there’s a trick that will eliminate this delay on many systems and make the Steam web browser fast. This problem seems to arise from an incompatibility with the Automatically Detect Proxy Settings option, which is enabled by default on Windows. This is a compatibility option that very few people should actually need, so it’s safe to disable it. To disable this option, open the Internet Options dialog — press the Windows key to access the Start menu or Start screen, type Internet Options, and click the Internet Options shortcut. Select the Connections tab in the Internet Options window and click the LAN settings button. Uncheck the Automatically detect settings option here, then click OK to save your settings. If you experienced a significant delay every time a web page loaded in Steam’s web browser, it should now be gone. In the unlikely event that you encounter some sort of problem with your network connection, you could always re-enable this option. Increase Steam’s Game Download Speed Steam attempts to automatically select the nearest download server to your location. However, it may not always select the ideal download server. Or, in the case of high-traffic events like big seasonal sales and huge game launches, you may benefit from selecting a less-congested server. To do this, open Steam’s settings by clicking the Steam menu in Steam and selecting Settings. Click over to the Downloads tab and select the closest download server from the Download Region box. You should also ensure that Steam’s download bandwidth isn’t limited from here. You may want to restart Steam and see if your download speeds improve after changing this setting. In some cases, the closest server might not be the fastest. One a bit farther away could be faster if your local server is more congested, for example. Steam once provided information about content server load, which allowed you to select a regional server that wasn’t under high-load, but this information no longer seems to be available. Steam still provides a page that shows you the amount of download activity happening in different regions, including statistics about the difference in download speeds in different US states, but this information isn’t as useful. Accelerate Steam and Your Games One way to speed up all your games — and Steam itself —  is by getting a solid-state drive and installing Steam to it. Steam allows you to easily move your Steam folder — at C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam by default — to another hard drive. Just move it like you would any other folder. You can then launch the Steam.exe program as if you had never moved Steam’s files. Steam also allows you to configure multiple game library folders. This means that you can set up a Steam library folder on a solid-state drive and one on your larger magnetic hard drive. Install your most frequently played games to the solid-state drive for maximum speed and your less frequently played ones to the slower magnetic hard drive to save SSD space. To set up additional library folders, open Steam’s Settings window and click the Downloads tab. You’ll find the Steam Library Folders option here. Click the Add Library Folder button and create a new game library on another hard drive. When you install a game in Steam, you’ll be asked which library folder you want to install it to. With the proxy compatibility option disabled, the correct download server chosen, and Steam installed to a fast SSD, it should be a speed demon. There’s not much more you can do to speed up Steam, short of upgrading other hardware like your computer’s CPU. Image Credit: Andrew Nash on Flickr     

    Read the article

  • Reflections on GiveCamp

    - by Reed
    I participated in the Seattle GiveCamp over the weekend, and am entirely impressed.  GiveCamp is a great event – I especially like how rewarding it is for everybody involved.  I strongly encourage any and all developers to watch for future GiveCamp events, and consider participating, for many reasons… GiveCamp provides real value to organizations that truly need help.  The Seattle event alone succeeded in helping sixteen non-profit organizations in many different ways.  The projects involved varied dramatically, including website redesigns, SEO, reworking data management workflows, and even game development.  Many non-profits have a strong need for good, quality technical help.  However, nearly every non-profit organization has an incredibly limited budget.  GiveCamp is a way to really give back, and provide incredibly valuable help to organizations that truly benefit. My experience has shown many developers to be incredibly generous – this is a chance to dedicate your energy to helping others in a way that really takes advantage of your expertise.  Your time as a developer is incredibly valuable, and this puts something of incredible value directly into the hands of places its needed. First, and foremost, GiveCamp is about providing technical help to non-profit organizations in need. GiveCamp can make you a better developer.  This is a fantastic opportunity for us, as developers, to work with new people, in a new setting.  The incredibly short time frame (one weekend for a deliverable project) and intense motivation to succeed provides a huge opportunity for learning from peers.  I’d personally like to thank off the developers with whom I worked – I learned something from each and every one of you.  I hope to see and work with all of you again someday. GiveCamp provides an opportunity for you to work outside of your comfort zone. While it’s always nice to be an expert, it’s also valuable to work on a project where you have little or no direct experience.  My team focused on a complete reworking of our organizations message and a complete new website redesign and deployment using WordPress.  While I’d used WordPress for my blog, and had some experience, this is completely unrelated to my professional work.  In fact, nobody on our team normally worked directly with the technologies involved – yet together we managed to succeed in delivering our goals.  As developers, it’s easy to want to stay abreast of new technology surrounding our expertise, but its rare that we get a chance to sit down and work on something practical that is completely outside of our normal realm of work.  I’m a desktop developer by trade, and spent much of the weekend working with CSS and Photoshop.  Many of the projects organizations need don’t match perfectly with the skill set in the room – yet all of the software professionals rose to the occasion and delivered practical, usable applications. GiveCamp is a short term, known commitment. While this seems obvious, I think it’s an important aspect to remember.  This is a huge part of what makes it successful – you can work, completely focused, on a project, then walk away completely when you’re done.  There is no expectation of continued involvement.  While many of the professionals I’ve talked to are willing to contribute some amount of their time beyond the camp, this is not expected. The freedom this provides is immense.  In addition, the motivation this brings is incredibly valuable.  Every developer in the room was very focused on delivering in time – you have one shot to get it as good as possible, and leave it with the organization in a way that can be maintained by them.  This is a rare experience – and excellent practice at time management for everyone involved. GiveCamp provides a great way to meet and network with your peers. Not only do you get to network with other software professionals in your area – you get to network with amazing people.  Every single person in the room is there to try to help people.  The balance of altruism, intelligence, and expertise in the room is something I’ve never before experienced. During the presentations of what was accomplished, I felt blessed to participate.  I know many people in the room were incredibly touched by the level of dedication and accomplishment over the weekend. GiveCamp is fun. At the end of the experience, I would have signed up again, even if it was a painful, tedious weekend – merely due to the amazing accomplishments achieved throughout the event.  However, the event is fun.  Everybody I talked to, the entire weekend, was having a good time.  While there were many faces focused into a near grimace at times (including mine, I’ll admit), this was always in response to a particularly challenging problem or task.  The challenges just added to the overall enjoyment of the weekend – part of why I became a developer in the first place is my love for challenge and puzzles, and a short deadline using unfamiliar technology provided plenty of opportunity for puzzles.  As soon as people would stand up, it was another smile.   If you’re a developer, I’d recommend looking at GiveCamp more closely.  Watch for an event in your area.  If there isn’t one, consider building a team and organizing an event.  The experience is worth the commitment. 

    Read the article

  • Answers to “What source control system do you use?” (and some winners)

    - by jamiet
    About a month ago I posed a question here on my blog SQL Server devs–what source control system do you use, if any? (answer and maybe win free stuff) in which I asked SQL Server developers to answer the following questions: Are you putting your SQL Server code into a source control system? If so, what source control server software (e.g. TFS, Git, SVN, Mercurial, SourceSafe, Perforce) are you using? What source control client software are you using (e.g. TFS Team Explorer, Tortoise, Red Gate SQL Source Control, Red Gate SQL Connect, Git Bash, etc…)? Why did you make those particular software choices? Any interesting anecdotes to share in regard to your use of source control and SQL Server? I had some really great responses (I highly recommend going and reading them). I promised that the five best, most thought-provoking, responses (as determined by me) would win one of five pairs of licenses for Red Gate SQL Source Control and Red Gate SQL Connect; here are the five that I chose (note that if you responded but did not leave a means of getting in touch then you weren’t considered for one of the prizes – sorry): In general, I don't think the management overhead and licensing cost associated with TFS is worthwhile if all you're doing is using source control. To get value from TFS, at a minimum you need to be using team build, and possibly other stuff as well, such as the sharepoint integration. If that's all you need, then svn with Tortoise would be my first choice. If you want to add build automation later, you can do this with cruisecontrol (is it still called that?), JetBrains, etc. For a long time I thought that Redgate's claims about "bridging the SSMS-VS divide" were a load of hot air, since in my experience anyone who knew what they were doing was using Visual Studio, in particular SSDT and its predecessors. However, on a recent client I was putting in source control for the first time, and I discovered that the "divide" really does exist. That client has ended up using svn with Redgate SQL Source Control, with no build automation, but with scope to add it in the future. Gavin Campbell I think putting the DB under source control is a great idea.  I have issues with the earlier versions of SQL Source Control in that it provides little help in versioning the DB. I think the latest version merges SQL Compare and SQL Source Control together.  Which is how it should have been all along. Sure I have the DB scripts in SVN, but I can't automate DB builds and changes without more tools.  Frankly I'm surprised databases don't have some sort of versioning built into them. Nick Portelli Source control has been immensely useful and saved me from a lot of rework on more than one occasion.  I have learned that you have to be extremely careful checking in data.  Our system is internal only so during the system production run once a week, if there is a problem that I can fix easily(for example, a control table points to a file in the wrong environment), I'll do it directly in production so the run can continue as soon as possible since we have a specified time window.  We do full test runs to minimize this but it has come up once or twice.  We use Red-Gate source control to "push" from the test environment to the production environment.  There have been a couple of occasions where the test environment with the wrong setting was pushed back over the production environment because the change was made only in production.  Gotta keep an eye on that. Alan Dykes Goodness is it manual.  And can be extremely painful at times.  Not only are we running thin, we are constrained on the tools we can get ($$ must mean free).  Certainly no excuse, and a great opportunity to improve my skills by learning new things.  But...  Getting buy in a on a proven process or methodology is hard, takes time, and diverts us from development.  If SQL Source Control is easy to use and proven oh boy could you get some serious fans around here!  Seriously though, as the "accidental dba" of this shop any new ideas / easy to implement tools can make a world of difference in productivity and most importantly accuracy.  Manual = bad. :) John Hennesey (who left his email address) The one thing I would love to know more about is the unique challenges of working with databases as source code - you can store scripts, but are they written as deployment scripts with all the logic about how to apply them to an existing DB? Where is that baseline DB? Where's the data? How does a team share the data and the code? It's a real challenge. Merrill Aldrich Congratulations to the five of you. Red Gate will be in touch with you soon about your free licenses. Thank you to all those that responded. And again, go and check out all the responses – those above are only small proportion from what is a very interesting comment thread. @Jamiet

    Read the article

  • How to Use Steam In-Home Streaming

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Steam’s In-Home Streaming is now available to everyone, allowing you to stream PC games from one PC to another PC on the same local network. Use your gaming PC to power your laptops and home theater system. This feature doesn’t allow you to stream games over the Internet, only the same local network. Even if you tricked Steam, you probably wouldn’t get good streaming performance over the Internet. Why Stream? When you use Steam In-Home streaming, one PC sends its video and audio to another PC. The other PC views the video and audio like it’s watching a movie, sending back mouse, keyboard, and controller input to the other PC. This allows you to have a fast gaming PC power your gaming experience on slower PCs. For example, you could play graphically demanding games on a laptop in another room of your house, even if that laptop has slower integrated graphics. You could connect a slower PC to your television and use your gaming PC without hauling it into a different room in your house. Streaming also enables cross-platform compatibility. You could have a Windows gaming PC and stream games to a Mac or Linux system. This will be Valve’s official solution for compatibility with old Windows-only games on the Linux (Steam OS) Steam Machines arriving later this year. NVIDIA offers their own game streaming solution, but it requires certain NVIDIA graphics hardware and can only stream to an NVIDIA Shield device. How to Get Started In-Home Streaming is simple to use and doesn’t require any complex configuration — or any configuration, really. First, log into the Steam program on a Windows PC. This should ideally be a powerful gaming PC with a powerful CPU and fast graphics hardware. Install the games you want to stream if you haven’t already — you’ll be streaming from your PC, not from Valve’s servers. (Valve will eventually allow you to stream games from Mac OS X, Linux, and Steam OS systems, but that feature isn’t yet available. You can still stream games to these other operating systems.) Next, log into Steam on another computer on the same network with the same Steam username. Both computers have to be on the same subnet of the same local network. You’ll see the games installed on your other PC in the Steam client’s library. Click the Stream button to start streaming a game from your other PC. The game will launch on your host PC, and it will send its audio and video to the PC in front of you. Your input on the client will be sent back to the server. Be sure to update Steam on both computers if you don’t see this feature. Use the Steam > Check for Updates option within Steam and install the latest update. Updating to the latest graphics drivers for your computer’s hardware is always a good idea, too. Improving Performance Here’s what Valve recommends for good streaming performance: Host PC: A quad-core CPU for the computer running the game, minimum. The computer needs enough processor power to run the game, compress the video and audio, and send it over the network with low latency. Streaming Client: A GPU that supports hardware-accelerated H.264 decoding on the client PC. This hardware is included on all recent laptops and PCs. Ifyou have an older PC or netbook, it may not be able to decode the video stream quickly enough. Network Hardware: A wired network connection is ideal. You may have success with wireless N or AC networks with good signals, but this isn’t guaranteed. Game Settings: While streaming a game, visit the game’s setting screen and lower the resolution or turn off VSync to speed things up. In-Home Steaming Settings: On the host PC, click Steam > Settings and select In-Home Streaming to view the In-Home Streaming settings. You can modify your streaming settings to improve performance and reduce latency. Feel free to experiment with the options here and see how they affect performance — they should be self-explanatory. Check Valve’s In-Home Streaming documentation for troubleshooting information. You can also try streaming non-Steam games. Click Games > Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library on your host PC and add a PC game you have installed elsewhere on your system. You can then try streaming it from your client PC. Valve says this “may work but is not officially supported.” Image Credit: Robert Couse-Baker on Flickr, Milestoned on Flickr

    Read the article

  • How to Force Graphics Options in PC Games with NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel Graphics

    - by Chris Hoffman
    PC games usually have built-in graphics options you can change. But you’re not limited to the options built into games — the graphics control panels bundled with graphics drivers allow you to tweak options from outside PC games. For example, these tools allow you to force-enabling antialiasing to make old games look better, even if they don’t normally support it. You can also reduce graphics quality to get more performance on slow hardware. If You Don’t See These Options If you don’t have the NVIDIA Control Panel, AMD Catalyst Control Center, or Intel Graphics and Media Control Panel installed, you may need to install the appropriate graphics driver package for your hardware from the hardware manufacturer’s website. The drivers provided via Windows Update don’t include additional software like the NVIDIA Control Panel or AMD Catalyst Control Center. Drivers provided via Windows Update are also more out of date. If you’re playing PC games, you’ll want to have the latest graphics drivers installed on your system. NVIDIA Control Panel The NVIDIA Control Panel allows you to change these options if your computer has NVIDIA graphics hardware. To launch it, right-click your desktop background and select NVIDIA Control Panel. You can also find this tool by performing a Start menu (or Start screen) search for NVIDIA Control Panel or by right-clicking the NVIDIA icon in your system tray and selecting Open NVIDIA Control Panel. To quickly set a system-wide preference, you could use the Adjust image settings with preview option. For example, if you have old hardware that struggles to play the games you want to play, you may want to select “Use my preference emphasizing” and move the slider all the way to “Performance.” This trades graphics quality for an increased frame rate. By default, the “Use the advanced 3D image settings” option is selected. You can select Manage 3D settings and change advanced settings for all programs on your computer or just for specific games. NVIDIA keeps a database of the optimal settings for various games, but you’re free to tweak individual settings here. Just mouse-over an option for an explanation of what it does. If you have a laptop with NVIDIA Optimus technology — that is, both NVIDIA and Intel graphics — this is the same place you can choose which applications will use the NVIDIA hardware and which will use the Intel hardware. AMD Catalyst Control Center AMD’s Catalyst Control Center allows you to change these options on AMD graphics hardware. To open it, right-click your desktop background and select Catalyst Control Center. You can also right-click the Catalyst icon in your system tray and select Catalyst Control Center or perform a Start menu (or Start screen) search for Catalyst Control Center. Click the Gaming category at the left side of the Catalyst Control Center window and select 3D Application Settings to access the graphics settings you can change. The System Settings tab allows you to configure these options globally, for all games. Mouse over any option to see an explanation of what it does. You can also set per-application 3D settings and tweak your settings on a per-game basis. Click the Add option and browse to a game’s .exe file to change its options. Intel Graphics and Media Control Panel Intel integrated graphics is nowhere near as powerful as dedicated graphics hardware from NVIDIA and AMD, but it’s improving and comes included with most computers. Intel doesn’t provide anywhere near as many options in its graphics control panel, but you can still tweak some common settings. To open the Intel graphics control panel, locate the Intel graphics icon in your system tray, right-click it, and select Graphics Properties. You can also right-click the desktop and select Graphics Properties. Select either Basic Mode or Advanced Mode. When the Intel Graphics and Media Control Panel appears, select the 3D option. You’ll be able to set your Performance or Quality setting by moving the slider around or click the Custom Settings check box and customize your Anisotropic Filtering and Vertical Sync preference. Different Intel graphics hardware may have different options here. We also wouldn’t be surprised to see more advanced options appear in the future if Intel is serious about competing in the PC graphics market, as they say they are. These options are primarily useful to PC gamers, so don’t worry about them — or bother downloading updated graphics drivers — if you’re not a PC gamer and don’t use any intensive 3D applications on your computer. Image Credit: Dave Dugdale on Flickr     

    Read the article

  • The Unspoken - The Why of GC Ergonomics

    - by jonthecollector
    Do you use GC ergonomics, -XX:+UseAdaptiveSizePolicy, with the UseParallelGC collector? The jist of GC ergonomics for that collector is that it tries to grow or shrink the heap to meet a specified goal. The goals that you can choose are maximum pause time and/or throughput. Don't get too excited there. I'm speaking about UseParallelGC (the throughput collector) so there are definite limits to what pause goals can be achieved. When you say out loud "I don't care about pause times, give me the best throughput I can get" and then say to yourself "Well, maybe 10 seconds really is too long", then think about a pause time goal. By default there is no pause time goal and the throughput goal is high (98% of the time doing application work and 2% of the time doing GC work). You can get more details on this in my very first blog. GC ergonomics The UseG1GC has its own version of GC ergonomics, but I'll be talking only about the UseParallelGC version. If you use this option and wanted to know what it (GC ergonomics) was thinking, try -XX:AdaptiveSizePolicyOutputInterval=1 This will print out information every i-th GC (above i is 1) about what the GC ergonomics to trying to do. For example, UseAdaptiveSizePolicy actions to meet *** throughput goal *** GC overhead (%) Young generation: 16.10 (attempted to grow) Tenured generation: 4.67 (attempted to grow) Tenuring threshold: (attempted to decrease to balance GC costs) = 1 GC ergonomics tries to meet (in order) Pause time goal Throughput goal Minimum footprint The first line says that it's trying to meet the throughput goal. UseAdaptiveSizePolicy actions to meet *** throughput goal *** This run has the default pause time goal (i.e., no pause time goal) so it is trying to reach a 98% throughput. The lines Young generation: 16.10 (attempted to grow) Tenured generation: 4.67 (attempted to grow) say that we're currently spending about 16% of the time doing young GC's and about 5% of the time doing full GC's. These percentages are a decaying, weighted average (earlier contributions to the average are given less weight). The source code is available as part of the OpenJDK so you can take a look at it if you want the exact definition. GC ergonomics is trying to increase the throughput by growing the heap (so says the "attempted to grow"). The last line Tenuring threshold: (attempted to decrease to balance GC costs) = 1 says that the ergonomics is trying to balance the GC times between young GC's and full GC's by decreasing the tenuring threshold. During a young collection the younger objects are copied to the survivor spaces while the older objects are copied to the tenured generation. Younger and older are defined by the tenuring threshold. If the tenuring threshold hold is 4, an object that has survived fewer than 4 young collections (and has remained in the young generation by being copied to the part of the young generation called a survivor space) it is younger and copied again to a survivor space. If it has survived 4 or more young collections, it is older and gets copied to the tenured generation. A lower tenuring threshold moves objects more eagerly to the tenured generation and, conversely a higher tenuring threshold keeps copying objects between survivor spaces longer. The tenuring threshold varies dynamically with the UseParallelGC collector. That is different than our other collectors which have a static tenuring threshold. GC ergonomics tries to balance the amount of work done by the young GC's and the full GC's by varying the tenuring threshold. Want more work done in the young GC's? Keep objects longer in the survivor spaces by increasing the tenuring threshold. This is an example of the output when GC ergonomics is trying to achieve a pause time goal UseAdaptiveSizePolicy actions to meet *** pause time goal *** GC overhead (%) Young generation: 20.74 (no change) Tenured generation: 31.70 (attempted to shrink) The pause goal was set at 50 millisecs and the last GC was 0.415: [Full GC (Ergonomics) [PSYoungGen: 2048K-0K(26624K)] [ParOldGen: 26095K-9711K(28992K)] 28143K-9711K(55616K), [Metaspace: 1719K-1719K(2473K/6528K)], 0.0758940 secs] [Times: user=0.28 sys=0.00, real=0.08 secs] The full collection took about 76 millisecs so GC ergonomics wants to shrink the tenured generation to reduce that pause time. The previous young GC was 0.346: [GC (Allocation Failure) [PSYoungGen: 26624K-2048K(26624K)] 40547K-22223K(56768K), 0.0136501 secs] [Times: user=0.06 sys=0.00, real=0.02 secs] so the pause time there was about 14 millisecs so no changes are needed. If trying to meet a pause time goal, the generations are typically shrunk. With a pause time goal in play, watch the GC overhead numbers and you will usually see the cost of setting a pause time goal (i.e., throughput goes down). If the pause goal is too low, you won't achieve your pause time goal and you will spend all your time doing GC. GC ergonomics is meant to be simple because it is meant to be used by anyone. It was not meant to be mysterious and so this output was added. If you don't like what GC ergonomics is doing, you can turn it off with -XX:-UseAdaptiveSizePolicy, but be pre-warned that you have to manage the size of the generations explicitly. If UseAdaptiveSizePolicy is turned off, the heap does not grow. The size of the heap (and the generations) at the start of execution is always the size of the heap. I don't like that and tried to fix it once (with some help from an OpenJDK contributor) but it unfortunately never made it out the door. I still have hope though. Just a side note. With the default throughput goal of 98% the heap often grows to it's maximum value and stays there. Definitely reduce the throughput goal if footprint is important. Start with -XX:GCTimeRatio=4 for a more modest throughput goal (%20 of the time spent in GC). A higher value means a smaller amount of time in GC (as the throughput goal).

    Read the article

  • .NET Security Part 3

    - by Simon Cooper
    You write a security-related application that allows addins to be used. These addins (as dlls) can be downloaded from anywhere, and, if allowed to run full-trust, could open a security hole in your application. So you want to restrict what the addin dlls can do, using a sandboxed appdomain, as explained in my previous posts. But there needs to be an interaction between the code running in the sandbox and the code that created the sandbox, so the sandboxed code can control or react to things that happen in the controlling application. Sandboxed code needs to be able to call code outside the sandbox. Now, there are various methods of allowing cross-appdomain calls, the two main ones being .NET Remoting with MarshalByRefObject, and WCF named pipes. I’m not going to cover the details of setting up such mechanisms here, or which you should choose for your specific situation; there are plenty of blogs and tutorials covering such issues elsewhere. What I’m going to concentrate on here is the more general problem of running fully-trusted code within a sandbox, which is required in most methods of app-domain communication and control. Defining assemblies as fully-trusted In my last post, I mentioned that when you create a sandboxed appdomain, you can pass in a list of assembly strongnames that run as full-trust within the appdomain: // get the Assembly object for the assembly Assembly assemblyWithApi = ... // get the StrongName from the assembly's collection of evidence StrongName apiStrongName = assemblyWithApi.Evidence.GetHostEvidence<StrongName>(); // create the sandbox AppDomain sandbox = AppDomain.CreateDomain( "Sandbox", null, appDomainSetup, restrictedPerms, apiStrongName); Any assembly that is loaded into the sandbox with a strong name the same as one in the list of full-trust strong names is unconditionally given full-trust permissions within the sandbox, irregardless of permissions and sandbox setup. This is very powerful! You should only use this for assemblies that you trust as much as the code creating the sandbox. So now you have a class that you want the sandboxed code to call: // within assemblyWithApi public class MyApi { public static void MethodToDoThings() { ... } } // within the sandboxed dll public class UntrustedSandboxedClass { public void DodgyMethod() { ... MyApi.MethodToDoThings(); ... } } However, if you try to do this, you get quite an ugly exception: MethodAccessException: Attempt by security transparent method ‘UntrustedSandboxedClass.DodgyMethod()’ to access security critical method ‘MyApi.MethodToDoThings()’ failed. Security transparency, which I covered in my first post in the series, has entered the picture. Partially-trusted code runs at the Transparent security level, fully-trusted code runs at the Critical security level, and Transparent code cannot under any circumstances call Critical code. Security transparency and AllowPartiallyTrustedCallersAttribute So the solution is easy, right? Make MethodToDoThings SafeCritical, then the transparent code running in the sandbox can call the api: [SecuritySafeCritical] public static void MethodToDoThings() { ... } However, this doesn’t solve the problem. When you try again, exactly the same exception is thrown; MethodToDoThings is still running as Critical code. What’s going on? By default, a fully-trusted assembly always runs Critical code, irregardless of any security attributes on its types and methods. This is because it may not have been designed in a secure way when called from transparent code – as we’ll see in the next post, it is easy to open a security hole despite all the security protections .NET 4 offers. When exposing an assembly to be called from partially-trusted code, the entire assembly needs a security audit to decide what should be transparent, safe critical, or critical, and close any potential security holes. This is where AllowPartiallyTrustedCallersAttribute (APTCA) comes in. Without this attribute, fully-trusted assemblies run Critical code, and partially-trusted assemblies run Transparent code. When this attribute is applied to an assembly, it confirms that the assembly has had a full security audit, and it is safe to be called from untrusted code. All code in that assembly runs as Transparent, but SecurityCriticalAttribute and SecuritySafeCriticalAttribute can be applied to individual types and methods to make those run at the Critical or SafeCritical levels, with all the restrictions that entails. So, to allow the sandboxed assembly to call the full-trust API assembly, simply add APCTA to the API assembly: [assembly: AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers] and everything works as you expect. The sandboxed dll can call your API dll, and from there communicate with the rest of the application. Conclusion That’s the basics of running a full-trust assembly in a sandboxed appdomain, and allowing a sandboxed assembly to access it. The key is AllowPartiallyTrustedCallersAttribute, which is what lets partially-trusted code call a fully-trusted assembly. However, an assembly with APTCA applied to it means that you have run a full security audit of every type and member in the assembly. If you don’t, then you could inadvertently open a security hole. I’ll be looking at ways this can happen in my next post.

    Read the article

  • Record Screen Activity with CamStudio

    - by Asian Angel
    Sometimes a visual demonstration works much better than a list of instructions. If you need to make a demo video for family and/or friends then you might want to have a look at CamStudio. Using CamStudio To get properly set up you will need to install two different files (the main program followed by the codec). Once that is done you are ready to get started. When you start the program you will see a surprisingly small window. Notice the highlighted Record to text…it serves as a visual indicator for the video type selected for recording. Before you start creating a video it would be a good idea to look through some of the settings. The first one to look at is the region or area that you want to record. Next you will want to look through the video options since these will affect the quality and final size of your video files. The default setting for quality is 70…adjust that to the level that best suits your needs. Note: For our example we maxed out the various video settings for best quality. On our system Microsoft Video 1 was listed as the default compressor but as you can see there were other options available. You can configure the settings for the compressor you want to use if desired. Keep in mind that each compressor will have unique settings of their own, so if you change it, be certain to go back and check. We decided to use the CamStudio Lossless Codec for our example (it gave the best results while trying the software). Going back to the main window you can toggle back and forth between .avi and .swf output using the last button. Once you are satisfied with the settings click on the red record button to start. If you need to pause while recording or stop recording click on the system tray icon and select the appropriate command. When you are finished recording, you will be presented with the save file window. Browse for the desired save location and name your new file. Once you have saved the file the movie player window will automatically open so that you view your new video. Our sample video shown here is at 50% of original size so may look slightly “gritty”. The detail was much better at 100%. If you decide to record and save as .swf the process will be identical to recording in .avi format until the movie player window opens. At that time the conversion process from .avi to .swf will begin. When complete you will have a new flash video and html file that goes with it. Depending on which browser you have set as default, you may run into a small problem when the preview for your new .swf file tries to open. There is a small bug in the generated html file. You can use this work-around or… Just open the .swf file directly in your favorite browser. Conclusion CamStudio may not produce the highest quality videos, but it’s free and does a very nice job nonetheless. If you are working on a tight budget or only need to make an occasional video then CamStudio is a very sensible choice. Links Download CamStudio Stable Version & CamStudio Codec *Download links are approximately half-way down the page. Download CamStudio Stable Version & CamStudio Codec at SourceForge *Beta version also available here. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Get the Classic Style Network Activity Indicator Back in Windows 7How To Copy a DVD with VLC 1.0ALLCapture 3.0 [Review]Listen and Record Over 12,000 Online Radio Stations with RadioSureGeek Reviews: Play And Record Internet Radio With Screamer Radio TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 TimeToMeet is a Simple Online Meeting Planning Tool Easily Create More Bookmark Toolbars in Firefox Filevo is a Cool File Hosting & Sharing Site Get a free copy of WinUtilities Pro 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate

    Read the article

  • TFS 2010 SDK: Integrating Twitter with TFS Programmatically

    - by Tarun Arora
    Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010,TFS API,Integrate Twitter TFS,TFS Programming,ALM,TwitterSharp   Friends at ‘Twitter Sharp’ have created a wonderful .net API for twitter. With this blog post i will try to show you a basic TFS – Twitter integration scenario where i will retrieve the Team Project details programmatically and then publish these details on my twitter page. In future blogs i will be demonstrating how to create a windows service to capture the events raised by TFS and then publishing them in your social eco-system. Download Working Demo: Integrate Twitter - Tfs Programmatically   1. Setting up Twitter API Download Tweet Sharp from => https://github.com/danielcrenna/tweetsharp  Before you can start playing around with this, you will need to register an application on twitter. This is because Twitter uses the OAuth authentication protocol and will not issue an Access token unless your application is registered with them. Go to https://dev.twitter.com/ and register your application   Once you have registered your application, you will need ‘Customer Key’, ‘Customer Secret’, ‘Access Token’, ‘Access Token Secret’ 2. Connecting to Twitter using the Tweet Sharp API Create a new C# windows forms project and add reference to ‘Hammock.ClientProfile’, ‘Newtonsoft.Json’, ‘TweetSharp’ Add the following keys to the App.config (Note – The values for the keys below are in correct and if you try and connect using them then you will get an authorization failure error). Add a new class ‘TwitterProxy’ and use the following code to connect to the TwitterService (Read more about OAuthentication - http://dev.twitter.com/pages/auth) using System;using System.Collections.Generic;using System.Linq;using System.Text;using System.Configuration;using TweetSharp; namespace WindowsFormsApplication2{ public class TwitterProxy { private static string _hero; private static string _consumerKey; private static string _consumerSecret; private static string _accessToken; private static string _accessTokenSecret;  public static TwitterService ConnectToTwitter() { _consumerKey = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ConsumerKey"]; _consumerSecret = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ConsumerSecret"]; _accessToken = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["AccessToken"]; _accessTokenSecret = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["AccessTokenSecret"];  return new TwitterService(_consumerKey, _consumerSecret, _accessToken, _accessTokenSecret); } }} Time to Tweet! _twitterService = Proxy.TwitterProxy.ConnectToTwitter(); _twitterService.SendTweet("Hello World"); SendTweet will return the TweetStatus, If you do not get a 200 OK status that means you have failed authentication, please revisit the Access tokens. --RESPONSE: https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/update.json HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Transaction: 1308476106-69292-41752 X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN X-Runtime: 0.03040 X-Transaction-Mask: a6183ffa5f44ef11425211f25 Pragma: no-cache X-Access-Level: read-write X-Revision: DEV X-MID: bd8aa0abeccb6efba38bc0a391a73fab98e983ea Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0 Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8 Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 09:35:06 GMT Expires: Tue, 31 Mar 1981 05:00:00 GMT Last-Modified: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 09:35:06 GMT Server: hi Vary: Accept-Encoding Content-Encoding: Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100 Connection: Keep-Alive Transfer-Encoding: chunked   3. Integrate with TFS In my blog post Connect to TFS Programmatically i have in depth demonstrated how to connect to TFS using the TFS API. 1: // Update the AppConfig with the URI of the Team Foundation Server you want to connect to, Make sure you have View Team Project Collection Details permissions on the server 2: private static string _myUri = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["TfsUri"]; 3: private static TwitterService _twitterService = null; 4:   5: private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 6: { 7: lblNotes.Text = string.Empty; 8:   9: try 10: { 11: StringBuilder notes = new StringBuilder(); 12:   13: _twitterService = Proxy.TwitterProxy.ConnectToTwitter(); 14:   15: _twitterService.SendTweet("Hello World"); 16:   17: TfsConfigurationServer configurationServer = 18: TfsConfigurationServerFactory.GetConfigurationServer(new Uri(_myUri)); 19:   20: CatalogNode catalogNode = configurationServer.CatalogNode; 21:   22: ReadOnlyCollection<CatalogNode> tpcNodes = catalogNode.QueryChildren( 23: new Guid[] { CatalogResourceTypes.ProjectCollection }, 24: false, CatalogQueryOptions.None); 25:   26: // tpc = Team Project Collection 27: foreach (CatalogNode tpcNode in tpcNodes) 28: { 29: Guid tpcId = new Guid(tpcNode.Resource.Properties["InstanceId"]); 30: TfsTeamProjectCollection tpc = configurationServer.GetTeamProjectCollection(tpcId); 31:   32: notes.AppendFormat("{0} Team Project Collection : {1}{0}", Environment.NewLine, tpc.Name); 33: _twitterService.SendTweet(String.Format("http://Lunartech.codeplex.com - Connecting to Team Project Collection : {0} ", tpc.Name)); 34:   35: // Get catalog of tp = 'Team Projects' for the tpc = 'Team Project Collection' 36: var tpNodes = tpcNode.QueryChildren( 37: new Guid[] { CatalogResourceTypes.TeamProject }, 38: false, CatalogQueryOptions.None); 39:   40: foreach (var p in tpNodes) 41: { 42: notes.AppendFormat("{0} Team Project : {1} - {2}{0}", Environment.NewLine, p.Resource.DisplayName,  "This is an open source project hosted on codeplex"); 43: _twitterService.SendTweet(String.Format(" Connected to Team Project: '{0}' – '{1}' ", p.Resource.DisplayName, "This is an open source project hosted on codeplex")); 44: } 45: } 46: notes.AppendFormat("{0} Updates posted on Twitter : {1} {0}", Environment.NewLine, @"http://twitter.com/lunartech1"); 47: lblNotes.Text = notes.ToString(); 48: } 49: catch (Exception ex) 50: { 51: lblError.Text = " Message : " + ex.Message + (ex.InnerException != null ? " Inner Exception : " + ex.InnerException : string.Empty); 52: } 53: }   The extensions you can build integrating TFS and Twitter are incredible!   Share this post :

    Read the article

  • EU Digital Agenda scores 85/100

    - by trond-arne.undheim
    If the Digital Agenda was a bottle of wine and I were wine critic Robert Parker, I would say the Digital Agenda has "a great bouquet, many good elements, with astringent, dry and puckering mouth feel that will not please everyone, but still displaying some finesse. A somewhat controlled effort with no surprises and a few noticeable flaws in the delivery. Noticeably shorter aftertaste than advertised by the producers. Score: 85/100. Enjoy now". The EU Digital Agenda states that "standards are vital for interoperability" and has a whole chapter on interoperability and standards. With this strong emphasis, there is hope the EU's outdated standardization system finally is headed for reform. It has been 23 years since the legal framework of standardisation was completed by Council Decision 87/95/EEC8 in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector. Standardization is market driven. For several decades the IT industry has been developing standards and specifications in global open standards development organisations (fora/consortia), many of which have transparency procedures and practices far superior to the European Standards Organizations. The Digital Agenda rightly states: "reflecting the rise and growing importance of ICT standards developed by certain global fora and consortia". Some fora/consortia, of course, are distorted, influenced by single vendors, have poor track record, and need constant vigilance, but they are the minority. Therefore, the recognition needs to be accompanied by eligibility criteria focused on openness. Will the EU reform its ICT standardization by the end of 2010? Possibly, and only if DG Enterprise takes on board that Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) have driven half of the productivity growth in Europe over the past 15 years, a prominent fact in the EU's excellent Digital Competitiveness report 2010 published on Monday 17 May. It is ok to single out the ICT sector. It simply is the most important sector right now as it fuels growth in all other sectors. Let's not wait for the entire standardization package which may take another few years. Europe does not have time. The Digital Agenda is an umbrella strategy with deliveries from a host of actors across the Commission. For instance, the EU promises to issue "guidance on transparent ex-ante disclosure rules for essential intellectual property rights and licensing terms and conditions in the context of standard setting", by 2011 in the Horisontal Guidelines now out for public consultation by DG COMP and to some extent by DG ENTR's standardization policy reform. This is important. The EU will issue procurement guidance as interoperability frameworks are put into practice. This is a joint responsibility of several DGs, and is likely to suffer coordination problems, controversy and delays. We have seen plenty of the latter already and I have commented on the Commission's own interoperability elsewhere, with mixed luck. :( Yesterday, I watched the cartoonesque Korean western film The Good, the Bad and the Weird. In the movie (and I meant in the movie only), a bandit, a thief, and a bounty hunter, all excellent at whatever they do, fight for a treasure map. Whether that is a good analogy for the situation within the Commission, others are better judges of than I. However, as a movie fanatic, I still await the final shoot-out, and, as in the film, the only certainty is that "life is about chasing and being chased". The missed opportunity (in this case not following up the push from Member States to better define open standards based interoperability) is a casualty of the chaos ensued in the European Wild West (and I mean that in the most endearing sense, and my excuses beforehand to actors who possibly justifiably cannot bear being compared to fictional movie characters). Instead of exposing the ongoing fight, the EU opted for the legalistic use of the term "standards" throughout the document. This is a term that--to the EU-- excludes most standards used by the IT industry world wide. So, while it, for a moment, meant "weapon down", it will not lead to lasting peace. The Digital Agenda calls for the Member States to "Implement commitments on interoperability and standards in the Malmö and Granada Declarations by 2013". This is a far cry from the actual Ministerial Declarations which called upon the Commission to help them with this implementation by recognizing and further defining open standards based interoperability. Unless there is more forthcoming from the Commission, the market's judgement will be: you simply fall short. Generally, I think the EU focus now should be "from policy to practice" and the Digital Agenda does indeed stop short of tackling some highly practical issues. There is need for progress beyond the Digital Agenda. Here are some suggestions that would help Europe re-take global leadership on openness, public sector reform, and economic growth: A strong European software strategy centred around open standards based interoperability by 2011. An ambitious new eCommission strategy for 2011-15 focused on migration to open standards by 2015. Aligning the IT portfolio across the Commission into one Digital Agenda DG by 2012. Focusing all best practice exchange in eGovernment on one social networking site, epractice.eu (full disclosure: I had a role in getting that site up and running) Prioritizing public sector needs in global standardization over European standardization by 2014.

    Read the article

  • Memory Efficient Windows SOA Server

    - by Antony Reynolds
    Installing a Memory Efficient SOA Suite 11.1.1.6 on Windows Server Well 11.1.1.6 is now available for download so I thought I would build a Windows Server environment to run it.  I will minimize the memory footprint of the installation by putting all functionality into the Admin Server of the SOA Suite domain. Required Software 64-bit JDK SOA Suite If you want 64-bit then choose “Generic” rather than “Microsoft Windows 32bit JVM” or “Linux 32bit JVM” This has links to all the required software. If you choose “Generic” then the Repository Creation Utility link does not show, you still need this so change the platform to “Microsoft Windows 32bit JVM” or “Linux 32bit JVM” to get the software. Similarly if you need a database then you need to change the platform to get the link to XE for Windows or Linux. If possible I recommend installing a 64-bit JDK as this allows you to assign more memory to individual JVMs. Windows XE will work, but it is better if you can use a full Oracle database because of the limitations on XE that sometimes cause it to run out of space with large or multiple SOA deployments. Installation Steps The following flow chart outlines the steps required in installing and configuring SOA Suite. The steps in the diagram are explained below. 64-bit? Is a 64-bit installation required?  The Windows & Linux installers will install 32-bit versions of the Sun JDK and JRockit.  A separate JDK must be installed for 64-bit. Install 64-bit JDK The 64-bit JDK can be either Hotspot or JRockit.  You can choose either JDK 1.7 or 1.6. Install WebLogic If you are using 64-bit then install WebLogic using “java –jar wls1036_generic.jar”.  Make sure you include Coherence in the installation, the easiest way to do this is to accept the “Typical” installation. SOA Suite Required? If you are not installing SOA Suite then you can jump straight ahead and create a WebLogic domain. Install SOA Suite Run the SOA Suite installer and point it at the existing Middleware Home created for WebLogic.  Note to run the SOA installer on Windows the user must have admin privileges.  I also found that on Windows Server 2008R2 I had to start the installer from a command prompt with administrative privileges, granting it privileges when it ran caused it to ignore the jreLoc parameter. Database Available? Do you have access to a database into which you can install the SOA schema.  SOA Suite requires access to an Oracle database (it is supported on other databases but I would always use an oracle database). Install Database I use an 11gR2 Oracle database to avoid XE limitations.  Make sure that you set the database character set to be unicode (AL32UTF8).  I also disabled the new security settings because they get in the way for a developer database.  Don’t forget to check that number of processes is at least 150 and number of sessions is not set, or is set to at least 200 (in the DB init parameters). Run RCU The SOA Suite database schemas are created by running the Repository Creation Utility.  Install the “SOA and BPM Infrastructure” component to support SOA Suite.  If you keep the schema prefix as “DEV” then the config wizard is easier to complete. Run Config Wizard The Config wizard creates the domain which hosts the WebLogic server instances.  To get a minimum footprint SOA installation choose the “Oracle Enterprise Manager” and “Oracle SOA Suite for developers” products.  All other required products will be automatically selected. The “for developers” installs target the appropriate components at the AdminServer rather than creating a separate managed server to house them.  This reduces the number of JVMs required to run the system and hence the amount of memory required.  This is not suitable for anything other than a developer environment as it mixes the admin and runtime functions together in a single server.  It also takes a long time to load all the required modules, making start up a slow process. If it exists I would recommend running the config wizard found in the “oracle_common/common/bin” directory under the middleware home.  This should have access to all the templates, including SOA. If you also want to run BAM in the same JVM as everything else then you need to “Select Optional Configuration” for “Managed Servers, Clusters and Machines”. To target BAM at the AdminServer delete the “bam_server1” managed server that is created by default.  This will result in BAM being targeted at the AdminServer. Installation Issues I had a few problems when I came to test everything in my mega-JVM. Following applications were not targeted and so I needed to target them at the AdminServer: b2bui composer Healthcare UI FMW Welcome Page Application (11.1.0.0.0) How Memory Efficient is It? On a Windows 2008R2 Server running under VirtualBox I was able to bring up both the 11gR2 database and SOA/BPM/BAM in 3G memory.  I allocated a minimum 512M to the PermGen and a minimum of 1.5G for the heap.  The setting from setSOADomainEnv are shown below: set DEFAULT_MEM_ARGS=-Xms1536m -Xmx2048m set PORT_MEM_ARGS=-Xms1536m -Xmx2048m set DEFAULT_MEM_ARGS=%DEFAULT_MEM_ARGS% -XX:PermSize=512m -XX:MaxPermSize=768m set PORT_MEM_ARGS=%PORT_MEM_ARGS% -XX:PermSize=512m -XX:MaxPermSize=768m I arrived at these numbers by monitoring JVM memory usage in JConsole. Task Manager showed total system memory usage at 2.9G – just below the 3G I allocated to the VM. Performance is not stellar but it runs and I could run JDeveloper alongside it on my 8G laptop, so in that sense it was a result!

    Read the article

  • The illusion of Competence

    - by tony_lombardo
    Working as a contractor opened my eyes to the developer food chain.  Even though I had similar experiences earlier in my career, the challenges seemed much more vivid this time through.  I thought I’d share a couple of experiences with you, and the lessons that can be taken from them. Lesson 1: Beware of the “funnel” guy.  The funnel guy is the one who wants you to funnel all thoughts, ideas and code changes through him.  He may say it’s because he wants to avoid conflicts in source control, but the real reason is likely that he wants to hide your contributions.  Here’s an example.  When I finally got access to the code on one of my projects, I was told by the developer that I had to funnel all of my changes through him.  There were 4 of us coding on the project, but only 2 of us working on the UI.  The other 2 were working on a separate application, but part of the overall project.  So I figured, I’ll check it into SVN, he reviews and accepts then merges in.  Not even close.  I didn’t even have checkin rights to SVN, I had to email my changes to the developer so he could check those changes in.  Lesson 2: If you point out flaws in code to someone supposedly ‘higher’ than you in the developer chain, they’re going to get defensive.  My first task on this project was to review the code, familiarize myself with it.  So of course, that’s what I did.  And in familiarizing myself with it, I saw so many bad practices and code smells that I immediately started coming up with solutions to fix it.  Of course, when I reviewed these changes with the developer (guy who originally wrote the code), he smiled and nodded and said, we can’t make those changes now, it’s too destabilizing.  I recommended we create a new branch and start working on refactoring, but branching was a new concept for this guy and he was worried we would somehow break SVN. How about some concrete examples? I started out by recommending we remove NUnit dependency and tests from the application project, and create a separate Unit testing project.  This was met with a little bit of resistance because - “How do I access the private methods?”  As it turned out there weren’t really any private methods that weren’t exposed by public methods, so I quickly calmed this fear. Win 1 Loss 0 Next, I recommended that all of the File IO access be wrapped in Using clauses, or at least properly wrapped in try catch finally.  This recommendation was accepted.. but never implemented. Win 2  Loss 1 Next recommendation was to refactor the command pattern implementation.  The command pattern was implemented, but it wasn’t really necessary for the application.  More over, the fact that we had 100 different command classes, each with it’s own specific command parameters class, made maintenance a huge hassle.  The same code repeated over and over and over.  This recommendation was declined, the code was too fragile and this change would destabilize it.  I couldn’t disagree, though it was the commands themselves in many cases that were fragile. Win 2 Loss 2 Next recommendation was to aid performance (and responsiveness) of the application by using asynchronous service calls.  This on was accepted. Win 2 Loss 3 If you’re paying any attention, you’re wondering why the async service calls was scored as a loss.. Let me explain.  The service call was made using the async pattern.  Followed by a thread.sleep  <facepalm>. Now it’s easy to be harsh on this kind of code, especially if you’re an experienced developer.  But I understood how most of this happened.  One junior guy, working as hard as he can to build his first real world application, with little or no guidance from anyone else.  He had his pattern book and theory of programming to help him, but no real world experience.  He didn’t know how difficult it would be to trace the crashes to the coding issues above, but he will one day.  The part that amazed me was the management position that “this guy should be a team lead, because he’s worked so hard”.  I’m all for rewarding hard work, but when you reward someone by promoting them past the point of their competence, you’re setting yourself and them up for failure.  And that’s lesson 3.  Just because you’ve got a hard worker, doesn’t mean he should be leading a development project.  If you’re a junior guy busting your ass, keep at it.  I encourage you to try new things, but most importantly to learn from your mistakes.  And correct your mistakes.  And if someone else looks at your code and shows you a laundry list of things that should be done differently, don’t take it personally – they’re really trying to help you.  And if you’re a senior guy, working with a junior guy, it’s your duty to point out the flaws in the code.  Even if it does make you the bad guy.  And while I’ve used “guy” above, I mean both men and women.  And in some cases mutant dinosaurs. 

    Read the article

  • How to install Sweetcron on XAMPP

    - by Sushaantu
    This tutorial will take you to the installation steps required to install Sweetcron in the XAMPP. I am taking the liberty to assume that you have already installed XAMPP. I First of all download sweetcron and copy the extracted “sweetcron” folder inside the htdocs folder in the XAMPP directory. You have to get few things in place before installing sweetcron: 1. Create a sweetcron database using Mysql. You can just put a name “sweetcron” and leave all the other settings such as Mysql connection collation as it is. Now that you have the database ready you can configure few settings before making sweetcron to work on XAMPP. 2. Open the config-sample PHP file with your text editor (something like Notepad++ or Komodo Edit is recommended) which is located in Sweetcron/system/application/config. You have to make few changes in it. a. In the first settings you have to edit the value of $config ['base_url']. The default value is             “http://www.your-site.com”; and you have to change that into “http://localhost/sweetcron/”; b. You also have to change the deafult settings of $config ['uri_protocol']. The value that you will see is “REQUEST_URI”; but you need to change that into “AUTO”; c. Now that we have made all the changes you can rename the file from config_sample to just config. 3. Open the database-sample.php in the text editor. You need to make the edits regarding the databse in here. a. The values of the databse at the moment are like this: $db['default']['hostname'] = “localhost”; $db['default']['username'] = “”; $db['default']['password'] = “”; $db['default']['database'] = “”; $db['default']['dbdriver'] = “mysql”; $db['default']['dbprefix'] = “”; $db['default']['pconnect'] = TRUE; $db['default']['db_debug'] = TRUE; $db['default']['cache_on'] = FALSE; $db['default']['cachedir'] = “”; $db['default']['char_set'] = “utf8″; $db['default']['dbcollat'] = “utf8_general_ci”; You have to change that into $db['default']['hostname'] = “localhost”; $db['default']['username'] = “root”; $db['default']['password'] = “”; $db['default']['database'] = “sweetcron”; $db['default']['dbdriver'] = “mysql”; $db['default']['dbprefix'] = “”; $db['default']['pconnect'] = TRUE; $db['default']['db_debug'] = TRUE; $db['default']['cache_on'] = FALSE; $db['default']['cachedir'] = “”; $db['default']['char_set'] = “utf8″; $db['default']['dbcollat'] = “utf8_general_ci”; We have written the username as root along with the name of database (sweetcron in my case). Since I was not using any password in xampp for the sweetcron database so I have left the password option empty. You can make suitable changes according to your system. Write down your password in the third line if you are using one in xampp. b. Now that we have made all the edits we can change the file name from database-sample to just database. 4. That leaves us with only one setting and that is editing values in the .htaccess file with our text editor. The default values you will have in the .htaccess file are: Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L] and you just have to add “sweetcron” after Rewritebase in the third line. Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteBase /sweetcron RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L] 5. Now you are all set and done. You can access sweetcron in the localhost by going to http://localhost/sweetcron/ you will see some text on the top which would prompt you to click on one script. Click that script and behold, you have your sweetcrom installation on xampp ready. Further it will ask you to add deatils such as Lifestream name, username and email address. Fill those deatils and you will reach the admin panel.

    Read the article

  • Shadow mapping with deffered shading for directional lights - shadow map projection problem

    - by Harry
    I'm trying to implement shadow mapping to my engine. I started with directional lights because they seemed to be the easiest one, but I was wrong :) I have implemented deferred shading and I retrieve position from depth. I think that there is the biggest problem but code looks ok for me. Now more about problem: Shadow map projected onto meshes looks bad scaled and translated and also some informations from shadow map texture aren't visible. You can see it on this screen: http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/2254/93dn.png Yelow frustum is light frustum and I have mixed shadow map preview and actual scene. As you can see shadows are in wrong place and shadow of cone and sphere aren't visible. Could you look at my codes and tell me where I have a mistake? // create shadow map if(!_shd)glGenTextures(1, &_shd); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, _shd); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT, 1024, 1024, 0, GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT, GL_FLOAT,NULL); // shadow map size glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glFramebufferTexture2D(GL_DRAW_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_DEPTH_ATTACHMENT, GL_TEXTURE_2D, _shd, 0); glDrawBuffer(GL_NONE); // setting camera Vector dire=Vector(0,0,1); ACamera.setLookAt(dire,Vector(0)); ACamera.setPerspectiveView(60.0f,1,0.1f,10.0f); // currently needed for proper frustum corners calculation Vector min(ACamera._point[0]),max(ACamera._point[0]); for(int i=0;i<8;i++){ max=Max(max,ACamera._point[i]); min=Min(min,ACamera._point[i]); } ACamera.setOrthogonalView(min.x,max.x,min.y,max.y,-max.z,-min.z); glBindFramebuffer(GL_DRAW_FRAMEBUFFER, _s_buffer); // framebuffer for shadow map // rendering to depth buffer glBindFramebuffer(GL_DRAW_FRAMEBUFFER, _g_buffer); Shaders["DirLight"].set(true); Matrix4 bias; bias.x.set(0.5,0.0,0.0,0.0); bias.y.set(0.0,0.5,0.0,0.0); bias.z.set(0.0,0.0,0.5,0.0); bias.w.set(0.5,0.5,0.5,1.0); Shaders["DirLight"].set("textureMatrix",ACamera.matrix*Projection3D*bias); // order of multiplications are 100% correct, everything gives mi the same result as using glm glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE5); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D,_shd); lightDir(dir); // light calculations Vertex Shader makes nothing related to shadow calculatons Pixel shader function which calculates if pixel is in shadow or not: float readShadowMap(vec3 eyeDir) { // retrieve depth of pixel float z = texture2D(depth, gl_FragCoord.xy/screen).z; vec3 pos = vec3(gl_FragCoord.xy/screen, z); // transform by the projection and view inverse vec4 worldSpace = inverse(View)*inverse(ProjectionMatrix)*vec4(pos*2-1,1); worldSpace /= worldSpace.w; vec4 coord=textureMatrix*worldSpace; float vis=1.0f; if(texture2D(shadow, coord.xy).z < coord.z-0.001)vis=0.2f; return vis; } I also have question about shadows specifically for directional light. Currently I always look at 0,0,0 position and in further implementation I have to move light frustum along to camera frustum. I've found how to do this here: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/505893-orthographic-projection-for-shadow-mapping/ but it doesn't give me what I want. Maybe because of problems mentioned above, but I want know your opinion. EDIT: vec4 worldSpace is position read from depht of the scene (not shadow map). Maybe I wasn't precise so I'll try quick explain what is what: View is camera view matrix, ProjectionMatrix is camera projection,. First I try to get world space position from depth map and then multiply it by textureMatrix which is light view *light projection*bias. Rest of code is the same as in many tutorials. I can't use vertex shader to make something like gl_Position=textureMatrix*gl_Vertex and get it interpolated in fragment shader because of deffered rendering use so I want get it from depht buffer. EDIT2: I also tried make it as in Coding Labs tutorial about Shadow Mapping with Deferred Rendering but unfortunately this either works wrong.

    Read the article

  • Backup Your Windows Home Server Off-Site with Asus Webstorage

    - by Mysticgeek
    Windows Home Server lets you backup machines on your network easily. But what about backing up the server data? Today we take a look at ASUS WebStorage for Windows Home Server, which provides you with secure off-site backup for WHS. To use the ASUS WebStorage service you’ll need to sign up for a free account. It offers 1GB of free storage, then you can purchase an unlimited backup package for $39.99 for a year subscription. Note: They also offer online storage for individual PCs as well. Install ASUS WebStorage for WHS Browse to your shared folders on the server and open the Add-Ins folder and copy over the WHSConnectorSetup2.2.4.088.msi file (link below) then close out of the folder. Now launch Windows Home Server Console from one of the computers on your network, click Settings, then Add-ins. Under Available Add-ins click the Available tab and you’ll see the Asus WebStorage installer file we just copied over. Click the Install button. Installation kicks off and when it’s complete, you’ll need to close out of the console and reconnect. Using ASUS WebStorage WHS Connector  When you reconnect to WHS Console, scroll over to the ASUS WebStorage icon and click on Settings. Now log into your ASUS account… Now select the folders you want to backup to the WebStorage service. Select the radio button next to Enable to initialize the backup process… The backup process begins. You can change which folders are backed up simply by disabling the backup process, uncheck the folder(s), then enable the backup again. ASUS WebStorage Site After you have files backed up to the ASUS site, log into your account, and your presented with an overview of the amount of storage you’re using. It also shows what type of files are taking certain amounts of space.   You can browse through your backed up files and folders. It allows you to share and sync backed up data as well. Navigate to the file you want and you can easily download it by clicking on it, or share it out by clicking the share link below it. If you choose to share it, you’re provided with a link to the file to send out to other users.   Conclusion Users of Windows Home Server have been looking for an inexpensive cloud backup solution for quite some time. There are services such as JungleDisk, KeepVault, Wuala…etc. These services probably do a better job, but can start getting expensive once you start uploading a GBs of data. Another disappointment of ASUS WebStorage is you can only backup your WHS shares (from what we’ve been able to determine), it’s an “all or nothing” type of thing. You cannot go in and select individual files and folders. The initial upload speeds can be a bit slow as well, although that might have something to do with limited upload speeds on the DSL connection we used to test it. Retrieving your data from the ASUS site is a breeze though, and all the data files are organized quite well. The WHS Addin is very easy to install and use. If you’re looking for an off-site solution to backup your WHS data, you can test out ASUS WebStorage for free with a 1GB limit. This is good for testing the service and it might be exactly what you’re looking for. Other users may want a more advanced solution like KeepVault or CloudBerry…which is a front end for Amazon S3 storage. Download ASUS WebStorage WHS Addin Other WHS Offsite Backup Solutions CloudBerry, JungleDisk, KeepVault, Wuala Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Restore Files from Backups on Windows Home ServerGMedia Blog: Setting Up a Windows Home ServerCreate A Windows Home Server Home Computer Restore DiscRemove a Network Computer from Windows Home ServerShare Ubuntu Home Directories using Samba TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 532 533 534 535 536 537 538 539 540 541 542 543  | Next Page >