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  • Picking good first estimates for Goldschmidt division

    - by Mads Elvheim
    I'm calculating fixedpoint reciprocals in Q22.10 with Goldschmidt division for use in my software rasterizer on ARM. This is done by just setting the nominator to 1, i.e the nominator becomes the scalar on the first iteration. To be honest, I'm kind of following the wikipedia algorithm blindly here. The article says that if the denominator is scaled in the half-open range (0.5, 1.0], a good first estimate can be based on the denominator alone: Let F be the estimated scalar and D be the denominator, then F = 2 - D. But when doing this, I lose a lot of precision. Say if I want to find the reciprocal of 512.00002f. In order to scale the number down, I lose 10 bits of precision in the fraction part, which is shifted out. So, my questions are: Is there a way to pick a better estimate which does not require normalization? Also, is it possible to pre-calculate the first estimates so the series converges faster? Right now, it converges after the 4th iteration on average. On ARM this is about ~50 cycles worst case, and that's not taking emulation of clz/bsr into account, nor memory lookups. Here is my testcase. Note: The software implementation of clz on line 13 is from my post here. You can replace it with an intrinsic if you want. #include <stdio.h> #include <stdint.h> const unsigned int BASE = 22ULL; static unsigned int divfp(unsigned int val, int* iter) { /* Nominator, denominator, estimate scalar and previous denominator */ unsigned long long N,D,F, DPREV; int bitpos; *iter = 1; D = val; /* Get the shift amount + is right-shift, - is left-shift. */ bitpos = 31 - clz(val) - BASE; /* Normalize into the half-range (0.5, 1.0] */ if(0 < bitpos) D >>= bitpos; else D <<= (-bitpos); /* (FNi / FDi) == (FN(i+1) / FD(i+1)) */ /* F = 2 - D */ F = (2ULL<<BASE) - D; /* N = F for the first iteration, because the nominator is simply 1. So don't waste a 64-bit UMULL on a multiply with 1 */ N = F; D = ((unsigned long long)D*F)>>BASE; while(1){ DPREV = D; F = (2<<(BASE)) - D; D = ((unsigned long long)D*F)>>BASE; /* Bail when we get the same value for two denominators in a row. This means that the error is too small to make any further progress. */ if(D == DPREV) break; N = ((unsigned long long)N*F)>>BASE; *iter = *iter + 1; } if(0 < bitpos) N >>= bitpos; else N <<= (-bitpos); return N; } int main(int argc, char* argv[]) { double fv, fa; int iter; unsigned int D, result; sscanf(argv[1], "%lf", &fv); D = fv*(double)(1<<BASE); result = divfp(D, &iter); fa = (double)result / (double)(1UL << BASE); printf("Value: %8.8lf 1/value: %8.8lf FP value: 0x%.8X\n", fv, fa, result); printf("iteration: %d\n",iter); return 0; }

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  • Parallel processing via multithreading in Java

    - by Robz
    There are certain algorithms whose running time can decrease significantly when one divides up a task and gets each part done in parallel. One of these algorithms is merge sort, where a list is divided into infinitesimally smaller parts and then recombined in a sorted order. I decided to do an experiment to test whether or not I could I increase the speed of this sort by using multiple threads. I am running the following functions in Java on a Quad-Core Dell with Windows Vista. One function (the control case) is simply recursive: // x is an array of N elements in random order public int[] mergeSort(int[] x) { if (x.length == 1) return x; // Dividing the array in half int[] a = new int[x.length/2]; int[] b = new int[x.length/2+((x.length%2 == 1)?1:0)]; for(int i = 0; i < x.length/2; i++) a[i] = x[i]; for(int i = 0; i < x.length/2+((x.length%2 == 1)?1:0); i++) b[i] = x[i+x.length/2]; // Sending them off to continue being divided mergeSort(a); mergeSort(b); // Recombining the two arrays int ia = 0, ib = 0, i = 0; while(ia != a.length || ib != b.length) { if (ia == a.length) { x[i] = b[ib]; ib++; } else if (ib == b.length) { x[i] = a[ia]; ia++; } else if (a[ia] < b[ib]) { x[i] = a[ia]; ia++; } else { x[i] = b[ib]; ib++; } i++; } return x; } The other is in the 'run' function of a class that extends thread, and recursively creates two new threads each time it is called: public class Merger extends Thread { int[] x; boolean finished; public Merger(int[] x) { this.x = x; } public void run() { if (x.length == 1) { finished = true; return; } // Divide the array in half int[] a = new int[x.length/2]; int[] b = new int[x.length/2+((x.length%2 == 1)?1:0)]; for(int i = 0; i < x.length/2; i++) a[i] = x[i]; for(int i = 0; i < x.length/2+((x.length%2 == 1)?1:0); i++) b[i] = x[i+x.length/2]; // Begin two threads to continue to divide the array Merger ma = new Merger(a); ma.run(); Merger mb = new Merger(b); mb.run(); // Wait for the two other threads to finish while(!ma.finished || !mb.finished) ; // Recombine the two arrays int ia = 0, ib = 0, i = 0; while(ia != a.length || ib != b.length) { if (ia == a.length) { x[i] = b[ib]; ib++; } else if (ib == b.length) { x[i] = a[ia]; ia++; } else if (a[ia] < b[ib]) { x[i] = a[ia]; ia++; } else { x[i] = b[ib]; ib++; } i++; } finished = true; } } It turns out that function that does not use multithreading actually runs faster. Why? Does the operating system and the java virtual machine not "communicate" effectively enough to place the different threads on different cores? Or am I missing something obvious?

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  • MVC multi page form losing session

    - by Bryan
    I have a multi-page form that's used to collect leads. There are multiple versions of the same form that we call campaigns. Some campaigns are 3 page forms, others are 2 pages, some are 1 page. They all share the same lead model and campaign controller, etc. There is 1 action for controlling the flow of the campaigns, and a separate action for submitting all the lead information into the database. I cannot reproduce this locally, and there are checks in place to ensure users can't skip pages. Session mode is InProc. This runs after every POST action which stores the values in session: protected override void OnActionExecuted(ActionExecutedContext filterContext) { base.OnActionExecuted(filterContext); if (this.Request.RequestType == System.Net.WebRequestMethods.Http.Post && this._Lead != null) ParentStore.Lead = this._Lead; } This is the Lead property within the controller: private Lead _Lead; /// <summary> /// Gets the session stored Lead model. /// </summary> /// <value>The Lead model stored in session.</value> protected Lead Lead { get { if (this._Lead == null) this._Lead = ParentStore.Lead; return this._Lead; } } ParentStore class: public static class ParentStore { internal static Lead Lead { get { return SessionStore.Get<Lead>(Constants.Session.Lead, new Lead()); } set { SessionStore.Set(Constants.Session.Lead, value); } } Campaign POST action: [HttpPost] public virtual ActionResult Campaign(Lead lead, string campaign, int page) { if (this.Session.IsNewSession) return RedirectToAction("Campaign", new { campaign = campaign, page = 0 }); if (ModelState.IsValid == false) return View(GetCampaignView(campaign, page), this.Lead); TrackLead(this.Lead, campaign, page, LeadType.Shared); return RedirectToAction("Campaign", new { campaign = campaign, page = ++page }); } The problem is occuring between the above action, and before the following Submit action executes: [HttpPost] public virtual ActionResult Submit(Lead lead, string campaign, int page) { if (this.Session.IsNewSession || this.Lead.Submitted || !this.LeadExists) return RedirectToAction("Campaign", new { campaign = campaign, page = 0 }); lead.AddCustomQuestions(); MergeLead(campaign, lead, this.AdditionalQuestionsType, false); if (ModelState.IsValid == false) return View(GetCampaignView(campaign, page), this.Lead); var sharedLead = this.Lead.ToSharedLead(Request.Form.ToQueryString(false)); //Error occurs here and sends me an email with whatever values are in the form collection. EAUtility.ProcessLeadProxy.SubmitSharedLead(sharedLead); this.Lead.Submitted = true; VisitorTracker.DisplayConfirmationPixel = true; TrackLead(this.Lead, campaign, page, LeadType.Shared); return RedirectToAction(this.ConfirmationView); } Every visitor to our site gets a unique GUID visitorID. But when these error occurs there is a different visitorID between the Campaign POST and the Submit POST. Because we track each form submission via the TrackLead() method during campaign and submit actions I can see session is being lost between calls, despite the OnActionExecuted firing after every POST and storing the form in session. So when there are errors, we get half the form under one visitorID and the remainder of the form under a different visitorID. Luckily we use a third party service which sends an API call every time a form value changes which uses it's own ID. These IDs are consistent between the first half of the form, and the remainder of the form, and the only way I can save the leads from the lost session issues. I should also note that this works fine 99% of the time. EDIT: I've modified my code to explicitly store my lead object in TempData and used the TempData.Keep() method to persist the object between subsequent requests. I've only deployed this behavior to 1 of my 3 sites but so far so good. I had also tried storing my lead objects in Session directly in the controller action i.e., Session.Add("lead", this._Lead); which uses HTTPSessionStateBase, attempting to circumvent the wrapper class, instead of HttpContext.Current.Session which uses HTTPSessionState. This modification made no difference on the issue, as expected.

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  • HTML/JS/CSS issue getting bigger by itself

    - by Azzyh
    Here's the picture to begin with. I have this check box, that when you check, then with jQuery toggle(); it hides that you see in first half of the picture (#writeComment) and shows #SCtryVOTE (what you see in the other half picture, to the right). Now i dont know why but of some reason it expands when its checked, why i dont know, is it because it needs more place than it have or? how do i make this work without having problems when its checked. Here's coding: $('#tryout').click(function () { $('#writeComment').toggle(!$(this).attr('checked')); $('#SCtryVOTE').toggle($(this).attr('checked')); }); the js jquery script part, heres the table and divs HTML part: <input type="checkbox" id="tryout"> <table align="center" width="400" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="1" id="theBoxer"> <tr style="background: #686868;"> <td align="center" valign="top" width="70" height="25" style="border:1px #FFF solid;">Opret</td> <td align="center" valign="top" width="70" height="25" style="border:1px #FFF solid;">Opret</td> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="left" valign="top" width="70" height="112" style=""> TEST </td> <td align="left" valign="top" width="70" height="112" style=""> <div id="writeComment"> Smid en kommentar:<br> <form action="javascript:DoInsert()" method="post"> <textarea id="kommentar" name="kommentar"></textarea><br /> <input type="hidden" name="fID" id="fID" value="<? echo $_GET["id"]; ?>"> <input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Sæt ind!"> </form> </div> <div id="SCtryVOTE" style="display: none;"> <form onsubmit="if (!this.comment.cleared) clearContents( document.getElementById('comment') ); return true;" action="javascript:DoSCInsert()" method="post"> <textarea onfocus=" javascript:clearContents(this); this.cleared=true;" rows="5" cols="40" id="comment" name="comment" <?php if($vis["username"] == $pusername) { echo "DISABLED"; } ?>>Tryk for at skrive. Skal være detaljeret og grundet.</textarea> <br>Ja: <input type="radio" value="Y" id="SCvoteY" name="vote"></input> Nej: <input type="radio" id="SCvoteN" value="N" name="vote"> </input> <input type="submit" id="SCstem" name="Submit" value="Stem!"> </form> </div> Maybe you need the CSS part too for these two boxes: #writeComment{ position: relative; left: 5px; top: 10px; } #SCtryVOTE{ position: relative; left: 5px; top: 10px; }

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  • Draw Circle on the Map once the application gets loaded

    - by TechGeeky
    Background:- In my application what is happening currently- Whenever I am opening the application, In the top half of the android screen, it draws a Map and in the bottom half of the android screen it show's a list view. And then as soon as the location gets changed, it draw's a Circle with the current location as the center of the circle and show's an image at the current location(center of circle). Everything is working fine till here- Problem Statement:- What I want is when the user opens my application, circle should get draw immediately on the Google Map (this is currently not happening, it draw's circle only on the location changed), without waiting for the location to get changed and without any image on the center of circle and then if the location get's changed, take the current location as the center of circle and draw the circle with an image at the center of circle. And this is my below code which fulfills the scenario that I mentioned in my Background- How can I make this code to work the way I wanted to? hope I am clear enough in my question. Any suggestions will be appreciated. @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.activity_main); mapView = (MapView) findViewById(R.id.mapView); listView = (ListView) findViewById(R.id.mylist); locationManager = (LocationManager) getSystemService(Context.LOCATION_SERVICE); locationListener = new GPSLocationListener(mapView); locationManager.requestLocationUpdates( LocationManager.GPS_PROVIDER, 35000, 10, locationListener); mapView.setStreetView(true); mapView.setBuiltInZoomControls(true); mapController = mapView.getController(); mapController.setZoom(14); } Location Update class where I am sending the request to Overlay to draw the circle private class GPSLocationListener implements LocationListener { MapOverlay mapOverlay; public GPSLocationListener(MapView mapView) { } @Override public void onLocationChanged(Location location) { if (location != null) { GeoPoint point = new GeoPoint( (int) (location.getLatitude() * 1E6), (int) (location.getLongitude() * 1E6)); mapController.animateTo(point); mapController.setZoom(15); if (mapOverlay == null) { mapOverlay = new MapOverlay(this,android.R.drawable.star_on); List<Overlay> listOfOverlays = mapView.getOverlays(); listOfOverlays.add(mapOverlay); } mapOverlay.setPointToDraw(point); mapView.invalidate(); } } @Override public void onProviderDisabled(String provider) { } @Override public void onProviderEnabled(String provider) { } @Override public void onStatusChanged(String provider, int status, Bundle extras) { } } Class in which circle is getting drawn. class MapOverlay extends Overlay { private GeoPoint pointToDraw; int[] imageNames=new int[6]; private Point mScreenPoints; private Bitmap mBitmap; private Paint mCirclePaint; public MapOverlay(GPSLocationListener gpsLocationListener, int currentUser) { imageNames[0]=currentUser; mCirclePaint = new Paint(Paint.ANTI_ALIAS_FLAG); mCirclePaint.setColor(0x30000000); mCirclePaint.setStyle(Style.FILL_AND_STROKE); mBitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(),imageNames[0]); mScreenPoints = new Point(); } public void setPointToDraw(GeoPoint point) { pointToDraw = point; } public GeoPoint getPointToDraw() { return pointToDraw; } @Override public boolean draw(Canvas canvas, MapView mapView, boolean shadow, long when) { super.draw(canvas, mapView, shadow); if (pointToDraw == null) { return true; } mScreenPoints = mapView.getProjection().toPixels(pointToDraw, mScreenPoints); int totalCircle=5; int radius=40; int centerimagesize=35; for (int i = 1; i <= totalCircle; i ++) { canvas.drawCircle(mScreenPoints.x,mScreenPoints.y, i*radius, mCirclePaint); } canvas.drawBitmap(mBitmap, (mScreenPoints.x-(centerimagesize/2)),(mScreenPoints.y-(centerimagesize/2)), null); super.draw(canvas,mapView,shadow); return true; } }

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  • Normalizing a table

    - by Alex
    I have a legacy table, which I can't change. The values in it can be modified from legacy application (application also can't be changed). Due to a lot of access to the table from new application (new requirement), I'd like to create a temporary table, which would hopefully speed up the queries. The actual requirement, is to calculate number of business days from X to Y. For example, give me all business days from Jan 1'st 2001 until Dec 24'th 2004. The table is used to mark which days are off, as different companies may have different days off - it isn't just Saturday + Sunday) The temporary table would be created from a .NET program, each time user enters the screen for this query (user may run query multiple times, with different values, table is created once), so I'd like it to be as fast as possible. Approach below runs in under a second, but I only tested it with a small dataset, and still it takes probably close to half a second, which isn't great for UI - even though it's just the overhead for first query. The legacy table looks like this: CREATE TABLE [business_days]( [country_code] [char](3) , [state_code] [varchar](4) , [calendar_year] [int] , [calendar_month] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month2] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month3] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month4] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month5] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month6] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month7] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month8] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month9] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month10] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month11] [varchar](31) , [calendar_month12] [varchar](31) , misc. ) Each month has 31 characters, and any day off (Saturday + Sunday + holiday) is marked with X. Each half day is marked with an 'H'. For example, if a month starts on a Thursday, than it will look like (Thursday+Friday workdays, Saturday+Sunday marked with X): ' XX XX ..' I'd like the new table to look like so: create table #Temp (country varchar(3), state varchar(4), date datetime, hours int) And I'd like to only have rows for days which are off (marked with X or H from previous query) What I ended up doing, so far is this: Create a temporary-intermediate table, that looks like this: create table #Temp_2 (country_code varchar(3), state_code varchar(4), calendar_year int, calendar_month varchar(31), month_code int) To populate it, I have a union which basically unions calendar_month, calendar_month2, calendar_month3, etc. Than I have a loop which loops through all the rows in #Temp_2, after each row is processed, it is removed from #Temp_2. To process the row there is a loop from 1 to 31, and substring(calendar_month, counter, 1) is checked for either X or H, in which case there is an insert into #Temp table. [edit added code] Declare @country_code char(3) Declare @state_code varchar(4) Declare @calendar_year int Declare @calendar_month varchar(31) Declare @month_code int Declare @calendar_date datetime Declare @day_code int WHILE EXISTS(SELECT * From #Temp_2) -- where processed = 0) BEGIN Select Top 1 @country_code = t2.country_code, @state_code = t2.state_code, @calendar_year = t2.calendar_year, @calendar_month = t2.calendar_month, @month_code = t2.month_code From #Temp_2 t2 -- where processed = 0 set @day_code = 1 while @day_code <= 31 begin if substring(@calendar_month, @day_code, 1) = 'X' begin set @calendar_date = convert(datetime, (cast(@month_code as varchar) + '/' + cast(@day_code as varchar) + '/' + cast(@calendar_year as varchar))) insert into #Temp (country, state, date, hours) values (@country_code, @state_code, @calendar_date, 8) end if substring(@calendar_month, @day_code, 1) = 'H' begin set @calendar_date = convert(datetime, (cast(@month_code as varchar) + '/' + cast(@day_code as varchar) + '/' + cast(@calendar_year as varchar))) insert into #Temp (country, state, date, hours) values (@country_code, @state_code, @calendar_date, 4) end set @day_code = @day_code + 1 end delete from #Temp_2 where @country_code = country_code AND @state_code = state_code AND @calendar_year = calendar_year AND @calendar_month = calendar_month AND @month_code = month_code --update #Temp_2 set processed = 1 where @country_code = country_code AND @state_code = state_code AND @calendar_year = calendar_year AND @calendar_month = calendar_month AND @month_code = month_code END I am not an expert in SQL, so I'd like to get some input on my approach, and maybe even a much better approach suggestion. After having the temp table, I'm planning to do (dates would be coming from a table): select cast(convert(datetime, ('01/31/2012'), 101) -convert(datetime, ('01/17/2012'), 101) as int) - ((select sum(hours) from #Temp where date between convert(datetime, ('01/17/2012'), 101) and convert(datetime, ('01/31/2012'), 101)) / 8) Besides the solution of normalizing the table, the other solution I implemented for now, is a function which does all this logic of getting the business days by scanning the current table. It runs pretty fast, but I'm hesitant to call a function, if I can instead add a simpler query to get result. (I'm currently trying this on MSSQL, but I would need to do same for Sybase ASE and Oracle)

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  • Full & Last Lunar Eclipse Of 2010 On December 21st

    - by Kavitha
    A total and last eclipse of the Moon occurs during the early morning hours of December 21, 2010 (for observers in western North America and Hawaii, the eclipse actually begins on the evening of December 20). You can fully view the total lunar eclipse from North America, Greenland and Iceland. The beginning stages of the eclipse is visible in Western Europe and the later stages after moonrise is visible in Western Asia. Total Lunar Eclipse Timings According to NASA “The Moon’s orbital trajectory takes it through the northern half of Earth’s umbral shadow. Although the eclipse is not central, the total phase still lasts 72 minutes”. The timings of the major eclipse phases are listed below. Penumbral Eclipse Begins 05:29:17 UT Partial Eclipse Begins 06:32:37 UT Total Eclipse Begins 07:40:47 UT Greatest Eclipse 08:16:57 UT Total Eclipse Ends 08:53:08 UT Partial Eclipse Ends 10:01:20 UT Penumbral Eclipse Ends 11:04:31 UT The timings of the major eclipse phases are listed below.   Total Lunar Eclipse of December 21, 2010   Europe North America Pacific Event GMT AST EST CST MST PST AKST HST Partial Eclipse Begins: 06:33 am 02:33 am 01:33 am 12:33 am 11:33 pm* 10:33 pm* 09:33 pm* 08:33 pm* Total Eclipse Begins: 07:41 am 03:41 am 02:41 am 01:41 am 12:41 am 11:41 pm* 10:41 pm* 09:41 pm* Mid-Eclipse: 08:17 am 04:17 am 03:17 am 02:17 am 01:17 am 12:17 am 11:17 pm* 10:17 pm* Total Eclipse Ends: 08:53 am 04:53 am 03:53 am 02:53 am 01:53 am 12:53 am 11:53 pm* 10:53 pm* Partial Eclipse Ends: 10:01 am 06:01 am 05:01 am 04:01 am 03:01 am 02:01 am 01:01 am 12:01 am Note: * Event occurs on evening of December 20, 2010 In India the Total Lunar Eclipse will take place between 13:10:47 and 14:23:08 on December 21st 2010. Animation Of Total Lunar Eclipse ShadowsAndSubstance website has a beautiful flash animation of December 21 2010 Total Lunar Eclipse and you can view it here Image Credit : flickr/stargazer95050 This article titled,Full & Last Lunar Eclipse Of 2010 On December 21st, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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  • How To Restore Firefox Options To Default Without Uninstalling

    - by Gopinath
    Firefox plugins are awesome and they are the pillars for the huge success of Firefox browser. Plugins vary from simple ones like changing color scheme of the browser to powerful ones likes changing the behavior of the browser itself. Recently I installed one of the powerful Firefox plugins and played around to tweak the behavior of the browser. At the end of my half an hour play, Firefox has completely become useless and stopped rending web pages properly. To continue using Firefox I had to restore it to default settings. But I don’t like to uninstall and then install it again as it’s a time consuming process and also I’ll loose all the plugins I’m using. How did I restore the default settings in a single click? Default Settings Restore Through Safe Mode Options It’s very easy to restore default settings of Firefox with the safe mode options. All we need to do is 1.  Close all the Firefox browser windows that are open 2. Launch Firefox in safe mode 3. Choose the option Reset all user preferences to Firefox defaults 4. Click on Make Changes and Restart button. Note: When Firefox restore the default settings, it erases all the stored passwords, browser history and other settings you have done. That’s all. This excellent feature of Firefox saved me from great pain and hope it’s going to help you too. Join us on Facebook to read all our stories right inside your Facebook news feed.

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  • How To Restore Firefox Options To Default Without Uninstalling

    - by Gopinath
    Firefox plugins are awesome and they are the pillars for the huge success of Firefox browser. Plugins vary from simple ones like changing color scheme of the browser to powerful ones likes changing the behavior of the browser itself. Recently I installed one of the powerful Firefox plugins and played around to tweak the behavior of the browser. At the end of my half an hour play, Firefox has completely become useless and stopped rending web pages properly. To continue using Firefox I had to restore it to default settings. But I don’t like to uninstall and then install it again as it’s a time consuming process and also I’ll loose all the plugins I’m using. How did I restore the default settings in a single click? Default Settings Restore Through Safe Mode Options It’s very easy to restore default settings of Firefox with the safe mode options. All we need to do is 1.  Close all the Firefox browser windows that are open 2. Launch Firefox in safe mode 3. Choose the option Reset all user preferences to Firefox defaults 4. Click on Make Changes and Restart button. Note: When Firefox restore the default settings, it erases all the stored passwords, browser history and other settings you have done. That’s all. This excellent feature of Firefox saved me from great pain and hope it’s going to help you too. Join us on Facebook to read all our stories right inside your Facebook news feed.

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  • AJI Report #19 | Scott K Davis and his son Tommy on Gamification and Programming for Kids

    - by Jeff Julian
    We are very excited about this show. John and Jeff sat down with Scott Davis and his son Tommy to talk about Gamification and Programming for Kids. Tommy is nine years old and the Iowa Code Camp was his second time presenting. Scott and Tommy introduce a package called Scratch that was developed by MIT to teach kids about logic and interacting with programming using sprites. Tommy's favorite experience with programming right now is Lego Mindstorms because of the interaction with the Legos and the development. Most adults when they get started with development also got started with interacting more with the physical machines. The next generation is given amazing tools, but the tools tend to be sealed and the physical interaction is not there. With some of these alternative hobby platforms like Legos, Arduino, and .NET Micro Framework, kids can write some amazing application and see their code work with physical movement and interaction with devices and sensors. In the second half of this podcast, Scott talks about how companies can us Gamification to prompt employees to interact with software and processes in the organization. We see gamification throughout the consumer space and you need to do is open up the majority of the apps on our phones or tablets and there is some interaction point to give the user a reward for using the tool. Scott gets into his product Qonqr which is described as the board game Risk and Foursquare together. Scott gets into the different mindsets of gamers (Bartle Index) and how you can use these mindsets to get the most out of your team through gamification techniques. Listen to the Show Site: http://scottkdavis.com/ Twitter: @ScottKDavis LinkedIn: ScottKDavis Scratch: http://scratch.mit.edu/ Lego Mindstorms: http://mindstorms.lego.com/ Bartle Test: Wikipedia Gamification: Wikipedia

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  • SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Jonathan Kehayias – Wait Type – Day 16 of 28

    - by pinaldave
    Jonathan Kehayias (Blog | Twitter) is a MCITP Database Administrator and Developer, who got started in SQL Server in 2004 as a database developer and report writer in the natural gas industry. After spending two and a half years working in TSQL, in late 2006, he transitioned to the role of SQL Database Administrator. His primary passion is performance tuning, where he frequently rewrites queries for better performance and performs in depth analysis of index implementation and usage. Jonathan blogs regularly on SQLBlog, and was a coauthor of Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting. On a personal note, I think Jonathan is extremely positive person. In every conversation with him I have found that he is always eager to help and encourage. Every time he finds something needs to be approved, he has contacted me without hesitation and guided me to improve, change and learn. During all the time, he has not lost his focus to help larger community. I am honored that he has accepted to provide his views on complex subject of Wait Types and Queues. Currently I am reading his series on Extended Events. Here is the guest blog post by Jonathan: SQL Server troubleshooting is all about correlating related pieces of information together to indentify where exactly the root cause of a problem lies. In my daily work as a DBA, I generally get phone calls like, “So and so application is slow, what’s wrong with the SQL Server.” One of the funny things about the letters DBA is that they go so well with Default Blame Acceptor, and I really wish that I knew exactly who the first person was that pointed that out to me, because it really fits at times. A lot of times when I get this call, the problem isn’t related to SQL Server at all, but every now and then in my initial quick checks, something pops up that makes me start looking at things further. The SQL Server is slow, we see a number of tasks waiting on ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION, IO_COMPLETION, or PAGEIOLATCH_* waits in sys.dm_exec_requests and sys.dm_exec_waiting_tasks. These are also some of the highest wait types in sys.dm_os_wait_stats for the server, so it would appear that we have a disk I/O bottleneck on the machine. A quick check of sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats() and tempdb shows a high write stall rate, while our user databases show high read stall rates on the data files. A quick check of some performance counters and Page Life Expectancy on the server is bouncing up and down in the 50-150 range, the Free Page counter consistently hits zero, and the Free List Stalls/sec counter keeps jumping over 10, but Buffer Cache Hit Ratio is 98-99%. Where exactly is the problem? In this case, which happens to be based on a real scenario I faced a few years back, the problem may not be a disk bottleneck at all; it may very well be a memory pressure issue on the server. A quick check of the system spec’s and it is a dual duo core server with 8GB RAM running SQL Server 2005 SP1 x64 on Windows Server 2003 R2 x64. Max Server memory is configured at 6GB and we think that this should be enough to handle the workload; or is it? This is a unique scenario because there are a couple of things happening inside of this system, and they all relate to what the root cause of the performance problem is on the system. If we were to query sys.dm_exec_query_stats for the TOP 10 queries, by max_physical_reads, max_logical_reads, and max_worker_time, we may be able to find some queries that were using excessive I/O and possibly CPU against the system in their worst single execution. We can also CROSS APPLY to sys.dm_exec_sql_text() and see the statement text, and also CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan() to get the execution plan stored in cache. Ok, quick check, the plans are pretty big, I see some large index seeks, that estimate 2.8GB of data movement between operators, but everything looks like it is optimized the best it can be. Nothing really stands out in the code, and the indexing looks correct, and I should have enough memory to handle this in cache, so it must be a disk I/O problem right? Not exactly! If we were to look at how much memory the plan cache is taking by querying sys.dm_os_memory_clerks for the CACHESTORE_SQLCP and CACHESTORE_OBJCP clerks we might be surprised at what we find. In SQL Server 2005 RTM and SP1, the plan cache was allowed to take up to 75% of the memory under 8GB. I’ll give you a second to go back and read that again. Yes, you read it correctly, it says 75% of the memory under 8GB, but you don’t have to take my word for it, you can validate this by reading Changes in Caching Behavior between SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 RTM and SQL Server 2005 SP2. In this scenario the application uses an entirely adhoc workload against SQL Server and this leads to plan cache bloat, and up to 4.5GB of our 6GB of memory for SQL can be consumed by the plan cache in SQL Server 2005 SP1. This in turn reduces the size of the buffer cache to just 1.5GB, causing our 2.8GB of data movement in this expensive plan to cause complete flushing of the buffer cache, not just once initially, but then another time during the queries execution, resulting in excessive physical I/O from disk. Keep in mind that this is not the only query executing at the time this occurs. Remember the output of sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats() showed high read stalls on the data files for our user databases versus higher write stalls for tempdb? The memory pressure is also forcing heavier use of tempdb to handle sorting and hashing in the environment as well. The real clue here is the Memory counters for the instance; Page Life Expectancy, Free List Pages, and Free List Stalls/sec. The fact that Page Life Expectancy is fluctuating between 50 and 150 constantly is a sign that the buffer cache is experiencing constant churn of data, once every minute to two and a half minutes. If you add to the Page Life Expectancy counter, the consistent bottoming out of Free List Pages along with Free List Stalls/sec consistently spiking over 10, and you have the perfect memory pressure scenario. All of sudden it may not be that our disk subsystem is the problem, but is instead an innocent bystander and victim. Side Note: The Page Life Expectancy counter dropping briefly and then returning to normal operating values intermittently is not necessarily a sign that the server is under memory pressure. The Books Online and a number of other references will tell you that this counter should remain on average above 300 which is the time in seconds a page will remain in cache before being flushed or aged out. This number, which equates to just five minutes, is incredibly low for modern systems and most published documents pre-date the predominance of 64 bit computing and easy availability to larger amounts of memory in SQL Servers. As food for thought, consider that my personal laptop has more memory in it than most SQL Servers did at the time those numbers were posted. I would argue that today, a system churning the buffer cache every five minutes is in need of some serious tuning or a hardware upgrade. Back to our problem and its investigation: There are two things really wrong with this server; first the plan cache is excessively consuming memory and bloated in size and we need to look at that and second we need to evaluate upgrading the memory to accommodate the workload being performed. In the case of the server I was working on there were a lot of single use plans found in sys.dm_exec_cached_plans (where usecounts=1). Single use plans waste space in the plan cache, especially when they are adhoc plans for statements that had concatenated filter criteria that is not likely to reoccur with any frequency.  SQL Server 2005 doesn’t natively have a way to evict a single plan from cache like SQL Server 2008 does, but MVP Kalen Delaney, showed a hack to evict a single plan by creating a plan guide for the statement and then dropping that plan guide in her blog post Geek City: Clearing a Single Plan from Cache. We could put that hack in place in a job to automate cleaning out all the single use plans periodically, minimizing the size of the plan cache, but a better solution would be to fix the application so that it uses proper parameterized calls to the database. You didn’t write the app, and you can’t change its design? Ok, well you could try to force parameterization to occur by creating and keeping plan guides in place, or we can try forcing parameterization at the database level by using ALTER DATABASE <dbname> SET PARAMETERIZATION FORCED and that might help. If neither of these help, we could periodically dump the plan cache for that database, as discussed as being a problem in Kalen’s blog post referenced above; not an ideal scenario. The other option is to increase the memory on the server to 16GB or 32GB, if the hardware allows it, which will increase the size of the plan cache as well as the buffer cache. In SQL Server 2005 SP1, on a system with 16GB of memory, if we set max server memory to 14GB the plan cache could use at most 9GB  [(8GB*.75)+(6GB*.5)=(6+3)=9GB], leaving 5GB for the buffer cache.  If we went to 32GB of memory and set max server memory to 28GB, the plan cache could use at most 16GB [(8*.75)+(20*.5)=(6+10)=16GB], leaving 12GB for the buffer cache. Thankfully we have SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2, 3, and 4 these days which include the changes in plan cache sizing discussed in the Changes to Caching Behavior between SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 RTM and SQL Server 2005 SP2 blog post. In real life, when I was troubleshooting this problem, I spent a week trying to chase down the cause of the disk I/O bottleneck with our Server Admin and SAN Admin, and there wasn’t much that could be done immediately there, so I finally asked if we could increase the memory on the server to 16GB, which did fix the problem. It wasn’t until I had this same problem occur on another system that I actually figured out how to really troubleshoot this down to the root cause.  I couldn’t believe the size of the plan cache on the server with 16GB of memory when I actually learned about this and went back to look at it. SQL Server is constantly telling a story to anyone that will listen. As the DBA, you have to sit back and listen to all that it’s telling you and then evaluate the big picture and how all the data you can gather from SQL about performance relate to each other. One of the greatest tools out there is actually a free in the form of Diagnostic Scripts for SQL Server 2005 and 2008, created by MVP Glenn Alan Berry. Glenn’s scripts collect a majority of the information that SQL has to offer for rapid troubleshooting of problems, and he includes a lot of notes about what the outputs of each individual query might be telling you. When I read Pinal’s blog post SQL SERVER – ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 11 of 28, I noticed that he referenced Checking Memory Related Performance Counters in his post, but there was no real explanation about why checking memory counters is so important when looking at an I/O related wait type. I thought I’d chat with him briefly on Google Talk/Twitter DM and point this out, and offer a couple of other points I noted, so that he could add the information to his blog post if he found it useful.  Instead he asked that I write a guest blog for this. I am honored to be a guest blogger, and to be able to share this kind of information with the community. The information contained in this blog post is a glimpse at how I do troubleshooting almost every day of the week in my own environment. SQL Server provides us with a lot of information about how it is running, and where it may be having problems, it is up to us to play detective and find out how all that information comes together to tell us what’s really the problem. This blog post is written by Jonathan Kehayias (Blog | Twitter). Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: MVP, Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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  • Free .NET Training at DevCare in Dallas...

    - by [email protected]
    Come take an early look at the debugging experience in VS 2010 this Friday (3/25/2010) at TekFocus in Dallas, at the InfoMart, at 9 AM: In this session, we’ll … Dive deep into the new IntelliTrace (formerly, historical debugging) feature, which enables you to step back in time within your debugging session and inspect or re-execute code, without having to restart your application See how to manage large numbers of breakpoints with labeling, searching and filtering Extend “data tips” by adding comments, notes and strategically “pinning” these resources to maintain their visibility throughout your session Demonstrate “collaborative debugging,“ by debugging a portion of an application and then exporting breakpoints and labeled data tips, so that others can leverage your effort, without having to start over Leverage these new debugging features in applications built in earlier versions of the .NET Framework through the MultiTargeting features available in VS 2010 You’ll walk-away with a clear understanding of how you can use this upcoming technology to vastly increase your productivity and build better software.Register to attend ==>  http://www.dallasdevcares.com/upcoming-sessions/ DevCares is a monthly series of FREE half-day events sponsored by TekFocus and Microsoft. Targeted specifically at developers, the content is presented by experts on a variety of .NET topics. These briefings include expert testimonials, working demos and sample code designed to help you get the most out of application development with .NET. Events are held on the last Friday of each month at the TekFocus offices in the Infomart near downtown Dallas.TekFocus is a full-service technology training provider with a core business delivering Microsoft-certified technical training and product skills enhancements to customers worldwide    

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  • Book Review &ndash; Developer&rsquo;s Guide To Collections in Microsoft&reg; .NET

    - by Lori Lalonde
    Developer’s Guide To Collections in Microsoft® .NET, by Calvin Janes, discusses the various collections available in the built-in NET libraries, as well as  the advantages and disadvantages of using each type of collection. Other areas are also covered including how collections utilize memory, how to use LINQ with collections, using threading with collections, serializing collections, and how to bind collections to controls in Windows Forms, WPF and Silverlight. For developers looking for a simple reference book on collections, then this book will serve that purpose and serve it well. For those looking for a great read from cover-to-cover, they may be disappointed. This book tends to be repetitive in discussion topics, examples, and code samples in the first two parts of the book. In the first part, the author conducts walk-throughs to develop custom collections. In  the second part, the author conducts walk-throughs on using the built-in .NET collections. For experienced .NET developers, the first two parts will not provide much value. However, it is beneficial for new developers who have not worked with the built-in collections in .NET. They will obtain an understanding of the mechanics of the built-in collections and how memory is utilized when using the various types of collections. So in this aspect, new developers will get more value out of this book. The third and fourth parts delve into advanced topics, including using LINQ, threading, serialization and data binding. I find these two parts of the book are well written and flow better than the first two parts. Both beginner and experienced developers will find value in this half of the book, mainly on the topics of threading and serialization. The eBook format of this book was provided free through O'Reilly's Blogger Review program. This book can be purchased from the O'Reilly book store at: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0790145317193.do

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  • Best of "The Moth" 2011

    - by Daniel Moth
    Once again (like in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010) the time has come to wish you a Happy New Year and to share my favorite posts from the year we just left behind. 1. My first blog entry in January and last one in December were both about my Windows Phone app: Translator by Moth and Translator by Moth v2. In between, I shared a few code snippets for Windows Phone development including a watermark textbox, a scroll helper, an RTL helper and a network connectivity helper - there will be more coming in 2012. 2. Efficiently using Microsoft Office products is the hallmark of an efficient Program Manager (and not only), and I'll continue sharing tips on this blog in that area. An example from last year is tracking changes in SharePoint-hosted Word document. 3. Half-way through last year I moved from managing the parallel debugger team to managing the C++ AMP team (both of them in Visual Studio 11). That means I had to deprioritize sharing content on VS parallel debugging features (I promise to do that in 2012), and it also meant that I wrote a lot about C++ AMP. You'll need a few cups of coffee to go through all of it, and most of the links were aggregated on this single highly recommended post: Give a session on C++ AMP – here is how You can stay tuned for more by subscribing via one of the options on the left… Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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  • Streaming Netflix Media with My Wii

    - by Ben Griswold
    Late last year, I wrote about Streaming Media with my Sony Blu-ray Disc Player. I am still digging the Blu-ray player setup but guess what showed up in the mail yesterday?   That’s right!  A free Netflix disc which now let’s me instantly watch TV episodes and movies via my Wii console.  I popped the disc into the console and in less than 2 minutes the brain-numbingly simple activation was complete.  (Full-disclosure: I already had my Wi-Fi connection configured, but I’m confident that the Netflix installation disc would have helpfully walked me through this additional step if need be.) As it turns out, the Wii Netflix UI offers far more options than what one gets with the Blu-ray setup.  Not only can I view my Instant Queue, but there’s a list of recently watched movies, a list of recommended titles by category, the star rating system, movies information and nearly everything you find on the web.  I reread Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability on a flight back from Orlando on Wednesday, so my current view of the world may be a little skewed but, the brilliance of Netflix Wii’s user interface is undeniable. It’s not like the Blu-ray navigation is complicated but the Wii navigation feels familiar and intuitive. How intuitive?  Well, you won’t find a single bit of help text on any of the Wii screens – just a simple and obvious point-and-click navigation system.  And the UI is really pretty (which is still very important if you ask me) and so easy it became fun. Did I mention the media streaming works!  Yep, we watched 2 half-hour kid videos yesterday without any streaming issues at all.  If you have a Netflix account and a Wii, order your disc and give it a go. It’s good stuff.

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  • What’s new in SQL Prompt 6.3?

    - by Tom Crossman
    This post describes some of the improvements we’ve made in the latest version of SQL Prompt. Code suggestions In recent months, the focus of the SQL Prompt development team has been to remove annoyances and improve code suggestions. Here’s just a few of the improvements to code suggestions we’ve made in SQL Prompt 6.3: The suggestions box is no longer shown when there are no suggestions Suggestions are now shown if you continue to type a half-completed word More suggestions for new SQL Server 2014 syntax Improvements to partial match suggestions Improved suggestion ordering As well as improving suggestions, we’ve also added some new features. Select in Object Explorer You can now use SQL Prompt to select an object in the Object Explorer from a query window. This is useful because many SSMS features are available from an object’s Object Explorer context menu (eg select top 1000 rows, design, script as). To select an object in the Object Explorer, place the cursor over the object you want to select and press Ctrl + F12: Here’s a short video of the feature in action. $SELECTIONSTART$ and $SELECTIONEND$ placeholders You can now use $SELECTIONSTART$ and $SELECTIONEND$ placeholders in your snippet code. The code between these placeholders is selected when you insert the snippet. For example, the following snippet: $SELECTIONSTART$SELECT TOP 100 * FROM Table1$SELECTIONEND$ is inserted as: You can then press F5 to run the selected snippet code. For the full list of snippet placeholders you can use, see the documentation. Highlighting matching parentheses If your cursor is next to an opening or closing parenthesis in a query, SQL Prompt now automatically highlights the matching parenthesis: You can then use the SSMS and Visual Studio shortcut Ctrl + ] to move between parentheses. More improvements Those are just a few of the improvements in SQL Prompt 6.3. For the full list of features and bug fixes, see the release notes.

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  • Your finger prints may unlock your iPhone and it’s digital wallets

    - by Gopinath
    The next version of iPhone is going to have a biometric sensor which may allow your finger prints to authenticate and authorize – unlock the device, sign in to an account, authorize a credit card transaction, etc . The iOS 7 beta 4 released couple of days ago had many traces of biometric software libraries embedded in the OS and they make it pretty clear that Apple is preparing a new iPhone with finger sensor. Biometric sensors are not something new in digital devices. Most of us have been already using them on your laptops to unlock the computers as well as to launch applications. Though these sensors are available in many devices, they are hardly reliable. My personal laptop has a biometric sensor and half of the time either it does not work or it does not recognize my finger prints. When works, it works like a charm and very easy to unlock my device. But Apple is known for delivering great products by nailing down technical challenges and blending technology with beautiful user interfaces.  They had been doing when Steve Jobs was leading the pack and hope his legacy will be carried forward by Tim Cook by delivering amazing products in coming months.  I expect iPhone finger sensors to work flawlessly. Photo credit: flickr/nettsu

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  • Recover Data Like a Forensics Expert Using an Ubuntu Live CD

    - by Trevor Bekolay
    There are lots of utilities to recover deleted files, but what if you can’t boot up your computer, or the whole drive has been formatted? We’ll show you some tools that will dig deep and recover the most elusive deleted files, or even whole hard drive partitions. We’ve shown you simple ways to recover accidentally deleted files, even a simple method that can be done from an Ubuntu Live CD, but for hard disks that have been heavily corrupted, those methods aren’t going to cut it. In this article, we’ll examine four tools that can recover data from the most messed up hard drives, regardless of whether they were formatted for a Windows, Linux, or Mac computer, or even if the partition table is wiped out entirely. Note: These tools cannot recover data that has been overwritten on a hard disk. Whether a deleted file has been overwritten depends on many factors – the quicker you realize that you want to recover a file, the more likely you will be able to do so. Our setup To show these tools, we’ve set up a small 1 GB hard drive, with half of the space partitioned as ext2, a file system used in Linux, and half the space partitioned as FAT32, a file system used in older Windows systems. We stored ten random pictures on each hard drive. We then wiped the partition table from the hard drive by deleting the partitions in GParted. Is our data lost forever? Installing the tools All of the tools we’re going to use are in Ubuntu’s universe repository. To enable the repository, open Synaptic Package Manager by clicking on System in the top-left, then Administration > Synaptic Package Manager. Click on Settings > Repositories and add a check in the box labelled “Community-maintained Open Source software (universe)”. Click Close, and then in the main Synaptic Package Manager window, click the Reload button. Once the package list has reloaded, and the search index rebuilt, search for and mark for installation one or all of the following packages: testdisk, foremost, and scalpel. Testdisk includes TestDisk, which can recover lost partitions and repair boot sectors, and PhotoRec, which can recover many different types of files from tons of different file systems. Foremost, originally developed by the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations, recovers files based on their headers and other internal structures. Foremost operates on hard drives or drive image files generated by various tools. Finally, scalpel performs the same functions as foremost, but is focused on enhanced performance and lower memory usage. Scalpel may run better if you have an older machine with less RAM. Recover hard drive partitions If you can’t mount your hard drive, then its partition table might be corrupted. Before you start trying to recover your important files, it may be possible to recover one or more partitions on your drive, recovering all of your files with one step. Testdisk is the tool for the job. Start it by opening a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and typing in: sudo testdisk If you’d like, you can create a log file, though it won’t affect how much data you recover. Once you make your choice, you’re greeted with a list of the storage media on your machine. You should be able to identify the hard drive you want to recover partitions from by its size and label. TestDisk asks you select the type of partition table to search for. In most cases (ext2/3, NTFS, FAT32, etc.) you should select Intel and press Enter. Highlight Analyse and press enter. In our case, our small hard drive has previously been formatted as NTFS. Amazingly, TestDisk finds this partition, though it is unable to recover it. It also finds the two partitions we just deleted. We are able to change their attributes, or add more partitions, but we’ll just recover them by pressing Enter. If TestDisk hasn’t found all of your partitions, you can try doing a deeper search by selecting that option with the left and right arrow keys. We only had these two partitions, so we’ll recover them by selecting Write and pressing Enter. Testdisk informs us that we will have to reboot. Note: If your Ubuntu Live CD is not persistent, then when you reboot you will have to reinstall any tools that you installed earlier. After restarting, both of our partitions are back to their original states, pictures and all. Recover files of certain types For the following examples, we deleted the 10 pictures from both partitions and then reformatted them. PhotoRec Of the three tools we’ll show, PhotoRec is the most user-friendly, despite being a console-based utility. To start recovering files, open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and type in: sudo photorec To begin, you are asked to select a storage device to search. You should be able to identify the right device by its size and label. Select the right device, and then hit Enter. PhotoRec asks you select the type of partition to search. In most cases (ext2/3, NTFS, FAT, etc.) you should select Intel and press Enter. You are given a list of the partitions on your selected hard drive. If you want to recover all of the files on a partition, then select Search and hit enter. However, this process can be very slow, and in our case we only want to search for pictures files, so instead we use the right arrow key to select File Opt and press Enter. PhotoRec can recover many different types of files, and deselecting each one would take a long time. Instead, we press “s” to clear all of the selections, and then find the appropriate file types – jpg, gif, and png – and select them by pressing the right arrow key. Once we’ve selected these three, we press “b” to save these selections. Press enter to return to the list of hard drive partitions. We want to search both of our partitions, so we highlight “No partition” and “Search” and then press Enter. PhotoRec prompts for a location to store the recovered files. If you have a different healthy hard drive, then we recommend storing the recovered files there. Since we’re not recovering very much, we’ll store it on the Ubuntu Live CD’s desktop. Note: Do not recover files to the hard drive you’re recovering from. PhotoRec is able to recover the 20 pictures from the partitions on our hard drive! A quick look in the recup_dir.1 directory that it creates confirms that PhotoRec has recovered all of our pictures, save for the file names. Foremost Foremost is a command-line program with no interactive interface like PhotoRec, but offers a number of command-line options to get as much data out of your had drive as possible. For a full list of options that can be tweaked via the command line, open up a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and type in: foremost –h In our case, the command line options that we are going to use are: -t, a comma-separated list of types of files to search for. In our case, this is “jpeg,png,gif”. -v, enabling verbose-mode, giving us more information about what foremost is doing. -o, the output folder to store recovered files in. In our case, we created a directory called “foremost” on the desktop. -i, the input that will be searched for files. This can be a disk image in several different formats; however, we will use a hard disk, /dev/sda. Our foremost invocation is: sudo foremost –t jpeg,png,gif –o foremost –v –i /dev/sda Your invocation will differ depending on what you’re searching for and where you’re searching for it. Foremost is able to recover 17 of the 20 files stored on the hard drive. Looking at the files, we can confirm that these files were recovered relatively well, though we can see some errors in the thumbnail for 00622449.jpg. Part of this may be due to the ext2 filesystem. Foremost recommends using the –d command-line option for Linux file systems like ext2. We’ll run foremost again, adding the –d command-line option to our foremost invocation: sudo foremost –t jpeg,png,gif –d –o foremost –v –i /dev/sda This time, foremost is able to recover all 20 images! A final look at the pictures reveals that the pictures were recovered with no problems. Scalpel Scalpel is another powerful program that, like Foremost, is heavily configurable. Unlike Foremost, Scalpel requires you to edit a configuration file before attempting any data recovery. Any text editor will do, but we’ll use gedit to change the configuration file. In a terminal window (Applications > Accessories > Terminal), type in: sudo gedit /etc/scalpel/scalpel.conf scalpel.conf contains information about a number of different file types. Scroll through this file and uncomment lines that start with a file type that you want to recover (i.e. remove the “#” character at the start of those lines). Save the file and close it. Return to the terminal window. Scalpel also has a ton of command-line options that can help you search quickly and effectively; however, we’ll just define the input device (/dev/sda) and the output folder (a folder called “scalpel” that we created on the desktop). Our invocation is: sudo scalpel /dev/sda –o scalpel Scalpel is able to recover 18 of our 20 files. A quick look at the files scalpel recovered reveals that most of our files were recovered successfully, though there were some problems (e.g. 00000012.jpg). Conclusion In our quick toy example, TestDisk was able to recover two deleted partitions, and PhotoRec and Foremost were able to recover all 20 deleted images. Scalpel recovered most of the files, but it’s very likely that playing with the command-line options for scalpel would have enabled us to recover all 20 images. These tools are lifesavers when something goes wrong with your hard drive. If your data is on the hard drive somewhere, then one of these tools will track it down! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Recover Deleted Files on an NTFS Hard Drive from a Ubuntu Live CDUse an Ubuntu Live CD to Securely Wipe Your PC’s Hard DriveReset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CDBackup Your Windows Live Writer SettingsAdding extra Repositories on Ubuntu 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 Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites Restore Hidden Updates in Windows 7 & Vista Iceland an Insurance Job? Find Downloads and Add-ins for Outlook Recycle !

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  • Tuxedo 11gR1 Client Server Affinity

    - by todd.little
    One of the major new features in Oracle Tuxedo 11gR1 is the ability to define an affinity between clients and servers. In previous releases of Tuxedo, the only way to ensure that multiple requests from a client went to the same server was to establish a conversation with tpconnect() and then use tpsend() and tprecv(). Although this works it has some drawbacks. First for single-threaded servers, the server is tied up for the entire duration of the conversation and cannot service other clients, an obvious scalability issue. I believe the more significant drawback is that the application programmer has to switch from the simple request/response model provided by tpcall() to the half duplex tpsend() and tprecv() calls used with conversations. Switching between the two typically requires a fair amount of redesign and recoding. The Client Server Affinity feature in Tuxedo 11gR1 allows by way of configuration an application to define affinities that can exist between clients and servers. This is done in the *SERVICES section of the UBBCONFIG file. Using new parameters for services defined in the *SERVICES section, customers can determine when an affinity session is created or deleted, the scope of the affinity, and whether requests can be routed outside the affinity scope. The AFFINITYSCOPE parameter can be MACHINE, GROUP, or SERVER, meaning that while the affinity session is in place, all requests from the client will be routed to the same MACHINE, GROUP, or SERVER. The creation and deletion of affinity is defined by the SESSIONROLE parameter and a service can be defined as either BEGIN, END, or NONE, where BEGIN starts an affinity session, END deletes the affinity session, and NONE does not impact the affinity session. Finally customers can define how strictly they want the affinity scope adhered to using the AFFINITYSTRICT parameter. If set to MANDATORY, all requests made during an affinity session will be routed to a server in the affinity scope. Thus if the affinity scope is SERVER, all subsequent tpcall() requests will be sent to the same server the affinity scope was established with. If the server doesn't offer that service, even though other servers do offer the service, the call will fail with TPNOENT. Setting AFFINITYSTRICT to PRECEDENT tells Tuxedo to try and route the request to a server in the affinity scope, but if that's not possible, then Tuxedo can try to route the request to servers out of scope. All of this begs the question, why? Why have this feature? There many uses for this capability, but the most common is when there is state that is maintained in a server, group of servers, or in a machine and subsequent requests from a client must be routed to where that state is maintained. This might be something as simple as a database cursor maintained by a server on behalf of a client. Alternatively it might be that the server has a connection to an external system and subsequent requests need to go back to the server that has that connection. A more sophisticated case is where a group of servers maintains some sort of cache in shared memory and subsequent requests need to be routed to where the cache is maintained. Although this last case might be able to be handled by data dependent routing, using client server affinity allows the cache to be partitioned dynamically instead of statically.

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  • 2.5D game development

    - by ne5tebiu
    2.5D ("two-and-a-half-dimensional"), 3/4 perspective and pseudo-3D are terms used to describe either: graphical projections and techniques which cause a series of images or scenes to fake or appear to be three-dimensional (3D) when in fact they are not, or gameplay in an otherwise three-dimensional video game that is restricted to a two-dimensional plane. (Information taken from Wikipedia.org) I have a question based on 2.5D game development. As stated before, 2.5D uses graphical projections and techniques to make fake 3d or a gameplay restricted to a two-dimensional plane. A good example is a TQ Digital made game: Zero Online (screenshot) the whole map is made of 2d images and only NPCs and players are 3d. The maps were drawn manually by hand without any 3d software rendering. As I'm playing the game I feel like I'm going from a lower part of the map (ground) to a higher one (some metal platform) and it feels like I'm moving in 3 dimensions. But when I look closely, I see that the player size didn't change and the shadow too but I'm still feeling like I'm somehow higher then before (I had rendered a simple map myself that I made in 3dmax but it didn't quite give the result I wanted). How to accomplish such an effect?

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  • guvciew/youtube problem

    - by Anonymous
    I'm fairly new to Linux. Running on 12.10 Ubuntu. I've been running into some problems recording videos. Cheese crashes (as I've read from other users), YouTube will not allow me to select Allow (flash in Chrome and in Firefox). I managed to get 1 video uploaded from my cam and it worked about half the time, cut the audio off, lagged, etc. My computer is fine 4gigs, 32-bit i5 so it shouldn't be a problem. Now onto guv, I managed to get 1 video to work and after that every video I save it comes up with an orange file that looks like a film. I tried to change the file name, open in VLC, everything. I love Ubuntu and I'm never going back to Windows, ever One other thing to note is I am allowed to click "allowed" in Tiny chat. I even went to the adobe website to allow everything to bypass allow, deny option and nothing. Even went out of my way to add youtube/upload/cam for it to allow it and nothing. I realize right now Flash has been terrible for the past couple of months (especially in Chrome). What my question is well first and foremost, how do I fix this, if possible? I've thought about running Wine but I haven't heard anything good about it and I've already re reformated Ubuntu twice. Is there a codec pack I need too? Like I said everything works fine, especially in Chrome. It allows me to broadcast, no lag, and my mic works fine. guv would be my best option at this point because everything I've tried has given me nothing but trouble Thanks and I hope you guys can give me an answer. I've been at this for 2-3 days straight now. I could even go out of my way to not use Youtube and use something similar if it came down to it.

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  • Custom Profile Provider with Web Deployment Project

    - by Ben Griswold
    I wrote about implementing a custom profile provider inside of your ASP.NET MVC application yesterday. If you haven’t read the article, don’t sweat it.  Most of the stuff I write is rubbish anyway. Since you have joined me today, though, I might as well offer up a little tip: you can run into trouble, like I did, if you enable your custom profile provider inside of an application which is deployed using a Web Deployment Project.  Everything will run great on your local machine and you’ll probably take an early lunch because you got the code running in no time flat and the build server is happy and all tests pass and, gosh, maybe you’ll just cut out early because it is Friday after all.  But then the first user hits the integration machine and, that’s right, yellow screen of death. Lucky you, just as you’re walking out the door, the user kindly sends the exception message and stack trace: Value cannot be null. Parameter name: type Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. Stack Trace: [ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null. Parameter name: type] System.Activator.CreateInstance(Type type, Boolean nonPublic) +2796915 System.Web.Profile.ProfileBase.CreateMyInstance(String username, Boolean isAuthenticated) +76 System.Web.Profile.ProfileBase.Create(String username, Boolean isAuthenticated) +312 User error?  Not this time. Damn! One hour later… you notice the harmless “Treat as library component (remove the App_Code.compiled file)” setting on the Output Assemblies Tab of your Web Deployment Project. You have no idea why, but you uncheck it.  You test and everything works great both locally and on the integration machine.  Application users think you’re the best and you’re still going to catch the last half hour of happy hour.  Happy Friday.

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  • Why does my computer crash when I minimise the last window?

    - by TRiG
    I am runnung Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. If I have a few windows open (say four to six, not a large amount), and minimise all by pressing Ctrl+Super+D, they all minimise immediately with no problems. However, if I minimise them one at a time, by clicking the minimise button with my mouse, the last one often hangs. Usually it will appear as a ghost on the screen for a while, semi-minimised (in other words, shrunk toward the Unity launcher bar, half-size or smaller, and semi-transparent). Usually it will eventually clear; sometimes the computer just freezes and I have to restart it. It doesn’t seem to matter what the window actually is. Just now, I had to restart my computer with Skype* semi-minimised. I’ve seen it freeze before with the Terminal semi-minimised (and the Terminal wasn’t even doing anything at the time). The only pattern is that it’s always the last window minimised which freezes, and that minimising all windows together using the keyboard shortcut works fine. What on earth is going on, and how can I stop it? * I hate Skype, but I need it for work.

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  • UK Partner Briefing – Business Analytics - 24 Sept 2012

    - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM
    Monday 24th September 2012 - Oracle City Office, London Register Here for this important, free briefing Oracle Partners are invited to attend this Business Analytics Partner Briefing on 24th September 2012 in Oracle’s London Moorgate Offices with Particular focus on Exalytics, Endeca and, BI Mobile. Who should attend? Oracle Business Analytics is one of our fastest growing product lines, hence this briefing will be of value to any executives looking for new business opportunities or extending their existing Analytics line of business Background This half day event will inform you of Oracle's Business Analytics strategy, how your organisation can gain commercial advantage from reselling and deploying Oracle's BI portfolio, and the tools and resources to support your sales engagements. Agenda 13:45 – Registration, Coffee, and iPad set up 14:30 – Briefing Commences: Welcome & Introduction to the Business Analytics FY13 Strategy from Mike Pell, VP UK Business Analytics Sales 15:15 – Exalytics: Speed of Thought Analytics 16:00 – Mobile BI & Endeca 16:45 – Event Wrap-up and Q&A 17:00 – Meet the UK BI Sales Team: Networking Please note – If you have an iPad please bring it with you to the session, as we will be helping to set these up with BI Mobile from 13:45 onwards. Click here to register now for this briefing for Oracle Partners. Best regards, Mike Pell                                  Duncan Fitter                           Mike Thompson VP UK Analytics Sales             BA Business Development       Alliances & Channels

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  • Charging by the hour/project

    - by thesam18888
    This is related to a question I asked earlier - How to end a relationship with a client without pissing them off? What are your obligations when charging by the hour vs charging by project? If you agree to take on a project, give a rough estimate that it might take 10 days for you to work on and charge £X per hour - are you obligated to work for free after those 10 days are up and you have still not managed to complete your project due to unanticipated issues? What if you have delivered the project but bugs are found - should you fix these bugs for free if the 10 days are up or should you charge your client? Also, for the above project, what should be the result when you start on the project, but after the 10 days for whatever reason you have to give up and tell your client that you cannot do it anymore? I realise that this does nothing to build your reputation and relationship with the client but are you obligated to pay back the money paid to you or do you just deliver the half/nearly completed source code and help them find someone else to complete it? The reason I am asking the above questions is because I am very new to freelancing and would like to know how to deal with the above situations if they ever crop up. Thanks!

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