george powell - Page 6 - Developer IT

Antenna Aligner Part 5: Devil is in the detail

- by Chris George

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

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yield – Just yet another sexy c# keyword?

- by George Mamaladze

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

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

- by Chris George

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

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Where can I find Cinema4D for game development tutorials ?

- by George Profenza

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

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

- by George

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

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Silverlight Relay Commands

- by George Evjen

v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} I am fairly new at Silverlight development and I usually have an issue that needs research every day. Which I enjoy, since I like the idea of going into a day knowing that I am going to learn something new. The issue that I am currently working on centers around relay commands. I have a pretty good handle on Relay Commands and how we use them within our applications. <Button Command="{Binding ButtonCommand}" CommandParameter="NewRecruit" Content="New Recruit" /> Here in our xaml we have a button. The button has a Command and a CommandParameter. The command binds to the ButtonCommand that we have in our ViewModel RelayCommand _buttonCommand; /// <summary> /// Gets the button command. /// </summary> /// <value>The button command.</value> public RelayCommand ButtonCommand { get { if (_buttonCommand == null) { _buttonCommand = new RelayCommand( x => x != null && x.ToString().Length > 0 && CheckCommandAvailable(x.ToString()), x => ExecuteCommand(x.ToString())); } return _buttonCommand; } } In our relay command we then do some checks with a lambda expression. We check if the command parameter is null, is the length greater than 0 and we have a CheckCommandAvailable method that will tell us if the button is even enabled. After we check on these three items we then pass the command parameter to an action method. This is all pretty straight forward, the issue that we solved a few days ago centered around having a control that needed to use a Relay Command and this control was a nested control and was using a different DataContext. The example below illustrates how we handled this scenario. In our xaml usercontrol we had to set a name to this control. <Controls3:RadTileViewItem x:Class="RecruitStatusTileView" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:Controls1="clr-namespace:Telerik.Windows.Controls;assembly=Telerik.Windows.Controls" xmlns:Controls2="clr-namespace:Telerik.Windows.Controls;assembly=Telerik.Windows.Controls.Input" xmlns:Controls3="clr-namespace:Telerik.Windows.Controls;assembly=Telerik.Windows.Controls.Navigation" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignHeight="400" d:DesignWidth="800" Header="{Binding Title,Mode=TwoWay}" MinimizedHeight="100" x:Name="StatusView"> Here we are using a telerik RadTileViewItem. We set the name of this control to “StatusView”. In our button control we set our command parameters and commands different than the example above. <HyperlinkButton Content="{Binding BigBoardButtonText, Mode=TwoWay}" CommandParameter="{Binding 'Position.PositionName'}" Command="{Binding ElementName=StatusView, Path=DataContext.BigBoardCommand, Mode=TwoWay}" /> This hyperlink button lives in a ListBox control and this listbox has an ItemSource of PositionSelectors. The Command Parameter is binding to the Position.Position property of that PositionSelectors object. This again is pretty straight forward again. What gets a bit tricky is the Command property in the hyperlink. It is binding to the element name we created in the user control (StatusView) Because this hyperlink is in a listbox and is in the item template it doesn’t have a direct handle on the DataContext that the RadTileViewItem has so we have to make sure it does. We do that by binding to the element name of status view then set the path to DataContext.BigBoardCommand. BigBoardCommand is the name of the RelayCommand in the view model. private RelayCommand _bigBoardCommand = null; /// <summary> /// Gets the big board command. /// </summary> /// <value>The big board command.</value> public RelayCommand BigBoardCommand { get { if (_bigBoardCommand == null) { _bigBoardCommand = new RelayCommand(x => true, x => AddToBigBoard(x.ToString())); } return _bigBoardCommand; } } From there we check for true again and then call the action and pass in the parameter that we had as the command parameter. What we are working on now is a bit trickier than this second example. In the above example we are only creating this TileViewItem with this name “StatusView” once. In another part of our application we are generating multiple TileViewItems, so we cannot set the name in the control as we cant have multiple controls with the same name. When we run the application we get an error that reads that the value is out of expected range. My searching has led me to think we cannot have multiple controls with the same name. This is today’s problem and Ill post the solution to this once it is found.

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Algorithm for dynamically calculating a level based on experience points?

- by George

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

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Agile Testing Days 2012 – My First Conference!

- by Chris George

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

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

- by George Mauer

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

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Cookbook: SES and UCM setup

- by George Maggessy

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

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Antenna Aligner Part 3: Kaspersky

- by Chris George

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

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

- by George Jiglau

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

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XNADevelopment.com : Would you like my Input?

- by George Clingerman

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

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

- by George Bailey

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

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

- by George Marian

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

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Documentation and e-Learning (Part 4): Make Your Courses Real for Students

School teachers know that reality is one of the greatest instructors. Chem-class explosions, telescope observations, and biology field trips can generate faster real learning than textbooks. And the ... [Author: Dave Powell - Computers and Internet - April 12, 2010]

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Antenna Aligner part 1: In the beginning.

- by Chris George

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

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Antenna Aligner Part 3: Kaspersky

- by Chris George

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

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I have a stacktrace and limit of 250 characters for a bug report

- by George Duckett

I'm developing an xbox indie game and as a last-resort I have a try...catch encompassing everything. At this point if an exception is raised I can get the user to send me a message through the xbox however the limit is 250 characters. How can I get the most value out of my 250 characters? I don't want to do any encoding / compressing at least initially. Any solution to this problem could be compressed if needed as a second step anyway. I'm thinking of doing things like turning this: at EasyStorage.SaveDevice.VerifyIsReady() at EasyStorage.SaveDevice.Save(String containerName, String fileName) into this (drop the repeated namespace/class and method parameter names): at EasyStorage.SaveDevice.VerifyIsReady() at ..Save(String, String) Or maybe even just including the inner-most method, then only line numbers up the stack etc. TL;DR: Given an exception with a stacktrace how would you get the most useful debugging infromation out of 250 characters? (It will be a .net exception/stacktrace)

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Antenna Aligner part 2: Finding the right direction

- by Chris George

Last time I managed to get "my first app(tm)" built, published and running on my iPhone. This was really cool, a piece of my code running on my very own device. Ok, so I'm easily pleased! The next challenge was actually trying to determine what it was I wanted this app to do, and how to do it. Reverting back to good old paper and pen, I started sketching out designs for the app. I knew I wanted it to get a list of transmitters, then clicking on a transmitter would display a compass type view, with an arrow pointing the right way. I figured there would not be much point in continuing until I know I could do the graphical part of the project, i.e. the rotating compass, so armed with that reasoning (plus the fact I just wanted to get on and code!), I once again dived into visual studio. Using my friend (google) I found some example code for getting the compass data from the phone using the PhoneGap framework. // onSuccess: Get the current heading // function onSuccess(heading) { alert('Heading: ' + heading); } navigator.compass.getCurrentHeading(onSuccess, onError); Using the ripple mobile emulator this showed that it was successfully getting the compass heading. But it didn't work when uploaded to my phone. It turns out that the examples I had been looking at were for PhoneGap 1.0, and Nomad uses PhoneGap 1.4.1. In 1.4.1, getCurrentHeading provides a compass object to onSuccess, not just a numeric value, so the code now looks like // onSuccess: Get the current magnetic heading // function onSuccess(heading) { alert('Heading: ' + heading.magneticHeading); }; navigator.compass.getCurrentHeading(onSuccess, onError); So the lesson learnt from this... read the documentation for the version you are actually using! This does, however, lead to compatibility problems with ripple as it only supports 1.0 which is a real pain. I hope that the ripple system is updated sometime soon.

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12.04: google-chrome takes ~3 min to startup, just shows grey box before that

- by George

This is what I see when I first start google chrome: http://i.imgur.com/suQUv.png I've tried the beta version, the stable version, uninstalling and reinstall through ubuntu software center, logging in and logging out of my sync account, purging and reinstalling through apt-get etc. If I have no profile on then it seems to load with a normal speed, however, even after purging all my local account data and reisntalling and syncing it still takes forever.

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XNA for life!

- by George Clingerman

Or until my arm falls off at least…. I’ve been meaning to get a new tattoo for quite a while. And I wanted it to be geeky and to represent some memorable milestone in my life. So I was thinking, mulling over some various ideas, sketching some things out. And then it hit me. XNA. Specifically the XNA logo. It’s super geeky (so geeky I’ll probably have to explain to 90% of the people that say it what it even means) and I’m not sure that anything has been so memorable and made such a change in my life as XNA. Cheesy but true. When the XNA framework came out, thing started happening quickly. I stumbled into a geek community and started going to code camps, MSDN events, code-a-thons. I got an XNA MVP award. Met huge geek idols in my life (like Rory Blyth and Scott Hanselman) and just really started getting integrated into this fantastic development community. Then to add to all of that I became part of this fantastic XNA community. It’s really just been one of the best things to ever happen to me and I’m having the time of my life right now. So sure, it’s permanent. Sure Microsoft could cancel XNA, rebrand it to Flimmer Flammer or some other name. Sure my arms are going to be wrinkly and flabby when I’m older and for sure I’m going to have to explain to people over and over again just what in the world “xna” means. But you know what, every time I look at that tattoo and every time I’m telling somebody what xna means, I’m going to remember all these awesome things that have happened to me. All the tremendous things I’m seeing people do with the XNA framework and more importantly all the stories and friendships I’ve formed in the XNA community. And I think that deserves a little permanent recognition.

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Methodology for Documenting Existing Code Base

- by George Stocker

I work as part of a team on an existing application that has no inline documentation, nor does it have technical documentation. As I've been working on various bug reports on the application, I've written a sort of breadcrumb trail for myself - bug numbers in various places so that the next developer can refer to that bug number to see what was going on. My question is thus: What is the most effecient method for documenting this code? Should I document as I touch the area (the virus method, if you will), or should I document from each section on its own, and not follow paths that branch out into other areas of the application? Should I insert inline comments where none previously existed (with the fear that I may end up incorrectly identifying what the code does)? What method would you use to accurately and quickly document a rather large application that has no existing inline documentation, nor inline references to external documentation?

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How to create a user with root privileges in bash?

- by George Edison

I have run the following commands: sudo groupadd -r testgroup sudo useradd -g testgroup -M -r testuser Notice the -r option, which according to the man page: -r Create a system account. Assuming I have a user account with root privileges, I then run: sudo -u testuser cat /dev/input/mouse0 However, I get: cat: /dev/input/mouse0: Permission denied Running the same command as root provides the expected output (garbled output from the mouse driver). How can I create a user with root privileges?

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“It’s only test code…”

- by Chris George

“Let me hack this in, it’s only test code”, “Don’t worry about getting it reviewed, it’s only test code”, “It doesn’t have to be elegant or efficient, it’s only test code”… do these phrases sound familiar? Chances are if you’ve working with test automation, at one point or other you will have heard these phrases, you have probably even used them yourself! What is certain is that code written under this “it’s only test code” mantra will come back and bite you in the arse! I’ve recently encountered a case where a test was giving a false positive, therefore hiding a real product bug because that test code was very badly written. Firstly it was very difficult to understand what the test was actually trying to achieve let alone how it was doing it, and this complexity masked a simple logic error. These issues are real and they do happen. Let’s take a step back from this and look at what we are trying to do. We are writing test code that tests product code, and we do this to create a suite of tests that will help protect our software against regressions. This test code is making sure that the product behaves as it should by employing some sort of expected result verification. The simple cases of these are generally not a problem. However, automation allows us to explore more complex scenarios in many more permutations. As this complexity increases then so does the complexity of the test code. It is at this point that code which has not been architected properly will cause problems. Keep your friends close… So, how do we make sure we are doing it right? The development teams I have worked on have always had Test Engineers working very closely with their Software Engineers. This is something that I have always tried to take full advantage of. They are coding experts! So run your ideas past them, ask for advice on how to structure your code, help you design your data structures. This may require a shift in your teams viewpoint, as contrary to this section title and folklore, Software Engineers are not actually the mortal enemy of Test Engineers. As time progresses, and test automation becomes more and more ingrained in what we do, the two roles are converging more than ever. Over the 16 years I have spent as a Test Engineer, I have seen the grey area between the two roles grow significantly larger. This serves to strengthen the relationship and common bond between the two roles which helps to make test code activities so much easier! Pair for the win Possibly the best thing you could do to write good test code is to pair program on the task. This will serve a few purposes. you will get the benefit of the Software Engineers knowledge and experience the Software Engineer will gain knowledge on the testing process. Sharing the love is a wonderful thing! two pairs of eyes are always better than one… And so are two brains. Between the two of you, I will guarantee you will derive more useful test cases than if it was just one of you. Code reviews Another policy which certainly pays dividends is the practice of code reviews. By having one of your peers review your code before you commit it serves two purposes. Firstly, it forces you to explain your code. Just the act of doing this will often pick up errors in your code. Secondly, it gets yet another pair of eyes on your code! I cannot stress enough how important code reviews are. The benefits they offer apply as much to product code as test code. In short, Software and Test Engineers should all be doing them! It can be extended even further by getting test code reviewed by a Software Engineer and a Test Engineer, and likewise product code. This serves to keep both functions in the loop with changes going on within your code base. Learn from your devs I briefly touched on this earlier but I’d like to go into more detail here. Pairing with your Software Engineers when writing your test code is such an amazing opportunity to improve your coding skills. As I sit here writing this article waiting to be called into court for jury service, it reminds me that it takes a lot of patience to be a Test Engineer, almost as much as it takes to be a juror! However tempting it is to go rushing in and start writing your automated tests, resist that urge. Discuss what you want to achieve then talk through the approach you’re going to take. Then code it up together. I find it really enlightening to ask questions like ‘is there a better way to do this?’ Or ‘is this how you would code it?’ The latter question, especially, is where I learn the most. I’ve found that most Software Engineers will be reluctant to show you the ‘right way’ to code something when writing tests because they perceive the ‘right way’ to be too complicated for the Test Engineer (e.g. not mentioning LINQ and instead doing something verbose). So by asking how THEY would code it, it unleashes their true dev-ness and advanced code usually ensues! I would like to point out, however, that you don’t have to accept their method as the final answer. On numerous occasions I have opted for the more simple/verbose solution because I found the code written by the Software Engineer too advanced and therefore I would find it unreadable when I return to the code in a months’ time! Always keep the target audience in mind when writing clever code, and in my case that is mostly Test Engineers.

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