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• More Quick Interview Tips

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  In the last couple of years I have conducted a lot of interviews for application and database developers for my company, and I can tell you that the little things can mean a lot.  Here are a few quick tips to help you make a good first impression. A year ago I gave you my #1 interview tip: Do some basic research!  And a year later, I am still stunned by how few technical people do the most basic of research.  I can only guess that it is because it is so engrained in our psyche that technical competence is everything (see How to Manage Technical Employees for more on this idea) that we forget or ignore the importance of soft skills and the art of the interview.  Or maybe it is because we have heard the stories of the uber-geek who has zero personal skills but still makes a fortune working for Microsoft.  Well, here’s another quick tip:  You’re probably not as good as he is; and a large number of companies actually run small to medium sized teams and can’t really afford to have the social outcast in the group.  In a small team, everyone has to get along well, and that’s an important part of what I’m evaluating during the interview process. My #2 tip is to act alive!  I typically conduct screening interviews by phone before I bring someone in for an in-person.  I don’t care how laid-back you are or if you have a “quiet personality”, when we are talking, ACT like you are happy I called and you are interested in getting the job.  If you sound like you are bored-to-death and that you would be perfectly happy to never work again, I am perfectly happy to help you attain that goal, and I’ll move on to the next candidate. And closely related to #2, perhaps we’ll call it #2.1 is this tip:  When I call you on the phone for the interview, don’t answer your phone by just saying, “Hello”.  You know that the odds are about 999-to-1 that it is me calling for the interview because we have specifically arranged this time slot for the call.  And you can see on the caller ID that it is not one of your buddies calling, so identify yourself.  Don’t make me question whether I dialed the right number.  Answer your phone with a, “Hello, this is ___<your full name preferred, but at least your first name>___.”.  And when I say, “Hi, <your name>, this is Mark from <my company>” it would be really nice to hear you say, “Hi, Mark, I have been expecting your call.”  This sets the perfect tone for our conversation.  I know I have the right person; you are professional enough and interested enough in the job or contract to remember your appointments; and now we can move on to a little intro segment and get on with the reason for our call. As crazy as it sounds, I’ve actually had phone interviews that went like this: <Ring…> You:  “Hello?” Me:  “Hi, this is Mark from _______” You:  “Yeah?” Me:  “Is this <your name>?” You:  “Yeah.” Me:  “I had this time in my calendar for us to talk…were you expecting my call?” You:  “Oh, yeah, sure…” I used to be nice and would try to go ahead with the interview even after this bad start, thinking I was giving the candidate the benefit of the doubt…a second chance…but more often than not it was a struggle and 10 minutes into what was supposed to be a 45-minute call, I’m looking for a way to hang up without being rude myself.  It never worked out.  I never brought that person in for an in-person interview, much less offered them the job or contract.  Who knows, maybe they were some sort of wunderkind that we missed out on.  What I know is that they would never fit in with the rest of the team, and around here that is absolutely critical. So, in conclusion… Act alive!  Identify yourself!  And do at least the very basic of research.

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• Platformer Starter Kit - Collision Issues

  - by Cyral

  I'm having trouble with my game that is based off the XNA Platformer starter kit. My game uses smaller tiles (16x16) then the original (32x40) which I'm thinking may be having an effect on collision (Being it needs to be more precise). Standing on the edge of a tile and jumping causes the player to move off the the tile when he lands. And 80% of the time, when the player lands, he goes flying though SOLID tiles in a diagonal fashion. This is very annoying as it is almost impossible to test other features, when spawning and jumping will result in the player landing in another part of the level or falling off the edge completely. The code is as follows: /// <summary> /// Updates the player's velocity and position based on input, gravity, etc. /// </summary> public void ApplyPhysics(GameTime gameTime) { float elapsed = (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; Vector2 previousPosition = Position; // Base velocity is a combination of horizontal movement control and // acceleration downward due to gravity. velocity.X += movement * MoveAcceleration * elapsed; velocity.Y = MathHelper.Clamp(velocity.Y + GravityAcceleration * elapsed, -MaxFallSpeed, MaxFallSpeed); velocity.Y = DoJump(velocity.Y, gameTime); // Apply pseudo-drag horizontally. if (IsOnGround) velocity.X *= GroundDragFactor; else velocity.X *= AirDragFactor; // Prevent the player from running faster than his top speed. velocity.X = MathHelper.Clamp(velocity.X, -MaxMoveSpeed, MaxMoveSpeed); // Apply velocity. Position += velocity * elapsed; Position = new Vector2((float)Math.Round(Position.X), (float)Math.Round(Position.Y)); // If the player is now colliding with the level, separate them. HandleCollisions(); // If the collision stopped us from moving, reset the velocity to zero. if (Position.X == previousPosition.X) velocity.X = 0; if (Position.Y == previousPosition.Y) velocity.Y = 0; } /// <summary> /// Detects and resolves all collisions between the player and his neighboring /// tiles. When a collision is detected, the player is pushed away along one /// axis to prevent overlapping. There is some special logic for the Y axis to /// handle platforms which behave differently depending on direction of movement. /// </summary> private void HandleCollisions() { // Get the player's bounding rectangle and find neighboring tiles. Rectangle bounds = BoundingRectangle; int leftTile = (int)Math.Floor((float)bounds.Left / Tile.Width); int rightTile = (int)Math.Ceiling(((float)bounds.Right / Tile.Width)) - 1; int topTile = (int)Math.Floor((float)bounds.Top / Tile.Height); int bottomTile = (int)Math.Ceiling(((float)bounds.Bottom / Tile.Height)) - 1; // Reset flag to search for ground collision. isOnGround = false; // For each potentially colliding tile, for (int y = topTile; y <= bottomTile; ++y) { for (int x = leftTile; x <= rightTile; ++x) { // If this tile is collidable, ItemCollision collision = Level.GetCollision(x, y); if (collision != ItemCollision.Passable) { // Determine collision depth (with direction) and magnitude. Rectangle tileBounds = Level.GetBounds(x, y); Vector2 depth = RectangleExtensions.GetIntersectionDepth(bounds, tileBounds); if (depth != Vector2.Zero) { float absDepthX = Math.Abs(depth.X); float absDepthY = Math.Abs(depth.Y); // Resolve the collision along the shallow axis. if (absDepthY < absDepthX || collision == ItemCollision.Platform) { // If we crossed the top of a tile, we are on the ground. if (previousBottom <= tileBounds.Top) isOnGround = true; // Ignore platforms, unless we are on the ground. if (collision == ItemCollision.Impassable || IsOnGround) { // Resolve the collision along the Y axis. Position = new Vector2(Position.X, Position.Y + depth.Y); // Perform further collisions with the new bounds. bounds = BoundingRectangle; } } else if (collision == ItemCollision.Impassable) // Ignore platforms. { // Resolve the collision along the X axis. Position = new Vector2(Position.X + depth.X, Position.Y); // Perform further collisions with the new bounds. bounds = BoundingRectangle; } } } } } // Save the new bounds bottom. previousBottom = bounds.Bottom; } It also tends to jitter a little bit sometimes, I'm solved some of this with some fixes I found here on stackexchange, But Ive only seen one other case of the flying though blocks problem. This question seems to have a similar problem in the video, but mine is more crazy. Again this is a very annoying bug! Any help would be greatly appreciated! EDIT: Speed stuff // Constants for controling horizontal movement private const float MoveAcceleration = 13000.0f; private const float MaxMoveSpeed = 1750.0f; private const float GroundDragFactor = 0.48f; private const float AirDragFactor = 0.58f; // Constants for controlling vertical movement private const float MaxJumpTime = 0.35f; private const float JumpLaunchVelocity = -3500.0f; private const float GravityAcceleration = 3400.0f; private const float MaxFallSpeed = 550.0f; private const float JumpControlPower = 0.14f;

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• Gamification at OOW

  - by erikanollwebb

  Last week was Oracle OpenWorld, and for those of you not in tech or downtown San Francisco, that might not mean a whole lot.  However, if you are familiar with it, Oracle OpenWorld is our premier customer event.  This year, more than 50,000 people attended.  It's not a good week to visit San Francisco on vacation because Oracle customers take over all the hotels in town!  It was crazy, but a lot of fun and it's a great opportunity for the Apps UX group to do customer research with a range of customers.  This year, more than 100+ customers and partners took the time to team up with our UX experts and provide feedback on new designs and ideas. Over three days,  UX teams conducted 8  one-on-one user feedback sessions, 4 focus groups and 7 surveys. In addition, we conducted a voice capture activity and were able to collect close to 70 speech samples at the lab and DEMOgrounds. This was a great opportunity for us to do some testing on some specific gamification concepts with a set of business analysts.  We pulled in 8 folks for a focus group on gamification concepts and whether they thought those would work for their teams. To get ready for this, my designer extraordinaire, Andrea Cantú, flew into town and we spent almost a week locked in a room together brainstorming design ideas.  We killed a few trees trying to get all of our concepts and other examples together in the process, but in the end, we put together a whole series of examples of how you might gamify an Oracle app (in this case, CRM).  Andrea is a genius for this kind of thing and the comps she created looked great.  Here's a picture of her hard at work!  We also had the good fortune to have my boss, Laurie Pattison and my usability contractor, Shobana Subramanian there to note take and observe as well.  Here's a few shots of us, hard at work preparing for the day (or checking out something on Laurie's iPhone...) To start things off, we gave an overview of gamification and I talked about what it's used for.  Then we gave the participants a scenario about our sales person and what we were trying to get her to do. It was a great opportunity to highlight what our business goals might be and why we might want to add game mechanics.  It was also a good way to get them thinking about how that might work for them in their environments and workplaces. There were some surprises for the day.  We asked how many of them were already familiar with the concept of gamification--only two people had heard of it and only one was using game mechanics in his work.  That's in contrast to a survey we just ran internally with folks in a dev org where almost 50% of about 450 respondents had heard of gamification.  As we discussed the ways game mechanics could be used, it became clear that many of the folks had seen some game mechanics in action but didn't know that's what they were.  We also noticed that the folks in this group felt that if they were trying to sell the concept in their orgs, they wouldn't call it gamification.  That's not a huge surprise to me--they said what we've heard in the past, that gamification does not seem like a serious term for enterprise software.  They said they'd sell it with the goals--as a means to increase behaviors by rewarding users for activities.  It's a funny problem.  The word puts some folks off, but at the same time, I haven't seen another one word description that quite captures the range of things that "gamification" can cover.  My guess is that the more mainstream the term becomes, the more desensitized we'll become to the idea the it's trivializing enterprise software in some way.  Still, it was interesting to note that this group still felt that they would not take this concept to their bosses or teams and call it "gamification".  They focused on the goals, and how we could incentivize desired behaviors with game mechanics.  As I have already stated in other posts, I feel like my org is more receptive to discussing how this is just a more transparent type of usability and user experience methods than talking about gamification.  That's the argument they said they would use. All in all, it was a good session.  I love getting to talk to customers, present ideas and concepts, and get their feedback and input.  It's the type of thing that really helps drive our designs and keeps us grounded in what our customers need/want.  We're already planning where to get more feedback opportunities in the coming months. 

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• What Can We Learn About Software Security by Going to the Gym

  - by Nick Harrison

  There was a recent rash of car break-ins at the gym. Not an epidemic by any stretch, probably 4 or 5, but still... My gym used to allow you to hang your keys from a peg board at the front desk. This way you could come to the gym dressed to work out, lock your valuables in your car, and not have anything to worry about. Ignorance is bliss. The problem was that anyone who wanted to could go pick up your car keys, click the unlock button and find your car. Once there, they could rummage through your stuff and then walk back in and finish their workout as if nothing had happened. The people doing this were a little smatter then the average thief and would swipe some but not all of your cash leaving everything else in place. Most thieves would steal the whole car and be busted more quickly. The victims were unaware that anything had happened for several days. Fortunately, once the victims realized what had happened, the gym was still able to pull security tapes and find out who was misbehaving. All of the bad guys were busted, and everyone can now breathe a sigh of relieve. It is once again safe to go to the gym. Except there was still a fundamental problem. Putting your keys on a peg board by the front door is just asking for bad things to happen. One person got busted exploiting this security flaw. Others can still be exploiting it. In fact, others may well have been exploiting it and simply never got caught. How long would it take you to realize that $10 was missing from your wallet, if everything else was there? How would you even know when it went missing? Would you go to the front desk and even bother to ask them to review security tapes if you were only missing a small amount. Once highlighted, it is easy to see how commonly such vulnerability may have been exploited. So the gym did the very reasonable precaution of removing the peg board. To me the most shocking part of this story is the resulting uproar from gym members losing the convenient key peg. How dare they remove the trusted peg board? How can I work out now, I have to carry my keys from machine to machine? How can I enjoy my workout with this added inconvenience? This all happened a couple of weeks ago, and some people are still complaining. In light of the recent high profile hacking, there are a couple of parallels that can be drawn. Many web sites are riddled with vulnerabilities are crazy and easily exploitable as leaving your car keys by the front door while you work out. No one ever considered thanking the people who were swiping these keys for pointing out the vulnerability. Without a hesitation, they had their gym memberships revoked and are awaiting prosecution. The gym did recognize the vulnerability for what it is, and closed up that attack vector. What can we learn from this? Monitoring and logging will not prevent a crime but they will allow us to identify that a crime took place and may help track down who did it. Once we find a security weakness, we need to eliminate it. We may never identify and eliminate all security weaknesses, but we cannot allow well known vulnerabilities to persist in our system. In our case, we are not likely to meet resistance from end users. We are more likely to meet resistance from stake holders, product owners, keeper of schedules and budgets. We may meet resistance from integration partners, co workers, and third party vendors. Regardless of the source, we will see resistance, but the weakness needs to be dealt with. There is no need to glorify a cracker for bringing to light a security weakness. Regardless of their claimed motives, they are not heroes. There is also no point in wasting time defending weaknesses once they are identified. Deal with the weakness and move on. In may be embarrassing to find security weaknesses in our systems, but it is even more embarrassing to continue ignoring them. Even if it is unpopular, we need to seek out security weaknesses and eliminate them when we find them. http://www.sans.org has put together the Common Weakness Enumeration http://cwe.mitre.org/ which lists out common weaknesses. The site navigation takes a little getting used to, but there is a treasure trove here. Here is the detail page for SQL Injection. It clearly states how this can be exploited, in case anyone doubts that the weakness should be taken seriously, and more importantly how to mitigate the risk.

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• How to properly add texture to multi-fixture/shape b2Body

  - by Blazej Wdowikowski

  Hello to everyone this is my first poste here I hope that will be not fail start. At start I must say I make part 1 in Ray's Tutorial "How To Make A Game Like Fruit Ninja With Box2D and Cocos2D". But I wonder what when I want make more complex body with texture? Simple just add n b2FixtureDef to the same body. OK but what about texture? If I will take code from that tutorial it only fill last fixture. Probably it does not takes every b2Vec2 point. I was right, it did not. So quick refactor and from that -(id)initWithTexture:(CCTexture2D*)texture body:(b2Body*)body original:(BOOL)original { // gather all the vertices from our Box2D shape b2Fixture *originalFixture = body->GetFixtureList(); b2PolygonShape *shape = (b2PolygonShape*)originalFixture->GetShape(); int vertexCount = shape->GetVertexCount(); NSMutableArray *points = [NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity:vertexCount]; for(int i = 0; i < vertexCount; i++) { CGPoint p = ccp(shape->GetVertex(i).x * PTM_RATIO, shape->GetVertex(i).y * PTM_RATIO); [points addObject:[NSValue valueWithCGPoint:p]]; } if ((self = [super initWithPoints:points andTexture:texture])) { _body = body; _body->SetUserData(self); _original = original; // gets the center of the polygon _centroid = self.body->GetLocalCenter(); // assign an anchor point based on the center self.anchorPoint = ccp(_centroid.x * PTM_RATIO / texture.contentSize.width, _centroid.y * PTM_RATIO / texture.contentSize.height); } return self; } I came up with that -(id)initWithTexture:(CCTexture2D*)texture body:(b2Body*)body original:(BOOL)original { int vertexCount = 0; //gather total number of b2Vect2 points b2Fixture *currentFixture = body->GetFixtureList(); while (currentFixture) { //new b2PolygonShape *shape = (b2PolygonShape*)currentFixture->GetShape(); vertexCount += shape->GetVertexCount(); currentFixture = currentFixture->GetNext(); } NSMutableArray *points = [NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity:vertexCount]; // gather all the vertices from our Box2D shape b2Fixture *originalFixture = body->GetFixtureList(); while (originalFixture) { //new NSLog((NSString*)@"-"); b2PolygonShape *shape = (b2PolygonShape*)originalFixture->GetShape(); int currentVertexCount = shape->GetVertexCount(); for(int i = 0; i < currentVertexCount; i++) { CGPoint p = ccp(shape->GetVertex(i).x * PTM_RATIO, shape->GetVertex(i).y * PTM_RATIO); [points addObject:[NSValue valueWithCGPoint:p]]; } originalFixture = originalFixture->GetNext(); } if ((self = [super initWithPoints:points andTexture:texture])) { _body = body; _body->SetUserData(self); _original = original; // gets the center of the polygon _centroid = self.body->GetLocalCenter(); // assign an anchor point based on the center self.anchorPoint = ccp(_centroid.x * PTM_RATIO / texture.contentSize.width,_centroid.y * PTM_RATIO / texture.contentSize.height); } return self; } I was working for simple two fixtures body like b2BodyDef bodyDef; bodyDef.type = b2_dynamicBody; bodyDef.position = position; bodyDef.angle = rotation; b2Body *body = world->CreateBody(&bodyDef); b2FixtureDef fixtureDef; fixtureDef.density = 1.0; fixtureDef.friction = 0.5; fixtureDef.restitution = 0.2; fixtureDef.filter.categoryBits = 0x0001; fixtureDef.filter.maskBits = 0x0001; b2Vec2 vertices[] = { b2Vec2(0.0/PTM_RATIO,50.0/PTM_RATIO), b2Vec2(0.0/PTM_RATIO,0.0/PTM_RATIO), b2Vec2(50.0/PTM_RATIO,30.1/PTM_RATIO), b2Vec2(60.0/PTM_RATIO,60.0/PTM_RATIO) }; b2PolygonShape shape; shape.Set(vertices, 4); fixtureDef.shape = &shape; body->CreateFixture(&fixtureDef); b2Vec2 vertices2[] = { b2Vec2(20.0/PTM_RATIO,50.0/PTM_RATIO), b2Vec2(20.0/PTM_RATIO,0.0/PTM_RATIO), b2Vec2(70.0/PTM_RATIO,30.1/PTM_RATIO), b2Vec2(80.0/PTM_RATIO,60.0/PTM_RATIO) }; shape.Set(vertices2, 4); fixtureDef.shape = &shape; body->CreateFixture(&fixtureDef); But if I try put secondary shape upper than first it starting wierd, texture goes crazy. For example not mention about more complex shapes. What's more if shapes have one common point texture will not render for them at all [For that I use Physics Edytor like in tutorial part1] BTW. I use PolygonSprite and in method createWithWorld... another shapes. Uff.. Question So my question is, why texture coords are in such a mess up? It's my modify method or just wrong approach? Maybe I should remove duplicated from points array?

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• How do I cleanly design a central render/animation loop?

  - by mtoast

  I'm learning some graphics programming, and am in the midst of my first such project of any substance. But, I am really struggling at the moment with how to architect it cleanly. Let me explain. To display complicated graphics in my current language of choice (JavaScript -- have you heard of it?), you have to draw graphical content onto a <canvas> element. And to do animation, you must clear the <canvas> after every frame (unless you want previous graphics to remain). Thus, most canvas-related JavaScript demos I've seen have a function like this: function render() { clearCanvas(); // draw stuff here requestAnimationFrame(render); } render, as you may surmise, encapsulates the drawing of a single frame. What a single frame contains at a specific point in time, well... that is determined by the program state. So, in order for my program to do its thing, I just need to look at the state, and decide what to render. Right? Right. But that is more complicated than it seems. My program is called "Critter Clicker". In my program, you see several cute critters bouncing around the screen. Clicking on one of them agitates it, making it bounce around even more. There is also a start screen, which says "Click to start!" prior to the critters being displayed. Here are a few of the objects I'm working with in my program: StartScreenView // represents the start screen CritterTubView // represents the area in which the critters live CritterList // a collection of all the critters Critter // a single critter model CritterView // view of a single critter Nothing too egregious with this, I think. Yet, when I set out to flesh out my render function, I get stuck, because everything I write seems utterly ugly and reminiscent of a certain popular Italian dish. Here are a couple of approaches I've attempted, with my internal thought process included, and unrelated bits excluded for clarity. Approach 1: "It's conditions all the way down" // "I'll just write the program as I think it, one frame at a time." if (assetsLoaded) { if (userClickedToStart) { if (critterTubDisplayed) { if (crittersDisplayed) { forEach(crittersList, function(c) { if (c.wasClickedRecently) { c.getAgitated(); } }); } else { displayCritters(); } } else { displayCritterTub(); } } else { displayStartScreen(); } } That's a very much simplified example. Yet even with only a fraction of all the rendering conditions visible, render is already starting to get out of hand. So, I dispense with that and try another idea: Approach 2: Under the Rug // "Each view object shall be responsible for its own rendering. // "I'll pass each object the program state, and each can render itself." startScreen.render(state); critterTub.render(state); critterList.render(state); In this setup, I've essentially just pushed those crazy nested conditions to a deeper level in the code, hiding them from view. In other words, startScreen.render would check state to see if it needed actually to be drawn or not, and take the correct action. But this seems more like it only solves a code-aesthetic problem. The third and final approach I'm considering that I'll share is the idea that I could invent my own "wheel" to take care of this. I'm envisioning a function that takes a data structure that defines what should happen at any given point in the render call -- revealing the conditions and dependencies as a kind of tree. Approach 3: Mad Scientist renderTree({ phases: ['startScreen', 'critterTub', 'endCredits'], dependencies: { startScreen: ['assetsLoaded'], critterTub: ['startScreenClicked'], critterList ['critterTubDisplayed'] // etc. }, exclusions: { startScreen: ['startScreenClicked'], // etc. } }); That seems kind of cool. I'm not exactly sure how it would actually work, but I can see it being a rather nifty way to express things, especially if I flex some of JavaScript's events. In any case, I'm a little bit stumped because I don't see an obvious way to do this. If you couldn't tell, I'm coming to this from the web development world, and finding that doing animation is a bit more exotic than arranging an MVC application for handling simple requests - responses. What is the clean, established solution to this common-I-would-think problem?

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• Applications: The Mathematics of Movement, Part 3

  - by TechTwaddle

  Previously: Part 1, Part 2 As promised in the previous post, this post will cover two variations of the marble move program. The first one, Infinite Move, keeps the marble moving towards the click point, rebounding it off the screen edges and changing its direction when the user clicks again. The second version, Finite Move, is the same as first except that the marble does not move forever. It moves towards the click point, rebounds off the screen edges and slowly comes to rest. The amount of time that it moves depends on the distance between the click point and marble. Infinite Move This case is simple (actually both cases are simple). In this case all we need is the direction information which is exactly what the unit vector stores. So when the user clicks, you calculate the unit vector towards the click point and then keep updating the marbles position like crazy. And, of course, there is no stop condition. There’s a little more additional code in the bounds checking conditions. Whenever the marble goes off the screen boundaries, we need to reverse its direction.  Here is the code for mouse up event and UpdatePosition() method, //stores the unit vector double unitX = 0, unitY = 0; double speed = 6; //speed times the unit vector double incrX = 0, incrY = 0; private void Form1_MouseUp(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) {     double x = e.X - marble1.x;     double y = e.Y - marble1.y;     //calculate distance between click point and current marble position     double lenSqrd = x * x + y * y;     double len = Math.Sqrt(lenSqrd);     //unit vector along the same direction (from marble towards click point)     unitX = x / len;     unitY = y / len;     timer1.Enabled = true; } private void UpdatePosition() {     //amount by which to increment marble position     incrX = speed * unitX;     incrY = speed * unitY;     marble1.x += incrX;     marble1.y += incrY;     //check for bounds     if ((int)marble1.x < MinX + marbleWidth / 2)     {         marble1.x = MinX + marbleWidth / 2;         unitX *= -1;     }     else if ((int)marble1.x > (MaxX - marbleWidth / 2))     {         marble1.x = MaxX - marbleWidth / 2;         unitX *= -1;     }     if ((int)marble1.y < MinY + marbleHeight / 2)     {         marble1.y = MinY + marbleHeight / 2;         unitY *= -1;     }     else if ((int)marble1.y > (MaxY - marbleHeight / 2))     {         marble1.y = MaxY - marbleHeight / 2;         unitY *= -1;     } } So whenever the user clicks we calculate the unit vector along that direction and also the amount by which the marble position needs to be incremented. The speed in this case is fixed at 6. You can experiment with different values. And under bounds checking, whenever the marble position goes out of bounds along the x or y direction we reverse the direction of the unit vector along that direction. Here’s a video of it running;   Finite Move The code for finite move is almost exactly same as that of Infinite Move, except for the difference that the speed is not fixed and there is an end condition, so the marble comes to rest after a while. Code follows, //unit vector along the direction of click point double unitX = 0, unitY = 0; //speed of the marble double speed = 0; private void Form1_MouseUp(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) {     double x = 0, y = 0;     double lengthSqrd = 0, length = 0;     x = e.X - marble1.x;     y = e.Y - marble1.y;     lengthSqrd = x * x + y * y;     //length in pixels (between click point and current marble pos)     length = Math.Sqrt(lengthSqrd);     //unit vector along the same direction as vector(x, y)     unitX = x / length;     unitY = y / length;     speed = length / 12;     timer1.Enabled = true; } private void UpdatePosition() {     marble1.x += speed * unitX;     marble1.y += speed * unitY;     //check for bounds     if ((int)marble1.x < MinX + marbleWidth / 2)     {         marble1.x = MinX + marbleWidth / 2;         unitX *= -1;     }     else if ((int)marble1.x > (MaxX - marbleWidth / 2))     {         marble1.x = MaxX - marbleWidth / 2;         unitX *= -1;     }     if ((int)marble1.y < MinY + marbleHeight / 2)     {         marble1.y = MinY + marbleHeight / 2;         unitY *= -1;     }     else if ((int)marble1.y > (MaxY - marbleHeight / 2))     {         marble1.y = MaxY - marbleHeight / 2;         unitY *= -1;     }     //reduce speed by 3% in every loop     speed = speed * 0.97f;     if ((int)speed <= 0)     {         timer1.Enabled = false;     } } So the only difference is that the speed is calculated as a function of length when the mouse up event occurs. Again, this can be experimented with. Bounds checking is same as before. In the update and draw cycle, we reduce the speed by 3% in every cycle. Since speed is calculated as a function of length, speed = length/12, the amount of time it takes speed to reach zero is directly proportional to length. Note that the speed is in ‘pixels per 40ms’ because the timeout value of the timer is 40ms.  The readability can be improved by representing speed in ‘pixels per second’. This would require you to add some more calculations to the code, which I leave out as an exercise. Here’s a video of this second version,

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• Profiling Startup Of VS2012 &ndash; YourKit Profiler

  - by Alois Kraus

  The YourKit (v7.0.5) profiler is interesting in terms of price (79€ single place license, 409€ + 1 year support and upgrades) and feature set. You do get a performance and memory profiler in one package for which you normally need also to pay extra from the other vendors. As an interesting side note the profiler UI is written in Java because they do also sell Java profilers with the same feature set. To get all methods of a VS startup you need first to configure it to include System* in the profiled methods and you need to configure * to measure wall clock time. By default it does record only CPU times which allows you to optimize CPU hungry operations. But you will never see a Thread.Sleep(10000) in the profiler blocking the UI in this mode. It can profile as all others processes started from within the profiler but it can also profile the next or all started processes. As usual it can profile in sampling and tracing mode. But since it is a memory profiler as well it does by default also record all object allocations > 1MB. With allocation recording enabled VS2012 did crash but without allocation recording there were no problems. The CPU tab contains the time line of the application and when you click in the graph you the call stacks of all threads at this time. This is really a nice feature. When you select a time region you the CPU Usage estimation for this time window. I have seen many applications consuming 100% CPU only because they did create garbage like crazy. For this is the Garbage Collection tab interesting in conjunction with a time range. This view is like the CPU table only that the CPU graph (green) is missing. All relevant information except for GCs/s is already visible in the CPU tab. Very handy to pinpoint excessive GC or CPU bound issues. The Threads tab does show the thread names and their lifetime. This is useful to see thread interactions or which thread is hottest in terms of CPU consumption. On the CPU tab the call tree does exist in a merged and thread specific view. When you click on a method you get below a list of all called methods. There you can sort for methods with a high own time which are worth optimizing. In the Method List you can select which scope you want to see. Back Traces are the methods which did call you. Callees ist the list of methods called directly or indirectly by your method as a flat list. This is not a call stack but still very useful to see which methods were slow so you can see the “root” cause quite quickly without the need to click trough long call stacks. The last view Merged Calles is a call stacked view of the previous view. This does help a lot to understand did call each method at run time. You would get the same view with a debugger for one call invocation but here you get the full statistics (invocation count) as well. Since YourKit is also a memory profiler you can directly see which objects you have on your managed heap and which objects do hold most of your precious memory. You can in in the Object Explorer view also examine the contents of your objects (strings or whatsoever) to get a better understanding which objects where potentially allocating this stuff.   YourKit is a very easy to use combined memory and performance profiler in one product. The unbeatable single license price makes it very attractive to straightly buy it. Although it is a Java UI it is very responsive and the memory consumption is considerably lower compared to dotTrace and ANTS profiler. What I do really like is to start the YourKit ui and then start the processes I want to profile as usual. There is no need to alter your own application code to be able to inject a profiler into your new started processes. For performance and memory profiling you can simply select the process you want to investigate from the list of started processes. That's the way I like to use profilers. Just get out of the way and let the application run without any special preparations.   Next: Telerik JustTrace

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• My rhythm game runs choppy even with high frame rate

  - by felipedrl

  I'm coding a rhythm game and the game runs smoothly with uncapped fps. But when I try to cap it around 60 the game updates in little chunks, like hiccups, as if it was skipping frames or at a very low frame rate. The reason I need to cap frame rate is because in some computers I tested, the fps varies a lot (from ~80 - ~250 fps) and those drops are noticeable and degrade response time. Since this is a rhythm game this is very important. This issue is driving me crazy. I've spent a few weeks already on it and still can't figure out the problem. I hope someone more experienced than me could shed some light on it. I'll try to put here all the hints I've tried along with two pseudo codes for game loops I tried, so I apologize if this post gets too lengthy. 1st GameLoop: const uint UPDATE_SKIP = 1000 / 60; uint nextGameTick = SDL_GetTicks(); while(isNotDone) { // only false when a QUIT event is generated! if (processEvents()) { if (SDL_GetTicks() > nextGameTick) { update(UPDATE_SKIP); render(); nextGameTick += UPDATE_SKIP; } } } 2nd Game Loop: const uint UPDATE_SKIP = 1000 / 60; while (isNotDone) { LARGE_INTEGER startTime; QueryPerformanceCounter(&startTime); // process events will return false in case of a QUIT event processed if (processEvents()) { update(frameTime); render(); } LARGE_INTEGER endTime; do { QueryPerformanceCounter(&endTime); frameTime = static_cast<uint>((endTime.QuadPart - startTime.QuadPart) * 1000.0 / frequency.QuadPart); } while (frameTime < UPDATE_SKIP); } [1] At first I thought it was a timer resolution problem. I was using SDL_GetTicks, but even when I switched to QueryPerformanceCounter, supposedly less granular, I saw no difference. [2] Then I thought it could be due to a rounding error in my position computation and since game updates are smaller in high FPS that would be less noticeable. Indeed there is an small error, but from my tests I realized that it is not enough to produce the position jumps I'm getting. Also, another intriguing factor is that if I enable vsync I'll get smooth updates @60fps regardless frame cap code. So why not rely on vsync? Because some computers can force a disable on gfx card config. [3] I started printing the maximum and minimum frame time measured in 1sec span, in the hope that every a few frames one would take a long time but still not enough to drop my fps computation. It turns out that, with frame cap code I always get frame times in the range of [16, 18]ms, and still, the game "does not moves like jagger". [4] My process' priority is set to HIGH (Windows doesn't allow me to set REALTIME for some reason). As far as I know there is only one thread running along with the game (a sound callback, which I really don't have access to it). I'm using AudiereLib. I then disabled Audiere by removing it from the project and still got the issue. Maybe there are some others threads running and one of them is taking too long to come back right in between when I measured frame times, I don't know. Is there a way to know which threads are attached to my process? [5] There are some dynamic data being created during game run. But It is a little bit hard to remove it to test. Maybe I'll have to try harder this one. Well, as I told you I really don't know what to try next. Anything, I mean, anything would be of great help. What bugs me more is why at 60fps & vsync enabled I get an smooth update and at 60fps & no vsync I don't. Is there a way to implement software vsync? I mean, query display sync info? Thanks in advance. I appreciate the ones that got this far and yet again I apologize for the long post. Best Regards from a fellow coder.

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• 2012&ndash;The End Of The World Review

  - by Tim Murphy

  The end of the world must be coming.  Not because the Mayan calendar says so, but because Microsoft is innovating more than Apple.  It has been a crazy year, with pundits declaring not that the end of the world is coming, but that the end of Microsoft is coming.  Let’s take a look at what 2012 has brought us. The beginning of year is a blur.  I managed to get to TechEd in June which was the first time that I got to take a deep dive into Windows 8 and many other things that had been announced in 2011.  The promise I saw in these products was really encouraging.  The thought of being able to run Windows 8 from a thumb drive or have Hyper-V native to the OS told me that at least for developers good things were coming. I finally got my feet wet with Windows 8 with the developer preview just prior to the RTM.  While the initial experience was a bit of a culture shock I quickly grew to love it.  The media still seems to hold little love for the “reimagined” platform, but I think that once people spend some time with it they will enjoy the experience and what the FUD mongers say will fade into the background.  With the launch of the OS we finally got a look at the Surface.  I think this is a bold entry into the tablet market.  While I wish it was a little more affordable I am already starting to see them in the wild being used by non-techies. I was waiting for Windows Phone 8 at least as much as Windows 8, probably more.  The new hardware, better marketing and new OS features I think are going to finally push us to the point of having a real presence in the smartphone market.  I am seeing a number of iPhone users picking up a Nokia Lumia 920 and getting rid of their brand new iPhone 5.  The only real debacle that I saw around the launch was when they held back the SDK from general developers. Shortly after the launch events came Build 2012.  I was extremely disappointed that I didn’t make it to this year’s Build.  Even if they weren’t handing out Surface and Lumia devices I think the atmosphere and content were something that really needed to be experience in person.  Hopefully there will be a Build next year and it’s schedule will be announced soon.  As you would expect Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 development were the mainstay of the conference, but improvements in Azure also played a key role.  This movement of services to the cloud will continue and we need to understand where it best fits into the solutions we build. Lower on the radar this year were Office 2013, SQL Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012.  Their glory stolen by the consumer OS and hardware announcements, these new releases are no less important.  Companies will see significant improvements in performance and capabilities if they upgrade.  At TechEd they had shown some of the new features of Windows Server 2012 around hardware integration and Hyper-V performance which absolutely blew me away.  It is our job to bring these important improvements to our company’s attention so that they can be leveraged. Personally, the consulting business in 2012 was the busiest it has been in a long time.  More companies were ready to attack new projects after several years of putting them on the back burner.  I also worked to bring back momentum to the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Both the community and clients are excited about the new technologies that have come out in 2012 and now it is time to deliver. What does 2013 have in store.  I don’t see it be quite as exciting as 2012.  Microsoft will be releasing the Surface Pro in January and it seems that we will see more frequent OS update for Windows.  There are rumors that we may see a Surface phone in 2013.  It has also been announced that there will finally be a rework of the XBox next fall.  The new year will also be a time for us in the development community to take advantage of these new tools and devices.  After all, it is what we build on top of these platforms that will attract more consumers and corporations to using them. Just as I am 99.999% sure that the world is not going to end this year, I am also sure that Microsoft will move on and that most of this negative backlash from the media is actually fear and jealousy.  In the end I think we have a promising year ahead of us. del.icio.us Tags: Microsoft,Pundits,Mayans,Windows 8,Windows Phone 8,Surface

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• SQL Monitor’s data repository: Alerts

  - by Chris Lambrou

  In my previous post, I introduced the SQL Monitor data repository, and described how the monitored objects are stored in a hierarchy in the data schema, in a series of tables with a _Keys suffix. In this post I had planned to describe how the actual data for the monitored objects is stored in corresponding tables with _StableSamples and _UnstableSamples suffixes. However, I’m going to postpone that until my next post, as I’ve had a request from a SQL Monitor user to explain how alerts are stored. In the SQL Monitor data repository, alerts are stored in tables belonging to the alert schema, which contains the following five tables: alert.Alert alert.Alert_Cleared alert.Alert_Comment alert.Alert_Severity alert.Alert_Type In this post, I’m only going to cover the alert.Alert and alert.Alert_Type tables. I may cover the other three tables in a later post. The most important table in this schema is alert.Alert, as each row in this table corresponds to a single alert. So let’s have a look at it. SELECT TOP 100 AlertId, AlertType, TargetObject, [Read], SubType FROM alert.Alert ORDER BY AlertId DESC;  AlertIdAlertTypeTargetObjectReadSubType 165550397:Cluster,1,4:Name,s29:srp-mr03.testnet.red-gate.com,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,10 265549387:Cluster,1,4:Name,s29:srp-mr03.testnet.red-gate.com,7:Machine,1,4:Name,s0:,10 365548187:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s15:FavouriteThings,00 465547157:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s15:FavouriteThings,00 565546147:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s15:FavouriteThings,00 665545187:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,00 765544157:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,00 865543147:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,00 965542187:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s4:msdb,00 1065541147:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s4:msdb,00 11…     So what are we seeing here, then? Well, AlertId is an auto-incrementing identity column, so ORDER BY AlertId DESC ensures that we see the most recent alerts first. AlertType indicates the type of each alert, such as Job failed (6), Backup overdue (14) or Long-running query (12). The TargetObject column indicates which monitored object the alert is associated with. The Read column acts as a flag to indicate whether or not the alert has been read. And finally the SubType column is used in the case of a Custom metric (40) alert, to indicate which custom metric the alert pertains to. Okay, now lets look at some of those columns in more detail. The AlertType column is an easy one to start with, and it brings use nicely to the next table, data.Alert_Type. Let’s have a look at what’s in this table: SELECT AlertType, Event, Monitoring, Name, Description FROM alert.Alert_Type ORDER BY AlertType;  AlertTypeEventMonitoringNameDescription 1100Processor utilizationProcessor utilization (CPU) on a host machine stays above a threshold percentage for longer than a specified duration 2210SQL Server error log entryAn error is written to the SQL Server error log with a severity level above a specified value. 3310Cluster failoverThe active cluster node fails, causing the SQL Server instance to switch nodes. 4410DeadlockSQL deadlock occurs. 5500Processor under-utilizationProcessor utilization (CPU) on a host machine remains below a threshold percentage for longer than a specified duration 6610Job failedA job does not complete successfully (the job returns an error code). 7700Machine unreachableHost machine (Windows server) cannot be contacted on the network. 8800SQL Server instance unreachableThe SQL Server instance is not running or cannot be contacted on the network. 9900Disk spaceDisk space used on a logical disk drive is above a defined threshold for longer than a specified duration. 101000Physical memoryPhysical memory (RAM) used on the host machine stays above a threshold percentage for longer than a specified duration. 111100Blocked processSQL process is blocked for longer than a specified duration. 121200Long-running queryA SQL query runs for longer than a specified duration. 131400Backup overdueNo full backup exists, or the last full backup is older than a specified time. 141500Log backup overdueNo log backup exists, or the last log backup is older than a specified time. 151600Database unavailableDatabase changes from Online to any other state. 161700Page verificationTorn Page Detection or Page Checksum is not enabled for a database. 171800Integrity check overdueNo entry for an integrity check (DBCC DBINFO returns no date for dbi_dbccLastKnownGood field), or the last check is older than a specified time. 181900Fragmented indexesFragmentation level of one or more indexes is above a threshold percentage. 192400Job duration unusualThe duration of a SQL job duration deviates from its baseline duration by more than a threshold percentage. 202501Clock skewSystem clock time on the Base Monitor computer differs from the system clock time on a monitored SQL Server host machine by a specified number of seconds. 212700SQL Server Agent Service statusThe SQL Server Agent Service status matches the status specified. 222800SQL Server Reporting Service statusThe SQL Server Reporting Service status matches the status specified. 232900SQL Server Full Text Search Service statusThe SQL Server Full Text Search Service status matches the status specified. 243000SQL Server Analysis Service statusThe SQL Server Analysis Service status matches the status specified. 253100SQL Server Integration Service statusThe SQL Server Integration Service status matches the status specified. 263300SQL Server Browser Service statusThe SQL Server Browser Service status matches the status specified. 273400SQL Server VSS Writer Service statusThe SQL Server VSS Writer status matches the status specified. 283501Deadlock trace flag disabledThe monitored SQL Server’s trace flag cannot be enabled. 293600Monitoring stopped (host machine credentials)SQL Monitor cannot contact the host machine because authentication failed. 303700Monitoring stopped (SQL Server credentials)SQL Monitor cannot contact the SQL Server instance because authentication failed. 313800Monitoring error (host machine data collection)SQL Monitor cannot collect data from the host machine. 323900Monitoring error (SQL Server data collection)SQL Monitor cannot collect data from the SQL Server instance. 334000Custom metricThe custom metric value has passed an alert threshold. 344100Custom metric collection errorSQL Monitor cannot collect custom metric data from the target object. Basically, alert.Alert_Type is just a big reference table containing information about the 34 different alert types supported by SQL Monitor (note that the largest id is 41, not 34 – some alert types have been retired since SQL Monitor was first developed). The Name and Description columns are self evident, and I’m going to skip over the Event and Monitoring columns as they’re not very interesting. The AlertId column is the primary key, and is referenced by AlertId in the alert.Alert table. As such, we can rewrite our earlier query to join these two tables, in order to provide a more readable view of the alerts: SELECT TOP 100 AlertId, Name, TargetObject, [Read], SubType FROM alert.Alert a JOIN alert.Alert_Type at ON a.AlertType = at.AlertType ORDER BY AlertId DESC;  AlertIdNameTargetObjectReadSubType 165550Monitoring error (SQL Server data collection)7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s29:srp-mr03.testnet.red-gate.com,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,00 265549Monitoring error (host machine data collection)7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s29:srp-mr03.testnet.red-gate.com,7:Machine,1,4:Name,s0:,00 365548Integrity check overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s15:FavouriteThings,00 465547Log backup overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s15:FavouriteThings,00 565546Backup overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s15:FavouriteThings,00 665545Integrity check overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,00 765544Log backup overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,00 865543Backup overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,00 965542Integrity check overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s4:msdb,00 1065541Backup overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s4:msdb,00 Okay, the next column to discuss in the alert.Alert table is TargetObject. Oh boy, this one’s a bit tricky! The TargetObject of an alert is a serialized string representation of the position in the monitored object hierarchy of the object to which the alert pertains. The serialization format is somewhat convenient for parsing in the C# source code of SQL Monitor, and has some helpful characteristics, but it’s probably very awkward to manipulate in T-SQL. I could document the serialization format here, but it would be very dry reading, so perhaps it’s best to consider an example from the table above. Have a look at the alert with an AlertID of 65543. It’s a Backup overdue alert for the SqlMonitorData database running on the default instance of granger, my laptop. Each different alert type is associated with a specific type of monitored object in the object hierarchy (I described the hierarchy in my previous post). The Backup overdue alert is associated with databases, whose position in the object hierarchy is root → Cluster → SqlServer → Database. The TargetObject value identifies the target object by specifying the key properties at each level in the hierarchy, thus: Cluster: Name = "granger" SqlServer: Name = "" (an empty string, denoting the default instance) Database: Name = "SqlMonitorData" Well, look at the actual TargetObject value for this alert: "7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,". It is indeed composed of three parts, one for each level in the hierarchy: Cluster: "7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger," SqlServer: "9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:," Database: "8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData," Each part is handled in exactly the same way, so let’s concentrate on the first part, "7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,". It comprises the following: "7:Cluster," – This identifies the level in the hierarchy. "1," – This indicates how many different key properties there are to uniquely identify a cluster (we saw in my last post that each cluster is identified by a single property, its Name). "4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData," – This represents the Name property, and its corresponding value, SqlMonitorData. It’s split up like this: "4:Name," – Indicates the name of the key property. "s" – Indicates the type of the key property, in this case, it’s a string. "14:SqlMonitorData," – Indicates the value of the property. At this point, you might be wondering about the format of some of these strings. Why is the string "Cluster" stored as "7:Cluster,"? Well an encoding scheme is used, which consists of the following: "7" – This is the length of the string "Cluster" ":" – This is a delimiter between the length of the string and the actual string’s contents. "Cluster" – This is the string itself. 7 characters. "," – This is a final terminating character that indicates the end of the encoded string. You can see that "4:Name,", "8:Database," and "14:SqlMonitorData," also conform to the same encoding scheme. In the example above, the "s" character is used to indicate that the value of the Name property is a string. If you explore the TargetObject property of alerts in your own SQL Monitor data repository, you might find other characters used for other non-string key property values. The different value types you might possibly encounter are as follows: "I" – Denotes a bigint value. For example, "I65432,". "g" – Denotes a GUID value. For example, "g32116732-63ae-4ab5-bd34-7dfdfb084c18,". "d" – Denotes a datetime value. For example, "d634815384796832438,". The value is stored as a bigint, rather than a native SQL datetime value. I’ll describe how datetime values are handled in the SQL Monitor data repostory in a future post. I suggest you have a look at the alerts in your own SQL Monitor data repository for further examples, so you can see how the TargetObject values are composed for each of the different types of alert. Let me give one further example, though, that represents a Custom metric alert, as this will help in describing the final column of interest in the alert.Alert table, SubType. Let me show you the alert I’m interested in: SELECT AlertId, a.AlertType, Name, TargetObject, [Read], SubType FROM alert.Alert a JOIN alert.Alert_Type at ON a.AlertType = at.AlertType WHERE AlertId = 65769;  AlertIdAlertTypeNameTargetObjectReadSubType 16576940Custom metric7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s6:master,12:CustomMetric,1,8:MetricId,I2,02 An AlertType value of 40 corresponds to the Custom metric alert type. The Name taken from the alert.Alert_Type table is simply Custom metric, but this doesn’t tell us anything about the specific custom metric that this alert pertains to. That’s where the SubType value comes in. For custom metric alerts, this provides us with the Id of the specific custom alert definition that can be found in the settings.CustomAlertDefinitions table. I don’t really want to delve into custom alert definitions yet (maybe in a later post), but an extra join in the previous query shows us that this alert pertains to the CPU pressure (avg runnable task count) custom metric alert. SELECT AlertId, a.AlertType, at.Name, cad.Name AS CustomAlertName, TargetObject, [Read], SubType FROM alert.Alert a JOIN alert.Alert_Type at ON a.AlertType = at.AlertType JOIN settings.CustomAlertDefinitions cad ON a.SubType = cad.Id WHERE AlertId = 65769;  AlertIdAlertTypeNameCustomAlertNameTargetObjectReadSubType 16576940Custom metricCPU pressure (avg runnable task count)7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s6:master,12:CustomMetric,1,8:MetricId,I2,02 The TargetObject value in this case breaks down like this: "7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger," – Cluster named "granger". "9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:," – SqlServer named "" (the default instance). "8:Database,1,4:Name,s6:master," – Database named "master". "12:CustomMetric,1,8:MetricId,I2," – Custom metric with an Id of 2. Note that the hierarchy for a custom metric is slightly different compared to the earlier Backup overdue alert. It’s root → Cluster → SqlServer → Database → CustomMetric. Also notice that, unlike Cluster, SqlServer and Database, the key property for CustomMetric is called MetricId (not Name), and the value is a bigint (not a string). Finally, delving into the custom metric tables is beyond the scope of this post, but for the sake of avoiding any future confusion, I’d like to point out that whilst the SubType references a custom alert definition, the MetricID value embedded in the TargetObject value references a custom metric definition. Although in this case both the custom metric definition and custom alert definition share the same Id value of 2, this is not generally the case. Okay, that’s enough for now, not least because as I’m typing this, it’s almost 2am, I have to go to work tomorrow, and my alarm is set for 6am – eek! In my next post, I’ll either cover the remaining three tables in the alert schema, or I’ll delve into the way SQL Monitor stores its monitoring data, as I’d originally planned to cover in this post.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 03, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 03, 2012Popular ReleasesLiveChat Starter Kit: LCSK v1.5.2: New features: Visitor location (City - Country) from geo-location Pass configuration via javascript for the chat box New visitor identification (no more using the IP address as visitor identification) To update from 1.5.1 Run the /src/1.5.2-sql-updates.txt SQL script to update your database tables. If you have it installed via NuGet, simply update your package and the file will be included so you can run the update script. New installation The easiest way to add LCSK to your app is by...Prime Factorization: Prime Factorization V2: Download the installation package and run it, to install prime factorization on your computer.DNN Content Localization Tools: CLTools v0.4 (Beta4): 3th Beta release for DNN 6.1 and obove Bug corrections : - Copy module work againNTemplates: NTemplates full source code and examples: This release includes the following changes: - NTemplates code. More enhacements and bug fixing. Nested scans seems to be working ok now. New event: ScanStart. Very usuful for calculating totals (see the example) - Examples. 2 new examples on nested scans. One of them very simple I did just for debugging. The other one is a report of invoices grouped by vendor, including totals calculations. Planned Roadmap: - Work on fixing performance bottlenecek: Try to compile the expression...ZXMAK2: Version 2.6.2.3: - add support for ZIP files created on UNIX system; - improve WAV support (fixed PCM24, FLOAT32; added PCM32, FLOAT64); - fix drag-n-drop on modal dialogs; - tape AutoPlay feature (thanks to Woody for algorithm).Net Code Samples: Full WCF Duplex Service Example: Full WCF Duplex Service ExampleKendo UI ASP.NET Sample Applications: Sample Applications (2012-06-01): Sample application(s) demonstrating the use of Kendo UI in ASP.NET applications.Better Explorer: Better Explorer Beta 1: Finally, the first Beta is here! There were a lot of changes, including: Translations into 10 different languages (the translations are not complete and will be updated soon) Conditional Select new tools for managing archives Folder Tools tab new search bar and Search Tab new image editing tools update function many bug fixes, stability fixes, and memory leak fixes other new features as well! Please check it out and if there are any problems, let us know. :) Also, do not forge...myManga: myManga v1.0.0.3: Will include MangaPanda as a default option. ChangeLog Updating from Previous Version: Extract contents of Release - myManga v1.0.0.3.zip to previous version's folder. Replaces: myManga.exe BakaBox.dll CoreMangaClasses.dll Manga.dll Plugins/MangaReader.manga.dll Plugins/MangaFox.manga.dll Plugins/MangaHere.manga.dll Plugins/MangaPanda.manga.dllPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 Metro (Preview 3): Player Framework for HTML/JavaScript and XAML/C# Metro Style Applications. Additional DownloadsIIS Smooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows 8 Microsoft PlayReady Client SDK for Metro Style Apps Release notes:Support for Windows 8 Release Preview (released 5/31/12) Advertising support (VAST, MAST, VPAID, & clips) Miscellaneous improvements and bug fixesMicrosoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.54: Fix for issue #18161: pretty-printing CSS @media rule throws an exception due to mismatched Indent/Unindent pair.Silverlight Toolkit: Silverlight 5 Toolkit Source - May 2012: Source code for December 2011 Silverlight 5 Toolkit release.Windows 8 Metro RSS Reader: RSS Reader release 6: Changed background and foreground colors Used VariableSizeGrid layout to wrap blog posts with images Sort items with Images first, text-only last Enabled Caching to improve navigation between framesJson.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 6: New feature - Added IgnoreDataMemberAttribute support New feature - Added GetResolvedPropertyName to DefaultContractResolver New feature - Added CheckAdditionalContent to JsonSerializer Change - Metro build now always uses late bound reflection Change - JsonTextReader no longer returns no content after consecutive underlying content read failures Fix - Fixed bad JSON in an array with error handling creating an infinite loop Fix - Fixed deserializing objects with a non-default cons...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.00: Major Highlights Fixed issue in the Site Settings when single quotes were being treated as escape characters Fixed issue loading the Mobile Premium Data after upgrading from CE to PE Fixed errors logged when updating folder provider settings Fixed the order of the mobile device capabilities in the Site Redirection Management UI The User Profile page was completely rebuilt. We needed User Profiles to have multiple child pages. This would allow for the most flexibility by still f...????: ????2.0.1: 1、?????。WiX Toolset: WiX v3.6 RC: WiX v3.6 RC (3.6.2928.0) provides feature complete Burn with VS11 support. For more information see Rob's blog post about the release: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2012/5/28/WiX-v3.6-Release-Candidate-availableJavascript .NET: Javascript .NET v0.7: SetParameter() reverts to its old behaviour of allowing JavaScript code to add new properties to wrapped C# objects. The behavior added briefly in 0.6 (throws an exception) can be had via the new SetParameterOptions.RejectUnknownProperties. TerminateExecution now uses its isolate to terminate the correct context automatically. Added support for converting all C# integral types, decimal and enums to JavaScript numbers. (Previously only the common types were handled properly.) Bug fixe...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0 (May 2012): Fixes: unserialize() of negative float numbers fix pcre possesive quantifiers and character class containing ()[] array deserilization when the array contains a reference to ISerializable parsing lambda function fix round() reimplemented as it is in PHP to avoid .NET rounding errors filesize bypass for FileInfo.Length bug in Mono New features: Time zones reimplemented, uses Windows/Linux databaseSharePoint Euro 2012 - UEFA European Football Predictor: havivi.euro2012.wsp (1.1): New fetures:Admin enable / disable match Hide/Show Euro 2012 SharePoint lists (3 lists) Installing SharePoint Euro 2012 PredictorSharePoint Euro 2012 Predictor has been developed as a SharePoint Sandbox solution to support SharePoint Online (Office 365) Download the solution havivi.euro2012.wsp from the download page: Downloads Upload this solution to your Site Collection via the solutions area. Click on Activate to make the web parts in the solution available for use in the Site C...New ProjectsAFS.PhonePusherConnectorVX: pusher for phone vxApache: this is the Apache project.Apple: this is the Apple project.CUARTOAZZJL: HURRA!!Designing Windows 8 Applications with C# and XAML: This project hosts the source code used in the example projects for the book, Designing Windows 8 Metro Applications with C# and XAML.Easy Internet: CyberWeb ist ein einfacher Webbrowser für PC Neulinge. Ideal für Leute, die noch keine PC-Erfahrung haben.Easy Outlook Backup: Beschreibung: Easy Outlook Backup ist ein Programm das alle Daten von Outlook sichert. Ideal für Leute, die noch keine PC-Erfahrung haben. Easy Realtime Start: Beschreibung: Easy Realtime Start ist ein Programm das einen Prozess in höchster Priorität startet. Und das ganz bequem Per drag & drop. Ideal für Leute, die aufwendige Programme starten müssen. (zB.: “Blender” Free 3D Designer)eStock: eStock ist ein Verwaltungstool für Elektroniker um Bauteile im "Lager" sowie Projekte zu verwalten. Es bietet eine Möglichkeit festzulegen, um welche Art von Bauteil es sich handelt und wo sich dieses im Lager bzw. Regal befindet. Die Projektverwaltung ermöglicht es, Bauteile einem Projekt hinzuzufügen und eine Bestellliste / Einkaufsliste von Bauteilen, die nicht mehr im Lager vorhanden sind, zu erstellen. FuTTY: FireEgl's PuTTY -- FuTTY! FuTTY is a fork of PuTTY and PuTTYTray.GeometryWorld: To Do...Google: this is the Google project.Google Advance Search: An easy way to create documents search at Google and read your emails and Much moregoogle maps viewer for dynamics crm 2011: Easy google maps viewer for dynamics CRM 2011GPS Status - (GPS tool für GPS-Dongles und Mäuse) - GPS-Empfänger: Mein Programm verbindet sich mit dem externen GPS über einen Com-Port und bietet verschiedene Tools.Harmony Text Editor: Harmony is a ridiculously simple text editor for code and poetry.Hi! Football: .Goal / Objective -> To help friends gather for enjoying watching football together. .How it works -> To basically choose your favorite team, choose one of the matches fetched for his team, our app will generate a list of popular restraunts, cafes where he can watch the chosen match, the user can select one of the generated locations around his area, and create an event inviting his friends to join him and he can also join other friends' events.Java: this is the Java project.LevelUp Serializer: LevelUp Serializer is a small and simple serialize library.It can help developer to serialize and deserialize data more convenient. Feature: - Ease of use - Supports almost all serializer, like Binary、Xml、Soap、Json、DataContract. - Support serialize to file、serialize to stream、deserialize from file、deserialize from stream. - Support Xml encryption. - Support accelerated through the XML the serialization assemble.LFormatConvert: ????Linux???????????????????????，??ffmpeg????Machine QA Manager: Machine QA Manager is intended to save and help trend results from radiation therapy equipment testing. The program will be made as generic as possible from a initial setup to enable it's use for other types of routine testing activities (for example factory equipment) but preconfigured templates for radiation therapy will be supplied for the convenience of people working in that domain.maven-asbuild-plugin: maven-asbuild-plugin incorporates the adobe flash/flex based artifacts like swc or swf into the maven methology.Midnight Peach - C# framework generator for LINQ: C# framework generator for LINQMiku???????: ????????，????????！?????????????，??????????。?????????????????！MIKU????????????，??！????????????、????。 This program used to detect music beat.You can listen to music while press button,and it can display the BPM of the song.Miku will wave to you.MyTestingStudy: my personal testing studyNameless Sprite Editor: Nameless Sprite Editor is a tool used to thoroughly edit the graphics in ALL Game Boy Advance games. [ UNDER CONSTRUCTION ]NeoModulus Business Rules Builder: A windows form application that allows non-programmers to build strict definitions of a business domain. Once the definition is complete the program will build out object oriented C# files and a .net DLL. My test business domain is the open SRD, basically Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 edition.NodeJs: this is the NodeJs projectNoSQL: this is the Nosql project.OmniKassa for NopCommerce: OmniKassa payment module plugin for nopCommerceOn-Line Therapy: testOpen School: This project is about to create an open platform for all the academic institutions, so that they can manage all of their work. Our efforts will be for every kind of institution who are currently struggling with different kind of systems in place which are not collaborating with each other. This project will provide a common platform to all these kind of systems and provide them a better solution which actually works. Oracle: this is the Oracle project.Orchard Web Services: RESTful web services to expose interaction with Orchard content management.Personal Social Network using asp.net mvc and mongodb: FirstRooster is a network platform that let user create their own social network of interest to connect and share with like minded people anywhere.peshop: E-Commerce application , separated by DAl,BLL and Presentation layersPHP: this is the PHP project.Prime Factorization: Factoring trinomials using the ac method can be made easier through the use of Prime Factorization. Prime Factorization is a program that can assist you in the factoring of numbers in Algebra, namely trinomials using the AC Method. It can also find all the factors of any number.PromedioNotas: El programa trata de promediar 3 nostas y mostrar y si pasaba de año o no por medio de un mensajeProyecto Tarea: Este proyecto esta hecho con el objetivo de aprender sobre TFSProyectotarea1: Sotfware de terminal aéreo de Guayaquil, donde se encuentran el nombre de las aerolíneas y las rutas de vuelo a nivel nacional.Python: this is the Python project.Ruby: this is the Ruby project.tedplay: tedplay is your media player of choice for playing Commodore 264 music format files similar to SIDplay. It is basically a stripped down Commodore plus/4 emulator without video output and peripherals based on the SDL build of the Commodore 264 family emulator YAPE. tedplay is released under version 2 of the GNU Generic Public License and can be built for both Windows and Unix or actually any platform that has a C++ compiler and SDL support.test1: This is a test projectwin-x264: A port of the x264-codebase into a VisualStudio-project. Compilation requires Intel-compiler and Yasm.XDA ROM Hub: Xperia 2011 line toolkit.znvicente_cuartoc: Poyecto Vicente Eduardo Zambrano Navarrete??Win7?????: ??????? *.theme ???????（??，??，??，???）。????VSB???*.msstyles??，????????，????????????????????????！????????????，?????????????。???，????????！ ?????????，?????????，????????，??????！?????????????，?????????????????，?????????，???Aero??，??????~?????????????！??，?????????theme??，?????????，??????，????，??????。 This program used to create .theme file and the relevant documents (wallpaper, pointer, ICONS, sounds, etc.). As long as you use VSB ready . msstyles files, chosen the icon wallpaper, etc, an...

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• Another Marketing Conference, part one – the best morning sessions.

  - by Roger Hart

  Yesterday I went to Another Marketing Conference. I honestly can’t tell if the title is just tipping over into smug, but in the balance of things that doesn’t matter, because it was a good conference. There was an enjoyable blend of theoretical and practical, and enough inter-disciplinary spread to keep my inner dilettante grinning from ear to ear. Sure, there was a bumpy bit in the middle, with two back-to-back sales pitches and a rather thin overview of the state of the web. But the signal:noise ratio at AMC2012 was impressively high. Here’s the first part of my write-up of the sessions. It’s a bit of a mammoth. It’s also a bit of a mash-up of what was said and what I thought about it. I’ll add links to the videos and slides from the sessions as they become available. Although it was in the morning session, I’ve not included Vanessa Northam’s session on the power of internal comms to build brand ambassadors. It’ll be in the next roundup, as this is already pushing 2.5k words. First, the important stuff. I was keeping a tally, and nobody said “synergy” or “leverage”. I did, however, hear the term “marketeers” six times. Shame on you – you know who you are. 1 – Branding in a post-digital world, Graham Hales This initially looked like being a sales presentation for Interbrand, but Graham pulled it out of the bag a few minutes in. He introduced a model for brand management that was essentially Plan >> Do >> Check >> Act, with Do and Check rolled up together, and went on to stress that this looks like on overall business management model for a reason. Brand has to be part of your overall business strategy and metrics if you’re going to care about it at all. This was the first iteration of what proved to be one of the event’s emergent themes: do it throughout the stack or don’t bother. Graham went on to remind us that brands, in so far as they are owned at all, are owned by and co-created with our customers. Advertising can offer a message to customers, but they provide the expression of a brand. This was a preface to talking about an increasingly chaotic marketplace, with increasingly hard-to-manage purchase processes. Services like Amazon reviews and TripAdvisor (four presenters would make this point) saturate customers with information, and give them a kind of vigilante power to comment on and define brands. Consequentially, they experience a number of “moments of deflection” in our sales funnels. Our control is lessened, and failure to engage can negatively-impact buying decisions increasingly poorly. The clearest example given was the failure of NatWest’s “caring bank” campaign, where staff in branches, customer support, and online presences didn’t align. A discontinuity of experience basically made the campaign worthless, and disgruntled customers talked about it loudly on social media. This in turn presented an opportunity to engage and show caring, but that wasn’t taken. What I took away was that brand (co)creation is ongoing and needs monitoring and metrics. But reciprocally, given you get what you measure, strategy and metrics must include brand if any kind of branding is to work at all. Campaigns and messages must permeate product and service design. What that doesn’t mean (and Graham didn’t say it did) is putting Marketing at the top of the pyramid, and having them bawl demands at Product Management, Support, and Development like an entitled toddler. It’s going to have to be collaborative, and session 6 on internal comms handled this really well. The main thing missing here was substantiating data, and the main question I found myself chewing on was: if we’re building brands collaboratively and in the open, what about the cultural politics of trolling? 2 – Challenging our core beliefs about human behaviour, Mark Earls This was definitely the best show of the day. It was also some of the best content. Mark talked us through nudging, behavioural economics, and some key misconceptions around decision making. Basically, people aren’t rational, they’re petty, reactive, emotional sacks of meat, and they’ll go where they’re led. Comforting stuff. Examples given were the spread of the London Riots and the “discovery” of the mountains of Kong, and the popularity of Susan Boyle, which, in turn made me think about Per Mollerup’s concept of “social wayshowing”. Mark boiled his thoughts down into four key points which I completely failed to write down word for word: People do, then think – Changing minds to change behaviour doesn’t work. Post-rationalization rules the day. See also: mere exposure effects. Spock < Kirk - Emotional/intuitive comes first, then we rationalize impulses. The non-thinking, emotive, reactive processes run much faster than the deliberative ones. People are not really rational decision makers, so  intervening with information may not be appropriate. Maximisers or satisficers? – Related to the last point. People do not consistently, rationally, maximise. When faced with an abundance of choice, they prefer to satisfice than evaluate, and will often follow social leads rather than think. Things tend to converge – Behaviour trends to a consensus normal. When faced with choices people overwhelmingly just do what they see others doing. Humans are extraordinarily good at mirroring behaviours and receiving influence. People “outsource the cognitive load” of choices to the crowd. Mark’s headline quote was probably “the real influence happens at the table next to you”. Reference examples, word of mouth, and social influence are tremendously important, and so talking about product experiences may be more important than talking about products. This reminded me of Kathy Sierra’s “creating bad-ass users” concept of designing to make people more awesome rather than products they like. If we can expose user-awesome, and make sharing easy, we can normalise the behaviours we want. If we normalize the behaviours we want, people should make and post-rationalize the buying decisions we want.  Where we need to be: “A bigger boy made me do it” Where we are: “a wizard did it and ran away” However, it’s worth bearing in mind that some purchasing decisions are personal and informed rather than social and reactive. There’s a quadrant diagram, in fact. What was really interesting, though, towards the end of the talk, was some advice for working out how social your products might be. The standard technology adoption lifecycle graph is essentially about social product diffusion. So this idea isn’t really new. Geoffrey Moore’s “chasm” idea may not strictly apply. However, his concepts of beachheads and reference segments are exactly what is required to normalize and thus enable purchase decisions (behaviour change). The final thing is that in only very few categories does a better product actually affect purchase decision. Where the choice is personal and informed, this is true. But where it’s personal and impulsive, or in any way social, “better” is trumped by popularity, endorsement, or “point of sale salience”. UX, UCD, and e-commerce know this to be true. A better (and easier) experience will always beat “more features”. Easy to use, and easy to observe being used will beat “what the user says they want”. This made me think about the astounding stickiness of rational fallacies, “common sense” and the pathological willful simplifications of the media. Rational fallacies seem like they’re basically the heuristics we use for post-rationalization. If I were profoundly grimy and cynical, I’d suggest deploying a boat-load in our messaging, to see if they’re really as sticky and appealing as they look. 4 – Changing behaviour through communication, Stephen Donajgrodzki This was a fantastic follow up to Mark’s session. Stephen basically talked us through some tactics used in public information/health comms that implement the kind of behavioural theory Mark introduced. The session was largely about how to get people to do (good) things they’re predisposed not to do, and how communication can (and can’t) make positive interventions. A couple of things stood out, in particular “implementation intentions” and how they can be linked to goals. For example, in order to get people to check and test their smoke alarms (a goal intention, rarely actualized  an information campaign will attempt to link this activity to the clocks going back or forward (a strong implementation intention, well-actualized). The talk reinforced the idea that making behaviour changes easy and visible normalizes them and makes them more likely to succeed. To do this, they have to be embodied throughout a product and service cycle. Experiential disconnects undermine the normalization. So campaigns, products, and customer interactions must be aligned. This is underscored by the second section of the presentation, which talked about interventions and pre-conditions for change. Taking the examples of drug addiction and stopping smoking, Stephen showed us a framework for attempting (and succeeding or failing in) behaviour change. He noted that when the change is something people fundamentally want to do, and that is easy, this gets a to simpler. Coordinated, easily-observed environmental pressures create preconditions for change and build motivation. (price, pub smoking ban, ad campaigns, friend quitting, declining social acceptability) A triggering even leads to a change attempt. (getting a cold and panicking about how bad the cough is) Interventions can be made to enable an attempt (NHS services, public information, nicotine patches) If it succeeds – yay. If it fails, there’s strong negative enforcement. Triggering events seem largely personal, but messaging can intervene in the creation of preconditions and in supporting decisions. Stephen talked more about systems of thinking and “bounded rationality”. The idea being that to enable change you need to break through “automatic” thinking into “reflective” thinking. Disruption and emotion are great tools for this, but that is only the start of the process. It occurs to me that a great deal of market research is focused on determining triggers rather than analysing necessary preconditions. Although they are presumably related. The final section talked about setting goals. Marketing goals are often seen as deriving directly from business goals. However, marketing may be unable to deliver on these directly where decision and behaviour-change processes are involved. In those cases, marketing and communication goals should be to create preconditions. They should also consider priming and norms. Content marketing and brand awareness are good first steps here, as brands can be heuristics in decision making for choice-saturated consumers, or those seeking education. 5 – The power of engaged communities and how to build them, Harriet Minter (the Guardian) The meat of this was that you need to let communities define and establish themselves, and be quick to react to their needs. Harriet had been in charge of building the Guardian’s community sites, and learned a lot about how they come together, stabilize  grow, and react. Crucially, they can’t be about sales or push messaging. A community is not just an audience. It’s essential to start with what this particular segment or tribe are interested in, then what they want to hear. Eventually you can consider – in light of this – what they might want to buy, but you can’t start with the product. A community won’t cohere around one you’re pushing. Her tips for community building were (again, sorry, not verbatim): Set goals Have some targets. Community building sounds vague and fluffy, but you can have (and adjust) concrete goals. Think like a start-up This is the “lean” stuff. Try things, fail quickly, respond. Don’t restrict platforms Let the audience choose them, and be aware of their differences. For example, LinkedIn is very different to Twitter. Track your stats Related to the first point. Keeping an eye on the numbers lets you respond. They should be qualified, however. If you want a community of enterprise decision makers, headcount alone may be a bad metric – have you got CIOs, or just people who want to get jobs by mingling with CIOs? Build brand advocates Do things to involve people and make them awesome, and they’ll cheer-lead for you. The last part really got my attention. Little bits of drive-by kindness go a long way. But more than that, genuinely helping people turns them into powerful advocates. Harriet gave an example of the Guardian engaging with an aspiring journalist on its Q&A forums. Through a series of serendipitous encounters he became a BBC producer, and now enthusiastically speaks up for the Guardian community sites. Cultivating many small, authentic, influential voices may have a better pay-off than schmoozing the big guys. This could be particularly important in the context of Mark and Stephen’s models of social, endorsement-led, and example-led decision making. There’s a lot here I haven’t covered, and it may be worth some follow-up on community building. Thoughts I was quite sceptical of nudge theory and behavioural economics. First off it sounds too good to be true, and second it sounds too sinister to permit. But I haven’t done the background reading. So I’m going to, and if it seems to hold real water, and if it’s possible to do it ethically (Stephen’s presentations suggests it may be) then it’s probably worth exploring. The message seemed to be: change what people do, and they’ll work out why afterwards. Moreover, the people around them will do it too. Make the things you want them to do extraordinarily easy and very, very visible. Normalize and support the decisions you want them to make, and they’ll make them. In practice this means not talking about the thing, but showing the user-awesome. Glib? Perhaps. But it feels worth considering. Also, if I ever run a marketing conference, I’m going to ban speakers from using examples from Apple. Quite apart from not being consistently generalizable, it’s becoming an irritating cliché.

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• The Changing Face of PASS

  - by Bill Graziano

  I’m starting my sixth year on the PASS Board.  I served two years as the Program Director, two years as the Vice-President of Marketing and I’m starting my second year as the Executive Vice-President of Finance.  There’s a pretty good chance that if PASS has done something you don’t like or is doing something you don’t like, that I’m involved in one way or another. Andy Leonard asked in a comment on his blog if the Board had ever reversed itself based on community input.  He asserted that it hadn’t.  I disagree.  I’m not going to try and list all the changes we make inside portfolios based on feedback from and meetings with the community.  I’m going to focus on major governance issues since I was elected to the Board. Management Company The first big change was our management company.  Our old management company had a standard approach to running a non-profit.  It worked well when PASS was launched.  Having a ready-made structure and process to run the organization enabled the organization to grow quickly.  As time went on we were limited in some of the things we wanted to do.  The more involved you were with PASS, the more you saw these limitations.  Key volunteers were regularly providing feedback that they wanted certain changes that were difficult for us to accomplish.  The Board at that time wanted changes that were difficult or impossible to accomplish under that structure. This was not a simple change.  Imagine a $2.5 million dollar company letting all its employees go on a Friday and starting with a new staff on Monday.  We also had a very narrow window to accomplish that so that we wouldn’t affect the Summit – our only source of revenue.  We spent the year after the change rebuilding processes and putting on the Summit in Denver.  That’s a concrete example of a huge change that PASS made to better serve its members.  And it was a change that many in the community were telling us we needed to make. Financials We heard regularly from our members that they wanted our financials posted.  Today on our web site you can find audited financials going back to 2004.  We publish our budget at the start of each year.  If you ask a question about the financials on the PASS site I do my best to answer it.  I’m also trying to do a better job answering financial questions posted in other locations.  (And yes, I know I owe a few of you some blog posts.) That’s another concrete example of a change that our members asked for that the Board agreed was a good decision. Minutes When I started on the Board the meeting minutes were very limited.  The minutes from a two day Board meeting might fit on one page.  I think we did the bare minimum we were legally required to do.  Today Board meeting minutes run from 5 to 12 pages and go into incredible detail on what we talk about.  There are certain topics that are NDA but where possible we try to list the topic we discussed but that the actual discussion was under NDA.  We also publish the agenda of Board meetings ahead of time. This is another specific example where input from the community influenced the decision.  It was certainly easier to have limited minutes but I think the extra effort helps our members understand what’s going on. Board Q&A At the 2009 Summit the Board held its first public Q&A with our members.  We’d always been available individually to answer questions.  There’s a benefit to getting us all in one room and asking the really hard questions to watch us squirm.  We learn what questions we don’t have good answers for.  We get to see how many people in the crowd look interested in the various questions and answers. I don’t recall the genesis of how this came about.  I’m fairly certain there was some community pressure though. Board Votes Until last November, the Board only reported the vote totals and not how individual Board members voted.  That was one of the topics at a great lunch I had with Tim Mitchell and Kendal van Dyke at the Summit.  That was also the topic of the first question asked at the Board Q&A by Kendal.  Kendal expressed his opposition to to anonymous votes clearly and passionately and without trying to paint anyone into a corner.  Less than 24 hours later the PASS Board voted to make individual votes public unless the topic was under NDA.  That’s another area where the Board decided to change based on feedback from our members. Summit Location While this isn’t actually a governance issue it is one of the more public decisions we make that has taken some public criticism.  There is a significant portion of our members that want the Summit near them.  There is a significant portion of our members that like the Summit in Seattle.  There is a significant portion of our members that think it should move around the country.  I was one that felt strongly that there were significant, tangible benefits to our attendees to being in Seattle every year.  I’m also one that has been swayed by some very compelling arguments that we need to have at least one outside Seattle and then revisit the decision.  I can’t tell you how the Board will vote but I know the opinion of our members weighs heavily on the decision. Elections And that brings us to the grand-daddy of all governance issues.  My thesis for this blog post is that the PASS Board has implemented policy changes in response to member feedback.  It isn’t to defend or criticize our election process.  It’s just to say that is has been under going continuous change since I’ve been on the Board.  I ran for the Board in the fall of 2005.  I don’t know much about what happened before then.  I was actively volunteering for PASS for four years prior to that as a chapter leader and on the program committee.  I don’t recall any complaints about elections but that doesn’t mean they didn’t occur.  The questions from the Nominating Committee (NomCom) were trivial and the selection process rudimentary (For example, “Tell us about your accomplishments”).  I don’t even remember who I ran against or how many other people ran.  I ran for the VP of Marketing in the fall of 2007.  I don’t recall any significant changes the Board made in the election process for that election.  I think a lot of the changes in 2007 came from us asking the management company to work on the election process.  I was expecting a similar set of puff ball questions from my previous election.  Boy, was I in for a shock.  The NomCom had found a much better set of questions and really made the interview portion difficult.  The questions were much more behavioral in nature.  I’d already written about my vision for PASS and my goals.  They wanted to know how I handled adversity, how I handled criticism, how I handled conflict, how I handled troublesome volunteers, how I motivated people and how I responded to motivation. And many, many other things. They grilled me for over an hour.  I’ve done a fair bit of technical sales in my time.  I feel I speak well under pressure addressing pointed questions.  This interview intentionally put me under pressure.  In addition to wanting to know about my interpersonal skills, my work experience, my volunteer experience and my supervisory experience they wanted to see how I’d do under pressure.  They wanted to see who would respond under pressure and who wouldn’t.  It was a bit of a shock. That was the first big change I remember in the election process.  I know there were other improvements around the process but none of them stick in my mind quite like the unexpected hour-long grilling. The next big change I remember was after the 2009 elections.  Andy Warren was unhappy with the election process and wanted to make some changes.  He worked with Hannes at HQ and they came up with a better set of processes.  I think Andy moved PASS in the right direction.  Nonetheless, after the 2010 election even more people were very publicly clamoring for changes to our election process.  In August of 2010 we had a choice to make.  There were numerous bloggers criticizing the Board and our upcoming election.  The easy change would be to announce that we were changing the process in a way that would satisfy our critics.  I believe that a knee-jerk response to criticism is seldom correct. Instead the Board spent August and September and October and November listening to the community.  I visited two SQLSaturdays and asked questions of everyone I could.  I attended chapter meetings and asked questions of as many people as they’d let me.  At Summit I made it a point to introduce myself to strangers and ask them about the election.  At every breakfast I’d sit down at a table full of strangers and ask about the election.  I’m happy to say that I left most tables arguing about the election.  Most days I managed to get 2 or 3 breakfasts in. I spent less time talking to people that had already written about the election.  They were already expressing their opinion.  I wanted to talk to people that hadn’t spoken up.  I wanted to know what the silent majority thought.  The Board all attended the Q&A session where our members expressed their concerns about a variety of issues including the election. The PASS Board also chose to create the Election Review Committee.  We wanted people from the community that had been involved with PASS to look at our election process with fresh eyes while listening to what the community had to say and give us some advice on how we could improve the process.  I’m a part of this as is Andy Warren.  None of the other members are on the Board.  I’ve sat in numerous calls and interviews with this group and attended an open meeting at the Summit.  We asked anyone that wanted to discuss the election to come speak with us.  The ERC held an open meeting at the Summit and invited anyone to attend.  There are forums on the ERC web site where we’ve invited people to participate.  The ERC has reached to key people involved in recent elections.  The years that I haven’t mentioned also saw minor improvements in the election process.  Off the top of my head I don’t recall what exact changes were made each year.  Specifically since the 2010 election we’ve gone out of our way to seek input from the community about the process.  I’m not sure what more we could have done to invite feedback from the community. I think to say that we haven’t “fixed” the election process isn’t a fair criticism at this time.  We haven’t rushed any changes through the process.  If you don’t see any changes in our election process in July or August then I think it’s fair to criticize us for ignoring the community or ask for an explanation for what we’ve done. In Summary Andy’s main point was that the PASS Board hasn’t changed in response to our members wishes.  I think I’ve shown that time and time again the PASS Board has changed in response to what our members want.  There are only two outstanding issues: Summit location and elections.  The 2013 Summit location hasn’t been decided yet.  Our work on the elections is also in progress.  And at every step in the election review we’ve gone out of our way to listen to the community and incorporate their feedback on the process. I also hope I’m not encouraging everyone that wants some change in the organization to organize a “blog rush” against the Board.  We take public suggestions very seriously but we also take the time to evaluate those suggestions and learn what the rest of our members think and make a measured decision.

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• ASP.NET 3.5 GridView - row editing - dynamic binding to a DropDownList

  - by marc_s

  This is driving me crazy :-) I'm trying to get a ASP.NET 3.5 GridView to show a selected value as string when being displayed, and to show a DropDownList to allow me to pick a value from a given list of options when being edited. Seems simple enough? My gridview looks like this (simplified): <asp:GridView ID="grvSecondaryLocations" runat="server" DataKeyNames="ID" OnInit="grvSecondaryLocations_Init" OnRowCommand="grvSecondaryLocations_RowCommand" OnRowCancelingEdit="grvSecondaryLocations_RowCancelingEdit" OnRowDeleting="grvSecondaryLocations_RowDeleting" OnRowEditing="grvSecondaryLocations_RowEditing" OnRowUpdating="grvSecondaryLocations_RowUpdating" > <Columns> <asp:TemplateField> <ItemTemplate> <asp:Label ID="lblPbxTypeCaption" runat="server" Text='<%# Eval("PBXTypeCaptionValue") %>' /> </ItemTemplate> <EditItemTemplate> <asp:DropDownList ID="ddlPBXTypeNS" runat="server" Width="200px" DataTextField="CaptionValue" DataValueField="OID" /> </EditItemTemplate> </asp:TemplateField> </asp:GridView> The grid gets displayed OK when not in editing mode - the selected PBX type shows its value in the asp:Label control. No surprise there. I load the list of values for the DropDownList into a local member called _pbxTypes in the OnLoad event of the form. I verified this - it works, the values are there. Now my challenge is: when the grid goes into editing mode for a particular row, I need to bind the list of PBX's stored in _pbxTypes. Simple enough, I thought - just grab the drop down list object in the RowEditing event and attach the list: protected void grvSecondaryLocations_RowEditing(object sender, GridViewEditEventArgs e) { grvSecondaryLocations.EditIndex = e.NewEditIndex; GridViewRow editingRow = grvSecondaryLocations.Rows[e.NewEditIndex]; DropDownList ddlPbx = (editingRow.FindControl("ddlPBXTypeNS") as DropDownList); if (ddlPbx != null) { ddlPbx.DataSource = _pbxTypes; ddlPbx.DataBind(); } .... (more stuff) } Trouble is - I never get anything back from the FindControl call - seems like the ddlPBXTypeNS doesn't exist (or can't be found). What am I missing?? Must be something really stupid.... but so far, all my Googling, reading up on GridView controls, and asking buddies hasn't helped. Who can spot the missing link? ;-) Marc

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• iPhone: CGPDFPageRef & CGPDFPageRelease memory leak and cryptic error message

  - by carloe

  Could someone tell me why the code below outputs "missing or invalid MediaBox" in the console? The code works fine if I remove CGPDFPageRelease(page);, but then my app starts leaking like crazy. -(CGSize)dimensionOfPageAtIndex:(int)index { CGPDFPageRef page = CGPDFDocumentGetPage(pdf, index); CGRect tempRect = CGPDFPageGetBoxRect(page, kCGPDFBleedBox); CGSize tempSize = CGSizeMake(tempRect.size.width, tempRect.size.height); CGPDFPageRelease(page); return tempSize; } I also have this code in my app, and releasing the pageref here works just fine... -(UIImage *)pageAtIndex:(NSInteger)pageNumber withWidth:(CGFloat)width andHeight:(CGFloat)height { if((pageNumber>0) && (pageNumber<=pageCount)) { CGFloat scaleRatio; // multiplier by which the PDF Page will be scaled UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(CGSizeMake(width, height)); CGContextRef context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext(); CGPDFPageRef page = CGPDFDocumentGetPage(pdf, pageNumber); CGRect pageRect = CGPDFPageGetBoxRect(page, kCGPDFBleedBox); //Figure out the orientation of the PDF page and set the scaleRatio accordingly if(pageRect.size.width/pageRect.size.height < 1.0) { scaleRatio = height/pageRect.size.height; } else { scaleRatio = width/pageRect.size.width; } //Calculate the offset to center the image CGFloat xOffset = 0.0; CGFloat yOffset = height; if(pageRect.size.width*scaleRatio<width) { xOffset = (width/2)-(pageRect.size.width*scaleRatio/2); } else { yOffset = height-((height/2)-(pageRect.size.height*scaleRatio/2)); } CGContextTranslateCTM(context, xOffset, yOffset); CGContextScaleCTM(context, 1.0, -1.0); CGContextSaveGState(context); CGAffineTransform pdfTransform = CGPDFPageGetDrawingTransform(page, kCGPDFBleedBox, CGRectMake(0, 0, pageRect.size.width, pageRect.size.height), 0, true); pdfTransform = CGAffineTransformScale(pdfTransform, scaleRatio, scaleRatio); CGContextConcatCTM(context, pdfTransform); CGContextDrawPDFPage(context, page); CGContextRestoreGState(context); UIImage *tempImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext(); CGContextRelease(context); CGPDFPageRelease(page); return tempImage; } return NO; }

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• ASP.NET MVC 2 InputExtensions different on server than local machine

  - by Mike

  Hi everyone, So this is kind of a crazy problem to me, but I've had no luck Googling it. I have an ASP.NET MVC 2 application (under .NET 4.0) running locally just fine. When I upload it to my production server (under shared hosting) I get Compiler Error Message: CS1061: 'System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper' does not contain a definition for 'TextBoxFor' and no extension method 'TextBoxFor' accepting a first argument of type 'System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) for this code: <%= this.Html.TextBoxFor(person => person.LastName) %> This is one of the new standard extension methods in MVC 2. So I wrote some diagnostic code: System.Reflection.Assembly ass = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetAssembly(typeof(InputExtensions)); Response.Write("From GAC: " + ass.GlobalAssemblyCache.ToString() + "<br/>"); Response.Write("ImageRuntimeVersion: " + ass.ImageRuntimeVersion.ToString() + "<br/>"); Response.Write("Version: " + System.Diagnostics.FileVersionInfo.GetVersionInfo(ass.Location).ToString() + "<br/>"); foreach (var method in typeof(InputExtensions).GetMethods()) { Response.Write(method.Name + "<br/>"); } running locally (where it works fine), I get this as output: From GAC: True ImageRuntimeVersion: v2.0.50727 Version: File: C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL\System.Web.Mvc\2.0.0.0__31bf3856ad364e35\System.Web.Mvc.dll InternalName: System.Web.Mvc.dll OriginalFilename: System.Web.Mvc.dll FileVersion: 2.0.50217.0 FileDescription: System.Web.Mvc.dll Product: Microsoft® .NET Framework ProductVersion: 2.0.50217.0 Debug: False Patched: False PreRelease: False PrivateBuild: False SpecialBuild: False Language: Language Neutral CheckBox CheckBox CheckBox CheckBox CheckBox CheckBox CheckBoxFor CheckBoxFor CheckBoxFor Hidden Hidden Hidden Hidden HiddenFor HiddenFor HiddenFor Password Password Password Password PasswordFor PasswordFor PasswordFor RadioButton RadioButton RadioButton RadioButton RadioButton RadioButton RadioButtonFor RadioButtonFor RadioButtonFor TextBox TextBox TextBox TextBox TextBoxFor TextBoxFor TextBoxFor ToString Equals GetHashCode GetType and when running on the production server (where it fails), I see: From GAC: True ImageRuntimeVersion: v2.0.50727 Version: File: C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL\System.Web.Mvc\2.0.0.0__31bf3856ad364e35\System.Web.Mvc.dll InternalName: System.Web.Mvc.dll OriginalFilename: System.Web.Mvc.dll FileVersion: 2.0.41001.0 FileDescription: System.Web.Mvc.dll Product: Microsoft® .NET Framework ProductVersion: 2.0.41001.0 Debug: False Patched: False PreRelease: False PrivateBuild: False SpecialBuild: False Language: Language Neutral CheckBox CheckBox CheckBox CheckBox CheckBox CheckBox Hidden Hidden Hidden Hidden Hidden Hidden Password Password Password Password RadioButton RadioButton RadioButton RadioButton RadioButton RadioButton TextBox TextBox TextBox TextBox ToString Equals GetHashCode GetType note that "TextBoxFor" is not present (hence the error). I have MVC referenced in the csproj: <Reference Include="System.Web.Mvc, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35, processorArchitecture=MSIL"> <SpecificVersion>True</SpecificVersion> <HintPath>References\System.Web.Mvc.dll</HintPath> <Private>True</Private> </Reference> I just can't figure it what to do next. Thoughts? Thanks! -Mike

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• Fluid CSS: floating column with max-width and overflow

  - by Ates Goral

  I'm using a fluid layout in the new theme that I'm working on for my blog. I often blog about code and include <pre> blocks within the posts. The float: left column for the content area has a max-width so that the column stops at a certain maximum width and can also be shrunk: +----------+ +------+ | text | | text | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +----------+ +------+ max shrunk What I want is for the <pre> elements to be wider than the text column so that I can fit 80-character-wrapped code without horizontal scroll bars. But I want the <pre> elements to overflow from the content area, without affecting its fluidity: +----------+ +------+ | text | | text | | | | | +----------+--+ +------+------+ | code | | code | +----------+--+ +------+------+ | | | | +----------+ +------+ max shrunk But, max-width stops being fluid once I insert the overhanging <pre> in there: the width of the column remains at the specified max-width even when I shrink the browser beyond that width. I've reproduced the issue with this bare-minimum scenario: <div style="float: left; max-width: 460px; border: 1px solid red"> <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit</p> <pre style="max-width: 700px; border: 1px solid blue"> function foo() { // Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit } </pre> <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit</p> </div> I noticed that doing either of the following brings back the fluidity: Remove the <pre> (doh...) Remove the float: left The workaround I'm currently using is to insert the <pre> elements into "breaks" in the post column, so that the widths of the post segments and the <pre> segments are managed mutually exclusively: +----------+ +------+ | text | | text | +----------+ +------+ +-------------+ +-------------+ | code | | code | +-------------+ +-------------+ +----------+ +------+ +----------+ +------+ max shrunk But this forces me to insert additional closing and opening <div> elements into the post markup which I'd rather keep semantically pristine. Admittedly, I don't have a full grasp of how the box model works with floats with overflowing content, so I don't understand why the combination of float: left on the container and the <pre> inside it cripple the max-width of the container. I'm observing the same problem on Firefox/Chrome/Safari/Opera. IE6 (the crazy one) seems happy all the time. This also doesn't seem dependent on quirks/standards mode. Update I've done further testing to observe that max-width seems to get ignored when the element has a float: left. I glanced at the W3C box model chapter but couldn't immediately see an explicit mention of this behaviour. Any pointers?

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• linking error in zxing while trying to use it in my project iphone

  - by Usman

  Hi, In My Project i need bar-code scanning. so i use zxing library but i m heaving some linking error and its getting me crazy. error is Undefined symbols: "zxing::BinaryBitmap::BinaryBitmap(zxing::Ref<zxing::Binarizer>)", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o "zxing::LuminanceSource::LuminanceSource()", referenced from: GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource::GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource(unsigned char const*, int, int, int)in GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource.o "zxing::qrcode::QRCodeReader::decode(zxing::Ref<zxing::BinaryBitmap>)", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o "zxing::LuminanceSource::~LuminanceSource()", referenced from: GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource::~GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource()in GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource.o GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource::~GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource()in GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource.o "zxing::ReaderException::~ReaderException()", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o "zxing::String::getText()", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o "typeinfo for zxing::LuminanceSource", referenced from: typeinfo for GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSourcein GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource.o "vtable for zxing::IllegalArgumentException", referenced from: __ZTVN5zxing24IllegalArgumentExceptionE$non_lazy_ptr in Decoder.o "typeinfo for zxing::ReaderException", referenced from: GCC_except_table1 in Decoder.o "vtable for zxing::Exception", referenced from: __ZTVN5zxing9ExceptionE$non_lazy_ptr in Decoder.o "zxing::LuminanceSource::copyMatrix()", referenced from: vtable for GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSourcein GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource.o "zxing::Result::getText()", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o "zxing::GlobalHistogramBinarizer::GlobalHistogramBinarizer(zxing::Ref<zxing::LuminanceSource>)", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o "zxing::IllegalArgumentException::~IllegalArgumentException()", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o "zxing::Result::getResultPoints()", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o "typeinfo for zxing::IllegalArgumentException", referenced from: GCC_except_table1 in Decoder.o "zxing::Exception::what() const", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o "vtable for zxing::ReaderException", referenced from: __ZTVN5zxing15ReaderExceptionE$non_lazy_ptr in Decoder.o "zxing::qrcode::QRCodeReader::QRCodeReader()", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o "zxing::qrcode::QRCodeReader::~QRCodeReader()", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o ld: symbol(s) not found collect2: ld returned 1 exit status "zxing::BinaryBitmap::BinaryBitmap(zxing::Ref<zxing::Binarizer>)", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o "zxing::LuminanceSource::LuminanceSource()", referenced from: GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource::GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource(unsigned char const*, int, int, int)in GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource.o "zxing::qrcode::QRCodeReader::decode(zxing::Ref<zxing::BinaryBitmap>)", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o "zxing::LuminanceSource::~LuminanceSource()", referenced from: GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource::~GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource()in GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource.o GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource::~GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource()in GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource.o "zxing::ReaderException::~ReaderException()", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o "zxing::String::getText()", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o "typeinfo for zxing::LuminanceSource", referenced from: typeinfo for GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSourcein GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource.o "vtable for zxing::IllegalArgumentException", referenced from: __ZTVN5zxing24IllegalArgumentExceptionE$non_lazy_ptr in Decoder.o "typeinfo for zxing::ReaderException", referenced from: GCC_except_table1 in Decoder.o "vtable for zxing::Exception", referenced from: __ZTVN5zxing9ExceptionE$non_lazy_ptr in Decoder.o "zxing::LuminanceSource::copyMatrix()", referenced from: vtable for GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSourcein GrayBytesMonochromeBitmapSource.o "zxing::Result::getText()", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o "zxing::GlobalHistogramBinarizer::GlobalHistogramBinarizer(zxing::Ref<zxing::LuminanceSource>)", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o "zxing::IllegalArgumentException::~IllegalArgumentException()", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o "zxing::Result::getResultPoints()", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o "typeinfo for zxing::IllegalArgumentException", referenced from: GCC_except_table1 in Decoder.o "zxing::Exception::what() const", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o "vtable for zxing::ReaderException", referenced from: __ZTVN5zxing15ReaderExceptionE$non_lazy_ptr in Decoder.o "zxing::qrcode::QRCodeReader::QRCodeReader()", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o "zxing::qrcode::QRCodeReader::~QRCodeReader()", referenced from: -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o -[Decoder decode:] in Decoder.o ld: symbol(s) not found collect2: ld returned 1 exit status i m trying to resolve this for last two day. i think i m missing some library or some file. can any one point me out what i m doing wrong. Usman

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• Java RMI (Server: TCP Connection Idle/Client: Unmarshalexception (EOFException))

  - by Perry Dahl Christensen

  I'm trying to implement Sun Tutorials RMI application that calculates Pi. I'm having some serious problems and I cant find the solution eventhough I've been searching the entire web and several javaskilled people. I'm hoping you can put an end to my frustrations. The crazy thing is that I can run the application from the cmd on my desktop computer. Trying the exact same thing with the exact same code in the exact same directories on my laptop produces the following errors. The problem occures when I try to connect the client to the server. I don't believe that the error is due to my policyfile as I can run it on the desktop. It must be elsewhere. Have anyone tried the same and can you give me a hint as to where my problem is, please? POLICYFILE SERVER: grant { permission java.security.AllPermissions; permission java.net.SocketPermission"*", "connect, resolve"; }; POLICYFILE CLIENT: grant { permission java.security.AllPermissions; permission java.net.SocketPermission"*", "connect, resolve"; }; SERVERSIDE ERRORS: Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600] (C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp. C:\Documents and Settings\STUDENTcd\ C:start rmiregistry C:java -cp c:\java;c:\java\compute.jar -Djava.rmi.server.codebase=file:/c:/jav a/compute.jar -Djava.rmi.server.hostname=localhost -Djava.security.policy=c:/jav a/servertest.policy engine.ComputeEngine ComputeEngine bound Exception in thread "RMI TCP Connection(idle)" java.security.AccessControlExcept ion: access denied (java.net.SocketPermission 127.0.0.1:1440 accept,resolve) at java.security.AccessControlContext.checkPermission(Unknown Source) at java.security.AccessController.checkPermission(Unknown Source) at java.lang.SecurityManager.checkPermission(Unknown Source) at java.lang.SecurityManager.checkAccept(Unknown Source) at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$ConnectionHandler.checkAcceptPermi ssion(Unknown Source) at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport.checkAcceptPermission(Unknown Sour ce) at sun.rmi.transport.Transport$1.run(Unknown Source) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at sun.rmi.transport.Transport.serviceCall(Unknown Source) at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport.handleMessages(Unknown Source) at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$ConnectionHandler.run0(Unknown Sou rce) at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$ConnectionHandler.run(Unknown Sour ce) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(Unknown Source ) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source) at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source) CLIENTSIDE ERRORS: Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600] (C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp. C:\Documents and Settings\STUDENTcd\ C:java -cp c:\java;c:\java\compute.jar -Djava.rmi.server.codebase=file:\C:\jav a\files\ -Djava.security.policy=c:/java/clienttest.policy client.ComputePi local host 45 ComputePi exception: java.rmi.UnmarshalException: Error unmarshaling return header; nested exception is: java.io.EOFException at sun.rmi.transport.StreamRemoteCall.executeCall(Unknown Source) at sun.rmi.server.UnicastRef.invoke(Unknown Source) at java.rmi.server.RemoteObjectInvocationHandler.invokeRemoteMethod(Unkn own Source) at java.rmi.server.RemoteObjectInvocationHandler.invoke(Unknown Source) at $Proxy0.executeTask(Unknown Source) at client.ComputePi.main(ComputePi.java:18) Caused by: java.io.EOFException at java.io.DataInputStream.readByte(Unknown Source) ... 6 more C: Thanks in advance Perry

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• UIWebView leak? Can someone confirm?

  - by Shaggy Frog

  I was leak-testing my current project and I'm stumped. I've been browsing like crazy and tried everything except chicken sacrifice. I just created a tiny toy project app from scratch and I can duplicate the leak in there. So either UIWebView has a leak or I'm doing something really silly. Essentially, it boils down to a loadRequest: call to a UIWebView object, given an URLRequest built from an NSURL which references a file URL, for a file in the app bundle, which lives inside a folder that Xcode is including by reference. Phew. The leak is intermittent but still happens ~75% of the time (in about 20 tests it happened about 15 times). It only happens on the device -- this does not leak in the simulator. I am testing targeting both iPhone OS 3.1.2 and 3.1.3, on an original (1st Gen) iPod Touch that is using iPhone OS 3.1.3. To reproduce, just create a project from scratch. Add a UIWebView to the RootViewController's .xib, hook it up via IBOutlet. In the Finder, create a folder named "html" inside your project's folder. Inside that folder, create a file named "dummy.html" that has the word "Test" in it. (Does not need to be valid HTML.) Then add the html folder to your project in Xcode by choosing "Create Folder References for any added folders" Add the following to viewDidLoad NSString* resourcePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] resourcePath]; NSString* filePath = [[resourcePath stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"html"] stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"dummy.html"]; NSURL* url = [[NSURL alloc] initFileURLWithPath:filePath]; NSURLRequest* request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:url]; // <-- this creates the leak! [browserView loadRequest:request]; [url release]; I've tried everything from setting delegate for the UIWebView and implementing UIWebViewDelegate, to not setting a delegate in IB, to not setting a delegate in IB and explicitly setting the web view's delegate property to nil, to using alloc/init instead of getting autoreleased NSURLRequests (and/or NSURLs)... I tried the answer to a similar question (setting the shared URL cache to empty) and that did not help. Can anyone help?

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• jqmodal IE (7 or 8) flashes black before modal loaded

  - by brad

  This is killing me. In both IE7 and 8, using jqModal, the screen flashes black before the modal content is loaded. I've set up a test app to show you what's happening. I've taken jqModal EXACTLY from the site, no changes whatsoever, no external css that could be affecting my app. It works perfectly in every other browser (including IE6). http://jqmtest.heroku.com/ So, first two links are ajax calls, second is straight up inline HTML. (I originally thought it was the ajax that was affecting it, but that doesn't seem to be the case, I then thought it was slow loading ajax, hence to two differen ajax links) What's crazy is that the jqmodal site itself works perfectly in IE, no flashing of black, but I can't see what I'm doing wrong. Code is straight forward html: <body> <div id="ajaxModal" class="jqmWindow"></div> <div id="inlineModal" class="jqmWindow"> <div style="height:300px;position:relative;"> <p>Here's some inline content</p> <a href="#" onclick='$("#inlineModal").jqmHide();return false;' style="position:absolute;bottom:10px;right:10px">Close</a> </div> </div> <div style="width:600px;height:400px;margin:auto;background:#eee;"> <p><a href="/ajax/short" class="jqModal">Short loading modal</a></p> <br /> <p><a href="/ajax/long" class="jqModal">Longer loading modal</a></p> <br /> <p><a href="#" class="jqInline">inline modal</a></p> </div> </body> Javascript: <script type="text/javascript"> $(function(){ $("#ajaxModal").jqm({ajax:'@href', modal:true}); $("#inlineModal").jqm({modal:true, trigger:'.jqInline'}); }); </script> CSS is exactly the same as the one downloaded from jqModal's site so I'll omit it, but you can see it on my app Has anyone experienced this? I don't get how his works and mine doesn't.

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• PHP: Can pcntl_alarm() and socket_select() peacefully exist in the same thread?

  - by DWilliams

  I have a PHP CLI script mostly written that functions as a chat server for chat clients to connect to (don't ask me why I'm doing it in PHP, thats another story haha). My script utilizes the socket_select() function to hang execution until something happens on a socket, at which point it wakes up, processes the event, and waits until the next event. Now, there are some routine tasks that I need performed every 30 seconds or so (check of tempbanned users should be unbanned, save user databases, other assorted things). From what I can tell, PHP doesn't have very great multi-threading support at all. My first thought was to compare a timestamp every time the socket generates an event and gets the program flowing again, but this is very inconsistent since the server could very well sit idle for hours and not have any of my cleanup routines executed. I came across the PHP pcntl extensions, and it lets me use assign a time interval for SIGALRM to get sent and a function get executed every time it's sent. This seems like the ideal solution to my problem, however pcntl_alarm() and socket_select() clash with each other pretty bad. Every time SIGALRM is triggered, all sorts of crazy things happen to my socket control code. My program is fairly lengthy so I can't post it all here, but it shouldn't matter since I don't believe I'm doing anything wrong code-wise. My question is: Is there any way for a SIGALRM to be handled in the same thread as a waiting socket_select()? If so, how? If not, what are my alternatives here? Here's some output from my program. My alarm function simply outputs "Tick!" whenever it's called to make it easy to tell when stuff is happening. This is the output (including errors) after allowing it to tick 4 times (there were no actual attempts at connecting to the server despite what it says): [05-28-10 @ 20:01:05] Chat server started on 192.168.1.28 port 4050 [05-28-10 @ 20:01:05] Loaded 2 users from file PHP Notice: Undefined offset: 0 in /home/danny/projects/PHPChatServ/ChatServ.php on line 112 PHP Warning: socket_select(): unable to select [4]: Interrupted system call in /home/danny/projects/PHPChatServ/ChatServ.php on line 116 [05-28-10 @ 20:01:15] Tick! PHP Warning: socket_accept(): unable to accept incoming connection [4]: Interrupted system call in /home/danny/projects/PHPChatServ/ChatServ.php on line 126 [05-28-10 @ 20:01:25] Tick! PHP Warning: socket_getpeername() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /home/danny/projects/PHPChatServ/ChatServ.php on line 129 [05-28-10 @ 20:01:25] Accepting socket connection from PHP Notice: Undefined offset: 1 in /home/danny/projects/PHPChatServ/ChatServ.php on line 112 PHP Warning: socket_select(): unable to select [4]: Interrupted system call in /home/danny/projects/PHPChatServ/ChatServ.php on line 116 [05-28-10 @ 20:01:35] Tick! PHP Warning: socket_accept(): unable to accept incoming connection [4]: Interrupted system call in /home/danny/projects/PHPChatServ/ChatServ.php on line 126 [05-28-10 @ 20:01:45] Tick! PHP Warning: socket_getpeername() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /home/danny/projects/PHPChatServ/ChatServ.php on line 129 [05-28-10 @ 20:01:45] Accepting socket connection from PHP Notice: Undefined offset: 2 in /home/danny/projects/PHPChatServ/ChatServ.php on line 112

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• Using XMLDecoder to cast Encoded XML to List<>

  - by Ender

  I am writing an application that reads in a large number of basic user details in the following format; once read in it then allows the user to search for a user's details using their email: NAME ROLE EMAIL --------------------------------------------------- Joe Bloggs Manager [email protected] John Smith Consultant [email protected] Alan Wright Tester [email protected] ... The problem I am suffering is that I need to store a large number of details of all people that have worked at the company. The file containing these details will be written on a yearly basis simply for reporting purposes, but the program will need to be able to access these details quickly. The way I aim to access these files is to have a program that asks the user for the name of the unique email of the member of staff and for the program to then return the name and the role from that line of the file. I've played around with text files, but am struggling with how I would handle multiple columns of data when it comes to searching this large file. What is the best format to store such data in? A text file? XML? The size doesn't bother me, but I'd like to be able to search it as quickly as possible. The file will need to contain a lot of entries, probably over the 10K mark over time. EDIT: I've decided to go with the XML serialisation method. I've managed to get the code for Encoding working perfectly, but the Decoding code below does not work. XMLDecoder d = new XMLDecoder( new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream("data.xml"))); List<Employee> list = (List<Employee>) d.readObject(); d.close(); for(Employee x : list) { if(x.getEmail().equals(userInput)) { // do stuff } } When the program hits List<Employee> list = (List<Employee>) d.readObject(); an exception is thrown claiming that "Employee cannot be cast to java.util.List". I've added a bounty to this and anyone that can help me solve this problem once and for all will get lots of lovely points. EDIT 2: I've looked a bit more into the problem and have come across Serialization as a potential answer. If anyone can look into this for me as I've no experience with Serialization or Deserialization I'd be very grateful. It can provide an Object with no problems whatsoever, but I really need to return it in the same format as it went in (List). EDIT 3: Ugh, this problem is really starting to drive me crazy and to be honest I'm starting to think that it's an unsolvable problem. If possible, could someone take a look at the code and help provide a solution for me?

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• CSS text-decoration rule ignored

  - by Ferdy

  I have found similar questions to mine but none of the suggestions seems to apply to my situation, so here goes... I have a webpage with a buch of images on them. Each image has a title which in markup is between h2 tags. The title is a link, so the resulting markup is like this: <ul class="imagelist"> <li> <a href=""><h2>Title 1</h2></a> <a href=""><img src="" /></a> </li> <li> Image 2, etc... </li> </ul> All I want is for the title links to not be underlined. I tried to address this like this: .imagelist li a h2 { color:#333; text-decoration:none; } It completely ignores the text-decoration rule, yet respects the color rule. From other questions I learned that this could be because a child element cannot overrule the text-decoration of any of its parents. So, I went looking for the parent elements to see if any explicit text-decoration rules are applied. I found none. This is driving me crazy, any help? For the sake of completeness, here is the Firebug CSS output, which shows the full inheritance and such. Probably more than you want, but I cannot see anything conflicting here. .imagelist li a h2 { color:#333333; text-decoration:none; } main.css (line 417) h2 { font-size:14px; } main.css (line 40) h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 { display:block; font-weight:bold; margin-bottom:10px; } main.css (line 38) h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 { font-size:100%; font-weight:normal; } reset-min.css (line 7) body, div, dl, dt, dd, ul, ol, li, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, pre, code, form, fieldset, legend, input, textarea, p, blockquote, th, td { margin:0; padding:0; } reset-min.css (line 7) Inherited froma /apps/ju...mage/745 a { color:#0063E2; } main.css (line 55) Inherited fromli .imagelist li { list-style-type:none; } main.css (line 411) li { list-style:none outside none; } reset-min.css (line 7) Inherited fromul.imagelist .imagelist { border-collapse:collapse; font-size:9px; } main.css (line 410) Inherited frombody body, form { color:#333333; font:12px arial,helvetica,clean,sans-serif; } main.css (line 36) Inherited fromhtml html { color:#000000;

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