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• Make Your Coworker’s Day in Ubuntu

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  It can be difficult to express your appreciation for your coworkers in person – what if they take it the wrong way, or think you’re fishing for a compliment of your own? If you use Ubuntu in your office, here’s a quick way to show your appreciation while avoiding the social pitfalls of face-to-face communication. Make sure their computer is locked An unlocked computer is a vulnerable computer. Vulnerable to malware sure, but much more vulnerable to the local office prankster, who thinks it’s hilarious to make a screenshot of your desktop, change your background to that screenshot, then hide all of your desktop icons. These incidents have taught us that you should lock your computer when taking a break. Hopefully your coworker has learned the same lesson, and pressed Ctrl+Alt+L before stepping out for a coffee. Leave a carefully worded message Now is your opportunity to leave your message of appreciation on your coworker’s computer. Click on the Leave Message button and type away! Click on Save. Wait, possibly in the shadows If you sit near your coworker, then wait for them to return. If you sit farther away, then try to listen for their footsteps. Eventually they will return to their computer and enter their password to unlock it. Observe smile Once they return to their desktop, they will be greeted with the message you left. Look to see if they appreciated the message, and if so, feel free to take credit. If they look annoyed, or press the Cancel button, continue on with your day like nothing happened. You may also try to slip into a conversation that you saw Jerry tinkering with their computer earlier. Conclusion Leaving your coworkers a nice message is easy and can brighten up their dull afternoon. We’re pretty sure that this method can only be used for good and not evil, but if you have any other suggestions of messages to leave, let us know in the comments! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Make Ubuntu Automatically Save Changes to Your SessionAdding extra Repositories on UbuntuInstall IceWM on Ubuntu LinuxInstall Blackbox on Ubuntu LinuxMake Firefox Display Large Images Full Size TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Optimize your computer the Microsoft way Stormpulse provides slick, real time weather data Geek Parents – Did you try Parental Controls in Windows 7? Change DNS servers on the fly with DNS Jumper Live PDF Searches PDF Files and Ebooks Converting Mp4 to Mp3 Easily

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• Cocos3d lighting problem

  - by Parasithe

  I'm currently working on a cocos3d project, but I'm having some trouble with lighting and I have no idea how to solve it. I've tried everything and the lighting is always as bad in the game. The first picture is from 3ds max (the software we used for 3d) and the second is from my iphone app. http://prntscr.com/ly378 http://prntscr.com/ly2io As you can see, the lighting is really bad in the app. I manually add my spots and the ambiant light. Here is all my lighting code : _spot = [CC3Light lightWithName: @"Spot" withLightIndex: 0]; // Set the ambient scene lighting. ccColor4F ambientColor = { 0.9, 0.9, 0.9, 1 }; self.ambientLight = ambientColor; //Positioning _spot.target = [self getNodeNamed:kCharacterName]; _spot.location = cc3v( 400, 400, -600 ); // Adjust the relative ambient and diffuse lighting of the main light to // improve realisim, particularly on shadow effects. _spot.diffuseColor = CCC4FMake(0.8, 0.8, 0.8, 1.0); _spot.specularColor = CCC4FMake(0, 0, 0, 1); [_spot setAttenuationCoefficients:CC3AttenuationCoefficientsMake(0, 0, 1)]; // Another mechansim for adjusting shadow intensities is shadowIntensityFactor. // For better effect, set here to a value less than one to lighten the shadows // cast by the main light. _spot.shadowIntensityFactor = 0.75; [self addChild:_spot]; _spot2 = [CC3Light lightWithName: @"Spot2" withLightIndex: 1]; //Positioning _spot2.target = [self getNodeNamed:kCharacterName]; _spot2.location = cc3v( -550, 400, -800 ); _spot2.diffuseColor = CCC4FMake(0.8, 0.8, 0.8, 1.0); _spot2.specularColor = CCC4FMake(0, 0, 0, 1); [_spot2 setAttenuationCoefficients:CC3AttenuationCoefficientsMake(0, 0, 1)]; _spot2.shadowIntensityFactor = 0.75; [self addChild:_spot2]; I'd really appreciate if anyone would have some tip on how to fix the lighting. Maybe my spots are bad? maybe it's the material? I really have no idea. Any help would be welcomed. I already ask some help on cocos2d forums. I had some answers but I need more help.

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• Create Image Maps with GIMP

  - by SGWellens

  Having a clickable image in a web page is not a big deal. Having an image in a web page with clickable hotspots is a big deal. The powerful GIMP editor has a tool to make creating clickable hotspots much easier. GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. Its home page and download links are here: http://www.gimp.org/ (it is completely free). Beware: GIMP is an extraordinarily advanced and powerful image editor. If you wish to use it for general image editing tasks, you have a steep learning curve to climb. FYI: I used it to create the shadows you see on the images below. Fortunately, the tool to make Image Maps is separate from the main program. To start, open an image with GIMP or, drag and drop an image onto the GIMP main window. I'm using the image of a bar graph. Next, we have to find the Image Map tool and launch it (Filters->Web->Image Map…): Why is the Image Map tool under Filters and not Tools? I don't know. It's mystery—much like the Loch Ness Monster, the Bermuda Triangle, or why my socks keep disappearing when I do laundry. I swear I've got twenty single unmatched socks. But I digress… Here is what the Image Map tool looks like: If we click the blue 'I' button, we can add information to the Image Map: Now we'll use the rectangle tool to create some clickable hotspots. Select the Blue Rectangle tool, drag a rectangle, click when done and you'll get something like this: You can also make circle/oval and polygon areas. You can edit all the parameters of an image map area after drawing it. Rectangle settings (for fine tweaking): JavaScript functions (it's up to you to write them): Here is a setup with two rectangles and one polygon area: When you hit save a map file is generated that looks something like this: Paste the contents into a web page and you are almost there. I made some tweaks before it became usable: Replaced &apos; with apostrophes in the javascript functions. Changed the image path so it would find the image in my images directory Tweaked the href urls. Added Title="Some Text" to get tool tips. Cleaned out the comments. Result: The final markup (with JavaScript function): function ImageMapMouseHover(Msg) { $("#Label1").html(Msg); } It may seem like a lot of bother but, the tool does the heavy lifting: i.e. the coordinates. Getting the regions positioned and sized is easy using a visual tool…much better than doing it by hand. This, of course, isn't a full treatise on the tool but it should give you enough information to decide if it's helpful. I hope someone finds this useful Steve Wellens

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• Compute directional light frustum from view furstum points and light direction

  - by Fabian

  I'm working on a friends engine project and my task is to construct a new frustum from the light direction that overlaps the view frustum and possible shadow casters. The project already has a function that creates a frustum for this but its way to big and includes way to many casters (shadows) which can't be seen in the view frustum. Now the only parameter of this function are the normalized light direction vector and a view class which lets me extract the 8 view frustum points in world space. I don't have any additional infos about the scene. I have read some of the related Questions here but non seem to fit very well to my problem as they often just point to cascaded shadow maps. Sadly i can't use DX or openGl functions directly because this engine has a dedicated math library. From what i've read so far the steps are: Transform view frustum points into light space and find min/max x and y values (or sometimes minima and maxima of all three axis) and create a AABB using the min/max vectors. But what comes after this step? How do i transform this new AABB back to world space? What i've done so far: CVector3 Points[8], MinLight = CVector3(FLT_MAX), MaxLight = CVector3(FLT_MAX); for(int i = 0; i<8;++i){ Points[i] = Points[i] * WorldToShadowMapMatrix; MinLight = Math::Min(Points[i],MinLight); MaxLight = Math::Max(Points[i],MaxLight); } AABox box(MinLight,MaxLight); I don't think this is the right way to do it. The near plain probably has to extend into the direction of the light source to include potentional shadow casters. I've read the Microsoft article about cascaded shadow maps http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ee416307%28v=vs.85%29.aspx which also includes some sample code. But they seem to use the scenes AABB to determine the near and far plane which I can't since i cant access this information from the funtion I'm working in. Could you guys please link some example code which shows the calculation of such frustum? Thanks in advance! Additional questio: is there a way to construct a WorldToFrustum matrix that represents the above transformation?

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• Unexpected results for projection on to plane

  - by ravenspoint

  I want to use this projection matrix: GLfloat shadow[] = { -1,0,0,0, 1,0,-1,1, 0,0,-1,0, 0,0,0,-1 }; It should cast object shadows onto the y = 0 plane from a point light at 1,1,-1. I create a rectangle in the x = 0.5 plane glBegin( GL_QUADS ); glVertex3f( 0.5,0.2,-0.5); glVertex3f( 0.5,0.2,-1.5); glVertex3f( 0.5,0.5,-1.5); glVertex3f( 0.5,0.5,-0.5); glEnd(); Now if I manually multiply these vertices with the matrix, I get. glBegin( GL_QUADS ); glVertex3f( 0.375,0,-0.375); glVertex3f( 0.375,0,-1.625); glVertex3f( 0,0,-2); glVertex3f( 0,0,0); glEnd(); Which produces a reasonable display ( camera at 0,5,0 looking down y axis ) So rather than do the calculation manually, I should be able to use the opengl model transormation. I write this code: glMatrixMode (GL_MODELVIEW); GLfloat shadow[] = { -1,0,0,0, 1,0,-1,1, 0,0,-1,0, 0,0,0,-1 }; glLoadMatrixf( shadow ); glBegin( GL_QUADS ); glVertex3f( 0.5,0.2,-0.5); glVertex3f( 0.5,0.2,-1.5); glVertex3f( 0.5,0.5,-1.5); glVertex3f( 0.5,0.5,-0.5); glEnd(); But this produces a blank screen! What am I doing wrong? Is there some debug mode where I can print out the transformed vertices, so I can see where they are ending up? Note: People have suggested that using glMultMatrixf() might make a difference. It doesn't. Replacing glLoadMatrixf( shadow ); with glLoadIdentity(); glMultMatrixf( shadow ); gives the identical result ( of course! )

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• Tidy up old Windows Server Backup snapshots

  - by dty

  Hi, I'm running wbadmin from a scheduled job, backing up my C: and D: drives to my E: and (I believe!) including the system state: wbadmin start backup -backuptarget:e: -include:c:,d: -allCritical -noVerify -quiet I'd like to delete old backups, but I'm concerned that all the information I can find says to use wbadmin to delete old system state backups, and vssadmin to delete other backups. As far as I know, my backups ARE system state backups, but are using VSS on E: for storage, so I'm worried about trying either of these techniques for fear of losing all my backups. This is a home network, so I don't have a spare server to test this on. I'm also happy to simply restrict the space used on E:, but I can't make sense of the difference between the /for and /on parameters of the relevant vssadmin command. For reference, here's the output of vssadmin show shadows: Contents of shadow copy set ID: {xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx} Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 07/01/2011 08:12:05 Shadow Copy ID: {xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx} Original Volume: (E:)\\?\Volume{xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}\ Shadow Copy Volume: \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy83 Originating Machine: x.y.com Service Machine: x.y.com Provider: 'Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0' Type: DataVolumeRollback Attributes: Persistent, No auto release, No writers, Differential [... repeated a lot...] vssadmin show shadowstorage: Shadow Copy Storage association For volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}\ Shadow Copy Storage volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}\ Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 0 B Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 0 B Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 5.859 GB Shadow Copy Storage association For volume: (D:)\\?\Volume{xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}\ Shadow Copy Storage volume: (D:)\\?\Volume{xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}\ Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 0 B Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 0 B Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 40.317 GB Shadow Copy Storage association For volume: (E:)\\?\Volume{xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}\ Shadow Copy Storage volume: (E:)\\?\Volume{xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}\ Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 168.284 GB Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 171.15 GB Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: UNBOUNDED wbadmin get versions: Backup time: 07/01/2011 03:00 Backup target: 1394/USB Disk labeled xxxxxxxxx(E:) Version identifier: 01/07/2011-03:00 Can Recover: Volume(s), File(s), Application(s), Bare Metal Recovery, System State [... repeated a lot...]

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• 1080p monitor: connected through VGA - perfect, HDMI - awful

  - by develroot

  When I connect my 23" monitor (1920x1080) to my pc through HDMI, I encourage some problems. It's not full screen That's it. There are ~1cm black borders on right and left side and ~0,5cm black borders on the top and the bottom of the monitor. That's pretty frustrating. I tried adjusting overscan, but I can't mannualy type the % of overscan that I need. I can only select between ex. 8 and 10% in AMD Vision Engine Control center, but what I need is 9%. Next, even if i select 10% and the image fits all the corners, but after log off all the settings are lost and I have to do it again and again. Text, images, everything looks blurry That surprised me a lot. Should'nt HDMI quality be better than VGA's one? When connected through HDMI, the text isn't readable. It's like a very low refresh rate, although i'm running at 60Hz. Also the text has something like little shadows, very very annoying. Are there any tips to get the same quality as with VGA, with HDMI ? (running on integrated ATI Radeon HD4200, which, appearently, is the best card I have ever seen in terms of integrated ones)

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• Web Server slows down (ASP.NET)

  - by mfeingold

  below is a question I posted on stackoverflow . as suggested by Martin Clarke I also post it here. We have a really strange problem. One of the servers in the server farm becomes really slow. We see a number of timeouts in the logs and overall response time is not where it should be (and is on other servers in the farm). What is also strange is that it is not just the web app - Just logging into the server takes up to 1.5 min to show you the desktop. Once you are in, the system is as responsive as ever - unless you try to launch something, i.e. notepad - it takes another minute to launch and after launch it works fine. I checked a number of things - memory utilization is reasonable, CPU is below 15%, windows handles, event logs do not show anything. Recycling the aps.net process does not fix it - it still takes over a minute to log in. Rebooting the server helped, but now it started to slow down again. After a closer look we found out that Windows Temp directory is full of temp files - over 65k files. This is certainly something to take care of. But my question is could it be the root cause of the sluggishness, or there is still something else lurking in the shadows? Edit After more digging I am zeroing in on the issue related to the size of temp directories. This article: (see the original post this thing will not let me include a second link) describes something very similar. It still does not answer the question why the server is still slow even there is no activity.

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• DESIGNING FOR WIN PHONE 7

  Designing applications for the Win Phone 7 is very similar to designing for print. In my opinion, it feels like a cross between a tri-fold brochure and a poster. I based my prototype designs on Microsofts Metro style guide, with typography as the main focus and stunning imagery for support. Its nice to have fixed factors regulating the design, making it a fun and fresh design experience. Microsoft provides a UI Design Guidelines document that outlines layout sizes, background image size, recommended typefaces and spacing. You know what you are designing for and you know how it will look and act on the win phone 7 platform. Although applications are not required to strictly adhere to the Metro style guide I feel it makes the best use of the panorama view  and navigation. With strong examples of this UI concept in place like their Zune-like music + videos hub, I found it fairly easy to put together a few quick app mockups (see below). In addition to design guidelines, using a ready built design templates, or a win phone 7 specific panorama control like the one by Clarity Consulting will make the process of bringing your designs to life much more efficient. Likes, Dislikes, and Challenges I think the idea of the hub is completely intuitive. This concept clearly breaks down info into more manageable pieces, and greatly helps with organization when designing for the phone. I like the chromeless appearance, allowing the core functionality of the application to take precedence over gradients, textures, bevels, drop shadows, and the complicated animations you see on the web. Although I understand the Win Phone 7 guidelines are a work in progress, I found a few contradictions. I also noticed that certain design specifications did not translate well to the phone emulator . If you use their guidelines as suggested best practices and not as fixed definitions you will have more success. Multi-directional vs Linear The main challenge I had was stepping away from familiar navigational examples seen in other mobile phones. I had to keep reminding myself that the content to the right and to the left of what I was working on didnt necessarily have to have a direct link to one another. I started thinking multi-directional as opposed to linear. Win phone 7 vs IPhone The Metro styling of the Win Phone 7 is similar to the Zune HD and the Windows Media Center UI and offers a different interface paradigm than the IPhone. When navigating an application it feels like you are panning a long seamless page of information in contrast to the multiple panels of an IPhone. I think there is less of an opportunity to overdesign your application, which happens often with IPhone applications. While both interfaces are simple and sleek, win phone 7 really gets down to the basics. IPhone sets a high standard for designing for touch, designing for win phone 7 could improve on that user experience with a consistent and strategic use of white space and staying away from a menu and icon heavy UI. Design Examples for Win Phone 7 Applications Here are some concepts for both generic and brand specific applications for Win Phone 7: View Full Album Resources to get you going with your own Win Phone 7 design: Helpful design templates for Win Phone 7  http://www.shazaml.com/archives/windows-phone-7-ui-templates Here is the interaction design guide for Win Phone 7 http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252 Windows has a project template for Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 RC1 http://developer.windowsphone.com/ Clarity Consulting developed a panorama control for Win Phone 7 http://blogs.claritycon.com/blogs/design/archive/2010/03/30/building-the-elusive-windows-phone-panorama-control.aspxDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• DESIGNING FOR WIN PHONE 7

  Designing applications for the Win Phone 7 is very similar to designing for print. In my opinion, it feels like a cross between a tri-fold brochure and a poster. I based my prototype designs on Microsofts Metro style guide, with typography as the main focus and stunning imagery for support. Its nice to have fixed factors regulating the design, making it a fun and fresh design experience. Microsoft provides a UI Design Guidelines document that outlines layout sizes, background image size, recommended typefaces and spacing. You know what you are designing for and you know how it will look and act on the win phone 7 platform. Although applications are not required to strictly adhere to the Metro style guide I feel it makes the best use of the panorama view  and navigation. With strong examples of this UI concept in place like their Zune-like music + videos hub, I found it fairly easy to put together a few quick app mockups (see below). In addition to design guidelines, using a ready built design templates, or a win phone 7 specific panorama control like the one by Clarity Consulting will make the process of bringing your designs to life much more efficient. Likes, Dislikes, and Challenges I think the idea of the hub is completely intuitive. This concept clearly breaks down info into more manageable pieces, and greatly helps with organization when designing for the phone. I like the chromeless appearance, allowing the core functionality of the application to take precedence over gradients, textures, bevels, drop shadows, and the complicated animations you see on the web. Although I understand the Win Phone 7 guidelines are a work in progress, I found a few contradictions. I also noticed that certain design specifications did not translate well to the phone emulator . If you use their guidelines as suggested best practices and not as fixed definitions you will have more success. Multi-directional vs Linear The main challenge I had was stepping away from familiar navigational examples seen in other mobile phones. I had to keep reminding myself that the content to the right and to the left of what I was working on didnt necessarily have to have a direct link to one another. I started thinking multi-directional as opposed to linear. Win phone 7 vs IPhone The Metro styling of the Win Phone 7 is similar to the Zune HD and the Windows Media Center UI and offers a different interface paradigm than the IPhone. When navigating an application it feels like you are panning a long seamless page of information in contrast to the multiple panels of an IPhone. I think there is less of an opportunity to overdesign your application, which happens often with IPhone applications. While both interfaces are simple and sleek, win phone 7 really gets down to the basics. IPhone sets a high standard for designing for touch, designing for win phone 7 could improve on that user experience with a consistent and strategic use of white space and staying away from a menu and icon heavy UI. Design Examples for Win Phone 7 Applications Here are some concepts for both generic and brand specific applications for Win Phone 7: View Full Album Resources to get you going with your own Win Phone 7 design: Helpful design templates for Win Phone 7  http://www.shazaml.com/archives/windows-phone-7-ui-templates Here is the interaction design guide for Win Phone 7 http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252 Windows has a project template for Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 RC1 http://developer.windowsphone.com/ Clarity Consulting developed a panorama control for Win Phone 7 http://blogs.claritycon.com/blogs/design/archive/2010/03/30/building-the-elusive-windows-phone-panorama-control.aspxDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Algorithm to Find the Aggregate Mass of "Granola Bar"-Like Structures?

  - by Stuart Robbins

  I'm a planetary science researcher and one project I'm working on is N-body simulations of Saturn's rings. The goal of this particular study is to watch as particles clump together under their own self-gravity and measure the aggregate mass of the clumps versus the mean velocity of all particles in the cell. We're trying to figure out if this can explain some observations made by the Cassini spacecraft during the Saturnian summer solstice when large structures were seen casting shadows on the nearly edge-on rings. Below is a screenshot of what any given timestep looks like. (Each particle is 2 m in diameter and the simulation cell itself is around 700 m across.) The code I'm using already spits out the mean velocity at every timestep. What I need to do is figure out a way to determine the mass of particles in the clumps and NOT the stray particles between them. I know every particle's position, mass, size, etc., but I don't know easily that, say, particles 30,000-40,000 along with 102,000-105,000 make up one strand that to the human eye is obvious. So, the algorithm I need to write would need to be a code with as few user-entered parameters as possible (for replicability and objectivity) that would go through all the particle positions, figure out what particles belong to clumps, and then calculate the mass. It would be great if it could do it for "each" clump/strand as opposed to everything over the cell, but I don't think I actually need it to separate them out. The only thing I was thinking of was doing some sort of N2 distance calculation where I'd calculate the distance between every particle and if, say, the closest 100 particles were within a certain distance, then that particle would be considered part of a cluster. But that seems pretty sloppy and I was hoping that you CS folks and programmers might know of a more elegant solution? Edited with My Solution: What I did was to take a sort of nearest-neighbor / cluster approach and do the quick-n-dirty N2 implementation first. So, take every particle, calculate distance to all other particles, and the threshold for in a cluster or not was whether there were N particles within d distance (two parameters that have to be set a priori, unfortunately, but as was said by some responses/comments, I wasn't going to get away with not having some of those). I then sped it up by not sorting distances but simply doing an order N search and increment a counter for the particles within d, and that sped stuff up by a factor of 6. Then I added a "stupid programmer's tree" (because I know next to nothing about tree codes). I divide up the simulation cell into a set number of grids (best results when grid size ˜7 d) where the main grid lines up with the cell, one grid is offset by half in x and y, and the other two are offset by 1/4 in ±x and ±y. The code then divides particles into the grids, then each particle N only has to have distances calculated to the other particles in that cell. Theoretically, if this were a real tree, I should get order N*log(N) as opposed to N2 speeds. I got somewhere between the two, where for a 50,000-particle sub-set I got a 17x increase in speed, and for a 150,000-particle cell, I got a 38x increase in speed. 12 seconds for the first, 53 seconds for the second, 460 seconds for a 500,000-particle cell. Those are comparable speeds to how long the code takes to run the simulation 1 timestep forward, so that's reasonable at this point. Oh -- and it's fully threaded, so it'll take as many processors as I can throw at it.

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• CGContextSetShadow() - shadow direction reversed between iOS 3.0 and 4.0?

  - by Pascal

  I've been using CGContextSetShadowWithColor() in my Quartz drawing code on the iPhone to generate the "stomped in" look for text and other things (in drawRect: and drawLayer:inContext:). Worked perfectly, but when running the exact same code against iOS 3.2 and now iOS 4.0 I noticed that the shadows are all in the opposite direction. E.g. in the following code I set a black shadow to be 1 pixel above the text, which gave it a "pressed in" look, and now this shadow is 1px below the text, giving it a standard shadow. ... CGContextSetShadowWithColor(context, CGSizeMake(0.f, 1.f), 0.5f, shadowColor); CGContextShowGlyphsAtPoint(context, origin.x, origin.y, glyphs, length); ... Now I don't know whether I am (or have been) doing something wrong or whether there has been a change to the handling of this setting. I haven't applied any transformation that would explain this to me, at least not knowingly. I've flipped the text matrix in one instance, but not in others and this behavior is consistent. Plus I wasn't able to find anything about this in the SDK Release Notes, so it looks like it's probably me. What might be the issue?

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• UIImage Shadow Trouble

  - by Brandon Schlenker

  I'm trying to add a small shadow to an image, much like the icon shadows in the App Store. Right now I'm using the following code to round the corners of my images. Does anyone know how I can adapt it to add a small shadow? - (UIImage *)roundCornersOfImage:(UIImage *)source height:(int)height width:(int)width { int w = width; int h = height; CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB(); CGContextRef imageContext = CGBitmapContextCreate(NULL, w, h, 8, 4 * w, colorSpace, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedFirst); CGContextBeginPath(imageContext); CGRect rect = CGRectMake(0, 0, w, h); addRoundedRectToPath(imageContext, rect, 10, 10); CGContextClosePath(imageContext); CGContextClip(imageContext); CGContextDrawImage(imageContext, CGRectMake(0, 0, w, h), source.CGImage); CGImageRef imageMasked = CGBitmapContextCreateImage(imageContext); CGContextRelease(imageContext); CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace); return [UIImage imageWithCGImage:imageMasked]; } "addRoundedRectToPath" refers to another method that obviously rounds the corners.

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• Where can I find clear examples of MVC?

  - by Tom

  I've read a couple of things about MVCs but I still don't understand when they should be used and when they shouldn't be used. I am looking for clear examples that say things like "if you're developing this then you should use MVC, like this" and "if you're developing this, you shouldn't use MVC." Most of the examples I've seen rely on complex frameworks which have already implemented everything and you have to learn the framework and use it a lot to understand what's really happening. To many programmers, phrasings such as "UI business logic" sound like marketing terms — for example, the words "Instead the View binds directly to a Presentation Model" are used in this post. I am aware of the dangers that may lurk in the shadows as MVC is a concept and everyone feels like they know it best, yet nobody really knows exactly how to use it because there may be a lot of variables involved and everyone is allowed to have a different perspective on how to dissect a project into the Model, the View and the Controller. There is a lot of theory out there but very few clear examples. What I'm looking for are not "the best" ways of doing it so this should not be considered as subjective; I'm looking for different simple implementations that would allow me to decide on my own which are the best approaches. Succinctly: What are good on-line resources that present pro and con arguments to using MVC in various situations and provide clear examples to help the reader understand the concept?

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• SQL Server - Multi-Column substring matching

  - by hamlin11

  One of my clients is hooked on multi-column substring matching. I understand that Contains and FreeText search for words (and at least in the case of Contains, word prefixes). However, based upon my understanding of this MSDN book, neither of these nor their variants are capable of searching substrings. I have used LIKE rather extensively (Select * from A where A.B Like '%substr%') Sample table A: ID | Col1 | Col2 | Col3 | ------------------------------------- 1 | oklahoma | colorado | Utah | 2 | arkansas | colorado | oklahoma | 3 | florida | michigan | florida | ------------------------------------- The following code will give us row 1 and row 2: select * from A where Col1 like '%klah%' or Col2 like '%klah%' or Col3 like '%klah%' This is rather ugly, probably slow, and I just don't like it very much. Probably because the implementations that I'm dealing with have 10+ columns that need searched. The following may be a slight improvement as code readability goes, but as far as performance, we're still in the same ball park. select * from A where (Col1 + ' ' + Col2 + ' ' + Col3) like '%klah%' I have thought about simply adding insert, update, and delete triggers that simply add the concatenated version of the above columns into a separate table that shadows this table. Sample Shadow_Table: ID | searchtext | --------------------------------- 1 | oklahoma colorado Utah | 2 | arkansas colorado oklahoma | 3 | florida michigan florida | --------------------------------- This would allow us to perform the following query to search for '%klah%' select * from Shadow_Table where searchtext like '%klah%' I really don't like having to remember that this shadow table exists and that I'm supposed to use it when I am performing multi-column substring matching, but it probably yields pretty quick reads at the expense of write and storage space. My gut feeling tells me there there is an existing solution built into SQL Server 2008. However, I don't seem to be able to find anything other than research papers on the subject. Any help would be appreciated.

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• Defining Light Coordinates

  - by Zachary

  I took a Computer Graphics exam a couple of days ago which had extra credit question like the following: A light can be defined in one of two ways. It can be defined in world coordinates, e.g. a street light, or in the viewer (eye coordinates), e.g., a head-lamp worn by a miner. In either case the viewpoint can freely change. Describe how the light should be transformed different in these two cases. Since I won't get to see the results of this until after spring break, I thought I would ask here. It seems like the analogies being used are misleading - could you not define a light source that is located at the viewers eye in world coordinates just as well as you could in eye coordinates? I've been doing some research on how OpenGL handles light, and it seems as though it always uses eye coordinates - the ModelView matrix would be applied to any light in world coordinates. In that case the answer may just be that you would have to transform light defined in world coordinates into eye coordinates using something like the ModelView matrix, while light defined in eye coordinates would only need to be transformed by the projection matrix. Then again I could be totally under thinking (or over thinking this). Another thought I had is that it determines which way you render shadows, but that has more to do with the location of the light and its type (point, directional, emission, etc) than what coordinates it is represented in. Any ideas?

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• The best way to implement drawing features like Keynote

  - by Shamseddine

  Hi all, I'm trying to make a little iPad tool's for drawing simple geometrical objects (rect, rounded rect, ellipse, star, ...). My goal is to make something very close to Keynote (drawing feature), i.e. let the user add a rect (for instance), resizing it and moving it. I want too the user can select many objects and move them together. I've thought about at least 3 differents ways to do that : Extends UIView for each object type, a class for Rect, another for Ellipse, ... With custom drawing method. Then add this view as subview of the global view. Extends CALayer for each object type, a class for Rect, another for Ellipse, ... With custom drawing method. Then add this layer as sublayer of the global view layer's. Extends NSObject for each object type, a class for Rect, another for Ellipse, ... With just a drawing method which will get as argument a CGContext and a Rect and draw directly the form in it. Those methods will be called by the drawing method of the global view. I'm aware that the two first ways come with functions to detect touch on each object, to add easily shadows,... but I'm afraid that they are a little too heavy ? That's why I thought about the last way, which it seems to be straight forward. Which way will be the more efficient ??? Or maybe I didn't thought another way ? Any help will be appreciated ;-) Thanks.

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• Flex Spark TitleWindow bad redraw on dragging

  - by praksant

  Hi, I have a problem with redrawing in flex 4. I have a spark titleWindow, and if i drag it faster, it looks like it's mask is one frame late after the component. it's easily visible with 1pixel thin border, because it becomes invisible even with slower movement. You can try it here (what is not my page, but it's easier to show you here than uploading example): http://flexponential.com/2010/01/10/resizable-titlewindow-in-flex-4/ If you move in direction up, you see disappearing top border. in another directions it's not that sensitive as it has wide shadow, and it's not very visible on shadow. On my computer i see it on every spark TitleWindow i have found on google, although it's much less visible with less contrast skins, without borders or with shadows. Do you see it there? i had never this problem with halo components. It's doing the same thing with different skins. I tried to delete masks from skin, cache component, skin even an application as bitmap with no success. I also turned on redraw regions in flash player, and it looks like it's one frame late after titlewindow too. Does anyone know why is it doing this or how can i prevent it? Thank you UPDATE: no answers? really?

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• How do I DYNAMICALLY cast in C# and return for a property

  - by ken-forslund

  I've already read threads on the topic, but can't find a solution that fits. I'm working on a drop-down list that takes an enum and uses that to populate itself. i found a VB.NET one. During the porting process, I discovered that it uses DirectCast() to set the type as it returns the SelectedValue. See the original VB here: http://jeffhandley.com/archive/2008/01/27/enum-list-dropdown-control.aspx the gist is, the control has Type _enumType; //gets set when the datasource is set and is the type of the specific enum The SelectedValue property kind of looks like (remember, it doesn't work): public Enum SelectedValue //Shadows Property { get { // Get the value from the request to allow for disabled viewstate string RequestValue = this.Page.Request.Params[this.UniqueID]; return Enum.Parse(_enumType, RequestValue, true) as _enumType; } set { base.SelectedValue = value.ToString(); } } Now this touches on a core point that I think was missed in the other discussions. In darn near every example, folks argued that DirectCast wasn't needed, because in every example, they statically defined the type. That's not the case here. As the programmer of the control, I don't know the type. Therefore, I can't cast it. Additionally, the following examples of lines won't compile because c# casting doesn't accept a variable. Whereas VB's CType and DirectCast can accept Type T as a function parameter: return Enum.Parse(_enumType, RequestValue, true); or return Enum.Parse(_enumType, RequestValue, true) as _enumType; or return (_enumType)Enum.Parse(_enumType, RequestValue, true) ; or return Convert.ChangeType(Enum.Parse(_enumType, RequestValue, true), _enumType); or return CastTo<_enumType>(Enum.Parse(_enumType, RequestValue, true)); So, any ideas on a solution? What's the .NET 3.5 best way to resolve this?

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• Why do my raytraced spheres have dark lines when lit with multiple light sources?

  - by Curyous

  I have a simple raytracer that only works back up to the first intersection. The scene looks OK with two different light sources, but when both lights are in the scene, there are dark shadows where the lit area from one ends, even if in the middle of a lit area from the other light source (particularly noticeable on the green ball). The transition from the 'area lit by both light sources' to the 'area lit by just one light source' seems to be slightly darker than the 'area lit by just one light source'. The code where I'm adding the lighting effects is: // trace lights for ( int l=0; l<primitives.count; l++) { Primitive* p = [primitives objectAtIndex:l]; if (p.light) { Sphere * lightSource = (Sphere *)p; // calculate diffuse shading Vector3 *light = [[Vector3 alloc] init]; light.x = lightSource.centre.x - intersectionPoint.x; light.y = lightSource.centre.y - intersectionPoint.y; light.z = lightSource.centre.z - intersectionPoint.z; [light normalize]; Vector3 * normal = [[primitiveThatWasHit getNormalAt:intersectionPoint] retain]; if (primitiveThatWasHit.material.diffuse > 0) { float illumination = DOT(normal, light); if (illumination > 0) { float diff = illumination * primitiveThatWasHit.material.diffuse; // add diffuse component to ray color colour.red += diff * primitiveThatWasHit.material.colour.red * lightSource.material.colour.red; colour.blue += diff * primitiveThatWasHit.material.colour.blue * lightSource.material.colour.blue; colour.green += diff * primitiveThatWasHit.material.colour.green * lightSource.material.colour.green; } } [normal release]; [light release]; } } How can I make it look right?

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• Windows.Forms RichTextBox Control - Avoid inserting large data.

  - by SchlaWiener

  I have a Windows Form with a RichTextBox on it. The content of the RichTextBox is written to a database field that ist limited to 64k data. For my purpose that is way more than enough text to store. I have set the MaxLength property to avoid insertng more data than allowed. rtcControl.MaxLength = 65536 Howevery, that only restricts the amount of characters that so is allowed to put in the text. But with the formatting overhead from the Rtf I can type more text than I should be allowed to. It even get's worse if I insert a large image, which dosn't increase the TextLength at all but the Rtf Length grows quite a lot. At the moment I check the Length of the richttextboxes' Rtf property in the FormClosing event and display a message to the user if it's to large. However that is just a workaround because I want to disallow putting more data than allowed into the control (like in a textbox if you exceed the MaxLength property nothing is inserted into the control and you hear the default beep(). Any ideas how to achive this? I already tried: using a custom control which extends the richtextbox and shadows th Rtf property to intercept the insertation. But it seems it isn't executed if I add text. Even the TextChanged Event does not fire if I type smth. in the control.

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• Prevent box shadow from showing on a specific side

  - by kaile

  Is there any way to create a css box-shadow in which regardless of the blur value, the shadow only appears on the desired sides? For example if I want to create a div with shadows on left and right sides and no shadow on the top or bottom. The div is not absolutely positioned and its height is determined by the content. -- Edit -- @ricebowl: I appreciate your answer. Maybe you can help with creating a complete solution to fix the problems stated in my reply to your solution... My page setup is as follows: <div id="container"> <div id="header"></div> <div id="content"></div> <div id="clearfooter"></div> </div> <div id="footer"></div> And CSS like this: #container {width:960px; min-height:100%; margin:0px auto -32px auto; position:relative; padding:0px; background-color:#e6e6e6; -moz-box-shadow: -3px 0px 5px rgba(0,0,0,.8), 3px 0px 5px rgba(0,0,0,.8);} #header {height:106px; position:relative;} #content {position:relative;} #clearFooter {height:32px; clear:both; display:block; padding:0px; margin:0px;} #footer {height:32px; padding:0px; position:relative; width:960px; margin:0px auto 0px auto;}

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• How to Implement Overlay blend method using opengles 1.1

  - by Cylon

  Blow is the algorithm of overlay. and i want using it on iphone, but iphone 3g only support opengles 1.1, can not using glsl. can i using blend function or texture combine to implement it. thank you /////////Reference from OpenGL Shading® Language Third Edition /////////// 19.6.12 Overlay OVERLAY first computes the luminance of the base value. If the luminance value is less than 0.5, the blend and base values are multiplied together. If the luminance value is greater than 0.5, a screen operation is performed. The effect is that the base value is mixed with the blend value, rather than being replaced. This allows patterns and colors to overlay the base image, but shadows and highlights in the base image are preserved. A discontinuity occurs where luminance = 0.5. To provide a smooth transition, we actually do a linear blend of the two equations for luminance in the range [0.45,0.55]. float luminance = dot(base, lumCoeff); if (luminance < 0.45) result = 2.0 * blend * base; else if (luminance 0.55) result = white - 2.0 * (white - blend) * (white - base); else { vec4 result1 = 2.0 * blend * base; vec4 result2 = white - 2.0 * (white - blend) * (white - base); result = mix(result1, result2, (luminance - 0.45) * 10.0); }

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• How to create a snowstorm on your Windows desktop?

  - by Vilx-

  Practical uses aside, how (if it is possible at all) could you create a "snowing" effect on your desktop PC running Windows? Preferably with nothing but raw C/C++ and WinAPI. The requirements for the snow are: Appears over everything else shown; Snowflakes are small, possibly simple dots or clusters of a few white pixels; Does not bother working with the computer (clicking a snowflake sends the click through to the underlying window); Plays nicely with users dragging windows; Multimonitor capable. Bonus points for any of the following features: Snow accumulates on the lower edge of the window or the taskbar (if it's at the bottom of the screen); Snow accumulates also on top-level windows. Or perhaps some snow accumulates, some continues down, accumulating on every window with a title bar; Snow accumulated on windows gets "shaken off" when windows are dragged; Snow accumulated on taskbar is aware of the extended "Start" button under Vista/7. Snowflakes have shadows/outlines, so they are visible on white backgrounds; Snowflakes have complex snowflike-alike shapes (they must still be tiny). Most of these effects are straightforward enough, except the part where snow is click-through and plays nicely with dragging of windows. In my early days I've made an implementation that draws on the HDC you get from GetDesktopWindow(), which was click-through, but had problems with users dragging windows (snowflakes rendered on them got "dragged along"). The solution may use Vista/7 Aero features, but, of course, a universal solution is preferred. Any ideas? :)

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• MS SQL - Multi-Column substring matching

  - by hamlin11

  One of my clients is hooked on multi-column substring matching. I understand that Contains and FreeText search for words (and at least in the case of Contains, word prefixes). However, based upon my understanding of this MSDN book, neither of these nor their variants are capable of searching substrings. I have used LIKE rather extensively (Select * from A where A.B Like '%substr%') Sample table A: ID | Col1 | Col2 | Col3 | ------------------------------------- 1 | oklahoma | colorado | Utah | 2 | arkansas | colorado | oklahoma | 3 | florida | michigan | florida | ------------------------------------- The following code will give us row 1 and row 2: select * from A where Col1 like '%klah%' or Col2 like '%klah%' or Col3 like '%klah%' This is rather ugly, probably slow, and I just don't like it very much. Probably because the implementations that I'm dealing with have 10+ columns that need searched. The following may be a slight improvement as code readability goes, but as far as performance, we're still in the same ball park. select * from A where (Col1 + ' ' + Col2 + ' ' + Col3) like '%klah%' I have thought about simply adding insert, update, and delete triggers that simply add the concatenated version of the above columns into a separate table that shadows this table. Sample Shadow_Table: ID | searchtext | --------------------------------- 1 | oklahoma colorado Utah | 2 | arkansas colorado oklahoma | 3 | florida michigan florida | --------------------------------- This would allow us to perform the following query to search for '%klah%' select * from Shadow_Table where searchtext like '%klah%' I really don't like having to remember that this shadow table exists and that I'm supposed to use it when I am performing multi-column substring matching, but it probably yields pretty quick reads at the expense of write and storage space. My gut feeling tells me there there is an existing solution built into SQL Server 2008. However, I don't seem to be able to find anything other than research papers on the subject. Any help would be appreciated.

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