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  • Mail-Merge on Steroids: Can Word 2003 do this?

    - by richardtallent
    I have a huge report to put together, made up of over 1,000 smaller, nearly-identical reports. Each report includes: General 1:1 information (basic mail-merge stuff) Lots of text, some of which may need to be disabled or have alternate text based on a boolean field. A few embedded images, preferably loaded via HTTP URL, but if they have to be on the a file system thing I can do that. (Filenames will be provided as a field in the data source.) Fortunately, all images are roughly the same size/shape. Several 1:m tables with a few fields apiece. The kicker is the master/child tables. I've seen examples for Word 2000 for doing this by left-joining the master and child table and using some IF/THEN logic to know whether to jump to the next master record. But in my case, I have several of these subtables, so that approach won't really work. So, can Word 2003 handle arbitrary master/child tables? If so, how? If not, I considered InfoPath, but I haven't used it before, and it seems to be made for data entry, not long formatted reports. I'm a software developer, so I could always hack something together with a massive VBA macro, or generating the report in HTML on the web server (where the data is coming from anyway). But I'm hoping Word will work without such gymnastics, since it will give the ultimate users of the report template better control over formatting and making minor changes.

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  • How 'terse' is too terse? -- Practical guidelines for expressing as much intent in as few characters

    - by Christopher Altman
    First, I love writing as little code as possible. I think, and please correct me, one of the golden rules of programming is to express your code in as few of character as possible while maintaining human readability. But I can get a little carried away. I can pack three or four lines into one statement, something like $startDate = $dateTime > time() ? mktime(0,0,0,date('m',time()-86400),date('d',time()*2),2011) : time(); (Note: this is a notional example) I can comprehend the above code when reading it. I prefer 'mushing' it all together because having less lines per page is a good thing to me. So my question: When writing code and thinking about how compact or terse you can express yourself, what are some guidelines you use? Do you write multiple lines because you think it helps other people? Do you write as little as possible, but use comments? Or do you always look for the way to write as little code as possible and enjoy the rewards of compact statements? (Just one slightly off topic comment: I love the Perl one-liners, but that is not what I am talking about here)

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  • How do I rewrite .after( content, content )?

    - by Evan Carroll
    I've got this form working, but according to my previous question it might not be supported: it isn't in the docs either way -- but the intention is pretty obvious in the code. $(".section.warranty .warranty_checks :last").after( $('<div class="little check" />').click( function () { alert('hi') } ) , $('<span>OEM</span>') /*Notice this (a second) argument */ ); What this does is insert <div class="little check"> with a simple .click() callback, followed by a sibling of <span>OEM</span>. How else can I write this then? I'm having difficulty conjuring something working by chaining any combination of .after(), and .insertAfter()? I would expect this to work, but it doesn't: $(".section.warranty .warranty_checks :last").after( $('<div class="little check" />').click( function () { alert('hi') } ).after ( $('<span>OEM</span>') ) ); I would also expect this to work, but it doesn't: $(".section.warranty .warranty_checks :last").after( $('<span>OEM</span>').insertAfter( $('<div class="little check" />').click( function () { alert('hi') } ) ); );

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  • jQuery: How do I rewrite .after( content, content )?

    - by Evan Carroll
    I've got this form working, but according to my previous question it might not be supported: it isn't in the docs either way -- but the intention is pretty obvious in the code. $(".section.warranty .warranty_checks :last").after( $('<div class="little check" />').click( function () { alert('hi') } ) , $('<span>OEM</span>') /*Notice this (a second) argument */ ); What this does is insert <div class="little check"> with a simple .click() callback, followed by a sibling of <span>OEM</span>. How else can I write this then? I'm having difficulty conjuring something working by chaining any combination of .after(), and .insertAfter()? I would expect this to work, but it doesn't: $(".section.warranty .warranty_checks :last").after( $('<div class="little check" />').click( function () { alert('hi') } ).after ( $('<span>OEM</span>') ) ); I would also expect this to work, but it doesn't: $(".section.warranty .warranty_checks :last").after( $('<span>OEM</span>').insertAfter( $('<div class="little check" />').click( function () { alert('hi') } ) ); );

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  • Form doesn't resize smoothly with a timer event

    - by BDotA
    I have a grid control at the bottom of my form and it can be shown or hidden if user wants to show/hide it. So one way was to well use AutoSize of the form and change the Visuble property of that grid to true or false,... But I thought let's make it a little cooler! so I wanted the form to resize a little more slowly, like a garage door! So I dropped a Timer on the form and started increasing the height of the form little by little while the timer ticks... so something like this when user says show/hide the grid: timer1.Enabled = true; timer1.Start(); and something like this on the timer_click event: this.Height = this.Height + 5; if(this.Height -10 > ErrorsGrid.Bottom ) timer1.Stop(); It kind of works but still not perfect. For example it lags at the very beginning, stop a like a second and then start moving it...So now with this idea in mind what alterations do you suggest I should do to make this thing look and work better?

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  • Making Money from your SQL Server Blog

    - by Bill Graziano
    My SQL Server blog reading list is around one hundred blogs.  Many people are writing great content and generating lots of page views.  I see some of them running Google AdSense and trying to make a little money off their traffic.  If you want to earn some some extra money from what you’ve written there are a couple of options.  And one new option that I’m announcing here. Background Internet advertising is sold based on a few different pricing schemes.  Flat Fee.  You offer either all your impressions (page views) or some percentage of your impressions in exchange for a flat monthly fee.  CPM or cost per thousand impressions.  If the quoted price is $2 CPM you’ll get $2 for every 1,000 times the ad is displayed.  While you might think the “M” means millions, the “M” in CPM is the roman numeral for 1,000. CPC or cost per click.  This is also called PPC or pay per click.  In this method you get paid based on how many clicks there are on the ad.  CPA or cost per action.  In this method you get paid based on an action that occurs on the advertisers site after they click on the ad.  This is typically some type of sign up form.  This is how most affiliate programs work. Darren Rowse at ProBlogger has been writing about blogging and making money off blogs for years.  He has a good introduction to making money on your blog in his “Making Money” section.  If you’re interested in learning more he has a post up titled How to Make More Money From Your Blog in the New Year that links to many of his best posts on the subject. Google AdSense This is the most common method for people earning money from their blogging.  It’s easy to setup and administer.  You tell AdSense what size ads you’d like to run and it gives you a little piece of JavaScript to put on your site.  AdSense quickly learns the topics you write about and displays ads that are appropriate for your site.  I typically see ads for hosting, SQL Server tools and developer tools running in AdSense slots.  AdSense pays on a CPC model.  If you translate that back to CPM pricing you’ll see rates from $0.50 to $1.00 CPM. Amazon While you might not make much money writing books it’s now possible to make even less helping Amazon sell them.  You can sign up for an Amazon affiliate program.  Each time you send Amazon a link and someone buys the book you get a cut of that sale.  This is the CPA model from above.  Amazon can help you build some pretty nice “stores”.  Here’s the SQL Server bookstore I built for SQLTeam.com.  If you’re just putting in a page with books like I’ve done on SQLTeam you should keep your expectations low.  If you’re writing book reviews of suggesting books on your blog it really does make sense to setup an Amazon affiliate link.  People are much more likely to buy a book based on a review from a trusted source.  I always try to buy through a referral link if there is one. Amazon pays about 4% of the price as a referral fee.  You also get credit for anything else they buy while on the site.  I recently had someone buy an iPod nano with their SQL Server book making me an extra $5.60 richer!  Estimating how much you can make is difficult though.  How much attention you draw to the links and book reviews can dramatically affect the earnings. Private Ad Sales This is the hardest but potentially most lucrative option.  You sell advertising directly to companies that want to sell things to your readers.  Typically this would be SQL Server tool vendors, hosting companies or anyone else that wants to make money off database administrators.  This is also the most difficult to do.  You’ll need the contacts at the companies and enough page views to make it worth their while.  You’ll also need software to track the page views and clicks, geo-target your ads and smooth out the impressions.  Your earnings are based on whatever you can negotiate with the companies. SQL Server Ad Network For the last couple of years I’ve run any extra ads that I sold on the SQLTeam Weblogs.  You can see an example of that on Mladen’s blog.  The ad in the upper right corner is one that I’m running for him.  (Note: Many of the ads I’m running are geo-targeted to only appear in English speaking countries.  You may see a different set of ads outside the US, Canada and the UK.  You can also see he has a couple of Google ads on his blog.)  When I run ads on his blog I split the advertising revenue with him.  They make a little and I make a little. I recently started to expand this and sell advertising specifically to run on SQL Server-related blogs.  I’m also starting to run ads on non-SQLTeam blogs.  The only way I can sell more advertising is to have more blogs to run it on.  And that’s where you come in. I’ve created a SQL Server advertising network.  I handle all the ad sales and provide the technology to serve the ads.  I handle collections and payments back to you.  You get paid at the end of each month regardless of when (or if) the advertiser actually pays.  All you need to do is add a small piece of JavaScript to your site to display the ads. If you’re writing about SQL Server and interested in earning a little money for your site I’d like to talk to you.  You can use the Contact Us page on SQLTeam.com to reach me.  Running advertising on your blog isn’t for everyone.  If you’re concerned about what advertisers might think about certain posts then you might not be a good fit.  For the most part this isn’t an issue.  You’ll also need to have a PayPal account to receive payments.  You probably won’t get rich doing this.  But you can earn extra cash on the side for doing what you would do anyway.  I do know that people have earned enough to buy themselves a nice laptop doing this. My initial target is blogs with more than 10,000 page views per month.  I expect to pay two to three times what Google pays.  If you have less than 10,000 page views per month but are still interested I’d still like to hear from you.  I may not be able to sign up smaller blogs right away but we’ll get the process started.  If you’re unsure about your traffic Google Analytics is a free tool that provides great reporting on traffic, popular posts and how people find your blog.  If you have any questions or are just curious drop me a line and I’ll try to answer your questions.

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  • My Code Kata–A Solution Kata

    - by Glav
    There are many developers and coders out there who like to do code Kata’s to keep their coding ability up to scratch and to practice their skills. I think it is a good idea. While I like the concept, I find them dead boring and of minimal purpose. Yes, they serve to hone your skills but that’s about it. They are often quite abstract, in that they usually focus on a small problem set requiring specific solutions. It is fair enough as that is how they are designed but again, I find them quite boring. What I personally like to do is go for something a little larger and a little more fun. It takes a little more time and is not as easily executed as a kata though, but it services the same purposes from a practice perspective and allows me to continue to solve some problems that are not directly part of the initial goal. This means I can cover a broader learning range and have a bit more fun. If I am lucky, sometimes they even end up being useful tools. With that in mind, I thought I’d share my current ‘kata’. It is not really a code kata as it is too big. I prefer to think of it as a ‘solution kata’. The code is on bitbucket here. What I wanted to do was create a kind of simplistic virtual world where I can create a player, or a class, stuff it into the world, and see if it survives, and can navigate its way to the exit. Requirements were pretty simple: Must be able to define a map to describe the world using simple X,Y co-ordinates. Z co-ordinates as well if you feel like getting clever. Should have the concept of entrances, exists, solid blocks, and potentially other materials (again if you want to get clever). A coder should be able to easily write a class which will act as an inhabitant of the world. An inhabitant will receive stimulus from the world in the form of surrounding environment and be able to make a decision on action which it passes back to the ‘world’ for processing. At a minimum, an inhabitant will have sight and speed characteristics which determine how far they can ‘see’ in the world, and how fast they can move. Coders who write a really bad ‘inhabitant’ should not adversely affect the rest of world. Should allow multiple inhabitants in the world. So that was the solution I set out to act as a practice solution and a little bit of fun. It had some interesting problems to solve and I figured, if it turned out ok, I could potentially use this as a ‘developer test’ for interviews. Ask a potential coder to write a class for an inhabitant. Show the coder the map they will navigate, but also mention that we will use their code to navigate a map they have not yet seen and a little more complex. I have been playing with solution for a short time now and have it working in basic concepts. Below is a screen shot using a very basic console visualiser that shows the map, boundaries, blocks, entrance, exit and players/inhabitants. The yellow asterisks ‘*’ are the players, green ‘O’ the entrance, purple ‘^’ the exit, maroon/browny ‘#’ are solid blocks. The players can move around at different speeds, knock into each others, and make directional movement decisions based on what they see and who is around them. It has been quite fun to write and it is also quite fun to develop different players to inject into the world. The code below shows a really simple implementation of an inhabitant that can work out what to do based on stimulus from the world. It is pretty simple and just tries to move in some direction if there is nothing blocking the path. public class TestPlayer:LivingEntity { public TestPlayer() { Name = "Beta Boy"; LifeKey = Guid.NewGuid(); } public override ActionResult DecideActionToPerform(EcoDev.Core.Common.Actions.ActionContext actionContext) { try { var action = new MovementAction(); // move forward if we can if (actionContext.Position.ForwardFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.ForwardFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Forward; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.LeftFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.LeftFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Left; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.RearFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.RearFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Back; return action; } } if (actionContext.Position.RightFacingPositions.Length > 0) { if (CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(actionContext.Position.RightFacingPositions[0])) { action.DirectionToMove = MovementDirection.Right; return action; } } return action; } catch (Exception ex) { World.WriteDebugInformation("Player: "+ Name, string.Format("Player Generated exception: {0}",ex.Message)); throw ex; } } private bool CheckAccessibilityOfMapBlock(MapBlock block) { if (block == null || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowEntry || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowExit || block.Accessibility == MapBlockAccessibility.AllowPotentialEntry) { return true; } return false; } } It is simple and it seems to work well. The world implementation itself decides the stimulus context that is passed to he inhabitant to make an action decision. All movement is carried out on separate threads and timed appropriately to be as fair as possible and to cater for additional skills such as speed, and eventually maybe stamina, strength, with actions like fighting. It is pretty fun to make up random maps and see how your inhabitant does. You can download the code from here. Along the way I have played with parallel extensions to make the compute intensive stuff spread across all cores, had to heavily factor in visibility of methods and properties so design of classes was paramount, work out movement algorithms that play fairly in the world and properly favour the players with higher abilities, as well as a host of other issues. So that is my ‘solution kata’. If I keep going with it, I may develop a web interface for it where people can upload assemblies and watch their player within a web browser visualiser and maybe even a map designer. What do you do to keep the fires burning?

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  • C#/.NET Fundamentals: Choosing the Right Collection Class

    - by James Michael Hare
    The .NET Base Class Library (BCL) has a wide array of collection classes at your disposal which make it easy to manage collections of objects. While it's great to have so many classes available, it can be daunting to choose the right collection to use for any given situation. As hard as it may be, choosing the right collection can be absolutely key to the performance and maintainability of your application! This post will look at breaking down any confusion between each collection and the situations in which they excel. We will be spending most of our time looking at the System.Collections.Generic namespace, which is the recommended set of collections. The Generic Collections: System.Collections.Generic namespace The generic collections were introduced in .NET 2.0 in the System.Collections.Generic namespace. This is the main body of collections you should tend to focus on first, as they will tend to suit 99% of your needs right up front. It is important to note that the generic collections are unsynchronized. This decision was made for performance reasons because depending on how you are using the collections its completely possible that synchronization may not be required or may be needed on a higher level than simple method-level synchronization. Furthermore, concurrent read access (all writes done at beginning and never again) is always safe, but for concurrent mixed access you should either synchronize the collection or use one of the concurrent collections. So let's look at each of the collections in turn and its various pros and cons, at the end we'll summarize with a table to help make it easier to compare and contrast the different collections. The Associative Collection Classes Associative collections store a value in the collection by providing a key that is used to add/remove/lookup the item. Hence, the container associates the value with the key. These collections are most useful when you need to lookup/manipulate a collection using a key value. For example, if you wanted to look up an order in a collection of orders by an order id, you might have an associative collection where they key is the order id and the value is the order. The Dictionary<TKey,TVale> is probably the most used associative container class. The Dictionary<TKey,TValue> is the fastest class for associative lookups/inserts/deletes because it uses a hash table under the covers. Because the keys are hashed, the key type should correctly implement GetHashCode() and Equals() appropriately or you should provide an external IEqualityComparer to the dictionary on construction. The insert/delete/lookup time of items in the dictionary is amortized constant time - O(1) - which means no matter how big the dictionary gets, the time it takes to find something remains relatively constant. This is highly desirable for high-speed lookups. The only downside is that the dictionary, by nature of using a hash table, is unordered, so you cannot easily traverse the items in a Dictionary in order. The SortedDictionary<TKey,TValue> is similar to the Dictionary<TKey,TValue> in usage but very different in implementation. The SortedDictionary<TKey,TValye> uses a binary tree under the covers to maintain the items in order by the key. As a consequence of sorting, the type used for the key must correctly implement IComparable<TKey> so that the keys can be correctly sorted. The sorted dictionary trades a little bit of lookup time for the ability to maintain the items in order, thus insert/delete/lookup times in a sorted dictionary are logarithmic - O(log n). Generally speaking, with logarithmic time, you can double the size of the collection and it only has to perform one extra comparison to find the item. Use the SortedDictionary<TKey,TValue> when you want fast lookups but also want to be able to maintain the collection in order by the key. The SortedList<TKey,TValue> is the other ordered associative container class in the generic containers. Once again SortedList<TKey,TValue>, like SortedDictionary<TKey,TValue>, uses a key to sort key-value pairs. Unlike SortedDictionary, however, items in a SortedList are stored as an ordered array of items. This means that insertions and deletions are linear - O(n) - because deleting or adding an item may involve shifting all items up or down in the list. Lookup time, however is O(log n) because the SortedList can use a binary search to find any item in the list by its key. So why would you ever want to do this? Well, the answer is that if you are going to load the SortedList up-front, the insertions will be slower, but because array indexing is faster than following object links, lookups are marginally faster than a SortedDictionary. Once again I'd use this in situations where you want fast lookups and want to maintain the collection in order by the key, and where insertions and deletions are rare. The Non-Associative Containers The other container classes are non-associative. They don't use keys to manipulate the collection but rely on the object itself being stored or some other means (such as index) to manipulate the collection. The List<T> is a basic contiguous storage container. Some people may call this a vector or dynamic array. Essentially it is an array of items that grow once its current capacity is exceeded. Because the items are stored contiguously as an array, you can access items in the List<T> by index very quickly. However inserting and removing in the beginning or middle of the List<T> are very costly because you must shift all the items up or down as you delete or insert respectively. However, adding and removing at the end of a List<T> is an amortized constant operation - O(1). Typically List<T> is the standard go-to collection when you don't have any other constraints, and typically we favor a List<T> even over arrays unless we are sure the size will remain absolutely fixed. The LinkedList<T> is a basic implementation of a doubly-linked list. This means that you can add or remove items in the middle of a linked list very quickly (because there's no items to move up or down in contiguous memory), but you also lose the ability to index items by position quickly. Most of the time we tend to favor List<T> over LinkedList<T> unless you are doing a lot of adding and removing from the collection, in which case a LinkedList<T> may make more sense. The HashSet<T> is an unordered collection of unique items. This means that the collection cannot have duplicates and no order is maintained. Logically, this is very similar to having a Dictionary<TKey,TValue> where the TKey and TValue both refer to the same object. This collection is very useful for maintaining a collection of items you wish to check membership against. For example, if you receive an order for a given vendor code, you may want to check to make sure the vendor code belongs to the set of vendor codes you handle. In these cases a HashSet<T> is useful for super-quick lookups where order is not important. Once again, like in Dictionary, the type T should have a valid implementation of GetHashCode() and Equals(), or you should provide an appropriate IEqualityComparer<T> to the HashSet<T> on construction. The SortedSet<T> is to HashSet<T> what the SortedDictionary<TKey,TValue> is to Dictionary<TKey,TValue>. That is, the SortedSet<T> is a binary tree where the key and value are the same object. This once again means that adding/removing/lookups are logarithmic - O(log n) - but you gain the ability to iterate over the items in order. For this collection to be effective, type T must implement IComparable<T> or you need to supply an external IComparer<T>. Finally, the Stack<T> and Queue<T> are two very specific collections that allow you to handle a sequential collection of objects in very specific ways. The Stack<T> is a last-in-first-out (LIFO) container where items are added and removed from the top of the stack. Typically this is useful in situations where you want to stack actions and then be able to undo those actions in reverse order as needed. The Queue<T> on the other hand is a first-in-first-out container which adds items at the end of the queue and removes items from the front. This is useful for situations where you need to process items in the order in which they came, such as a print spooler or waiting lines. So that's the basic collections. Let's summarize what we've learned in a quick reference table.  Collection Ordered? Contiguous Storage? Direct Access? Lookup Efficiency Manipulate Efficiency Notes Dictionary No Yes Via Key Key: O(1) O(1) Best for high performance lookups. SortedDictionary Yes No Via Key Key: O(log n) O(log n) Compromise of Dictionary speed and ordering, uses binary search tree. SortedList Yes Yes Via Key Key: O(log n) O(n) Very similar to SortedDictionary, except tree is implemented in an array, so has faster lookup on preloaded data, but slower loads. List No Yes Via Index Index: O(1) Value: O(n) O(n) Best for smaller lists where direct access required and no ordering. LinkedList No No No Value: O(n) O(1) Best for lists where inserting/deleting in middle is common and no direct access required. HashSet No Yes Via Key Key: O(1) O(1) Unique unordered collection, like a Dictionary except key and value are same object. SortedSet Yes No Via Key Key: O(log n) O(log n) Unique ordered collection, like SortedDictionary except key and value are same object. Stack No Yes Only Top Top: O(1) O(1)* Essentially same as List<T> except only process as LIFO Queue No Yes Only Front Front: O(1) O(1) Essentially same as List<T> except only process as FIFO   The Original Collections: System.Collections namespace The original collection classes are largely considered deprecated by developers and by Microsoft itself. In fact they indicate that for the most part you should always favor the generic or concurrent collections, and only use the original collections when you are dealing with legacy .NET code. Because these collections are out of vogue, let's just briefly mention the original collection and their generic equivalents: ArrayList A dynamic, contiguous collection of objects. Favor the generic collection List<T> instead. Hashtable Associative, unordered collection of key-value pairs of objects. Favor the generic collection Dictionary<TKey,TValue> instead. Queue First-in-first-out (FIFO) collection of objects. Favor the generic collection Queue<T> instead. SortedList Associative, ordered collection of key-value pairs of objects. Favor the generic collection SortedList<T> instead. Stack Last-in-first-out (LIFO) collection of objects. Favor the generic collection Stack<T> instead. In general, the older collections are non-type-safe and in some cases less performant than their generic counterparts. Once again, the only reason you should fall back on these older collections is for backward compatibility with legacy code and libraries only. The Concurrent Collections: System.Collections.Concurrent namespace The concurrent collections are new as of .NET 4.0 and are included in the System.Collections.Concurrent namespace. These collections are optimized for use in situations where multi-threaded read and write access of a collection is desired. The concurrent queue, stack, and dictionary work much as you'd expect. The bag and blocking collection are more unique. Below is the summary of each with a link to a blog post I did on each of them. ConcurrentQueue Thread-safe version of a queue (FIFO). For more information see: C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentStack and ConcurrentQueue ConcurrentStack Thread-safe version of a stack (LIFO). For more information see: C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentStack and ConcurrentQueue ConcurrentBag Thread-safe unordered collection of objects. Optimized for situations where a thread may be bother reader and writer. For more information see: C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentBag and BlockingCollection ConcurrentDictionary Thread-safe version of a dictionary. Optimized for multiple readers (allows multiple readers under same lock). For more information see C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentDictionary BlockingCollection Wrapper collection that implement producers & consumers paradigm. Readers can block until items are available to read. Writers can block until space is available to write (if bounded). For more information see C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentBag and BlockingCollection Summary The .NET BCL has lots of collections built in to help you store and manipulate collections of data. Understanding how these collections work and knowing in which situations each container is best is one of the key skills necessary to build more performant code. Choosing the wrong collection for the job can make your code much slower or even harder to maintain if you choose one that doesn’t perform as well or otherwise doesn’t exactly fit the situation. Remember to avoid the original collections and stick with the generic collections.  If you need concurrent access, you can use the generic collections if the data is read-only, or consider the concurrent collections for mixed-access if you are running on .NET 4.0 or higher.   Tweet Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Collecitons,Generic,Concurrent,Dictionary,List,Stack,Queue,SortedList,SortedDictionary,HashSet,SortedSet

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  • How to Run Low-Cost Minecraft on a Raspberry Pi for Block Building on the Cheap

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    We’ve shown you how to run your own blocktastic personal Minecraft server on a Windows/OSX box, but what if you crave something lighter weight, more energy efficient, and always ready for your friends? Read on as we turn a tiny Raspberry Pi machine into a low-cost Minecraft server you can leave on 24/7 for around a penny a day. Why Do I Want to Do This? There’s two aspects to this tutorial, running your own Minecraft server and specifically running that Minecraft server on a Raspberry Pi. Why would you want to run your own Minecraft server? It’s a really great way to extend and build upon the Minecraft play experience. You can leave the server running when you’re not playing so friends and family can join and continue building your world. You can mess around with game variables and introduce mods in a way that isn’t possible when you’re playing the stand-alone game. It also gives you the kind of control over your multiplayer experience that using public servers doesn’t, without incurring the cost of hosting a private server on a remote host. While running a Minecraft server on its own is appealing enough to a dedicated Minecraft fan, running it on the Raspberry Pi is even more appealing. The tiny little Pi uses so little resources that you can leave your Minecraft server running 24/7 for a couple bucks a year. Aside from the initial cost outlay of the Pi, an SD card, and a little bit of time setting it up, you’ll have an always-on Minecraft server at a monthly cost of around one gumball. What Do I Need? For this tutorial you’ll need a mix of hardware and software tools; aside from the actual Raspberry Pi and SD card, everything is free. 1 Raspberry Pi (preferably a 512MB model) 1 4GB+ SD card This tutorial assumes that you have already familiarized yourself with the Raspberry Pi and have installed a copy of the Debian-derivative Raspbian on the device. If you have not got your Pi up and running yet, don’t worry! Check out our guide, The HTG Guide to Getting Started with Raspberry Pi, to get up to speed. Optimizing Raspbian for the Minecraft Server Unlike other builds we’ve shared where you can layer multiple projects over one another (e.g. the Pi is more than powerful enough to serve as a weather/email indicator and a Google Cloud Print server at the same time) running a Minecraft server is a pretty intense operation for the little Pi and we’d strongly recommend dedicating the entire Pi to the process. Minecraft seems like a simple game, with all its blocky-ness and what not, but it’s actually a pretty complex game beneath the simple skin and required a lot of processing power. As such, we’re going to tweak the configuration file and other settings to optimize Rasbian for the job. The first thing you’ll need to do is dig into the Raspi-Config application to make a few minor changes. If you’re installing Raspbian fresh, wait for the last step (which is the Raspi-Config), if you already installed it, head to the terminal and type in “sudo raspi-config” to launch it again. One of the first and most important things we need to attend to is cranking up the overclock setting. We need all the power we can get to make our Minecraft experience enjoyable. In Raspi-Config, select option number 7 “Overclock”. Be prepared for some stern warnings about overclocking, but rest easy knowing that overclocking is directly supported by the Raspberry Pi foundation and has been included in the configuration options since late 2012. Once you’re in the actual selection screen, select “Turbo 1000MhHz”. Again, you’ll be warned that the degree of overclocking you’ve selected carries risks (specifically, potential corruption of the SD card, but no risk of actual hardware damage). Click OK and wait for the device to reset. Next, make sure you’re set to boot to the command prompt, not the desktop. Select number 3 “Enable Boot to Desktop/Scratch”  and make sure “Console Text console” is selected. Back at the Raspi-Config menu, select number 8 “Advanced Options’. There are two critical changes we need to make in here and one option change. First, the critical changes. Select A3 “Memory Split”: Change the amount of memory available to the GPU to 16MB (down from the default 64MB). Our Minecraft server is going to ruin in a GUI-less environment; there’s no reason to allocate any more than the bare minimum to the GPU. After selecting the GPU memory, you’ll be returned to the main menu. Select “Advanced Options” again and then select A4 “SSH”. Within the sub-menu, enable SSH. There is very little reason to keep this Pi connected to a monitor and keyboard, by enabling SSH we can remotely access the machine from anywhere on the network. Finally (and optionally) return again to the “Advanced Options” menu and select A2 “Hostname”. Here you can change your hostname from “raspberrypi” to a more fitting Minecraft name. We opted for the highly creative hostname “minecraft”, but feel free to spice it up a bit with whatever you feel like: creepertown, minecraft4life, or miner-box are all great minecraft server names. That’s it for the Raspbian configuration tab down to the bottom of the main screen and select “Finish” to reboot. After rebooting you can now SSH into your terminal, or continue working from the keyboard hooked up to your Pi (we strongly recommend switching over to SSH as it allows you to easily cut and paste the commands). If you’ve never used SSH before, check out how to use PuTTY with your Pi here. Installing Java on the Pi The Minecraft server runs on Java, so the first thing we need to do on our freshly configured Pi is install it. Log into your Pi via SSH and then, at the command prompt, enter the following command to make a directory for the installation: sudo mkdir /java/ Now we need to download the newest version of Java. At the time of this publication the newest release is the OCT 2013 update and the link/filename we use will reflect that. Please check for a more current version of the Linux ARMv6/7 Java release on the Java download page and update the link/filename accordingly when following our instructions. At the command prompt, enter the following command: sudo wget --no-check-certificate http://www.java.net/download/jdk8/archive/b111/binaries/jdk-8-ea-b111-linux-arm-vfp-hflt-09_oct_2013.tar.gz Once the download has finished successfully, enter the following command: sudo tar zxvf jdk-8-ea-b111-linux-arm-vfp-hflt-09_oct_2013.tar.gz -C /opt/ Fun fact: the /opt/ directory name scheme is a remnant of early Unix design wherein the /opt/ directory was for “optional” software installed after the main operating system; it was the /Program Files/ of the Unix world. After the file has finished extracting, enter: sudo /opt/jdk1.8.0/bin/java -version This command will return the version number of your new Java installation like so: java version "1.8.0-ea" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0-ea-b111) Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 25.0-b53, mixed mode) If you don’t see the above printout (or a variation thereof if you’re using a newer version of Java), try to extract the archive again. If you do see the readout, enter the following command to tidy up after yourself: sudo rm jdk-8-ea-b111-linux-arm-vfp-hflt-09_oct_2013.tar.gz At this point Java is installed and we’re ready to move onto installing our Minecraft server! Installing and Configuring the Minecraft Server Now that we have a foundation for our Minecraft server, it’s time to install the part that matter. We’ll be using SpigotMC a lightweight and stable Minecraft server build that works wonderfully on the Pi. First, grab a copy of the the code with the following command: sudo wget http://ci.md-5.net/job/Spigot/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/Spigot-Server/target/spigot.jar This link should remain stable over time, as it points directly to the most current stable release of Spigot, but if you have any issues you can always reference the SpigotMC download page here. After the download finishes successfully, enter the following command: sudo /opt/jdk1.8.0/bin/java -Xms256M -Xmx496M -jar /home/pi/spigot.jar nogui Note: if you’re running the command on a 256MB Pi change the 256 and 496 in the above command to 128 and 256, respectively. Your server will launch and a flurry of on-screen activity will follow. Be prepared to wait around 3-6 minutes or so for the process of setting up the server and generating the map to finish. Future startups will take much less time, around 20-30 seconds. Note: If at any point during the configuration or play process things get really weird (e.g. your new Minecraft server freaks out and starts spawning you in the Nether and killing you instantly), use the “stop” command at the command prompt to gracefully shutdown the server and let you restart and troubleshoot it. After the process has finished, head over to the computer you normally play Minecraft on, fire it up, and click on Multiplayer. You should see your server: If your world doesn’t popup immediately during the network scan, hit the Add button and manually enter the address of your Pi. Once you connect to the server, you’ll see the status change in the server status window: According to the server, we’re in game. According to the actual Minecraft app, we’re also in game but it’s the middle of the night in survival mode: Boo! Spawning in the dead of night, weaponless and without shelter is no way to start things. No worries though, we need to do some more configuration; no time to sit around and get shot at by skeletons. Besides, if you try and play it without some configuration tweaks first, you’ll likely find it quite unstable. We’re just here to confirm the server is up, running, and accepting incoming connections. Once we’ve confirmed the server is running and connectable (albeit not very playable yet), it’s time to shut down the server. Via the server console, enter the command “stop” to shut everything down. When you’re returned to the command prompt, enter the following command: sudo nano server.properties When the configuration file opens up, make the following changes (or just cut and paste our config file minus the first two lines with the name and date stamp): #Minecraft server properties #Thu Oct 17 22:53:51 UTC 2013 generator-settings= #Default is true, toggle to false allow-nether=false level-name=world enable-query=false allow-flight=false server-port=25565 level-type=DEFAULT enable-rcon=false force-gamemode=false level-seed= server-ip= max-build-height=256 spawn-npcs=true white-list=false spawn-animals=true texture-pack= snooper-enabled=true hardcore=false online-mode=true pvp=true difficulty=1 player-idle-timeout=0 gamemode=0 #Default 20; you only need to lower this if you're running #a public server and worried about loads. max-players=20 spawn-monsters=true #Default is 10, 3-5 ideal for Pi view-distance=5 generate-structures=true spawn-protection=16 motd=A Minecraft Server In the server status window, seen through your SSH connection to the pi, enter the following command to give yourself operator status on your Minecraft server (so that you can use more powerful commands in game, without always returning to the server status window). op [your minecraft nickname] At this point things are looking better but we still have a little tweaking to do before the server is really enjoyable. To that end, let’s install some plugins. The first plugin, and the one you should install above all others, is NoSpawnChunks. To install the plugin, first visit the NoSpawnChunks webpage and grab the download link for the most current version. As of this writing the current release is v0.3. Back at the command prompt (the command prompt of your Pi, not the server console–if your server is still active shut it down) enter the following commands: cd /home/pi/plugins sudo wget http://dev.bukkit.org/media/files/586/974/NoSpawnChunks.jar Next, visit the ClearLag plugin page, and grab the latest link (as of this tutorial, it’s v2.6.0). Enter the following at the command prompt: sudo wget http://dev.bukkit.org/media/files/743/213/Clearlag.jar Because the files aren’t compressed in a .ZIP or similar container, that’s all there is to it: the plugins are parked in the plugin directory. (Remember this for future plugin downloads, the file needs to be whateverplugin.jar, so if it’s compressed you need to uncompress it in the plugin directory.) Resart the server: sudo /opt/jdk1.8.0/bin/java -Xms256M -Xmx496M -jar /home/pi/spigot.jar nogui Be prepared for a slightly longer startup time (closer to the 3-6 minutes and much longer than the 30 seconds you just experienced) as the plugins affect the world map and need a minute to massage everything. After the spawn process finishes, type the following at the server console: plugins This lists all the plugins currently active on the server. You should see something like this: If the plugins aren’t loaded, you may need to stop and restart the server. After confirming your plugins are loaded, go ahead and join the game. You should notice significantly snappier play. In addition, you’ll get occasional messages from the plugins indicating they are active, as seen below: At this point Java is installed, the server is installed, and we’ve tweaked our settings for for the Pi.  It’s time to start building with friends!     

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  • Twitter bootstrap + asp.net masterpages, how to set navbar item as active when user selects it?

    - by ase69s
    We are in se same situation as question Make Twitter Bootstrap navbar link active, but in our case we are using ASP.net and MasterPages... The thing is the navbar is defined at the masterpage and when you click a menuitem you are redirected to the corresponding child page so how would you do to change the navbar active item consecuently without replicating the logic in each child page? (Preferably without session variables and javascript only at master page)

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  • Master/Detail insert using BCP?

    - by Joseph
    I've a master table with identity on for the primary key and I've some child tables. When I insert a record to the master table using BCP, how can I use the newly created ID from the master table to insert in the related child tables (May be BCP again)? Will it be possible? I may be able to set identity off, but, will it work? Thanks Joseph

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  • Parsing a given binary tree using python?

    - by kaushik
    Parse a binary tree,referring to given set of features,answering decision tree question at each node to decide left child or right child and find the path to leaf node according to answer given to the decision tree.. input wil be a set of feature which wil help in answering the question at each level to choose the left or right half and the output will be the leaf node.. i need help in implementing this can anyone suggest methods?? Please answer... thanks in advance..

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  • Including one Xcode project in another -- linker errors

    - by William Jockusch
    I am trying to do this, and running into problems. The parent project needs to access the class SettingsViewController from the child project. I have put the child project path into my header search paths. Everything compiles OK, but I get linker errors, as follows: Undefined symbols: "_OBJC_METACLASS_$_SettingsViewController", referenced from: _OBJC_METACLASS_$_StatisticsViewController in StatisticsViewController.o "_OBJC_CLASS_$_SettingsViewController", referenced from: objc-class-ref-to-SettingsViewController in SelectionViewController.o _OBJC_CLASS_$_StatisticsViewController in StatisticsViewController.o ld: symbol(s) not found collect2: ld returned 1 exit status How can I fix this?

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  • PIVOT / UNPIVOT in SQL Server 2008

    - by Nev_Rahd
    Hello I got child / parent tables as below. MasterTable: MasterID, Description ChildTable ChildID, MasterID, Description. Using PIVOT / UNPIVOT how can i get result as below in single row. if (MasterID : 1 got x child records) MasterID, ChildID1, Description1, ChildID2, Description2....... ChildIDx, Descriptionx Thanks

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  • How to eager load sibling data using LINQ to SQL?

    - by Scott
    The goal is to issue the fewest queries to SQL Server using LINQ to SQL without using anonymous types. The return type for the method will need to be IList<Child1>. The relationships are as follows: Parent Child1 Child2 Grandchild1 Parent Child1 is a one-to-many relationship Child1 Grandchild1 is a one-to-n relationship (where n is zero to infinity) Parent Child2 is a one-to-n relationship (where n is zero to infinity) I am able to eager load the Parent, Child1 and Grandchild1 data resulting in one query to SQL Server. This query with load options eager loads all of the data, except the sibling data (Child2): DataLoadOptions loadOptions = new DataLoadOptions(); loadOptions.LoadWith<Child1>(o => o.GrandChild1List); loadOptions.LoadWith<Child1>(o => o.Parent); dataContext.LoadOptions = loadOptions; IQueryable<Child1> children = from child in dataContext.Child1 select child; I need to load the sibling data as well. One approach I have tried is splitting the query into two LINQ to SQL queries and merging the result sets together (not pretty), however upon accessing the sibling data it is lazy loaded anyway. Adding the sibling load option will issue a query to SQL Server for each Grandchild1 and Child2 record (which is exactly what I am trying to avoid): DataLoadOptions loadOptions = new DataLoadOptions(); loadOptions.LoadWith<Child1>(o => o.GrandChild1List); loadOptions.LoadWith<Child1>(o => o.Parent); loadOptions.LoadWith<Parent>(o => o.Child2List); dataContext.LoadOptions = loadOptions; IQueryable<Child1> children = from child in dataContext.Child1 select child; exec sp_executesql N'SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Child2] AS [t0] WHERE [t0].[ForeignKeyToParent] = @p0',N'@p0 int',@p0=1 exec sp_executesql N'SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Child2] AS [t0] WHERE [t0].[ForeignKeyToParent] = @p0',N'@p0 int',@p0=2 exec sp_executesql N'SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Child2] AS [t0] WHERE [t0].[ForeignKeyToParent] = @p0',N'@p0 int',@p0=3 exec sp_executesql N'SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Child2] AS [t0] WHERE [t0].[ForeignKeyToParent] = @p0',N'@p0 int',@p0=4 I've also written LINQ to SQL queries to join in all of the data in hopes that it would eager load the data, however when the LINQ to SQL EntitySet of Child2 or Grandchild1 are accessed it lazy loads the data. The reason for returning the IList<Child1> is to hydrate business objects. My thoughts are I am either: Approaching this problem the wrong way. Have the option of calling a stored procedure? My organization should not be using LINQ to SQL as an ORM? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you, -Scott

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  • Should I worry about circular references in Python?

    - by bodacydo
    Suppose I have code that maintains parent/children structure. In such a structure I get circular references, where child points to parent and parent points to child. Should I worry about them? I'm using Python 2.5. I am concerned that they will not be garbage collected and the application will eventually consume all memory. Thanks, Boda Cydo.

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  • Using/Calling a cursor in another cursor - PL/Sql

    - by Cindy
    I have a function with a cursor which returns an ID. I need to get some fields in another cursor using this ID result from the first cursor. So my first cursor is: CREATE OR REPLACE function get_id(id number) CURSOR child_id IS SELECT table1_id FROM table1,child WHERE child_id = id AND table1_id = child_chld_id; Ideally my second cursor should be: cursor grandchild_id is select table1_id from table1,child where child_id = (return value of id from cursor child_id) and table1_id = child_chld_id; How do I do this?

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  • @webservice inheritance java

    - by javamonkey79
    I am trying to build a java ee webservice that has a common base class, but the child classes are the actual @webservice classes (and expose the parent class methods as @webmethod's) Like this: public abstract class Parent { @WebMethod public void doSomething(){//...does stuff} } @WebService public class Child extends Parent {} I've tried (and have failed): - annotating the parent class as a webservice as well - making sure all parent methods are annotated with @WebMethod Is this possible, if so, how?

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  • question about jquery treeview

    - by kusanagi
    i use such jquery treeview if parent node don't have child, it don't render '+' near it, how can i forse display it? i see such solution- if node don't have any child, add there fake childs and mark parent node not opened can you give any solution with sample?

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  • Silverlight 4 DataBinding: Binding to ObservableCollection<string> not working anymore

    - by Kurt
    Upgrading from SL3 - SL4. First problem: this throws a parser exception: <StackPanel Name={Binding} /> (same with x:Name) Collection is ObservableCollection<string>. Worked fine in SL3. So it seems that SL4 doen't allow binding to the Name property. Huh? So: changed to <StackPanel Tag={Binding} /> ... since I just need to ID the control in code behind. So here's the bug ('cuz this has got to be a bug!): In this frag, AllAvailableItems is an ObservableCollection<string>: <ItemsControl Name="lbItems" ItemsSource="{Binding AllAvailableItems}" Height="Auto" Width="Auto" BorderBrush="Transparent" BorderThickness="0" VerticalAlignment="Top" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="12,6,0,0"> <ItemsControl.ItemTemplate> <DataTemplate> <Grid> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition /> <RowDefinition /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <CheckBox Tag="{Binding}" Checked="ItemChecked_Click" Unchecked="ItemUnchecked_Click" Style="{StaticResource CheckBoxStyle}" Grid.Row="0"> <CheckBox.Content> <TextBlock Text="{Binding}" Style="{StaticResource FormLJustStyle}" /> </CheckBox.Content> </CheckBox> <StackPanel Tag="{Binding}" Orientation="Vertical" Grid.Row="1"> <configControls:ucLanguage /> <!-- simple user control --> </StackPanel> </Grid> </DataTemplate> </ItemsControl.ItemTemplate> </ItemsControl> In the code behind, I use a recursive function to find the Dependency object with either the Name or Tag property provided: public static T FindVisualChildByName<T>(DependencyObject parent, string name, DependencyProperty propToUse) where T : DependencyObject { for (int i = 0; i < VisualTreeHelper.GetChildrenCount(parent); i++) { var child = VisualTreeHelper.GetChild(parent, i); string controlName = child.GetValue(propToUse) as string; if (controlName == name) { return child as T; } else { T result = FindVisualChildByName<T>(child, name, propToUse); if (result != null) return result; } } return null; } OK, get this: in the code behind, I can get the control that is ORDERED FIRST in the XAML! In other words, if I put the CheckBox first, I can retrieve the CheckBox, but no StackPanel. And vice-versa. This all worked fine in SL3. Any help, ideas ... ? Thanks - Kurt

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  • Searching over a templated tree

    - by floatingfrisbee
    So I have 2 interfaces: A node that can have children public interface INode { IEnumeration<INode> Children { get; } void AddChild(INode node); } And a derived "Data Node" that can have data associated with it public interface IDataNode<DataType> : INode { DataType Data; IDataNode<DataType> FindNode(DataType dt); } Keep in mind that each node in the tree could have a different data type associated with it as its Data (because the INode.AddChild function just takes the base INode) Here is the implementation of the IDataNode interface: internal class DataNode<DataType> : IDataNode<DataType> { List<INode> m_Children; DataNode(DataType dt) { Data = dt; } public IEnumerable<INode> Children { get { return m_Children; } } public void AddChild(INode node) { if (null == m_Children) m_Children = new List<INode>(); m_Children.Add(node); } public DataType Data { get; private set; } Question is how do I implement the FindNode function without knowing what kinds of DataType I will encounter in the tree? public IDataNode<DataType> FindNode(DataType dt) { throw new NotImplementedException(); } } As you can imagine something like this will not work out public IDataNode<DataType> FindNode(DataType dt) { IDataNode<DataType> result = null; foreach (var child in Children) { if (child is IDataNode<DataType>) { var datachild = child as IDataNode<DataType>; if (datachild.Data.Equals(dt)) { result = child as IDataNode<DataType>; break; } } else { // What?? } } return result; } Is my only option to do this when I know what kinds of DataType a particular tree I use will have? Maybe I am going about this in the wrong way, so any tips are appreciated. Thanks!

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  • Entity framework not loading relationship even when using include

    - by dilbert789
    I have this code: Category selectedCategory = (from c in DB.Category.Include("SubCategory") join a in DB.Accessory on c.AccCatUID equals a.Category.AccCatUID where a.AccUID == currentAccessory.AccUID select c).FirstOrDefault(); It works fine, selectedCategory gets populated as expected. BUT selectedCategory has a child table 'SubCategory' which does not get loaded even though there is the include there. It is not loaded until I do this: selectedCategory.SubCategory.Load(); Why do I have to call load explicitly in order to load the child table?

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