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• ZenGallery: a minimalist image gallery for Orchard

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  There are quite a few image gallery modules for Orchard but they were not invented here I wanted something a lot less sophisticated that would be as barebones and minimalist as possible out of the box, to make customization extremely easy. So I made this, in less than two days (during which I got distracted a lot). Nwazet.ZenGallery uses existing Orchard features as much as it can: Galleries are just a content part that can be added to any type The set of photos in a gallery is simply defined by a folder in Media Managing the images in a gallery is done using the standard media management from Orchard Ordering of photos is simply alphabetical order of the filenames (use 1_, 2_, etc. prefixes if you have to) The path to the gallery folder is mapped from the content item using a token-based pattern The pattern can be set per content type You can edit the generated gallery path for each item The default template is just a list of links over images, that get open in a new tab No lightbox script comes with the module, just customize the template to use your favorite script. Light, light, light. Rather than explaining in more details this very simple module, here is a video that shows how I used the module to add photo galleries to a product catalog: Adding a gallery to a product catalog You can find the module on the Orchard Gallery: https://gallery.orchardproject.net/List/Modules/Orchard.Module.Nwazet.ZenGallery/ The source code is available from BitBucket: https://bitbucket.org/bleroy/nwazet.zengallery

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• Is C and Python enough?

  - by gruszczy

  I am very proficient in Python (including Django), which I use for most tasks. I am also quite confident with C; I am maintaining small file system in userspace written in C. Yet when I am browsing job offers I see everywhere Java/C# and sometimes C++. I have coded profesionally in C++ for half a year in a gaming company, but I don't consider myself a pro. Also I simply despise Java and C#, which I would prefer not to touch ever. But it seems to me, that I am at very unfavorable position, when it comes to career. I am browsing careers.stackoverflow.com and I don't see and pure python or C offers. I would like to find a new job abroad in about 6 months. If I find some python offer, it means doing web development (not my favorite job). Does it mean, that I have to quickly start improving my C++ skills, if I wish to find a satisfying job? What would you suggest me? EDIT Learning new technologies is not an issue. Company I am working in is an integrator. Basically every new project requires learning new technologies, sometimes custom made. During last two years I was writing SQLs by hand, using LDAP, writing GUI in Qt, working on large scale DBMS prototype, making our internal help desk system use gsm modem or writing own report system. In previous job I had to learn from basics everything what I could about games development, because I knew nothing and chose this job only because of the challene it posed. I am all about embracing new technologies. I have used Java in the past and simply didn't like it. It's dull and boring. Doesn't let me do anything cool. I have recently seen some C# in action and seems similar. I don't like it. It's like German. I don't like speaking German.

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• How to Be a Software Engineer?

  - by Mistrio

  My problem is kind of weird so please bear with me. I have been working in a start up concerned basically with mobile development since my graduation 2 years ago. I develop apps for iOS but it's not really relevant. The start up structure is simply founders developers, with no middle-tier technical supervision or project management whatsoever. A typical project cycle of ours is like this: meet with a client send very vague recruitment to an outsourced graphics designer dig in development right after we get the design, no questions asked then improvise improvise improvise! It's not that we are unaware that stuff like requirements analysis, UML, design patterns, source code control, testing, development methodologies... etc. exist, we just simply don't use them, and I mean like never. The result is usually a clunk of hardly-maintainable yet working code. Despite everything we are literally flourishing with many successful apps on all platforms and bigger clients each project. The thing is, we want the chaos and we're looking for advice. How would you fix our company technically? Given that you can't hire project managers or team leaders just because we are barely 5 developers, so it wouldn't be a justified cost for the founders, but one-time things like courses, books, private training... etc is an option. Lastly, if it's relevant, we are based in Egypt. Thank you a lot in advance.

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• Brand New Annotations Support

  - by Ondrej Brejla

  Hi all! Today we would like to introduce you our brand new annotation support for NetBeans 7.2. The first thing which is different is the look of annotations in code completion. As you can see, there is a new annotation icon and an annotation type. Because we have a lot of modules with their own annotations, we differ them in code completion window by their type. We support annotations for: ApiGen (legacy PHPDoc annotations), PHPUnit, Doctrine 2 (ORM and ODM) and Symfony 2. Every annotation can be associated with some context. We recognize four of them: function, class/interface (type), method and field. It means that you will get just proper annotations for your class field as well as your global function. Do you have your own annotations? Or do you simply miss some? There is nothing hard to add it in there. We have a simple UI for adding your custom annotations! It's in Tools -> Options -> PHP -> Annotations. Here you can simply add, edit or delete your annotations. When you try to create new one, all fields are prefilled by some default values. So you really don't have to remember "how to use that crazy freemarker syntax". If you are satisfied with your new annotation, you can see it in a code completion window among other annotations. As you can see it has its own "Custom" type. That's all for today and as usual, please test it and if you find something strange, don't hesitate to file a new issue (component php, subcomponent Editor). Thanks.

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• Getting rid of Massive View Controller in iOS?

  - by Earl Grey

  I had a discussion with my colleague about the following problem. We have an application where we need filtering functionality. On any main screen within the upper navigation bar, there is a button in the upper right corner. Once you touch that button, an custom written Alert View like view will pop up modally, behind it a semitransparent black overlay view. In that modal view, there is a table view of options, and you can choose one exclusively. Based on your selection, once this modal view is closed, the list of items in the main view is filtered. It is simply a modally presented filter to filter the main table view.This UI design is dictated by the design department, I cannot do anything about it so let accept this as a premise. Also the main filter button in the navbar will change colours to indicate that the filter is active. The question I have is about implementation. I suggested to my colleague that we create a separate XYZFilter class that will be an instance created by the main view controller acquire the filtering options handle saving and restoration of its state - i.e. last filter selected provide its two views - the overlay view and the modal view be the datasource for the table in its modal view. For some unknown reason, my colleague was not impressed by that approach at all. He simply wants to do these functionalities in the main view controller, maybe out of being used to do this in the past like that :-/ Is there any fundamental problem with my approach? I want to keep the view controller small, not to have spaghetti code create a reusable component (for use outside the project) have more object oriented, decoupled approach. prevent duplication of code as we need the filtering in two different places but it looks the same in both.. Any advice?

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• Read On Phone Pushes Data from Your Desktop to the Appropriate Android App

  - by ETC

  Read On Phone is a free Android application that intelligently pushes data to your phone from your bowser. Rather than simply opening the URL on your phone, it opens the appropriate application for the task and formats text. Most send-to-phone type tools simply take the URL of the web page you’re looking at on your computer and shuttle it to your phone. Read On Phone is a more active and effective tool. When you send a page that is text, it formats the text for easy reading on your phone. When you send a YouTube video, map, or telephone number, it opens up the appropriate tool on your phone such as your YouTube viewer, Google Maps, or your phone dialer. In addition to that handy functionality Read On Phone also includes adjustments for day and night reading, font size, auto-scrolling, and pagination. Read On Phone is available as both a Chrome extension and as a bookmarklet for cross-browser use. Hit up the link below for additional information. Read On Phone Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) Read On Phone Pushes Data from Your Desktop to the Appropriate Android App MetroTwit is a Sleek Native Twitter Client for Your Windows System Make Efficient Use of Tab Bar Space by Customizing Tab Width in Firefox See the Geeky Work Done Behind the Scenes to Add Sounds to Movies [Video] Use a Crayon to Enhance Engraved Lettering on Electronics Adult Swim Brings Their Programming Lineup to iOS Devices

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• Purpose of "new" keyword

  - by Channel72

  The new keyword in languages like Java, Javascript, and C# creates a new instance of a class. This syntax seems to have been inherited from C++, where new is used specifically to allocate a new instance of a class on the heap, and return a pointer to the new instance. In C++, this is not the only way to construct an object. You can also construct an object on the stack, without using new - and in fact, this way of constructing objects is much more common in C++. So, coming from a C++ background, the new keyword in languages like Java, Javascript, and C# seemed natural and obvious to me. Then I started to learn Python, which doesn't have the new keyword. In Python, an instance is constructed simply by calling the constructor, like: f = Foo() At first, this seemed a bit off to me, until it occurred to me that there's no reason for Python to have new, because everything is an object so there's no need to disambiguate between various constructor syntaxes. But then I thought - what's really the point of new in Java? Why should we say Object o = new Object();? Why not just Object o = Object();? In C++ there's definitely a need for new, since we need to distinguish between allocating on the heap and allocating on the stack, but in Java all objects are constructed on the heap, so why even have the new keyword? The same question could be asked for Javascript. In C#, which I'm much less familiar with, I think new may have some purpose in terms of distinguishing between object types and value types, but I'm not sure. Regardless, it seems to me that many languages which came after C++ simply "inherited" the new keyword - without really needing it. It's almost like a vestigial keyword. We don't seem to need it for any reason, and yet it's there. Question: Am I correct about this? Or is there some compelling reason that new needs to be in C++-inspired memory-managed languages like Java, Javascript and C#?

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• How can I make an MMORPG appeal to casual players?

  - by Philipp

  I believe that there is a significant market of players who would enjoy the exploration and interaction aspects of MMORPGs, but simply don't have the time for the endless grinding marathons which are part of the average MMORPG. MMORPGs are all about interaction between players. But when different players have different amounts of time to invest into a game, those with less time to spend will soon lack behind their power-leveling friends and won't be able to interact with them anymore. One way to solve this would be to limit the progress a player can achieve per day, so that it simply doesn't make sense to play more than one or two hours a day. But even the busiest casual players sometimes like to spend a whole sunday afternoon playing a video game. Just stopping them after two hours would be really frustrating. It also creates a pressure to use the daily progress limit every day, because otherwise the player would feel like wasting something. This pressure would be detrimental for casual gamers. What else could be done to level the playing field between those players who play 40+ hours a week and those who can't play more than 10?

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• Examples of 2D side-scrollers that achieve open non-linear feel?

  - by Milosz Falinski

  I'm working on a 2.5D platformer prototype that aims for an open feel while maintaining familiar core mechanics. Now, there's some obvious challenges with creating a non constricted feel in a spatially constricted environment. What I'm interested in, is examples of how game designers deal with the "here's a level, beat the bad guys/puzzles to get to the next level" design that seems so natural to most platformers (eg. Mario/Braid/Pid/Meat Boy to name a few). Some ideas for achieving openness I've come across include: One obvious successful example is Terraria, which achieves openness simply through complexity and flexibility of the game-system Another example that comes to mind is Cave Story. Game is non-linear, offers multiple choices and side-stories Mario, Rayman and some other 'classics' with a top-down level selection. I actually really dislike this as it never did anything for me emotionally and just seems like a bit of a lazy way to do things. Note: I've not actually had much experience with most of the 'classical' console platformers, apart from the obvious Marios/Zeldas/Metroids, since I've grown up on adventure games. By that I mean, it's entirely possible that I simply missed some games that solve the problem really well and are by some considered obvious 'classics'.

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• Best Persistence choice for J2EE-App with frequently changing Data Model

  - by Ben-G

  Whenever I develop a J2EE-Application, I at some point decide to switch from my dummy Persistence (Simply Using Lists and other Data Structures) to some Sort of Database Persistence. Mostly when I hope the Data Model is more or less complete. From this point on, changes to the data model become exhausting, but unluckily they occur rather often. I've used different Object-Relational-Mappers (iBatis, Hibernate) for my projects. They definitely reduce the pain coming with Data Model changes, but they anyway let me adjust code/configuration at 3 or 4 places for every single change. To me, that's cumbersome and error prone. I made a better experience with DB4O, which simply persists Java Objects as they are, but I believe it's performance does not scale for huge applications. Is there anyway to maintain performance while letting out all the ugly configuration work? I'm seeking a performant framework which really hides persistence from my code. Wish for thinking? Or am I missing out THE technology? Hope you can help.

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• Javascript: Machine Constants Applicable?

  - by DavidB2013

  I write numerical routines for students of science and engineering (although they are freely available for use by anybody else as well) and am wondering how to properly use machine constants in a JavaScript program, or if they are even applicable. For example, say I am writing a program in C++ that numerically computes the roots of the following equation: exp(-0.7x) + sin(3x) - 1.2x + 0.3546 = 0 A root-finding routine should be able to compute roots to within the machine epsilon. In C++, this value is specified by the language: DBL_EPSILON. C++ also specifies the smallest and largest values that can be held by a float or double variable. However, how does this convert to JavaScript? Since a Javascript program runs in a web browser, and I don't know what kind of computer will run the program, and JavaScript does not have corresponding predefined values for these quantities, how can I implement my own version of these constants so that my programs compute results to as much accuracy as allowed on the computer running the web browser? My first draft is to simply copy over the literal constants from C++: FLT_MIN: 1.17549435082229e-038 FLT_MAX: 3.40282346638529e+038 DBL_EPSILON: 2.2204460492503131e-16 I am also willing to write small code blocks that could compute these values for each machine on which the program is run. That way, a supercomputer might compute results to a higher accuracy than an old, low-level, PC. BUT, I don't know if such a routine would actually reach the computer, in which case, I would be wasting my time. Anybody here know how to compute and use (in Javascript) values that correspond to machine constants in a compiled language? Is it worth my time to write small programs in Javascript that compute DBL_EPSILON, FLT_MIN, FLT_MIN, etc. for use in numerical routines? Or am I better off simply assigning literal constants that come straight from C++ on a standard Windows PC?

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• Internet Explorer will not open Office files

  - by geekrutherford

  An issue was brought to my attention today at work where certain users were unable to open Office files (specifically Excel) from Internet Explorer 7.   The user would click on a button which simply generated an inline JS call to open a pop-up pointing to the .xlsx file on the server. IE would open the pop-up and then shortly thereafter the pop-up would disappear without the file ever opening.   I tweaked the security settings in the users browser...added the site to the list of trusted sites and lowered the security settings to Medium-Low. This allowed IE to at least prompt with the Save or Open message. Clicking either open resulted in "Internet Explorer Could Not Open the Site...".   Perturbed, I retreated back to Geek Central (aka my desk) and modified my application such that instead of simply pointing the browser to the file and now used Response.TransmitFile() to stream it to the browser instead. I thought to myself "this is perfect, it has to work!!!". Alas, no luck.   Bewildered and confused and returned to the lone users computer and started looking around the various IE options. I stumbled upon "Clear SSL State" under the "Content" tab. This appears to clear out all SSL certificates on the client forcing it to refresh. Doing this in concert with resetting the security levels for all zones back to their defaults seemed to do the trick.

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• MMORPG design for time-limited players

  - by Philipp

  I believe that there is a significant market of players who would enjoy the exploration and interaction aspects of MMORPGs, but simply don't have the time for the endless grinding marathons which are part of the average MMORPG. MMORPGs are all about interaction between players. But when different players have different amounts of time to invest into a game, those with less time to spend will soon lack behind their power-leveling friends and won't be able to interact with them anymore. One way to solve this would be to limit the progress a player can achieve per day, so that it simply doesn't make sense to play more than one or two hours a day. But even the busiest casual players sometimes like to spend a whole sunday afternoon playing a video game. Just stopping them after two hours would be really frustrating. It also creates a pressure to use the daily progress limit every day, because otherwise the player would feel like wasting something. This pressure would be detrimental for casual gamers. What else could be done to level the playing field between those players who play 40+ hours a week and those who can't play more than 10?

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• how to link a c++ object to a local variable in Lua

  - by MahanGM

  I'm completing my scripting interface with Lua, but recently I've stuck at some point. I have several functions for my Entitiy events like Update(). I have a function called create_entitiy() which instantiate a new entity from a given entity index: function Update() local bullet = create_entity(0, 0, "obj_bullet") end create_entity returns a table which is the properties of the created entity. Now how can I make a connection between bullet variable and my newly created object? Right now for previously added objects to the scene, I simply set a global table for each of them and then after every call to Update(), I go through registered names to find object tables and perform new changes. Like the one below: function Update() if keyboard_key_press(vk_right) then obj_player.x += 3 end I can get obj_player table because I know its name from C++, plus I can get it as a global table and simply reach for the first instance named obj_player. Is there any solution for me to make bullet variable act like this? I was thinking to get all local variables in Update() function and check for every one to see if is it table and it has an unique field attached to it like id, this way I can determine that this is an object table and do the rest of the process. By the way, is this interface going to work easier with luaBind if I implement it? Bottom line: How can I make a local variable in Lua that receives a table from create_entity function and track that local variable to capture it from C++. e. g. function Update() local bullet = create_entity(0, 0, "obj_bullet") bullet.x = 10 <== Commit a change in table end Now I want to get variable bullet from C++. And it's not just this variable, there might be a ton of these local variables with different names.

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• Problem with Ogre::Camera lookAt function when target is directly below.

  - by PigBen

  I am trying to make a class which controls a camera. It's pretty basic right now, it looks like this: class HoveringCameraController { public: void init(Ogre::Camera & camera, AnimatedBody & target, Ogre::Real height); void update(Ogre::Real time_delta); private: Ogre::Camera * camera_; AnimatedBody * target_; Ogre::Real height_; }; HoveringCameraController.cpp void HoveringCameraController::init(Ogre::Camera & camera, AnimatedBody & target, Ogre::Real height) { camera_ = &camera; target_ = &target; height_ = height; update(0.0); } void HoveringCameraController::update(Ogre::Real time_delta) { auto position = target_->getPosition(); position.y += height_; camera_->setPosition(position); camera_->lookAt(target_->getPosition()); } AnimatedBody is just a class that encapsulates an entity, it's animations and a scene node. The getPosition function is simply forwarded to it's scene node. What I want(for now) is for the camera to simply follow the AnimatedBody overhead at the distance given(the height parameter), and look down at it. It follows the object around, but it doesn't look straight down, it's tilted quite a bit in the positive Z direction. Does anybody have any idea why it would do that? If I change this line: position.y += height_; to this: position.x += height_; or this: position.z += height_; it does exactly what I would expect. It follows the object from the side or front, and looks directly at it.

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• Is djvubundle available in Ubuntu?

  - by Tim

  The official webpage says Assembling DjVu Images into Multipage Documents The batch compressors distributed as part of the DjVuText and DjVuLayered packages can directly produce multipage DjVu file when fed with multiple input files. The files produced are smaller than if the pages are compressed separately because the compressor can extract and share redundant information accross multiple pages. Individually compressed DjVu pages can be assembled into multipage documents using the free package DjVuMulti. To assemble a bunch of DjVu images into a single BUNDLED document simply type: djvubundle page1.djvu page2.djvu.... pageN.djvu document.djvu To assemble a bunch of DjVu images into an INDIRECT document, type: djvujoin page1.djvu page2.djvu.... pageN.djvu documentdir/index.djvu where documentdir must be an existing directory where all the individual page files will be copied. To disassemble a BUNDLED document into an INDIRECT one, simply say: djvujoin document.djvu documentdir/indexfile.djvu To convert a multipage document from one of the old 2.0 multipage formats, do djvureindex olddocument newdocument The programs djvujoin, and djvubundle supersede the 2.0 programs djvuindex and djvumerge. I couldn't find djvujoin and djvubundle for Ubuntu. djvulibre doesn't have them either. Do I miss something? Thanks.

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• How do I start Ubuntu without X server?

  - by Kaare Mikkelsen

  So, I'm trying to install the official nVidia drivers for my fancy graphics card, and they advice disabling the X server before installing, as well as making sure that I can boot without the X server, so as not to wreck anything. However, I seem to be doing something wrong. As I understand it, this should be as simple as changing the runlevel from 2 to 1? (I am aware that all this may simply be me not understanding runlevels) If that is correct, a quick test should be simply typing "sudo init 1" or "sudo telinit 1" in a terminal? Doing that makes the system attempt to shutdown, only it stops at the purple screen with the ubuntu logo and 5 white dots underneath. I haven't observed it get anywhere from there, I always end up holding down the power button. "sudo telinit 3" has not visible effect. Alternatively, I should be able to get there using the recovery mode, activated through the grub menu? I have very little success with that. After picking recovery mode, I am faced with a set of options about how to proceed. Both choosing the one with "network enabled" and "text only", I get a dialog explaining that this will mount my / file system in read/write mode, and whether this is what I want. I choose yes, and it seems to report that my drive is fine (there's a single line of text detailing the state of the partition). And then it stops. I haven't tried letting it sit for more than a few minutes, but presumably this process should be comparable in duration to a regular boot? I am not particularly fond of messing with any .conf-files until I am certain that I can handle things with training wheels on. So, I guess there are two questions: the one in the title, and "how do I start a text-only session without changing defaults?" Thanks in advance :)

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• A Simple Solution For NetBeans RCP Apps That Need A Groovy Editor

  - by Geertjan

  Take a look at Nils Hoffmann's metabolomic analyzer, especially at the Groovy editor contained within it: Obviously, it would be cool if the Groovy editor in the app above were to have syntax coloring and other editor features helpful in coding Groovy. However, as I showed in If You Include the Groovy Editor, there are multiple dependencies that the NetBeans Groovy support has on other modules that would be completely superfluous in the above application, while they'd make the app much heavier than it is, simply because of all the Groovy dependencies. But today I thought of a simple solution. Why not take the Groovy.g file (i.e., the ANTLR definition), such as this one [though that's probably not the most up to date one, wondering how to find the most up to date one] and then apply the content of this screencast (made by me) to the Groovy.g file: Within a few minutes, you should end up with Groovy syntax coloring. OK, so that's not a full blown Groovy editor, but syntax coloring is surely a cool thing to have in the app with which this blog entry started? Sure, this means creating a new Groovy editor from scratch. But the point is that doing so can be very simple, i.e., the syntax coloring can simply be generated via the simple instructions above. I'm going to try it myself in the next few days, but would be cool if others out there would try this too!

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• Decorator not calling the decorated instance - alternative design needed

  - by Daniel Hilgarth

  Assume I have a simple interface for translating text (sample code in C#): public interface ITranslationService { string GetTranslation(string key, CultureInfo targetLanguage); // some other methods... } A first simple implementation of this interface already exists and simply goes to the database for every method call. Assuming a UI that is being translated at start up this results in one database call per control. To improve this, I want to add the following behavior: As soon as a request for one language comes in, fetch all translations from this language and cache them. All translation requests are served from the cache. I thought about implementing this new behavior as a decorator, because all other methods of that interface implemented by the decorater would simple delegate to the decorated instance. However, the implementation of GetTranslation wouldn't use GetTranslation of the decorated instance at all to get all translations of a certain language. It would fire its own query against the database. This breaks the decorator pattern, because every functionality provided by the decorated instance is simply skipped. This becomes a real problem if there are other decorators involved. My understanding is that a Decorator should be additive. In this case however, the decorator is replacing the behavior of the decorated instance. I can't really think of a nice solution for this - how would you solve it? Everything is allowed, even a complete re-design of ITranslationService itself.

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• What is the best way to render a 2d game map?

  - by Deukalion

  I know efficiency is key in game programming and I've had some experiences with rendering a "map" earlier but probably not in the best of ways. For a 2D TopDown game: (simply render the textures/tiles of the world, nothing else) Say, you have a map of 1000x1000 (tiles or whatever). If the tile isn't in the view of the camera, it shouldn't be rendered - it's that simple. No need to render a tile that won't be seen. But since you have 1000x1000 objects in your map, or perhaps less you probably don't want to loop through all 1000*1000 tiles just to see if they're suppose to be rendered or not. Question: What is the best way to implement this efficiency? So that it "quickly/quicker" can determine what tiles are suppose to be rendered? Also, I'm not building my game around tiles rendered with a SpriteBatch so there's no rectangles, the shapes can be different sizes and have multiple points, say a curved object of 10 points and a texture inside that shape; Question: How do you determine if this kind of objects is "inside" the View of the camera? It's easy with a 48x48 rectangle, just see if it X+Width or Y+Height is in the view of the camera. Different with multiple points. Simply put, how to manage the code and the data efficiently to not having to run through/loop through a million of objects at the same time.

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• Data Movement and the Decision Matrix

  - by BuckWoody

  Maybe it’s my military background, or maybe I’ve always had this predilection, but I like to use two devices when I need to make a complex decision: A checklist and a decision matrix. I like to use a checklist because it ensures that I remember the big bits of what I need to do, and brings up questions or areas that I didn’t think about when evaluating options for the decision. And the decision matrix – that’s the thing I use to actually lay out those options. It’s simply a spreadsheet-like grid (I use Excel, but paper and pencil works as well) that lays out the requirements or advantages for the decision across the top, and the options I have on the left-hand side. Then in the “cells” I put whether or not that option on the left will meet the requirement in that column. I then simply “weight” each cell to organize the choices by best-fit. The right answer (or answers) will float right to the top. I was asked yesterday about options for moving data in SQL Server to another system. There are just dozens of ways to do this, from bcp to Replication, each with certain advantages and costs. But asking the questions for the top row first helped me show the person that it isn’t a particular technology that is important, it’s laying out those requirements and thinking about which elements are more important than the other. For instance, is it more important to have the data moved all the time, or is it OK if that happens once in a while? Does the data have to move in two directions or just one? All of these will help that answer jump right out. Try it sometime – it’s a great learning exercise, since it will force you to focus on filling out the matrix. The answer is out there, Neo. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Why do memory-managed languages retain the `new` keyword?

  - by Channel72

  The new keyword in languages like Java, Javascript, and C# creates a new instance of a class. This syntax seems to have been inherited from C++, where new is used specifically to allocate a new instance of a class on the heap, and return a pointer to the new instance. In C++, this is not the only way to construct an object. You can also construct an object on the stack, without using new - and in fact, this way of constructing objects is much more common in C++. So, coming from a C++ background, the new keyword in languages like Java, Javascript, and C# seemed natural and obvious to me. Then I started to learn Python, which doesn't have the new keyword. In Python, an instance is constructed simply by calling the constructor, like: f = Foo() At first, this seemed a bit off to me, until it occurred to me that there's no reason for Python to have new, because everything is an object so there's no need to disambiguate between various constructor syntaxes. But then I thought - what's really the point of new in Java? Why should we say Object o = new Object();? Why not just Object o = Object();? In C++ there's definitely a need for new, since we need to distinguish between allocating on the heap and allocating on the stack, but in Java all objects are constructed on the heap, so why even have the new keyword? The same question could be asked for Javascript. In C#, which I'm much less familiar with, I think new may have some purpose in terms of distinguishing between object types and value types, but I'm not sure. Regardless, it seems to me that many languages which came after C++ simply "inherited" the new keyword - without really needing it. It's almost like a vestigial keyword. We don't seem to need it for any reason, and yet it's there. Question: Am I correct about this? Or is there some compelling reason that new needs to be in C++-inspired memory-managed languages like Java, Javascript and C#?

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• Fake links cause crawl error in Google Webmaster Tools

  - by Itai

  Google reported Crawl Errors last week on my largest site though Webmaster Tools. Here is the message: Google detected a significant increase in the number of URLs that return a 404 (Page Not Found) error. Investigating these errors and fixing them where appropriate ensures that Google can successfully crawl your site's pages. The Crawl Errors list is now full of hundreds of fake links like these causing 16,519 errors so far: Note that my site does not even have a search.html and is not related to any of the terms shown in the above image. Inspecting sources for one of those links, I can see this is not simply an isolated source but a concerted effort: Each of the links has a few to a dozen sources all from different, seemingly unrelated sites. It is completely baffling as to why would someone to spending effort doing this. What are they hoping to achieve? Is this an attack? Most importantly: Does this have a negative effect on my side? Could it negatively impact my ranking? If so, what to do about it? The few linking pages I looked at are full of thousands of links to tons of sites and have no contact information and do not seem like the kind of people who would simply stop if asked nicely! According to Google Webmaster Tools, these errors have appeared in a span of 11 days. No crawl errors were being reported previously.

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• Algorithm to measure how "diffused" 5,000 pennies are in an economy?

  - by makerofthings7

  Please allow me to use this example/metaphor to describe an algorithm I need. Objects There are 5 thousand pennies. There are 50 cups. There is a tracking history (Passport "stamp" etc) that is associated with each penny as it moves between cups. Definition I'll define a "highly diffused" penny as one that passes through many cups. A "poorly diffused" penny is one that either passes back and forth between 2 cups Question How can I objectively measure the diffusion of a penny as: The number of moves the penny has gone through The number of cups the penny has been in A unit of time (day, week, month) Why am I doing this? I want to detect if a cup is hoarding pennies. Resistance from bad actors Since hoarding is bad, the "bad cup" may simply solicit a partner and simply move pennies between each other. This will reduce the amount of time a coin isn't in transit, and would skew hoarding detection. A solution might be to detect if a cup (or set of cups) are common "partners" with each other, though I'm not sure how to think though this problem. Broad applicability Any assistance would be helpful, since I would think that this algorithm is common to Economics The study of migration patterns of animals, citizens of a country Other natural occurring phenomena ... and probably exists as a term or concept I'm unfamiliar with.

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• How to keep track of previous scenes and return to them in libgdx

  - by MxyL

  I have three scenes: SceneTitle, SceneMenu, SceneLoad. (The difference between the title scene and the menu scene is that the title scene is what you see when you first turn on the game, and the menu scene is what you can access during the game. During the game, meaning, after you've hit "play!" in the title scene.) I provide the ability to save progress and consequently load a particular game. An issue that I've run into is being able to easily keep track of the previous scene. For example, if you enter the load scene and then decide to change your mind, the game needs to go back to where you were before; this isn't something that can be hardcoded. Now, an easy solution off the top of my head is to simply maintain a scene stack, which basically keeps track of history for me. A simple transaction would be as follows I'm currently in the menu scene, so the top of the stack is SceneMenu I go to the load scene, so the game pushes SceneLoad onto the stack. When I return from the load scene, the game pops SceneLoad off the stack and initializes the scene that's currently at the top, which is SceneMenu I'm coding in Java, so I can't simply pass around Classes as if they were objects, so I've decided implemented as enum for eac scene and put that on the stack and then have my scene managing class go through a list of if conditions to return the appropriate instance of the class. How can I implement my scene stack without having to do too much work maintaining it?

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