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• What You Said: Cutting the Cable Cord

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Earlier this week we asked you if you’d cut the cable and switched to alternate media sources to get your movie and TV fix. You responded and we’re back with a What You Said roundup. One of the recurrent themes in reader comments and one, we must admit, we didn’t expect to see with such prevalence, was the number of people who had ditched cable for over-the-air HD broadcasts. Fantasm writes: I have a triple HD antenna array, mounted on an old tv tower, each antenna facing out from a different side of the triangular tower. On tope of the tower are two 20+ year old antennas… I’m 60 miles from toronto and get 35 channels, most in brilliant HD… Anything else, comes from the Internet… Never want cable or sat again… Grant uses a combination of streaming services and, like Fantasm, manages to pull in HD content with a nice antenna setup: We use Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, Crackle, and others on a Roku as well as OTA on a Tivo Premier. The Tivo is simply the best DVR interface I have ever used. The Tivo Netflix application, though, is terrible, and it does not support Amazon Prime. Having both boxes makes it easy to use all of the services. 6 Ways Windows 8 Is More Secure Than Windows 7 HTG Explains: Why It’s Good That Your Computer’s RAM Is Full 10 Awesome Improvements For Desktop Users in Windows 8

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• Cat 6 Only 100mbit speed

  - by Stu2000

  I tried two different cat6 cables directly connected between my two ubuntu machines. This one I ordered online: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002SQPDXS/ref=wms_ohs_product only achieves 100mbit speeds, but does appear to be supporting cross-talk (direct pc to pc), the other cat 6 cable, worked perfectly and gets the full 1gigabit speed. Both tests were performed using ftp and checking the network monitor with direct pc to pc connection. Did the product from amazon lie to me or do I need to manually set a setting somewhere in ubuntu for some cables? I had thought 10 quid for 20m of gigabit ethernet cable was a bit cheap, you get what you pay for... Regards, Stu Update: It seems that after rebooting, the device is set to 1000mbit sec when looking it up with sudo ethtool eth0 However after a while, this will drop down to just 100, after which to reset it to 1000 again, I have to reboot, and simply unpugging and re-plugging in the cable doesn't do it. I tried setting this in networking config file as suggested here: auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static pre-up /usr/sbin/ethtool -s eth0 speed 1000 duplex full but that resulted in my networking failing to start. Is there a problem with my 'auto-negotiation' or something? Can I manually override a setting to 1000mbit?

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• Tools for managing eCommerce backend

  - by rboarman

  I am working with an eCommerce company that has outgrown their hacked together backend for managing inventory, pricing and feeds to various shopping engines (Yahoo, 3d cart, Amazon, etc.). They currently manage about 12,000 skus and are doing $40M in revenue. Their internal people are working on a new Magento solution, but that is six months away and they need to replace/improve their current solution in order to hold them over. Their current solution was developed by two people who have left the company. What tools/architecture do other eCommerce sites use to manage their inventory, pricing, product descriptions and feed generation for the shopping engines? The current solution looks like this: 1) Inventory, pricing and product descriptions are maintained in a database and in NetSuite by employees 2) New products are added to the database via import 3) Twice a week data is extracted into a giant Excel spreadsheet 4) The Excel file adjusts pricing based on some simple algorithms 5) The Excel file exports about six different csv feeds which are manually uploaded to Amazon, 3d cart, Yahoo, Google and Merchant Advantage a. Each feed is a variant of the product which different field names and formatting b. Pricing levels differ between feeds c. Some products are not sent to all feeds 6) Orders are manually parsed and the inventory is adjusted as needed once product is sold The new solution should: 1) Import data from ODBC, CSV and NetSuite (CSV via ftp) 2) Apply pricing changes via simple algorithms (< $80 add $10, $200 add $25) 3) Ensure margins are being met 4) Format and generate a bunch of CSV and XML feeds 5) Perhaps upload feeds to shopping engines automatically What I need to do is replace the Excel file with something that is maintainable and automated. Something in the .Net stack is preferable but not mandatory. I’ve been looking at BizTalk but it may take too long to develop and deploy. Any suggestions?

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• Find meeting point of 2 objects in 2D, knowing (constant) speed and slope

  - by Axonn

  I have a gun which fires a projectile which has to hit an enemy. The problem is that the gun has to be automatic, i.e. - choose the angle in which it has to shoot so that the projectile hits the enemy dead in the center. It's been a looooong time since school, and my physics skills are a bit rusty, but they're there. I've been thinking to somehow apply the v = d/t formula to find the time needed for the projectile or enemy to reach a certain point. But the problem is that I can't find the common point for both the projectile and enemy. Yes, I can find a certain point for the projectile, and another for the enemy, but I would need lots of tries to find where the point coincides, which is stupid. There has to be a way to link them together but I can't figure it out. I prepared some drawings and samples: A simple version of my Flash game, dumbed down to the basics, just some shapes: http://axonnsd.org/W/P001/MathSandBox.swf - click the mouse anywhere to fire a projectile. Or, here is an image which describes my problem: So... who has any ideas about how to find x3/y3 - thus leading me to find the angle in which the weapon has to tilt in order to fire a projectile to meet the enemy? EDIT I think it would be clearer if I also mention that I know: the speed of both Enemy and Projectile and the Enemy travels on a straight vertical line.

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• Cron is running but not outputting data

  - by Youri

  I'm trying to make my Amazon EC2 instances stop and start by a crontab. EC2 Api tools is succesfully installed. Manually it works. The cron (which I put in with the command crontab -e): 10 * * * * ubuntu /usr/bin/ec2-stop-instances [instanceid] /tmp/ec2.log The file /tmp/ec2.log is created. When I use the command grep CRON /var/log/syslog I see the cron has actually run. I don't get any output in the /tmp/ec2.log file though. I have set all the amazon variables needed. Even if I on purpose create a wrong cron, like this: 10 * * * * ubuntu /usr/bin/ec2-stop-instancwweqes [instanceid] /tmp/ec2.log I get no output in the file. Shouldn't there be an error? I also tried not defining the user: 10 * * * * /usr/bin/ec2-stop-instances [instanceid] /tmp/ec2.log And direct command: 10 * * * * ubuntu ec2-stop-instances [instanceid] /tmp/ec2.log Can someone please help me. If I can somehow debug, I can get to the solution. Thanks in advance.

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• how to make a continuous machine gun sound-effect

  - by Jan

  I am trying to make an entity fire one or more machine-guns. For each gun I store the time between shots (1.0 / firing rate) and the time since the last shot. Also I've loaded ~10 different gun-shot sound-effects. Now, for each gun I do the following: function update(deltatime): timeSinceLastShot += deltatime if timeSinceLastShot >= timeBetweenShots + verySmallRandomValue(): timeSinceLastShot -= timeBetweenShots if gunIsFiring: displayMuzzleFlash() spawnBullet() selectRandomSound().play() But now I often get a crackling noise (which I assume is when two or more guns are firing at the same time and confuse the sound-device). My question is whether A) This a common problem and there is a well-known solution, maybe to do with the channels or something, or B) I am using a completely wrong approach to the task. I had a look at some sound-assets for other games and they used complete burst with multiple shots. I suppose I could try that, but I would like to have organic little hickups in the gun-fire (that's what the random value is for) to make the game more gritty and dirty. I am using Panda3D, but I had the exact same problem in PyGame and SDL. [edit] Thanks a lot for the answers so far! One more problem with faking it though: Now how do I stop the sound? Let's say I have an effect with 5 bangs... *bang* *bang* *bang* *bang* *bang* And I magically manage to loop it so that there's no gap or overlap if the player fires more than 5 shots. Now, what do I do if the player stops firing halfway through the third bang? How do I know how long to keep playing the sample so that the third bang is completed and I can start playing the rumbling echo of the last shot? Of course I can look up the shot/pause timing of that sound-sample and code accordingly, but it feels extremely hacky.

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• Moving all UI logic to Client Side?

  - by Mag20

  Our team originally consisted of mostly server side developers with minimum expertise in Javascript. In ASP.NET we used to write a lot of UI logic in code-behind or more recently through controllers in MVC. A little while ago 2 high level client side developers joined our team. They can do in HTMl/CSS/Javascript pretty much anything that we could previously do with server-side code and server-side web controls: Show/hide controls Do validation Control AJAX refreshing So I started to think that maybe it would be more efficient to just create a high level API around our business logic, kinda like Amazon Fulfillment API: http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/fws/latest/APIReference/, so that client side developers would fully take over the UI, while server side developers would only concentrate on business logic. So for ordering system you would have a high level API like: OrderService.asmx CreateOrderResponse CreateOrder(CreateOrderRequest) AddOrderItem AddPayment - SubmitPayment - GetOrderByID FindOrdersByCriteria ... There would be JSON/REST access to API, so it would be easy to consume from client-side UI. We could use this API for both internal UI development and also for 3-rd parties to create their own applications. With advances in Javascript and availability of good client side developers, is it a good time to get rid of code-behind/controllers and just concentrate on developing high level APIs (ala Amazon) that client side developers can consume?

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• How to shift a vector based on the rotation of another vector?

  - by bpierre

  I’m learning 2D programming, so excuse my approximations, and please, don’t hesitate to correct me. I am just trying to fire a bullet from a player. I’m using HTML canvas (top left origin). Here is a representation of my problem: The black vector represent the position of the player (the grey square). The green vector represent its direction. The red disc represents the target. The red vector represents the direction of a bullet, which will move in the direction of the target (red and dotted line). The blue cross represents the point from where I really want to fire the bullet (and the blue and dotted line represents its movement). This is how I draw the player (this is the player object. Position, direction and dimensions are 2D vectors): ctx.save(); ctx.translate(this.position.x, this.position.y); ctx.rotate(this.direction.getAngle()); ctx.drawImage(this.image, Math.round(-this.dimensions.x/2), Math.round(-this.dimensions.y/2), this.dimensions.x, this.dimensions.y); ctx.restore(); This is how I instanciate a new bullet: var bulletPosition = playerPosition.clone(); // Copy of the player position var bulletDirection = Vector2D.substract(targetPosition, playerPosition).normalize(); // Difference between the player and the target, normalized new Bullet(bulletPosition, bulletDirection); This is how I move the bullet (this is the bullet object): var speed = 5; this.position.add(Vector2D.multiply(this.direction, speed)); And this is how I draw the bullet (this is the bullet object): ctx.save(); ctx.translate(this.position.x, this.position.y); ctx.rotate(this.direction.getAngle()); ctx.fillRect(0, 0, 3, 3); ctx.restore(); How can I change the direction and position vectors of the bullet to ensure it is on the blue dotted line? I think I should represent the shift with a vector, but I can’t see how to use it.

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• Is there a cheaper non-express non-student, non-msdn version of Visual Studio 2010 that supports plugins in the US than the $710 Professional Edition?

  - by Justin Dearing

  I've never actually purchased a copy of Visual Studio myself. SharpDevelop and Express edition have always been good enough for my personal use, and my employers always furnished me with the IDEs I needed to serve them. However, I'm thinking of actually paying for a copy for my personal laptop. I need this mainly so I can open solutions that contain web projects. So my question is: Is there an edition cheaper than the $710 Pro edition on Amazon that will do what I need: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-C5E-00521-Visual-Studio-Professional/dp/B0038KTO8S/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1287456230&sr=8-2 ? What I need is defined as: Open up a solution with C#, Web App, VB.NET, and Web Projects. Install addins like resharper, testdriven.net, etc, SCM plugins, etc. Some level of db project support. At least to be able to open a dbproj. I only need that for SCM hooks. SSMS and SQLCMD are good enough for actually editing databases. Ability to install F#, IronPython, IronRuby etc. Now naturally I'm a fairly intelligent resourceful person so I realize I can get Visual Studio in a questionable manner. Thats not what I'm looking to do. I want a legal copy, I don't want a student copy, or an MSDN copy. I want a real copy, I just want to make sure I get the cheapest edition that serves my needs.

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• Advice on choosing a book to read

  - by Kioshiki

  I would like to ask for some recommendations on useful books to read. Initially I had intended on posting quite a long description of my current issue and asking for advice. But I realised that I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to ask. One thing that is clear to me is that my knowledge in various areas needs improving and reading is one method of doing that. Though choosing the right book to read seems like a task in itself when there are so many books out there. I am a programmer but I also deal with analysis, design & testing. So I am not sure what type of book to read. One option might be to work through two books at the same time. I had thought maybe one about design or practices and another of a more technical focus. Recently I came across one book that I thought might be useful to read: http://xunitpatterns.com/index.html It seems like an interesting book, but the comments I read on amazon.co.uk show that the book is probably longer than it needs to be. Has anyone read it and can comment on this? Another book that I already own and would probably be a good one to finish reading is this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-Construction/dp/0735619670/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1309438553&sr=8-1 Has anyone else read this who can comment on its usefulness? Beyond these two I currently have no clear idea of what to read. I have thought about reading a book related to OO design or the GOF design patterns. But I wonder if I am worrying too much about the process and practices and not focusing on the actual work. I would be very grateful for any suggestions or comments. Many Thanks, Kioshiki

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• Pick Up BioShock and Bioshock 2 for Price of a Big Mac Meal

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Pre-ordering just opened on the third-installment of the highly-acclaimed horror-survival game series BioShock, BioShock Infinite. As part of the pre-order promotions, you can pick up a bundled copy of BioShock and BioShock 2 for a song. For the unfamiliar, BioShock is an atmospheric first-person-shooter backed up by an incredible storyline set in the underwater utopian-turned-dystopian city of Rapture. BioShock 2 continues the story in Rapture and the upcoming release (Febuary 2013) of BioShock Infinite takes place in the same game universe but fifty years before the events of the first two installments. If that seems like the kind of game you could dig into, Amazon has the Windows-platform version of BioShock and BioShock 2 bundled together for a scant $7.49–81% off the Steam and general retail price. The best part about the promotion is you can either download the games from Amazon or, for those of you that use Steam, you can simply plug the game product key into Steam. You can read more about the both the original two games and the upcoming release at the official BioShock site. BioShock Dual Pack [via Geeks Are Sexy] How Hackers Can Disguise Malicious Programs With Fake File Extensions Can Dust Actually Damage My Computer? What To Do If You Get a Virus on Your Computer

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• Weekend Project: Build a Fireball Launcher

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  What’s more fun than playing with fire? Shooting it from your hands. Put on your robe and wizard hat, make a stop at the hardware store, and spend the weekend trying to convince your friends you’ve acquired supernatural powers. Over at MAKE Magazine, Joel Johnson explains the impetus for his project: A stalwart of close-quarter magicians for years, the electronic flash gun is a simple device: a battery-powered, hand-held ignitor that uses a “glo-plug” to light a bit of flash paper and cotton, shooting a fireball a few feet into the air. You can buy one from most magic shops for around $50, but if you build one on your own, you’ll not only save a few bucks, you’ll also learn how easy it is to add fire effects to almost any electronics project. (And what gadget couldn’t stand a little more spurting flame?) The parts list is minimal but the end effect is pretty fantastic. Hit up the link below for the full build guide, plenty of warnings, and a weekend project that’s sure to impress. How to Own Your Own Website (Even If You Can’t Build One) Pt 3 How to Sync Your Media Across Your Entire House with XBMC How to Own Your Own Website (Even If You Can’t Build One) Pt 2

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• Multiplayer approach for tablets on wi-fi (FPS/TPS)? Server authority, etc

  - by Fraggle

  Looking for some guidance or what has worked well for others in implementing a multiplayer FPS/TPS type game on tablets (probably just 2-6 players at a time). The main issue being that tablets/phones are typically "less" connected than say a console or pc might be. And therefore, my thought is that to have complete Server authority of everything is not going to work. But maybe I'm off base on that. So I guess I'm struggling with what (if anything) should happen on a central server and what should happen locally. Or is centralized approach even needed? Some approaches I might do: Player movement : my thought is to control this locally (player-owner) and update server with positon (which then sends out to other clients). Use client side prediction for opponent players so that connection loss will not show a plane for example stop in mid air. Server will send update and try to smoothly correct an opponent player position to server updated one.But don't update owners position on owners device from server. Powerups (health kit/ammo/coins/etc) : need to see them disappear immediately, so do it locally. Add the health locally, but perhaps allow for server correction. If server doesn't see player near that powerup, reject the powerup and adjust server health for player. Fire weapons: Have to see it happen right away, so fire locally, create local bullet and send on its way. Send rpc to server so that this player on other clients also fires. Hit detection: Get's trickier. Make bullet/projectile disappear locally, and perhaps perform local hit animations (shaking, whatever). non-authoritative approach= take the damage locally and send rpc to server or others to update health and inform of hit. Authoritative approach-Don't take the damage, or adjust health. Server will do that if it detects a hit. Anyway that's my current thought stream. Let me know what you think of the above or what has worked for you.

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• Windows 8.1 - unfixable grub

  - by Nick

  I have a Gigabyte laptop that came with secure boot and windows 8. After a bit of battling, I managed to get my dual boot with Ubuntu 13.10.. Anyway, I upgraded zindows to 8.1, now grub is gone. I restarted from a live CD and chrooted to my drive. I used boot-repair multiple times (with successful output) both in default and with some advanced options; also reinstalled grub manually... Each time it tries once to boot to grub but gives a message for a very short amount of time. I recorded it and it is a regular bios message "Rebbot and Select proper Boot device of Insert Boot media in selected boot device and press a key" I even tried something called EasyBCD under winblows, it shows the correct boot options, but same there, it is unable to make the linux partition fire up. Anyway, no way to boot my linux box. Does anyone have an idea how to fix this? No need to redirect me to another post with grub reinstall or boot-repair, seen them all... I am thinking of trying this other boot loader, refind, to see if it works http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/index.html Also re-reading this bios message, I'm thinking my partition might not have a boot flag anymore... I'll try that too with parted. Although both grub and win 8 are supposed to fire up from the same boot partition (the EFI one) Please help! thx

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• Book Giveaway: We Have 10 Free Copies of the 4-Hour Chef (The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life)

  - by The Geek

  The 4-Hour Chef isn’t just a cookbook. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure guide to the world of rapid learning from the best-selling author of the 4-Hour Workweek, and we’ve got 10 free copies for How-To Geek readers. Want more information? Here’s the description of the book, from the Amazon page. The 4-Hour Chef is a five-stop journey through the art and science of learning: 1. META-LEARNING. Before you learn to cook, you must learn to learn. META charts the path to doubling your learning potential. 2. THE DOMESTIC. DOM is where you learn the building blocks of cooking. These are the ABCs (techniques) that can take you from Dr, Seuss to Shakespeare. 3. THE WILD. Becoming a master student requires self-sufficiency in all things. WILD teaches you to hunt, forage, and survive. 4. THE SCIENTIST. SCI is the mad scientist and modernist painter wrapped into one. This is where you rediscover whimsy and wonder. 5. THE PROFESSIONAL. Swaraj, a term usually associated with Mahatma Gandhi, can be translated as “self-rule.” In PRO, we’ll look at how the best in the world become the best in the world, and how you can chart your own path far beyond this book. Still not sold? There’s more information and pictures over on the Amazon page for the book. The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life Why Your Android Phone Isn’t Getting Operating System Updates and What You Can Do About It How To Delete, Move, or Rename Locked Files in Windows HTG Explains: Why Screen Savers Are No Longer Necessary

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• Where can I learn about managing domain names for my websites? [closed]

  - by Shahbaz

  [I originally asked this question on serverfault.com, where it was closed as 'out of scope.' Hopefully it is appropriate for this forum] I am a developer who doesn't understand how to effectively manage Internet domain names. Say I registered a name with namecheap and host a website on linode. Now what is an a-record? What is a name server and do I host it with namecheap of linode? Why would I pay amazon when others are free? Does any of this matter in terms of website latency or reliability? I feel like a script kiddy, copying and pasting others' and hoping it works. Is there a book or other resource that explains all this? I know amazon is full of books about DNS, but afaik they are about setting up DNA servers for local networks, not the Internet. p.s. To emphasize, I'm asking for books or long write-ups which explain this to technically competent people, who just haven't had to think about the role of commercial registrars, name servers, commercial hosts, commercial websites and how all parts play together on the real internet (not local networks).

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• Latest (5 June 14) Updates t0 10.04 Causing Multiple Problems

  - by user291780

  Apologies, the questions are very short, but the bkg isn't. I rec'd a routine notification from the update mgr a few days ago (I believe, June 5th). I took a look and there was lots of linux stuff, headers, etc., nothing obviously unusual. I'd rec'd and updated w/a more extensive pkg set, kernel and all a few weeks ago, no problem. On June 6, I pushed the upgrade button on the June 5th batch, nothing usual, needed a reboot, which I did after a full power down, it came up fine. Gedit worked, the calculator worked, started up firefox, it came up, selected the BookMarks menu, and blam, it hesitated and then greyed out, when I tried to close it, got the "process not responding" msg. Undaunted, I tried to fire up Google Chrome....nothing on the screen or process bar. I fired up the system monitor and indeed there were some "sleeping" chrome processes "running". Powered down several times, but the same problems persist. Similar but worse story when I tried to fire up one of my virtual machines, VirtualBox came up fine, but when I tried to start one of my virtual machines I got a progress popup that I'd never seen before which showed that we were making no progress past 20%. Uninstalled Oracle VirtualBox, reinstalled the latest and greatest, same result. Also, unable to logout, or shutdown once the virtual machine exhibited this behavior. Powered down manually, end of story. Never saw such a bad result after an update. I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) as I have been for a number of years. Please don't reply with why don't you run some other version of Ubuntu, that doesn't answer the questions below. Questions: Will their be a subsequent update that fixes this, and if so, when? If not, is there a way for me to get back to where I was before this disaster?

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• Good resources for learning modern OpenGL (3.0 or later)?

  - by MatterGoal

  I stumble upon the search of a good resource to start with OpenGL (3.0 or later) . Well, I found a lot of books but none of them can be considered a good resource! Here two examples: OpenGL Programming Guide (7th edition) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321552628/khongrou-20 This is FULL of deprecated material! Almost every chapters begin with a note about that. OpenGL Superbible (5th Edition) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321712617/khongrou-20 This book uses a library created by the author to explain the main arguments, hiding what you want to learn! I don't want to learn how to use your library! I want to learn OpenGL! I hope that you understand this is not the same question like "hey I'm not able to use Google... tell me how to learn OpenGL". I've just finished a full and deep search but I can't find a good and complete resource to learn the "new" OpenGL avoiding deprecated topics. Can someone heading me in the right direction? I know C++ and I have 10 years of experience in development... where I can find a good resource?! I want to spend time on it and I want to learn deeply. (please feel free to edit my question, my English is terrible!)

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• What I Expect From Myself This Year

  - by Lee Brandt

  I am making it a point not to call them resolutions, because the word has become an institution and is beginning to have no meaning. That's why I end up not keeping my resolutions, I think. So in the spirit of holding myself to my own commitments, I will make a plan and some realistic goals. 1.) Lose weight. Everyone has this on their list, but I am going to be conservative and specific. I currently weigh 393lbs. (yeah, I know). So I want to plan to lose 10lbs per month, that's 1lb. every three days, that shouldn't be difficult if I stick to my diet and exercise plan. - How do I do this?     - Diet: vegetarian. Since I already know I have high blood pressure and borderline high cholesterol, a meat-free diet is in order. I was vegan for a little over 2 years in 2006-2008, I think I can handle vegetarian.     - Exercise: at least 3 times (preferably every day) a week for 30 minutes. It has to be something that gets my heart rate up, or burns in my muscles. I can walk for cardio to start and mild calisthenics (girly push-ups, crunches, etc.).         - Move: I spend all my time behind the computer. I have recently started to use a slight variation of the Pomodoro Technique (my Pomodoros are 50 minutes instead of 25). During my 10 minutes every hour to answer emails, chats, etc., I will take a few minutes to stretch. 2.) Get my wife pregnant. We've been talking about it for years. Now that she is done with graduate school and I have a great job, now's the time. We'll be the oldest parents in the PTA most likely, but I don't care. 3.) Blog More. Another favorite among bloggers, but I do have about six drafts for blog posts started. The topics are there all I need to do is flesh out the post. This can be the first hour of any computer time I have after work. As soon as I am done exercising, shower and post. 4.) Speak less. Most people want to speak more. I want to concentrate on the places that I enjoy and that can really use the speakers (like local code camps), rather than trying to be some national speaker. I love speaking at conferences, but I need to spend some more time at home if we're going to get pregnant. 5.) Read more. I got a Kindle for Christmas and I am loving it so far. I have almost finished Treasure Island, and am getting ready to pick my next book. I will probably read a lot of classics for 2 reasons: (1) they teach deep lessons and (2) most are free for the Kindle. 6.) Find my religion. I was raised Southern Baptist, but I want to find my own way. I've been wanting to go to the local Unitarian Church, so I will make a point to go before the end of March. I also want to add a few religious books to my reading list. My boss bought me a copy of Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus , and I have a copy of Bruce Feiler's Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths (P.S.) . I will start there. Seems like a lot now that I spell it out like this. But these are only starters. I am forty years old. I cannot keep living like I am twenty anymore. So here we go, 2011.

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• SQLAuthority News – Book Signing Event – SQLPASS 2011 Event Log

  - by pinaldave

  I have been dreaming of writing book for really long time, and I finally got the chance – in fact, two chances!  I recently wrote two books: SQL Programming Joes 2 Pros: Programming and Development for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 [Amazon] | [Flipkart] | [Kindle] and SQL Wait Stats Joes 2 Pros: SQL Performance Tuning Techniques Using Wait Statistics, Types & Queues [Amazon] | [Flipkart] | [Kindle].  I had a lot of fun writing these two books, even though sometimes I had to sacrifice some family time and time for other personal development to write the books. The good side of writing book is that when the efforts put in writing books are recognize by books readers and kind organizations like expressor studio. Book Signing Event Book writing is a complex process.  Even after you spend months, maybe years, writing the material you still have to go through the editing and fact checking processes.  And, once the book is out there, there is no way to take back all the copies to change mistakes or add something you forgot.  Most of the time it is a one-way street. Book Signing Event Just like every author, I had a dream that after the books were written, they would be loved by people and gain acceptance by an audience. My first book, SQL Programming Joes 2 Pros: Programming and Development for Microsoft SQL Server 2008, is extremely popular because it helps lots of people learn various fundamental topics. My second book covers beginning to learn SQL Server Wait Stats, which is a relatively new subject. This book has had very good acceptance in the community. Book Signing Event Helping my community is my primary focus, so I was happy to see this year’s SQLPASS tag line: ‘This is a Community.‘ At the event, the expressor studio guys came up with a very novel idea. They had previously used my books and they had found them very useful. They got 100 copies of the book and decided to give it away to community folks. They invited me and my co-author Rick Morelan to hold a book signing event. We did a book signing on Thursday between 1 pm and 2 pm. Book Signing Event This event was one of the best events for me. This was my first book signing event outside of India. I reached the book signing location around 20 minutes before the scheduled time and what I saw was a big line for the book signing event. I felt very honored looking at the crowd and all the people around the event location. I felt very humbled when I saw some of my very close friends standing in the line to get my signature. It was really heartwarming to see so many enthusiasts waiting for more than an hour to get my signature. While standing in line I had the chance to have a conversation with every single person who showed up for the signature. I made sure that I repeated every single name and wrote it in every book with my signature. There is saying that if we write a name once we will remember it forever. I want to remember all of you who saw me at the book signing. Your comments were wonderful, your feedback was amazing and you were all very supportive. Book Signing Event I have made a note of every conversation I had with all of you when I was signing the books. Once again, I just want to express my thanks for coming to my book signing event. The whole experience was very humbling. On the top of it, I want to thank the expressor studio people who made it possible, who organized the whole signing event. I am so thankful to them for facilitating the whole experience, which is going to be hard to beat by any future experience. My books Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL PASS, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• What is reading source on an ebook reader like?

  - by Daniel Straight

  There are a few open source projects I would really like to read through the code of to understand better / improve on. The problem is, for me, reading for a long time on the computer screen is tedious. I would love to be able to read code while lounging around and on a screen that was better on my eyes. Has anyone ever tried reading code on an ebook reader? It seems like the e-ink would make it easy on the eyes, plus it would be portable, plus it wouldn't kill any trees. In other words, it sounds perfect, but before I drop a couple benjamins on an ebook reader, I'd like to hear if anyone else has tried this and how it went. It seems Scott Hanselman discussed using the Kindle to read code, but I wouldn't necessarily want a Kindle. Has anyone had a positive experience with some other device? I realize this is not directly about programming, but it relates directly to my ability to improve my skills. I think if a good portable reading device for code exists, it could help a lot of programmers.

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• Converting Source ASCII Files to JPEGs

  - by CommonsWare

  I publish technical books, in print, PDF, and Kindle/MOBI, with EPUB on the way. The Kindle does not support monospace fonts, which are kinda useful for source code listings. The only way to do monospace fonts is to convert the text (Java source, HTML, XML, etc.) into JPEG images. More specifically, due to pagination issues, a given input ASCII file needs to be split into slices of ~6 lines each, with each slice turned into a JPEG, so listings can span a screen. This is a royal pain. My current mechanism to do that involves: Running expand to set a consistent 2-space tab size, which pipes to... a2ps, which pipes to... A small Perl snippet to add a "%%LanguageLevel: 3\n" line, which pipes to... ImageMagick's convert, to take the (E)PS and make a JPEG out it, with an appropriate background, cropped to 575x148+5+28, etc. That used to work 100% of the time. It now works 95% of the time. The rest of the time, I get convert: geometry does not contain image errors, which I cannot seem to get rid of, in part because I don't understand what the problem is. Before this process, I used to use a pretty-print engine (source-highlight) to get HTML out of the source code...but then the only thing I could find to convert the HTML into JPEGs was to automate screen-grabs from an embedded Gecko engine. Reliability stank, which is why I switched to my current mechanism. So, if you were you, and you needed to turn source listings into JPEG images, in an automated fashion, how would you do it? Bonus points if it offers some sort of pretty-print process (e.g., bolded keywords)! Or, if you know what typically causes convert: geometry does not contain image, that might help. My current process is ugly, but if I could get it back to 100% reliability, that'd be just fine for now. Thanks in advance!

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• Formal Languages, Inductive Proofs &amp; Regular Expressions

  - by MarkPearl

  So I am slogging away at my UNISA stuff. I have just finished doing the initial once non stop read through the first 11 chapters of my COS 201 Textbook - “Introduction to Computer Theory 2nd Edition” by Daniel Cohen. It has been an interesting couple of days, with familiar concepts coming up as well as some new territory. In this posting I am going to cover the first couple of chapters of the book. Let start with Formal Languages… What exactly is a formal language? Pretty much a no duh question for me but still a good one to ask – a formal language is a language that is defined in a precise mathematical way. Does that mean that the English language is a formal language? I would say no – and my main motivation for this is that one can have an English sentence that is correct grammatically that is also ambiguous. For example the ambiguous sentence: "I once shot an elephant in my pyjamas.” For this and possibly many other reasons that I am unaware of, English is termed a “Natural Language”. So why the importance of formal languages in computer science? Again a no duh question in my mind… If we want computers to be effective and useful tools then we need them to be able to evaluate a series of commands in some form of language that when interpreted by the device no confusion will exist as to what we were requesting. Imagine the mayhem that would exist if a computer misinterpreted a command to print a document and instead decided to delete it. So what is a Formal Language made up of… For my study purposes a language is made up of a finite alphabet. For a formal language to exist there needs to be a specification on the language that will describe whether a string of characters has membership in the language or not. There are two basic ways to do this: By a “machine” that will recognize strings of the language (e.g. Finite Automata). By a rule that describes how strings of a language can be formed (e.g. Regular Expressions). When we use the phrase “string of characters”, we can also be referring to a “word”. What is an Inductive Proof? So I am not to far into my textbook and of course it starts referring to proofs and different types. I have had to go through several different approaches of proofs in the past, but I can never remember their formal names , so when I saw “inductive proof” I thought to myself – what the heck is that? Google to the rescue… An inductive proof is like a normal proof but it employs a neat trick which allows you to prove a statement about an arbitrary number n by first proving it is true when n is 1 and then assuming it is true for n=k and showing it is true for n=k+1. The idea is that if you want to show that someone can climb to the nth floor of a fire escape, you need only show that you can climb the ladder up to the fire escape (n=1) and then show that you know how to climb the stairs from any level of the fire escape (n=k) to the next level (n=k+1). Does this sound like a form of recursion? No surprise then that in the same chapter they deal with recursive definitions. An example of a recursive definition for the language EVEN would the 3 rules below: 2 is in EVEN If x is in EVEN then so is x+2 The only elements in the set EVEN are those that be produced by the rules above. Nothing to exciting… So if a definition for a language is done recursively, then it makes sense that the language can be proved using induction. Regular Expressions So I am wondering to myself what use is this all – in fact – I find this the biggest challenge to any university material is that it is quite hard to find the immediate practical applications of some theory in real life stuff. How great was my joy when I suddenly saw the word regular expression being introduced. I had been introduced to regular expressions on Stack Overflow where I was trying to recognize if some text measurement put in by a user was in a valid form or not. For instance, the imperial system of measurement where you have feet and inches can be represented in so many different ways. I had eventually turned to regular expressions as an easy way to check if my parser could correctly parse the text or not and convert it to a normalize measurement. So some rules about languages and regular expressions… Any finite language can be represented by at least one if not more regular expressions A regular expressions is almost a rule syntax for expressing how regular languages can be formed regular expressions are cool For a regular expression to be valid for a language it must be able to generate all the words in the language and no other words. This is important. It doesn’t help me if my regular expression parses 100% of my measurement texts but also lets one or two invalid texts to pass as well. Okay, so this posting jumps around a bit – but introduces some very basic fundamentals for the subject which will be built on in later postings… Time to go and do some practical examples now…

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• AWS: setting up auto-scale for EC2 instances

  - by Elton Stoneman

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman/archive/2013/10/16/aws-setting-up-auto-scale-for-ec2-instances.aspxWith Amazon Web Services, there’s no direct equivalent to Azure Worker Roles – no Elastic Beanstalk-style application for .NET background workers. But you can get the auto-scale part by configuring an auto-scaling group for your EC2 instance. This is a step-by-step guide, that shows you how to create the auto-scaling configuration, which for EC2 you need to do with the command line, and then link your scaling policies to CloudWatch alarms in the Web console. I’m using queue size as my metric for CloudWatch,  which is a good fit if your background workers are pulling messages from a queue and processing them.  If the queue is getting too big, the “high” alarm will fire and spin up a new instance to share the workload. If the queue is draining down, the “low” alarm will fire and shut down one of the instances. To start with, you need to manually set up your app in an EC2 VM, for a background worker that would mean hosting your code in a Windows Service (I always use Topshelf). If you’re dual-running Azure and AWS, then you can isolate your logic in one library, with a generic entry point that has Start() and Stop()  functions, so your Worker Role and Windows Service are essentially using the same code. When you have your instance set up with the Windows Service running automatically, and you’ve tested it starts up and works properly from a reboot, shut the machine down and take an image of the VM, using Create Image (EBS AMI) from the Web Console: When that completes, you’ll have your own AMI which you can use to spin up new instances, and you’re ready to create your auto-scaling group. You need to dip into the command-line tools for this, so follow this guide to set up the AWS autoscale command line tool. Now we’re ready to go. 1. Create a launch configuration This launch configuration tells AWS what to do when a new instance needs to be spun up. You create it with the as-create-launch-config command, which looks like this: as-create-launch-config sc-xyz-launcher # name of the launch config --image-id ami-7b9e9f12 # id of the AMI you extracted from your VM --region eu-west-1 # which region the new instance gets created in --instance-type t1.micro # size of the instance to create --group quicklaunch-1 #security group for the new instance 2. Create an auto-scaling group The auto-scaling group links to the launch config, and defines the overall configuration of the collection of instances: as-create-auto-scaling-group sc-xyz-asg # auto-scaling group name --region eu-west-1 # region to create in --launch-configuration sc-xyz-launcher # name of the launch config to invoke for new instances --min-size 1 # minimum number of nodes in the group --max-size 5 # maximum number of nodes in the group --default-cooldown 300 # period to wait (in seconds) after each scaling event, before checking if another scaling event is required --availability-zones eu-west-1a eu-west-1b eu-west-1c # which availability zones you want your instances to be allocated in – multiple entries means EC@ will use any of them 3. Create a scale-up policy The policy dictates what will happen in response to a scaling event being triggered from a “high” alarm being breached. It links to the auto-scaling group; this sample results in one additional node being spun up: as-put-scaling-policy scale-up-policy # policy name -g sc-psod-woker-asg # auto-scaling group the policy works with --adjustment 1 # size of the adjustment --region eu-west-1 # region --type ChangeInCapacity # type of adjustment, this specifies a fixed number of nodes, but you can use PercentChangeInCapacity to make an adjustment relative to the current number of nodes, e.g. increasing by 50% 4. Create a scale-down policy The policy dictates what will happen in response to a scaling event being triggered from a “low” alarm being breached. It links to the auto-scaling group; this sample results in one node from the group being taken offline: as-put-scaling-policy scale-down-policy -g sc-psod-woker-asg "--adjustment=-1" # in Windows, use double-quotes to surround a negative adjustment value –-type ChangeInCapacity --region eu-west-1 5. Create a “high” CloudWatch alarm We’re done with the command line now. In the Web Console, open up the CloudWatch view and create a new alarm. This alarm will monitor your metrics and invoke the scale-up policy from your auto-scaling group, when the group is working too hard. Configure your metric – this example will fire the alarm if there are more than 10 messages in my queue for over a minute: Then link the alarm to the scale-up policy in your group: 6. Create a “low” CloudWatch alarm The opposite of step 4, this alarm will trigger when the instances in your group don’t have enough work to do (e.g fewer than 2 messages in the queue for 1 minute), and will invoke the scale-down policy. And that’s it. You don’t need your original VM as the auto-scale group has a minimum number of nodes connected. You can test out the scaling by flexing your CloudWatch metric – in this example, filling up a queue from a  stub publisher – and watching AWS create new nodes as required, then stopping the publisher and watch AWS kill off the spare nodes.

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• Profit's COLLABORATE 10 Session Selections

  - by Aaron Lazenby

  COLLABORATE 2010 is a mere 11 days away (thanks for the reminder @ocp_advisor). Every year I publish my a list of the sessions I think reflect some of the more interesting people/trends in enterprise IT. I should be at all of these sessions, so drop by for a chat--I'll be the guy tapping out emails on my iPad... Monday, April 19 9:15 a.m. - Keynote: Transforming Customer Value, Delivering Highest Customer Service Location: Keynote Hall I never miss Charles Phillips when he speaks--it's one of the best opportunities to get an update on Oracle product developments and strategy. And there's certainly occasion for an update: this will be Phillips' first big presentation since the Oracle + Sun Strategy Update in late January. Phillips is appearing with Oracle Executive Vice President of Development Thomas Kurian which means there should be some excellent information about how customers are using Oracle's complete software and hardware stack to address enterprise IT challenges. The session should provide some excellent context for the rest of the week's session...don't miss it. 10:45 a.m. - Oracle Fusion Applications: Functional Overview Location: South Seas FI met Basheer Khan at COLLABORATE 08 in Denver and have followed his work ever since. He's a former member of the OAUG Board of Directors, an Oracle ACE, and a charismatic enterprise IT expert. Having worked with the Oracle Usability Advisory Board, Basheer should have some fascinating insights to share about the features and interface of Oracle's Fusine Applications. This session, along with Nadia Bendjedou's "10 Things You Can Do Today to Prepare for the Next Generation Applications" (on Tuesday, April 20 8:00 a.m. in room 3662) should give attendees the update they need about Oracle's next-generation applications.   1:15p.m. - E-Business Suite in the Amazon Cloud Location: South Seas HI did my first full-fledged cloud computing coverage at last year's COLLABORATE show (check out my interview with Oracle's Bill Hodak), where I first learned about Amazon's EC2 offering. I've since talked with several people who have provisioned server space on Amazon's cloud with great results. So I'm looking forward to watching the audience configure an instance of the Oracle E-Business Suite release 12 on the cloud while Chuck Edwards from Blue Gecko drives. This session should take some of the mist and vapor out of the cloud conversation.2:30 p.m. - "Zero Sign-on" to EBS - Enabling 96000 Users to Login to EBS Without User Maintenance Location: South Seas HI'll be sitting tight in South Seas H for the next session on Monday where Doug Pepka, a ten-year veteran of communications giant Comcast, will be walking attendees through a massive single sign-on (SSO) project across the enterprise. I'm working on a story about SSO for the August issue of Profit, so this session has real practical value to me. Plus the proliferation of user account logins--both personal and professional--makes this a critical usability/change management issue for IT leaders planning for successful long-term IT implementations.   Tuesday 8:00 am  - Information Architecture for Men in Kilts Location: SURF AGetting to a 8:00 a.m. presentation is a tall order in Las Vegas, but presenter Billy Cripe will make it worth your effort. Not only is the title of this session great, but the content should appeal to any IT strategist looking to push the limits of Web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise. Cripe is a product management director of Enterprise 2.0 and Enterprise Content Management at Oracle, author of Reshaping Your Business with Web 2.0, and a prolific blogger--he knows how information architecture is critical to and enterprise 2.0 implementation.    10:30a.m. - Oracle Virtualization: From Desktop to Data Center Location: REEF FData center virtualization is still one of the best ways to reduce the cost of running enterprise IT. With the addition of Sun products, Oracle has the industry's most comprehensive virtualization portfolio. I must admit, I'm no expert in this subject. So I'm looking forward to Monica Kumar's presentation so I can get up to speed.   Wednesday 8:00 a.m. - The Art of the Steal Location: Mandalay Bay Ballroom JMany will know Frank Abagnale from Steven Spielberg's 2002 film "Catch Me if You Can." The one-time con man and international fugitive who swindled $2.5 million in forged checks went on to help U.S. federal officials investigate fraud cases. Now the CEO of Abagnale and Associates, he has become an invaluable source to the business world on the subject of fraud and fraud protection. With identity theft and digital fraud still on the rise, this session should be an entertaining, and sobering, education on the threats facing businesses and customers around the world. A great way to start Wednesday.1:00 p.m. - Google Wave: Will it replace e-mail as we know it today? Location: SURF EBy many assessments (my own included), Google Wave is a bit of an open collaboration failure. It may seem like an odd reason for me to be excited about this session, but I'm looking forward to the chance to revisit the technology. Also, this is a great case study in connecting free, available Internet tools to existing enterprise computing environments--an issue that IT strategists must contend with as workers spreads out and choose their own productivity tools.  

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