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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 15, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 15, 2012Popular ReleasesMVC Bootstrap: MVC Boostrap 0.5.6: A small demo site, based on the default ASP.NET MVC 3 project template, showing off some of the features of MVC Bootstrap. Added features to the Membership provider, a "lock out" feature to help fight brute force hacking of accounts. After a set number of log in attempts, the account is locked for a set time. If you download and use this project, please give some feedback, good or bad!Home Access Plus+: v8.4: This release only contains fixes for the 97576 release, you can download the v8.3 release files which aren't in this release from 97576 Changes: Fixed: Setup.aspx wrong jquery reference Fixed: Issue with loading the user's photo Changed: The JSON Urls to use a number of a date rather than a string Added: Code to hopefully, finally, fix the AD Browser not working some times File Changes: ~/bin/hap.ad.dll ~/bin/hap.web.dll ~/bin/hap.web.configuration.dll ~/bin/hap.web.livetiles.dl...OnTopReplica: Release 3.4: Update to the 3 version with major fixes and improvements. Compatible with Windows 8. Now runs (and requires) .NET Framework v.4.0. Added relative mode for region selection (allows the user to select regions as margins from the borders of the thumbnail, useful for windows which have a variable size but fixed size controls, like video players). Improved window seeking when restoring cloned thumbnail or cloning a window by title or by class. Improved settings persistence. Improved co...DotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.4: This is a Minor Release. See the changes in the issue tracker. Minimal -- includes DotSpatial core and essential extensions Extended -- includes debugging symbols and additional extensions Tutorials are available. Just want to run the software? End user (non-programmer) version available branded as MapWindow Want to add your own feature? Develop a plugin, using the template and contribute to the extension feed (you can also write extensions that you distribute in other ways). Components ...JSLint for Resharper: 0.2.4701 (Resharper 7.1): Added settings dialog. May now prioritize before Resharper JS messages JSLint settings may be set as default. (For example browser: true, indent: 2) Added support for JSLint directives in mixed language files. Upgraded to Resharper 7.1.WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.3.5: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features Attachable Behaviors AwaitableUI extensions Controls Converters Debugging helpers Extension methods Imaging helpers IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes Docum...Social Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.6.1): This new version includes: - Fixes for some reported bugs. To use the new graph data provider, do the following: Unzip the Zip file into the "PlugIns" folder that can be found in the NodeXL installation folder (i.e "C:\Program Files\Social Media Research Foundation\NodeXL Excel Template\PlugIns") Open NodeXL template and you can access the new importer from the "Import" menuAcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.3: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????，????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???，????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??2...SoftRenderer: SoftRenderer v0.2: SPONZA DEMO SoftRender is a CPU based renderer. It render 3D scene only on CPU. It's a project for learning purpose. SoftRender ????????，??????????。 http://i3.codeplex.com/Download?ProjectName=sr&DownloadId=528732 ?????????????，???compilehwshader.bat???????shader SoftRenderer.exe?vc10???????bin?? SoftRenderer_avx.exe?intel????????avx???cpu?????bin??WallSwitch: WallSwitch 1.2.1: Version 1.2.1 Changes: Improved collage image distribution to overlap older images first. Set default collage background blur distance to 4 (provides a more gradual effect). Fixed issue where wallpaper not displayed on Windows Vista when Cross-Fade transitions enabled. Fixed issue with duplicated themes not updating history view correctly.????: ???? 1.0: ????Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office: Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office: Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office ??? ?????、Unicode IVS?????????????????Unicode IVS???????????????。??、??????????????、?????????????????????????????。Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.74: fix for issue #18836 - sometimes throws null-reference errors in ActivationObject.AnalyzeScope method. add back the Context object's 8-parameter constructor, since someone has code that's using it. throw a low-pri warning if an expression statement is == or ===; warn that the developer may have meant an assignment (=). if window.XXXX or window"XXXX" is encountered, add XXXX (as long as it's a valid JavaScript identifier) to the known globals so subsequent references to XXXX won't throw ...???????: Monitor 2012-11-11: This is the first releasehttpclient?????????: httpclient??????? 1.0: httpclient??????? （1）?????????? （2）????????? （3）??2012-11-06??，???????。VidCoder: 1.4.5 Beta: Removed the old Advanced user interface and moved x264 preset/profile/tune there instead. The functionality is still available through editing the options string. Added ability to specify the H.264 level. Added ability to choose VidCoder's interface language. If you are interested in translating, we can get VidCoder in your language! Updated WPF text rendering to use the better Display mode. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5045. Removed logic that forced the .m4v extension in certain ...ImageGlass: Version 1.5: http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc483/phapsuxeko/ImageGlass/1.png v1.5.4401.3015 Thumbnail bar: Increase loading speed Thumbnail image with ratio Support personal customization: mouse up, mouse down, mouse hover, selected item... Scroll to show all items Image viewer Zoom by scroll, or selected rectangle Speed up loading Zoom to cursor point New background design and customization and others... v1.5.4430.483 Thumbnail bar: Auto move scroll bar to selected image Show / Hi...Building Windows 8 Apps with C# and XAML: Full Source Chapters 1 - 10 for Windows 8 Fix 002: This is the full source from all chapters of the book, compiled and tested on Windows 8 RTM. Includes: A fix for the Netflix example from Chapter 6 that was missing a service reference A fix for the ImageHelper issue (images were not being saved) - this was due to the buffer being inadequate and required streaming the writeable bitmap to a buffer first before encoding and savingmyCollections: Version 2.3.2.0: New in this version : Added TheGamesDB.net API for Games and NDS Added Support for Windows Media Center Added Support for myMovies Added Support for XBMC Added Support for Dune HD Added Support for Mede8er Added Support for WD HDTV Added Fast search options Added order by Artist/Album for music You can now create covers and background for games You can now update your ID3 tag with the info of myCollections Fixed several provider Performance improvement New Splash ...Draw: Draw 1.0: Drawing PadNew ProjectsCreatorRSS: CreatorRSS - A Simple Desktop tray RSS Reader This is a simple desktop RSS reader that will help in managing your feeds and get notifications. CreatorRSS is based on .NET framework 2.0 and is coded in C#. This was tested only on Windows Xp Professional Sp2 but it should work on any Windows operating systems that support .NET framework. Extensions Library: Extension Library adds several helpful extensions to your project including: - SharePoint Logging - Event Viewer Logging - Exception Handling - .Net ExtensionsHoliday Calendar: This project contains a holiday calendar user control to be used in Windows Form applications.InputSQL: C# InputSQLInstall Visual Basic 6 in Windows 8: Please see the home page.KaartenSolution: A very simple card game.MezanmiNet_TaxiReviews: just a review application on the mobile platformMSHelpMeHD: A Windows 8 Store App.ProjectSocial: This is just a project to try coding.Rabbit MQ Client for Windows Store apps: rabbitmq client support for windows apps storeRFC 822 DateTime: Parse or write a date and time formatted according to the RFC 822 specification. RxJS TypeScript difinition: TypeScript d.ts files for RxJS(ReactiveExtensions for JavaScript)Samurai Blades - Webapp: A mimic of a classic board game (Shogun) created for web using HTML5 and ASP.NET MVC 4 (including the new typescript js compiler). servicehook: testSIMS Bulk Import: SIMS .net is the most popular MIS system used by schools across the UK. This tool allows you to bulk import email addresses and information into UDF fields.SpaceFlight: This project is a browser for the SloanDigital Sky Survey Data sets that allows for unconstrained movement within the data set.Sparse matrix format converter: Convert matrix market files to CSR0, CSR1 format. SPAutoSuggestion: A JavaScript application to show auto-suggestions in SharePoint search site's text boxes like in Google.SpreadsheetLight by Vincent Tan: For the latest release of SpreadsheetLight always go to http://www.spreadsheetlight.com, Anele MbangaSSTU: SSTU - this is simple client for Russian "Saratov State Technical University" web-site.Username generator library: Helps generate usernamesVideoStream: First attempt at a Windows Store Style App, aims to make it easy to browse videos from links provided in social media streams.WP8 Async WebClient: Provides async/await (TPL) capability to WebClient within Windows Phone 8wsccprototype: this is a prototype of what the main website will look like. Every other customization will be made in time.wsubi: A spiced-up way to manage scripts. This is a Windows port of the the 'sub' project from 37signals (https://github.com/37signals/sub).??C#????????: ?????????????ROYcms?????????！ 1.?????????，?????? 2.????????，?????????? 3.?????，?????，????????????????,??????????? 4.???????????，????

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• 12c - SQL Text Expansion

  - by noreply(at)blogger.com (Thomas Kyte)

  Here is another small but very useful new feature in Oracle Database 12c - SQL Text Expansion.  It will come in handy in two cases:You are asked to tune what looks like a simple query - maybe a two table join with simple predicates.  But it turns out the two tables are each views of views of views and so on... In other words, you've been asked to 'tune' a 15 page query, not a two liner.You are asked to take a look at a query against tables with VPD (virtual private database) policies.  In order words, you have no idea what you are trying to 'tune'.A new function, EXPAND_SQL_TEXT, in the DBMS_UTILITY package makes seeing what the "real" SQL is quite easy. For example - take the common view ALL_USERS - we can now:ops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> variable x clobops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> begin  2          dbms_utility.expand_sql_text  3          ( input_sql_text => 'select * from all_users',  4            output_sql_text => :x );  5  end;  6  /PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.ops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> print xX--------------------------------------------------------------------------------SELECT "A1"."USERNAME" "USERNAME","A1"."USER_ID" "USER_ID","A1"."CREATED" "CREATED","A1"."COMMON" "COMMON" FROM  (SELECT "A4"."NAME" "USERNAME","A4"."USER#" "USER_ID","A4"."CTIME" "CREATED",DECODE(BITAND("A4"."SPARE1",128),128,'YES','NO') "COMMON" FROM "SYS"."USER$" "A4","SYS"."TS$" "A3","SYS"."TS$" "A2" WHERE "A4"."DATATS#"="A3"."TS#" AND "A4"."TEMPTS#"="A2"."TS#" AND "A4"."TYPE#"=1) "A1"Now it is easy to see what query is really being executed at runtime - regardless of how many views of views you might have.  You can see the expanded text - and that will probably lead you to the conclusion that maybe that 27 table join to 25 tables you don't even care about might better be written as a two table join.Further, if you've ever tried to figure out what a VPD policy might be doing to your SQL, you know it was hard to do at best.  Christian Antognini wrote up a way to sort of see it - but you never get to see the entire SQL statement: http://www.antognini.ch/2010/02/tracing-vpd-predicates/.  But now with this function - it becomes rather trivial to see the expanded SQL - after the VPD has been applied.  We can see this by setting up a small table with a VPD policy ops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> create table my_table  2  (  data        varchar2(30),  3     OWNER       varchar2(30) default USER  4  )  5  /Table created.ops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> create or replace  2  function my_security_function( p_schema in varchar2,  3                                 p_object in varchar2 )  4  return varchar2  5  as  6  begin  7     return 'owner = USER';  8  end;  9  /Function created.ops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> begin  2     dbms_rls.add_policy  3     ( object_schema   => user,  4       object_name     => 'MY_TABLE',  5       policy_name     => 'MY_POLICY',  6       function_schema => user,  7       policy_function => 'My_Security_Function',  8       statement_types => 'select, insert, update, delete' ,  9       update_check    => TRUE ); 10  end; 11  /PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.And then expanding a query against it:ops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> begin  2          dbms_utility.expand_sql_text  3          ( input_sql_text => 'select * from my_table',  4            output_sql_text => :x );  5  end;  6  /PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.ops$tkyte%ORA12CR1> print xX--------------------------------------------------------------------------------SELECT "A1"."DATA" "DATA","A1"."OWNER" "OWNER" FROM  (SELECT "A2"."DATA" "DATA","A2"."OWNER" "OWNER" FROM "OPS$TKYTE"."MY_TABLE" "A2" WHERE "A2"."OWNER"=USER@!) "A1"Not an earth shattering new feature - but extremely useful in certain cases.  I know I'll be using it when someone asks me to look at a query that looks simple but has a twenty page plan associated with it!

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• Passing Strings by Ref

  - by SGWellens

  Humbled yet again…DOH! No matter how much experience you acquire, no matter how smart you may be, no matter how hard you study, it is impossible to keep fully up to date on all the nuances of the technology we are exposed to. There will always be gaps in our knowledge: Little 'dead zones' of uncertainty. For me, this time, it was about passing string parameters to functions. I thought I knew this stuff cold. First, a little review... Value Types and Ref Integers and structs are value types (as opposed to reference types). When declared locally, their memory storage is on the stack; not on the heap. When passed to a function, the function gets a copy of the data and works on the copy. If a function needs to change a value type, you need to use the ref keyword.  Here's an example:     // ---- declaration -----------------     public struct MyStruct    {        public string StrTag;    }     // ---- functions -----------------------     void SetMyStruct(MyStruct myStruct)     // pass by value    {        myStruct.StrTag = "BBB";    }     void SetMyStruct(ref MyStruct myStruct)  // pass by ref    {        myStruct.StrTag = "CCC";    }     // ---- Usage -----------------------     protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)    {        MyStruct Data;        Data.StrTag = "AAA";         SetMyStruct(Data);        // Data.StrTag is still "AAA"         SetMyStruct(ref Data);        // Data.StrTag is now "CCC"    } No surprises here. All value types like ints, floats, datetimes, enums, structs, etc. work the same way. And now on to... Class Types and Ref     // ---- Declaration -----------------------------     public class MyClass    {        public string StrTag;    }     // ---- Functions ----------------------------     void SetMyClass(MyClass myClass)  // pass by 'value'    {        myClass.StrTag = "BBB";    }     void SetMyClass(ref MyClass myClass)   // pass by ref    {        myClass.StrTag = "CCC";    }     // ---- Usage ---------------------------------------     protected void Button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)    {        MyClass Data = new MyClass();        Data.StrTag = "AAA";         SetMyClass(Data);          // Data.StrTag is now "BBB"         SetMyClass(ref Data);        // Data.StrTag is now "CCC"    }  No surprises here either. Since Classes are reference types, you do not need the ref keyword to modify an object. What may seem a little strange is that with or without the ref keyword, the results are the same: The compiler knows what to do. So, why would you need to use the ref keyword when passing an object to a function? Because then you can change the reference itself…ie you can make it refer to a completely different object. Inside the function you can do: myClass = new MyClass() and the old object will be garbage collected and the new object will be returned to the caller. That ends the review. Now let's look at passing strings as parameters. The String Type and Ref Strings are reference types. So when you pass a String to a function, you do not need the ref keyword to change the string. Right? Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. When I saw this, I was so surprised that I fell out of my chair. Getting up, I bumped my head on my desk (which really hurt). My bumping the desk caused a large speaker to fall off of a bookshelf and land squarely on my big toe. I was screaming in pain and hopping on one foot when I lost my balance and fell. I struck my head on the side of the desk (once again) and knocked myself out cold. When I woke up, I was in the hospital where due to a database error (thanks Oracle) the doctors had put casts on both my hands. I'm typing this ever so slowly with just my ton..tong ..tongu…tongue. But I digress. Okay, the only true part of that story is that I was a bit surprised. Here is what happens passing a String to a function.     // ---- Functions ----------------------------     void SetMyString(String myString)   // pass by 'value'    {        myString = "BBB";    }     void SetMyString(ref String myString)  // pass by ref    {        myString = "CCC";    }     // ---- Usage ---------------------------------     protected void Button3_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)    {        String MyString = "AAA";         SetMyString(MyString);        // MyString is still "AAA"  What!!!!         SetMyString(ref MyString);        // MyString is now "CCC"    } What the heck. We should not have to use the ref keyword when passing a String because Strings are reference types. Why didn't the string change? What is going on?   I spent hours unssuccessfully researching this anomaly until finally, I had a Eureka moment: This code: String MyString = "AAA"; Is semantically equivalent to this code (note this code doesn't actually compile): String MyString = new String(); MyString = "AAA"; Key Point: In the function, the copy of the reference is pointed to a new object and THAT object is modified. The original reference and what it points to is unchanged. You can simulate this behavior by modifying the class example code to look like this:      void SetMyClass(MyClass myClass)  // call by 'value'    {        //myClass.StrTag = "BBB";        myClass = new MyClass();        myClass.StrTag = "BBB";    } Now when you call the SetMyClass function without using ref, the parameter is unchanged...just like the string example.  I hope someone finds this useful. Steve Wellens

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• Advice for a distracted, unhappy, recently graduated programmer? [closed]

  - by Re-Invent

  I graduated 4 months ago. I had offers from a few good places to work at. At the same time I wanted to stick to building a small software business of my own, still have some ideas with good potential, some half done projects frozen in my github. But due to social pressures, I chose a job, the pay is great, but I am half-passionate about it. A small team of smart folks building useful product, working out contracts across the world. I've started finding it extremely boring. Boring to the extent that I skip 2-3 days a week together not doing work. Neither do I spend that time progressing any of my own projects. Yes, I feel stupid at the way I'm wasting time, but I don't understand exactly why is it happening. It's as if all the excitement has been drained. What can I do about it? Long version: School - I was in third standard. Only students, 6th grade had access to computer labs. I once peeked into the lab from the little door opening. No hard-disks, MS DOS on 5 1/2 inch floppies. I asked a senior student to play some sound in BASIC. He used PLAY to compose a tune. Boy! I was so excited, I was jumping from within. Back home, asked my brother to teach me some programming. We bought a book "MODERN All About GW-BASIC for Schools & Colleges". The book had everything, right from printing, to taking input, file i/o, game programming, machine level support, etc. I was in 6th standard, wrote my first game - a wheel of fortune, rotated the wheel by manipulating 16 color palette's definition. Got internet soon, got hooked to QuickBasic programming community. Made some more games "007 in Danger", "Car Crush 2" for submission to allbasiccode archives. I was extremely excited about all this. My interests now swayed into "hacking" (computer security). Taught myself some perl, found it annoying, learnt PHP and a bit of SQL. Also taught myself Visual Basic one of the winters and wrote a pacman clone with Direct X. By the time I was in 10th standard, I created some evil tools using visual basic, php and mysql and eventually landed myself into an unpaid side-job at a government facility, building evil tools for them. It was a dream come true for crackers of that time. And so was I, still very excited. Things changed soon, last two years of school were not so great as I was balancing preps for college, work at govt. and studies for school at same time. College - College was opposite of all I had wished it to be. I imagined it to be a place where I'd spend my 4 years building something awesome. It was rather an epitome of rote learning, attendance, rules, busy schedules, ban on personal laptops, hardly any hackers surrounding you and shit like that. We had to take permissions to even introduce some cultural/creative activities in our annual schedule. The labs won't be open on weekends because the lab employees had to have their leaves. Yes, a horrible place for someone like me. I still managed to pull out a project with a friend over 2 months. Showed it to people high in the academia hierarchy. They were immensely impressed, we proposed to allow personal computers for students. They made up half-assed reasons and didn't agree. We felt frustrated. And so on, I still managed to teach myself new languages, do new projects of my own, do an intern at the same govt. facility, start a small business for sometime, give a talk at a conference I'm passionate about, win game-dev and hacking contest at most respected colleges, solve good deal of programming contest problems, etc. At the same time I was not content with all these restrictions, great emphasis on rote learning, and sheer wastage of time due to college. I never felt I was overdoing, but now I feel I burnt myself out. During my last days at college, I did an intern at a bigco. While I spent my time building prototypes for certain LBS, the other interns around me, even a good friend, was just skipping time. I thought maybe, in a few weeks he would put in some serious efforts at work assigned to him, but all he did was to find creative ways to skip work, hide his face from manager, engage people in talks if they try to question his progress, etc. I tried a few time to get him on track, but it seems all he wanted was to "not to work hard at all and still reap the fruits". I don't know how others take such people, but I find their vicinity very very poisonous to one's own motivation and productivity. Over that, the place where I come from, HRs don't give much value to what have you done past 4 years. So towards the end of out intern, we all were offered work at the bigco, but the slacker, even after not writing more than 200 lines of code was made a much better offer. I felt enraged instantly - "Is this how the corp world treats someone who does fruitful, if not extra-ordinary work form them for past 6 months?". Yes, I did try to negotiate and debate. The bigcos seem blind due to departmentalization of responsibilities and many layers of management. I decided not to be in touch with any characters of that depressing play. Probably the busy time I had at college, ignoring friends, ignoring fun and squeezing every bit of free time for myself is also responsible. Probably this is what has drained all my willingness to work for anyone. I find my day job boring, at the same time I with to maintain it for financial reasons. I feel a bit burnt out, unsatisfied and at the same time an urge to quit working for someone else and start finishing my frozen side-projects (which may be profitable). Though I haven't got much to support myself with food, office, internet bills, etc in savings. I still have my day job, but I don't find it very interesting, even though the pay is higher than the slacker, I don't find money to be a great motivator here. I keep comparing myself to my past version. I wonder how to get rid of this and reboot myself back to the way I was in school days - excited about it, tinkering, building, learning new things daily, and NOT BORED?

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, October 21, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, October 21, 2013Popular ReleasesVirtual Wifi Hotspot for Windows 7 & 8: Virtual Router Plus 2.6.0: Virtual Router Plus 2.6.0Fast YouTube Downloader: Fast YouTube Downloader 2.3.0: Fast YouTube DownloaderABCat: ABCat v.2.0a: ?????? ????? ??? ????????? ????????????. ???????? ???, ?? ?? ????? ???? :) ?? ??????? ??????????? ???????? ?? Windows 7 - ????? ??????? ????????? ?? ???? ??? ?????? ??????.Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.7.101: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.7.1. Breaking changes: - Renamed Matrix classes: MatrixColor = ColorMatrix and MatrixConvolve = ConvolveMatrix. - Renamed Depth method with Channels parameter to BitDepth and changed the other method into a property.VidCoder: 1.5.9 Beta: Added Rip DVD and Rip Blu-ray AutoPlay actions for Windows: now you can have VidCoder start up and scan a disc when you insert it. Go to Start -> AutoPlay to set it up. Added error message for Windows XP users rather than letting it crash. Removed "quality" preset from list for QSV as it currently doesn't offer much improvement. Changed installer to ignore version number when copying files over. Should reduce the chances of a bug from me forgetting to increment a version number. Fixed ...MSBuild Extension Pack: October 2013: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack October 2013 release provides a collection of over 480 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GUI...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.49: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImageTeam.org links NEW: Added Support for "ImgNext.com" links NEW: Added Support for "HostUrImage.com" links NEW: Added Support for "3XVintage.com" linksMedia Companion: Media Companion MC3.583b: As before release but fixed for no movie poster sourcesNew* Both - Added 'An' as option to ignore in title * Movie - Renaming - added %Z - Sorttitle to Legend * Movie - Renaming - added %O - Audio Channels to Legend * Movie - Remove a poster source from priority list. Reset List back to defaults. * Made Media Companion truly portable application. Fixed* Movie - browse for Poster Or Fanart, allows for jpg, tbn, png and bmp images * Movie - Alt Fanart Browser - Url or Browse window now fully...MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.3.1: Release 1.11.3.1 ================ = New Features = ================ Added markers for Copper Cache, Silver Cache and the Enchanted Sword. ============= = Bug Fixes = ============= Use Official Colors now no longer tries to change the Draw Wires option instead. World reading was breaking for people with a stock 1.2 Terraria version. Changed world name reading so it does not crash the program if you load MoreTerra while Terraria is saving the world. =================== = Feature Removal = =...patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: Cloud Design Patterns: 1st drop of Cloud Design Patterns project. It contains 14 patterns with 6 related guidance.Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows and WP (v1.3): Includes all changes in v1.3 beta 1 and v1.3 beta 2 Support for Windows 8.1 RTM and VS2013 RTM Xaml: New property: AutoLoadPluginTypes to help control which stock plugins are loaded by default (requires AutoLoadPlugins = true). Support for SystemMediaTransportControls on Windows 8.1 JS: Support for visual markers in the timeline. JS: Support for markers collection and markerreached event. JS: New ChaptersPlugin to automatically populate timeline with chapter tracks. JS: Audio an...Json.NET: Json.NET 5.0 Release 8: Fix - Fixed not writing string quotes when QuoteName is falsePowerShell Community Extensions: 3.1 Production: PowerShell Community Extensions 3.1 Release NotesOct 17, 2013 This version of PSCX supports Windows PowerShell 3.0 and 4.0 See the ReleaseNotes.txt download above for more information.SQL Power Doc: Version 1.0.2.1: Misc. bug fixes Added logic to resolve members of a Windows Group server login Added columns to Excel workbooks to show definitions for server permissions, server roles, database permissions, and database rolesSocial Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.9): This new version includes: - Download latest status update and use it as vertex tooltip - Limit the timelines to parse to me, my friends or both - Fixed some reported bugs about the fan page and group importer - Fixed the login bug reported latelyTerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v7.1 [Terraria Inventory Editor]: You can now backspace in number fields Items added in 1.2.0.3 no longer corrupt player files Buff durations capped at 9999999 Item stacks capped at 9999999 Version info added Prefix IDs corrected Shoe and Eye color box are now properly clickable Moved Bank and Safe into their own tab Users will now be notified of new updatesPython Tools for Visual Studio: 2.0: PTVS 2.0 We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.0 RTM. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, Edit/Intellisense/Debug/Profile, Cloud, IPython, and cross platform and cross language debugging support. QUICK VIDEO OVERVIEW For a quick overview of the general IDE experience, please watch this v...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.09: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.Sandcastle Help File Builder: SHFB v1.9.8.0 with Visual Studio Package: General InformationIMPORTANT: On some systems, the content of the ZIP file is blocked and the installer may fail to run. Before extracting it, right click on the ZIP file, select Properties, and click on the Unblock button if it is present in the lower right corner of the General tab in the properties dialog. This new release contains bug fixes and feature enhancements. There are some potential breaking changes in this release as some features of the Help File Builder have been moved into...C++ REST SDK (codename "Casablanca"): C++ REST SDK 1.3.0: This release fixes multiple customer reported issues as well as the following: Full support for Dev12 binaries and project files Full support for Windows XP New sample highlighting the Client and Server APIs : BlackJack Expose underlying native handle to set custom options on http_client Improvements to Listener Library Note: Dev10 binaries have been dropped as of this release, however the Dev10 project files are still available in the Source CodeNew Projects4Elements game project: Project for a game were players will be able to earn money by just playingBible: This project aims to deliver an awesome Bible application for as many platforms as possible.cIFrex: cIFrexConnecting SharePoint with Exchange Server 2010/2013 using remote sessions: The project focuses on connecting SharePoint 2013 with Exchange Server 2010/2013 via Remote PowerShell with C# API Crzy Cms: Crzy CMS is a content management system created in ASP.NET using MVC/Entity Framework.DownloadsArchiver: Kann automatisch das Downloads-Verzeichnis aufräumen.GatePass: Gatepass SystemGenerate PowerShell scripts for SharePoint 2010 Site Collection Administration: Winform tool to generate PowerShell scripts, to move, create, backup and restore site collections It needs to be run on SharePoint Server 2010Generate PowerShell scripts for SharePoint 2013 Site Collection Administration: Winform tool to generate PowerShell scripts, to move, create, backup and restore site collections It needs to be run on SharePoint Server 2013GTerm: GTerm is alternative Terminal for Windows Vista/XP/7 and 8.Ignitron Chess: A newly created software product for playing chess by Ignitron Development Team.Introduccion a C# con VS2012: El curso de Introducción a C# con Visual Studio 2012, tiene como objetivo principal enseñar al estudiante los conceptos básicos de programación utilizando C#Punch Clock: Punch Clock is a online tool for any employee to sign up and calculate their daily,weekly monthly hours and download the report in PDF/Excel format. PVMonitor: This project will provide a monitoring dashboard for PV systems.qttexteditor: qttexteditorRegister Interest app: Register Interest is an app template where you can use to record interest of attendees, useful in marketing distribution.SharePoint Simple Developer: Project allows to simply SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013 daily developers tasks. Main goal is to implement validation of built solutions. Silverlight QB Rating Calculator: Silverlight QB Rating Calculator is a Silverlight 5 App that calculates a QB's NFL and NCAA passing efficiency ratings.SimpleAdditionPage: This projects consists of a simple ASP.NET in VB.NET page that allows users to enter 2 numbers, and display their sum.SP SIN Store: SP SIN Store is an extension to SP SIN that allows users to install solutions in SharePoint similar to the WordPress plugins. Project is in Alpha stage.

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• How To: Using SimpleMembserhipProvider with MySql Connector/Net.

  - by Francisco Tirado

  Now on Connector/Net 6.9 the users will have the ability to use SimpleMembership Provider on MVC4 templates. The configuration is very simple and also have compatibility with OAuth, in this post we'll explain step by step how to configure it in a MVC 4 Web Application. Requirements  The requirements to use SimpleMembership with Connector/Net are: Install Connector/Net 6.9, or download the No Install version. Net Framework 4.0 or greater. MVC 4  Visual Studio 2012 or newer version Creating and configuring a new project In this example we'll use VS2012 to create the project basis on the Internet Aplication template and using Entity Framework to manage the User model. Open VS 2012 and create a new project, we'll create a new MVC 4 Web Application and configure the project to use Net Framework 4.5. Type a name for the project and then click “Ok”. In the next dialog we'll choose the “Internet Application” template and use Razor as engine without creating a test project. Click “Ok” to continue. Now we have a new project with the templates necessaries to run a Web Application with the default values. We'll use the current files to continue working. If you have installed Connector/Net you can skip this step, if you don't have installed but you're planning to do it, please install it and continue with the next step. If you're using the No Install version of Connector/Net we'll need to add the references to our project, the assemblies needed are: MySql.Data, MySql.Data.Entities and MySql.Web. Be sure that the assemblies chosen match the Net Framework version used in our project and the MySql.Data.Entities is compatible with EF5 (EF5 is the default added by the project). Now open the “web.config” file, and under the <connectionStrings> node add a connection string that points to a MySql instance. We'll use the following connection configuration: <add name="MyConnection" connectionString="server=localhost;UserId=root;password=pass;database=MySqlSimpleMembership;" providerName="MySql.Data.MySqlClient"/> Under the node <system.web> we'll add the following configuration: <membership defaultProvider="MySqlSimpleMembershipProvider"><providers><clear/><add name="MySqlSimpleMembershipProvider" type="MySql.Web.Security.MySqlSimpleMembershipProvider,MySql.Web,Version=6.9.3.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=c5687fc88969c44d" applicationName="MySqlSimpleMembershipTest" description="MySQLdefaultapplication" connectionStringName="MyConnection"  userTableName="UserProfile" userIdColumn="UserId" userNameColumn="UserName" autoGenerateTables="True"/></providers></membership> In the previous configuration the mandatory properties are: connectionStringName, userTableName, userIdColumn, userNameColumn and autoGenerateTables. If the other properties are not provided a default value is set to it but if the mandatory properties are not set a ProviderException will be thrown. The valid properties for the MySqlSimpleMembership are the same used for MySqlMembership plus the mandatory fields. UserTableName: Name of the table where will be stored the user, this table is independent from the schema generated by the provider and can be edited later by the user. UserId: name of the column that will store the id for the records in the userTableName. UserName : name of the column that will store the name/user for the records in the userTableName. The connectionStringName property must match a connection string defined in web.config file. Once the configuration is done in web.config, we need to be sure that our database context for the Users Table point to the right connection string. In our case we just need to update the class UsersContext in the file AcountModel.cs in the Models folder. The file also contains the UserProfile class which match the configuration for our UserTable. Other class that needs to be updated is the SimpleMembershipInitializer in the file InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute.cs in the Filters folder. In that class we'll see a call to the method “WebSecurity.InitializeDatabaseConnection”, in that call is where we need to update the parameters to match our configuration. If the database that you configure in your connection string doesn't exists, you need to create it empty. Now we're ready to run our web application, press F5 or the Run button in the tool bar. You'll see the following screen: If you go to your database used by the application you'll see some tables created, now we are using SimpleMembership. Now create a user, click on “Register” at the top-right in the web page. Type your user name and password, then click on “Register”. You'll be redirected to the home page and you'll see the name of your user at the top-right page. If you take a look on the tables just created in your database you will find the data about the user you just register. In our case the tables that contains the information are UserProfile and Webpages_Membership.  Configuring OAuth Other option to access your website will be using OAuth, so you can validate an user using an external account like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. In this post we'll enable the authentication for Google account in our application. Go to the class AuthConfig.cs in the folder App_Start. In the method “RegisterAuth” uncomment the last line where is the call to the method “OauthWebSecurity.RegisterGoogleClient”. Run the application. Once the application is running click on “Login”. You will see at the right side the option to login using a Google account, click on “Google”.  You will be asked for Google credentials. If your login is successful you'll see a message asking for your approval to give permission to your site to access your information. Click on “Accept”. Now a page to register your user will be shown, click on “Register”. Now your new user is logged in in your application. You can take a look of the user information created in the tables  UserProfile and Webpages_OauthMembership. If you want to use another external option to authenticate users you must enable the client in the same class where we enable the Google authentication, but for others providers is mandatory to register your Application in their site. Once you have register your application they will give you a token/key and the id for your application, that information you're going to use it to register the client. Thanks for reading.

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• Slicing the EDG

  - by Antony Reynolds

  Different SOA Domain Configurations In this blog entry I would like to introduce three different configurations for a SOA environment.  I have omitted load balancers and OTD/OHS as they introduce a whole new round of discussion.  For each possible deployment architecture I have identified some of the advantages. Super Domain This is a single EDG style domain for everything needed for SOA/OSB.   It extends the standard EDG slightly but otherwise assumes a single “super” domain. This is basically the SOA EDG.  I have broken out JMS servers and Coherence servers to improve scalability and reduce dependencies. Key Points Separate JMS allows those servers to be kept up separately from rest of SOA Domain, allowing JMS clients to post messages even if rest of domain is unavailable. JMS servers are only used to host application specific JMS destinations, SOA/OSB JMS destinations remain in relevant SOA/OSB managed servers. Separate Coherence servers allow OSB cache to be offloaded from OSB servers. Use of Coherence by other components as a shared infrastructure data grid service. Coherence cluster may be managed by WLS but more likely run as a standalone Coherence cluster. Benefits Single Administration Point (1 Admin Server) Closely follows EDG with addition of application specific JMS servers and standalone Coherence servers for OSB caching and application specific caches. Coherence grid can be scaled independent of OSB/SOA. JMS queues provide for inter-application communication. Drawbacks Patching is an all or nothing affair. Startup time for SOA may be slow if large number of composites deployed. Multiple Domains This extends the EDG into multiple domains, allowing separate management and update of these domains.  I see this type of configuration quite often with customers, although some don't have OWSM, others don't have separate Coherence etc. SOA & BAM are kept in the same domain as little benefit is obtained by separating them. Key Points Separate JMS allows those servers to be kept up separately from rest of SOA Domain, allowing JMS clients to post messages even if other domains are unavailable. JMS servers are only used to host application specific JMS destinations, SOA/OSB JMS destinations remain in relevant SOA/OSB managed servers. Separate Coherence servers allow OSB cache to be offloaded from OSB servers. Use of Coherence by other components as a shared infrastructure data grid service. Coherence cluster may be managed by WLS but more likely run as a standalone Coherence cluster. Benefits Follows EDG but in separate domains and with addition of application specific JMS servers and standalone Coherence servers for OSB caching and application specific caches. Coherence grid can be scaled independent of OSB/SOA. JMS queues provide for inter-application communication. Patch lifecycle of OSB/SOA/JMS are no longer lock stepped. JMS may be kept running independently of other domains allowing applications to insert messages fro later consumption by SOA/OSB. OSB may be kept running independent of other domains, allowing service virtualization to continue independent of other domains availability. All domains use same OWSM policy store (MDS-WSM). Drawbacks Multiple domains to manage and configure. Multiple Admin servers (single view requires use of Grid Control) Multiple Admin servers/WSM clusters waste resources. Additional homes needed to enjoy benefits of separate patching. Cross domain trust needs setting up to simplify cross domain interactions. Startup time for SOA may be slow if large number of composites deployed. Shared Service Environment This model extends the previous multiple domain arrangement to provide a true shared service environment.This extends the previous model by allowing multiple additional SOA domains and/or other domains to take advantage of the shared services.  Only one non-shared domain is shown, but there could be multiple, allowing groups of applications to share patching independent of other application groups. Key Points Separate JMS allows those servers to be kept up separately from rest of SOA Domain, allowing JMS clients to post messages even if other domains are unavailable. JMS servers are only used to host application specific JMS destinations, SOA/OSB JMS destinations remain in relevant SOA/OSB managed servers. Separate Coherence servers allow OSB cache to be offloaded from OSB servers. Use of Coherence by other components as a shared infrastructure data grid service Coherence cluster may be managed by WLS but more likely run as a standalone Coherence cluster. Shared SOA Domain hosts Human Workflow Tasks BAM Common "utility" composites Single OSB domain provides "Enterprise Service Bus" All domains use same OWSM policy store (MDS-WSM) Benefits Follows EDG but in separate domains and with addition of application specific JMS servers and standalone Coherence servers for OSB caching and application specific caches. Coherence grid can be scaled independent of OSB/SOA. JMS queues provide for inter-application communication. Patch lifecycle of OSB/SOA/JMS are no longer lock stepped. JMS may be kept running independently of other domains allowing applications to insert messages fro later consumption by SOA/OSB. OSB may be kept running independent of other domains, allowing service virtualization to continue independent of other domains availability. All domains use same OWSM policy store (MDS-WSM). Supports large numbers of deployed composites in multiple domains. Single URL for Human Workflow end users. Single URL for BAM end users. Drawbacks Multiple domains to manage and configure. Multiple Admin servers (single view requires use of Grid Control) Multiple Admin servers/WSM clusters waste resources. Additional homes needed to enjoy benefits of separate patching. Cross domain trust needs setting up to simplify cross domain interactions. Human Workflow needs to be specially configured to point to shared services domain. Summary The alternatives in this blog allow for patching to have different impacts, depending on the model chosen.  Each organization must decide the tradeoffs for itself.  One extreme is to go for the shared services model and have one domain per SOA application.  This requires a lot of administration of the multiple domains.  The other extreme is to have a single super domain.  This makes the entire enterprise susceptible to an outage at the same time due to patching or other domain level changes.  Hopefully this blog will help your organization choose the right model for you.

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• Windows 7 cannot join samba domain

  - by Antonis Christofides

  I have a 3.5.6 samba server with a LDAP backend (both on Debian 6.0). I've been successfully adding Windows XP machines to the domain for years. I now try to add Windows 7. I have made the recommended registry changes, but I don't have any success so far. Here is what happens: 1. I go to computer name, select "Domain" instead of "Workgroup", type in the domain name, click OK. It asks me for the username and password of an account that can add computers to the domain; I enter them. After about 40 seconds, I get the following message: The following error occurred attempting to join the domain "ITIA": The specified computer account could not be found. Contact an administrator to verify the account is in the domain. If the account has been deleted unjoin, reboot, and rejoin the domain. Despite this, the samba server successfully creates the computer account. 2. Therefore, if I try again a second time, without deleting the already created computer account, I get a different error: The following error occurred attempting to join the domain "ITIA": The specified account already exists. (Note that until a while ago samba wasn't configured to automatically create computer accounts. What I did whenever I wanted an XP to join was to manually create it. When I first attempted to solve the Windows 7 join problem, I setup samba to do this automatically, as this is what most people do, as I understand, and I thought that it might be related. I haven't attempted to add an XP since I made this change, so I don't know if it works, but whether it works or not, the problem remains.) Update 1: Here are the relevant parts of smb.conf: [global] panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d workgroup = ITIA server string = Itia file server announce as = NT interfaces = 147.102.160.1 volume = %h passdb backend = ldapsam:ldap://ldap.itia.ntua.gr:389 ldap admin dn = uid=samba,ou=daemons,dc=itia,dc=ntua,dc=gr ldap ssl = off ldap suffix = dc=itia,dc=ntua,dc=gr ldap user suffix = ou=people ldap group suffix = ou=groups ldap machine suffix = ou=computers unix password sync = no add machine script = smbldap-useradd -w -i %u log file = /var/log/samba/samba-log.all log level = 3 max log size = 5000 syslog = 2 socket options = SO_KEEPALIVE TCP_NODELAY encrypt passwords = true password level = 1 security = user domain master = yes local master = no wins support = yes domain logons = yes idmap gid = 1000-2000 Update 2: The server has a single network interface eth1 (also an unused eth0 that shows up only in the kernel boot messages) and two ip addresses; the main, 147.102.160.1, and an additional one, 147.102.160.37, that comes up with "ip addr add 147.102.160.37/32 dev eth1" (used only for a web site that has a different certificate than other web sites served from the same machine). One of the problems I recently faced was that samba was using the latter IP address. I fixed that by adding the "interfaces = 147.102.160.1" statement in smb.conf. Now: acheloos:/etc/apache2# tcpdump host 147.102.160.40 and not port 5900 tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode listening on eth1, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 65535 bytes 13:13:56.549048 IP lithaios.itia.civil.ntua.gr.netbios-dgm > 147.102.160.255.netbios-dgm: NBT UDP PACKET(138) 13:13:56.549056 ARP, Request who-has acheloos2.itia.civil.ntua.gr tell lithaios.itia.civil.ntua.gr, length 46 13:13:56.549091 ARP, Reply acheloos2.itia.civil.ntua.gr is-at 00:10:4b:b4:9e:59 (oui Unknown), length 28 13:13:56.549324 IP acheloos.itia.civil.ntua.gr.netbios-dgm > lithaios.itia.civil.ntua.gr.netbios-dgm: NBT UDP PACKET(138) 13:13:56.549608 IP lithaios.itia.civil.ntua.gr.netbios-dgm > acheloos2.itia.civil.ntua.gr.netbios-dgm: NBT UDP PACKET(138) 13:13:56.549741 IP acheloos.itia.civil.ntua.gr.netbios-dgm > lithaios.itia.civil.ntua.gr.netbios-dgm: NBT UDP PACKET(138) 13:13:56.550364 IP lithaios.itia.civil.ntua.gr.netbios-dgm > acheloos.itia.civil.ntua.gr.netbios-dgm: NBT UDP PACKET(138) 13:13:56.550468 IP acheloos.itia.civil.ntua.gr.netbios-dgm > lithaios.itia.civil.ntua.gr.netbios-dgm: NBT UDP PACKET(138) (acheloos2 is the second IP address, 147.102.160.37). The above dump occurs when I click "OK" (to join the domain), until it asks me for the username and password of a user that can join the domain. I don't know why the client is contacting the second IP address. I tried temporarily deactivating it, but I still had some related ARP traffic (though I think not IP traffic).

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, July 25, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, July 25, 2013Popular ReleasesEnglish Practice Helper: English Practice Helper Demo v1.0: The first demoTweetinvi a friendly C# Twitter API: Alpha 0.8.0.1: This is the first release of Tweetinvi. Please report any issue in the discussion or issues. Sincerely, LinviKartris E-commerce: Kartris v2.5003: This fixes an issue where search engines appear to identify as IE and so trigger the noIE page if there is not a non-responsive skin specified.VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.45: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImgBabes.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImagesIon.com" linksMagelia WebStore Open-source Ecommerce software: Magelia WebStore 2.4: Magelia WebStore version 2.4 introduces new and improved features: Basket and order calculation have been redesigned with a more modular approach geographic zone algorithms for tax and shipping calculations have been re-developed. The Store service has been split in three services (store, basket, order). Product start and end dates have been added. For variant products a unique code has been introduced for the top (variable) product, product attributes can now be defined at the top ...LogicCircuit: LogicCircuit 2.13.07.22: Logic Circuit - is educational software for designing and simulating logic circuits. Intuitive graphical user interface, allows you to create unrestricted circuit hierarchy with multi bit buses, debug circuits behavior with oscilloscope, and navigate running circuits hierarchy. Changes of this versionYou can make visual elements of the circuit been visible on its symbols. This way you can build composite displays, keyboards and reuse them. Please read about displays for more details http://ww...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.08: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.AcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.4.3: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ??v4.4.3 ?? ??Bilibili????????????? ???????????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???，????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??2.10?...Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.6.601: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.6.6. These zip files are also available as a NuGet package: https://nuget.org/profiles/dlemstra/C# Intellisense for Notepad++: Initial release: Members auto-complete Integration with native Notepad++ Auto-Completion Auto "open bracket" for methods Right-arrow to accept suggestions51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.19.4: One Click Install from NuGet This release introduces the 51Degrees.mobi IIS Vary Header Fix. When Compression and Caching is used in IIS, the Vary header is overwritten, making intelligent caching with dynamic content impossible. Find out more about installing the Vary Header fix. Changes to Version 2.1.19.4Handlers now have a ‘Count’ property. This is an integer value that shows how many devices in the dataset that use that handler. Provider.cs -> GetDeviceInfoByID to address a problem w...SMSGateWay: SMSGateWayLaunch: CMPP,SGIP,SMGP ????SP?? ??,????,????,????,VPS??,?????,???. ??????,????,?????,????......????? ????SPID ,MsgSrc,???,???IP,?????? ?????,?????,??,???? ??QQ:3483305Centrify DirectControl PowerShell Module: 1.5.709: -fix- Computer password is correctly set when preparing Computer account for Self-Service join and hostname is longer than 14 charsDLog: DLog v1.0: Log v1.0SalarDbCodeGenerator: SalarDbCodeGenerator v2.1.2013.0719: Version 2.1.2013.0719 2013/7/19 Pattern Changes: * DapperContext pattern is added. * All patterns are updated to work with one-to-one relations. Changes: * One-to-one relation is supported. * Minor bug fixes.PantheR's GraphX for .NET: GraphX for .NET v0.9.5 BETA: BETA 0.9.5 + Added GraphArea.SaveAsImage() method that supports different image formats + Added GraphArea.UseNativeObjectArrange property. True by default. If set to False it will use different coordinates handling that helps to soften vertex drag issues to the top and left area sides. + Added GraphArea.Translation property. It is needed to get correct translation coordinates when determining object position from the mouse coordinates. + Added new VertexControl.PositionChanged event along wit....NET Code Migrator for Dynamics CRM: v1.0.12: Combined the main macros, generated macros from a sample organization, and the CreateVisualStudioMacros utility into a single package.Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows and WP (v1.3 beta 2): Includes all changes in v1.3 beta 1 Additional support for Windows 8.1 Preview New API (JS): addTextTrack New API (JS): msKeys New API (JS): msPlayToPreferredSourceUri New API (JS): msSetMediaKeys New API (JS): onmsneedkey New API (Xaml): SetMediaStreamSource method New API (Xaml): Stretch property New API (Xaml): StretchChanged event New API (Xaml): AreTransportControlsEnabled property New API (Xaml): IsFullWindow property New API (Xaml): PlayToPreferredSourceUri proper...CodeGen Code Generator: CodeGen 4.2.11: Changes in this release include: Added several new alternate forms of the <FIELD_SELWND> token to provide template developers better control over the case of field selection window names. Also added a new token <FIELD_SELWND_ORIGINAL> to preserve the case of selection window names in the same way that <FIELD_SELWND> used to. Enhanced UI Toolkit window script selection window processing (-ws) so that selection window names are no longer case sensitive (they aren't in UI Toolkit). Also the -w...Outlook 2013 Add-In: Multiple Calendars: As per popular request, this new version includes: - Support for multiple calendars. This can be enabled in the configuration by choosing which ones to show/hide appointments from. In some cases (public folders) it may time out and crash, and so far it only supports "My Calendars", so not shared ones yet. Also they're currently shown in the same font/color so there are no confusions with color categories, but please drop me a line on any suggestions you'd like to see implemented. - Added fri...New ProjectsActive Directory Web App Availability Monitor for SCOM 2012: Extend the web application availability monitoring in System Center Operations Manager 2012 with the ability to monitor Active Directory Authenticated Web SitesArgoWinform: ArgoWinform ASP.NET Routing Optional Parameters in body of Urls: This library allows ASP.NET MVC developers to have custom parameters in the body of Urls. Routes that are defined by this library accepts a LookupService that wAutomate Variations in SharePoint 2013 using C#: Automating variations settings and configuration so whenever a deployment is needed, you will be ready with your PowerShell scripts.Automate Variations in SharePoint 2013 using PowerShell: Automating variations settings and configuration so whenever a deployment is needed, you will be ready with your PowerShell scripts.BingosoftSwimming: ?????????ContentCreator for Orchard: Orchard Module that is suposed to replace the Orchard.ContentPicker module by letting you create contentItems directlyGET - General Emitter Templates: GET: General Emitter Templates. Language: C# Given a data file (in xml format), it models the data according with the directives specified in the template file.GTS Project: This project is a private personal educational project to study and learn DNN and ASP.NET MVCJustCompare: Just Compare is human made tool to help humans to compare two digital files. We are now concentrating on source code files only. Media Tool: A collection of tool to manage media files (Pictures and videos)MVVMlight Navigation Service for Windows Phone 8: A simple project to make navigation in MVVMlight on windows phone faster.Qibla Compass for Windows Phone: Qibla compass is one of the mostly used community applications/utility among Muslims. It allows users to determine the correct location / direction of Ka’aba.QuickWebLauncherWP: Una aplicación para windows phone para leer fuentes de sindicación y coleccionar enlaces a los artículos que se desean leerSimpleBingWallpaper: It's a simple project for get bingwallpaper. if you like it. please +1.. ThanksStyrApp: Template Application for technology testingTataFm: Tata FM for Windows 8 app.TimeZoneInfoForm: Exercises timezone related classes and methods in .NET. It can be used as sample code or to troubleshoot suspected timezone issues in .NET.Wix Test: *WIX Test Solution* - is a simple WIX solution for learning some new features. This project is currently in setup mode and free.

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• Snake Game Help

  - by MuhammadA

  I am making a snake game and learning XNA at the same time. I have 3 classes : Game.cs, Snake.cs and Apple.cs My problem is more of a conceptual problem, I want to know which class is really responsible for ... detecting collision of snake head on apple/itself/wall? which class should increase the snakes speed, size? It seems to me that however much I try and put the snake stuff into snake.cs that game.cs has to know a lot about the snake, like : -- I want to increase the score depending on size of snake, the score variable is inside game.cs, which means now I have to ask the snake its size on every hit of the apple... seems a bit unclean all this highly coupled code. or -- I DO NOT want to place the apple under the snake... now the apple suddenly has to know about all the snake parts, my head hurts when I think of that. Maybe there should be some sort of AppleLayer.cs class that should know about the snake... Whats the best approach in such a simple scenario? Any tips welcome. Game.cs : using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GamerServices; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Design; namespace Snakez { public enum CurrentGameState { Playing, Paused, NotPlaying } public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { private GraphicsDeviceManager _graphics; private SpriteBatch _spriteBatch; private readonly Color _niceGreenColour = new Color(167, 255, 124); private KeyboardState _oldKeyboardState; private SpriteFont _scoreFont; private SoundEffect _biteSound, _crashSound; private Vector2 _scoreLocation = new Vector2(10, 10); private Apple _apple; private Snake _snake; private int _score = 0; private int _speed = 1; public Game1() { _graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to perform any initialization it needs to before starting to run. /// This is where it can query for any required services and load any non-graphic /// related content. Calling base.Initialize will enumerate through any components /// and initialize them as well. /// </summary> protected override void Initialize() { base.Initialize(); } /// <summary> /// LoadContent will be called once per game and is the place to load /// all of your content. /// </summary> protected override void LoadContent() { _spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); _scoreFont = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("Score"); _apple = new Apple(800, 480, Content.Load<Texture2D>("Apple")); _snake = new Snake(Content.Load<Texture2D>("BodyBlock")); _biteSound = Content.Load<SoundEffect>("Bite"); _crashSound = Content.Load<SoundEffect>("Crash"); } /// <summary> /// UnloadContent will be called once per game and is the place to unload /// all content. /// </summary> protected override void UnloadContent() { Content.Unload(); } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to run logic such as updating the world, /// checking for collisions, gathering input, and playing audio. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { KeyboardState newKeyboardState = Keyboard.GetState(); if (newKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Escape)) { this.Exit(); // Allows the game to exit } else if (newKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Up) && !_oldKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Up)) { _snake.SetDirection(Direction.Up); } else if (newKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Down) && !_oldKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Down)) { _snake.SetDirection(Direction.Down); } else if (newKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left) && !_oldKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left)) { _snake.SetDirection(Direction.Left); } else if (newKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Right) && !_oldKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Right)) { _snake.SetDirection(Direction.Right); } _oldKeyboardState = newKeyboardState; _snake.Update(); if (_snake.IsEating(_apple)) { _biteSound.Play(); _score += 10; _apple.Place(); } base.Update(gameTime); } /// <summary> /// This is called when the game should draw itself. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(_niceGreenColour); float frameRate = 1 / (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; _spriteBatch.Begin(); _spriteBatch.DrawString(_scoreFont, "Score : " + _score, _scoreLocation, Color.Red); _apple.Draw(_spriteBatch); _snake.Draw(_spriteBatch); _spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } } } Snake.cs : using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; namespace Snakez { public enum Direction { Up, Down, Left, Right } public class Snake { private List<Rectangle> _parts; private readonly Texture2D _bodyBlock; private readonly int _startX = 160; private readonly int _startY = 120; private int _moveDelay = 100; private DateTime _lastUpdatedAt; private Direction _direction; private Rectangle _lastTail; public Snake(Texture2D bodyBlock) { _bodyBlock = bodyBlock; _parts = new List<Rectangle>(); _parts.Add(new Rectangle(_startX, _startY, _bodyBlock.Width, _bodyBlock.Height)); _parts.Add(new Rectangle(_startX + bodyBlock.Width, _startY, _bodyBlock.Width, _bodyBlock.Height)); _parts.Add(new Rectangle(_startX + (bodyBlock.Width) * 2, _startY, _bodyBlock.Width, _bodyBlock.Height)); _parts.Add(new Rectangle(_startX + (bodyBlock.Width) * 3, _startY, _bodyBlock.Width, _bodyBlock.Height)); _direction = Direction.Right; _lastUpdatedAt = DateTime.Now; } public void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { foreach (var p in _parts) { spriteBatch.Draw(_bodyBlock, new Vector2(p.X, p.Y), Color.White); } } public void Update() { if (DateTime.Now.Subtract(_lastUpdatedAt).TotalMilliseconds > _moveDelay) { //DateTime.Now.Ticks _lastTail = _parts.First(); _parts.Remove(_lastTail); /* add new head in right direction */ var lastHead = _parts.Last(); var newHead = new Rectangle(0, 0, _bodyBlock.Width, _bodyBlock.Height); switch (_direction) { case Direction.Up: newHead.X = lastHead.X; newHead.Y = lastHead.Y - _bodyBlock.Width; break; case Direction.Down: newHead.X = lastHead.X; newHead.Y = lastHead.Y + _bodyBlock.Width; break; case Direction.Left: newHead.X = lastHead.X - _bodyBlock.Width; newHead.Y = lastHead.Y; break; case Direction.Right: newHead.X = lastHead.X + _bodyBlock.Width; newHead.Y = lastHead.Y; break; } _parts.Add(newHead); _lastUpdatedAt = DateTime.Now; } } public void SetDirection(Direction newDirection) { if (_direction == Direction.Up && newDirection == Direction.Down) { return; } else if (_direction == Direction.Down && newDirection == Direction.Up) { return; } else if (_direction == Direction.Left && newDirection == Direction.Right) { return; } else if (_direction == Direction.Right && newDirection == Direction.Left) { return; } _direction = newDirection; } public bool IsEating(Apple apple) { if (_parts.Last().Intersects(apple.Location)) { GrowBiggerAndFaster(); return true; } return false; } private void GrowBiggerAndFaster() { _parts.Insert(0, _lastTail); _moveDelay -= (_moveDelay / 100)*2; } } } Apple.cs : using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; namespace Snakez { public class Apple { private readonly int _maxWidth, _maxHeight; private readonly Texture2D _texture; private readonly Random random = new Random(); public Rectangle Location { get; private set; } public Apple(int screenWidth, int screenHeight, Texture2D texture) { _maxWidth = (screenWidth + 1) - texture.Width; _maxHeight = (screenHeight + 1) - texture.Height; _texture = texture; Place(); } public void Place() { Location = GetRandomLocation(_maxWidth, _maxHeight); } private Rectangle GetRandomLocation(int maxWidth, int maxHeight) { // x and y -- multiple of 20 int x = random.Next(1, maxWidth); var leftOver = x % 20; x = x - leftOver; int y = random.Next(1, maxHeight); leftOver = y % 20; y = y - leftOver; return new Rectangle(x, y, _texture.Width, _texture.Height); } public void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { spriteBatch.Draw(_texture, Location, Color.White); } } }

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• Using IIS Logs for Performance Testing with Visual Studio

  - by Tarun Arora

  In this blog post I’ll show you how you can play back the IIS Logs in Visual Studio to automatically generate the web performance tests. You can also download the sample solution I am demo-ing in the blog post. Introduction Performance testing is as important for new websites as it is for evolving websites. If you already have your website running in production you could mine the information available in IIS logs to analyse the dense zones (most used pages) and performance test those pages rather than wasting time testing & tuning the least used pages in your application. What are IIS Logs To help with server use and analysis, IIS is integrated with several types of log files. These log file formats provide information on a range of websites and specific statistics, including Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, user information and site visits as well as dates, times and queries. If you are using IIS 7 and above you will find the log files in the following directory C:\Interpub\Logs\ Walkthrough 1. Download and Install Log Parser from the Microsoft download Centre. You should see the LogParser.dll in the install folder, the default install location is C:\Program Files (x86)\Log Parser 2.2. LogParser.dll gives us a library to query the iis log files programmatically. By the way if you haven’t used Log Parser in the past, it is a is a powerful, versatile tool that provides universal query access to text-based data such as log files, XML files and CSV files, as well as key data sources on the Windows operating system such as the Event Log, the Registry, the file system, and Active Directory. More details… 2. Create a new test project in Visual Studio. Let’s call it IISLogsToWebPerfTestDemo.   3.  Delete the UnitTest1.cs class that gets created by default. Right click the solution and add a project of type class library, name it, IISLogsToWebPerfTestEngine. Delete the default class Program.cs that gets created with the project. 4. Under the IISLogsToWebPerfTestEngine project add a reference to Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.WebTestFramework – c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies\Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.WebTestFramework.dll LogParser also called MSUtil - c:\users\tarora\documents\visual studio 2010\Projects\IisLogsToWebPerfTest\IisLogsToWebPerfTestEngine\obj\Debug\Interop.MSUtil.dll 5. Right click IISLogsToWebPerfTestEngine project and add a new classes – IISLogReader.cs The IISLogReader class queries the iis logs using the log parser. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using MSUtil; using LogQuery = MSUtil.LogQueryClassClass; using IISLogInputFormat = MSUtil.COMIISW3CInputContextClassClass; using LogRecordSet = MSUtil.ILogRecordset; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.WebTesting; using System.Diagnostics; namespace IisLogsToWebPerfTestEngine { // By making use of log parser it is possible to query the iis log using select queries public class IISLogReader { private string _iisLogPath; public IISLogReader(string iisLogPath) { _iisLogPath = iisLogPath; } public IEnumerable<WebTestRequest> GetRequests() { LogQuery logQuery = new LogQuery(); IISLogInputFormat iisInputFormat = new IISLogInputFormat(); // currently these columns give us suffient information to construct the web test requests string query = @"SELECT s-ip, s-port, cs-method, cs-uri-stem, cs-uri-query FROM " + _iisLogPath; LogRecordSet recordSet = logQuery.Execute(query, iisInputFormat); // Apply a bit of transformation while (!recordSet.atEnd()) { ILogRecord record = recordSet.getRecord(); if (record.getValueEx("cs-method").ToString() == "GET") { string server = record.getValueEx("s-ip").ToString(); string path = record.getValueEx("cs-uri-stem").ToString(); string querystring = record.getValueEx("cs-uri-query").ToString(); StringBuilder urlBuilder = new StringBuilder(); urlBuilder.Append("http://"); urlBuilder.Append(server); urlBuilder.Append(path); if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(querystring)) { urlBuilder.Append("?"); urlBuilder.Append(querystring); } // You could make substitutions by introducing parameterized web tests. WebTestRequest request = new WebTestRequest(urlBuilder.ToString()); Debug.WriteLine(request.UrlWithQueryString); yield return request; } recordSet.moveNext(); } Console.WriteLine(" That's it! Closing the reader"); recordSet.close(); } } }   6. Connect the dots by adding the project reference ‘IisLogsToWebPerfTestEngine’ to ‘IisLogsToWebPerfTest’. Right click the ‘IisLogsToWebPerfTest’ project and add a new class ‘WebTest1Coded.cs’ The WebTest1Coded.cs inherits from the WebTest class. By overriding the GetRequestMethod we can inject the log files to the IISLogReader class which uses Log parser to query the log file and extract the web requests to generate the web test request which is yielded back for play back when the test is run. namespace IisLogsToWebPerfTest { using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.WebTesting; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.WebTesting.Rules; using IisLogsToWebPerfTestEngine; // This class is a coded web performance test implementation, that simply passes // the path of the iis logs to the IisLogReader class which does the heavy // lifting of reading the contents of the log file and converting them to tests. // You could have multiple such classes that inherit from WebTest and implement // GetRequestEnumerator Method and pass differnt log files for different tests. public class WebTest1Coded : WebTest { public WebTest1Coded() { this.PreAuthenticate = true; } public override IEnumerator<WebTestRequest> GetRequestEnumerator() { // substitute the highlighted path with the path of the iis log file IISLogReader reader = new IISLogReader(@"C:\Demo\iisLog1.log"); foreach (WebTestRequest request in reader.GetRequests()) { yield return request; } } } }   7. Its time to fire the test off and see the iis log playback as a web performance test. From the Test menu choose Test View Window you should be able to see the WebTest1Coded test show up. Highlight the test and press Run selection (you can also debug the test in case you face any failures during test execution). 8. Optionally you can create a Load Test by keeping ‘WebTest1Coded’ as the base test. Conclusion You have just helped your testing team, you now have become the coolest developer in your organization! Jokes apart, log parser and web performance test together allow you to save a lot of time by not having to worry about what to test or even worrying about how to record the test. If you haven’t already, download the solution from here. You can take this to the next level by using LogParser to extract the log files as part of an end of day batch to a database. See the usage trends by user this solution over a longer term and have your tests consume the web requests now stored in the database to generate the web performance tests. If you like the post, don’t forget to share … Keep RocKiNg!

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• XNA shield effect with a Primative sphere problem

  - by Sparky41

  I'm having issue with a shield effect i'm trying to develop. I want to do a shield effect that surrounds part of a model like this: http://i.imgur.com/jPvrf.png I currently got this: http://i.imgur.com/Jdin7.png (The red likes are a simple texture a black background with a red cross in it, for testing purposes: http://i.imgur.com/ODtzk.png where the smaller cross in the middle shows the contact point) This sphere is drawn via a primitive (DrawIndexedPrimitives) This is how i calculate the pieces of the sphere using a class i've called Sphere (this class is based off the code here: http://xbox.create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/sample/primitives_3d) public class Sphere { // During the process of constructing a primitive model, vertex // and index data is stored on the CPU in these managed lists. List vertices = new List(); List indices = new List(); // Once all the geometry has been specified, the InitializePrimitive // method copies the vertex and index data into these buffers, which // store it on the GPU ready for efficient rendering. VertexBuffer vertexBuffer; IndexBuffer indexBuffer; BasicEffect basicEffect; public Vector3 position = Vector3.Zero; public Matrix RotationMatrix = Matrix.Identity; public Texture2D texture; /// <summary> /// Constructs a new sphere primitive, /// with the specified size and tessellation level. /// </summary> public Sphere(float diameter, int tessellation, Texture2D text, float up, float down, float portstar, float frontback) { texture = text; if (tessellation < 3) throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("tessellation"); int verticalSegments = tessellation; int horizontalSegments = tessellation * 2; float radius = diameter / 2; // Start with a single vertex at the bottom of the sphere. AddVertex(Vector3.Down * ((radius / up) + 1), Vector3.Down, Vector2.Zero);//bottom position5 // Create rings of vertices at progressively higher latitudes. for (int i = 0; i < verticalSegments - 1; i++) { float latitude = ((i + 1) * MathHelper.Pi / verticalSegments) - MathHelper.PiOver2; float dy = (float)Math.Sin(latitude / up);//(up)5 float dxz = (float)Math.Cos(latitude); // Create a single ring of vertices at this latitude. for (int j = 0; j < horizontalSegments; j++) { float longitude = j * MathHelper.TwoPi / horizontalSegments; float dx = (float)(Math.Cos(longitude) * dxz) / portstar;//port and starboard (right)2 float dz = (float)(Math.Sin(longitude) * dxz) * frontback;//front and back1.4 Vector3 normal = new Vector3(dx, dy, dz); AddVertex(normal * radius, normal, new Vector2(j, i)); } } // Finish with a single vertex at the top of the sphere. AddVertex(Vector3.Up * ((radius / down) + 1), Vector3.Up, Vector2.One);//top position5 // Create a fan connecting the bottom vertex to the bottom latitude ring. for (int i = 0; i < horizontalSegments; i++) { AddIndex(0); AddIndex(1 + (i + 1) % horizontalSegments); AddIndex(1 + i); } // Fill the sphere body with triangles joining each pair of latitude rings. for (int i = 0; i < verticalSegments - 2; i++) { for (int j = 0; j < horizontalSegments; j++) { int nextI = i + 1; int nextJ = (j + 1) % horizontalSegments; AddIndex(1 + i * horizontalSegments + j); AddIndex(1 + i * horizontalSegments + nextJ); AddIndex(1 + nextI * horizontalSegments + j); AddIndex(1 + i * horizontalSegments + nextJ); AddIndex(1 + nextI * horizontalSegments + nextJ); AddIndex(1 + nextI * horizontalSegments + j); } } // Create a fan connecting the top vertex to the top latitude ring. for (int i = 0; i < horizontalSegments; i++) { AddIndex(CurrentVertex - 1); AddIndex(CurrentVertex - 2 - (i + 1) % horizontalSegments); AddIndex(CurrentVertex - 2 - i); } //InitializePrimitive(graphicsDevice); } /// <summary> /// Adds a new vertex to the primitive model. This should only be called /// during the initialization process, before InitializePrimitive. /// </summary> protected void AddVertex(Vector3 position, Vector3 normal, Vector2 texturecoordinate) { vertices.Add(new VertexPositionNormal(position, normal, texturecoordinate)); } /// <summary> /// Adds a new index to the primitive model. This should only be called /// during the initialization process, before InitializePrimitive. /// </summary> protected void AddIndex(int index) { if (index > ushort.MaxValue) throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("index"); indices.Add((ushort)index); } /// <summary> /// Queries the index of the current vertex. This starts at /// zero, and increments every time AddVertex is called. /// </summary> protected int CurrentVertex { get { return vertices.Count; } } public void InitializePrimitive(GraphicsDevice graphicsDevice) { // Create a vertex declaration, describing the format of our vertex data. // Create a vertex buffer, and copy our vertex data into it. vertexBuffer = new VertexBuffer(graphicsDevice, typeof(VertexPositionNormal), vertices.Count, BufferUsage.None); vertexBuffer.SetData(vertices.ToArray()); // Create an index buffer, and copy our index data into it. indexBuffer = new IndexBuffer(graphicsDevice, typeof(ushort), indices.Count, BufferUsage.None); indexBuffer.SetData(indices.ToArray()); // Create a BasicEffect, which will be used to render the primitive. basicEffect = new BasicEffect(graphicsDevice); //basicEffect.EnableDefaultLighting(); } /// <summary> /// Draws the primitive model, using the specified effect. Unlike the other /// Draw overload where you just specify the world/view/projection matrices /// and color, this method does not set any renderstates, so you must make /// sure all states are set to sensible values before you call it. /// </summary> public void Draw(Effect effect) { GraphicsDevice graphicsDevice = effect.GraphicsDevice; // Set our vertex declaration, vertex buffer, and index buffer. graphicsDevice.SetVertexBuffer(vertexBuffer); graphicsDevice.Indices = indexBuffer; graphicsDevice.BlendState = BlendState.Additive; foreach (EffectPass effectPass in effect.CurrentTechnique.Passes) { effectPass.Apply(); int primitiveCount = indices.Count / 3; graphicsDevice.DrawIndexedPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleList, 0, 0, vertices.Count, 0, primitiveCount); } graphicsDevice.BlendState = BlendState.Opaque; } /// <summary> /// Draws the primitive model, using a BasicEffect shader with default /// lighting. Unlike the other Draw overload where you specify a custom /// effect, this method sets important renderstates to sensible values /// for 3D model rendering, so you do not need to set these states before /// you call it. /// </summary> public void Draw(Camera camera, Color color) { // Set BasicEffect parameters. basicEffect.World = GetWorld(); basicEffect.View = camera.view; basicEffect.Projection = camera.projection; basicEffect.DiffuseColor = color.ToVector3(); basicEffect.TextureEnabled = true; basicEffect.Texture = texture; GraphicsDevice device = basicEffect.GraphicsDevice; device.DepthStencilState = DepthStencilState.Default; if (color.A < 255) { // Set renderstates for alpha blended rendering. device.BlendState = BlendState.AlphaBlend; } else { // Set renderstates for opaque rendering. device.BlendState = BlendState.Opaque; } // Draw the model, using BasicEffect. Draw(basicEffect); } public virtual Matrix GetWorld() { return /*world */ Matrix.CreateScale(1f) * RotationMatrix * Matrix.CreateTranslation(position); } } public struct VertexPositionNormal : IVertexType { public Vector3 Position; public Vector3 Normal; public Vector2 TextureCoordinate; /// <summary> /// Constructor. /// </summary> public VertexPositionNormal(Vector3 position, Vector3 normal, Vector2 textCoor) { Position = position; Normal = normal; TextureCoordinate = textCoor; } /// <summary> /// A VertexDeclaration object, which contains information about the vertex /// elements contained within this struct. /// </summary> public static readonly VertexDeclaration VertexDeclaration = new VertexDeclaration ( new VertexElement(0, VertexElementFormat.Vector3, VertexElementUsage.Position, 0), new VertexElement(12, VertexElementFormat.Vector3, VertexElementUsage.Normal, 0), new VertexElement(24, VertexElementFormat.Vector2, VertexElementUsage.TextureCoordinate, 0) ); VertexDeclaration IVertexType.VertexDeclaration { get { return VertexPositionNormal.VertexDeclaration; } } } A simple call to the class to initialise it. The Draw method is called in the master draw method in the Gamecomponent. My current thoughts on this are: The direction of the weapon hitting the ship is used to get the middle position for the texture Wrap a texture around the drawn sphere based on this point of contact Problem is i'm not sure how to do this. Can anyone help or if you have a better idea please tell me i'm open for opinion? :-) Thanks.

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• Loaded OBJ Model Will Not Display in OpenGL / C++ Project

  - by Drake Summers

  I have been experimenting with new effects in game development. The programs I have written have been using generic shapes for the visuals. I wanted to test the effects on something a bit more complex, and wrote a resource loader for Wavefront OBJ files. I started with a simple cube in blender, exported it to an OBJ file with just vertices and triangulated faces, and used it to test the resource loader. I could not get the mesh to show up in my application. The loader never gave me any errors, so I wrote a snippet to loop through my vertex and index arrays that were returned from the loader. The data is exactly the way it is supposed to be. So I simplified the OBJ file by editing it directly to just show a front facing square. Still, nothing is displayed in the application. And don't worry, I did check to make sure that I decreased the value of each index by one while importing the OBJ. - BEGIN EDIT I also tested using glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLES, 0, 3 ); to draw the first triangle and it worked! So the issue could be in the binding of the VBO/IBO items. END EDIT - INDEX/VERTEX ARRAY OUTPUT: GLOBALS AND INITIALIZATION FUNCTION: GLuint program; GLint attrib_coord3d; std::vector<GLfloat> vertices; std::vector<GLushort> indices; GLuint vertexbuffer, indexbuffer; GLint uniform_mvp; int initialize() { if (loadModel("test.obj", vertices, indices)) { GLfloat myverts[vertices.size()]; copy(vertices.begin(), vertices.end(), myverts); GLushort myinds[indices.size()]; copy(indices.begin(), indices.end(), myinds); glGenBuffers(1, &vertexbuffer); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vertexbuffer); glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(myverts), myverts, GL_STATIC_DRAW); glGenBuffers(1, &indexbuffer); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, indexbuffer); glBufferData(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(myinds), myinds, GL_STATIC_DRAW); // OUTPUT DATA FROM NEW ARRAYS TO CONSOLE // ERROR HANDLING OMITTED FOR BREVITY } GLint link_result = GL_FALSE; GLuint vert_shader, frag_shader; if ((vert_shader = create_shader("tri.v.glsl", GL_VERTEX_SHADER)) == 0) return 0; if ((frag_shader = create_shader("tri.f.glsl", GL_FRAGMENT_SHADER)) == 0) return 0; program = glCreateProgram(); glAttachShader(program, vert_shader); glAttachShader(program, frag_shader); glLinkProgram(program); glGetProgramiv(program, GL_LINK_STATUS, &link_result); // ERROR HANDLING OMITTED FOR BREVITY const char* attrib_name; attrib_name = "coord3d"; attrib_coord3d = glGetAttribLocation(program, attrib_name); // ERROR HANDLING OMITTED FOR BREVITY const char* uniform_name; uniform_name = "mvp"; uniform_mvp = glGetUniformLocation(program, uniform_name); // ERROR HANDLING OMITTED FOR BREVITY return 1; } RENDERING FUNCTION: glm::mat4 model = glm::translate(glm::mat4(1.0f), glm::vec3(0.0, 0.0, -4.0)); glm::mat4 view = glm::lookAt(glm::vec3(0.0, 0.0, 4.0), glm::vec3(0.0, 0.0, 3.0), glm::vec3(0.0, 1.0, 0.0)); glm::mat4 projection = glm::perspective(45.0f, 1.0f*(screen_width/screen_height), 0.1f, 10.0f); glm::mat4 mvp = projection * view * model; int size; glUseProgram(program); glUniformMatrix4fv(uniform_mvp, 1, GL_FALSE, glm::value_ptr(mvp)); glClearColor(0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0); glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT|GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); glEnableVertexAttribArray(attrib_coord3d); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vertexbuffer); glVertexAttribPointer(attrib_coord3d, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, 0); glBindBuffer(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, indexbuffer); glGetBufferParameteriv(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, GL_BUFFER_SIZE, &size); glDrawElements(GL_TRIANGLES, size/sizeof(GLushort), GL_UNSIGNED_SHORT, 0); glDisableVertexAttribArray(attrib_coord3d); VERTEX SHADER: attribute vec3 coord3d; uniform mat4 mvp; void main(void) { gl_Position = mvp * vec4(coord3d, 1.0); } FRAGMENT SHADER: void main(void) { gl_FragColor[0] = 0.0; gl_FragColor[1] = 0.0; gl_FragColor[2] = 1.0; gl_FragColor[3] = 1.0; } OBJ RESOURCE LOADER: bool loadModel(const char * path, std::vector<GLfloat> &out_vertices, std::vector<GLushort> &out_indices) { std::vector<GLfloat> temp_vertices; std::vector<GLushort> vertexIndices; FILE * file = fopen(path, "r"); // ERROR HANDLING OMITTED FOR BREVITY while(1) { char lineHeader[128]; int res = fscanf(file, "%s", lineHeader); if (res == EOF) { break; } if (strcmp(lineHeader, "v") == 0) { float _x, _y, _z; fscanf(file, "%f %f %f\n", &_x, &_y, &_z ); out_vertices.push_back(_x); out_vertices.push_back(_y); out_vertices.push_back(_z); } else if (strcmp(lineHeader, "f") == 0) { unsigned int vertexIndex[3]; int matches = fscanf(file, "%d %d %d\n", &vertexIndex[0], &vertexIndex[1], &vertexIndex[2]); out_indices.push_back(vertexIndex[0] - 1); out_indices.push_back(vertexIndex[1] - 1); out_indices.push_back(vertexIndex[2] - 1); } else { ... } } // ERROR HANDLING OMITTED FOR BREVITY return true; } I can edit the question to provide any further info you may need. I attempted to provide everything of relevance and omit what may have been unnecessary. I'm hoping this isn't some really poor mistake, because I have been at this for a few days now. If anyone has any suggestions or advice on the matter, I look forward to hearing it. As a final note: I added some arrays into the code with manually entered data, and was able to display meshes by using those arrays instead of the generated ones. I do not understand!

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• “It’s only test code…”

  - by Chris George

  “Let me hack this in, it’s only test code”, “Don’t worry about getting it reviewed, it’s only test code”, “It doesn’t have to be elegant or efficient, it’s only test code”… do these phrases sound familiar? Chances are if you’ve working with test automation, at one point or other you will have heard these phrases, you have probably even used them yourself! What is certain is that code written under this “it’s only test code” mantra will come back and bite you in the arse! I’ve recently encountered a case where a test was giving a false positive, therefore hiding a real product bug because that test code was very badly written. Firstly it was very difficult to understand what the test was actually trying to achieve let alone how it was doing it, and this complexity masked a simple logic error. These issues are real and they do happen. Let’s take a step back from this and look at what we are trying to do. We are writing test code that tests product code, and we do this to create a suite of tests that will help protect our software against regressions. This test code is making sure that the product behaves as it should by employing some sort of expected result verification. The simple cases of these are generally not a problem. However, automation allows us to explore more complex scenarios in many more permutations. As this complexity increases then so does the complexity of the test code. It is at this point that code which has not been architected properly will cause problems.   Keep your friends close… So, how do we make sure we are doing it right? The development teams I have worked on have always had Test Engineers working very closely with their Software Engineers. This is something that I have always tried to take full advantage of. They are coding experts! So run your ideas past them, ask for advice on how to structure your code, help you design your data structures. This may require a shift in your teams viewpoint, as contrary to this section title and folklore, Software Engineers are not actually the mortal enemy of Test Engineers. As time progresses, and test automation becomes more and more ingrained in what we do, the two roles are converging more than ever. Over the 16 years I have spent as a Test Engineer, I have seen the grey area between the two roles grow significantly larger. This serves to strengthen the relationship and common bond between the two roles which helps to make test code activities so much easier!   Pair for the win Possibly the best thing you could do to write good test code is to pair program on the task. This will serve a few purposes. you will get the benefit of the Software Engineers knowledge and experience the Software Engineer will gain knowledge on the testing process. Sharing the love is a wonderful thing! two pairs of eyes are always better than one… And so are two brains. Between the two of you, I will guarantee you will derive more useful test cases than if it was just one of you.   Code reviews Another policy which certainly pays dividends is the practice of code reviews. By having one of your peers review your code before you commit it serves two purposes. Firstly, it forces you to explain your code. Just the act of doing this will often pick up errors in your code. Secondly, it gets yet another pair of eyes on your code! I cannot stress enough how important code reviews are. The benefits they offer apply as much to product code as test code. In short, Software and Test Engineers should all be doing them! It can be extended even further by getting test code reviewed by a Software Engineer and a Test Engineer, and likewise product code. This serves to keep both functions in the loop with changes going on within your code base.   Learn from your devs I briefly touched on this earlier but I’d like to go into more detail here. Pairing with your Software Engineers when writing your test code is such an amazing opportunity to improve your coding skills. As I sit here writing this article waiting to be called into court for jury service, it reminds me that it takes a lot of patience to be a Test Engineer, almost as much as it takes to be a juror! However tempting it is to go rushing in and start writing your automated tests, resist that urge. Discuss what you want to achieve then talk through the approach you’re going to take. Then code it up together. I find it really enlightening to ask questions like ‘is there a better way to do this?’ Or ‘is this how you would code it?’ The latter question, especially, is where I learn the most. I’ve found that most Software Engineers will be reluctant to show you the ‘right way’ to code something when writing tests because they perceive the ‘right way’ to be too complicated for the Test Engineer (e.g. not mentioning LINQ and instead doing something verbose). So by asking how THEY would code it, it unleashes their true dev-ness and advanced code usually ensues! I would like to point out, however, that you don’t have to accept their method as the final answer. On numerous occasions I have opted for the more simple/verbose solution because I found the code written by the Software Engineer too advanced and therefore I would find it unreadable when I return to the code in a months’ time! Always keep the target audience in mind when writing clever code, and in my case that is mostly Test Engineers.  

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• Oracle Certification and virtualization Solutions.

  - by scoter

  As stated in official MOS ( My Oracle Support ) document 249212.1 support for Oracle products on non-Oracle VM platforms follow exactly the same stance as support for VMware and, so, the only x86 virtualization software solution certified for any Oracle product is "Oracle VM". Based on the fact that: Oracle VM is totally free ( you have the option to buy Oracle-Support ) Certified is pretty different from supported ( OracleVM is certified, others could be supported ) With Oracle VM you may not require to reproduce your issue(s) on physical server Oracle VM is the only x86 software solution that allows hard-partitioning *** *** see details to these Oracle public links: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/vm/ovm-hardpart-168217.pdf http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/partitioning-070609.pdf people started asking to migrate from third party virtualization software (ex. RH KVM, VMWare) to Oracle VM. Migrating RH KVM guest to Oracle VM. OracleVM has a built-in P2V utility ( Official Documentation ) but in some cases we can't use it, due to : network inaccessibility between hypervisors ( KVM and OVM ) network slowness between hypervisors (KVM and OVM) size of the guest virtual-disks Here you'll find a step-by-step guide to "manually" migrate a guest machine from KVM to OVM. 1. Verify source guest characteristics. Using KVM web console you can verify characteristics of the guest you need to migrate, such as: CPU Cores details Defined Memory ( RAM ) Name of your guest Guest operating system Disks details ( number and size ) Network details ( number of NICs and network configuration ) 2. Export your guest in OVF / OVA format.  The export from Redhat KVM ( kernel virtual machine ) will create a structured export of your guest: [root@ovmserver1 mnt]# lltotal 12drwxrwx--- 5 36 36 4096 Oct 19 2012 b8296fca-13c4-4841-a50f-773b5139fcee b8296fca-13c4-4841-a50f-773b5139fcee is the ID of the guest exported from RH-KVM [root@ovmserver1 mnt]# cd b8296fca-13c4-4841-a50f-773b5139fcee/[root@ovmserver1 b8296fca-13c4-4841-a50f-773b5139fcee]# ls -ltrtotal 12drwxr-x--- 4 36 36 4096 Oct 19  2012 masterdrwxrwx--- 2 36 36 4096 Oct 29  2012 dom_mddrwxrwx--- 4 36 36 4096 Oct 31  2012 images images contains your virtual-disks exported [root@ovmserver1 b8296fca-13c4-4841-a50f-773b5139fcee]# cd images/[root@ovmserver1 images]# ls -ltratotal 16drwxrwx--- 5 36 36 4096 Oct 19  2012 ..drwxrwx--- 2 36 36 4096 Oct 31  2012 d4ef928d-6dc6-4743-b20d-568b424728a5drwxrwx--- 2 36 36 4096 Oct 31  2012 4b241ea0-43aa-4f3b-ab7d-2fc633b491a1drwxrwx--- 4 36 36 4096 Oct 31  2012 .[root@ovmserver1 images]# cd d4ef928d-6dc6-4743-b20d-568b424728a5/[root@ovmserver1 d4ef928d-6dc6-4743-b20d-568b424728a5]# ls -ltotal 5169092-rwxr----- 1 36 36 187904819200 Oct 31  2012 4c03b1cf-67cc-4af0-ad1e-529fd665dac1-rw-rw---- 1 36 36          341 Oct 31  2012 4c03b1cf-67cc-4af0-ad1e-529fd665dac1.meta[root@ovmserver1 d4ef928d-6dc6-4743-b20d-568b424728a5]# file 4c03b1cf-67cc-4af0-ad1e-529fd665dac14c03b1cf-67cc-4af0-ad1e-529fd665dac1: LVM2 (Linux Logical Volume Manager) , UUID: sZL1Ttpy0vNqykaPahEo3hK3lGhwspv 4c03b1cf-67cc-4af0-ad1e-529fd665dac1 is the first exported disk ( physical volume ) [root@ovmserver1 d4ef928d-6dc6-4743-b20d-568b424728a5]# cd ../4b241ea0-43aa-4f3b-ab7d-2fc633b491a1/[root@ovmserver1 4b241ea0-43aa-4f3b-ab7d-2fc633b491a1]# ls -ltotal 5568076-rwxr----- 1 36 36 107374182400 Oct 31  2012 9020f2e1-7b8a-4641-8f80-749768cc237a-rw-rw---- 1 36 36          341 Oct 31  2012 9020f2e1-7b8a-4641-8f80-749768cc237a.meta[root@ovmserver1 4b241ea0-43aa-4f3b-ab7d-2fc633b491a1]# file 9020f2e1-7b8a-4641-8f80-749768cc237a9020f2e1-7b8a-4641-8f80-749768cc237a: x86 boot sector; partition 1: ID=0x83, active, starthead 1, startsector 63, 401562 sectors; partition 2: ID=0x82, starthead 0, startsector 401625, 65529135 sectors; startsector 63, 401562 sectors; partition 2: ID=0x82, starthead 0, startsector 401625, 65529135 sectors; partition 3: ID=0x83, starthead 254, startsector 65930760, 8385930 sectors; partition 4: ID=0x5, starthead 254, startsector 74316690, 135395820 sectors, code offset 0x48 9020f2e1-7b8a-4641-8f80-749768cc237a is the second exported disk, with partition 1 bootable 3. Prepare the new guest on Oracle VM. By Ovm-Manager we can prepare the guest where we will move the exported virtual-disks; under the Tab "Servers and VMs": click on  and create your guest with parameters collected before (point 1): - add NICs on different networks: - add virtual-disks; in this case we add two disks of 1.0 GB each one; we will extend the virtual disk copying the source KVM virtual-disk ( see next steps ) - verify virtual-disks created ( under Repositories tab ) 4. Verify OVM virtual-disks names. [root@ovmserver1 VirtualMachines]# grep -r hyptest_rdbms * 0004fb0000060000a906b423f44da98e/vm.cfg:OVM_simple_name = 'hyptest_rdbms' [root@ovmserver1 VirtualMachines]# cd 0004fb0000060000a906b423f44da98e [root@ovmserver1 0004fb0000060000a906b423f44da98e]# more vm.cfgvif = ['mac=00:21:f6:0f:3f:85,bridge=0004fb001089128', 'mac=00:21:f6:0f:3f:8e,bridge=0004fb00101971d'] OVM_simple_name = 'hyptest_rdbms' vnclisten = '127.0.0.1' disk = ['file:/OVS/Repositories/0004fb00000300004f17b7368139eb41/ VirtualDisks/0004fb000012000097c1bfea9834b17d.img,xvda,w', 'file:/OVS/Repositories/0004fb00000300004f17b7368139eb41/VirtualDisks/ 0004fb0000120000cde6a11c3cb1d0be.img,xvdb,w'] vncunused = '1' uuid = '0004fb00-0006-0000-a906-b423f44da98e' on_reboot = 'restart' cpu_weight = 27500 memory = 32768 cpu_cap = 0 maxvcpus = 8 OVM_high_availability = True maxmem = 32768 vnc = '1' OVM_description = '' on_poweroff = 'destroy' on_crash = 'restart' name = '0004fb0000060000a906b423f44da98e' guest_os_type = 'linux' builder = 'hvm' vcpus = 8 keymap = 'en-us' OVM_os_type = 'Oracle Linux 5' OVM_cpu_compat_group = '' OVM_domain_type = 'xen_hvm' disk2 ovm ==> /OVS/Repositories/0004fb00000300004f17b7368139eb41/VirtualDisks/ 0004fb0000120000cde6a11c3cb1d0be.img disk1 ovm ==> /OVS/Repositories/0004fb00000300004f17b7368139eb41/VirtualDisks/ 0004fb000012000097c1bfea9834b17d.img Summarizing disk1 --source ==> /mnt/b8296fca-13c4-4841-a50f-773b5139fcee/images/4b241ea0-43aa-4f3b-ab7d-2fc633b491a1/9020f2e1-7b8a-4641-8f80-749768cc237a disk1 --dest ==> /OVS/Repositories/0004fb00000300004f17b7368139eb41/VirtualDisks/ 0004fb000012000097c1bfea9834b17d.img disk2 --source ==> /mnt/b8296fca-13c4-4841-a50f-773b5139fcee/images/d4ef928d-6dc6-4743-b20d-568b424728a5/4c03b1cf-67cc-4af0-ad1e-529fd665dac1 disk2 --dest ==> /OVS/Repositories/0004fb00000300004f17b7368139eb41/VirtualDisks/ 0004fb0000120000cde6a11c3cb1d0be.img 5. Copy KVM exported virtual-disks to OVM virtual-disks. Keeping your Oracle VM guest stopped you can copy KVM exported virtual-disks to OVM virtual-disks; what I did is only to locally mount the filesystem containing the exported virtual-disk ( by an usb device ) on my OVS; the copy automatically resize OVM virtual-disks ( previously created with a size of 1GB ) . nohup cp /mnt/b8296fca-13c4-4841-a50f-773b5139fcee/images/4b241ea0-43aa-4f3b-ab7d-2fc633b491a1/9020f2e1-7b8a-4641-8f80-749768cc237a /OVS/Repositories/0004fb00000300004f17b7368139eb41/VirtualDisks/0004fb000012000097c1bfea9834b17d.img & nohup cp /mnt/b8296fca-13c4-4841-a50f-773b5139fcee/images/d4ef928d-6dc6-4743-b20d-568b424728a5/4c03b1cf-67cc-4af0-ad1e-529fd665dac1 /OVS/Repositories/0004fb00000300004f17b7368139eb41/VirtualDisks/0004fb0000120000cde6a11c3cb1d0be.img & 7. When copy completed refresh repository to aknowledge the new-disks size. 7. After "refresh repository" is completed, start guest machine by Oracle VM manager. After the first start of your guest: - verify that you can see all disks and partitions - verify that your guest is network reachable ( MAC Address of your NICs changed ) Eventually you can also evaluate to convert your guest to PVM ( Paravirtualized virtual Machine ) following official Oracle documentation. Ciao Simon COTER ps: next-time I'd like to post an article reporting how to manually migrate Virtual-Iron guests to OracleVM.  Comments and corrections are welcome. 

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• Simplifying Human Capital Management with Mobile Applications

  - by HCM-Oracle

  By Aaron Green If you're starting to think 'mobility' is a recurring theme in your reading, you'd be right. For those who haven't started to build organisational capabilities to leverage it, it's fair to say you're late to the party. The good news: better late than never. Research firm eMarketer says the worldwide smartphone audience will total 1.75 billion this year, while communications technology and services provider Ericsson suggests smartphones will triple to 5.6 billion globally by 2019. It should be no surprise, smart phone adoption is reaching the farthest corners of the globe; the subsequent impact of enterprise applications enabled by these devices is driving business performance improvement and will continue to do so. Companies using advanced workforce analytics can add significantly to the bottom line, while impacting customer satisfaction, quality and productivity. It's a statement that makes most business leaders sit forward in their chairs. Achieving these three standards is like sipping The Golden Elixir for the business world. No-one would argue their importance. So what are 'advanced workforce analytics?' Simply, they're unprecedented access to workforce trends and performance markers. Many are made possible by a mobile world and the enterprise applications that come with it on smart devices. Some refer to it as 'the consumerisation of IT'. As this phenomenon has matured and become more widely appreciated it has impacted the spectrum of functional units within an enterprise differently, but powerfully. Whether it's sales, HR, marketing, IT, or operations, all have benefited from a more mobile approach. It has been the catalyst for improvement in, and management of, the employee experience. The net result of which is happier customers. The obvious benefits but the lesser realised impact Most people understand that mobility allows for greater efficiency and productivity, collaboration and flexibility, but how that translates into business outcomes within the various functional groups is lesser known. In actuality mobility has helped galvanise partnerships between cross-functional groups within the enterprise. Where in some quarters it was once feared mobility could fragment a workforce, its rallying cry of support is coming from what you might describe as an unlikely source - HR. As the bedrock of an enterprise, it is conceivable HR might contemplate the possible negative impact of a mobile workforce that no-longer sits in an office, at the same desks every day. After all, who would know what they were doing or saying? How would they collaborate? It's reasonable to see why HR might have a legitimate claim to try and retain as much 'perceived control' as possible. The reality however is mobility has emancipated human capital and its management. Mobility and enterprise applications are expediting decision making. Google calls it Zero Moment of Truth, or ZMOT. It enables smoother operation and can contribute to faster growth. From a collaborative perspective, with the growing use of enterprise social media, which in many cases is being driven by HR, workforce planning and the tangible impact of change is much easier to map. This in turn provides a platform from which individuals and teams can thrive. With more agility and ability to anticipate, staff satisfaction and retention is higher, and real time feedback constant. The management team can save time, energy and costs with more accurate data, which is then intelligently applied across the workforce to truly engage with staff, customers and partners. From a human capital management (HCM) perspective, mobility can help you close the loop on true talent management. It can enhance what managers can offer and what employees can provide in return. It can create nested relationships and powerful partnerships. IT and HR - partners and stewards of mobility One effect of enterprise mobility is an evolution in the nature of the relationship between HR and IT from one of service provision to partnership. The reason for the dynamic shift is largely due to the 'bring your own device' (BYOD) movement, which is transitioning to a 'bring your own application' (BYOA) scenario. As enterprise technology has in some ways reverse-engineered its solutions to help manage this situation, the partnership between IT (the functional owner) and HR (the strategic enabler) is deeply entrenched. And it has to be. The CIO and the HR leader are faced with compliance and regulatory issues and concerns around information security and personal privacy on a daily basis, complicated by global reach and varied domestic legislation. There are tens of thousands of new mobile apps entering the market each month and, unlike many consumer applications which get downloaded but are often never opened again after initial perusal, enterprise applications are being relied upon by functional groups, not least by HR to enhance people management. It requires a systematic approach across all applications in use within the enterprise in order to ensure they're used to best effect. No turning back, and no desire to With real time analytics on performance and the ability for immediate feedback, there is no turning back for managers. In my experience with Oracle, our customers' operational efficiency is at record levels. It's clear as a result of the combination of individual KPIs and organisational goals, CIOs have been able to give HR leaders the ability to build predictive models that feed into an enterprise organisations' evolving strategy. It also helps them ensure regulatory compliance much more easily. Once an arduous task, with mobile enabled automation and quality data, compliance is simpler. Their world has changed for the better. For the CIO, mobility also assists them to optimise performance. While it doesn't come without challenges, mobile-enabled applications and the native experience users have with them means employees don't need high-level technical expertise to train users. It reduces the training and engagement required from the IT team so they can focus on other things that deliver value to the bottom line; all the while lowering the cost of assets and related maintenance work by simplifying processes. Rewards of a mobile enterprise outweigh risks With mobile tools allowing us to increasingly integrate our personal and professional lives, terms like "office hours" are becoming irrelevant, so work/life balance is a cultural must. Enterprises are expected to offer tools that enable workers to access information from anywhere, at any time, from any device. Employees want simplicity and convenience but it doesn't stop at private enterprise. This is a societal shift. Governments, which traditionally have been known to be slower to adopt newer technology, are also offering support for local businesses to go mobile. Several state government websites have advice on how to create mobile apps and more. And as recently as last week the Victorian Minister for Technology Gordon Rich-Phillips unveiled his State government's ICT roadmap for the next two years, which details an increased use of the public cloud, as well as mobile communications, and improved access to online data-sets. Tech giants are investing significantly in solutions designed to simplify mobile deployment and enablement. The mobility trend is creating a wave of change in the industry and driving transformation in the enterprise. If you're not on that wave, the business risk continues to rise as your competitiveness drops. Aaron is the Vice President of HCM Strategy at Oracle Corporation where he is responsible for researching and identifying emerging trends in the practice of Human Resources and works to deliver industry-leading technology solutions. Other responsibilities include, ownership of Oracle's innovative HCM solutions across JAPAC and enabling organisations to transform and modernise their workforce tools. Follow him on Twitter @aaronjgreen

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• Looking into the jQuery LazyLoad Plugin

  - by nikolaosk

  I have been using JQuery for a couple of years now and it has helped me to solve many problems on the client side of web development.  You can find all my posts about JQuery in this link. In this post I will be providing you with a hands-on example on the JQuery LazyLoad Plugin.If you want you can have a look at this post, where I describe the JQuery Cycle Plugin.You can find another post of mine talking about the JQuery Carousel Lite Plugin here. Another post of mine regarding the JQuery Image Zoom Plugin can be found here. You can have a look at the JQuery Overlays Plugin here . There are times when when I am asked to create a very long page with lots of images.My first thought is to enable paging on the proposed page. Imagine that we have 60 images on a page. There are performance concerns when we have so many images on a page. Paging can solve that problem if I am allowed to place only 5 images on a page.Sometimes the customer does not like the idea of the paging.Believe it or not some people find the idea of paging not attractive at all.In that case I need a way to only load the initial set of images and as the user scrolls down the page to load the rest.So as someone scrolls down new requests are made to the server and more images are fetched. I can accomplish that with the jQuery LazyLoad Plugin.This is just a plugin that delays loading of images in long web pages.The images that are outside of the viewport (visible part of web page) won't be loaded before the user scrolls to them. Using jQuery LazyLoad Plugin on long web pages containing many large images makes the page load faster. In this hands-on example I will be using Expression Web 4.0.This application is not a free application. You can use any HTML editor you like. You can use Visual Studio 2012 Express edition. You can download it here.  You can download this plugin from this link. I launch Expression Web 4.0 and then I type the following HTML markup (I am using HTML 5)<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en">  <head>    <title>Liverpool Legends</title>    <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-1.8.3.min.js"></script>        <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.lazyload.min.js" ></script></head>  <body>    <header>                <h1>Liverpool Legends</h1>    </header>        <div id="main">             <img src="barnes.JPG" width="800" height="1100" /><p />        <img src="dalglish.JPG" width="800" height="1100" /><p />                <img class="LiverpoolImage" src="loader.gif" data-original="fans.JPG" width="1200" height="900" /><p />        <img class="LiverpoolImage" src="loader.gif" data-original="lfc.JPG" width="1000" height="700" /><p />        <img class="LiverpoolImage" src="loader.gif" data-original="Liverpool-players.JPG" width="1100" height="900" /><p />        <img class="LiverpoolImage" src="loader.gif" data-original="steven_gerrard.JPG" width="1110" height="1000" /><p />        <img class="LiverpoolImage" src="loader.gif" data-original="robbie.JPG" width="1200" height="1000" /><p />          </div>            <footer>        <p>All Rights Reserved</p>      </footer>                    <script type="text/javascript">                $(function () {                    $("img.LiverpoolImage").lazyload();                });        </script>     </body>  </html> This is a very simple markup. I have  added references to the JQuery library (current version is 1.8.3) and the JQuery LazyLoad Plugin. Firstly, I add two images         <img src="barnes.JPG" width="800" height="1100" /><p />        <img src="dalglish.JPG" width="800" height="1100" /><p />  that will load immediately as soon as the page loads. Then I add the images that will not load unless they become active in the viewport. I have all my img tags pointing the src attribute towards a placeholder image. I’m using a blank 1×1 px grey image,loader.gif.The five images that will load as the user scrolls down the page follow.         <img class="LiverpoolImage" src="loader.gif" data-original="fans.JPG" width="1200" height="900" /><p />        <img class="LiverpoolImage" src="loader.gif" data-original="lfc.JPG" width="1000" height="700" /><p />        <img class="LiverpoolImage" src="loader.gif" data-original="Liverpool-players.JPG" width="1100" height="900" /><p />        <img class="LiverpoolImage" src="loader.gif" data-original="steven_gerrard.JPG" width="1110" height="1000" /><p />        <img class="LiverpoolImage" src="loader.gif" data-original="robbie.JPG" width="1200" height="1000" /><p /> Then we need to rename the image src to point towards the proper image placeholder. The full image URL goes into the data-original attribute.The Javascript code that makes it all happen follows. We need to make a call to the JQuery LazyLoad Plugin. We add the script just before we close the body element.         <script type="text/javascript">                $(function () {                    $("img.LiverpoolImage").lazyload();                });        </script>We can change the code above to incorporate some effects.          <script type="text/javascript">  $("img.LiverpoolImage").lazyload({    effect: "fadeIn"  });    </script> That is all I need to write to achieve lazy loading. It it true that you can do so much with less!!I view my simple page in Internet Explorer 10 and it works as expected. I have tested this simple solution in all major browsers and it works fine. You can test it yourself and see the results in your favorite browser. Hope it helps!!!

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• PASS Summit 2010 BI Workshop Feedbacks

  - by Davide Mauri

  As many other speakers already did, I’d like to share with the SQL Community the feedback of my PASS Summit 2010 Workshop. For those who were not there, my workshop was the “BI From A-Z” and the main objective of that workshop was to introduce people in the BI world not only from a technical point of view but insist a lot on the methodological and “engineered” approach. The will to put more engineering in the IT (and specially in the BI field) is something that has been growing stronger and stronger in me every day for of this last 5 years since is simply envy the fact that Airbus, Fincatieri, BMW (just to name a few) can create very complex machine “just” using putting people together and giving them some rules to follow (Of course this is an oversimplification but I think you get what I mean). The key point of engineering is that, after having defined the project blueprint, you have the possibility to give to a huge number of people, the rules to follow, the correct tools in order to implement the rules easily and semi-automatically and a way to measure the quality of the results. Could this be done in IT? Very big question, so my scope is now limited to BI. So that’s the main point of my workshop: and entry-level approach to BI (level was 200) in order to allow attendees to know the basics, to understand what tools they should use for which purpose and, above all, a set of rules and tools in order to make a BI solution scalable in terms of people working on it, while still maintaining a very good quality. All done not focusing only on the practice but explaining the theory behind to see how it can help *a lot* to build a correct solution despite the technology used to implement it. The idea is to reach a point where more then 70% of the work done to create a BI solution can be reused even if technologies changes. This is a very demanding challenge nowadays with the coming of Denali and its column-aligned storage and the shiny-new DAX language. As you may understand I was looking forward to get the feedback since you may have noticed that there’s a lot of “architectural” stuff in IT but really nothing on “engineering”. So how the session could be perceived by the attendees was really unknown to me. The feedback could also give a good indication if the need of more “engineering” is something I feel only by myself or if is something more broad. I’m very happy to be able to say that the overall score of 4.75 put my workshop in the TOP 20 session (on near 200 sessions)! Here’s the detailed evaluations: How would you rate the usefulness of the information presented in your day-to-day environment? 4.75 Answer:    # of Responses 3    1         4    12        5    42               How would you rate the Speaker's presentation skills? 4.80 Answer:    # of Responses 3 : 1         4 : 9         5 : 45               How would you rate the Speaker's knowledge of the subject? 4.95 Answer:    # of Responses 4 :  3         5 : 52               How would you rate the accuracy of the session title, description and experience level to the actual session? 4.75 Answer:    # of Responses 3 : 2         4 : 10         5 : 43               How would you rate the amount of time allocated to cover the topic/session? 4.44 Answer:    # of Responses 3 : 7         4 : 17        5 : 31               How would you rate the quality of the presentation materials? 4.62 Answer:    # of Responses 4 : 21        5 : 34 The comments where all very positive. Many of them asked for more time on the subject (or to shorten the very last topics). I’ll make treasure of these comments and will review the content accordingly. We’ll organize a two-day classes on this topic, where also more examples will be shown and some arguments will be explained more deeply. I’d just like to answer a comment that asks how much of what I shown is “universally applicable”. I can tell you that all of our BI project follow these rules and they’ve been applied to different markets (Insurance, Fashion, GDO) with different people and different teams and they allowed us to be “Adaptive” against the customer. The more the rules are well defined and the more there are tools that supports their implementations, the easier is to add new people to the project and to add or change solution features. Think of a car. How come that almost any mechanic can help you to fix a problem? Because they know what to expect. Because there a rules that allow them to identify the problem without having to discover each time how the car has been implemented build. And this is of course also true for car upgrades/improvements. Last but not least: thanks a lot to everyone for coming!

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• Benefits of Behavior Driven Development

  - by Aligned

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Aligned/archive/2013/07/26/benefits-of-behavior-driven-development.aspxContinuing my previous article on BDD, I wanted to point out some benefits of BDD and since BDD is an extension of Test Driven Development (TDD), you get those as well. I’ll add another article on some possible downsides of this approach. There are many articles about the benefits of TDD and they apply to BDD. I’ve pointed out some here and copied some of the main points for each article, but there are many more including the book The Art of Unit Testing by Roy Osherove. http://geekswithblogs.net/leesblog/archive/2008/04/30/the-benefits-of-test-driven-development.aspx (Lee Brandt) Stability Accountability Design Ability Separated Concerns Progress Indicator http://tddftw.com/benefits-of-tdd/ Help maintainers understand the intention behind the code Bring validation and proper data handling concerns to the forefront. Writing the tests first is fun. Better APIs come from writing testable code. TDD will make you a better developer. http://www.slideshare.net/dhelper/benefit-from-unit-testing-in-the-real-world (from Typemock). Take a look at the slides, especially the extra time required for TDD (slide 10) and the next one of the bugs avoided using TDD (slide 11). Less bugs (slide 11) about testing and development (13) Increase confidence in code (14) Fearlessly change your code (14) Document Requirements (14) also see http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2013/06/01/roc-rocks.aspx Discover usability issues early (14) All these points and articles are great and there are many more. The following are my additions to the benefits of BDD from using it in real projects for my company. July 2013 on MSDN - Behavior-Driven Design with SpecFlow Scott Allen did a very informative TDD and MVC module, but to me he is doing BDDCompile and Execute Requirements in Microsoft .NET ~ Video from TechEd 2012 Communication I was working through a complicated task that the decision tree kept growing. After writing out the Given, When, Then of the scenario, I was able tell QA what I had worked through for their initial test cases. They were able to add from there. It is also useful to use this language with other developers, managers, or clients to help make informed decisions on if it meets the requirements or if it can simplified to save time (money). Thinking through solutions, before starting to code This was the biggest benefit to me. I like to jump into coding to figure out the problem. Many times I don't understand my path well enough and have to do some parts over. A past supervisor told me several times during reviews that I need to get better at seeing "the forest for the trees". When I sit down and write out the behavior that I need to implement, I force myself to think things out further and catch scenarios before they get to QA. A co-worker that is new to BDD and we’ve been using it in our new project for the last 6 months, said “It really clarifies things”. It took him awhile to understand it all, but now he’s seeing the value of this approach (yes there are some downsides, but that is a different issue). Developers’ Confidence This is huge for me. With tests in place, my confidence grows that I won’t break code that I’m not directly changing. In the past, I’ve worked on projects with out tests and we would frequently find regression bugs (or worse the users would find them). That isn’t fun. We don’t catch all problems with the tests, but when QA catches one, I can write a test to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It’s also good for Releasing code, telling your manager that it’s good to go. As time goes on and the code gets older, how confident are you that checking in code won’t break something somewhere else? Merging code - pre release confidence If you’re merging code a lot, it’s nice to have the tests to help ensure you didn’t merge incorrectly. Interrupted work I had a task that I started and planned out, then was interrupted for a month because of different priorities. When I started it up again, and un-shelved my changes, I had the BDD specs and it helped me remember what I had figured out and what was left to do. It would have much more difficult without the specs and tests. Testing and verifying complicated scenarios Sometimes in the UI there are scenarios that get tricky, because there are a lot of steps involved (click here to open the dialog, enter the information, make sure it’s valid, when I click cancel it should do {x}, when I click ok it should close and do {y}, then do this, etc….). With BDD I can avoid some of the mouse clicking define the scenarios and have them re-run quickly, without using a mouse. UI testing is still needed, but this helps a bunch. The same can be true for tricky server logic. Documentation of Assumptions and Specifications The BDD spec tests (Jasmine or SpecFlow or other tool) also work as documentation and show what the original developer was trying to accomplish. It’s not a different Word document, so developers will keep this up to date, instead of letting it become obsolete. What happens if you leave the project (consulting, new job, etc) with no specs or at the least good comments in the code? Sometimes I think of a new scenario, so I add a failing spec and continue in the same stream of thought (don’t forget it because it was on a piece of paper or in a notepad). Then later I can come back and handle it and have it documented. Jasmine tests and JavaScript –> help deal with the non-typed system I like JavaScript, but I also dislike working with JavaScript. I miss C# telling me if a property doesn’t actually exist at build time. I like the idea of TypeScript and hope to use it more in the future. I also use KnockoutJs, which has observables that need to be called with ending (), since the observable is a function. It’s hard to remember when to use () or not and the Jasmine specs/tests help ensure the correct usage.   This should give you an idea of the benefits that I see in using the BDD approach. I’m sure there are more. It talks a lot of practice, investment and experimentation to figure out how to approach this and to get comfortable with it. I agree with Scott Allen in the video I linked above “Remember that TDD can take some practice. So if you're not doing test-driven design right now? You can start and practice and get better. And you'll reach a point where you'll never want to get back.”

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, October 20, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, October 20, 2013Popular ReleasesKerbalAlarmClock: v2.6.1.0 Release: Version 2.6.1.0 Recompiled it for 0.21 Added Crew Alarms (track Kerbal rather than Vessel) Added Distance Target Alarms - distance from target vessel or altitude above planet Added Launch Rendezvous Alarm (under Ascending/Descending Node for Landed craft) - MechJeb2 code - thanks r4m0n Allow restoration of Nodes that you have passed (useful for interplanetary burns) Added missing Dres Transfer Model data - thanks Voneiden Added view only version of Alarm clock to both Space Center...MSBuild Extension Pack: October 2013: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack October 2013 release provides a collection of over 480 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GUI...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.49: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImageTeam.org links NEW: Added Support for "ImgNext.com" links NEW: Added Support for "HostUrImage.com" links NEW: Added Support for "3XVintage.com" linksMedia Companion: Media Companion MC3.583b: As before release but fixed for no movie poster sourcesNew* Both - Added 'An' as option to ignore in title * Movie - Renaming - added %Z - Sorttitle to Legend * Movie - Renaming - added %O - Audio Channels to Legend * Movie - Remove a poster source from priority list. Reset List back to defaults. * Made Media Companion truly portable application. Fixed* Movie - browse for Poster Or Fanart, allows for jpg, tbn, png and bmp images * Movie - Alt Fanart Browser - Url or Browse window now fully...MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.3.1: Release 1.11.3.1 ================ = New Features = ================ Added markers for Copper Cache, Silver Cache and the Enchanted Sword. ============= = Bug Fixes = ============= Use Official Colors now no longer tries to change the Draw Wires option instead. World reading was breaking for people with a stock 1.2 Terraria version. Changed world name reading so it does not crash the program if you load MoreTerra while Terraria is saving the world. =================== = Feature Removal = =...patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: Cloud Design Patterns: 1st drop of Cloud Design Patterns project. It contains 14 patterns with 6 related guidance.Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows and WP (v1.3): Includes all changes in v1.3 beta 1 and v1.3 beta 2 Support for Windows 8.1 RTM and VS2013 RTM Xaml: New property: AutoLoadPluginTypes to help control which stock plugins are loaded by default (requires AutoLoadPlugins = true). Support for SystemMediaTransportControls on Windows 8.1 JS: Support for visual markers in the timeline. JS: Support for markers collection and markerreached event. JS: New ChaptersPlugin to automatically populate timeline with chapter tracks. JS: Audio an...Json.NET: Json.NET 5.0 Release 8: Fix - Fixed not writing string quotes when QuoteName is falsePowerShell Community Extensions: 3.1 Production: PowerShell Community Extensions 3.1 Release NotesOct 17, 2013 This version of PSCX supports Windows PowerShell 3.0 and 4.0 See the ReleaseNotes.txt download above for more information.SQL Power Doc: Version 1.0.2.1: Misc. bug fixes Added logic to resolve members of a Windows Group server login Added columns to Excel workbooks to show definitions for server permissions, server roles, database permissions, and database rolesSocial Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.9): This new version includes: - Download latest status update and use it as vertex tooltip - Limit the timelines to parse to me, my friends or both - Fixed some reported bugs about the fan page and group importer - Fixed the login bug reported latelyTerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v7.1 [Terraria Inventory Editor]: You can now backspace in number fields Items added in 1.2.0.3 no longer corrupt player files Buff durations capped at 9999999 Item stacks capped at 9999999 Version info added Prefix IDs corrected Shoe and Eye color box are now properly clickable Moved Bank and Safe into their own tab Users will now be notified of new updatesPython Tools for Visual Studio: 2.0: PTVS 2.0 We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.0 RTM. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, Edit/Intellisense/Debug/Profile, Cloud, IPython, and cross platform and cross language debugging support. QUICK VIDEO OVERVIEW For a quick overview of the general IDE experience, please watch this v...CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.8.2: Solved scrolling problem after DocumentFormatting Implemented "format as you type" --- To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.09: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.Sandcastle Help File Builder: SHFB v1.9.8.0 with Visual Studio Package: General InformationIMPORTANT: On some systems, the content of the ZIP file is blocked and the installer may fail to run. Before extracting it, right click on the ZIP file, select Properties, and click on the Unblock button if it is present in the lower right corner of the General tab in the properties dialog. This new release contains bug fixes and feature enhancements. There are some potential breaking changes in this release as some features of the Help File Builder have been moved into...C++ REST SDK (codename "Casablanca"): C++ REST SDK 1.3.0: This release fixes multiple customer reported issues as well as the following: Full support for Dev12 binaries and project files Full support for Windows XP New sample highlighting the Client and Server APIs : BlackJack Expose underlying native handle to set custom options on http_client Improvements to Listener Library Note: Dev10 binaries have been dropped as of this release, however the Dev10 project files are still available in the Source CodeAD ACL Scanner: 1.3.2: Minor bug fixed: Powershell 4.0 will report: Select—Object: Parameter cannot be processed because the parameter name p is ambiguous.Fast YouTube Downloader: YouTube Downloader 2.2.0: YouTube Downloader 2.2.0VidCoder: 1.5.8 Beta: Added hardware acceleration options: Bicubic OpenCL scaling algorithm, QSV decoding/encoding and DXVA decoding. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5834. Updated VidCoder setup icon. Fixed crash when choosing the mp4v2 container on x86 and opening on x64. Warning: the hardware acceleration features require specific hardware or file types to work correctly: QSV: Need an Intel processor that supports Quick Sync Video encoding, with a monitor hooked up to the Intel HD Graphics output and the lat...New ProjectsAdd2Nums: Add2Nums is a VB.NET project that takes 2 numbers, computes their sum and outputs the result. Developed by Justin Mifsud as part of Assignment 1 (7COM0152)Athir: GPAO El_AthirCS-MIC - C# Math Input Control: CS-MIC is a .NET library written in C# designed to give developers easy access to expression parsing.HLS Video Player: An open source over-the-network video player for HLS (Hinkle Light Show)Project Stark: This is a secret project available only to the project owners for the time being.Run ++: Run Plus Plus is a tool that enables you to custom the commands in the "Run" dialog.SimpleAddition: This is a simple ASP.NET in VB.NET page that allows users to enter 2 numbers, and display their sum. SWE 681 Go Fish: Project

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• Are your personal insecurities screwing up your internal communications?

  - by Lucy Boyes

  I do some internal comms as part of my job. Quite a lot of it involves talking to people about stuff. I’m spending the next couple of weeks talking to lots of people about internal comms itself, because we haven’t done a lot of audience/user feedback gathering, and it turns out that if you talk to people about how they feel and what they think, you get some pretty interesting insights (and an idea of what to do next that isn’t just based on guesswork and generalising from self). Three things keep coming up from talking to people about what we suck at  in terms of internal comms. And, as far as I can tell, they’re all examples where personal insecurity on the part of the person doing the communicating makes the experience much worse for the people on the receiving end. 1. Spending time telling people how you’re going to do something, not what you’re doing and why Imagine you’ve got to give an update to a lot of people who don’t work in your area or department but do have an interest in what you’re doing (either because they want to know because they’re curious or because they need to know because it’s going to affect their work too). You don’t want to look bad at your job. You want to make them think you’ve got it covered – ideally because you do*. And you want to reassure them that there’s lots of exciting work going on in your area to make [insert thing of choice] happen to [insert thing of choice] so that [insert group of people] will be happy. That’s great! You’re doing a good job and you want to tell people about it. This is good comms stuff right here. However, you’re slightly afraid you might secretly be stupid or lazy or incompetent. And you’re exponentially more afraid that the people you’re talking to might think you’re stupid or lazy or incompetent. Or pointless. Or not-adding-value. Or whatever the thing that’s the worst possible thing to be in your company is. So you open by mentioning all the stuff you’re going to do, spending five minutes or so making sure that everyone knows that you’re DOING lots of STUFF. And the you talk for the rest of the time about HOW you’re going to do the stuff, because that way everyone will know that you’ve thought about this really hard and done tons of planning and had lots of great ideas about process and that you’ve got this one down. That’s the stuff you’ve got to say, right? To prove you’re not fundamentally worthless as a human being? Well, maybe. But probably not. See, the people who need to know how you’re going to do the stuff are the people doing the stuff. And those are the people in your area who you’ve (hopefully-please-for-the-love-of-everything-holy) already talked to in depth about how you’re going to do the thing (because else how could they help do it?). They are the only people who need to know the how**. It’s the difference between strategy and tactics. The people outside of your bubble of stuff-doing need to know the strategy – what it is that you’re doing, why, where you’re going with it, etc. The people on the ground with you need the strategy and the tactics, because else they won’t know how to do the stuff. But the outside people don’t really need the tactics at all. Don’t bother with the how unless your audience needs it. They probably don’t. It might make you feel better about yourself, but it’s much more likely that Bob and Jane are thinking about how long this meeting has gone on for already than how personally impressive and definitely-not-an-idiot you are for knowing how you’re going to do some work. Feeling marginally better about yourself (but, let’s face it, still insecure as heck) is not worth the cost, which in this case is the alienation of your audience. 2. Talking for too long about stuff This is kinda the same problem as the previous problem, only much less specific, and I’ve more or less covered why it’s bad already. Basic motivation: to make people think you’re not an idiot. What you do: talk for a very long time about what you’re doing so as to make it sound like you know what you’re doing and lots about it. What your audience wants: the shortest meaningful update. Some of this is a kill your darlings problem – the stuff you’re doing that seems really nifty to you seems really nifty to you, and thus you want to share it with everyone to show that you’re a smart person who thinks up nifty things to do. The downside to this is that it’s mostly only interesting to you – if other people don’t need to know, they likely also don’t care. Think about how you feel when someone is talking a lot to you about a lot of stuff that they’re doing which is at best tangentially interesting and/or relevant. You’re probably not thinking that they’re really smart and clearly know what they’re doing (unless they’re talking a lot and being really engaging about it, which is not the same as talking a lot). You’re probably thinking about something totally unrelated to the thing they’re talking about. Or the fact that you’re bored. You might even – and this is the opposite of what they’re hoping to achieve by talking a lot about stuff – be thinking they’re kind of an idiot. There’s another huge advantage to paring down what you’re trying to say to the barest possible points – it clarifies your thinking. The lightning talk format, as well as other formats which limit the time and/or number of slides you have to say a thing, are really good for doing this. It’s incredibly likely that your audience in this case (the people who need to know some things about your thing but not all the things about your thing) will get everything they need to know from five minutes of you talking about it, especially if trying to condense ALL THE THINGS into a five-minute talk has helped you get clear in your own mind what you’re doing, what you’re trying to say about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. The bonus of this is that by being clear in your thoughts and in what you say, and in not taking up lots of people’s time to tell them stuff they don’t really need to know, you actually come across as much, much smarter than the person who talks for half an hour or more about things that are semi-relevant at best. 3. Waiting until you’ve got every detail sorted before announcing a big change to the people affected by it This is the worst crime on the list. It’s also human nature. Announcing uncertainty – that something important is going to happen (big reorganisation, product getting canned, etc.) but you’re not quite sure what or when or how yet – is scary. There are risks to it. Uncertainty makes people anxious. It might even paralyse them. You can’t run a business while you’re figuring out what to do if you’ve paralysed everyone with fear over what the future might bring. And you’re scared that they might think you’re not the right person to be in charge of [thing] if you don’t even know what you’re doing with it. Best not to say anything until you know exactly what’s going to happen and you can reassure them all, right? Nope. The people who are going to be affected by whatever it is that you don’t quite know all the details of yet aren’t stupid***. You wouldn’t have hired them if they were. They know something’s up because you’ve got your guilty face on and you keep pulling people into meeting rooms and looking vaguely worried. Here’s the deal: it’s a lot less stressful for everyone (including you) if you’re up front from the beginning. We took this approach during a recent company-wide reorganisation and got really positive feedback. People would much, much rather be told that something is going to happen but you’re not entirely sure what it is yet than have you wait until it’s all fixed up and then fait accompli the heck out of them. They will tell you this themselves if you ask them. And here’s why: by waiting until you know exactly what’s going on to communicate, you remove any agency that the people that the thing is going to happen to might otherwise have had. I know you’re scared that they might get scared – and that’s natural and kind of admirable – but it’s also patronising and infantilising. Ask someone whether they’d rather work on a project which has an openly uncertain future from the beginning, or one where everything’s great until it gets shut down with no forewarning, and very few people are going to tell you they’d prefer the latter. Uncertainty is humanising. It’s you admitting that you don’t have all the answers, which is great, because no one does. It allows you to be consultative – you can actually ask other people what they think and how they feel and what they’d like to do and what they think you should do, and they’ll thank you for it and feel listened to and respected as people and colleagues. Which is a really good reason to start talking to them about what’s going on as soon as you know something’s going on yourself. All of the above assumes you actually care about talking to the people who work with you and for you, and that you’d like to do the right thing by them. If that’s not the case, you can cheerfully disregard the advice here, but if it is, you might want to think about the ways above – and the inevitable countless other ways – that making internal communication about you and not about your audience could actually be doing the people you’re trying to communicate with a huge disservice. So take a deep breath and talk. For five minutes or so. About the important things. Not the other things. As soon as you possibly can. And you’ll be fine.   *Of course you do. You’re good at your job. Don’t worry. **This might not always be true, but it is most of the time. Other people who need to know the how will either be people who you’ve already identified as needing-to-know and thus part of the same set as the people in you’re area you’ve already discussed this with, or else they’ll ask you. But don’t bring this stuff up unless someone asks for it, because most of the people in the audience really don’t care and you’re wasting their time. ***I mean, they might be. But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they’re not.

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• How to begin? Windows 8 Development

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Ok. I convinced you in my last post to do some Win8 development. You want a piece of that cake, or whatever your reasons may be. Good! Welcome to the club! Now let me ask you a question: what are you going to write? Ah. That’s the big one, isn’t it? What indeed? If you have been creating applications for computers before you’re in for quite a shock. The way people perceive apps on a tablet is quite different from what we know as applications. There’s a reason we call them apps instead of applications! Yes, technically they are applications but we don’t call them apps only because it sounds cool. The abbreviated form of the word applications itself is a pointer. Apps are small. Apps are focused. Apps are more lightweight. Apps do one thing but they do that one thing extremely good. In the ‘old’ days we wrote huge systems. We build ecosystems of services, screens, databases and more to create a system that provides value for the user. Think about it: what application do you use most at work? Can you in one sentence describe what it is, or what it does and yet still distinctively describe its purpose? I doubt you can. Let’s have a look at Outlouk. We all know it and we all love or hate it. But what is it? A mail program? No, there’s so much more there: calendar, contacts, RSS feeds and so on. Some call it a ‘collaboration’  application but that’s not really true as well. After all, why should a collaboration application give me my schedule for the day? I think the best way to describe Outlook is “client for Exchange”  although that isn’t accurate either. Anyway: Outlook is a great application but it’s not an ‘app’ and therefor not very suitable for WinRT. Ok. Disclaimer here: yes, you can write big applications for WinRT. Some will. But that’s not what 99.9% of the developers will do. So I am stating here that big applications are not meant for WinRT. If 0.01% of the developers think that this is nonsense then they are welcome to go ahead but for the majority here this is not what we’re talking about. So: Apps are small, lightweight and good at what they do but only at that. If you’re a Phone developer you already know that: Phone apps on any platform fit the description I have above. If you’ve ever worked in a large cooperation before you might have seen one of these before: the Mission Statement. It’s supposed to be a oneliner that sums up what the company is supposed to do. Funny enough: although this doesn’t work for large companies it does work for defining your app. A mission statement for an app describes what it does. If it doesn’t fit in the mission statement then your app is going to get to big and will fail. A statement like this should be in the following style “<your app name> is the best app to <describe single task>” Fill in the blanks, write it and go! Mmm.. not really. There are some things there we need to think about. But the statement is a very, very important one. If you cannot fit your app in that line you’re preparing to fail. Your app will become to big, its purpose will be unclear and it will be hard to use. People won’t download it and those who do will give it a bad rating therefor preventing that huge success you’ve been dreaming about. Stick to the statement! Ok, let’s give it a try: “PlanesAreCool” is the best app to do planespotting in the field. You might have seen these people along runways of airports: taking photographs of airplanes and noting down their numbers and arrival- and departure times. We are going to help them out with our great app! If you look at the statement, can you guess what it does? I bet you can. If you find out it isn’t clear enough of if it’s too broad, refine it. This is probably the most important step in the development of your app so give it enough time! So. We’ve got the statement. Print it out, stick it to the wall and look at it. What does it tell you? If you see this, what do you think the app does? Write that down. Sit down with some friends and talk about it. What do they expect from an app like this? Write that down as well. Brainstorm. Make a list of features. This is mine: Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. Now, I must make it clear that I am not a planespotter nor do I know what one does. So if the above list makes no sense, I apologize. There is a lesson: write apps for stuff you know about…. First of all, let’s look at our statement and then go through the list of features. Remove everything that has nothing to do with that statement! If you end up with an empty list, try again with both steps. Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. That's better. The things I removed could be pretty useful to a plane spotter and could be fun to write. But do they match the statement? I said that the app is for spotting in the field, so “look up airfields” doesn’t belong there: I know where I am so why look it up? And the same goes for inviting friends or looking up the weather conditions for tomorrow. I am at the airfield right now, looking through my binoculars at the planes. I know the weather now and I don’t care about tomorrow. If you feel the items you’ve crossed out are valuable, then why not write another app? One that says “SpotNoter” is the best app for preparing a day of spotting with my friends. That’s a different app! Remember: Win8 apps are small and very good at doing ONE thing, and one thing only! If you have made that list, it’s time to prepare the navigation of your app. The navigation is how users see your app and how they use it. We’ll do that next time!

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• Windows Phone 7 : Dragging and flicking UI controls

  - by TechTwaddle

  Who would want to flick and drag UI controls!? There might not be many use cases but I think some concepts here are worthy of a post. So we will create a simple silverlight application for windows phone 7, containing a canvas element on which we’ll place a button control and an image and then, as the title says, drag and flick the controls. Here’s Mainpage.xaml, <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Transparent">   <Grid.RowDefinitions>     <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/>     <RowDefinition Height="*"/>   </Grid.RowDefinitions>     <!--TitlePanel contains the name of the application and page title-->   <StackPanel x:Name="TitlePanel" Grid.Row="0" Margin="12,17,0,28">     <TextBlock x:Name="ApplicationTitle" Text="KINETICS" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextNormalStyle}"/>     <TextBlock x:Name="PageTitle" Text="drag and flick" Margin="9,-7,0,0" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextTitle1Style}"/>   </StackPanel>     <!--ContentPanel - place additional content here-->   <Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" >     <Canvas x:Name="MainCanvas" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch">       <Canvas.Background>         <LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0 0" EndPoint="0 1">           <GradientStop Offset="0" Color="Black"/>           <GradientStop Offset="1.5" Color="BlanchedAlmond"/>         </LinearGradientBrush>       </Canvas.Background>     </Canvas>   </Grid> </Grid> the second row in the main grid contains a canvas element, MainCanvas, with its horizontal and vertical alignment set to stretch so that it occupies the entire grid. The canvas background is a linear gradient brush starting with Black and ending with BlanchedAlmond. We’ll add the button and image control to this canvas at run time. Moving to Mainpage.xaml.cs the Mainpage class contains the following members, public partial class MainPage : PhoneApplicationPage {     Button FlickButton;     Image FlickImage;       FrameworkElement ElemToMove = null;     double ElemVelX, ElemVelY;       const double SPEED_FACTOR = 60;       DispatcherTimer timer; FlickButton and FlickImage are the controls that we’ll add to the canvas. ElemToMove, ElemVelX and ElemVelY will be used by the timer callback to move the ui control. SPEED_FACTOR is used to scale the velocities of ui controls. Here’s the Mainpage constructor, // Constructor public MainPage() {     InitializeComponent();       AddButtonToCanvas();       AddImageToCanvas();       timer = new DispatcherTimer();     timer.Interval = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(35);     timer.Tick += new EventHandler(OnTimerTick); } We’ll look at those AddButton and AddImage functions in a moment. The constructor initializes a timer which fires every 35 milliseconds, this timer will be started after the flick gesture completes with some inertia. Back to AddButton and AddImage functions, void AddButtonToCanvas() {     LinearGradientBrush brush;     GradientStop stop1, stop2;       Random rand = new Random(DateTime.Now.Millisecond);       FlickButton = new Button();     FlickButton.Content = "";     FlickButton.Width = 100;     FlickButton.Height = 100;       brush = new LinearGradientBrush();     brush.StartPoint = new Point(0, 0);     brush.EndPoint = new Point(0, 1);       stop1 = new GradientStop();     stop1.Offset = 0;     stop1.Color = Colors.White;       stop2 = new GradientStop();     stop2.Offset = 1;     stop2.Color = (Application.Current.Resources["PhoneAccentBrush"] as SolidColorBrush).Color;       brush.GradientStops.Add(stop1);     brush.GradientStops.Add(stop2);       FlickButton.Background = brush;       Canvas.SetTop(FlickButton, rand.Next(0, 400));     Canvas.SetLeft(FlickButton, rand.Next(0, 200));       MainCanvas.Children.Add(FlickButton);       //subscribe to events     FlickButton.ManipulationDelta += new EventHandler<ManipulationDeltaEventArgs>(OnManipulationDelta);     FlickButton.ManipulationCompleted += new EventHandler<ManipulationCompletedEventArgs>(OnManipulationCompleted); } this function is basically glorifying a simple task. After creating the button and setting its height and width, its background is set to a linear gradient brush. The direction of the gradient is from top towards bottom and notice that the second stop color is the PhoneAccentColor, which changes along with the theme of the device. The line,     stop2.Color = (Application.Current.Resources["PhoneAccentBrush"] as SolidColorBrush).Color; does the magic of extracting the PhoneAccentBrush from application’s resources, getting its color and assigning it to the gradient stop. AddImage function is straight forward in comparison, void AddImageToCanvas() {     Random rand = new Random(DateTime.Now.Millisecond);       FlickImage = new Image();     FlickImage.Source = new BitmapImage(new Uri("/images/Marble.png", UriKind.Relative));       Canvas.SetTop(FlickImage, rand.Next(0, 400));     Canvas.SetLeft(FlickImage, rand.Next(0, 200));       MainCanvas.Children.Add(FlickImage);       //subscribe to events     FlickImage.ManipulationDelta += new EventHandler<ManipulationDeltaEventArgs>(OnManipulationDelta);     FlickImage.ManipulationCompleted += new EventHandler<ManipulationCompletedEventArgs>(OnManipulationCompleted); } The ManipulationDelta and ManipulationCompleted handlers are same for both the button and the image. OnManipulationDelta() should look familiar, a similar implementation was used in the previous post, void OnManipulationDelta(object sender, ManipulationDeltaEventArgs args) {     FrameworkElement Elem = sender as FrameworkElement;       double Left = Canvas.GetLeft(Elem);     double Top = Canvas.GetTop(Elem);       Left += args.DeltaManipulation.Translation.X;     Top += args.DeltaManipulation.Translation.Y;       //check for bounds     if (Left < 0)     {         Left = 0;     }     else if (Left > (MainCanvas.ActualWidth - Elem.ActualWidth))     {         Left = MainCanvas.ActualWidth - Elem.ActualWidth;     }       if (Top < 0)     {         Top = 0;     }     else if (Top > (MainCanvas.ActualHeight - Elem.ActualHeight))     {         Top = MainCanvas.ActualHeight - Elem.ActualHeight;     }       Canvas.SetLeft(Elem, Left);     Canvas.SetTop(Elem, Top); } all it does is calculate the control’s position, check for bounds and then set the top and left of the control. OnManipulationCompleted() is more interesting because here we need to check if the gesture completed with any inertia and if it did, start the timer and continue to move the ui control until it comes to a halt slowly, void OnManipulationCompleted(object sender, ManipulationCompletedEventArgs args) {     FrameworkElement Elem = sender as FrameworkElement;       if (args.IsInertial)     {         ElemToMove = Elem;           Debug.WriteLine("Linear VelX:{0:0.00}  VelY:{1:0.00}", args.FinalVelocities.LinearVelocity.X,             args.FinalVelocities.LinearVelocity.Y);           ElemVelX = args.FinalVelocities.LinearVelocity.X / SPEED_FACTOR;         ElemVelY = args.FinalVelocities.LinearVelocity.Y / SPEED_FACTOR;           timer.Start();     } } ManipulationCompletedEventArgs contains a member, IsInertial, which is set to true if the manipulation was completed with some inertia. args.FinalVelocities.LinearVelocity.X and .Y will contain the velocities along the X and Y axis. We need to scale down these values so they can be used to increment the ui control’s position sensibly. A reference to the ui control is stored in ElemToMove and the velocities are stored as well, these will be used in the timer callback to access the ui control. And finally, we start the timer. The timer callback function is as follows, void OnTimerTick(object sender, EventArgs e) {     if (null != ElemToMove)     {         double Left, Top;         Left = Canvas.GetLeft(ElemToMove);         Top = Canvas.GetTop(ElemToMove);           Left += ElemVelX;         Top += ElemVelY;           //check for bounds         if (Left < 0)         {             Left = 0;             ElemVelX *= -1;         }         else if (Left > (MainCanvas.ActualWidth - ElemToMove.ActualWidth))         {             Left = MainCanvas.ActualWidth - ElemToMove.ActualWidth;             ElemVelX *= -1;         }           if (Top < 0)         {             Top = 0;             ElemVelY *= -1;         }         else if (Top > (MainCanvas.ActualHeight - ElemToMove.ActualHeight))         {             Top = MainCanvas.ActualHeight - ElemToMove.ActualHeight;             ElemVelY *= -1;         }           Canvas.SetLeft(ElemToMove, Left);         Canvas.SetTop(ElemToMove, Top);           //reduce x,y velocities gradually         ElemVelX *= 0.9;         ElemVelY *= 0.9;           //when velocities become too low, break         if (Math.Abs(ElemVelX) < 1.0 && Math.Abs(ElemVelY) < 1.0)         {             timer.Stop();             ElemToMove = null;         }     } } if ElemToMove is not null, we get the top and left values of the control and increment the values with their X and Y velocities. Check for bounds, and if the control goes out of bounds we reverse its velocity. Towards the end, the velocities are reduced by 10% every time the timer callback is called, and if the velocities reach too low values the timer is stopped and ElemToMove is made null. Here’s a short video of the program, the video is a little dodgy because my display driver refuses to run the animations smoothly. The flicks aren’t always recognised but the program should run well on an actual device (or a pc with better configuration), You can download the source code from here: ButtonDragAndFlick.zip

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• How do I implement SkyBox in xna 4.0 Reach Profile (for Windows Phone 7)?

  - by Biny

  I'm trying to Implement SkyBox in my phone game. Most of the samples in the web are for HiDef profile, and they are using custom effects (that not supported on Windows Phone). I've tried to follow this guide. But for some reason my SkyBox is not rendered. This is my SkyBox class: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Rocuna.Core; using Rocuna.GameEngine.Graphics; using Rocuna.GameEngine.Graphics.Components; namespace Rocuna.GameEngine.Extension.WP7.Graphics { /// <summary> /// Sky box element for phone games. /// </summary> public class SkyBox : SkyBoxBase { /// <summary> /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="SkyBoxBase"/> class. /// </summary> /// <param name="game">The Game that the game component should be attached to.</param> public SkyBox(TextureCube cube, Game game) : base(game) { Cube = cube; CubeFaces = new Texture2D[6]; PositionOffset = new Vector3(20, 20, 20); CreateGraphic(512); StripTexturesFromCube(); InitializeData(Game.GraphicsDevice); } #region Properties /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the position offset. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The position offset. /// </value> public Vector3 PositionOffset { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the position. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The position. /// </value> public Vector3 Position { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the cube. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The cube. /// </value> public TextureCube Cube { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the pixel array. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The pixel array. /// </value> public Color[] PixelArray { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the cube faces. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The cube faces. /// </value> public Texture2D[] CubeFaces { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the vertex buffer. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The vertex buffer. /// </value> public VertexBuffer VertexBuffer { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the index buffer. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The index buffer. /// </value> public IndexBuffer IndexBuffer { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the effect. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The effect. /// </value> public BasicEffect Effect { get; set; } #endregion protected override void LoadContent() { } public override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { var camera = Game.GetService<GraphicManager>().CurrentCamera; this.Position = camera.Position + PositionOffset; base.Update(gameTime); } public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { DrawOrder = int.MaxValue; var graphics = Effect.GraphicsDevice; graphics.DepthStencilState = new DepthStencilState() { DepthBufferEnable = false }; graphics.RasterizerState = new RasterizerState() { CullMode = CullMode.None }; graphics.BlendState = new BlendState(); graphics.SamplerStates[0] = SamplerState.AnisotropicClamp; graphics.SetVertexBuffer(VertexBuffer); graphics.Indices = IndexBuffer; Effect.Texture = CubeFaces[0]; Effect.CurrentTechnique.Passes[0].Apply(); graphics.DrawIndexedPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleList, 0, 0, _vertices.Count, 0, 2); Effect.Texture = CubeFaces[1]; Effect.CurrentTechnique.Passes[0].Apply(); graphics.DrawIndexedPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleList, 0, 0, _vertices.Count, 6, 2); Effect.Texture = CubeFaces[2]; Effect.CurrentTechnique.Passes[0].Apply(); graphics.DrawIndexedPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleList, 0, 0, _vertices.Count, 12, 2); Effect.Texture = CubeFaces[3]; Effect.CurrentTechnique.Passes[0].Apply(); graphics.DrawIndexedPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleList, 0, 0, _vertices.Count, 18, 2); Effect.Texture = CubeFaces[4]; Effect.CurrentTechnique.Passes[0].Apply(); graphics.DrawIndexedPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleList, 0, 0, _vertices.Count, 24, 2); Effect.Texture = CubeFaces[5]; Effect.CurrentTechnique.Passes[0].Apply(); graphics.DrawIndexedPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleList, 0, 0, _vertices.Count, 30, 2); base.Draw(gameTime); } #region Fields private List<VertexPositionNormalTexture> _vertices = new List<VertexPositionNormalTexture>(); private List<ushort> _indices = new List<ushort>(); #endregion #region Private methods private void InitializeData(GraphicsDevice graphicsDevice) { VertexBuffer = new VertexBuffer(graphicsDevice, typeof(VertexPositionNormalTexture), _vertices.Count, BufferUsage.None); VertexBuffer.SetData<VertexPositionNormalTexture>(_vertices.ToArray()); // Create an index buffer, and copy our index data into it. IndexBuffer = new IndexBuffer(graphicsDevice, typeof(ushort), _indices.Count, BufferUsage.None); IndexBuffer.SetData<ushort>(_indices.ToArray()); // Create a BasicEffect, which will be used to render the primitive. Effect = new BasicEffect(graphicsDevice); Effect.TextureEnabled = true; Effect.EnableDefaultLighting(); } private void CreateGraphic(float size) { Vector3[] normals = { Vector3.Right, Vector3.Left, Vector3.Up, Vector3.Down, Vector3.Backward, Vector3.Forward, }; Vector2[] textureCoordinates = { Vector2.One, Vector2.UnitY, Vector2.Zero, Vector2.UnitX, Vector2.Zero, Vector2.UnitX, Vector2.One, Vector2.UnitY, Vector2.Zero, Vector2.UnitX, Vector2.One, Vector2.UnitY, Vector2.Zero, Vector2.UnitX, Vector2.One, Vector2.UnitY, Vector2.UnitY, Vector2.Zero, Vector2.UnitX, Vector2.One, Vector2.UnitY, Vector2.Zero, Vector2.UnitX, Vector2.One, }; var index = 0; foreach (var normal in normals) { var side1 = new Vector3(normal.Z, normal.X, normal.Y); var side2 = Vector3.Cross(normal, side1); AddIndex(CurrentVertex + 0); AddIndex(CurrentVertex + 1); AddIndex(CurrentVertex + 2); AddIndex(CurrentVertex + 0); AddIndex(CurrentVertex + 2); AddIndex(CurrentVertex + 3); AddVertex((normal - side1 - side2) * size / 2, normal, textureCoordinates[index++]); AddVertex((normal - side1 + side2) * size / 2, normal, textureCoordinates[index++]); AddVertex((normal + side1 + side2) * size / 2, normal, textureCoordinates[index++]); AddVertex((normal + side1 - side2) * size / 2, normal, textureCoordinates[index++]); } } protected void StripTexturesFromCube() { PixelArray = new Color[Cube.Size * Cube.Size]; for (int s = 0; s < CubeFaces.Length; s++) { CubeFaces[s] = new Texture2D(Game.GraphicsDevice, Cube.Size, Cube.Size, false, SurfaceFormat.Color); switch (s) { case 0: Cube.GetData<Color>(CubeMapFace.PositiveX, PixelArray); CubeFaces[s].SetData<Color>(PixelArray); break; case 1: Cube.GetData(CubeMapFace.NegativeX, PixelArray); CubeFaces[s].SetData(PixelArray); break; case 2: Cube.GetData(CubeMapFace.PositiveY, PixelArray); CubeFaces[s].SetData(PixelArray); break; case 3: Cube.GetData(CubeMapFace.NegativeY, PixelArray); CubeFaces[s].SetData(PixelArray); break; case 4: Cube.GetData(CubeMapFace.PositiveZ, PixelArray); CubeFaces[s].SetData(PixelArray); break; case 5: Cube.GetData(CubeMapFace.NegativeZ, PixelArray); CubeFaces[s].SetData(PixelArray); break; } } } protected void AddVertex(Vector3 position, Vector3 normal, Vector2 textureCoordinates) { _vertices.Add(new VertexPositionNormalTexture(position, normal, textureCoordinates)); } protected void AddIndex(int index) { if (index > ushort.MaxValue) throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("index"); _indices.Add((ushort)index); } protected int CurrentVertex { get { return _vertices.Count; } } #endregion } }

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• Towards Ultra-Reusability for ADF - Adaptive Bindings

  - by Duncan Mills

  The task flow mechanism embodies one of the key value propositions of the ADF Framework, it's primary contribution being the componentization of your applications and implicitly the introduction of a re-use culture, particularly in large applications. However, what if we could do more? How could we make task flows even more re-usable than they are today? Well one great technique is to take advantage of a feature that is already present in the framework, a feature which I will call, for want of a better name, "adaptive bindings". What's an adaptive binding? well consider a simple use case.  I have several screens within my application which display tabular data which are all essentially identical, the only difference is that they happen to be based on different data collections (View Objects, Bean collections, whatever) , and have a different set of columns. Apart from that, however, they happen to be identical; same toolbar, same key functions and so on. So wouldn't it be nice if I could have a single parametrized task flow to represent that type of UI and reuse it? Hold on you say, great idea, however, to do that we'd run into problems. Each different collection that I want to display needs different entries in the pageDef file and: I want to continue to use the ADF Bindings mechanism rather than dropping back to passing the whole collection into the taskflow   If I do use bindings, there is no way I want to have to declare iterators and tree bindings for every possible collection that I might want the flow to handle  Ah, joy! I reply, no need to panic, you can just use adaptive bindings. Defining an Adaptive Binding  It's easiest to explain with a simple before and after use case.  Here's a basic pageDef definition for our familiar Departments table.  <executables> <iterator Binds="DepartmentsView1" DataControl="HRAppModuleDataControl" RangeSize="25"             id="DepartmentsView1Iterator"/> </executables> <bindings> <tree IterBinding="DepartmentsView1Iterator" id="DepartmentsView1">   <nodeDefinition DefName="oracle.demo.model.vo.DepartmentsView" Name="DepartmentsView10">     <AttrNames>       <Item Value="DepartmentId"/>         <Item Value="DepartmentName"/>         <Item Value="ManagerId"/>         <Item Value="LocationId"/>       </AttrNames>     </nodeDefinition> </tree> </bindings>  Here's the adaptive version: <executables> <iterator Binds="${pageFlowScope.voName}" DataControl="HRAppModuleDataControl" RangeSize="25"             id="TableSourceIterator"/> </executables> <bindings> <tree IterBinding="TableSourceIterator" id="GenericView"> <nodeDefinition Name="GenericViewNode"/> </tree> </bindings>  You'll notice three changes here.   Most importantly, you'll see that the hard-coded View Object name  that formally populated the iterator Binds attribute is gone and has been replaced by an expression (${pageFlowScope.voName}). This of course, is key, you can see that we can pass a parameter to the task flow, telling it exactly what VO to instantiate to populate this table! I've changed the IDs of the iterator and the tree binding, simply to reflect that they are now re-usable The tree binding itself has simplified and the node definition is now empty.  Now what this effectively means is that the #{node} map exposed through the tree binding will expose every attribute of the underlying iterator's collection - neat! (kudos to Eugene Fedorenko at this point who reminded me that this was even possible in his excellent "deep dive" session at OpenWorld  this year) Using the adaptive binding in the UI Now we have a parametrized  binding we have to make changes in the UI as well, first of all to reflect the new ID that we've assigned to the binding (of course) but also to change the column list from being a fixed known list to being a generic metadata driven set: <af:table value="#{bindings.GenericView.collectionModel}" rows="#{bindings.GenericView.rangeSize}"         fetchSize="#{bindings.GenericView.rangeSize}"           emptyText="#{bindings.GenericView.viewable ? 'No data to display.' : 'Access Denied.'}"           var="row" rowBandingInterval="0"           selectedRowKeys="#{bindings.GenericView.collectionModel.selectedRow}"           selectionListener="#{bindings.GenericView.collectionModel.makeCurrent}"           rowSelection="single" id="t1"> <af:forEach items="#{bindings.GenericView.attributeDefs}" var="def">   <af:column headerText="#{bindings.GenericView.labels[def.name]}" sortable="true"            sortProperty="#{def.name}" id="c1">     <af:outputText value="#{row[def.name]}" id="ot1"/>     </af:column>   </af:forEach> </af:table> Of course you are not constrained to a simple read only table here.  It's a normal tree binding and iterator that you are using behind the scenes so you can do all the usual things, but you can see the value of using ADFBC as the back end model as you have the rich pantheon of UI hints to use to derive things like labels (and validators and converters...)  One Final Twist  To finish on a high note I wanted to point out that you can take this even further and achieve the ultra-reusability I promised. Here's the new version of the pageDef iterator, see if you can notice the subtle change? <iterator Binds="{pageFlowScope.voName}"  DataControl="${pageFlowScope.dataControlName}" RangeSize="25"           id="TableSourceIterator"/>  Yes, as well as parametrizing the collection (VO) name, we can also parametrize the name of the data control. So your task flow can graduate from being re-usable within an application to being truly generic. So if you have some really common patterns within your app you can wrap them up and reuse then across multiple developments without having to dictate data control names, or connection names. This also demonstrates the importance of interacting with data only via the binding layer APIs. If you keep any code in the task flow generic in that way you can deal with data from multiple types of data controls, not just one flavour. Enjoy!

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