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• selected area to cut an image

  - by Oskar Marciniak

  Hi I would do the selected area to cut an image on picturebox control. I have the following code: using System; using System.Drawing; using System.Windows.Forms; namespace WindowsFormsApplication1 { public partial class Form1 : Form { private Rectangle rect; private Pen p; public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); } private void pictureBox1_Paint(object sender, PaintEventArgs e) { if (this.p == null) this.p = new Pen(Color.FromArgb(100, 200, 200, 200), 5); if (this.rect.Width > 0) e.Graphics.DrawRectangle(this.p, this.rect); } private void pictureBox1_MouseUp(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) { if (e.X < this.rect.X) { this.rect.Width = this.rect.X - e.X; this.rect.X = e.X; } else { this.rect.Width = e.X - this.rect.X; } if (e.Y < this.rect.Y) { this.rect.Height = this.rect.Y - e.Y; this.rect.Y = e.Y; } else { this.rect.Height = e.Y - this.rect.Y; } this.Invalidate(this.rect); } private void pictureBox1_MouseDown(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) { this.rect.X = e.X; this.rect.Y = e.Y; } } } It returns an error here: Application.Run(new Form1()); Why? thanks for all replies ;p

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• Using large transparent pictures as texture atlases

  - by azlisum

  i'm new to android programming and i'm trying to create a relatively big 2D game. I have to use lots of images and objects in my game so I decided to use OpenGL ES. I have several texture atlases, all of them saved as png's because of the transparency. I also know, but i'm not sure why, that I have to use images, which height and width is multiple of two. I test my game on an old HTC Hero running Android 2.3.3. When my picture atlases are 512x512 each, my game has a frame rate of between 50 to 60 fps. When I use 1024x1024 non transparent png, there is no problem - the FPS is again between 50 to 60 fps. But when i decide to use a 1024x1024 transperent PNG's my frame rate drops to 4,5 fps. Could this be a problem related to the age of the device i'm using for testing? These are the OpenGL functions I use each loop to draw batches: gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D); gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_BLEND); gl.glBlendFunc(GL10.GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL10.GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA); //drawing happens here gl.glDisable(GL10.GL_BLEND); Thanks in advance :)

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• Voice Recognition Google API

  - by user2966744

  thanks for reading. I'm creating a simple web based drawing app that uses speech recognition. I have created a simple page, the project is on github here: https://github.com/a5hton/speechdraw It has a 16x16 pixel grid. I would like to be able to draw on this grid by using simple words. For example if you say "right", the pixel to the right will be colored black. If you say "down" the pixel below the last one will be colored black. You can say up, down, left or right and the corresponding pixels will be colored. Saying "erase" will switch to erase mode, colouring the pixels back to their original color. Saying "lift" will lift the pen off the page. Saying "draw" will enable the draw mode. Could you please help me work out how to make this happen. Please see the simple page at to get an understanding. Thank you! Cheers, Michael

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• java.awt -- when java outputs an image to my monitor (screen), where is the file that is output to the monitor card?

  - by user1405870

  Suppose that I am drawing a set of images using java graphics objects. Suppose that I java is outputting these images to my monitor. Where is the file or files that are sent to the monitor card (the graphical representation files). How can I take this file and save it to disk, or how can I take this file and write it to an array, or how can I take these files and combine the results of their output (to the monitor) into a single file for saving? I don't want to use a screen shot feature, I want to be able to redirect (xor capture also) the output to the monitor to some sort of byte-stream. I note that monitors are much better than semaphores, when you are talking about display capabilities; I don't need a counter example. I might not be asking the correct question. It might be that I want to capture the file while it is still in User Space, before it is put into 'Device Space'. I would like to try and capture the byte stream so that I can convert it to MPEG-4 format. I either need a streaming output from the MPEG-4 converter, coming from the streaming input, or else, I need to take static images at discrete times and convert the images. What format will the output from User Space be in? What format will the Device Space output be in? Try to keep speculation to a minimum. http://docs.oracle.com/javame/config/cdc/opt-pkgs/api/jsr927/index.html I guess that Java has made a means of displaying AWT objects on a television screen. Thank you. Ryan Zoerner

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• Windows 7 remains powered on when restarting

  - by BombDefused

  I'm running windows 7 x64 on an MSI P67A-GD53 motherboard, in an Antec P280 Super Midi Towercase with a Corsair 650w PSU. I've just installed a second instance of windows 7 x64 on a separate disk (this is to keep my games separate from my work OS). The problem is that it appears now that I cannot restart from either instance of Windows 7. The shut down command, and sleep commands work as expected. When I try to restart, the shutdown happens but the system never reboots. Everything remains powered on, until I hold down the power button to force the power off. Ithink (but am not 100% sure) this has only started since I installed the second OS, and am assuming this has something to do with the motherboard needing to know which OS to run up again? Some other forums I've read suggest that the PSU has a major role in restart and could be at fault. Changing the boot order of the disks in the BIOS does not change anything. Any suggestions greatfully recieved! Update: I now have a reproduceable issue: I think the secondary OS install may have been a red herring. It was when windows tried to reboot during the install that I noticed the issue. After playing around with installing drivers, and rebooting many many times, I have found that it is the OC genie setting on the MSI motherboard that seems to trigger the problem. This makes sense as I only started using the OC genie feature a couple of weeks ago, and probably hadn't used restart in that time. However... simply turning off OC genie does not make the issue go away. I have to turn off OC genie, shutdown, start enter bios, go to the "Save and Exit" menu "Restore Defaults" yes to "Load optimized defaults", which will reset to clear the problem. Now when the PC boots into windows, I can restart as normal (and from the OS on either HDD). I only know how to control the issue, and don't still know the root cause. I'd like to be able to use the OC genie function if anyone can suggest a why I'm seeing this problem. Could it be that I'm drawing too much power when using OC feature?

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• How to create NTFS partition in Linux to install Windows 7 from USB?

  - by Michal Stefanow

  I messed up with my computer and need help. Generally: install Windows 7 from USB. Problem: "setup was unable to create a new system partition" When first attempt to install Windows 7 failed I tried Linux live USB, installed distro to HDD, and erased all the existing partitions. Current state (fdisk -l): [writing from other computer so no copy and paste] /dev/sda1 305GB Linux /dev/sda2 7GB Extended /dev/sda5 7GB Linux Swam / Solaris To create a new, NTFS partition: fdisk /dev/sda n (for new) p (for primary) 3 (for partintion number) "No free sectors available" All the HDD was formatted couple of minutes before so there is a lot of free space but how to resize a parition? I cannot find an option for resizing in man fdisk. Some people say I should use gparted but my distro doesn't not contain this package. And my distro doesn't support wireless drivers so I have serious problems with downloading stuff. I tried also using cfdisk but any command results in: "cfdisk bad primary partition 1 partition ends in the final partial cylinder" I tried also removing partition 1 and then creating a new one (so there is no "no free sectors"). I'm receiving a warning: "Re-reading the partition table failed with error 16: Device or resource busy. The kernel still uses the old table. The new table will be used at the next reboot." After restating: "grub rescue, no known filesystem" It may indicate that some changes have been made BUT when running Windows 7 installed some another error: "Windows cannot be installed to Disk 0 Partition 1" More detailed: "Windows cannot be installed to this hard disk space. Windows must be installed to a partition formatted as NTFS." So formatting drive using Windows 7 installer BUT this time yet another error: "Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition. See the setup log files for more information" Apparently I cannot access logs (how?) and I am back to drawing board with my live USB (this time showing partition as HPFS/NTFS). Any suggestions how to install Windows 7? Should I reinstall Linux to HDD, erase existing partitions once again, and use Parted rather than gparted (parted is included in the distro). Or maybe should I create another bootable USB such as PartedMagic to painlessly create partitions? I just want to install Windows 7 from USB, my laptop is semi-operational and I am ready to receive some help regarding fdisk and creating NTFS partitions. UPDATE: I did as suggested (removed all the partitions) and tried to install in unallocated space. Tried to create a new partition and format it. Same error: "setup was unable to create a new system partition" Came to the conclusion it may have something to do with TrueCrypt I have recently installed. Right now trying to FIX MBR (as I haven't got possibility to create rescue disc without optical drive)

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• System won't boot: Gigabyte HD 7790 1GB OC GPU issue or Corsair VS550 PSU issue?

  - by MGOwen

  Installed a new GPU, and PC won't boot. Turn it on and: No monitor signal at all (tried HDMI and VGA via DVI, on 2 working monitors). CPU and GPU fans DO spin, but No system beeps, no sounds from drives (they might make a small noise in the first 1 second or so, but there's definitely no OS loading or anything like that) If hit "power off" button it turns off immediately (no holding down for 3 seconds like usual) If I put my old HD 5670 GPU back in, everything works fine. But (plot twist!) card is not totally dead. My friend put it in his PC, and it works fine (he even played a game for 15 minutes, no issues). He has a Corsair TX850 850W and a Gigabyte MB. So my main theory is: the GPU isn't getting enough power from the PSU. But is it: Bad PSU? Seems unlikely, since it works fine with the other GPU. Also, the PSU Is brand new and 550W (single 42A/504W 12V rail). Overkill for this GPU. Corsair is a decent brand, but maybe just mine is faulty? Bad GPU? Could it be drawing more power than it should be, somehow, or something? Supposedly HD 7790 needs only 21A/75W on the 12v rail, though this one is factory overclocked a bit... but should that triple the power requirement? Something else? Could there be a motherboard incompatibility somehow? Both MB and GPU are less than a year old and PCI Express 3.0 x16. Things I've tried: Re-seating the video card Testing PC with old GPU (works fine, same PCIe slot). Checked AMD's stated amp/watt requirements of a 7790 and my PSU (see above). My PSU can output twice the amps (single rail) and 5x the Wattage a 7790 needs. Here are the full specs: Gigabyte HD 7790 1GB OC GPU Corsair VS550 550W PSU 4GB RAM AsRock H61M U3S3 motherboard i3-2100 500GB SATA HDD (2007-ish) blu-ray drive (new) PCI 802.11g card Edit: Motherboard BIOS Update seems to have fixed it. (If anyone has same problem and it doesn't work, comment here).

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• AGENT: The World's Smartest Watch

  - by Rob Chartier

  AGENT: The World's Smartest Watch by Secret Labs + House of Horology Disclaimer: Most if not all of this content has been gleaned from the comments on the Kickstarter project page and comments section. Any discrepancies between this post and any documentation on agentwatches.com, kickstarter.com, etc.., those official sites take precedence. Overview The next generation smartwatch with brand-new technology. World-class developer tools, unparalleled battery life, Qi wireless charging. Kickstarter Page, Comments Funding period : May 21, 2013 - Jun 20, 2013 MSRP : $249 Other Urls http://www.agentwatches.com/ https://www.facebook.com/agentwatches http://twitter.com/agentwatches http://pinterest.com/agentwatches/ http://paper.li/robchartier/1371234640 Developer Story The first official launch of the preview SDK and emulator will happen on 20-Jun-2013.  All development will be done in Visual Studio 2012, using the .NET Micro Framework SDK 2.3.  The SDK will ship with the first round of the expected API for developers along with an emulator. With that said, there is no need to wait for the SDK.  You can download the tooling now and get started with Apps and Faces immediately.  The only thing that you will not be able to work with is the API; but for example, watch faces, you can start building the basic face rendering with the Bitmap graphics drawing in the .NET Micro Framework.   Does it look good? Before we dig into any more of the gory details, here are a few photos of the current available prototype models.   The watch on the tiny QI Charter   If you wander too far away from your phone, your watch will let you know with a vibration and a message, all but one button will dismiss the message.   An app showing the premium weather data!   Nice stitching on the straps, leather and silicon will be available, along with a few lengths to choose from (short, regular, long lengths). On to those gory details…. Hardware Specs Processor 120MHz ARM Cortex-M4 processor (ATSAM4SD32) with secondary AVR co-processor Flash & RAM 2MB of onboard flash and 160KB of RAM 1/4 of the onboard flash will be used by the OS The flash is permanent (non-volatile) storage. Bluetooth Bluetooth 4.0 BD/EDR + LE Bluetooth 4.0 is backwards compatible with Bluetooth 2.1, so classic Bluetooth functions (BD/EDR, SPP/AVRCP/PBAP/etc.) will work fine. Sensors 3D Accelerometer (Motion) ST LSM303DLHC Ambient Light Sensor Hardware power metering Vibration Motor (You can pulse it to create vibration patterns, not sure about the vibration strength - driven with PWM) No piezo/speaker or microphone. Other QI Wireless Charging, no NFC, no wall adapter included Custom LED Backlight No GPS in the watch. It uses the GPS in your phone. AGENT watch apps are deployed and debugged wirelessly from your PC via Bluetooth. RoHS, Pb-free Battery Expected to use a CR2430-sized rechargeable battery – replaceable (Mouser, Amazon) Estimated charging time from empty is 2 hours with provided charger 7 Days typical with Bluetooth on, 30 days with Bluetooth off (watch-face only mode) The battery should last at least 2 years, with 100s of charge cycles. Physical dimensions Roughly 38mm top-to-bottom on the front face 35mm left-to-right on the front face and around 12mm in depth 22mm strap Two ~1/16" hex screws to attach the watch pin The top watchcase material candidates are PVD stainless steel, brushed matte ceramic, and high-quality polycarbonate (TBD). The glass lens is mineral glass, Anti-glare glass lens Strap options Leather and silicon straps will be available Expected to have three sizes Display 1.28" Sharp Memory Display The display stays on 100% of the time. Dimensions: 128x128 pixels Buttons Custom "Pusher" buttons, they will not make noise like a mouse click, and are very durable. The top-left button activates the backlight; bottom-left changes apps; three buttons on the right are up/select/down and can be used for custom purposes by apps. Backup reset procedure is currently activated by holding the home/menu button and the top-right user button for about ten seconds Device Support Android 2.3 or newer iPhone 4S or newer Windows Phone 8 or newer Heart Rate monitors - Bluetooth SPP or Bluetooth LE (GATT) is what you'll want the heart monitor to support. Almost limitless Bluetooth device support! Internationalization & Localization Full UTF8 Support from the ground up. AGENT's user interface is in English. Your content (caller ID, music tracks, notifications) will be in your native language. We have a plan to cover most major character sets, with Latin characters pre-loaded on the watch. Simplified Chinese will be available Feature overview Phone lost alert Caller ID Music Control (possible volume control) Wireless Charging Timer Stopwatch Vibrating Alarm (possibly custom vibrations for caller id) A few default watch faces Airplane mode (by demand or low power) Can be turned off completely Customizable 3rd party watch faces, applications which can be loaded over bluetooth. Sample apps that maybe installed Weather Sample Apps not installed Exercise App Other Possible Skype integration over Bluetooth. They will provide an AGENT app for your smartphone (iPhone, Android, Windows Phone). You'll be able to use it to load apps onto the watch.. You will be able to cancel phone calls. With compatible phones you can also answer, end, etc. They are adopting the standard hands-free profile to provide these features and caller ID.

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• Book Review Charlene Li's New Book: Open Leadership

  - by david.talamelli

  A few weeks ago, I was surprised when I looked in our mail box. I had received an Advance Copy of Charlene Li's new book titled "Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead". Charlene sent a tweet a while back asking anyone interested in receiving the book to submit their details. I sent off my details and didn't think I would hear anything back, so it was a pleasant surprise. With that I almost feel bad that it has taken me 3 weeks to read her book. It took this long mainly because it has been hard to fit in some quality reading time for myself with work, the kids, volunteering, etc..... I am happy to report I have finished her book and wanted to run through my initial thoughts with you. I first came across Charlene Li after reading her book "Groundswell" a few years ago, her latest book "Open Leadership" is a follow on from Groundswell and to me it seems like a natural progression from the question "Ok the business landscape is changing, what do we do now?" For me these two books have a different writing style to them. Groundswell from memory spoke about broad social media concepts and adoption and alerted us to some of the changes taking place in the SM landscape. Open Leadership seems to be focussed on taking those broad concepts and finding ways to implement them into your environment. That is breaking broad concepts down into individual action items that can be measured and analysed. As the business world changes Leaders must change their approach and let go of control to more control. One of the things I love reading about is seeing real life examples of how people and organisations are making these things happen. In this book Charlene has collected some great collateral and case studies from companies such as Cisco, Best Buy, The Red Cross and The State Bank of India (as a side-note, I wish now that I submitted my input for the Leaders I work with here at Oracle - there are some great examples here of people who empower their staff). As society becomes more adept at using social media it is inevitable that Leaders must become open with their employees, clients and partners. From the book some of the key points I took away are (I actually took away a lot more from this book, this is just an overview) : 1) Organisations should encourage risk taking. Without being a "hacker", how can we improve ourselves, our processes, our business, etc... The old saying you only fail by not trying applies here. If Leaders create a culture where people are afraid to stick their neck out - how will you innovate? 2) Leaders need to lead by example - if you want to promote an open and transparent business, a Leader needs to exemplify the traits they would like to see out of their employees. 3) The definition of a Leader is changing, open leadership is about being a catalyst to change that uses networks to spread a vision as opposed to traditional leadership that is viewed as a role. 4) There is a cultural and business shift taking place. Information is more wide-spread and is being disseminated faster than any other time in the past. Leaders who are open and transparent will thrive in this new business environment. 5) Leadership is not defined by a title - it is defined by a person's actions. Also anyone can be a Leader or has Leadership potential in them- it is a matter of drawing that out of people. I found this book useful and I also found myself looking at my own actions and the actions of others around me (including my management) to see how open and transparent I am in my work. For me I am glad I read this book as it validated my own thoughts of the changes we are seeing take place. This book has certainly given me some new ideas and helped me push my own boundaries of what I can do. The book has a number of action plans at the end of some of the chapters such as "Conducting you Openness Audit" that I think have helped me take thoughts and ideas and turn them into concrete action items. I have included a link to the introduction of the book here if anyone wants to have a read of it. If anyone else has read this book, it would be great to hear your thoughts/comments/review. Leave your comments below. This article was originally posted on David Talamelli's Blog - David's Journal on Tap

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• Agile Testing Days 2012 – Day 1 – The birth of the #unicorn…

  - by Chris George

  Still riding the high from the tutorial day, I arrived at the conference venue eager to get cracking with the days talks. The opening Keynote was “Disciplined Agile Delivery: The Foundation for Scaling Agile” presented by Scott Ambler. The general ideas behind the methodology such as not re-inventing the wheel, and being goal driven, not prescriptive in how you work certainly struck chords with how we are trying to work in my team. Scott made some interesting observations about how scrum is quite prescriptive and is this really agile? I agreed with quite a few of his points on how what works for one team may not work for another. How a team works should be driven by context and reflection, not process and prescription. However was somewhat dubious about some of the statistics he rolled out towards the end. However, out of this keynote was born something that was to transcend this one presentation. During the talk, Scott mentioned on more than one occasion “In the real world”, and at one point made reference to people living in the land of unicorns and rainbows. The challenge was then laid down on twitter for all speakers to include a unicorn in their presentations… and for the most part this happened! It became an identity for this years conference, and I’m sure something that any attendee will always associate with Agile Testing Days 2012! Following this keynote, I attended “Going agile with Automated GUI Testing – Some personal insights” by Jan Zdunek from codecentric on the vendor track. My speciality is test automation, and in particular GUI testing, so this drew me to this talk more than the others. Thankfully, it was made clear from the very start that this was not peddling any particular product (even though it was on the vendor track), and Jan faithfully stuck to that. Most of the content was not new to me, but it was really comforting to hear someone else with very similar experiences to my own. In particular, things like how GUI testing is hard and is not a silver bullet; how record & replay is NOT a good thing to do (which drew a somewhat inflammatory tweet from an automation company when I tweeted that!). Something that I have started hearing around the place, and has certainly been murmuring at work is to push more of the automation coding onto the developers. After all they are the coding experts. I agree with this to a degree, but I personally enjoy coding and find it very rewarding doing so, therefore I’d be reluctant to give it up. I think there are some better alternatives such as pairing with a developer. Lastly, Jan mentioned, almost in passing, that we should consider virtualisation for gui testing for covering configuration combinations. On my project we’ve been running our win32/.NET GUI tests in cloud virtualisation for a couple of years now… I really should write about that! After lunch the second keynote of the day was by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory,”Myths about Agile Testing, De-Bunked”. It started off well… with the two ladies donning Medusa style head bands whilst they disbanding several myths about agile testing! I got the impression that it was perhaps not as slick as they would have liked, but then Janet was suffering with a very sore throat so kept losing her voice. Nevertheless, the presentation was captivating, and they debunked several myths such as : “Testing is dead”, “Testers must write code”, “Agile teams always deliver faster”. I didn’t take many notes for this because it was being recorded, but unfortunately the recordings have not been posted yet so I’ll write more about this when they are. The TestLab was held during a somewhat free for all time during most of the afternoon. It looked intriguing and proved to be one of the surprising experiences of the conference for me. Run by James Lyndsay and Bart Knaack, it consisted of a number of ‘stations’ that offered different testing problems. I opted for testing a mathematical drawing app call Geogebra, the task being to pair up and exploratory test it. After an allotted time, we discussed issues we’d found and decided if we wanted to continue ‘playing’ to which we all agreed! It was fun! The last track talk of the day was “Developers Exploratory Testing – Raising the bar” by Sigge Birgisson. One of the teams at Red Gate have tried Dev or Team exploratory testing a couple of times, and I was really interested to go to the presentation that prompted that. I was not disappointed! Sigge gave a first class presentation, and not only explained what DET was all about, but also how to go about implementing it. Little tips like calling it a ‘workshop’ rather than ‘testing’ I can really see working! Monday evening saw the presentation of the award for the Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Person go to a much deserved Lisa Crispin. The evening was great, with acrobatics, magic and music. My Takeaway Triple from Day 1:  Some of the cool stuff that was suggested in the GUI Testing talk, we are already doing. I should write about that! Testing is not dead! Perhaps testing will become more of a skill than a specific role, but it is certainly not dead. Team/Developer exploratory testing… seems like a no-brainer assuming you have a team who is willing.  Day 2 – Coming soon…

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• Sort Your Emails by Conversation in Outlook 2010

  - by Matthew Guay

  Do you prefer the way Gmail sorts your emails by conversation?  Here’s how you can use this handy feature in Outlook 2010 too. One exciting new feature in Outlook 2010 is the ability to sort and link your emails by conversation.  This makes it easier to know what has been discussed in emails, and helps you keep your inbox more tidy.  Some users don’t like their emails linked into conversations, and in the final release of Outlook 2010 it is turned off by default.  Since this is a new feature, new users may overlook it and never know it’s available.  Here’s how you can enable conversation view and keep your email conversations accessible and streamlined. Activate Conversation View By default, your inbox in Outlook 2010 will look much like it always has in Outlook…a list of individual emails. To view your emails by conversation, select the View tab and check the Show as Conversations box on the top left. Alternately, click on the Arrange By tab above your emails, and select Show as Conversations. Outlook will ask if you want to activate conversation view in only this folder or all folders.  Choose All folders to view all emails in Outlook in conversations. Outlook will now resort your inbox, linking emails in the same conversation together.  Individual emails that don’t belong to a conversation will look the same as before, while conversations will have a white triangle carrot on the top left of the message title.  Select the message to read the latest email in the conversation. Or, click the triangle to see all of the messages in the conversation.  Now you can select and read any one of them. Most email programs and services include the previous email in the body of an email when you reply.  Outlook 2010 can recognize these previous messages as well.  You can navigate between older and newer messages from popup Next and Previous buttons that appear when you hover over the older email’s header.  This works both in the standard Outlook preview pane and when you open an email in its own window.   Edit Conversation View Settings Back in the Outlook View tab, you can tweak your conversation view to work the way you want.  You can choose to have Outlook Always Expand Conversations, Show Senders Above the Subject, and to Use Classic Indented View.  By default, Outlook will show messages from other folders in the conversation, which is generally helpful; however, if you don’t like this, you can uncheck it here.  All of these settings will stay the same across all of your Outlook accounts. If you choose Indented View, it will show the title on the top and then an indented message entry underneath showing the name of the sender. The Show Senders Above the Subject view makes it more obvious who the email is from and who else is active in the conversation.  This is especially useful if you usually only email certain people about certain topics, making the subject lines less relevant. Or, if you decide you don’t care for conversation view, you can turn it off by unchecking the box in the View tab as above. Conclusion Although it may take new users some time to get used to, conversation view can be very helpful in keeping your inbox organized and letting important emails stay together.  If you’re a Gmail user syncing your email account with Outlook, you may find this useful as it makes Outlook 2010 work more like Gmail, even when offline. If you’d like to sync your Gmail account with Outlook 2010, check out our articles on syncing it with POP3 and IMAP. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Automatically Move Daily Emails to Specific Folders in OutlookQuickly Clean Your Inbox in Outlook 2003/2007Find Emails With Attachments with Outlook 2007’s Instant SearchAdd Your Gmail Account to Outlook 2010 using POPSchedule Auto Send & Receive in Microsoft Outlook TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox)

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• TFS API-Process Template currently applied to the Team Project

  - by Tarun Arora

  Download Demo Solution - here In this blog post I’ll show you how to use the TFS API to get the name of the Process Template that is currently applied to the Team Project. You can also download the demo solution attached, I’ve tested this solution against TFS 2010 and TFS 2011.    1. Connecting to TFS Programmatically I have a blog post that shows you from where to download the VS 2010 SP1 SDK and how to connect to TFS programmatically. private TfsTeamProjectCollection _tfs; private string _selectedTeamProject;   TeamProjectPicker tfsPP = new TeamProjectPicker(TeamProjectPickerMode.SingleProject, false); tfsPP.ShowDialog(); this._tfs = tfsPP.SelectedTeamProjectCollection; this._selectedTeamProject = tfsPP.SelectedProjects[0].Name; 2. Programmatically get the Process Template details of the selected Team Project I’ll be making use of the VersionControlServer service to get the Team Project details and the ICommonStructureService to get the Project Properties. private ProjectProperty[] GetProcessTemplateDetailsForTheSelectedProject() { var vcs = _tfs.GetService<VersionControlServer>(); var ics = _tfs.GetService<ICommonStructureService>(); ProjectProperty[] ProjectProperties = null; var p = vcs.GetTeamProject(_selectedTeamProject); string ProjectName = string.Empty; string ProjectState = String.Empty; int templateId = 0; ProjectProperties = null; ics.GetProjectProperties(p.ArtifactUri.AbsoluteUri, out ProjectName, out ProjectState, out templateId, out ProjectProperties); return ProjectProperties; } 3. What’s the catch? The ProjectProperties will contain a property “Process Template” which as a value has the name of the process template. So, you will be able to use the below line of code to get the name of the process template. var processTemplateName = processTemplateDetails.Where(pt => pt.Name == "Process Template").Select(pt => pt.Value).FirstOrDefault();   However, if the process template does not contain the property “Process Template” then you will need to add it. So, the question becomes how do i add the Name property to the Process Template. Download the Process Template from the Process Template Manager on your local        Once you have downloaded the Process Template to your local machine, navigate to the Classification folder with in the template       From the classification folder open Classification.xml        Add a new property <property name=”Process Template” value=”MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0” />           4. Putting it all together… using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Data; using System.Drawing; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Windows.Forms; using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client; using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client; using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Server; using System.Diagnostics; using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client; namespace TfsAPIDemoProcessTemplate { public partial class Form1 : Form { public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); } private TfsTeamProjectCollection _tfs; private string _selectedTeamProject; private void btnConnect_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { TeamProjectPicker tfsPP = new TeamProjectPicker(TeamProjectPickerMode.SingleProject, false); tfsPP.ShowDialog(); this._tfs = tfsPP.SelectedTeamProjectCollection; this._selectedTeamProject = tfsPP.SelectedProjects[0].Name; var processTemplateDetails = GetProcessTemplateDetailsForTheSelectedProject(); listBox1.Items.Clear(); listBox1.Items.Add(String.Format("Team Project Selected => '{0}'", _selectedTeamProject)); listBox1.Items.Add(Environment.NewLine); var processTemplateName = processTemplateDetails.Where(pt => pt.Name == "Process Template") .Select(pt => pt.Value).FirstOrDefault(); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(processTemplateName)) { listBox1.Items.Add(Environment.NewLine); listBox1.Items.Add(String.Format("Process Template Name: {0}", processTemplateName)); } else { listBox1.Items.Add(String.Format("The Process Template does not have the 'Name' property set up")); listBox1.Items.Add(String.Format("***TIP: Download the Process Template and in Classification.xml add a new property Name, update the template then you will be able to see the Process Template Name***")); listBox1.Items.Add(String.Format(" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -")); } } private ProjectProperty[] GetProcessTemplateDetailsForTheSelectedProject() { var vcs = _tfs.GetService<VersionControlServer>(); var ics = _tfs.GetService<ICommonStructureService>(); ProjectProperty[] ProjectProperties = null; var p = vcs.GetTeamProject(_selectedTeamProject); string ProjectName = string.Empty; string ProjectState = String.Empty; int templateId = 0; ProjectProperties = null; ics.GetProjectProperties(p.ArtifactUri.AbsoluteUri, out ProjectName, out ProjectState, out templateId, out ProjectProperties); return ProjectProperties; } } } Thank you for taking the time out and reading this blog post. If you enjoyed the post, remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Have you come across a better way of doing this, please share your experience here. Questions/Feedback/Suggestions, etc please leave a comment. Thank You! Share this post : CodeProject

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• How big can my SharePoint 2010 installation be?

  - by Sahil Malik

  Ad:: SharePoint 2007 Training in .NET 3.5 technologies (more information). 3 years ago, I had published “How big can my SharePoint 2007 installation be?” Well, SharePoint 2010 has significant under the covers improvements. So, how big can your SharePoint 2010 installation be? There are three kinds of limits you should know about Hard limits that cannot be exceeded by design. Configurable that are, well configurable – but the default values are set for a pretty good reason, so if you need to tweak, plan and understand before you tweak. Soft limits, you can exceed them, but it is not recommended that you do. Before you read any of the limits, read these two important disclaimers - 1. The limit depends on what you’re doing. So, don’t take the below as gospel, the reality depends on your situation. 2. There are many additional considerations in planning your SharePoint solution scalability and performance, besides just the below. So with those in mind, here goes.   Hard Limits - Zones per web app 5 RBS NAS performance Time to first byte of any response from NAS must be less than 20 milliseconds List row size 8000 bytes driven by how SP stores list items internally Max file size 2GB (default is 50MB, configurable). RBS does not increase this limit. Search metadata properties 10,000 per item crawled (pretty damn high, you’ll never need to worry about it). Max # of concurrent in-memory enterprise content types 5000 per web server, per tenant Max # of external system connections 500 per web server PerformancePoint services using Excel services as a datasource No single query can fetch more than 1 million excel cells Office Web Apps Renders One doc per second, per CPU core, per Application server, limited to a maximum of 8 cores.   Configurable Limits - Row Size Limit 6, configurable via SPWebApplication.MaxListItemRowStorage property List view lookup 8 join operations per query Max number of list items that a single operation can process at one time in normal hours 5000 Configurable via SPWebApplication.MaxItemsPerThrottledOperation   Also you get a warning at 3000, which is configurable via SPWebApplication.MaxItemsPerThrottledOperationWarningLevel   In addition, throttle overrides can be requested, throttle overrides can be disabled, and time windows can be set when throttle is disabled. Max number of list items for administrators that a single operation can process at one time in normal hours 20000 Configurable via SPWebApplication.MaxItemsPerThrottledOperationOverride Enumerating subsites 2000 Word and Powerpoint co-authoring simultaneous editors 10 (Hard limit is 99). # of webparts on a page 25 Search Crawl DBs per search service app 10 Items per crawl db 25 million Search Keywords 200 per site collection. There is a max limit of 5000, which can then be modified by editing the web.config/client.config. Concurrent # of workflows on a content db 15. Workflows running in the timer service are not counted in this limit. Further workflows are queued. Can be configured via the Set-SPFarmConfig powershell commandlet. Number of events picked by the workflow timer job and delivered to workflows 100. You can increase this limit by running additional instances of the workflow timer service. Visio services file size 50MB Visio web drawing recalculation timeout 120 seconds Configurable via – Powershell commandlet Set-SPVisioPerformance Visio services minimum and maximum cache age for data connected diagrams 0 to 24 hours. Default is 60 minutes. Configurable via – Powershell commandlet Set-SPVisioPerformance   Soft Limits - Content Databases 300 per web app Application Pools 10 per web server Managed Paths 20 per web app Content Database Size 200GB per Content DB Size of 1 site collection 100GB # of sites in a site collection 250,000 Documents in a library 30 Million, with nesting. Depends heavily on type and usage and size of documents. Items 30 million. Depends heavily on usage of items. SPGroups one SPUser can be in 5000 Users in a site collection 2 million, depends on UI, nesting, containers and underlying user store AD Principals in a SPGroup 5000 SPGroups in a site collection 10000 Search Service Instances 20 Indexed Items in Search 100 million Crawl Log entries 100 million Search Alerts 1 million per search application Search Crawled Properties 1/2 million URL removals in search 100 removals per operation User Profiles 2 million per service application Social Tags 500 million per social database Comment on the article ....

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• Personal search – the future of search

  - by jamiet

  [Four months ago I wrote a meandering blog post on another blogging site entitled Personal search – the future of search. The points I made therein are becoming more relevant to what I'm reading about and hoping to get involved in in the future so I'm re-posting here to a wider audience to hopefully get some more feedback and guage reaction to it. This has been prompted by the book Pull by David Siegel that is forming my current holiday reading (recommended to me by a commenter on my previous post Interesting things – Twitter annotations and your phone as a web server) and in particular by Siegel's notion of us all in the future having a personal online data vault.] My one-time colleague Paul Dawson recently wrote an article called The Future of Search and in it he proposed some interesting ideas. Some choice quotes: The growth of Chinese search giant Baidu is an indicator that fully localised and tailored content and offerings have great traction with local audiences This trend is already driving an increase in the use of specialist searches … Look at how Farecast is now integrated into Bing for example, or how Flightstats is now integrated into Google. Search does not necessarily have to begin with a keyword, but could start instead with a click or a touch. Take a look at Retrievr. Start drawing a picture in the box and see what happens. This is certainly search without the need for typing in keywords search technology has advanced greatly in recent years. The recent launch of Microsoft Live Labs’ Pivot has given us a taste of what we can expect to see in the future This really got me thinking about where search might go in the future and as my mind wandered I realised that as the amount of data that we collect about ourselves increases so too will the need and the desire to search it. The amount of electronic data that exists about each and every person is increasing and in the near future I fully expect that we are going to be able to store personal data such as: A history of our location (in fact Google Latitude already offers this facility) Recordings of all our phone conversations Health information history (weight, blood pressure etc…) Energy usage Spending history What films we watch, what radio stations we listen to Voting history Of course, most of this stuff is already stored somewhere but crucially we don’t have easy access to it. My utilities supplier knows how much electricity I’m using but if I want to know for myself I have to go and dig through my statements (assuming I have kept them). Similarly my doctor probably has ready access to all of my health records, my bank knows exactly what I have spent my money on, my cable supplier knows what I watch on TV and my mobile phone supplier probably knows exactly where I am and where I’ve been for the past few years. Strange then that none of this electronic information is available to me in a way that I can really make use of it; after all, its MY information. Its MY data. I created it. That is set to change. As technologies mature and customers become more technically cognizant they will demand more access to the data that companies hold about them. The companies themselves will realise the benefit that they derive from giving users what they want and will embrace ways of providing it. As a result the amount of data that we store about ourselves is going to increase exponentially and the desire to search and derive value from that data is going to grow with it; we are about to enter the era of the “personal datastore” and we will want, and need, to search through it in order to make sense of it all. Its interesting then that today when we think of search we think of search engines and yet in these personal datastores we’re referring to data that search engines can’t touch because WE own it and we (hopefully) choose to keep it private. Someone, I know not who, is going to lead in this space by making it easy for us to search our data and retrieve information that we have either forgotten or maybe didn’t even know in the first place. We will learn new things about ourselves and about our habits; we will share these findings with whomever we choose; we will compare what we discover with others; we will collaborate for mutual benefit and, most of all, we will educate ourselves as to how to live our lives better. Search will be the means to that end, it will enable us to make sense of the wealth of information that we will collect day in day out. The future of search is personal, why would we be interested in anything else? @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Use Drive Mirroring for Instant Backup in Windows 7

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  Even with the best backup solution, a hard drive crash means you’ll lose a few hours of work. By enabling drive mirroring in Windows 7, you’ll always have an up-to-date copy of your data. Windows 7’s mirroring – which is only available in Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions – is a software implementation of RAID 1, which means that two or more disks are holding the exact same data. The files are constantly kept in sync, so that if one of the disks fails, you won’t lose any data. Note that mirroring is not technically a backup solution, because if you accidentally delete a file, it’s gone from both hard disks (though you may be able to recover the file). As an additional caveat, having mirrored disks requires changing them to “dynamic disks,” which can only be read within modern versions of Windows (you may have problems working with a dynamic disk in other operating systems or in older versions of Windows). See this Wikipedia page for more information. You will need at least one empty disk to set up disk mirroring. We’ll show you how to mirror an existing disk (of equal or lesser size) without losing any data on the mirrored drive, and how to set up two empty disks as mirrored copies from the get-go. Mirroring an Existing Drive Click on the start button and type partitions in the search box. Click on the Create and format hard disk partitions entry that shows up. Alternatively, if you’ve disabled the search box, press Win+R to open the Run window and type in: diskmgmt.msc The Disk Management window will appear. We’ve got a small disk, labeled OldData, that we want to mirror in a second disk of the same size. Note: The disk that you will use to mirror the existing disk must be unallocated. If it is not, then right-click on it and select Delete Volume… to mark it as unallocated. This will destroy any data on that drive. Right-click on the existing disk that you want to mirror. Select Add Mirror…. Select the disk that you want to use to mirror the existing disk’s data and press Add Mirror. You will be warned that this process will change the existing disk from basic to dynamic. Note that this process will not delete any data on the disk! The new disk will be marked as a mirror, and it will starting copying data from the existing drive to the new one. Eventually the drives will be synced up (it can take a while), and any data added to the E: drive will exist on both physical hard drives. Setting Up Two New Drives as Mirrored If you have two new equal-sized drives, you can format them to be mirrored copies of each other from the get-go. Open the Disk Management window as described above. Make sure that the drives are unallocated. If they’re not, and you don’t need the data on either of them, right-click and select Delete volume…. Right-click on one of the unallocated drives and select New Mirrored Volume…. A wizard will pop up. Click Next. Click on the drives you want to hold the mirrored data and click Add. Note that you can add any number of drives. Click Next. Assign it a drive letter that makes sense, and then click Next. You’re limited to using the NTFS file system for mirrored drives, so enter a volume label, enable compression if you want, and then click Next. Click Finish to start formatting the drives. You will be warned that the new drives will be converted to dynamic disks. And that’s it! You now have two mirrored drives. Any files added to E: will reside on both physical disks, in case something happens to one of them. Conclusion While the switch from basic to dynamic disks can be a problem for people who dual-boot into another operating system, setting up drive mirroring is an easy way to make sure that your data can be recovered in case of a hard drive crash. Of course, even with drive mirroring, we advocate regular backups to external drives or online backup services. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Rebit Backup Software [Review]Disabling Instant Search in Outlook 2007Restore Files from Backups on Windows Home ServerSecond Copy 7 [Review]Backup Windows Home Server Folders to an External Hard Drive TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010

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• Do Not Optimize Without Measuring

  - by Alois Kraus

  Recently I had to do some performance work which included reading a lot of code. It is fascinating with what ideas people come up to solve a problem. Especially when there is no problem. When you look at other peoples code you will not be able to tell if it is well performing or not by reading it. You need to execute it with some sort of tracing or even better under a profiler. The first rule of the performance club is not to think and then to optimize but to measure, think and then optimize. The second rule is to do this do this in a loop to prevent slipping in bad things for too long into your code base. If you skip for some reason the measure step and optimize directly it is like changing the wave function in quantum mechanics. This has no observable effect in our world since it does represent only a probability distribution of all possible values. In quantum mechanics you need to let the wave function collapse to a single value. A collapsed wave function has therefore not many but one distinct value. This is what we physicists call a measurement. If you optimize your application without measuring it you are just changing the probability distribution of your potential performance values. Which performance your application actually has is still unknown. You only know that it will be within a specific range with a certain probability. As usual there are unlikely values within your distribution like a startup time of 20 minutes which should only happen once in 100 000 years. 100 000 years are a very short time when the first customer tries your heavily distributed networking application to run over a slow WIFI network… What is the point of this? Every programmer/architect has a mental performance model in his head. A model has always a set of explicit preconditions and a lot more implicit assumptions baked into it. When the model is good it will help you to think of good designs but it can also be the source of problems. In real world systems not all assumptions of your performance model (implicit or explicit) hold true any longer. The only way to connect your performance model and the real world is to measure it. In the WIFI example the model did assume a low latency high bandwidth LAN connection. If this assumption becomes wrong the system did have a drastic change in startup time. Lets look at a example. Lets assume we want to cache some expensive UI resource like fonts objects. For this undertaking we do create a Cache class with the UI themes we want to support. Since Fonts are expensive objects we do create it on demand the first time the theme is requested. A simple example of a Theme cache might look like this: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Drawing; struct Theme { public Color Color; public Font Font; } static class ThemeCache { static Dictionary<string, Theme> _Cache = new Dictionary<string, Theme> { {"Default", new Theme { Color = Color.AliceBlue }}, {"Theme12", new Theme { Color = Color.Aqua }}, }; public static Theme Get(string theme) { Theme cached = _Cache[theme]; if (cached.Font == null) { Console.WriteLine("Creating new font"); cached.Font = new Font("Arial", 8); } return cached; } } class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Theme item = ThemeCache.Get("Theme12"); item = ThemeCache.Get("Theme12"); } } This cache does create font objects only once since on first retrieve of the Theme object the font is added to the Theme object. When we let the application run it should print “Creating new font” only once. Right? Wrong! The vigilant readers have spotted the issue already. The creator of this cache class wanted to get maximum performance. So he decided that the Theme object should be a value type (struct) to not put too much pressure on the garbage collector. The code Theme cached = _Cache[theme]; if (cached.Font == null) { Console.WriteLine("Creating new font"); cached.Font = new Font("Arial", 8); } does work with a copy of the value stored in the dictionary. This means we do mutate a copy of the Theme object and return it to our caller. But the original Theme object in the dictionary will have always null for the Font field! The solution is to change the declaration of struct Theme to class Theme or to update the theme object in the dictionary. Our cache as it is currently is actually a non caching cache. The funny thing was that I found out with a profiler by looking at which objects where finalized. I found way too many font objects to be finalized. After a bit debugging I found the allocation source for Font objects was this cache. Since this cache was there for years it means that the cache was never needed since I found no perf issue due to the creation of font objects. the cache was never profiled if it did bring any performance gain. to make the cache beneficial it needs to be accessed much more often. That was the story of the non caching cache. Next time I will write something something about measuring.

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• Personal search – the future of search

  - by jamiet

  [Four months ago I wrote a meandering blog post on another blogging site entitled Personal search – the future of search. The points I made therein are becoming more relevant to what I'm reading about and hoping to get involved in in the future so I'm re-posting here to a wider audience to hopefully get some more feedback and guage reaction to it. This has been prompted by the book Pull by David Siegel that is forming my current holiday reading (recommended to me by a commenter on my previous post Interesting things – Twitter annotations and your phone as a web server) and in particular by Siegel's notion of us all in the future having a personal online data vault.] My one-time colleague Paul Dawson recently wrote an article called The Future of Search and in it he proposed some interesting ideas. Some choice quotes: The growth of Chinese search giant Baidu is an indicator that fully localised and tailored content and offerings have great traction with local audiences This trend is already driving an increase in the use of specialist searches … Look at how Farecast is now integrated into Bing for example, or how Flightstats is now integrated into Google. Search does not necessarily have to begin with a keyword, but could start instead with a click or a touch. Take a look at Retrievr. Start drawing a picture in the box and see what happens. This is certainly search without the need for typing in keywords search technology has advanced greatly in recent years. The recent launch of Microsoft Live Labs’ Pivot has given us a taste of what we can expect to see in the future This really got me thinking about where search might go in the future and as my mind wandered I realised that as the amount of data that we collect about ourselves increases so too will the need and the desire to search it. The amount of electronic data that exists about each and every person is increasing and in the near future I fully expect that we are going to be able to store personal data such as: A history of our location (in fact Google Latitude already offers this facility) Recordings of all our phone conversations Health information history (weight, blood pressure etc…) Energy usage Spending history What films we watch, what radio stations we listen to Voting history Of course, most of this stuff is already stored somewhere but crucially we don’t have easy access to it. My utilities supplier knows how much electricity I’m using but if I want to know for myself I have to go and dig through my statements (assuming I have kept them). Similarly my doctor probably has ready access to all of my health records, my bank knows exactly what I have spent my money on, my cable supplier knows what I watch on TV and my mobile phone supplier probably knows exactly where I am and where I’ve been for the past few years. Strange then that none of this electronic information is available to me in a way that I can really make use of it; after all, its MY information. Its MY data. I created it. That is set to change. As technologies mature and customers become more technically cognizant they will demand more access to the data that companies hold about them. The companies themselves will realise the benefit that they derive from giving users what they want and will embrace ways of providing it. As a result the amount of data that we store about ourselves is going to increase exponentially and the desire to search and derive value from that data is going to grow with it; we are about to enter the era of the “personal datastore” and we will want, and need, to search through it in order to make sense of it all. Its interesting then that today when we think of search we think of search engines and yet in these personal datastores we’re referring to data that search engines can’t touch because WE own it and we (hopefully) choose to keep it private. Someone, I know not who, is going to lead in this space by making it easy for us to search our data and retrieve information that we have either forgotten or maybe didn’t even know in the first place. We will learn new things about ourselves and about our habits; we will share these findings with whomever we choose; we will compare what we discover with others; we will collaborate for mutual benefit and, most of all, we will educate ourselves as to how to live our lives better. Search will be the means to that end, it will enable us to make sense of the wealth of information that we will collect day in day out. The future of search is personal, why would we be interested in anything else? @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Superpower Your Touchpad Computer with Scrybe

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you looking for a way to help your Touchpad computer make you more productive?  Here’s a quick look at Scrybe, a new application from Synaptics that lets you superpower it. Touchpad devices have become increasingly more interesting as they’ve included support for multi-touch gestures.  Scrybe takes it to the next level and lets you use your touchpad as an application launcher.  You can launch any application, website, or complete many common commands on your computer with a simple gesture.  Scrybe works with most modern Synaptics touchpads, which are standard on most laptops and netbooks.  It is optimized for newer multi-touch touchpads, but can also work with standard single-touch touchpads.  It works on Windows 7, Vista, and XP, so chances are it will work with your laptop or netbook. Get Started With Scrybe Head over to the Scrybe website and download the latest version (link below).  You are asked to enter your email address, name, and information about your computer…but you actually only have to enter your email address.  Click Download when finished. Run the installer when it’s download.  It will automatically download the latest Synaptics driver for your touchpad and any other components needed for Scrybe.  Note that the Scrybe installer will ask to install the Yahoo! toolbar, so uncheck this to avoid adding this worthless browser toolbar. Using Scrybe To open an application or website with a gesture, press 3 fingers on your touchpad at once, or if your touchpad doesn’t support multi-touch gestures, then press Ctrl+Alt and press 1 finger on your touchpad.  This will open the Scrype input pane; start drawing a gesture, and you’ll see it on the grey square.  The input pane shows some default gestures you can try. Here we drew an “M”, which opens our default Music player.  As soon as you finish the gesture and lift up your finger, Scrybe will open the application or website you selected. A notification balloon will let you know what gesture was preformed. When you’re entering your gesture, the input pane will show white “ink”.  The “ink” will turn blue if the command is recognized, but will turn red if it isn’t.  If Scrybe doesn’t recognize your command, press 3 fingers and try again. Scrybe Control Panel You can open the Scrybe Control panel to enter or change commands by entering a box-like gesture, or right-clicking the Scrybe icon in your system tray and selecting “Scrybe Control Panel”. Scrybe has many pre-configured gestures that you can preview and even practice. All of the gestures in the Popular tab are preset and cannot be changed.  However, the ones in the favorites tab can be edited.  Select the gesture you wish to edit, and click the gear icon to change it.  Here we changed the email gesture to open Hotmail instead of the default Yahoo Mail. Scrybe can also help you perform many common Windows commands such as Copy and Undo.  Select the Tools tab to see all of these commands.   Scrybe has many settings you may wish to change.  Select the Preferences button in the Control Panel to change these.  Here’s some of the settings we changed. Uncheck “Display a message” to turn off the tooltip notifications when you enter a gesture Uncheck “Show symbol hints” to turn off the sidebar on the input pane Select the search engine you want to open with the Search Gesture.  The default is Yahoo, but you can choose your favorite. Adding a new Scrybe Gesture The default Scrybe options are useful, but the best part is that you can assign gestures to your own programs or websites.  Open the Scrybe control panel, and click the plus sign on the bottom left corner.  Enter a name for your gesture, and then choose if it is for a website or an application. If you want the gesture to open a website, enter the address in the box. Alternately, if you want your gesture to open an application, select Launch Application and then either enter the path to the application, or click the button beside the Launch field and browse to it. Now click the down arrow on the blue box and choose one of the gestures for your application or website. Your new gesture will show up under the Favorites tab in the Scrybe control panel, and you can use it whenever you want from Scrybe, or practice the gesture by selecting the Practice button. Conclusion If you enjoy multi-touch gestures, you may find Scrybe very useful on your laptop or netbook.  Scrybe recognizes gestures fairly easily, even if you don’t enter them perfectly correctly.  Just like pinch-to-zoom and two-finger scroll, Scrybe can quickly become something you miss on other laptops. Download Scrybe (registration required) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Fixing Firefox Scrolling Problems with Dell Synaptics TouchpadRemove Synaptics Touchpad Icon from System TrayRoll Back Troublesome Device Drivers in Windows VistaChange Your Computer Name in Windows 7 or VistaLet Somebody Use Your Computer Without Logging Off in Ubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Fun with 47 charts and graphs Tomorrow is Mother’s Day Check the Average Speed of YouTube Videos You’ve Watched OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott

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• Day 4 - Game Sprites In Action

  - by dapostolov

  Yesterday I drew an image on the screen. Most exciting, but ... I spent more time blogging about it then actual coding. So this next little while I'm going to streamline my game and research and simply post key notes. Quick notes on the last session: The most important thing I wanted to point out were the following methods:           spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend);           spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position, Color.White);           spriteBatch.End(); The spriteBatch object is used to draw Textures and a 2D texture is called a Sprite A texture is generally an image, which is called an Asset in XNA The Draw Method in the Game1.cs is looped (until exit) and utilises the spriteBatch object to draw a Scene To begin drawing a Scene you call the Begin Method. To end a Scene you call the End Method. And to place an image on the Scene you call the Draw method. The most simple implementation of the draw method is:           spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position, Color.White); 1) sprite - the 2D texture you loaded to draw 2) position - the 2d vector, a set of x & y coordinates 3) Color.White - the tint to apply to the texture, in this case, white light = nothing, nada, no tint. Game Sprites In Action! Today, I played around with Draw methods to get comfortable with their "quirks". The following is an example of the above draw method, but with more parameters available for us to use. Let's investigate!             spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position2, null, Color.White, MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), new Vector2(sprite.Width / 2, sprite.Height / 2), 1.0F, SpriteEffects.None, 0.0F); The parameters (in order): 1) sprite  the texture to display 2) position2 the position on the screen / scene this can also be a rectangle 3) null the portion of the image to display within an image null = display full image this is generally used for animation strips / grids (more on this below) 4) Color.White Texture tinting White = no tint 5) MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f) rotation of the object, in this case 45 degrees rotates from the set plotting point. 6) new Vector(0,0) the plotting point in this case the top left corner the image will rotate from the top left of the texture in the code above, the point is set to the middle of the image. 7) 1.0f Image scaling (1x) 8) SpriteEffects.None you can flip the image horizontally or vertically 9) 0.0f The z index of the image. 0 = closer, 1 behind? And playing around with different combinations I was able to come up with the following whacky display:   Checking off Yesterdays Intention List: learn game development terminology (in progress) - We learned sprite, scene, texture, and asset. how to place and position (rotate) a static image on the screen (completed) - The thing to note was, it's was in radians and I found a cool helper method to convert degrees into radians. Also, the image rotates from it's specified point. how to layer static images on the screen (completed) - I couldn't seem to get the zIndex working, but one things for sure, the order you draw the image in also determines how it is rendered on the screen. understand image scaling (in progress) - I'm not sure I have this fully covered, but for the most part plug a number in the scaling field and the image grows / shrinks accordingly. can we reuse images? (completed) - yes, I loaded one image and plotted the bugger all over the screen. understand how framerate is handled in XNA (in progress) - I hacked together some code to display the framerate each second. A framerate of 60 appears to be the standard. Interesting to note, the GameTime object does provide you with some cool timing capabilities, such as...is the game running slow? Need to investigate this down the road. how to display text , basic shapes, and colors on the screen (in progress) - i got text rendered on the screen, and i understand containing rectangles. However, I didn't display "shapes" & "colors" how to interact with an image (collision of user input?) (todo) how to animate an image and understand basic animation techniques (in progress) - I was able to create a stripe animation of numbers ranging from 1 - 4, each block was 40 x 40 pixles for a total stripe size of 160 x 40. Using the portion (source Rectangle) parameter, i limited this display to each section at varying intervals. It was interesting to note my first implementation animated at rocket speed. I then tried to create a smoother animation by limiting the redraw capacity, which seemed to work. I guess a little more research will have to be put into this for animating characters / scenes. how to detect colliding images or screen edges (todo) - but the rectangle object can detect collisions I believe. how to manipulate the image, lets say colors, stretching (in progress) - I haven't figured out how to modify a specific color to be another color, but the tinting parameter definately could be used. As for stretching, use the rectangle object as the positioning and the image will stretch to fit! how to focus on a segment of an image...like only displaying a frame on a film reel (completed) - as per basic animation techniques what's the best way to manage images (compression, storage, location, prevent artwork theft, etc.) (todo) Tomorrows Intention Tomorrow I am going to take a stab at rendering a game menu and from there I'm going to investigate how I can improve upon the code and techniques. Intention List: Render a menu, fancy or not Show the mouse cursor Hook up click event A basic animation of somesort Investigate image / menu techniques D.

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• using isight camera in macbookpro(8,2) on ubuntu 12.04 virtualbox VM

  - by Kurt Spindler

  I'm having a lot of trouble using the built-in isight camera on my macbookpro8,2 (early 2011) from an ubuntu 12.04 virtual machine, run inside VirtualBox. The following is the log I get when I try to run guvcview ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ guvcview guvcview 1.5.3 ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.rear ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.center_lfe ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.side ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.surround71 ALSA lib setup.c:565:(add_elem) Cannot obtain info for CTL elem (MIXER,'IEC958 Playback Default',0,0,0): No such file or directory ALSA lib setup.c:565:(add_elem) Cannot obtain info for CTL elem (MIXER,'IEC958 Playback Default',0,0,0): No such file or directory ALSA lib setup.c:565:(add_elem) Cannot obtain info for CTL elem (MIXER,'IEC958 Playback Default',0,0,0): No such file or directory ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.hdmi ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.hdmi ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.modem ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.modem ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.phoneline ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.phoneline ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5) ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5) ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5) ALSA lib audio/pcm_bluetooth.c:1614:(audioservice_expect) BT_GET_CAPABILITIES failed : Input/output error(5) ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:957:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) The dmix plugin supports only playback stream Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory Cannot connect to server socket jack server is not running or cannot be started video device: /dev/video0 Init. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in) (location: usb-0000:00:0b.0-1) { pixelformat = 'YUYV', description = 'YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV)' } { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 1/10, { pixelformat = 'MJPG', description = 'MJPEG' } { discrete: width = 960, height = 540 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 576 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { pixelformat = 'RGB3', description = 'RGB3' } { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 960, height = 540 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 576 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { pixelformat = 'BGR3', description = 'BGR3' } { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 960, height = 540 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 576 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { pixelformat = 'YU12', description = 'YU12' } { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 960, height = 540 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 576 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { pixelformat = 'YV12', description = 'YV12' } { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 720 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 960, height = 540 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 576 } Time interval between frame: 100/2997, 1/25, 1/24, 1/15, vid:05ac pid:8509 driver:uvcvideo checking format: 1196444237 VIDIOC_G_COMP:: Invalid argument compression control not supported fps is set to 1/25 drawing controls no codec detected for H264 no codec detected for MP3 - (lavc) Checking video mode 960x540@32bpp : OK Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable Could not grab image (select timeout): Resource temporarily unavailable write /home/ubuntu/.guvcviewrc OK free controls cleaned allocations - 100% Closing portaudio ...OK Closing GTK... OK ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ Any help would be greatly appreciated. Only clue I have is that I initially was having problems, tried using the old method of fixing isights (involving installing isight-firmware-tools) before realizing that I just hadn't turned on the VM setting to allow the VM to access the webcam. :) Anyway, I wonder if installing that messed something up. However, I think this is a red herring because I've: shut down and turned back on the Mac, restarted the VM, tried a different VM (for which I never installed isight-firmware-tools, and created an entirely new ubuntu vm. All instances have had this problem. Similarly, other viewers, such as cheese, avplay, avconv have had all various kinds of errors.

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• problem with loading in .FBX meshes in DirectX 10

  - by N0xus

  I'm trying to load in meshes into DirectX 10. I've created a bunch of classes that handle it and allow me to call in a mesh with only a single line of code in my main game class. How ever, when I run the program this is what renders: In the debug output window the following errors keep appearing: D3D10: ERROR: ID3D10Device::DrawIndexed: Input Assembler - Vertex Shader linkage error: Signatures between stages are incompatible. The reason is that Semantic 'TEXCOORD' is defined for mismatched hardware registers between the output stage and input stage. [ EXECUTION ERROR #343: DEVICE_SHADER_LINKAGE_REGISTERINDEX ] D3D10: ERROR: ID3D10Device::DrawIndexed: Input Assembler - Vertex Shader linkage error: Signatures between stages are incompatible. The reason is that the input stage requires Semantic/Index (POSITION,0) as input, but it is not provided by the output stage. [ EXECUTION ERROR #342: DEVICE_SHADER_LINKAGE_SEMANTICNAME_NOT_FOUND ] The thing is, I've no idea how to fix this. The code I'm using does work and I've simply brought all of that code into a new project of mine. There are no build errors and this only appears when the game is running The .fx file is as follows: float4x4 matWorld; float4x4 matView; float4x4 matProjection; struct VS_INPUT { float4 Pos:POSITION; float2 TexCoord:TEXCOORD; }; struct PS_INPUT { float4 Pos:SV_POSITION; float2 TexCoord:TEXCOORD; }; Texture2D diffuseTexture; SamplerState diffuseSampler { Filter = MIN_MAG_MIP_POINT; AddressU = WRAP; AddressV = WRAP; }; // // Vertex Shader // PS_INPUT VS( VS_INPUT input ) { PS_INPUT output=(PS_INPUT)0; float4x4 viewProjection=mul(matView,matProjection); float4x4 worldViewProjection=mul(matWorld,viewProjection); output.Pos=mul(input.Pos,worldViewProjection); output.TexCoord=input.TexCoord; return output; } // // Pixel Shader // float4 PS(PS_INPUT input ) : SV_Target { return diffuseTexture.Sample(diffuseSampler,input.TexCoord); //return float4(1.0f,1.0f,1.0f,1.0f); } RasterizerState NoCulling { FILLMODE=SOLID; CULLMODE=NONE; }; technique10 Render { pass P0 { SetVertexShader( CompileShader( vs_4_0, VS() ) ); SetGeometryShader( NULL ); SetPixelShader( CompileShader( ps_4_0, PS() ) ); SetRasterizerState(NoCulling); } } In my game, the .fx file and model are called and set as follows: Loading in shader file //Set the shader flags - BMD DWORD dwShaderFlags = D3D10_SHADER_ENABLE_STRICTNESS; #if defined( DEBUG ) || defined( _DEBUG ) dwShaderFlags |= D3D10_SHADER_DEBUG; #endif ID3D10Blob * pErrorBuffer=NULL; if( FAILED( D3DX10CreateEffectFromFile( TEXT("TransformedTexture.fx" ), NULL, NULL, "fx_4_0", dwShaderFlags, 0, md3dDevice, NULL, NULL, &m_pEffect, &pErrorBuffer, NULL ) ) ) { char * pErrorStr = ( char* )pErrorBuffer->GetBufferPointer(); //If the creation of the Effect fails then a message box will be shown MessageBoxA( NULL, pErrorStr, "Error", MB_OK ); return false; } //Get the technique called Render from the effect, we need this for rendering later on m_pTechnique=m_pEffect->GetTechniqueByName("Render"); //Number of elements in the layout UINT numElements = TexturedLitVertex::layoutSize; //Get the Pass description, we need this to bind the vertex to the pipeline D3D10_PASS_DESC PassDesc; m_pTechnique->GetPassByIndex( 0 )->GetDesc( &PassDesc ); //Create Input layout to describe the incoming buffer to the input assembler if (FAILED(md3dDevice->CreateInputLayout( TexturedLitVertex::layout, numElements,PassDesc.pIAInputSignature, PassDesc.IAInputSignatureSize, &m_pVertexLayout ) ) ) { return false; } model loading: m_pTestRenderable=new CRenderable(); //m_pTestRenderable->create<TexturedVertex>(md3dDevice,8,6,vertices,indices); m_pModelLoader = new CModelLoader(); m_pTestRenderable = m_pModelLoader->loadModelFromFile( md3dDevice,"armoredrecon.fbx" ); m_pGameObjectTest = new CGameObject(); m_pGameObjectTest->setRenderable( m_pTestRenderable ); // Set primitive topology, how are we going to interpet the vertices in the vertex buffer md3dDevice->IASetPrimitiveTopology( D3D10_PRIMITIVE_TOPOLOGY_TRIANGLELIST ); if ( FAILED( D3DX10CreateShaderResourceViewFromFile( md3dDevice, TEXT( "armoredrecon_diff.png" ), NULL, NULL, &m_pTextureShaderResource, NULL ) ) ) { MessageBox( NULL, TEXT( "Can't load Texture" ), TEXT( "Error" ), MB_OK ); return false; } m_pDiffuseTextureVariable = m_pEffect->GetVariableByName( "diffuseTexture" )->AsShaderResource(); m_pDiffuseTextureVariable->SetResource( m_pTextureShaderResource ); Finally, the draw function code: //All drawing will occur between the clear and present m_pViewMatrixVariable->SetMatrix( ( float* )m_matView ); m_pWorldMatrixVariable->SetMatrix( ( float* )m_pGameObjectTest->getWorld() ); //Get the stride(size) of the a vertex, we need this to tell the pipeline the size of one vertex UINT stride = m_pTestRenderable->getStride(); //The offset from start of the buffer to where our vertices are located UINT offset = m_pTestRenderable->getOffset(); ID3D10Buffer * pVB=m_pTestRenderable->getVB(); //Bind the vertex buffer to input assembler stage - md3dDevice->IASetVertexBuffers( 0, 1, &pVB, &stride, &offset ); md3dDevice->IASetIndexBuffer( m_pTestRenderable->getIB(), DXGI_FORMAT_R32_UINT, 0 ); //Get the Description of the technique, we need this in order to loop through each pass in the technique D3D10_TECHNIQUE_DESC techDesc; m_pTechnique->GetDesc( &techDesc ); //Loop through the passes in the technique for( UINT p = 0; p < techDesc.Passes; ++p ) { //Get a pass at current index and apply it m_pTechnique->GetPassByIndex( p )->Apply( 0 ); //Draw call md3dDevice->DrawIndexed(m_pTestRenderable->getNumOfIndices(),0,0); //m_pD3D10Device->Draw(m_pTestRenderable->getNumOfVerts(),0); } Is there anything I've clearly done wrong or are missing? Spent 2 weeks trying to workout what on earth I've done wrong to no avail. Any insight a fresh pair eyes could give on this would be great.

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• Render 2 images that uses different shaders

  - by Code Vader

  Based on the giawa/nehe tutorials, how can I render 2 images with different shaders. I'm pretty new to OpenGl and shaders so I'm not completely sure whats happening in my code, but I think the shaders that is called last overwrites the first one. private static void OnRenderFrame() { // calculate how much time has elapsed since the last frame watch.Stop(); float deltaTime = (float)watch.ElapsedTicks / System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch.Frequency; watch.Restart(); // use the deltaTime to adjust the angle of the cube angle += deltaTime; // set up the OpenGL viewport and clear both the color and depth bits Gl.Viewport(0, 0, width, height); Gl.Clear(ClearBufferMask.ColorBufferBit | ClearBufferMask.DepthBufferBit); // use our shader program and bind the crate texture Gl.UseProgram(program); //<<<<<<<<<<<< TOP PYRAMID // set the transformation of the top_pyramid program["model_matrix"].SetValue(Matrix4.CreateRotationY(angle * rotate_cube)); program["enable_lighting"].SetValue(lighting); // bind the vertex positions, UV coordinates and element array Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(top_pyramid, program, "vertexPosition"); Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(top_pyramidNormals, program, "vertexNormal"); Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(top_pyramidUV, program, "vertexUV"); Gl.BindBuffer(top_pyramidTrianlges); // draw the textured top_pyramid Gl.DrawElements(BeginMode.Triangles, top_pyramidTrianlges.Count, DrawElementsType.UnsignedInt, IntPtr.Zero); //<<<<<<<<<< CUBE // set the transformation of the cube program["model_matrix"].SetValue(Matrix4.CreateRotationY(angle * rotate_cube)); program["enable_lighting"].SetValue(lighting); // bind the vertex positions, UV coordinates and element array Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(cube, program, "vertexPosition"); Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(cubeNormals, program, "vertexNormal"); Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(cubeUV, program, "vertexUV"); Gl.BindBuffer(cubeQuads); // draw the textured cube Gl.DrawElements(BeginMode.Quads, cubeQuads.Count, DrawElementsType.UnsignedInt, IntPtr.Zero); //<<<<<<<<<<<< BOTTOM PYRAMID // set the transformation of the bottom_pyramid program["model_matrix"].SetValue(Matrix4.CreateRotationY(angle * rotate_cube)); program["enable_lighting"].SetValue(lighting); // bind the vertex positions, UV coordinates and element array Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(bottom_pyramid, program, "vertexPosition"); Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(bottom_pyramidNormals, program, "vertexNormal"); Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(bottom_pyramidUV, program, "vertexUV"); Gl.BindBuffer(bottom_pyramidTrianlges); // draw the textured bottom_pyramid Gl.DrawElements(BeginMode.Triangles, bottom_pyramidTrianlges.Count, DrawElementsType.UnsignedInt, IntPtr.Zero); //<<<<<<<<<<<<< STAR Gl.Disable(EnableCap.DepthTest); Gl.Enable(EnableCap.Blend); Gl.BlendFunc(BlendingFactorSrc.SrcAlpha, BlendingFactorDest.One); Gl.BindTexture(starTexture); //calculate the camera position using some fancy polar co-ordinates Vector3 position = 20 * new Vector3(Math.Cos(phi) * Math.Sin(theta), Math.Cos(theta), Math.Sin(phi) * Math.Sin(theta)); Vector3 upVector = ((theta % (Math.PI * 2)) > Math.PI) ? Vector3.Up : Vector3.Down; program_2["view_matrix"].SetValue(Matrix4.LookAt(position, Vector3.Zero, upVector)); // make sure the shader program and texture are being used Gl.UseProgram(program_2); // loop through the stars, drawing each one for (int i = 0; i < stars.Count; i++) { // set the position and color of this star program_2["model_matrix"].SetValue(Matrix4.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(stars[i].dist, 0, 0)) * Matrix4.CreateRotationZ(stars[i].angle)); program_2["color"].SetValue(stars[i].color); Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(star, program_2, "vertexPosition"); Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(starUV, program_2, "vertexUV"); Gl.BindBuffer(starQuads); Gl.DrawElements(BeginMode.Quads, starQuads.Count, DrawElementsType.UnsignedInt, IntPtr.Zero); // update the position of the star stars[i].angle += (float)i / stars.Count * deltaTime * 2 * rotate_stars; stars[i].dist -= 0.2f * deltaTime * rotate_stars; // if we've reached the center then move this star outwards and give it a new color if (stars[i].dist < 0f) { stars[i].dist += 5f; stars[i].color = new Vector3(generator.NextDouble(), generator.NextDouble(), generator.NextDouble()); } } Glut.glutSwapBuffers(); } The same goes for the textures, whichever one I mention last gets applied to both object?

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• libgdx rotation (animation, arrays) issues and help needed

  - by johnny-b

  well i am a noob at java and libgdx. i got the homing bullet working with the help of someone. now i am smashing my head as to how i can make it rotate so it faces the ball (which is the main character) when it goes around it or when it is coming towards it. the bullet is facing <--- and the code below is what i have done so far. also i used sprites for the bullet and also animation method. Also how do i make it an array/arraylist which is best so i can have multiple bullets at random or placed places. i tried many things nothing workd :( thank you for the help. // below is the bullet or enemy if you want to call it. public class Bullet extends Sprite { public static final float BULLET_HOMING = 6000; public static final float BULLET_SPEED = 300; private Vector2 velocity; private float lifetime; public Bullet(float x, float y) { velocity = new Vector2(0, 0); setPosition(x, y); } public void update(float delta) { float targetX = GameWorld.getBall().getX(); float targetY = GameWorld.getBall().getY(); float dx = targetX - getX(); float dy = targetY - getY(); float distToTarget = (float) Math.sqrt(dx * dx + dy * dy); dx /= distToTarget; dy /= distToTarget; dx *= BULLET_HOMING; dy *= BULLET_HOMING; velocity.x += dx * delta; velocity.y += dy * delta; float vMag = (float) Math.sqrt(velocity.x * velocity.x + velocity.y * velocity.y); velocity.x /= vMag; velocity.y /= vMag; velocity.x *= BULLET_SPEED; velocity.y *= BULLET_SPEED; Vector2 v = velocity.cpy().scl(delta); setPosition(getX() + v.x, getY() + v.y); setOriginCenter(); setRotation(velocity.angle()); lifetime += delta; setRegion(AssetLoader.bulletAnimation.getKeyFrame(lifetime)); } } // this is where i load the images. public class AssetLoader { public static Animation bulletAnimation; public static Sprite bullet1, bullet2; public static void load() { texture = new Texture(Gdx.files.internal("SpriteN1.png")); texture.setFilter(TextureFilter.Nearest, TextureFilter.Nearest); bullet1 = new Sprite(texture, 380, 350, 45, 20); bullet1.flip(false, true); bullet2 = new Sprite(texture, 425, 350, 45, 20); bullet2.flip(false, true); Sprite[] bullets = { bullet1, bullet2 }; bulletAnimation = new Animation(0.06f, aims); bulletAnimation.setPlayMode(Animation.PlayMode.LOOP); } public static void dispose() { // We must dispose of the texture when we are finished. texture.dispose(); } // this is for the rendering of the images etc public class GameRenderer { private Bullet bullet; private Ball ball; public GameRenderer(GameWorld world) { myWorld = world; cam = new OrthographicCamera(); cam.setToOrtho(true, 480, 320); batcher = new SpriteBatch(); // Attach batcher to camera batcher.setProjectionMatrix(cam.combined); shapeRenderer = new ShapeRenderer(); shapeRenderer.setProjectionMatrix(cam.combined); // Call helper methods to initialize instance variables initGameObjects(); initAssets(); } private void initGameObjects() { ball = GameWorld.getBall(); bullet = myWorld.getBullet(); scroller = myWorld.getScroller(); } private void initAssets() { ballAnimation = AssetLoader.ballAnimation; bulletAnimation = AssetLoader.bulletAnimation; } public void render(float runTime) { Gdx.gl.glClearColor(0, 0, 0, 1); Gdx.gl.glClear(GL30.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); batcher.begin(); // Disable transparency // This is good for performance when drawing images that do not require // transparency. batcher.disableBlending(); // The ball needs transparency, so we enable that again. batcher.enableBlending(); batcher.draw(AssetLoader.ballAnimation.getKeyFrame(runTime), ball.getX(), ball.getY(), ball.getWidth(), ball.getHeight()); batcher.draw(AssetLoader.bulletAnimation.getKeyFrame(runTime), bullet.getX(), bullet.getY()); // End SpriteBatch batcher.end(); } } // this is to load the image etc on the screen i guess public class GameWorld { public static Ball ball; private Bullet bullet; private ScrollHandler scroller; public GameWorld() { ball = new Ball(480, 273, 32, 32); bullet = new Bullet(10, 10); scroller = new ScrollHandler(0); } public void update(float delta) { ball.update(delta); bullet.update(delta); scroller.update(delta); } public static Ball getBall() { return ball; } public ScrollHandler getScroller() { return scroller; } public Bullet getBullet() { return bullet; } } so there is the whole thing. the images are loaded via the AssetLoader then to the GameRenderer and GameWorld via the Bullet class. i am guessing that is how it is. sorry newbie so still learning. thank you in advace for the help or any advice.

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• How to structure game states in an entity/component-based system

  - by Eva

  I'm making a game designed with the entity-component paradigm that uses systems to communicate between components as explained here. I've reached the point in my development that I need to add game states (such as paused, playing, level start, round start, game over, etc.), but I'm not sure how to do it with my framework. I've looked at this code example on game states which everyone seems to reference, but I don't think it fits with my framework. It seems to have each state handling its own drawing and updating. My framework has a SystemManager that handles all the updating using systems. For example, here's my RenderingSystem class: public class RenderingSystem extends GameSystem { private GameView gameView_; /** * Constructor * Creates a new RenderingSystem. * @param gameManager The game manager. Used to get the game components. */ public RenderingSystem(GameManager gameManager) { super(gameManager); } /** * Method: registerGameView * Registers gameView into the RenderingSystem. * @param gameView The game view registered. */ public void registerGameView(GameView gameView) { gameView_ = gameView; } /** * Method: triggerRender * Adds a repaint call to the event queue for the dirty rectangle. */ public void triggerRender() { Rectangle dirtyRect = new Rectangle(); for (GameObject object : getRenderableObjects()) { GraphicsComponent graphicsComponent = object.getComponent(GraphicsComponent.class); dirtyRect.add(graphicsComponent.getDirtyRect()); } gameView_.repaint(dirtyRect); } /** * Method: renderGameView * Renders the game objects onto the game view. * @param g The graphics object that draws the game objects. */ public void renderGameView(Graphics g) { for (GameObject object : getRenderableObjects()) { GraphicsComponent graphicsComponent = object.getComponent(GraphicsComponent.class); if (!graphicsComponent.isVisible()) continue; GraphicsComponent.Shape shape = graphicsComponent.getShape(); BoundsComponent boundsComponent = object.getComponent(BoundsComponent.class); Rectangle bounds = boundsComponent.getBounds(); g.setColor(graphicsComponent.getColor()); if (shape == GraphicsComponent.Shape.RECTANGULAR) { g.fill3DRect(bounds.x, bounds.y, bounds.width, bounds.height, true); } else if (shape == GraphicsComponent.Shape.CIRCULAR) { g.fillOval(bounds.x, bounds.y, bounds.width, bounds.height); } } } /** * Method: getRenderableObjects * @return The renderable game objects. */ private HashSet<GameObject> getRenderableObjects() { return gameManager.getGameObjectManager().getRelevantObjects( getClass()); } } Also all the updating in my game is event-driven. I don't have a loop like theirs that simply updates everything at the same time. I like my framework because it makes it easy to add new GameObjects, but doesn't have the problems some component-based designs encounter when communicating between components. I would hate to chuck it just to get pause to work. Is there a way I can add game states to my game without removing the entity-component design? Does the game state example actually fit my framework, and I'm just missing something? EDIT: I might not have explained my framework well enough. My components are just data. If I was coding in C++, they'd probably be structs. Here's an example of one: public class BoundsComponent implements GameComponent { /** * The position of the game object. */ private Point pos_; /** * The size of the game object. */ private Dimension size_; /** * Constructor * Creates a new BoundsComponent for a game object with initial position * initialPos and initial size initialSize. The position and size combine * to make up the bounds. * @param initialPos The initial position of the game object. * @param initialSize The initial size of the game object. */ public BoundsComponent(Point initialPos, Dimension initialSize) { pos_ = initialPos; size_ = initialSize; } /** * Method: getBounds * @return The bounds of the game object. */ public Rectangle getBounds() { return new Rectangle(pos_, size_); } /** * Method: setPos * Sets the position of the game object to newPos. * @param newPos The value to which the position of the game object is * set. */ public void setPos(Point newPos) { pos_ = newPos; } } My components do not communicate with each other. Systems handle inter-component communication. My systems also do not communicate with each other. They have separate functionality and can easily be kept separate. The MovementSystem doesn't need to know what the RenderingSystem is rendering to move the game objects correctly; it just need to set the right values on the components, so that when the RenderingSystem renders the game objects, it has accurate data. The game state could not be a system, because it needs to interact with the systems rather than the components. It's not setting data; it's determining which functions need to be called. A GameStateComponent wouldn't make sense because all the game objects share one game state. Components are what make up objects and each one is different for each different object. For example, the game objects cannot have the same bounds. They can have overlapping bounds, but if they share a BoundsComponent, they're really the same object. Hopefully, this explanation makes my framework less confusing.

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• Manage Your Amazon S3 Account with CloudBerry Explorer

  - by Mysticgeek

  If you have an Amazon S3 account you’re using to backup your data, you might want an easy way to manage it. CloudBerry Explorer is a free app that runs on your desktop an provides an easy way to manage your S3 account. Installation and Setup Just download and install the application with the defaults. When the application launches you’ll be prompted to enter in your username and email to get a registration key. Or you can continue on by clicking Register later. Now you will want to set up your Amazon S3 account. Click on File \ Amazon S3 Accounts. Double-click on the New Account icon.   Next enter in your Amazon account Access and Secret keys, select SSL if you want, then click the Test Connection button. Provided everything was entered correctly, you’ll see the Connection Success screen, just close out of it. Browse and Manage files Once you have your account setup through the Explorer, you can start viewing and managing your files on S3. The left pane shows your S3 buckets and stored files, while the right side shows your local computer. This allows you to manage your files in your Amazon S3 buckets directly from your desktop! It’s very easy to use, and you can drag and drop files from your computer to the S3 account or vice versa. There is also the ability to transfer files between Amazon S3 accounts from within the explorer. Go into Tools and Content Types and you can control the file types by adding, removing, or editing them. If you end up messing something up along the lines, you can always select Reset to defaults and everything will be back to normal. There is a multiple tabbed view so you can easily keep track of your different accounts and local machine. It allows the ability to create new storage buckets directly in the Explorer. Or you can delete buckets as well… Different actions can be accessed from the toolbars or by right-clicking and selecting from the context menu. Here we see a cool option that lets you move your data inside Amazon S3. It is faster and doesn’t cost money by moving the files to your computer first, then to another account. However, if you want data moved to your local machine first, you have that option as well.   Not all features are available in the free version, and if it’s not, you’ll be prompted to purchase a license for the Pro version. We will have a comprehensive review of the Pro version in the near future.    If you ever need help with CloudBerry Explorer, go to Tools \ Diagnostics. It will run a quick diagnostics check and you can send the information to the CloudBerry team for assistance. Delete Files from Amazon S3 To delete a file from you Amazon S3 account, simply highlight the files or folder you want to get rid of then click Delete on the toolbar. You can also right-click the file and select Delete from the Context Menu. Click Yes to the confirmation dialog box… Then you can watch the progress as your files are deleted in the bottom section of the explorer. Conclusion CloudBerry Explorer free version has several neat features that will allow you easy and basic control over you Amazon S3 account. The free version may be enough for basic users, but power users will want to upgrade to the pro version, as it includes a lot more features. Using the free version allows you to get a feel for what CloudBerry Explorer has to offer, and is a good starting point. Keep in mind that Amazon S3 is introducing Reduced Redundancy Storage which will lower the price of data stored. The price drops from $0.15 per GB to only $0.10 per GB. If you’re a Windows Home Server user, check out our review of CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for WHS. Download CloudBerry Explorer Free for Amazon S3 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home ServerReopen Closed Tabs in Internet ExplorerPreview and Purchase Ebooks with Kindle for PCTroubleshoot and Manage Addons in Internet Explorer 8Beginner Geek: Delete User Accounts in Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor

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