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Sketches: Experiments

Derek — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:00:05 +0000

Here are some screenshots of ongoing sketches / concepts for visualizing data off of the track.

The first concept was to mimic the relationship of the car's relative position on the track (in this case by drawing a continuous oval/spiral) and tie that in with the car's current throttle. In this way we can get a sort of "histogram" of the entire race.

Oval concept using random data:

Using throttle input (changing colors per lap)

I tried something a bit different using strips of color, almost like a line graph. In this way it might be easier to visually distinguish a faster laptime based on the length of the color strip:

Platform Up and running on the website

jasonmirra — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:50:09 +0000

Hey guys-- I've been sick for a while, but now I'm feeling better so I'm getting some more work done. I made some improvements and fixed some bugs. The main thing that you'll notice is that its easier to access. To test it, just go to

http://www.dragonwars.net/dragonwars-alpha2.html

If it doesn't work, then you don't have the latest version of java, or the server is down.

Try to gather as many people as you can to chat away, in order to flush out any bugs.

Hopefully this weekend, we'll see progress with the DragonWars itself.

Regards,
Jason

Library Services for a New Age: Transforming Libraries into Centers for Boomer Learning and Community

Lifelong Access Libraries — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:33:55 +0000

Diantha Schull writes:

On October 1, I was delighted to work with Susan Irving, 2006 Lifelong Access Fellow, and Hagar Shirman, LFF’s Massachusetts EqualAccess Program Manager, to offer a preconference on Library Services for a New Age: Transforming Libraries into Centers for Boomer Learning and Community at the National Diversity in Libraries Conference co-sponsored by the Kentucky Library Association, KSMA, SELA, and the Association of Research Libraries. Held in Louisvile, Kentucky, the preconference attracted a diverse and motivated group, including adult program specialists, branch managers, library trustees, public reference librarians and academic librarians from such locations as Baton Rouge, Louisville, Atlanta, Lexington and Scott County Library in Georgetown, Kentucky. Participants contributed throughout the session, discussing the need for new approaches to working with active older adults and exchanging ideas for programs, partnerships and “branding.”

Lifelong Access Fellow Susan Irving gave an exceptional presentation on the work she has lead in Louisville as Manager of the St. Matthews Eline Library. She described the beginnings of the program, when she attended her first meeting of the Kentucky Elder Readiness Initiative and her participation in the 2006 Lifelong Access Institute. From there, she worked with leaders of 4 local organizations that were already using the library on a regular basis, to design and experiment with programs that would engage older adults from across the community. She outlined the programming philosophy—innovate, inform, involve—and showed examples of the program series that have evolved over two years, including "Aging Well" Programs, "Community Conversations," "Puzzle Play" and "Want to Talk About It?". Each program involves a partner organization. According to Susan, the library now has more partners than it can accommodate, and a waiting list besides. She believes that programming for boomers has given her library and her community “an anchor” that continues to grow.

We know many other Lifelong Access Fellows are organizing programs to inform colleagues about Lifelong Access. Please let us know if you are presenting or participating in workshops about 50+ services!

О программировании

Dark SavanT — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:11:39 +0000

Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for life.

что в вольном переводе означает "Программирование, оно как секс - совершив ошибку, тебе придется поддерживать ее всю жизнь"

отсюда

Birth of a startup

Blog Admin — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:40:14 +0000

The real motivation for the startup was really to make money. After hearing about developers making thousands if not millions of dollars just selling applications on the Apple App Store, we couldn't resist but to join the market. It has been predicted that the App Store would become a billion-dollar market in the near future, and what better time to get into it if not now, while the market is still not saturated. With the SDK free for download, and the NDA dropped - which means that iPhone-related resources such as books and tutorials can now be acquired - the only thing left for us to do is to design and code. If only it were that simple.

You see, I don't know how to code in Objective-C. But I do have a background in programming. My programming skills are either more towards the Web, utilising languages such as HTML, ASP, CSS and JavaScript; or more towards Engineering programming using Matlab or LabView. I do however, have a formal training in C and C++, which would be great foundations for learning Objective-C, but I have long since forgotten how to code in C and C++.

So the startup is really an ongoing project; requiring time to learn how to code in Objective-C and at the same time code for the real app for the App Store. Wish us luck in our journey.

Thank you.

- The Programmer

Simple Grid + JSON Store

vishravars — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:17:15 +0000

Sample Dojo Grid with JSON access below

Works for Dojo 1.2, and not for earlier versions.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Layout Markup Basic</title>
<style type="text/css">
@import "dijit/themes/soria/soria.css";
@import "dijit/themes/tundra/tundra.css";
@import "dojox/grid/resources/Grid.css";
@import "dojox/grid/resources/tundraGrid.css";
@import "general.css";
</style>
<script type="text/javascript" src="dojo/dojo.js" djConfig="isDebug:false, parseOnLoad: true"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
dojo.require("dojo.data.ItemFileReadStore");
dojo.require("dojox.grid.DataGrid");
dojo.require("dojo.parser");
dojo.require("dijit.form.Button");
dojo.require("dijit.form.TextBox");
dojo.require("dijit.form.DateTextBox");
dojo.require("dijit.form.ComboBox");
dojo.require("dijit.layout.ContentPane");
dojo.require("dijit.layout.TabContainer");
var jsonStore = new dojo.data.ItemFileReadStore({ url: "MyJson.jsp" });
</script>
</head>
<body class="soria">
<table id="gridNode" jsId="grid" dojoType="dojox.grid.DataGrid" autowidth="true"
query="{ customer_name: '*' }" store="jsonStore" class="tundra" style="height:300px;width:400px">
<thead>
<tr>
<th field="customer_name">Customer Name</th>
<th field="customer_address" width="100px">Customer Address</th>
</tr>
</thead>
</table>
</body>
</html>

MyJson.jsp Sample goes below:

<%@ taglib prefix="json" uri="http://www.atg.com/taglibs/json" %>
<json:object>
<json:array name="items" var="item" items="2">
<json:object>
<json:property name="customer_name" value="nancy"/>
<json:property name="customer_address" value="LA"/>
</json:object>
<json:object>
<json:property name="customer_name" value="ken"/>
<json:property name="customer_address" value="CA"/>
</json:object>
</json:array>
</json:object>

Το Lazarus θα χρησιμοποιεί το GTK2

cyberpython — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:14:36 +0000

Μέχρι σήμερα (όπως και στην επόμενη έκδοση που αναμένεται) το Lazarus χρησιμοποιούσε το GTK1 ως προεπιλεγμένο widgetset. Αν κάποιος ήθελε να χρησιμοποιήσει το περιβάλλον με GTK2 έπρεπε να ξαναμεταγλωττίσει το IDE από την αρχή.

Όλα αυτά όμως είναι παρελθόν σύμφωνα με ανακοίνωση του Mattias Gärtner στη mailing list των developers του Lazarus, όπου δήλωσε οτι πλέον (από την έκδοση 0.9.28 δηλαδή που είναι υπό ανάπτυξη) το default widgetset θα είναι το GTK2

VBA and VSTO

christopherspicer — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:58:50 +0000

I'm a really big fan of the .NET framework and have been working with the Visual Studio Tools for Office suite that comes with Visual Studio 2008 Professional. I have to say that I'm not such a big fan of VSTO - it has a long way to go for a number of reasons:

Deployment is awkward. I've been working on a managed add-in and deploying to Excel 2003 is awkward. Deploying to Excel 2007 is easy, but then who uses Excel 2007?
VSTO solutions (by which I mean anything managed bar a COM addin) aren't as flexible as their VBA or XLL counterparts. For example, you can easily provide UDFs and access the Excel object model in VBA and C++, but this isn't possible in a single managed solution.
You need an expensive copy of Visual Studio to use it. VBA solutions can be developed with the copy of Excel that you already have on your machine

That said, once you get past the point where your managed code and Excel meet, you're into the sunlit uplands of the .Net Framework. Happy days!

(Bullen, Bovey and Green's book, "Professional Excel Development", gives a thorough examination of the pros and cons of .Net in Excel. Worth a look).

I work in the Financial industry. There's such a massive investment in VBA - and the managed alternatives so inadequate - that I can't see anybody switching to managed solutions in the foreseeable future. There's just too many mission-critical systems running on VBA.

Which leads me to feel a bit disappointed. I understand that Microsoft are trying to squeeze everything into the .Net framework to control their development costs, but they really were almost there with VBA! If only VBA in Excel 2007 had been given a spruced up IDE and perhaps some new language features (inheritance!), it would really have driven its sales.

So how about it Microsoft - one last push for Excel 13?

Back to Lua

M_D_K — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:53:49 +0000

Ok so i returned to lua and I'm trying to get boost to work, i have a feeling I'll get the same shit as before when compiling luabind. If it happens I'm gonna go Code monkey on LuaBind's ass fix that stuff myself, wouldn't be the first time I've had to fight with a library to get it to compile(and work).

One thing i hate about having to use Lua 5.0 is that it has the thread support but its missing stuff like the return defines(LUA_YIELD etc) i looked at lua 5.1 found it to be 1 but don't know if thats what lua 5.0 returns when i actually yield. Also some functions i needed were missing so yep going for round two with lua.

I'll post the luabind fix(if i can fix it) soon as boost finishes compiling. Which reminds me I'm upgrading to boost-1.36 so whatever.

Peace out.

Usability - Thinking about User Tasks

Steph — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:44:52 +0000

A good start to analyzing the flow of your program is to think about the tasks that your users are trying to accomplish with your application.

Identify the individual tasks the user is trying to solve - This is WHAT the user is trying to do, not HOW the user is doing this. You can start off by thinking about the overall goal of the system and then by breaking it up into smaller subtasks.

Are there any preconditions or dependencies that need to be figured out to make this task possible? -This can be information that the user needs to supply, or it can also be other tasks (recursion!) that need to be done before this one can be accomplished. One example is that a user must first create an account before they can use their account to log into a website.

Other things to know about tasks: How often is this task being done? What are the errors that can happen? Or how can it go wrong? Are there any constraints on the task? And so on..

Gartner Says, Sometimes Hype is Necessary

lewisshepherd — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:06:34 +0000

Fact: Gartner is taking the same approach they often critique with their normally-solid "Hype Cycle" reports - arguing that "a little cloud hype" is beneficial if it "captures the imaginations of a broader audience of decision makers."

Analysis: With their annual "Hype Cycle" reports, Gartner usually does a solid job of tracking over-optimistic assessments of the "latest and greatest" in technology and calling out overly hyped "hot new tech" and providing realistic assessments of the projected future of trends in software, hardware, and business processes.

Sometimes, Gartner slips up, and falls prey to the error they ascribe to others. That's the only interpretation I can make on a curious blog posting on an official Gartner blog designed to promote their new book "Mastering the Hype Cycle: Choosing the Right Innovation at the Right Time." Mark Raskino, the book's co-author with longtime analyst Jackie Fenn, argues that "We have to simplify the business proposition behind this ‘big shift’, explain it well and socialize it deeply to convince non-tech business leaders to buy-in."

Mr. Raskino makes clear that he wants to babytalk these business-side executives into believing "a little cloud hype" because, in his words, IT leaders and CIOs "need help explaining the fundamental change."

I haven't read the book; it may be a fine work with other (more valuable) insights. After all, it's published by Harvard Business Press; here's the Amazon page for it, you can read it and judge for yourself, as I likely will. But this blog posting is an official one on Gartner's own site, promoting their book by their analysts, so the firm bears accountability for this curious approach.

In the blog posting, Mr. Raskino sums up his case on "hyping the buzz" about cloud computing as follows:

It’s too simplistic to say cloud hype is bad. If we are technically expert is might irritate us with its breadth and abstraction, but we are not the only audience. Somehow the idea has to cross the corridor into other business departments and that’s just as likely to be via a Business Week article or even (dare I say it?) an airline in-flight magazine. Whether we like it or not, repeatedly promoting a basic collective term through broader media has a long history of overcoming corporate resistance and inertia in ways IT departments can’t do alone. ‘The cloud’ is a BIG idea, its a reasonable visual metaphor and most of all its not an acronym. It may not be perfect, but if it captures the imaginations of a broader audience of decision makers we should cut it some slack.

My opinion is that the technology of cloud services is developing at a blistering pace, and adoption rates are incrementally moving along at an appropriately lagged step behind the technology. Perhaps we need to clarify our definitions of words like "hype" and "buzz," and more importantly distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate "technical education."

Marketing the promise of cloud services is fine; intentionally "hyping" the technology is unnecessary and will be counterproductive. Why on earth does Mr. Raskino think technologies wind up going through a "trough of disillusionment" on Gartner's own hype cycle? Is that now supposed to be a desirable thing?

Ah, got that off my chest. Feels better. Breathing deeply, calming down, taking the long view. In fact, taking the long view is something I advise to those (like Mr. Raskino) who are too focused on hyping technology's advance, not building it. Here's a suggestion: look back several years and read something you wrote about the future, and see what lessons you can learn from history and your attempt to predict it.

An enjoyable read along those lines is the legendary Charles Simonyi's piece from this summer, "Programmers at Work: Follow Up." Simonyi (of Xerox PARC, early Microsoft, and space tourism fame) reflects on an interview from two decades ago, with some fascinating observations about advances in programming languages and practices, software, education, aviation... it's a thought-provoking read from an entertainingly complex fellow. (Maybe that's what Martha Stewart saw in him for the 20 years they dated.)

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iniParser : memparsing file dengan ekstensi *.ini

petra — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:06:02 +0000

INI file adalah sebuah format file yang digunakan untuk menampung konfigurasi. Ekstensi INI berasal dari kata "initialization". Biasanya memang digunakan untuk menampung konfigurasi inisialisasi dari sebuah aplikasi.

Format datanya adalah seperti ini

[section]
name = value ; comment

Untuk mengolah file seperti ini pada lingkungan pemrograman C, sudah terdapat banyak library yang dapat digunakan untuk melakukan parsing, mengedit, serta mengambil dan mengeset nilai pada file tersebut. Salah satu dari library tersebut adalah iniParser. Library sangat baik untuk digunakan karena cukup lengkap dan simpel.

Supaya dapat menggunakannya source code dapat langsung didownload dari situsnya. Kemudian tinggal mengeksekusi perintah "Make" pada terminal. (Pastikan sudah ada gcc dan libc6-dev). Pengeksekusian ini akan menghasilkan sebuah file yakni libiniparser.a yakni sebuah static library yang telah berisi fungsi-fungsi yang dapat digunakan.
Kali ini lagi-lagi untuk memudahkan akan digunakan pada IDE Netbeans.

Copy file dictionary.h dan iniparser.h ke folder projectnya secara manual.
Kemudian klik kanan pada virtual folder Header Files pada Window Projectnya lalu pilih Add Existings Items... Kemudian pilih dictionary.h dan iniparser.h serta set store path sebagai relative. Ini akan memudahkan jika nanti projectnya akan dikerjakan di lain tempat.
Copy file libiniparser.a ke direktori project secara manual. Lebih baik jika dibuatkan sebuah sub folder "lib"
Klik kanan pada projectnya kemudian pilih Properties.
Pilih bagian Linker, dan kemudian pilih pada bagian Libraries.
Pilih Add Library File, dan kemudian pilih file libiniparser.a yang tadi telah diadd. Pathnya diset ke relative.

Untuk mencobanya, kita buat sebuah file ini. Isinya

[section1]
nama1 = data3 ; ini komentar
nama3 = data2 ; ini komentar juga

[section3]
nama1 = data1
nama2 = data2

Kemudian kita simpan ke /tmp/config1.ini

[sourcecode language="c"]
#include
#include
#include "dictionary.h"
#include "iniparser.h"

int main(int argc, char** argv) {
    dictionary * config;
    config = iniparser_load("/tmp/config1.ini");
    char * nama1 = iniparser_getstring(config, "section1:nama1", "halo2");
    printf("%s\n", nama1);
    return (EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
[/sourcecode]

Fungsi iniparser_load berguna untuk membuka file yang dipilih (/tmp/config1.ini) dan menyimpan handlenya ke pointer config.
Kemudian nilai-nilai yang disimpan dapat diambil dengan menggunakan fungsi iniparser_getstring atau fungsi lain seperti iniparser_getint dengan menyebutkan section serta nama dari nilai yang ingin diambil.

Aplikasi dapat langsung dijalankan dan dilihat hasilnya.

Microsoft: programming contest defaced, not hacked

lindsayprogramming — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:05:34 +0000

Yesterday I reported on a Microsoft Australia programming contest to find star developers which had many more submissions from Ov3rLord and Turkish self-labelled hackers than genuine entrants. Microsoft...

http://www.itwire.com

Embedding Firefox in Windows Forms

James Rossiter — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:28:06 +0000

I used Skybound GeckoFX to embed firefox in my c# windows forms. Goodbye terrible .net webbrowser component!

Pointer C++ (lanjutan sebelumnya)

abeinoe — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:39:01 +0000

Karena ada yang request untuk ditambah pembahasan tentang pointer, saya coba untuk menambahkan penjelasan penggunaan pointer di C++. Jika kita menggunakan pointer hanya dalam satu fungsi,mungkin manfaatnya tidak terlihat karena tidak ada bedanya dengan penggunaan variabel kecuali kita ingin menggunakan memori dinamis. Namun akan terasa bedanya jika kita ingin melewatkan suatu variabel ke fungsi lain dimana kita ingin langsung mengubah isi variabel tersebut didalam fungsi tanpa menunggu return dari fungsi tersebut. Contoh:

void negasi(int x){
x = -(x);
}
void negasiP(int *x){
*x = -(*x);
}

int main(){

int a=5;

int *b = a;
cout << “nilai a awal: “ << a << endl;

negasi(a);

cout << “nilai a jika a yang dilewatkan ke fungsi: “ << a << endl;

negasiP(b);

cout << “nilai a jika b yang dilewatkan ke fungsi: “ << a << endl;

return 0;
}

coba compile (mudah2n bisa,hehe…)

Sekarang perhatikan bahwa pointer b menyimpan alamat a. Ketika a yang dilewatkan ke fungsi, isi variabel a akan disalin ke x yaitu 5. Dengan demikian, jika ada statement yang merubah nilai 5 di variabel x pada fungsi negasi, hanya pada variabel x itu nilai 5 berubah karena nilai itu merupakan salinan dari nilai 5 pada variabel a. Sehingga tidak ada perubahan nilai 5 pada variabel a. Lain halnya pada waktu variabel b yang dilewatkan pada fungsi. Isi variabel b adalah alamat dari variabel a, sehingga yang dilewatkan pada fungsi adalah alamat tersebut yang disalin pada variabel x. Jika ada perubahan nilai 5 di variabel x pada fungsi negasiP maka nilai 5 pada variabel a juga akan berubah. Jika kita terjemahkan dalam bahasa manusia ;p perintah *x = -(*x) dapat diterjemahkan bahwa nilai pada alamat yang tersimpan dalam variabel x dikali dengan -1 (yaitu pernyataan -(*x)) kemudian disimpan ke alamat yang disimpan pada variabel x (yaitu pernyataan *x=). Alamat yang nilainya dirubah tersebut tidak lain adalah alamat variabel a sehingga nilai variabel a lah yang berubah.

Gimana? Sekarang sudah tergambar maksud dari pointer? Untuk lebih detail tentang pointer saya sarankan untuk membaca buku-buku pemrograman C++. Dan jika mau saya akan kirimkan ebook tentang pointer ke email anda. Kirim saja email ke abeinoe@gmail.com. Yang saya jelaskan di blog adalah hal yang tidak dijelaskan di buku-buku pemrograman umumnya.

XCode!!!

taganegros — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:19:16 +0000

It's been a lot of fun reading thru Aaron Hillegass' book "Cocoa Programming in Mac OS X - 3rd Edition". I'd say it's a Cocoa newbie Bible - for anyone who is looking for an easy to read book pick this up in your nearest bookstore. Aaron makes programming in Mac OS X so easy it's like taking Algebra for a refresher.

There isn't a lot of new programming languages an enterprise developer needs to know these days. It's either you are into COBOL/Mainframe or your into Java. I've literally stopped learning a new programming language for some time now - the last usable langauge I tried to learn was...uhmm...Javascript/AJAX.

Since I've switched to a Mac, I've tried to learn as much as how this thing works. For a long time Windows Power User, and an Ubuntu hobbyist - the Mac OS seemed pretty familiar, but its not. Enter XCode. I've had a lot of experience in different IDEs for almost a decade I'm into software development. XCode is a mix of the complexity of MS Visual Studio but with the simplicity of look-up functions of Eclipse. All I can say is Wow! Just that!

If anyone of you who wants to explore development in a Mac - I'd recommend getting Aaron's book and walk yourself through XCode. It's amazing how a free development tool just works!