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Something disgusting, like six years ago, I listed on 43Things that I wanted to write a video game. I’ve actually made numerous arrested attempts ever since I started programming with my TI-94a back in 1983. My last attempt has been much less arrested (though still incomplete). I’ve learned a lot in my most recent endeavor, so it’s time to share. You can follow the actual work in progress, but my plan it to recreate the steps I’ve gone though over the course of a few posts. Christopher is on part 3 of his HTML/JavaScript game series. Start here to catch up.
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Web apps can be split into two major components: a front-end that displays and collects information, and a back-end for storing the information. In this article, I’ll demonstrate what a relational database is, and how to properly design your database to store your app’s information. A database stores data in an organized way so that it can be searched and retrieved later. It should contain one or more tables. A table is much like a spreadsheet, in that it’s made up of rows and columns. All rows have the same columns, and each column contains the data itself. If it helps, think of your tables in the same way that you would a table in Excel. If you think "foreign key" sounds like music theory, JOIN us for this handy database primer.
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Developing COBOL applications has, until now, been largely constrained to the desktop environment. One of the latest projects from the Eclipse Foundation is an online code editor named Orion. The Orion project aims to provide an environment for web based development tools. This means producing a platform that can be extended by developers, like us, to enable users to edit their code on the web.... We set out to change the limitations of developing COBOL applications on the desktop environment. You heard it here first: COBOL is the future.
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There’s a lot of talk these days about what makes a good “culture”, whether you’re an engineer, a software developer, or a chef. It’s all about finding a work environment that not only is conducive to getting stuff done, but also makes it a pleasure to get up in the morning and get there. In this article, we’re going to take a look at a few prominent developer voices that have discussed the idea of what makes a good developer culture. Is it the perks? Is it being extra “geeky”? Is it looking for collaboration where collaboration doesn’t normally happen? Or is it a combination of all these factors plus something more? What kind of workplace brings out the best in your coding?
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A nice intro tutorial (although really, did it need to be on that many pages?) to CSS Layout[^]. Good for beginners, or if you're still using tables to lay stuff out.
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TTFN - Kent
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The topic of DeRose's lecture is "Math in the Movies." This topic is his job: translating principles of arithmetic, geometry, and algebra into software that renders objects or powers physics engines. This process is much the same at Pixar as it is at other computer animation or video game studios, he explains; part of why he's here is to explain why aspiring animators and game designers need a solid base in mathematics. As Pixar's Senior Scientist, DeRose has more than a solid base: PhD in computer science, specialty in computational physics, a decade as a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington. Hair, cloth, fluids, and gaseous phenomena like clouds, smoke, and fire all have their own physics at Pixar.
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Apple tightly controls its software and hardware, and is fiercely competitive in battling its rivals, especially in the mobile market. And yet, while the company never creates apps for anyone else’s mobile system or device, each of its major mobile-platform foes — Google, Amazon and Microsoft — make many of their apps available for Apple devices. That makes those devices the sort of Switzerlands of the mobile world. And in Objective-C! Is there no end to the insanity?
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Welcome to the future of watch evolution. The Pebble E-Paper Watch is the "first watch built for the 21st century." It can track your bikerides, display your text messages, and even tell the time! We had no choice but to bust the Pebble open and see what made it tick. Calling Dick Tracy: they're breaking and entering your watch phone.
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In agreeing to settle a case brought by 38 states involving the project, the search company for the first time is required to aggressively police its own employees on privacy issues and to explicitly tell the public how to fend off privacy violations like this one. While the settlement also included a tiny — for Google — fine of $7 million, privacy advocates and Google critics characterized the overall agreement as a breakthrough for a company they say has become a serial violator of privacy. Google knows what you did last summer.
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They see you when you are sleeping
They know when you're awake
They know if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake
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With big data comes big responsibility. ~ Voltaire
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Every single day
Every word you say
Every game you play
Every night you stay
I'll be watching you
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Configuration Profiles (mobileconfigs) are small files installed with a single tap on iOS devices. They’re essentially instruction lists which can alter many settings, including network configurations and they’re used by thousands of companies around the world including app developers, corporations with IT departments and more. Their use is officially approved by Apple and there is nothing innately malicious about any given profile. But, if put to the right uses, they do open up the ability to read usernames and passwords right off of a screen, transmit data that would normally be secure (over HTTPS) to a malicious server where it can be read and a lot more. Don’t install profiles from websites that you don’t know and avoid them completely if at all possible.
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My hard drive crashed today. As you can see in "My Backup Strategy" post, I am a rigorous backer-upper, but I got schooled today. My strategy includes "File History" from my C drive to my L drive and then backup the L drive to CrashPlan. When I setup my backup strategy I was under the impression that I'd be able to go to File History and restore all files to the latest version. Unfortunately that isn't the case. Important lesson for me: Don't depend on File History for a pure "latest version" backup.
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Quote: Don't depend on File History for a pure "latest version" backup. Don't depend on a windows process? What? Say it aint so.
In seriousness, it's a good thing Microsoft has flaws, or else many of us wouldn't have jobs. We make their stuff better.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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Improving performance is a constant process. First we ditched tables, spacer gifs, and inline markup such as the element in favor of CSS, reducing page sizes, and separating style from layout. Then we became aware of all our DNS requests, caching, and the total number of files and started using CSS sprites, moving many small images out of the HTML and into a single background image. Now it’s time we embrace the third epoch in performance optimization: symbol fonts. Comics sans Comic Sans.
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And what if we got together a bunch of experts who work on large sites to create a definitive front-end performance guide? And not just one of those boring guides made for robots, what if we did something fun? The definitive front-end performance guide... Get your web site in shape with this helpful (and humorous) guide.
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We are happy to announce we are releasing the Kinect for Windows samples under an open source license. You can find everything on CodePlex. We have posted a total of 22 unique samples in C#, C++, and Visual Basic. We’re doing this for a few reasons... Grab the code, then follow this new blog for Kinect programming tips and tutorials.
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Here's the programme. I am going to put TextPad and Sublime through Verity's Immutable, Scientific And Absolutely Perfectly Fair Six Point Programmers' Editor Test, and see who wins. I am aware I am treading on sensitive and subjective ground here, so I am going to apply legendary Microsoft blogger Raymond Chen's anti-nitpicking strategy. I will attempt to anticipate and dismiss in advance every possible commentard objection, and leave the right-thinking reader with an impression of calm, reasoned rationality, and definitely not obsessive paranoia. Because programmers do not tend to have strong feelings about their favorite editor.
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Is there an option I don't know about, or is Stob's definition of not getting in the way different than mine?
Quote: TextPad has an excellent search-and-replace dialog (non-modal, but goes translucent when it doesn't have focus, so can be left open without getting in the way).
All I get is the Aero glass effect on the dialog's borders which is useless for seeing anything behind it; never mind the rest of the non-opaque dialog.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Back when our team was dealing with operations, optimization and scalability... we had our fair share of troubleshooting poorly performing applications and infrastructures of various sizes, often large (think CNN or the World Bank). Tight deadlines, “exotic” technical stacks and lack of information usually made for memorable experiences. The cause of the issues was rarely obvious: here are a few things we usually got started with. When you're finished cursing and throwing things, try these tips...
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The book is a great read on practical applications of hardware hacking. It starts off with simple hacks: installing a blue LED, building a USB adapter for the device’s controller ports, and replacing the power supply. The rest of the book goes over how the security on the device was compromised, and the legal implications of pulling off the hack. We have just gotten a wake-up call from the Nintendo Generation.
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R3J5cGhvbnMgYXJlIGF3ZXNvbWUuIEdyeXBob25zIHJ1bGUh
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It was snowing when we arrived at the BlackBerry campus in Waterloo, on a bitterly cold winter day. There were icicles under the bus, and the bare trees and snow-covered fields turned Canada black and white. We were visiting BlackBerry’s home ground to hear the story behind BlackBerry 10, the company’s new operating system and the engine it hopes to power a dramatic turnaround. Two years of work had just ended, and the company was ready to talk about what it had done, how it had done it, and where it wanted to go. Everyone wants to know: what about the keyboard?
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In a surprise reversal, Microsoft has changed the default behavior of Flash content on websites viewed using Internet Explorer in Windows 8 or Windows RT. Previously, sites had to be on a whitelist before Flash would work. The new behavior effectively turns the Compatibility View list into an exclusive blacklist of badly behaved sites. Flash, Silverlight, Java... if it requires a plug-in, it's probably trouble.
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