C++ Programming Language

Well I’m starting up C++ again and It’s quite easy this time, I’m guess because my brain has developed from my aging .  All jokes aside, it’s taken about almost two years for me to understand the basics of C++ since c++ pointers thrown me way off course when I was younger.

I recently found a discovery which if I would of found when I was just starting would of saved my life on the basic concept of C++.  This website in general covers a lot of topics that my book doesn’t cover, (Beginning C++ Through Game Dev, 2nd Edi), I’m now using it as a good reference and If anyone is a young self learner you should check it out because this website is a dream for anyone who wants to know a bit of C++ before they get started in there career.

Learn C++ [ learncpp.com ]

In no particular order:

1. The home page doesn’t get any sub-navigation. Don’t ask me why, it just does. Move along, nothing to see here.
2. A site map’s purpose is to tell you where pages exist within the structure of a Web site.
3. A site map’s purpose isn’t to list every element of each page, especially repeating items like “search box” or “email signup box.” That goes somewhere else, like in an Information Architecture document or a checklist of “things it would suck to forget.”
4. A place for everything and everything in its place. Think of the site map as a tree. If you have a page that doesn’t connect to the rest of the site what you’ve got is a dead branch. The only pages you don’t need in a site map is Not Found and Thank You (landing page for contact forms.)
5. “About” should be one of the last items, not right after “Home.” Web sites for individuals may be the only exception to this rule, and even then not very often.
6. If you’ve got to the 5th level of navigation, you’ve gone too far. Carol Anne – listen to me. Do NOT go into the light. Stop where you are. Turn away from it. Don’t even look at it.
7. Every line in the site map = one Web page. If you’ve got a Resources section that includes Links and FAQs, you still need content for the Resources overview page.

Any other suggestions?

Comments

Fortunately it is ot too difficult to add this piece of behaviour. The following code is applicable to an instance of the FLVPlayback component on stage (instance name ‘player’) not using a skin but using a custom UI seekbar component (instance name ’seekbar’).

Give that a try and you should be able to click the seekbar to jump to any point in the video (provided you are streaming or – if using progressive download – the video has already loaded up to the part you are trying to seek to).

Ubiquity

Recently I had some collision with Ubiquity and MSN Plus Live.  Just also had problems with writing so I was playing with ubiquity and changed my settings its real simple.

Just type in the address bar after you install Ubiquity:

about:ubiquity

After that click on the “Change your hotkey.” input box:

Ubiquity

Thats about it for doing that happy Ubiquiting!

Ubiquity

Yes thats right ubiquity is here and its future!  You can do a lot of things such as simple selection & language translations, inserting maps into your emails, helping you define words with just a selection and simple keyboard clicks instead of going to Google, theres so many cool things you should check out, it’s insane, just watch the video and you’ll understand why this is the future of the Internet! Check out this video.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Introducing Ubiquidy [labs.mozilla.com]

Over at Fusion Authority they point to an article by Joe Rinehart on Dr. Dobb’s Portal. Rinehart says ColdFusion has become his application server of choice. He says he prefers it because it combines straightforward development with features such as Flash Remoting and real-time messaging gateways that make communication between the application server and Flex RIAs simpler.

On the HTML Goodies site, Doug Hughes writes favorably of ColdFusion. “ColdFusion has always focused on making complex and difficult tasks easy. The classic example of this is the ease of querying databases”.

“In most languages you need to have several lines of code to establish a connection to a database server (more if you’re using connection pooling), several lines to build your SQL statement, a couple lines to send the request, more to close the connection and then several more lines of code just to output data from the query into an HTML list. However, early versions of ColdFusion consolidated most of this tedious process into one tag that wraps the SQL statement you’re running and one tag that iterates over results.”

Its good to see ColdFusion receive some positive coverage from other mainstream tech sites.

Here are my images that I used in this tutorial.

First we are going to lay some textures down to give the map some character and color. My base background is this picture of a piece of crumpled up brown paper.

Next we are going to add some leather on top of that. Change the blending mode to Hard Light and the opacity down to 90%.

Now lay over that your map picture. To make that texture show through, change the blending mode to Multiply.

Next to darken up the edges, draw a radial (black to transparent) gradient. To blend it better, change the layer to Overlay and to 30% opacity.

Lets add some text to brand the image (insert your own text here). I used a fancy script font you will see why next. Also change the blending mode to Color Burn and set opacity to 80%.

Since we are adding some text, lets add a ‘X’, to mark the spot where the treasure is hidden. Use a dark crimson color and set the blending mode to Darken.

Now we can add a fountain pen to the picture. Use the Polygon Lasso tool to cut out the pen and place it in the new image. Add a drop shadow to the layer to give it a three-dimensional feel.

Now cut out some objects to place on top of the map (ex. compass, key, leather book). Add a light shadow with a feathered edge.

Repeat last step until you are happy with the composition. Then we need to flatten the image so we can add the burnt edges. After flattening the image place a blank layer underneath the map layer and fill it with black.

Next use the Polygon Lasso tool to cut out some jagged holes in the map and also take cut a piece out of the corner.

Now delete that selection and you are left with holes in your map. But we are not finished yet.

Place an image of old roughed up wood between the top layer and the black layer. So you can see it through the holes.

Next adjust the color by going to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation. This will make the wood look like it matches the image better.

After that, change the blending mode to Vivid Light, so that the black shows through. Now it looks like burnt charred wood.

Now using the Burn tool, brush around the edges of the holes and randomly around the map. Use a feathered brush at 45% exposure.

Were almost done! Flatten the image one more time and adjust the brightness and contrast. Go to going to Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast.

And now we are done creating a treasure map that has withstood the test of time.

Congrats!

Here is a video of his leaked information:

Google Search Results

Recently Discovered, I was searching the web for mysql group by and on the very first page half way down I found out google is now including its code snippet engine in the root search engine.

So I’m guessing google is going to start trying to make searching as easy as possible with it’s search results in the near future.  So far I’ve only discovered google only did this for “group by” mysql clause, but not sure if this works with any other search results yet, google ftw!