Dispatchers and Routers
by
Munish K. Gupta | November 2012 | Java
Akka is a toolkit and runtime for building highly concurrent, distributed, and fault-tolerant event-driven applications on the JVM. Dispatchers are the heart of the Akka application. It is the engine that powers the Akka application. It is very important to understand the switches and knobs that need to be tuned to extract the maximum concurrency and scalability out of the application. Routers on the other hand, route incoming messages to outbound actors.
In this article by Munish K. Gupta, author of Akka Essentials, we will cover:
- What a dispatcher is and how it works, various types of dispatchers and theirusage and configuration settings
- Different types of mailboxes, and their usage and configuration
- What a router is, and different types of routers and their usage
- How to write a custom router
Web Services Testing and soapUI
by
Charitha Kankanamge | November 2012 | SOA Web Services Open Source
Quality is a key to success of service-oriented projects. Utilization of proper tools is important to the outcome of web service testing methodology. Being the leading open source web services testing tool, soapUI helps to build robust and flexible automated tests in a productive manner.
In this article by Charitha Kankanamge, author of Web Services Testing with soapUI, we will cover:
- Overview of some of the key characteristics of web services
- The role of web services in SOA
- Approaches of testing web services
- Web services testing challenges
- Introduction to soapUI
- Installing soapUI
Web services are one of the key building blocks of service-oriented solutions. Because of their usage and importance in the enterprise applications, the project teams are expected to be knowledgeable and familiar with the technologies which are associated with web services and service-oriented architecture(SOA).
Read Web Services Testing and soapUI in fullGraphic Design - Working with Clip Art and Making Your Own
by
Alexander Anichkin | November 2012 | Cookbooks
iWork is Apple on a shoestring: iWork costs a fraction of the price of full creative suites and yet is packed with the potential to achieve the same results. It shows users how to exploit iWork's full potential. By taking a lateral approach to this relatively inexpensive software, you can find solutions to all your professional and creative needs, from designing logos and brochures to producing a high quality monthly magazine.
This article by Alexander Anichkin, author of iWork for Mac OS X Cookbook, we will be:
- Making symbols from Character Palette into clip art—where to find clip art for iWork
- Using elements of iWork templates as clip art—clipping a photo to a hand-written note
- Making your digital photos into a piece of clip art
- Putting images inside letters—filling letters with photos and other graphic images
- Turning a star into a thought bubble—how to edit shapes
Blender Engine : Characters
by
Victor Kuller Bacone | November 2012 | Games
Blender is an open source, cross platform suite of tools for 3D creation, capable of modeling, rendering, and animating 3D environments.Blender Game Engine is the part of the Blender 3D editor used to create actual 3D video games. It’s the ideal entry level game development environment because you don’t even need to learn to program. Create a complete game using Bender’s innovative logic bricks.
In this article by Victor Kuller Bacone, author of Blender Game Engine: Beginner’s Guide, we'll:
- Learn how to create a library
- Involve enemies in the game
- Create a meeting point for the enemy and player
Starting with Gradle
by
Hubert Klein Ikkink | November 2012 | Open Source
Gradle is a tool for build automation. With Gradle, we can automate the compiling, testing, packaging, and deployment of our software or other types of projects. Gradle is flexible but has sensible defaults for most projects. This means we can rely on the defaults, if we don't want something special, but can still use the flexibility to adapt a build to certain custom needs.
This article by Hubert Klein Ikkink, author of Gradle Effective Implementation Guide introduces Gradle and explains how to install Gradle.
Gradle is already used by big open source projects, such as Spring, Hibernate, and Grails. Enterprise companies such as LinkedIn also use Gradle.
Read Starting with Gradle in fullRetopology in 3ds Max
by
Thomas Mooney | November 2012 | Games
Retopology is the process of reducing the polygon count of a high-resolution mesh tidily, without losing key detail. Quite often, sculpted meshes have polygon counts in the millions and it is messy to decimate or optimize them automatically. There are specialist tools for retopology, such as Topogun and 3D-Coat, but 3ds Max does include its own retopology tools, found in the Freeform section of the Ribbon.
This article by Thomas Mooney, author of 3ds Max Speed Modeling for 3D Artists shows different ways to get a highly detail model down to a useable polygon count without losing key detail from the original, primarily looking at the brush-based PolyDraw tools.
Read Retopology in 3ds Max in fullSecuring Data at Rest in Oracle 11g
by
Adrian Neagu | October 2012 | Cookbooks Enterprise Articles Oracle
For almost all organizations, data security is a matter of prestige and credibility. The Oracle Database is one of the richest in features and the most used database in a variety of industries, where security is essential. In this article by Adrian Neagu, author of Oracle 11g Anti-hacker's Cookbook we will learn how to secure data at rest and will cover:
- Using block device encryption
- Using filesystem encryption with eCryptfs
- Using DBMS_CRYPTO for column encryption
- Using Transparent Data Encryption for column encryption
- Using TDE for tablespace encryption
- Using encryption with data pump
- Using encryption with RMAN
(For more resources on Oracle, see here.)
Read Securing Data at Rest in Oracle 11g in fullCryENGINE 3: Breaking Ground with Sandbox
by
Paul Reindell Sean Tracy | October 2012 | Beginner's Guides Games
You may now be asking yourself, "I've downloaded the CryENGINE 3 SDK. Now how do I start making games with it?" Such a question has far-reaching implications and is awfully difficult to answer! So in my attempt to answer this question, let's create our own game together, in a short amount of time, using some of the functions and entities that the CryENGINE 3 SDK gives to us straight out of the box.
In this article by Sean Tracy and Paul Reindell, authors of CryENGINE 3 Game Development: Beginner's Guide, we will be:
- Beginning with our first example using out of the box features of the engine
- Creating and sculpting terrain for a new level, from scratch
- Creating and using terrain texture layers
- Creating vegetation groups and applying them to your level
- Creating and setting a basic time of day to light our level
Low-level C# Practices
by
Peter Ritchie | October 2012 | Enterprise Articles
Syntax isn't the only thing that matters when it comes to writing code. We can't get far without getting past the compiler, but not everything that compiles is of acceptable quality. Practices and techniques beyond being "syntactically correct" are so important that there are entire third-party ecosystems devoted to detecting common issues and patterns in source code and in compiled code.
This article isn't about many of the issues that code analysis tools detect, but details some practices that can be used with C# to avoid certain pitfalls and improve quality. In this article by Peter Ritchie, author of Visual Studio 2010 Best Practices, we'll look at recommended practices in the following areas:
- .NET generics
- Sequences and iterator members
- Lambdas
- Extension methods
- Exception handling
Read Low-level C# Practices in full
Mission Running in EVE Online
by
Y. Michael Xu | October 2012 | Games
The ISK Making Guide to EVE Online teaches you the inner workings of each ISK making career choice. Help determine the path of EVE by taking on careers like Mining and Manufacturing, the backbone of New Eden or help your empire rise above the rest by Running Missions for the corporations of your empire. While it does not take much skill to start mission running, knowing what each type of mission involves, and how to best approach it, will ensure the best results.
This article by Y. Michael Xu, author of EVE Online: ISK Strategy Guide, we help you:
- Understand the different mission types
- Understand how the Agent system works
- Understand how standing works
- Pick an agent to work for
- Understand the rewards of mission running
(For more resources on EVE Online, see here.)
Read Mission Running in EVE Online in fullPiwik: Tracking User Interactions
by
Stephan A. Miller | October 2012 | e-Commerce Open Source
Despite the advanced tracking features of Piwik, there are still some actions on a website that may require you to do some manual work in order to track. Events in JavaScript and Flash don't cause a page load and because of that, the standard Piwik tracking code won't register any details other than a visit. In order to record user interactions with website elements such as Flash, Ajax, JavaScript, and third-party widgets, you need to use different tactics.
In this article by Stephan A. Miller, author of Piwik Web Analytics Essentials, we will learn:
- What event tacking is used for
- How to set up event tracking in Piwik using custom variables
- How to track social media events on your website
- How to track blog commenting events
- How to track e-commerce events
- How to track Flash events in either ActionScript 2 or ActionScript 3
Organizing your Balsamiq files
by
Scott Faranello | October 2012 | Beginner's Guides Web Development Web Graphics & Video
In this article by Scott Faranello, author of Balsamiq Wireframes Quickstart Guide, we will cover:
- Naming your files
- Albhabetically
- Numbering
Client-Side Endpoint Protection Tasks in Microsoft SCEP 2012
by
Andrew Plue | October 2012 | Enterprise Articles Microsoft
In this article by Andrew Plue, author of Microsoft System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection Cookbook, we will cover:
- Locating and interrupting client-side SCEP logs
- Performing manual definition updates and checking definition version
- Manually editing local SCEP policy using the user interface
- Utilizing MpCmdRun.exe
Read Client-Side Endpoint Protection Tasks in Microsoft SCEP 2012 in full
Troubleshooting in OpenStack Cloud Computing
by
Kevin Jackson | October 2012 | Cookbooks Open Source
OpenStack is an open source software for building public and private clouds, born from Rackspace and NASA. It is now a global success and is developed and supported by scores of people around the globe and backed by some of the leading players in the cloud space today
In this article by Kevin Jackson, author of OpenStack Cloud Computing Cookbook, we will cover:
- Checking OpenStack Compute Services
- Understanding logging
- Troubleshooting OpenStack Compute Services
- Troubleshooting OpenStack Storage Service
- Troubleshooting OpenStack Authentication
Importing videos and basic editing mechanics
by
Jason Cox | October 2012 | Web Graphics & Video
The Final Cut Pro X Cookbook contains recipes that will take you from the importing process and basic mechanics of editing up through many of FCPX’s advanced tools needed by top-tier editors on a daily basis. Edit quickly and efficiently, fix image and sound problems with ease, and get your video out to your client or the world easily.
In this article by Jason Cox, we will see the following topics:
- Importing from a tapeless video camera
- Importing MTS, M2TS, and M2T files
- Appending, inserting, and overwriting clips to a storyline
- Working with (and without) the Magnetic Timeline
- Creating connected clips
Most artists have it easy—a painter grabs a brush, some paint and goes straight for the canvas. A writer grabs a pen and paper (or keyboard) and starts writing. A graphic artist grabs a tablet and starts drawing. If only it were that easy for video editors!
Well before an editor can start doing any actual work, we've got to spend a good amount of time getting organized and importing our media. The act of importing is simply the process of bringing our media inside FCPX and making the program aware of its existence. It's very similar to dragging a song file into iTunes—the song file already existed in some capacity, but by dropping it into iTunes, we're making iTunes aware that it exists. The same goes for FCPX in most cases.
Unlike the digital music world, however, which only has a small handful of file formats, the digital video world has dozens, and the process for importing these different media types can vary greatly. And, to top it all off, we have many options to consider as to how we want FCPX to process and handle that media as it is imported!
FCPX can import many kinds of media, but there are many factors that must be considered before doing so to determine the best workflow for a project, and where there's a will there's a way—even if FCPX can't immediately import certain file types or projects from other programs, this chapter will help explain workarounds to do the impossible!
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