Programming

There are some Chromebooks with awesome hardware out there, like the beautiful Chromebook Pixel, but they don't quite hit their full potential with Chrome OS. Here's how to install Ubuntu and get more out of your Chromebook.

I'm always on the lookout for the perfect mouse. I don't think it exists, yet, frankly, but we're getting close. I've got two notebook mice I'm bouncing between while using my new ultrabook, the Lenovo X1 Carbon Touch. I'm using the Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse and the Microsoft Wedge Mouse. I'm classifying both of these mice as "weird" because, well, they are. They aren't classic-looking mice and each one has garnered the occasional double-take from passersby. Each has an unusual design for a reason: portability. The Wedge Mouse The Wedge is tiny. Like, really tiny. The idea appears to have been to remove the back half of the mouse completely (the part that usually gets cupped in your palm) and instead make just the fingertips part. There's a AA battery that goes in the round part (the butt) and underneath there's a single button for on/off/Bluetooth sync and a battery door switch. Oddly, the battery door switch looks like an on/off switch also so I ended up flicking that a few times before I learned. The Wedge is a Bluetooth mouse, and getting a good Bluetooth mouse was my goal. This Ultrabook only has two USB ports and that's one port too few. I'll often find myself with a hard drive plugged in, then want to add one more item (USB key, presenter remote, smart card) and with most mice I'm stuck because the other USB port already has that mouse's transmitter. The mouse uses the capacitive touch technology that we're seeing in a lot of mice lately. See that vertical line that separates the two mouse "buttons?" Stroke that and it's the "scroll wheel." It feels odd initially but ends up quite comfortable. Speed of scrolling is also easily changed. There's no middle mouse button, but that hasn't been an issue for me. My Right-Clicking Issues Now here's an odd one. Every once in a while I do what, in my mind is a CRYSTAL clear right-click and it registers as a left-click. I've tested it. Click hard with the right and it got picked up as a left. What the heck? I searched around and found a few people in the forums with the same issue so I assumed it was a driver issue. However, I have the latest drivers. What's going on? Well, it's actually obvious and a little funny if you give it some though. Occasionally when I right click I end up right-clicking the FAR TOP EDGE on the right. Looking at the picture below, I'm pushing with my finger ABOVE the right-side blue square. This is outside the touch area but is registered with the mouse's mechanical click. Since there's no right-touch, there's no right-click. Stated differently, there's a touch area with clear left and right areas delimited. If I mechanical click the mouse - remember, there's just one click...the whole mouse goes down - then the mouse decides if it's a left or right by seeing where your finger is that moment. If it's on the far top edge then it can't see your right finger, so....left click from the right. Call it an oddity, call it a design flaw, call it "you're holding it wrong." Regardless, as soon as I figured this out, it stopped happening. I just assumed initially that the touch area wrapped around the front of the mouse. It doesn't. Once my subconscious heard about this from my conscious mind, I can right-click like a champ, but it was quite confusing for a minute there. Be aware. Bluetooth Disconnecting I thought that Bluetooth aspect of this mouse would be pure win, but even after using it for a few hours it stopped responding at least a half dozen times. I would have to lift the mouse up and put it down again. The word on the street and in the forums is that this a power management issue and that you should go into Device Manager and check the properties of the mouse and change the setting that allows the operating system to, well, turn it off. Of course, this setting is not checked and not available.  The takeaway here as far as I'm concerned is that while the dream of a Bluetooth mouse is a great and valid one, it's just not ready. Whethe

Oracle VM Templates provide an easy, fast, and cost effective approach to deploying a fully configured software stack by offering pre-installed and pre-configured software images. The Oracle VM Template for the latest release of Sun Ray Software version 5.4 is now available for Oracle Linux 6.3 (64-bit). The... [Read More]

In this series, Robert Schneider, from our training-partner WiseClouds, goes through what you should be thinking about if you’re testing mission-critical services. Even if they’re not necessarily mission-critical, you should probably be following these guidelines.

I'm trying to come up with more project ideas for intermediate learners, somewhat along the lines of Intermediate Python Workshop Projects.So here's a question for people who remember coming up from beginner: as you moved from exercises like those in Learn Python the Hard Way, up to your own self-guided work on small projects, what project were you working on that made you feel independent and skilled? What program first felt like your own work rather than an exercise the teacher had assigned?I don't want anything too large, but big enough that there's room for design, and multiple approaches, etc.Any and all ideas welcome. Thanks in advance!

Neo4j 1.9 General Availability - Auto-clustering, Cypher, and Some comments: The 1.9 release adds primarily three things: Auto-Clustering, which makes Neo4j Enterprise clustering more robust & easier to administer, with fewer moving parts Cypher language improvements make the language more functionally powerful and more performant, and New welcome pages make learning easier for new users The first is for the enterprise customers and brings in the features that were initially supported through ZooKeeper Cypher is Neo4j’s fast evolving query language The site is brilliant. The release post is terrible with links to dive into the newly announced features. Original title and link: Neo4j 1.9 General Availability - Auto-clustering, Cypher, and Some comments (NoSQL database©myNoSQL)

Hi, I am trying to get output of mongostat into a file using shell script. can someone please regarding this? Thanks, Prasad

I’m really excited to be hosting a few events in the Microsoft Raleigh office focused on Windows 8 development.  The first on revolves around our APIMASH starter kits – a great way to get started building mashup style applications in Windows 8, with templates and examples in both C# and HTML/JS.  The other sessions are intro to gaming, developing some simple games using Construct2, and GameMaker/other frameworks as time allows.   Here are the events/times: APIMASH: Tue 6/4/2013 from 10:00am to 2:00pm and Tue 6/11/2013 from 10:00am to 2:00pm Intro to Gaming: Wed 6/5/2013 from 10:00am to 2:00pm and Wed 6/11/2013 from 10:00am to 2:00pm Here’s a more official description of each event: Game Development for Beginners In this beginner level workshop we will cover the basics of game design, programming and publication. We will build a casual game and publish it to the Windows Store. This workshop is great for students, hobbyists and professional developers who want to learn the basics of game development and publish their first app to the store as no programming skills are required! Windows 8 App Mashup Series In this workshop you will learn how to develop Windows 8 apps based on well-known web service API's such as Twitter, Meetup, ESPN, EchoNest and data from the World Health Organization WHO. Your app could entertain or even change the world. This workshop is great for students, hobbyists and professional developers who want to learn the basics of app development and publish their first app to the store. For more info, stay tuned to the MSDN Events page!

Abstract of my Pluralsight CourseBuilding a Successful BlogModule – Frequently Asked Questions. If you have been following this blog series about starting and maintaining a blog, you might be excited to go start blogging right now. But if you have a few more questions, let me get them out of the way right now with […]...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

For those of you still sitting on the 10g fence ... or if you're new to Publisher 11g, take advantage of this educational opportunity:Oracle BI Publisher 11g R1: FundamentalsLearn To: Create data models by using the Data Model Editor. Create BI Publisher reports based on data... [Read More]