slightly:

methodistcoloringbook:

corruptela:

The Actually Ugly Duckling by pictures for sad children

Thanks Kyle

The F.lux Windows app has just been given a rather significant update for Windows 7 and Windows 8 with some very cool new features. You can now F.lux your house with a schedule for Philips Hue, enter Movie Mode when you’re using your PC as a home theatre or disable it until morning if you’re planning on working all night. Every evening at 6.30pm, my screen starts to get less brighter and more Sepia-brownish-softer-colour. No, my monitor is not on the blink. Rather, that is my F.lux installation kicking in, a rather not-so-subtle hint to tell me to get off...

Read the full article: F.lux Gets A Huge Update With Movie Mode And House F.lux Scheduling

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, founded in 1964, is an annual international showcase of the very best in nature photography. Owned by the Natural History Museum and BBC Worldwide, the contest includes 18 individual categories, ranging from birds and mammals to "Creative Visions" and "Nature in Black & White." This year, the 49th annual competition, drew tens of thousands of entries from dozens of countries. Starting today, the winning photos will be on exhibit at the Natural History Museum in London until March 23, 2014. The owners and sponsors have been kind enough to share the following 10 images from their group of overall winners. Be sure to visit their website to see all of the winners and find out more about the competition. [10 photos]

The spat: For several hours, the noisy sounds of courtship and mating were all Joe McDonald was treated to as he sat, sweltering in the hot sun, in a boat on the Three Brothers River in Brazil's Pantanal. So when the female jaguar finally emerged from the undergrowth and walked down to the river to drink, he was grateful for the photo opportunity. But that was just a start. After slaking her thirst, the female flopped down on the sand. Then the male appeared. After drinking and scent-marking, he approached the female, who was lying in what appeared to be a pose of enticement. At least, that's what both Joe and the male thought. She rose, growled and suddenly charged, slamming the male back as he reared up to avoid her outstretched claws. His own claws were sheathed. "I couldn't believe the energy and intensity of those three seconds," says Joe. The pair then disappeared into the undergrowth to resume their courtship, leaving Joe with a sense of awe and a rare, winning image. (Joe McDonald / Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013)

by metricfucktonne

ghostkid:

tedison

Do what you wanna do

untrustyou:

Doublefaced No. 23

Sebastian Bieniek

O leitor Daniel Porsel trafegava pela rua Marechal Hermes da Fonseca, São Paulo, quando se deparou com um “pesque-pague”! Não, não se trata daquelas lagoas onde podemos colher alguns peixes e se divertir no fim de semana, mas um enorme buraco no asfalto.

Em protesto, moradores isolaram a área e colocaram cartazes criticando o descaso da prefeitura com o buraco, que poderia ter provocado um acidente caso não tivesse sido sinalizado. Com dizeres “pesque paga”, “devagar, não acorde os peixes” e “25% aumento IPTU”, os residentes locais tentam chamar a atenção para o problema na via.

Para completar, até um boneco com capa de chuva, guarda-chuva, mesa com garrafas e copos e uma vara de pescar com um peixe no “anzol” foi colocado no local. Enfim, quem sabe agora a prefeitura resolva tapar esse buraco na zona norte da capital paulista. Ou, se levarmos em consideração a placa sobre aumento do IPTU, decida cobrar essa e outras taxas do novo estabelecimento comercial na Marechal Hermes…

Agradecimentos ao Daniel pelas imagens e informações.

A noticia Buraco em rua de São Paulo vira “pesque-pague” foi publicada no site Notícias Automotivas - Carros.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We are happy to announce that Visual Studio 2013 is now available.

• Download Visual Studio 2013.
• Discover What's New for Visual Studio 2013.
• Read the formal announcement on Soma's blog.
• Check the system requirements and platform compatibility.
• Grab the MCBS MFC library for this release.
• Build an extension for Visual Studio 2013.
• Provide feedback! Visit Connect to report bugs, UserVoice for suggestions, forums for Q&A, Send-a-Smile for quick feedback, and product support for other issues.

And now—in no particular order—here are the top reasons why C++ developers want Visual Studio 2013:

Better C++ language conformance. Support for C++11 began in Visual Studio 2010, which included auto and lambda functions. In Visual Studio 2012, we implemented more of the standard—for example, range-based for loops, standard threads, and futures. Visual Studio 2013 provides even more—variadic templates, delegating constructors, non-static data member initializers, uniform initialization, 'using' aliases, and other features. For more information, see the C++ Conformance Roadmap on Soma's blog, and learn about the Future of C++ from Herb Sutter.

Editor, editor, editor! We're introducing new editor features that boost productivity, save time, and provide better context. We added over 40 settings to help you control C/C++ code formatting. Brace completion automatically closes braces (and other characters that typically come in pairs). Parameter Help tooltips now automatically switch to the best matching overload, based on the number of parameters you've typed. The Enhanced Vertical Scrollbar provides visual cues about your file. You can use Peek Definition to view definitions in line instead of opening a new document tab. (To see it in action, put the cursor on a symbol and press Alt+F12.) Navigate To uses smart semantic search to help you find symbol definitions or files. For a list of editor and productivity improvements, see C++ IDE Improvements in Visual Studio 2013 and Visual Studio 2013 New Editor Features.

Better performance and improved code quality. We've improved the Visual C++ compiler so that it generates faster code, even from existing sources. We added an optimization that changes the order of certain, nested loops to reduce stalls on memory access. We also made the auto-vectorizer smarter by enabling the compiler to now vectorize a larger number of loops—including loops that perform pointer manipulation, which is a common pattern for libraries like STL (for example, transform). We're also introducing Profile Guided Optimization (PGO) for Windows Store apps, vector calling convention for x86/x64 platforms, and other improvements.

Connected Windows 8.1 apps. Use the new Add Push Notification wizard to register your app with the Windows Store, configure your mobile service to enable push notifications, and add code to your app to register a device channel (for example, see Connecting to Windows Azure Mobile Services on MSDN). Also included: The new C++ library for Azure mobile services and the C++ REST Extension SDK provide connectivity. (An open-source version of the C++ REST Extension SDK is available on CodePlex.) The DirectX Templates DirectX App and DirectX App (XAML) have also been improved and structured similarly, making it easier to transition from one model to another after creation. The new templates also take advantage of Windows 8.1 features.

Enhancements to debugging and profiling. The new XAML UI Responsiveness tool in the Visual Studio Performance and Diagnostics hub helps you analyze responsiveness in XAML-based Windows Store apps. Also in the Diagnostics hub, the Energy Consumption tool for Windows 8.1 helps you estimate your store app's energy consumption without requiring specialized hardware. We also added Just My Code so that you can hide the code you didn't write to focus your debugging on the code you did write, and we improved async debugging and enabled JavaScript/Native interop debugging. For more details about the diagnostics improvements for C++ and other languages, visit Diagnostics Investments in Visual Studio 2013.

Enhanced C++ AMP. C++ AMP is an open specification for harnessing the processing resources of modern graphics cards from C++ code. In Visual Studio 2013, C++ AMP gets better debugger and profiler support so that you can examine operations being performed on the GPU. We added a bunch of features to enhance support for textures and side-by-side CPU/GPU debugging (mixed-mode debugging is available on Windows 8.1 for the WARP accelerator). See What's New for C++ AMP in Visual Studio 2013.

Improved graphics debugging. In Visual Studio 2012, you could debug DirectX apps on your development machine or on a simulator. In Visual Studio 2013, we've added support for debugging apps on remote machines or devices (x86, x64, ARM) so that you can better identify hardware-specific issues. You can capture frames on a target device and then analyze the log file on your dev machine. Visual Studio 2013 also supports the debugging of apps that use Deferred Context or Compute Shader written in HLSL. Usability of the tools has also been improved, through better organization of more detailed information about DirectX objects—device state, shader, buffer.

Thanks! We couldn't have made these improvements without the overwhelming support of our customers and community, and the great feedback you provide through Connect, the forums, this blog, and other channels. Thanks also to our mighty MVPs, who never hold back their true feelings J

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

mooooosetache:

deadlydinos:

depression-party:

laughed too hard at this

The Australian Apocalypse begins

the difference between a koala and a drop bear

RUN FOR YOUR LIFE TINY KOALA

Waterproofing your life may be easier than you think - all it takes is a few cans of liquid repellent. This specialized spray works on a variety of surfaces including concrete, wood, and fabric to guard against the nasty weather mother nature throws your way.

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via NeverWet.com

To populate a temporary database table, most of us would write something like this:

-- Assume table TempData exists
Truncate table TempData;
Insert Into TempData
Select ... From ... Where id = 1234 and Flag Is Not NULL;

Trevor A.'s cohort decided to use Spring to help do it better:

SpringStuff.xml:

    <bean id="ourReader" class="org.springframework.batch.item.database.JdbcCursorItemReader" scope="step">
       <property name="saveState" value="false" />
       <property name="dataSource" ref="ourDataSource" />
       <property name="rowMapper" ref="filterRowMapper" />
       <property name="fetchSize" value="5000" />
       <property name="prepatedStatementSetter">
           <bean class="org.springframework,batch.core.resource.listPreparedStatementSetter">
              <property name='parameters">
                 <list>
                    <value>1234</value>
                 </list>
              </property>
           </bean>
       </property>
    </bean>

    <bean id="ourValidator" class="org.springframework.batch.core.job.DefaultJobParametersValidator" >
       <property name="requiredKeys">
           <array value-type="java.lang.int">
              <value>id</value>
           </array>
       </property>
    </bean>

    <bean id="filterRowMapper" class="x.y.z.FilterRowMapper" />

    <bean id="theDao" class="x.y.z.TheDao">
       <constructor-arg ref="ourDataSource" />
       <constructor-arg value="Truncate Table TempData" />
    </bean>

    <bean id="truncateTemptTable" class="x.y.z.TruncateTempTable">
       <constructor-arg ref="theDao"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="ourProcessor" class="x.y.z.OurProcessor"/>

    <bean id="ourWriter" class="x.y.z.OurWriter" scope="step">
       <constructor-arg ref="theJdbcTemplate"/>
       <constructor-arg value="insert into tempdata values(?,?, ..., ?)"/>
    </bean>

    <batch:job id="loadTempTable">
       <batch-description>Load the temp table for id: 1234</batch:description>
       <batch:validate ref="ourValidator"/>
       <batch:step id="step1" next="step2">
           <batch:tasklet ref="truncateTempTable"/>
       </batch:step>
       <batch:step id="step2">
           <batch:tasklet>
               <batch:chunk reader="ourReader" processor="ourProcessor" writer="ourWriter" commit-interval="5000"/>
           </batch:tasklet>
       </batch:step>
    </batch:job>

public class FilterRowMapper implements RowMapper<MyRecord> {
  public final static String COL_1 = "ColName-1";
  // ...
  public final static String COL_N = "ColName-n";

  public MyRecord mapRow(ResultSet rs, int rowNum) throws SQLException {
    MyRecord r = new MyRecord();
    r.setField1(rs.getString(COL_1));
    // ...
    r.setFieldN(rs.getInt(COL_N));
    return r;
  }
}

public class TruncateTempTable implements Tasklet {
  private TheDao dao;

  public TruncateTempTable(TheDao dao) {
    this.dao = dao;
  }

  public RepeatStatus execute(StepContribution sc, ChunkContext cc) throws Exception {
    dao.truncateTempTable();
    return RepeatStatus.FINISHED;
  }
}

public class TheDao extends NamedParametersJdbcDaoSupport {
  private String truncateTempTableSql;

  public TheDao(DataSource ds, String sql) {
    super();
    setDataSource(ds);
    truncateTempTableSql = sql;
  }

  public void truncateTempTable() {
    getJdbcTemplate().execute(truncateTempTableSql);
  }
}

public class OurProcessor implements ItemProcessor<MyRecord, MyRecord> {

  public MyRecord process(MyRecord in) throws Exception {
    MyRecord out = in;
    return out;
  }
}

public class OurWriter implements ItemWriter<MyRecord> {
  private JdbcTemplate jt;
  private String sql;

  public OurWriter(JdbcTempalte jt; String sql) {
    this.jt  = jt;
    this.sql = sql;
  }

  public void write(List<? extends MyRecord> list) throws Exception {
    for (MyRecord r : list) {
        if (r.getFlag() != null) {
           jt.batchUpdate(sql, new BatchPreparedStatementSetter() {

             public void setValues(PreparedStatement ps, int rowNum) throws Exception {
               ps.setString(1,r.getField1());
               // ...
               ps.setInt(n,r.getFieldN());
             }

             public int getBatchSize() {
               return list.size();
             }
           });
        }
    }
  }
}

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for utilizing tools to help get things done, but when the tool obfuscates what you're trying to accomplish, perhaps it's not helping as much as you think it's helping.

Axiom: 95% of the cost of software is in maintenance and upgrades: if the next person can't figure out what you did without your help, you didn't do as good a job as you might think!

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Born in Tokyo, Dusseldorf-based artist Ramon Todo creates beautiful textural juxtapositions using layers of glass in unexpected places. Starting with various stones, volcanic rock, fragments of the Berlin wall, and even books, the artist inserts perfectly cut glass fragments that seem to slice through the object resulting in segments of translucence where you would least expect it. You can see more of his work over on Art Front Gallery, and here. (via My Amp Goes to 11)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!