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Accounting Methods—Adoption and Change
by T. MILTON KUPFER. Partner, Executive Office
Presented at the Mid-America Tax Conference sponsored by the Saint Louis Chapter of the Missouri Society of Certified Public Accountants, Saint Louis—November 1966
WE OFTEN HAVE OCCASION to suggest the desirability of adopting or changing established accounting practices. This frequently happens
in the initial examinations of financial statements of new clients but can also arise in our tax-planning work with present clients or when changes in conditions make such a recommendation advisable.
In many cases, the suggested changes would have the effect of substantial
increases in taxable income if they were made for tax accounting
as well as for financial accounting purposes. Before we suggest changes in accounting, or before we approve changes suggested by the client, it is important that we be cognizant of tax effects of the changes and of the ways in which tax increases might be avoided or held to a minimum.
The purposes of my discussion today are:
First, to discuss some of the tax implications of changes in accounting
Second, to indicate what your clients should do to secure desirable changes and also what they can do to resist undesirable changes initiated by the Commissioner.
Third, to consider some specific tax-planning opportunities in adopting and changing accounting methods.
As you are probably aware, much uncertainty concerning tax results
has stemmed from an inability to produce a solution to the problem of determining just what an accounting method is.
Before going into the definitional problem perhaps we should set it in perspective by answering the question, "Why is it important that we determine whether the item we are dealing with has the dignity of being an accounting method?"
The tax consequences of any change in accounting procedure depend
to a large extent on whether the change is deemed to be a change in accounting method or merely a correction of an erroneous accounting treatment. Most changes of accounting method require the prior approval
of the Service and, therefore, give the Service rather broad au-


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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Tassopoulos made several tough stops to help hold UMass without a field goal (photo courtesy David Silverman).
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.-Freshman Cynthia Tassopoulos made 12 saves and the Harvard field hockey team held No. 10 Massachusetts without a goal from the field, but Makaela Potts' penalty stroke lifted the Minutewomen to a 1-0 win Tuesday evening at Jordan Field.
The Minutewomen (9-3) got some early chances but could not convert as Tassopoulos made four first-half saves. They got on the board with 6:36 remaining in the half. Harvard's Pilar Mayora knocked down a Katie Kelly shot in front of an otherwise open goal. The ball was ruled to have hit a Crimson body, however, and Potts put her stroke into the right side of the goal. Harvard battled back with some late pressure, but Alesha Widdall stopped sophomore Georgia McGillivray's penalty-corner shot and the rebound attempt by freshman Nina Kucharczyk.
Neither team could break through in the second half. Harvard (4-5) got a good chance early, when sophomore Allie Kimmel ripped a shot from the right side, but Alesha Widdall was there for one of her four saves. On the other end, Tassopoulos came up big with eight stops in the second half.
The Crimson fought hard for the would-be equalizer in the final minutes. With just seconds to play, sophomore Carly Dickson carried the ball into the circle on the right side and got the ball to senior Kristin Bannon, but Widdall was again there for a save to preserve the UMass win.


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Vaidyaratnam Balarishtam from Vaidyaratnam
- Brand: Vaidyaratnam Oushadhasala
- Product Code: VOS112
- Weight: 450.00 Gram(s)
- Availability: In Stock
$40.00 (Free Shipping on orders over $100.00)
We Never Sell
Near-Expiry Medicines
Licenced Ayurvedic
Medicine Reseller
Vaidyaratnam Balarishtam from Vaidyaratnam
What is Balarishtam?
Balarishtam is an Ayurvedic fermented product .Balarishtam, Balarishta, Bala Arishtam, etc are the commonly used synonyms. Bala is Sida cordifolia is one of the major content of this fermented product. Arishta is the special pharma preparation of Ayurveda and it's very potent and manages all arthritic ailments along with neurologic disorders.
What are the major ingredients of Balarishtam
Balrarishtam is a liquid preparation
Each 10ml is prepared of decoction of Sida cordifolia 1.12g, Withania somnifera 1.12 and powders of Ricinus communis .09g, Holostemma adakodien 0.045g, Alpina galanga 0.023g, Eleteria cardamomum .023g, Paedaria foetida .045g, Syzygium aromaticum .023g, Vetiveria zizanioides .023g, Mucuna pruriens .023g, Jaggery 6.77g, Woodfordia fruticosa .38g.
What is an Arishta?
Arishtas and Asavas are classical fermented formulations in the traditional Ayurveda medical system. They are alcoholic medicines prepared by fermenting herbal juices or their decoctions with the addition of sugar or jaggery and dhataki flowers. ( Woodfordia fruticosa). Many formulations contain additonal spices for improving their assimilation. They contain alcohol up to 12 % and sweet in nature, acidic with good taste and smell. The major advantages of these are longer shelf life, enhanced therapeutic properties, increased bio availability of drug molecules and imporved drug delivery to the action of sites of diseases in human bodies.The most cited traditional literature about arishta and asava includes Charaka Samhita, Sushruta Samhita, Astanga Hridaya,Ashtangasangraham Bhaishajya Ratnavali,SharngadharaSamhita,Gadhanigragam,Sahasrayogam,Yogaratnagaram and Asavarishtasamgraham .
What are the indications of Balarishta?
Balarishta is indicated for all type of arthritis; it improves the general vitality of the body, increases digestion and rejuvenates body tissues.
Is there any contraindication for Balarishta?
Balarishta is contraindicated in Diabetes.
What is dosage of Balarishtam?
One ounce twice daily after food is the general dosage and dosage differs in different conditions and combinations. So its better to take an advice from a qualified Ayurvedic practioner regarding the dosage or you can take the advise here
Is there any other indications of Balarishta not in the classical citations?
Balarishta is a good vehicle for several qwaths and tablets. It increases the efficacy of obesity medicines, hormone regulators and memory boosters. Our chief Dr Rajesh Nair has written a blog on this and can read here.
Which are most popular brands of Balarishtam?
Arya Vaidyasala Kottakkal, Vaidyaratnam Oushadhasala, AVP Coimbatore, Kerala Ayurveda are the popular brands of Balarishta.
Testimonials of Balarishta
Shipping details.
We pack Balarishta in discrete pack with double layer protection to avoid brekage and leaking and will be shipped on the very next day of the order. Depending on the mode of shipping selected, you will receive the product in 10- 20 working days.
How can we contact you after purchase?
All our customers can write to us ( email@example.com ) and will get reply in 24 hrs. You can also call using Skype or use Live Chat enabled here.
Major ingredients of Balarishta
Sida cordifolia 1.12g
Balaatithikta madhura pittathisaranasani
Balaviryapradha pushtikapharogavisodhani..
– Rajanighantu Rajanighantu describes this herb as extremely bitter (atitikta) and madhura in guna , and it balances deranged pitta. It is used to treat diarrhoea and is rejuvenative and nutritive. It is also efficacious in diseases caused by vitated kapha. The rejuvenating action of this herb extends to the nervous, circulatory, and urinary systems. It has a diuretic effect and is useful in urinary problems, including cystitis. Being cooling and astringent, it is used in inflammations and bleeding disorders also.
Withania somnifera 1.12
Ashwagandha contains many useful medicinal chemicals, including alkaloids, choline, fatty acids, amino acids ,withanolides, (steroidal lactones) and a variety of carbohydrates and sugars. While the leaves and fruit have valuable therapeutic properties, the root of the ashwagandha plant is the part most commonly used in Ayurvedic medicines.
Several researches were conducted on the pharmacological activities of Ashwagandha and have confirmed this herb has following actions.
- reduces anxiety and depression without causing drowsiness and other side effects.
- Inhibits cancer cell growth
- immune system protection
- reduces brain-cell degeneration
- stabilizes blood sugar
- relieves stress
- improves brain functions like learning, memory, and reaction time
- reduces cholesterol
- has anti-malarial properties
- respond quickly to inflammations.
Powders of
Ricinus communis .09g
Holostemma adakodien 0.045g
Alpina galanga 0.023g
Eleteria cardamomum .023g
Paedaria foetida .045g
Syzygium aromaticum .023g
Vetiveria zizanioides .023g
Mucuna pruriens .023g
Jaggery 6.77g
Woodfordia fruticosa .38g
Frequently bought together medicines for the same disease
Tags: balarishtam, from, vaidyaratnam, arthritis


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Photographer's Note
The Moses Mabhida Stadium is a stadium in Durban, South Africa, named after Moses Mabhida a former General Secretary of the South African Communist Party. It is a multi-use stadium.
It was one of the host stadiums for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The stadium has a capacity of 62,760 during the World Cup and 54,000 afterwards.
Critiques | Translate
janneman (3903) 2014-01-04 5:30
There are two lines with repetetive elements in this phto. The fence as a dioganla and the roofconstruction of the stadium as a horizontal line.
They both make a wonderful composition!
Regards, Jan
williewhistler (16606) 2014-01-07 10:36
Hello Zbigniew,
you have made very good use of the graphical lines to compose a very interesting and attractive photograph.
A simple scene that has been handled with care and imagination.Well done.
Regards Les.
Oceania (5202) 2014-01-07 13:32
Hi Zbigniew,
The stadium is very modern. It's a nice picture from South Africa. Thanks for sharing.
Graal (103038) 2014-01-14 7:04
ladnie wyglada z zewnatrz ten nowoczesny stadion. Interesujaca konstrukcja i architektura. Dobra prezentacja z dalekiej RPA.
Milego wieczoru.
jemaflor (125739) 2014-01-17 9:29
Hi Z,
Interesting modern architecture with an original composition with this Fg and the fence, good effect with light and shadows on the ground.
Photo Information
- Copyright: Zbigniew Kalinowski (fotka) (6579)
- Genre: Places
- Medium: Color
- Date Taken: 2013-04-22
- Categories: Architecture
- Camera: Panasonic Lumix FZ 28, Leica Vario-Elmarit 1:2.8-4.4/4.8-86.4
- Exposure: f/6.3, 1/400 seconds
- More Photo Info: view
- Photo Version: Original Version
- Date Submitted: 2014-01-04 4:47


text:
Government, Education, and Freedom
I did the above interview recently with ChoiceMedia.tv on the subject of education tax credits and vouchers, in which I argued that credits are a better way of ensuring universal access to the education marketplace. Credits can either directly reduce the taxes owed by families who pay for their own children's education (as in Illinois and Iowa), or they can offset donations taxpayers make to non-profit k-12 scholarship programs that provide tuition assistance to the poor (as in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida, and several other states).
The interview elicited an important question from a commenter: If financial assistance for the poor comes from scholarship programs, isn't there a risk that those programs will impose restrictions on how the scholarships can be used, thereby curtailing poor families' educational options?
Minimizing that problem is actually one of the many reasons to prefer education tax credits over vouchers. Any time someone other than the parents is footing the bill for a child's education, there is the risk that this third party is going to limit parents' choices. The worst case, historically, has been when that third party is the government. When governments pay for schooling, there is a single set of regulations on what choices parents can make, and there is no way to avoid those regulations short of rejecting the financial assistance altogether—which the poorest families have difficulty doing. Vouchers bring with them this single set of government rules (and it is often an extensive one as I discovered in this study).
By contrast, scholarship tax credit programs, like the one in Pennsylvania, give rise to a multitude of different organizations that provide tuition assistance to poor families. If any one of those organizations decides to impose a particular set of restrictions on the use of its scholarships, it has no effect on any of the other organizations. Parents looking for financial assistance are thus free to seek it from a scholarship organization that aligns with their needs and values. The multiplicity of different sources of funding is instrumental—in fact it is essential—in ensuring that poor parents' choices are not curtailed.
I've made this argument in a variety of places, most recently in a U.S. Supreme Court brief in the Arizona tax credit case ACSTO v. Winn.


text:
The above video is a short presentation I gave at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam.
It covers a basic framework for mastering any skill quickly, including languages, music, dance, and more.
What skill have you put off learning for longest… and why? Let me know in the comments. Perhaps I (or other readers) can help. Second, if you could learn one skill in the next six months, what would it be?
Important afterword:
NOTE — For my competition launched last week (not too late to join), roundtrip airfare is covered for all four winners.
Related content:
The 4-Hour Chef and Meta-Learning — 200+ pages on all I know about accelerated learning
Total Immersion: How I Learned to Swim Effortlessly in 10 Days and You Can Too
Scientific Speed Reading: How to Read 300% Faster in 20 Minutes
How I Deconstruct Languages (scroll through the list)
Posted on: May 20, 2013.
Please check out Tribe of Mentors, my newest book, which shares short, tactical life advice from 100+ world-class performers. Many of the world's most famous entrepreneurs, athletes, investors, poker players, and artists are part of the book. The tips and strategies in Tribe of Mentors have already changed my life, and I hope the same for you. Click here for a sample chapter and full details. Roughly 90% of the guests have never appeared on my podcast.
Who was interviewed? Here's a very partial list: tech icons (founders of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Craigslist, Pinterest, Spotify, Salesforce, Dropbox, and more), Jimmy Fallon, Arianna Huffington, Brandon Stanton (Humans of New York), Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ben Stiller, Maurice Ashley (first African-American Grandmaster of chess), Brené Brown (researcher and bestselling author), Rick Rubin (legendary music producer), Temple Grandin (animal behavior expert and autism activist), Franklin Leonard (The Black List), Dara Torres (12-time Olympic medalist in swimming), David Lynch (director), Kelly Slater (surfing legend), Bozoma Saint John (Beats/Apple/Uber), Lewis Cantley (famed cancer researcher), Maria Sharapova, Chris Anderson (curator of TED), Terry Crews, Greg Norman (golf icon), Vitalik Buterin (creator of Ethereum), and nearly 100 more. Check it all out by clicking here.


text:
As you can see by the post header, we at Rhedd's Towers are taking a break for the whole of December.
However we will be back with a brand new challenge and some new faces, who will share their designs with you on the.....
1st January 2015
It was my turn to choose a winner for our November Challenge...boy, you didn't make it easy for me....so after selecting my final 5, I put all the names in to a hat and choose...ta dah......
No.38 Jane
Remember to take our Winner's Badge to display on your blog.
Pop a note in your diary so you won't forget to pop back on....
1st January 2015 for our next challenge.
We hope to see you all again very soon......in the mean time myself and the design team want to wish you all
A Very Happy Christmas & New Year.


text:
Types of rare cancer
We have information on many types of rare cancers. Use our A-Z list to find out more.
Order or download free, reliable information that is easy to understand. Our booklets cover signs and symptoms, diagnosis, cancer types, treatments and living with cancer.
Our booklet explains how clinical trials are carried out, when you might be invited to take part and what you could expect if you do.
If anyone deserves a break, isn't it someone with cancer? Help us campaign for clear and fairly priced travel insurance.
What's happening near you? Find out about support groups, where to get information and how to get involved with Macmillan where you are.
Our Online Community is always open and full of people ready to support you.
Are you affected by a cancer type that we don't have a group for? A group for anyone affected by a rarer cancer type to get together, ask questions, share experiences and support each other.
We rely on a number of sources to gather evidence for our information. If you'd like further information on the sources we use, please feel free to contact us on: firstname.lastname@example.com
All our information is reviewed by cancer or other relevant professionals to ensure that it's accurate and reflects the best evidence available. We thank all those people who have provided expert review for the information on this page.
Our information is also reviewed by people affected by cancer to ensure it is as relevant and accessible as possible. Thank you to all those people who reviewed what you're reading and have helped our information to develop.
You could help us too when you join our Cancer Voices Network – find out more at: http://www.macmillan.org.uk/cancervoices
Need to talk? Call us free* 0808 808 00 00 7 days a week, 8am-8pm


text:
This is post tries to explain some of what I was talking about in my talk at weactuallybuildstuff.com, it's series of two posts, I've tried write it as one post but it got too long and icky, so I've split it into two.
I believe at the heart of Software Development culture there is an identity crisis. I say this because I believe software development to be an engineering discipline, based on science, but many of fellow developers do not believe this. They say it is an art form or a craft.
To support my argument I think first it would be useful to look at what engineering is. Wikipedia currently defines engineering as:
Engineering is the application of scientific, economic, social, and practical knowledge in order to design, build, and maintain structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes
Engineering is the application of scientific, economic, social, and practical knowledge in order to design, build, and maintain structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes
In software, we're trying build stuff so, it seems clear to me that following engineering practices is necessary. But what are good engineering practices? This is where the science bit comes in. Wikipedia currently defines science as:
Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
So science is how we organize knowledge, so we can use science and particularly the scientific method to investigate what are good software engineering practices. Accept, I'm left with the overwhelming feeling that we don't do this. With open source we have become very good at sharing building blocks for software, this is a good thing and I think it's something our industry can be proud of, but it isn't enough. To again more insight into best practices we need industry and write more papers and reports on successful and unsuccessful projects (understand the reasons for failure is very import too). Industry also needs to get better about publish statics about projects, and knowing which statistics to collect. We also need a better relations between academia and industry so academics can take up the challenge of performing meta-analysis once this data is available. I not knocking academia, I believe there's some good working been done out there, but what also needed is a different kind of work. I think more people need to do the for software what epidemiologist do for medicine. In medicine an epidemiologist is someone how looks for health best practices by studying the available data, think computer science desperately needs someone to pull together the available data on software engineering and help tease out what the best practices of our industry really are. (Apologies if you are an academic working in the way I describe, but I don't feel your voice is being heard)
When I talk about this there are two arguments I often hear people use against software needing science and engineering, so I'd like to deal with them briefly here. The first is that software can't be engineering as it is an art/craft. I think this is wrong as it false dichotomy. Many artists and crafts folk rely on science and engineering, they often spend years learning the details of how things look and techniques to reproduce them in there chosen medium. If you want to produce giant sculptures as Louise Bourgeois did, then you'll need to know a thing or two about engineering, though if your Damien Hirst you may outsource this. Interestingly, for perhaps the most famous artist, Leonardo da Vinci, there was no difference between art and science. Leonardo often drew the world in an attempt to understand it better and also to express his ideas about science and technology. The second I often hear against the use of science/engineering in software is that software engineering is simply too complex to be study by science. While it's true than there are many factors that effect what makes a successful software project and this makes it difficult for scientist to pull part how to build software successful project and give it back to us in easy to understand chunks, not to even try seems a little defeatist. After all, where people have applied the scientific method with rigor we have learn a great deal on many complex subjects.
For what it's worth I'm not saying current trends in software development, like agile and craftsmanship, are wrong, I merely saying we're not doing enough to check they are taking us in the right directions. As Scott Hanselman pointed out there's clearly room for improvement. So, summary, don't be afraid to follow intuition and draw inspirations form many other unrelated domains, but always fall back on scientific method to check these intuitions are leading in the right direction.
The follow will "How We Fool Ourselves: Why Intuition Isn't Enough" will be published shortly (at my current blogging rate "shortly" means before end of 2015).
(Interesting aside: I found this article from Joe Duffy "Bluring the line between research and development" had and interesting and not dissimilar view of the relationship between industry and academia)
As part of the app I developed for AngelHack I wanted to display some data in a classic grid style. Android offers a GridView as part of the basic SDK, however if you look at all the samples they only show how to use it as a grid of images, essentially they only demonstrate usages where all columns show the same thing, usually columns of photographs. It's not too tricky to use the GridView as classic "data grid" but it did require a wee bit of thinking, so I thought I put together a quick example to show how it worked.
In many ways working with Android controls reminds me of working with WFP. They both allow a user to either create controls using an xml based designer or create them directly in code. The way data-binding works is similar too, for Android controls you plug in a "data adapt" which controls the creation of the child controls that will handle displaying the data. To use the GridView we need to create an adapter to which is responsible for telling the GridView how the data source should be rendered. Initially for the data source I created mine own "DataTable like object", but then after saying d'oh and slapping my head a couple of times I realized there was no need to create "DataTable like object" when I could just use a DataTable.
The first step is to create the adapter, to do this you derive from BaseAdapter<T> where T is the type of element that will appear in the data cells, for simplicity I made T string. Next you need to provide a constructor that takes a Activity (which is an Androidy type thing for accessing the gui context) and the data source itself, in our case a DataTable. This means the top of the adapter class looks something like:
public class DataTableGridAdapter : BaseAdapter<string> { private Activity context = null; private DataTable itemTable = null; public DataTableGridAdapter(Activity context, DataTable itemTable) : base () { this.context = context; this.itemTable = itemTable; }
public class DataTableGridAdapter : BaseAdapter<string> { private Activity context = null; private DataTable itemTable = null; public DataTableGridAdapter(Activity context, DataTable itemTable) : base () { this.context = context; this.itemTable = itemTable; }
Next you need to override the count property to return the number of cells (the rows plus one gives room for column headers):
public override int Count { get { return (itemTable.Rows.Count + 1) * itemTable.Columns.Count; } }
public override int Count { get { return (itemTable.Rows.Count + 1) * itemTable.Columns.Count; } }
Then you need to override the GetView method, which is the method that creates the control that will be displayed for the cell:
public override Android.Views.View GetView (int position, Android.Views.View convertView, Android.Views.ViewGroup parent) { // find the current row number, need to test we're in the header int row = GetRow(position); // Get our text for position var item = PositionToString(position); // find if we have a control for the cell, if not create it var txtName = convertView as EditText ?? new EditText (context); // if the row is a header give it a different colour if (row == 0) { txtName.SetBackgroundColor( new Color(0x0d,0x12,0xf5)); txtName.SetTextColor (new Color(0x0,0x0,0x0)); } //Assign item's values to the various subviews txtName.SetText (item, TextView.BufferType.Normal); //Finally return the view return txtName; }
public override Android.Views.View GetView (int position, Android.Views.View convertView, Android.Views.ViewGroup parent) { // find the current row number, need to test we're in the header int row = GetRow(position);
// Get our text for position var item = PositionToString(position);
// find if we have a control for the cell, if not create it var txtName = convertView as EditText ?? new EditText (context);
// if the row is a header give it a different colour if (row == 0) { txtName.SetBackgroundColor( new Color(0x0d,0x12,0xf5)); txtName.SetTextColor (new Color(0x0,0x0,0x0)); }
//Assign item's values to the various subviews txtName.SetText (item, TextView.BufferType.Normal);
//Finally return the view return txtName; }
The important line is '"var txtName = convertView as EditText ?? new EditText (context);" here we see if the control to display the cell has been created or not, if not we create one. In this case we use an EditView, a control build-in to the Android SDK for editing text. This is because we want our grid to be editable, if we wanted a readonly grid we'd use a TextView instead. We we wanted to display complex, more structured data we could return a user defined control instead. The rest of the method is just about setting up the various properties of this control, including it's content, which we obtain from our data source via the PositionToString method. The position is the identifier of the cell in the grid, the data grid doesn't provide a row and column id, just one continuous position id, fortunate with just a little maths we can translate a position to a row and column pair. Below shows how we do this and also the implementation of "PositionToString".
private int GetCol(int pos){ int col = pos % (itemTable.Columns.Count); return col; } private int GetRow(int pos){ int row = pos / (itemTable.Columns.Count); return row; } private string PositionToString(int pos) { int row = GetRow(pos); int col = GetCol(pos); if (row == 0) { return itemTable.Columns[col].ColumnName; } if (itemTable.Rows [row - 1][col] != DBNull.Value) { return itemTable.Rows [row - 1][col].ToString(); } return ""; }
private int GetCol(int pos){ int col = pos % (itemTable.Columns.Count); return col; } private int GetRow(int pos){ int row = pos / (itemTable.Columns.Count); return row; } private string PositionToString(int pos) { int row = GetRow(pos); int col = GetCol(pos); if (row == 0) { return itemTable.Columns[col].ColumnName; } if (itemTable.Rows [row - 1][col] != DBNull.Value) { return itemTable.Rows [row - 1][col].ToString(); } return ""; }
There's a few wall-dressing method that need to be implement, but I'm put the code on github, so you can take a look at them here.
To use the "DataTableGridAdapter", simply add a GridView to one of you're layouts, a .axml file, then you'll need to configure the data adapter in the Activity that uses the layout. To do this first recover a reference to the GridView and store it as a member:
gridView = FindViewById<GridView> (Resource.Id.offerGridView);
gridView = FindViewById<GridView> (Resource.Id.offerGridView);
Once you've created your DataTable and populated it, binding to the grid as so:
var itemListAdapter = new Adapters.DataTableGridAdapter (this, dataTable); gridView.NumColumns = dataTable.Columns.Count; //Hook up our adapter to our ListView gridView.Adapter = itemListAdapter;
var itemListAdapter = new Adapters.DataTableGridAdapter (this, dataTable); gridView.NumColumns = dataTable.Columns.Count; //Hook up our adapter to our ListView gridView.Adapter = itemListAdapter;
The slightly annoying thing about this approach is you need to explicitly set the number of columns the grid has and you do need to keep updating the number of columns each time a new column is added or removed.
And that's basically it, take a look at the full working example here, and feel free to send a pull request if you have an improvements.
As I've already mentioned last weekend I took part in AngelHack and took the opportunity to learn how to develop for an Android device (in this case a Kindle Fire) using C# and Xamarin Studio. The experience was a bit mixed, overall I think the folks at Xamarin have done a good job in smoothing the experience when targeting mobile devices, but there's still a few rough edges. Here's a run though of what I thought:
The installer for Xamarin Studio works well and does a good job of downloading and installing the large number of different components need to develop for various devices. However, it's slow, not so much the download which came down surprisingly quickly but the installation took ages with the window's installer promising "6 seconds remaining" but in reality I was still waiting minutes later.
Once I was past the installer I downloaded the tasky sample and tried to open in Visual Studio but all the projects refused to load. I tried both with VS2012 and the "Shell" version of VS2010. I think this is because I'd installed the Indie version of Xamarin Studio, which doesn't have Visual Studio integration, so in this case my fault, but one might have reasonable expected a clearer error message about why the projects weren't loading. This is especially true as the Visual Studio 2010 shell seems to have been installed by the Xamarin Studio installer (at least I have no memory of trying to install VS2010 shell on this machine).
Once I open the tasky project files in Xamarin Studio things started looking up. I soon got tasky compiling and working the emulator. However by default the Android emulator is setup to emulate a phone and I wanted to target a Kindle Fire, there are various other configurations of the emulator but none of them appropriate for Kindle development. Amazon has detailed instructions about how to setup your development environment to target kindle fire, however there only for folks using eclipse. Xamarin Studio installs the same set of tools described in the article but there installed under C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Android\android-sdk in Windows, so it took me a while to figure out where they were (C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local seems an odd place to install them to).
UPDATE: I've just installed XamarinStudio on another box and I noticed the installer asks you were you want to put the Android SDK, obviously this didn't strike me as important information at the time and I just did "next > next > next".
Once you've found the tools, you need to use the "SDK Manager.exe" to installing the following extra bits for Kindle Fire development (you'll need to add a reference to "http://kindle-sdk.s3.amazonaws.com/addon.xml" under "Tools > Manage Add-on Sites … > User Defined Sites" before they are available). Then install:
- "Kindle Fire Device Definitions"
- "Kindle Fire USB Driver" (this doesn't really install the driver it just downloads it, you then need to find the exe and double click it)
- "Intel x86 Emulator Accelerator (HAXM)" (again doesn't install automatically, you need to double click the exe, and it wasn't supported by my processor, but well worth doing if your processor does support it)
Before I had installed all of this a I tried "side loading" (directly dragging and dropping my compiled .apk via a USB connection) on to a kindle I'd borrowed. This didn't work and the app just closed without display an error message. I strongly suspect that this was because I hadn't uncheck the "Use shared runtime" option, but I haven't tried "side loading" since. After I installed the "Kindle Fire USB Driver" I just let Xamarin Studio handle the deployment and it just worked.
Working with the Android emulator is slow and the emulator is a little crashy. The emulator seems especially prone to crashing after sleeping/unsleeping my laptop by closing/opening the lid. Although my laptop doesn't support the "HAXM" accelerator checking the the "Use Host GPU" under the "AVD Options" ( AVD is Android Virtual Device) did seem to speed things up a lot. Starting the emulator and deploying to it is the slowest bit. There is a "Quick deploy" option which is check by default but that just produced strange error messages for me and after a bit of googling the suggested fix seemed to be "if it ain't working turn it off". Unchecking the "Use shared runtime" also slows things enormously, so make sure it's checked during development. I had one other problem with the emulator which turned out to be a user error. When I first use the emulator it would go straight to the start screen of the app. Later, for reason I don't understand, it started to show the lock screen of the Android OS, along with a "50% Loaded" message. I wasted a lot of time waiting of the "50% Loaded" to disappear, but after several restarts I realized the "50% Loaded" message was a red herring the emulator was fully loaded, I just need to unlock it by dragging the flashy circle over the lock sign.
Another problem that gave me a slow start to my development was that although the tasky project worked fine on both really hardware and the emulator I couldn't for the life of me get a project I'd created via "File" > "New Project" to loaded into the emulator (I never bothered trying real hardware). When I tried to deploy, the app would seem to deploy but then exit straight away, I tried putting a break point in the first screen, it was never hit. I'm not sure what the problem was, I noticed the app didn't have a manifest so I tried creating one, but it didn't seem to make any difference. In the end I just gave up and used a copy of the tasky project to create my app.
The final glitch was related to libraries. I wanted to parse some JSON, easy right? As it turns out a bit of a struggle. I wanted to use newtonsoft.json.dll to do the job, but it you can't use any old .NET binary to target an Android app, if the binary hasn't been build specifically for Mono/Android you end up with weird error messages about object being from the wrong mscorlib.dll. I looked around for a version of newtonsoft.json.dll that targeted Android, but only found some old source, no binaries. Next I tried to use "system.runtime.serialization.json.datacontractjsonserializer" but this isn't included in the Android libs. The one that I found that actually did the job was "ServiceStack.Text", it's true that service stack doesn't provide binaries for Android, but it does at least supply a csproj in the main repo to build the source to target Android, so a big thanks to Demis Bellot for providing this.
UPDATE: Dave Thomas just pointed out that newtonsoft.json.dll is available in the Xamarin "Component Store": http://components.xamarin.com/
Despite the problems I've laid out here overall I was very pleased with the experience of using Xamarin studio to target Android and now I have some Android hardware I may go on to build some apps. It's true that I did encounter a lot of problems, but I hope to create bug reports and help get these solved. I didn't add F# into the mix this time around, but I shall definitely be trying it out when it comes to building my next app.
AngelHack Paris is the first "hack day" I have every attended, so I didn't really know what to except. Early on Saturday morning I found myself in a slightly run down area just outside the "peripherique" road that marks the boundary of Pairs. The event was hosted at "cifacom" a colleague for digital design and art, I was quite sure what to make to their campus, about half seemed to swish lectures theaters and the rest seemed to have been basically left as the old warehouse that it was before it is was converted.
My objectives for the weekend were to learn some new technology, I wasn't sure what, so before the kickoff presentations I experiment with a little node.js, but became a little frustrated when a tutorial just died with cryptic errors. During the kickoff presentation I learn that the prizes were much better that I had originally thought, I'd just assumed that the weekend objectives were to build something for the fun of it, but I found out 1st prize was a trip for the whole winning team to go to San Francisco, and not just to enjoy the sites, the organizers would arrange meetings with venture capitalist who might be interested in the project. Other prizes were on offer too, the event several sponsored by several large tech firms and most of them were offering prize for the best use of there technology. When I learned to that Amazon was offering a Kindle fire for the best app on it's Kindle I decided to that it was time to try out Xamarin Studio and make me an Android app. I join a team on the basis that I could do a front end on the Kindle for their web application. The winners of all prizes would be decided by a 2 minute presentation given by the team.
After the kick off presentation we basically found a quiet corner and began to shape our project. I installed Xamarin Studio while we discussed the project specs and who would do what. Setting up the dev environment took a little longer that I hoped and it was only really about 7pm that I was in a position to start coding. I had to head home just after that, but many people left in the early hours of the morning and some stopped around all night. The organizers did a great job in providing things developers like. There was a ready supply of sandwiches, pizza and beer. There was also a masseur providing back massagers and toy helicopters and foam dart guns. Sadly, people were just starting to turn there attentions from their projects to the toys as I was learning, and apparently after mid-night there was a period of full blown urban warfare. I only saw the photos.
Sunday morning was cold and bright and I got up early again to the 7:11 train, only to find that didn't exist on a Sunday. So I sat coding and shivering on the platform till the 7:41 eventually arrived. I made much more progress Sunday morning and by the 2pm deadline I had a kindle app that I thought at least demonstrated the idea of our project. The rest of the team had done a good job on assembling the web app, datastore and a well polished presentation. At 2pm sharp we assembled in the meeting room to give our presentation and see what the others had done. This was one of my favourite parts of the weekend. There were many projects who's presentations I enjoyed watching. I was very impressed by the Loopifive app that won the competition, the concept is interesting, a platform that allows musician's to share and remix there compositions and their presentation was very slick. I did win the best Kindle prize, but it was a bit by default as no-one else built a kindle app.
Here's a photo of us presenting our project:
Then there was still an ample supply of beers for the post event party. I'm glad I stuck around as it provided and interesting opportunity to meet people dissect the weekend, which had been a bit lacking during the competition as everyone was concentrating on there own projects. A fun weekend, I'd definitely do it again.
Last Wednesday I got the chance to attend a "Coding Breakfast" hosted by Damien Thouvenin of CLT Services. The concept is simple, turn up a little before 8:30, enjoy some coffee and croissant, then we attempt a Coding Kata for about an hour and finally we get together to review the results. I was pleased to see the great and the good of the Paris coding scene there, in the form of Yann Schwartz and Jérémie Chassaing.
The chosen Kata was the "Parking Meter" problem. Create a function to calculate how much time the coins you've inserted into the machine buy's you. The parking meter only accepts 10, 20, 50 cents and 1, 2 € coins. Parking costs 1€ 20 min, 2€ 60mins, 3€ 2 hours, 5€ 5 hours 8€ 1 day. You only need to pay for Parking between 9h and 19h and parking is free on Sundays, public holidays and in august. The problem seems fairly straightforward but the various rules mean there's actually a fair bit of code need to cover all the cases. Myself and Jérémie choose to do the problem in F# and the others coded in C#. I was the only one to finish in the allotted time (although I did notice and fix a small bug later on) but the other weren't too far from finishing. I didn't practice strict TDD which the other's did, but I did produce a test script that I ran from F# interactive.
I the discussion at the end a couple of interesting points came up, how to handle 'DateTime.Now' correctly and whether to store current time paid for and start from this when adding new coins. I believe these are both problems caused by trying to model everything as objects, trying to group things into behaviour plus state, rather than just creating functions that make calculations. The correct was to handle 'DateTime.Now' is not use it, you're function should take DateTime representing the start time and all calculations should be based on this parameter. It's true you'll need to observe 'DateTime.Now' at some point, but this should be at the last possible moment, probably when you're handling the "AddCoin" event, or whatever. There is no need to store the current time bought, you just need to calculate it and display it or send it to the ticket printer. The only thing you really need to store is the total of the coins entered, I think it's good practice to try and store the minimum amount of state possible. The function the calculate the amount of time paid for can be called each time the values is needed, the calculation is so quick it's not going to cause performance issues, plus you'll always get a version that has been updated for the current time.
I won't describe the approach I took, but I'll show you two version of the problem, the first was what I managed during the allotted time, the second is the result of a 20mins tidy and commenting session, and the various steps of the calculation are explained there.
One last thing before for I show you the code, a big thanks to Damien for organizing the event, I'm looking forward to the next one.
Link to the first version (as I can seem to get github to do an embedded version of a previous revision)
Cleaned up version:
The 2013 edition of Functional Programming eXchange is just over a month away, so if you're not already signed up now the time to do so. When we first started Functional Programming eXchange back in 2009 there were very few functional programming conference's aimed at developers, over years this has changed quite dramatically and now even if we just talk about about functional programming events in the UK hosted at Skills Matter we have Clojure eXchange, Haskell eXchange, Progressive F#, Scala Days and Scala eXchange. What makes Functional Programming eXchange different from these other conferences is that rather than focus on a specific functional programming language we have the freedom to bring together the talks from a broad range of functional languages, to bring there respective communities together to swap ideas and it gives us a chance to include some talks from languages that do not yet have there own conferences.
I'm very pleased with the way the schedule has turned out, there were other talks I'd loved to have included, but the schedule already is full to busting! I'm very pleased to have both Simon Peyton-Jones and Don Syme the men who are the driving forces behind the research and development of Haskell and F# respectively. Simon will start the day by giving a "Adventures with Types" in which he'll give us an overview of some of the latest development in the Haskell type system and Don will round the day off by giving a talk "F# in an Open Source World" in which he'll talk about the changing way the community contributes to F#.
I'm also very pleased to have a talk from Alain Frisch of LexiFi. LexiFi are one of the pioneers of using functional programming industry and have been helping their customers tackle complex problems in the financial domain using OCaml since the early 2000s. Alain has also made many contributions to the OCaml compiler itself and he'll be covering both these topics in his talk so it really is one not to miss.
David Pollak and Paul Dale will both the be giving Scala related talks, David will be telling us about the latest developments in his popular web programming framework "Lift" and Paul will talking about his experinces using Scala and the Akka framework in successful real world projects. Robert Rees will be giving a talk that covers both Scala and Clojure and will be giving talk that compares both language with a view to helping developers decided why you might chose one or the other for a specific project.
Nic Ferrier will be keeping fans of lisp style languages happy with his talk on ELNode, a node.js style web server that written in Emacs Lisp, so can be hosted inside the famous emacs text editor.
Adam Granicz also has a talk which pushes the boundaries of the web and text editing, he'll be showing off an IDE in a web browser for the F# language.
Hope to see you there, it'll certainly be a day pact full of learning and fun!
Today I gave a talk "Science and Software Development" at the weactuallybuildstuff.com. The talk was largely inspired by Ben Goldacre's "Bad Science" column and book and try to apply some of the ideas relating to the use and abuse of evidence in the software industry. In the talk I tried to build a case for why the software industry might by to pay more attention to scientific techniques, such as "Randomized Controlled Trails", by talking about availability bias, Confirmation Bias, the placebo effect and overconfidence. The slides are available on SlideShare:
Additional Material came from The Geek Manifesto by Mark Henderson, Irrationality by Stuart Sutherland and the 6th February 2012 Edition of the Guardian Science podcast. The also a large number of quality blogs talking about science scienceblogs.com and The Guardian's Science blogs seem to be good jumping off points.
A video of the talk should be available soon, I'll post the link to this blog when it is.
A huge thanks to Greg Young to inviting me to speak and this new and exciting conference!
Well we're doing it again!
I've been running a conference "Functional Programming eXchange" in London for a few years now. The conference is run by Skills Matter and will take place on Friday 15th Mar 2013.
The idea of the conference is to bring together London's diverse functional programming communities to share ideas and war stories. Most previous talks have focus on concepts from functional programming or feedback from projects that have used functional programming. Previous talks can be seen on line:
If you'd be interested in speaking please drop us a line with an abstract to email@example.com
If you're intested in coming long a you can already order your tickets at the conférence's proto-website: http://skillsmatter.com/event/scala/functional-programming-exchange
Visual Studio 2012 has been out for a while now, I've been using it every day at work and I'm generally very happy with it. The biggest win is the performance, which is some much better than VS2010.
I've finally begun to get curious about the new stuff in VS2012. Visual Studio was delivered with .NET 4.5 a shiny new version of the .NET framework, that will allow developers to create "Metro" style apps (which for reason that are too silly to go into are no longer called Metro style apps, but we will continue to call them Metro style apps in this article as suitable name has yet to be found). You can also develop all the apps you used to be able to develop using .NET 4.5, such as WinForm, WPF, ASP.NET etc.
Metro style apps are the new style of application that will only run on Windows 8. They take up the full screen and are design to be used on touch screen tablet devices, though it is possible to use them from a device that isn't touch screen. Metro style apps do not run on the Win34/Win64 Windows APIs we have come to know and love, they have their own APIs that are completely isolated from the classic Win34/Win64 Windows APIs. These new APIs are called WinRT, confusingly also the name of the version of Windows that runs on ARM based devices. WinRT will not load executable or .dll that target Win32/Win64, code must be compile specially for WinRT and applications cannot simple be download from the internet, they must be installed via the Windows Store (all though inevitably someone will find a way to hack there way round this restriction). The idea is that WinRT is locked down and completely isolated from the Win32/Win64 world to try and prevent the malware issues that plagued Win32/Win64 'anything goes' world.
As we know the .NET framework is built on top of the Win32/Win64, so how does .NET 4.5 allow developers to create Metro style apps, while still allowing them create apps that run on Win32/Win64? The answer is simple, .NET 4.5 is not one framework but two:
- .NET 4.5 is an in-place update for .NET 4.0 used by Windows 7 applications, Windows 8 classic desktop mode, Mono-Mac, Mono-Linux etc.
- .NETCore 4.5 is the core implementation of .NET used by Windows Store apps written in .NET languages.
In VS2012 you know have the possibility to target either framework (or both in the case of building a library), it just depends on the project type you choose. So say you decided to create a .NET library, you now have the following choices:
- 'Class Library' project type, this creates a library that will target .NET 4.5 or any of the older 'classic frameworks'
- 'Portable Class Library' project type, this creates a library that could potentially be used on any version of .NET, that is the 'classic frameworks', Silverlight, XBox and the new .NETCore 4.5 for Windows Store.
- 'Class Library (Windows Store Apps)' project type, this produces a class library that can only be used with .NETCore 4.5 for Windows Store.
- 'Windows Runtime Component' project type, this doesn't produce a .dll like all the other project types, but instead produces a .winmd file. A file .winmd still uses the same Common-IL (CIL) format as a the other libraries, but winmd library can be used from JavaScript and C++ applications that target Windows Store, were as a .dll produced by a 'Class Library (Windows Store Apps)' project can't be.
I wanted to understand the difference between these projects types. I was particularly interested in what was the difference between the files produced 'Class Library (Windows Store Apps)' project type and the 'Windows Runtime Component' project type. I could seem to find a good explanation of this on the internet. So I open Visual Studio create project of each project type and then used ildasm to decompile each library so that I could compare them in WinMerge. For those who want to play with this for themselves I've uploaded by project here.
This is a summary of what I found and few other tip bits about .NET 4.5:
'Portable Class Library'
These are very similar to the 'Class Library' project type. The only difference is that they create 'retargetable' reference to mscorlib. It looks something like this in the text version of IL:
.assembly extern retargetable mscorlib
.publickeytoken = (7C EC 85 D7 BE A7 79 8E ) // |.....y.
.ver 2:0:5:0
I've failed to find a good explanation of 'retargetable' keyword does in IL. It seems to be an old idea that's been in available in IL for a good while as I found a reference to it on this site that was put together around 2005, which is actually an old readme file from an old distribution of F#, but it's on the top results when you google for 'extern retargetable mscorlib'. The site does offer a little inside what retargetable does:
"Retargetable binaries are neutral w.r.t. the publisher of particular referenced binaries. For example, a truly portable .NET program will be neutral w.r.t. the publisher of mscorlib - rather than picking up a dependency against the publisher of mscorlib used at compile-time. This means the program will bind to ANY assembly called "mscorlib", which is OK for mscorlib but is not necessarily such a good idea for other strong named assemblies."
So there you go.
The programmer also gets a lot of choice about what can be targeted, they could choose to target .NET 4.5 and .NETCore 4.5 but not Silverlight, for example. To make this possible, Microsoft has create different "profiles". Each profile allows to target a different set of frameworks for example "Profile1" lets you target .NET for Windows Store apps, .NET Framework 4, Silverlight 4, Windows Phone 7, XBox 360. Microsoft provide a set of reference assemblies that have all the methods that are common across all these frameworks, these live under: C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETPortable\v4.0\Profile\Profile1.
To add extra-meta data to the assembly the msbuild project produces a .cs file you're temp directory and add this into the build. Here's an example of the generated file:
using System;
using System.Reflection;
[assembly: global::System.Runtime.Versioning.TargetFrameworkAttribute(".NETPortable,Version=v4.0,Profile=Profile4", FrameworkDisplayName = ".NET Portable Subset")]
A full list of all the different profiles can be found here.
'Class Library (Windows Store Apps)' and 'Windows Runtime Component'
These differ hugely from the 'Class Library' project type. In .NET Core mscorlib has been renamed to 'System.Runtime'. So we seem this import at the top of both files:
.assembly extern System.Runtime
.publickeytoken = (B0 3F 5F 7F 11 D5 0A 3A ) // .?_....:
.ver 4:0:0:0
Confusingly the .winmd file also imports a version of mscorlib, whereas the .dll produced by 'Class Library (Windows Store Apps)' does not:
.assembly extern mscorlib
.publickeytoken = (B7 7A 5C 56 19 34 E0 89 ) // .z\V.4..
.ver 255:255:255:255
This seems to be because a .winmd file uses the definition of System.Object and System.Type from mscorlib whereas the .dll does not. I have no idea why this is.
For the 'Class Library (Windows Store Apps)' project type the renaming of mscorlib to System.Runtime accounts for most of the difference, (since the text IL format is very verbose and the assembly name and names is needed each time a type is referenced).
For the 'Windows Runtime Component' project there are more changes. I think these changes are to make the expose the managed class via COM to JavaScript and C++. Any public class in a 'Windows Runtime Component' project must be sealed, have no new virtual or abstract members and no events. I assume this is to make it COM compatible. We then see that our class also implements an interface:
.class public auto ansi windowsruntime sealed beforefieldinit TestNet45.Class1
extends [mscorlib]System.Object
implements TestNet45.IClass1Class
This implementation is completely implicit, no changes to the C# code where necessary. The implantation of the interface is accounts for most of the rest of the differences in the .winmd file and an ordinary .dll.
Another minor difference is that methods in .winmd file have attributes attached that specify the direction:
.method public hidebysig specialname rtspecialname
instance void .ctor([in] int32 a,
[in] string b,
[in] float64 c) cil managed
If you want to see a picture of the IL diffs you can see one here.
Other Differences in .NETCore 4.5
I've been trying to port some existing code to .NETCore 4.5 and keep it compatible with plain old .NET 4.5. There's a couple of other difference that make this tricky. Firstly, .NETCore 4.5 assemblies are much more fine grain that their .NET 4.0 equivalents. Assemblies tend to only cover one namespace, so were as most of the System.Threading namespace as in mscorlib before it's now split over several assemblies:
This can be a little annoying, trying to work out where stuffs gone, but I quickly got used to and it doesn't make a huge difference. The second problem is much more annoying. It seems Microsoft has taken the opportunity to redesign some parts of the framework, System.Reflection has be heavily affect by this. The CLR team has a good blog post explaining the changes. While I understand the design rational, and even think the new API as are better some respect, it's still very annoying porting code between the two models. Worse is trying to write code that is compatible with the two models, you end up drowning in '#if' definitions. To add insult to injury some of the more powerful features, like the System.Reflection.Emit namespace have been completely removed.
Hope you've found this little tour of the difference between .NET 4.5 and .NETCore 4.5 useful. Happy hacking!
Things are changing at Microsoft (or maybe they changed a while ago and it took me all this time to notice). The short story is the company no longer cares whether you use their development tools, they only care that you target their platforms: Windows 8 and Windows Azure.
The result is this, Microsoft is in the process of opening up Software Development tool chain. They no longer see themselves as the owners of .NET, or at perhaps more accurately some of the technologies around .NET (i.e. ASP.NET, Entity Framework which are now fully open source and parts of ASP.NET are packaged with Mono). Instead they seem themselves as driving contributor with other contributions from the community and other development companies. It can be seen too in the way that Microsoft has contributed to other projects to help bring them to the Microsoft platform, Node.js and the choice of Hadoop for its default Map/Reduce tool are probably the most prominent examples for this. This new way of doing thinks can also be seen in the way they released TypeScript, full open source and integrated with other Javascript open source projects.
Why are they doing this? It's simple. They want to attract as many developers to the Microsoft Platforms as they can, they no longer care whether they're using C, .NET or Javascript as long as they're building Apps for the Windows 8 Store or that run on Windows Azure.
One interesting question to ask is "is this a good strategy for Microsoft?" I honestly don't have an answer for this. Clearly the tablets pose a threat to their traditional cash cows of Windows and Office, so getting developers to develop apps for Windows 8 and Azure 'using any tool' seems like a good thing for them. Clearly getting Windows Store Apps developed is vital for them, but with so mobile developers already very busy building stuff for iOS and Android, will the 'using any tool' be enough to win them over? As for Azure it's difficult to see why they're chasing it so hard, sure the rental model is very attractive to them because it means a nice steady income rather than a one off sales, but the margins on Azure are so very thin. The figures I've heard, and admittedly this is rumors rather than hard facts, is that they're only making a few cents for every dollar spend on Azure, were as with Windows and Office they're used to 30% or 40% margins. Microsoft make some money from Visual Studio and MSDN licenses, I guess the 'using any tool' strategy threatens this but I think perusing this strategy doesn't necessarily mean they lose much revenue from Visual Studio/MSDN. Developers like Visual Studio so, will continue to use Visual Studio and buy MSDN Licenses. Plus the money they from MSDN licenses goes in the small change jar.
Another interesting question to ask is "is this a good thing for Software Developers?" I think it's mostly a good thing, but there are problems with the model too. .NET being more open means it's now easier to use from other platforms. Sure, you've always been able to use .NET from other platforms thanks to Mono, but now it's feasible to use more and more libraries that Microsoft have provide themselves. We don't get the full benefits of open source, such as contributing patches, small incremental releases and features requests as .NET is not full open yet. There's also a danger of fragmentation. To be fair .NET is already pretty fragmented with different framework version for targeting Windows Desktop, Windows App Store, Windows Phone, Silverlight, and Xbox, and that's just the Microsoft versions, not even taking account the Mono ones. There's also a new interesting development, Miguel de Icaza has recently been talking about extending C# to include non-null types. Although, I like the idea of non-null types in C# I'm not completely sure this is a good idea. A Mono C# compiler that supported a superset of Microsoft C# would only add to the fragmentation. Though, I think this shows a growing confidence at Xamarin, this is something the mono team would have never dreamed of in the Novell days.
Another potential problem is that many developers have always looked to Microsoft for guidance about how to develop software. Typically developers on the Microsoft platform like being told what languages, frameworks and tools to use, now they have more choice than ever: C++, JavaScript, TypeScript and .NET. Maybe this extra choice is a good think and will lead to new generation of developers that think for themselves instead of blindly following Microsoft's guidance. We can only hope.
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text:
Calvin Smith's 6911/42 Super Bee Is The Real Deal
Looking back, 1969 was a big year for Dodge performance. After all, the NASCAR series bred not one, but two different models-the Charger 500 and the winged Daytona. Standard Dodge Scat Pack models like the Charger were available in R/T and SE (or both) formats as well, while Coronets came in R/T and Super Bee trim. Next were the Dart GT, GTS, and new Swinger models. Finally, the mid-year introduction model seen here, the 440 Six Pack Super Bee, garnered a great deal of attention.
The Six Pack cars were unique for many reasons, not the least of which was the high performance 440 Magnum that finally became part of the budget-minded Super Bee and Plymouth Road Runner lineups. Up to that point with these models, you either got the base 335-horse 383 engine or the 426 Hemi; that was it. But the special engines were much more than warmed-over 440s from the R/T and GTX lineups. The 440 Six Pack featured many unique parts and pieces, developed exclusively for it through severe dyno testing at Chrysler's Highland Park facility. The most visible change, of course, was a newly-designed Holley 3×2 carburetor outfit on an Edelbrock aluminum intake that sat atop the engine.
Like most Chrysler musclecars, the Six Pack Dodge and sister 440-6 BBL at Plymouth were a complete package, not just an engine. A Hemi four-speed or automatic (which used the standard 440 converter) were behind the mill, feeding horses back to a Dana 60 rear, the only differential available. Steel 15×6 police car rims were the only wheels big enough to support the new Goodyear G70 tires chosen for the cars, so no special wheels were available, either. Chrome lug nuts were added as trim and the hubcaps were left at the factory. Heavy duty shocks and springs rounded out the suspension.
Meanwhile, work on hoodscoop design had produced a revolutionary model that moved the opening off of the hood face (where turbulent boundary air was a problem) and into the cleaner air above by using a little air dam. Since this was to be built of fiberglass, Dodge created the whole hood from that material, deleted the hood hinges in favor of four NASCAR-style hold-down pins, and painted it flat black for street savvy. The package screamed speed, and in the minds of many, remains the ultimate visual expression of Detroit street iron.
Best of all, the price of the entire option over the base 383 Super Bee was only $468.80 ($462.80 on the Road Runner 440-6 BBL). Except for shortages due to the number of parts from outside vendors (Edelbrock intakes in particular), the cars should have been a runaway success. As it was, only 1,907 Dodge and 1,432 Plymouth package cars were built before the end of the 1969 model year, though the new 440 Six Pack would be available in several standard production cars for 1970. As a result, these well-balanced street/strip machines are among the highest-demand Mopar supercars from the 1966-1971 era.
Luckily, Calvin Smith knew some of this before he tackled the project, or the car might have been passed over. Delivered new from Bill Strange Dodge in Birmingham, Alabama, the Dodge had been thrashed severely in its life, and was sitting in an Alabama junkyard (with a dog chained up inside for good measure) when he bought it and took it back to Ohio. In its favor was the numbers-matching engine still between the fenderwells (missing the intake and carbs), the solid southern body with rust only in the trunk and floor, and its potential for true greatness.
Thus began an eight-year labor of love. Obviously, between the water damage and junkyard condition, it was not a question of what to fix; everything had to be fixed. Once straightened out with a new trunk pan and right-side floor pan, the body went to Joel Cox of Elyria, Ohio. Cox took out the dings and reapplied the stock Hemi Orange paint using a base coat/clear coat acrylic enamel. Having taken extensive photographs during the disassembly, Smith was even able to replicate the Bill Strange Dodge decal on the decklid. The hood is the original, and the Super Bee graphics came from Dale's 'Cuda Shop. A final great find was an NOS windshield that a body shop in southern California had on its locator listings.
Next, the car went to Vic Mills, also in Elyria, where the process of assembling the needed pieces began. These included materials from the Paddock, Year One, Legendary Interiors, Roger Gibson, Eastwood, Stevens Performance, and other aftermarket suppliers; Calvin was also able to secure NOS wheel mouldings and Super Bee badging. At the same time, engine parts, the correct differential (which wasn't in the car when purchased), and four Six Pack steel rims, all properly date-coded, replaced those missing from the original. Mills did a majority of the work in getting the car in the condition it is today, which was completed in May of 2000. It was discovered from the build sheet that the car had been ordered with a higher 3.54:1 ring instead of the standard 4.10:1 ratio; Calvin has now located a second '69 440 Six Pack Dodge, also documented and delivered with this heretofore unrecognized option.
Since he began showing it this year, Calvin's car has generated a great deal of interest. Moreover, the quality of the restoration was such that it took Best of Show at the Chrysler Classic in Columbus, First Place honors in B-Body Dodge at the Carlisle All-Chrysler Nationals, First Place '69-'70 B-Body Dodge at the Mopar Nationals in Columbus, Paddock's Pick at the same event and First Place '69-'70 B-Body Dodge at the Chrysler Classic at Kansas City, not to mention accolades at local shows. In fact, at the Viper Invitational in St. Louis, Smith was even asked to display the gorgeous car with Dodge's latest concept vehicles under the factory tent
So we'd have to agree; whether new in 1969 or "renewed" in 2000, Calvin's Six Pack Bee remains picture perfect.


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This looks bad for the Phillies now. They couldn't win Game 3 at home, and now they lose 2 in a row at home and just one more loss and they've lost the World Series. The Phillies have played like a tired team now, they are completely out of gas. The comments from Cole Hamels that he can't wait for the season to be over and start fresh seems to be what perhaps a few of the Phillies players feel like as they just don't seem like they're having fun out there on the field this year in the World Series. It's a great accomplishment that the Phils made it to the World Series but the perfomances so far from the team as a whole hasn't been what I thought we would see from them.
Now there are only 3 possible games left in the Series, and the Yankees only need to win one of them. It's an enviable position that the Phillies wish they were in, but now it seems like this team will be like the 1950 Phillies and go down to defeat again vs the Yankees in this 2009 edition of the World Series. They say you really remember the team that won it all, and that's true. The baggage that went along with the team all last year will be gone, they will no longer be reffered to as the 'World Champions of baseball." The Phils look tired and weary. They tried a dramatic comeback last night, but it wasn't to be as the Yankees got to Brad Lidge and the game was lost. The way runners have stole on Lidge this year, is an absolute crime. It's almost automatic for the Phillies to not do anything about it, and this is bizarre. The pitching coach has done almost nothing about this but the responsibility falls on Manuel to figure out what to do about it. I've never seen a pitcher who has been run on like Lidge has this season. And nothing is done about it.
This team could come back and win three straight, I wouldn't start Hamels again after his comments if I were Manuel. If fact, it's one of the strangest comments I've ever heard a player in the World Series make. If the Phillies win tonight and go back to New York, I wouldn't pitch him. You just don't say things like that, even if it's how you really feel. We'll see tonight what happens in what should have been the third win at home for the Phils, now they are fighting to stay alive in the Series.
Monday, November 02, 2009
Phillies out of gas lose 7-4, and could lose the Series tonight
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Posted by Rich Baxter at 6:52 AM
2 comments:
It may look like a long shot but we have our ace tonight to hopefully push it to 6. I believe Pedro in game 6 has a good matchup...very consistent this postseason and the heart of a champion. If we can get it to seven anything is possible. Keep the faith... GO PHILS!ReplyDelete
Scott, they did it! There's a Game 6 to look forward to. Let's Go Phils, let's Go.ReplyDelete
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When the Jets drafted Geno Smith, it gave them a whopping six quarterbacks. Six, in the absence of some uncharacteristic once-in-a-generation innovation springing forth from the mind of Marty Mornhinweg, was too many quarterbacks. So, to get to five, the Jets dumped Tim Tebow. And today there are four.
Veteran David Garrard told reporters and teammates today that he planned to depart the Jets; Garrard, who texted with SNY's Adam Schein, blamed his knee and says retirement will come shortly. Garrard had signed with the Jets—and passed a physical—in March. He was planning to compete for the starting job against Mark Sanchez and rookie Geno Smith, with Greg McElroy and Matt Simms around as possible backups.
While Garrard's departure does clear up the Jets' logjam, he's probably not the one the team wanted to lose. Garrard made his first NFL roster in 2002, so he had years of film study and game experience under his belt. With Garrard out, the most senior Jets quarterback is—ugh? really?—Sanchez.
Image via AP.


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Destiny wrote:Hi..
I have made contact with Thomas Seidl CEO of Eye Mirror regarding road testing his GP Lens. He has no lenses available until May when I will ask again. Andrew (ATXcloud) has agreed to road test this lens since he has some nice new GoPro cameras. I would like to test their other lenses too but this would make a good start..
Destiny wrote:Well Andrew... I have tested most of the One Shot Camara lenses but none of them had the quality I can see with the Eye Mirror, or the FOV.. The few demos on their web site have been captured under extreme conditions so I am hoping that Andrew can provide a end user overview.. If I had a GoPro I would do it.. Only time will tell.. Its now up to Thomas Seidl to provide a demo lens and software to test.....
mediavets wrote:IMO the typical (low) Net connection bandwidth, and high charges for mobile data, will limit to appeal of 360 video in most markets, and that's unlikely to change any time soon.
Destiny wrote:I feel exciting new Hardware is begin developed by many companies...
Destiny wrote:Hi..
I have made contact with Thomas Seidl CEO of Eye Mirror regarding road testing his GP Lens. He has no lenses available until May when I will ask again. Andrew (ATXcloud) has agreed to road test this lens since he has some nice new GoPro cameras. I would like to test their other lenses too but this would make a good start..
There is software support for this lens too, which I will also ask for a trail for Andrew to use with his test.. I will also download the software and ask Andrew to send me the 360 video's to test..
One thing I have been pondering since getting more involved with 360 Video, and that is an option to process a 360 Video Tour, perhaps "PTP 360 Video".. I wonder if Kolor has thought on these lines. One thing is certain, all this new media is getting very exciting..
Destiny wrote:Not so sure about the FOV with this unit.
Destiny wrote: I had high expectations that their GP Mirror lens would be better than any of the other One Shot Mirror lenses
Destiny wrote:The reflective materials are different... The distance from the mirror to the camera lens is far less than the other mirror lenses I have tested... The fact that it uses the GoPro cameras which in itself is nice cameras, all lead me to believe would produce a much better result..
Destiny wrote:Well yes Andrew.. I guess until a forum member buys one and test its, all we have to go by is the Eye Mirrors claims..
Destiny wrote:The reflective materials are different...
Destiny wrote:Not 360 video but I will mention this camera anyway.. In a nutshell.. Horrible.!. and that is just a 360 pano image...
I realise that many here like the Theta Ricoh but for the money I am sorry, for me its has to be said... This camera is in serous need of a rethink.. Most of the everyday user results I would say are not worth the expensive of this camera @ about $650 to $700 + Aus.. However the Kolor web site shows that the results can be better.... Not so sure I would use such a camera on the upper end of the real estate market though..
This screen shot is captured from the IVRPA website... Really horrible! If this is the best Ricoh can do, in that case its ONLY going to be good marketing that sells this unit.. not quality of output. Personally I would wait for new and better options.. Sooo much blow out on white light here... Really Ricoh, are these Showcase Images the best you can do....?????? and in dim light.. its then a mater of far too much noise in the image... Not sure which is worse.......
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Black Plain Leggings - 14 yearstuc131355565
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A basic essential for her everyday wardrobe, these plain black full length leggings are crafted in a cotton rich fabric with added stretch.
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Great for my girl perfect fit and such a great price
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Affordable, everyday leggings that are super comfy.
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HTC Wildfire wallpapers
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HTC Wildfire running on Android OS (2.1 Eclair) and powered by a 528MHz Qualcomm MSM7225 chipset, features quad-band GSM and 900/2100 MHz WCDMA/HSDPA support, a 3.2-inch QVGA TFT non-AMOLED display, 384MB of RAM, a 5MP camera, 512MB of flash storage, a microSD slot, A-GPS, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, 802.11 b/g WiFi, and MicroUSB charging port.
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text: The iPhone Photography Awards (IPPAWARDS) is the first and the longest running iPhone photography competition since 2007. IPPAWARDS has been celebrating the creativity of the iPhone users since the first iPhone has inspired, excited and engaged the users worldwide. Since then every year, IPPAWARDS has selected the best shots among thousands of images submitted by iPhone photographers from 38 countries around the world. Winners are selected by the jury members in several steps and The Photographer of the Year prize awarded. This years overall winner is Holly Wesley, from Argyll, Scotland with this photograph of a pony.Picture: www.ippawards.com


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AudienceView Deployed by San Antonio's New Tobin Center for the Performing Arts
TORONTO, Ontario, Canada – January 29, 2014 – AudienceView has been deployed as the e-commerce and patron relationship management solution of the new Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, scheduled to open this fall in San Antonio, Texas. The solution is being implemented in phases while the iconic theatrical venue is being transformed into a shining beacon of creativity, fine art and downtown development. Subscription tickets for the inaugural season will soon be on sale, with single shows to follow in the summer.
"With AudienceView, we are able to implement a single ticketing and e-commerce solution to serve the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts as both a venue and producing organization, as well as all of our resident tenants, and any short-term and/or visiting tenants," said Aren Murray, Director of Ticketing for the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts. "In addition to the single patron database, we are also excited by AudienceView's ease of use, including high-quality user interfaces for the web, social networks, the box office and back office and the product's maturity."
AudienceView was selected following a comprehensive search for a solution that offers robust patron relationship management/CRM at the core with tightly integrated ticketing, fundraising, marketing, access control and an efficient interface to financial accounting systems. In addition, AudienceView enables multiple resident clients to share one platform powered by a single database while maintaining their own unique brand identities. In doing so, the organizations can share information through defined security levels while keeping certain data proprietary.
The Tobin Center for the Performing Arts is situated along the banks of the newly restored and expanded San Antonio River Walk. The historic Municipal Auditorium is being renovated into a world-class venue with performances for people of all ages, cultures, lifestyles and income levels. The venue will include a 1,759-capacity main theatre (up to 2,100 with a state-of-the-art flat floor configuration), a 250-capacity flexible studio theatre and a 600-capacity outdoor performance plaza. The multi-purpose facility will be home to many local resident arts organizations including the San Antonio Symphony, The Opera San Antonio and Ballet San Antonio.
"We are pleased to welcome the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts to the AudienceView family and share in their excitement as the venue's grand opening approaches," said Mark Fowlie, CEO for AudienceView. "Our single, integrated solution will provide this wonderfully transformed facility and its resident tenants with the innovative, modern technology they require to meet all of their patron's needs. We look forward to a long-term partnership."
About the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts
Situated along the banks of the Riverwalk in the heart of Downtown San Antonio, the historic Municipal Auditorium, with its original facade preserved, is being transformed into a world-class venue. This theatrical icon will once again become the pride of the River and a shining beacon of creativity, fine art and downtown development. There will be no better place — anywhere — to see and hear a live performance.
When the dust finally settles in Fall 2014, The Tobin Center will feature a state-of-the-art, multi-purpose 1,759-seat (2,100-seat with flat-floor configuration) performance hall, a 250-seat studio theater, and an outdoor performance plaza connected to the River Walk with a water taxi portal.
The remarkable flexibility of the 1,759-seat H-E-B Performance Hall, with its distinctive "flat-floor" capability (the first of its kind in the nation), opens the door for performances and events of almost any sort. The acoustics in the Hall can be "tuned" to fit the performance and the physical set-up of the hall, and the sound insulation throughout The Tobin Center will also enable simultaneous use of the HEB Performance Hall, the 250-seat Alvarez Family Studio Theater and the 600-seat River Walk Plaza.
About AudienceView
AudienceView is a complete entertainment business solutions provider. Rapidly approaching $2 billion in transactions value each year, our innovative, engaging software is helping more than 550 venues in 15 countries deliver exceptional shopping, in-venue and overall customer experiences. It also powers self-serve e-commerce, ticketing and events management portals, which can be used for shows and programs of any size or type. AudienceView was founded in 2002 and has received funding from Ventures West 8 Limited Partnership and private investors. Learn more at www.audienceview.com, or connect with the company on Facebook and Twitter.
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With every passing day it is become harder for people to maintain healthy eating and living habits. Our work schedules and social calendars do not leave us with enough time on hand to indulge in healthy cooking and eating on a regular basis. Workdays feel like rush hour fuelled with on-the-go meals and power naps. In such chaotic times, meal replacement products seem to solve a lot of problems. They are quick to make, fast to consume, full of body essential vitamins and minerals, and tasty enough to satisfy the taste buds.
They Assist in Weight Loss.
These shakes are low in calories and high in protein, carbs, and fibre. They also replace one meal of the day. So for people who are wanting to cut down their calorie intake, these shakes are a good option because they make them feel full without adding a lot of calories.
They Are Good In Certain Medical Conditions.
People who have chronic digestive system problems have found these shakes helpful. People who generally suffer from gastritis or ulcers tend to lose appetite. This loss of appetite results in them not consuming enough of whole food. These shakes can keep them full and also give their bodies the necessary vitamins and minerals.
Give a Sense of Community
There are a lot of people who are consuming the meal replacement shakes on a regular basis. These people have their own social media groups and communities. They have special programs designed for certain teams. They also organize some fun events around these products. All these things tend to give a person a sudden sense of belonging which is critical of emotional well-being.
Moderation is Essential
People make the mistake of assuming that these products can replace your whole food meal for a long term. The fact is that the consumption of these products needs to be moderated every now and then with real whole food. You also need to keep changing the flavours so that your taste buds don't get overwhelmed by the same taste and develop a fatigue.
Combine Them with Activity
It should not be assumed that consuming these products alone is enough. You also need to maintain an active lifestyle to lose weight. It is important to keep yourself busy and on the move to see real weight loss.