Her name is Che-Chee, she was born on 12th February 2008, and she’s with us since this monday, 24th March. Surprisingly, she got used to us very fast, no crying or anything, already the first evening she was checking around what all belongs to her.
Many more photos to follow, don’t worry, for now just a small “appetizer”:
Just realized I could share with you the LaTeX template I used for the Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy; it’s nothing special or pro, but if anyone wants to get a similar result, feel free to use the template – I added quite a few comments inside, you can delete them once you orient yourself in the source.
Also, it can be used as an example of adding poetry in verses, adding illustrations, etc.
This is my break off work, since yet again I found myself amazed by how the Visual Assist X (VAX) is… no, there is no strong enough superlative to describe it! I just wanted to share this jewel with those people that might not know what VAX is.
VAX is Visual Studio plug-in (all popular versions – VS6, VS2002, VS2003, VS2005 and newly also VS2008 – supported) that saves you nerves, time, and also saves you from quite a few bugs along the way. See more at the official site.
Are you tired of the pointless or totally wrong hints IntelliSense gives you (yes, it got better in VS2005 and VS2008, but still…)? Are you tired of switching between files, trying to find the prototype you need, definition of class, or even just where you were moment ago?
VAX is a program of (almost) infinite possibilities. Except of being “the really intelligent IntelliSense”, it provides many refactoring facilities, for any variable provides you with info about its type, in VAX panel shows you member of variables, provides you with definitions of macros (and knows how to work with them, unlike IntelliSense), speeds up typing (e.g. if you type in MFC dialog class gdi, it right away provides you with GetDlgItem as hint), go to definition and declaration (no need to generate the useless Browse Info anymore!) and much MUCH more…
One thing that might seem totally pointless, but that really made me happy when I found out it’s in VAX – the “go back” function (just like in your web-browser) to get back to where you were before you e.g. skipped to declaration of a function. It sure saves a lot of time and nerves, to fast find where you were moment ago.
Of course, VAX is only a program, and as such has also its little “problems”; for me, main problem (and the only I so far faced!) is its confusion while working with templates; esp. while working on template metaprogram, it’s easier to switch it off. Yet of course, even the best and newest compilers get often confused around templates, not to mention humans… 😉
What more to say? Just go to the official site and check out the trial version!
One warning – price of full version, for individuals, is set at $99; if you don’t want to, or can’t afford to, spend 100 bucks on piece of software, do NOT download the trial! Once you go VAX, there’s no going back… For real, no kidding.
One link to end off the praise – example of refactoring abilities of VAX.
Once you’ve obtained the Win32 archive for NASM, nasmw-inst-xxx.exe (where xxx denotes the version number of NASM contained in the archive), install the NASM into its own directory (for example “C:\Program Files\NASM”).
The archive will contain two executable files: the NASM executable files nasmw.exe, and the NDISASM executable files ndisasm.exe and ndisasmw.exe. In each case, the file whose name ends in w is a Win32 executable, designed to run under Windows 95 or Windows NT Intel.
Since 0.95.36, NASM is fully officially compatible with Microsoft Visual Studio 6/2003.NET.
Commands:
nasmw.exe -f win32 -Xvc -o "$(IntDir)$\(InputName).obj" $(InputDir)\$(InputName).asm
Outputs:
"$(IntDir)$\(InputName).obj"
Commands:
nasmw.exe -f win32 -Xvc -o "$(IntDir)\$(InputName).obj" $(InputDir)\$(InputName).asm
Outputs:
"$(IntDir)\$(InputName).obj"
.asm file:
[bits 32] [section .bss align=16] [section .data align=16] [section .text align=16] [global _myFunction] _myFunction: push ebp mov ebp,esp mov eax, [ebp + 8] ; your code goes here, instead of this line... pop ebp ret END
in .c/.cpp file call the function:
under MSVS:
int cdecl myFunction(int parameter);
under GCC you’d call the function with ‘_’ prefix:
int _myFunction(int parameter);
For more information see NASM Documentation, chapter 8.
Often when programming simple TCP/IP server (for monitoring of services and other non-GUI-based applications, etc.) we need to know IP of the host computer so that clients can connect to it; to retrieve this IP from within the server-side program, use the following snippet:
WORD wVersionRequested;
WSADATA wsaData;
wVersionRequested = MAKEWORD(2, 0);
if (WSAStartup(wVersionRequested, &wsaData ) != 0)
{
printf("WSAStartup() failed!n");
return 0;
}
// Get the local host information
hostent* localHost = gethostbyname("");
char* localIP = inet_ntoa(*(struct in_addr *)*localHost->h_addr_list);
printf("Local host IP is: %sn", localIP);
WSACleanup();
Includes
WinSock2.h, Ws2tcpip.h
Link libraries
ws2_32.lib
Once I get some time on my hands, I’ll clean up and post the code of my WinSock-based TCP/IP library for simple development of both server and client side.
Often you wanna make sure some tables in database exist, but you want to avoid getting the error message “There is already an object named ‘yourtable’ in the database.”, that you would get by simply issuing the CREATE TABLE command.
For these cases, MSSQL offers keyword EXISTS (most SQL engines provide similar facilities; e.g. MySQL C API allows you to directly check for the existance of database and/or table).
All you have to do in MSSQL is make sure the table is not yet registered in the sysobjects table, using the following SQL command:
IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sysobjects WHERE id = object_id(N'[dbo].[tablename]')
AND OBJECTPROPERTY(id, N'IsUserTable') = 1)
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[tablename] ( columns specification );
where “tablename” is name of table you want to create, and “columns specification” is the usual definition of table’s columns. Feel free to extend the table definition to your liking.
Or you might want to DROP the table before re-creating it:
IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sysobjects WHERE id = object_id(N'[dbo].[tablename]')
AND OBJECTPROPERTY(id, N'IsUserTable') = 1)
DROP TABLE [dbo].[tablename];
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[tablename] ( columns specification );
Yes, that’s all. Good luck!
Windows provide means for a more precise time measurement than just the standard C-function clock().
The basic definitions and declarations are as follows (typedef is for readability):
#define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN #include <windows.h> typedef LARGE_INTEGER timeStamp; void getCurrentTimeStamp(timeStamp& _time); timeStamp getCurrentTimeStamp(); double getTimeMili(const timeStamp& start, const timeStamp& end); double getTimeSecs(const timeStamp& start, const timeStamp& end);
Notes:
* LARGE_INTEGER is 8B big, so it’s faster to use reference than direct copy, but this may vary compiler to compiler – test before using!
* Value stored in LARGE_INTEGER variable is by itself useless – it’s something of the sort “number of ticks since the computer booted”; but two of them define interval with quite a useable resolution. (check MSDN for more info)
Usage is trivial – to measure intervals, simply use one of getCurrentTimeStamp() functions to get current “timestamp” of beginning and end of interval, and then use getTimeMili() go get interval’s length in miliseconds, or getTimeSecs() for length in seconds.
Implementation pretty much just uses what’s readily available (both versions of getCurrentTimeStamp() are obvious candidates for inline‘s):
void getCurrentTimeStamp(timeStamp& _time)
{
QueryPerformanceCounter(&_time);
}
timeStamp getCurrentTimeStamp()
{
timeStamp tmp;
QueryPerformanceCounter(&tmp);
return tmp;
}
double getTimeMili(const timeStamp& start, const timeStamp& end)
{
timeStamp dwFreq;
QueryPerformanceFrequency(&dwFreq);
return double(end.QuadPart - start.QuadPart) /
double(dwFreq.QuadPart) * 1000;
}
double getTimeSecs(const timeStamp& start, const timeStamp& end)
{
timeStamp dwFreq;
QueryPerformanceFrequency(&dwFreq);
return double(end.QuadPart - start.QuadPart) / double(dwFreq.QuadPart);
}
Note:
* The QueryPerformanceFrequency(&dwFreq); in getTimeMili() returns the same value on each call – storing this value at the start of the program might be a good idea. (most probably – on multiprocessor computers this might be false!)
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