I have moved this blog to my new site located at http://www.shawnmclean.com with the blog located at http://www.shawnmclean.com/blog. This blog was already messy and I had little or no time to clean it up. This is my last post on this blog.
Thanks, Shawn Mclean.
Uploading on GitHub Soon.
Technical Level: Beginner
Problem: Retrieve the coordinates from a click event on html/javascript google maps.
Required Tools:
Solution:Very simple solution, a Google map click event passes the coordinate as a parameter. I Use JQuery in my implementation of this map because I intend to make AJAX calls. If you are not familiar with JQuery, then the following codes can be substituted in the as follows:
$("#SomeIDOfATextBox").val("Some value");
//Can be replaced by:
document.getElementById('SomeIDOfATextBox').value = "Some value";
Below is the javascript used to setup the map and grab the coordinates:
var map;
function initialize() {
if (GBrowserIsCompatible()) //a check to make sure the browser is compatible for GEmaps.
{
map = new GMap2(document.getElementById("map_canvas")); //assign the div to map var
map.setCenter(new GLatLng(18, -77.4), 13); //centering the location
map.setUIToDefault(); //setting the default location to the center.
//The GE event for clicking the map.
GEvent.addListener(map, 'click', function(overlay, point) {
map.clearOverlays(); //clearing the previous marker
var lati = point.lat(); //Function to extract latitude
var longi = point.lng(); //Function to extract longitude
var marker = new GMarker(new GLatLng(lati, longi), { draggable: false }); //Setting the marker to clicked location
map.addOverlay(marker); //adding the marker to the map
//JQuery function to assign the lat and long to the values of textboxes.
$('#LatTxt').val(lati);
$('#LonTxt').val(longi);
});
}
//This JQuery Function operates almost the same as the onload function, except more earlier
$(function() {
initialize();//call to initialize the map.
}
<div id="map_canvas" style="width: 600px; height: 400px;"> </div> <label> Latitude <input id="LatTxt" disabled="disabled" type="text" /> </label> <label> Longitude <input id="LonTxt" disabled="disabled" type="text" /> </label>
Below is a screenshot of my extended version (I’ll show how to get Geo-coded locations in a next post):
PS. Google Geo-Code service sucks for Jamaica. I’m now seeking alternative data sets.
Since there are no review sites for products and services in Jamaica, I’ll just rant about my little problem on my blog in the hopes of saving potential customers from getting ripped off. This review is based on northern St. Elizabeth location for Claro Internet Service . They claim they do not do refunds if you get a service, even if your service is crap.
Review: Rating based out of 5.
My Rant
I was informed by claro representatives at 2 different resellers and customer service that in my location, EDGE is available. I bought a claro modem with 1 month’s internet service, brought it to my area in which I indeed have EDGE. So before I get into the technical aspects of my rant, I’ll give a little lesson on the technologies I am working with:
There are multiple types of data transfers that Claro offers. Their best type is 3G. In my location I have GPRS and EDGE. These are the speeds that these 2 data transfer should give from this network:
Now back to my rant. The modem frequently switches back and forth between GPRS and EDGE, but most of the time, it stays on EDGE. When on EDGE, I get a maximum down rate of 2kbps. Yep 2kbps of the 25kbps of what I should be getting. When it switches to GPRS, I get a maximum down rate of 7kbps. So here we have it, the lower performing service is out performing the better service.
I waiting a day or two before contacting customer service, they turned out to be very nice people who understood my problem very inefficiently and auto responded with “We are aware, technicians are working on the problem”. So after a few calls to their customer care service, I gave up and turned to a governmental organization called Consumer Affairs Commision. This very nice lady was assigned to my problem, she contacted Mr. Randolph Nelson (Customer Service Manager from Claro).
Mr. Nelson along with a technician tried to temporarily fix the service on GPRS until they fix the cell site in the area so EDGE would work properly. Weeks passed, each time of contact, telling me that they have not visited the cell site yet. 2 months passed until I told the assigned technician I need a refund. She claimed she would pass it on to Mr. Nelson, who suddenly decided to stop replying to my emails. The lady at consumer affairs contacted him again to inform him about the refund, she replied to my email with the following:
Mr. Nelson has just responded to me by stating that “Claro wouldn’t be able to refund you because there is connectivity on the modem, just not at the speeds you would like.”
This is the last I have heard from them since I bought the modem 4 months ago with 1 month of unacceptable internet service. In total, I wasted around $11,700.00 JMD on this modem and the 1 month service.
I’d like to thank Petra Young, the lady who looked after my case from consumer affairs. I’d also like to thank Randolph Nelson, who was just doing his job (I think hiding away from my emails is a part of Claro’s internal rules).
Conclusion
Claro is a typical Company that does not care about customers. They are unethical and their customer care reps are well trained with bullshit. I can safely say, being a digicel customer, they’re customer care is on par with Claro’s. Their prices are also very high, but because there is not much competition, people run to them as I did (for a lower quality service).
Names may or may not be removed upon request.
This is a tool I whipped up. Its a simple one-click application that acts as a localhost server and runs an asp.net application.
The core works fine without any crashes yet. I need to do a few improvements so I can submit my game in 1 package and start the project without navigating to it. Stay tuned for more updates on this little application.
The download is located on the left in a Box.net widget. The file is called XorianaServer.exe.
Requirements:
My machine is vista sp2 and I’ve tested it on a windows 7 also. But this is what I think it requires:
.NET 3.5 SP1.
Official Description:
Xoriana Server is a local client server that can run ASP.NET 3.5 and under projects the same way visual studio’s internal server does. (WebDev.WebServer.exe) There are many servers like this around including those used by commercial 3rd party control creators such as Telerik, ComponentOne and Infragistics. This is where I got my idea from.
Instructions:
Start XorianaServer.exe.
Browse to the root path of where you project is located. That is for example, the folder that Default.aspx is located.
There is a default port and virtual path set, if they are already in use, you can change them.
License:
Anyone is free to use this tool, distribute it or whatever.
Future Updates:
soon to come
Technical Level: Beginner
Content:
Tools Used:
Incomplete. Check back in a week.
We did not make it to the top 12. The results sourced from the imagine cup blog is:
Software Design
•First place: Romania — SYTECH
•Second place: Russia — Vital Lab
•Third place: Brazil — Virtual Dreams
Embedded Development
•First place: South Korea — Wafree
•Second place: China — iSee
•Third place: Ukraine — Intellectronics
Game Development
•First place: Brazil — LEVV It
•Second place: United States — Epsylon Games
•Third place: United Kingdom — Sanquine Labs
Robotics and Algorithm
•First place: Czech Republic — Lukáš Perůtka
•Second place: Canada — Byron Knoll
•Third place: China — Lin Fuming
IT Challenge
•First place: Romania — Cosmin Ilie
•Second place: China — Wu Chang
•Third place: Bolivia — Miklos Cari Sivila
MashUp
•First place: United States — CURIOS
•Second place: Poland — Monastery of Innovations
•Third place: Singapore — PlanetKY
Photography
•First place: Croatia —Voodoo Delirium
•Second place: Singapore — Woolgathering
•Third place: Japan — Terada
Short Film
•First place: United Kingdom — Fulham Four
•Second place: India — ChennaiCoolers
•Third place: Ukraine — Just4Fun
Design
•First place: Brazil — Willburn
•Second place: United States — eXchangeFun
•Third place: France — Paindepices
Interoperability Award:
•First Place: Brazil — Proativa Team
•Second Place: Poland — Fteams
•Third Place: Jordan — ECRAM
Unlimited Potential Design for Development Award:
•First Place: Malaysia — COSMIC
•Second Place: China — Unique Studio
•Third Place: Malaysia — Capricorn
Unlimited Potential MultiPoint Education Award:
•First Place: India — Trailblazers
Accessibility Award:
•First Place: Saudi Arabia — ATST
Accessible Design Award:
•First Place: United States — eXchangeFun
Parallel Computing Award:
•First Place: India — Biollel
Tablet Accessibility Award:
•First Place: United States — Auratech
•Second Place: Brazil — IC-UNICAMP
Live Services Award:
•First Place: France — Help’Aged
•Second Place: Serbia — BrainWave
Windows Mobile Award:
•First Place: Croatia — Team Explorer
•Second Place: Indonesia — Big Bang
•Third Place: Brazil — Virtual Dreams
H.E. Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak Special Award:
•First Place: Poland — kAMUflage
•Second Place: Egypt — Big Buddy
•Third Place: France — WikiChildProtect
Today is sunday, the finals is Saturday and I’m still coding. No presentation script has been written for the demo as yet. We have our storyboard and outline for the demo. I need to upload our Azure project to the live windows azure server and our silverlight application into the live mesh and do some testing against those.
What needs to be done for finals:
All of this can be done in the next 3 days if i do not sleep… else, I’ll be coding on the plane to Egypt …
Technical Level: Beginner
Problem: Binding an object to multiple elements/controls on a xaml page.
Solution: Very simple, just put all your controls in a container and bind the object to it using the DataContext property.
