C# 4.0/3.0 in a Nutshell – LINQ Quiz

There are some particularly tricky ones in there. I fell flat on questions 6 and 9. Those are the types of seemingly anomalous bugs I would rant and rave about, then slap my head when I figure out my mistake.

Take your test today!

Fast? Superfast!

Can this get more crazy? One of the key plug-lines of the page:

The Cisco CRS-3 triples the capacity of its predecessor, the Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System, with up to 322 Terabits per second, which enables the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress to be downloaded in just over one second; every man, woman and child in China to make a video call, simultaneously; and every motion picture ever created to be streamed in less than four minutes.

Housed in the same components of today's CRS-1, in-place uninterrupted upgrades can be performed in a production environment.

A bit technical-heavy, but eye-opening, the clip below is a good reel of advertising blurb that made me think of the future:

Apart from making me laugh, it made me think a little. So I thought some more. Then I stopped thinking and picked my nose. Then I thought some more again.

I came up with this as the world’s first (I think) “CharvaScript”:

alrite mate
  got ciggy mate?
  got a light mate?

  mate, ciggy is "Marlboro"
  mate, light is "Zippo"

  av got ciggy and " " and light for you mate

nawww thanks mate

This is a new flavour of the classic “Hello World.” It outputs “Marlboro Zippo”.

I’m sure you can work it out by yourself how it’s interpreting the script into an executable code path.

Na'vi/Night Elf Hunter

I’ve just read an interesting article detailing 5 similarities between James Cameron’s Avatar and the World of Warcraft.

If you play WoW, I think you’ll agree he has a point…

Modern Warfare 2 Logo

Just a quick note to post some information about how to correctly set up port forwarding on your router/gateway for the PS3 (and I believe also the XBOX360) version of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Basically, the game requires port 3074 UDP to be forwarded to your router. There is no need for assigning it as the DMZ, or for forwarding TCP port 80. Don’t do this!

The reason for having an incoming port opened for the game is so the game is able to host matches. On the PS3, every multiplayer game is hosted by one of the players within the same game. You can tell if it’s you if you check the score screen and see that you are the one with the highest connection rating (4 green bars). If there are lots of people with 4 bars, then congratulations, you’re either the host, or at least connected to an excellent one!

Most people will notice the game works fine without any port forwarding. This is either because you have UPnP enabled on your network, or you have no port forwarding configured. The game will use UPnP to automatically set up port forwarding for this port to your PS3, and will appear as “NAT Type 2″ in a PS3 connection test, or “Open” in game. If you are able to check your UPnP ports, you will discover an open 3074 UDP port directed at your PS3 with the name “DemonwarePortMapping“. This is correct, and you should leave it alone, unless the IP address it shows doesn’t match your PS3.

If you have a “NAT Type 3″, it means you need to manually set up port forwarding for 3074 UDP to your PS3, which will then change the in-game NAT status to “Open” and allow you to host games.

Setting up port forwarding varies between different routers, which is why it is best to get your manual out and simply enable UPnP yourself. However, for some people UPnP isn’t an option, because they are the type of person to open “sexylady.pif” in a spam message and not expect to get a virus. They’re stupid, and can’t be trusted. Some worms and back-doors use UPnP to allow incoming connections without the user’s knowledge, and hence can be considered a risk.

If you can’t, or don’t want to enable UPnP, you will have to sort out port forwarding yourself. Most routers have a web-interface to do this, and is pretty straight-forward once you see it in front of you. Feel free to use portforward.com to find out how to configure your router for this task, but the site lists the wrong ports for Modern Warfare 2, so ensure you use just UDP 3074.

If you can’t find your router, simply click these links and see what happens:

• http://192.168.0.1
• http://192.168.1.1
• http://192.168.10.1
• http://192.168.100.1

Hopefully one of those will pop up with your router’s administration site. If not, you need to look into this in more detail, or use whatever configuration tool that is provided by your router’s manufacturer.

So remember: port 3074 UDP only, or use UPnP. Do not use DMZ!

I posted some listing on eBay to generate a little cash to pay for some gifts for people at Christmas; take a look:

• Metroid Prime Hunters for Nintendo DS
• Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam for Nintendo DS
• Leadtek WinFast PX7800 GT TDH Extreme PCI Express Graphics card

I feel dirty posting links to my eBay listing on my blog, but fuck it. Clicky please!

Shameless plug to promote voting… click here.

Credits to Sion Edwards for this find

So I joined the revolution into the new internet fad Twitter recently, and although I’m having trouble with some bugs (I think…) I’m having fun reading other people’s profiles.
My page is http://twitter.com/Codesleuth – followers welcome

DataTable myData = new DataTable();
myData.ReadXml("myxml.xml");

if (myData.Rows[0].IsNull("column1"))
    return null;
else
    return myData.Rows[0]["column1"];

The obvious performance improvement here is to first pull out the column index from the DataTable and then also pull out the row you need. You would end up with something like this:

DataTable myData = new DataTable();
myData.ReadXml("myxml.xml");

DataRow row = myData.Rows[0];
int col = myData.Columns.IndexOf("column1");

if (col == -1)
    throw new Exception("The column 'column1' was not found.");

if (row.IsNull(col))
    return null;
else
    return row[col];

I first changed my code to work in this way but I was thinking to myself that the DataRow will still have to perform an index pull from its internal collection even when using the verified index for the column. Another way of doing this would be to pull out the DataColumn and use that in the place of the column index, but I had no idea what would be faster. So I fired up Reflector and took a look at the Int32 version of the index lookup:

public object this[int columnIndex]
{
    get
    {
        DataColumn column = this._columns[columnIndex];
        int defaultRecord = this.GetDefaultRecord();
        return column[defaultRecord];
    }
    set
    {
        DataColumn column = this._columns[columnIndex];
        this[column] = value;
    }
}

As you can see, internally the lookup finds the DataColumn first anyway, which means it would be faster for us to get the DataColumn in our own code first as we reference it twice. So our new code becomes:

DataTable myData = new DataTable();
myData.ReadXml("myxml.xml");

DataRow row = myData.Rows[0];
DataColumn col = myData.Columns["column1"];

if (col == null)
    throw new Exception("The column 'column1' was not found.");

if (row.IsNull(col))
    return null;
else
    return row[col];

This is a very tiny performance improvement, but every little helps when it’s used many times a second.

Look at any news network, paper, or blog roll, and you will find comments that show there is no real need for this particular piece of news to be escalated this far.

I loved this Daily Show video, which summarises all that is stupid about the media:

If you’re looking for information, go to Effect Measure. Otherwise, laugh it off like the rest of us.