There are times when using a Prototype template or jQuery templates, we feel like “wish it had conditions & collection loops”. Conditional rendering in ASP.NET Ajax 4.0 seems to address this to some extent. Its pretty much using attributes like below in tags

• sys:if="false" - this as the name sounds is a Javascript condition

• sys:before="false" - is PreRender equvalent script for this XHTML Element

• sys:after="false" - is PostRender equvalent script for this XHTML Element

Pretty basic stuff, but we can’t use loops and more JavaScript. But may be helpful.  What i would like to see is, browsers support javascript eval statements already. I think we need to write something, which just will keep the existing jQuery/prototypejs template structure. But embed <%%> like structures, which is real JS. This has to work with relatively less code, compared to the total freedom. Lets say we define our template as:

<tr>
<td>#{CountryName}</td>
<td>#{CurrencySymbol}</td>
<td>
    <# if(dataItem.States && dataItem.States.length>0) #>
        <ul>
            <# foreach s in dataItem.States #>
                <li>#{s}</li>
            </##>
        </ul>
    </##>
</td>
</tr>

For easy of development sake, we could mandate that the JS blocks must be enclosed in tags, and all tags must be closed properly. We are currently assuming its </##>, we could pick something else. not <$ $><!– –> or <%%>, as they are used already by .net, jsp, html and other languages) template. The js class, which we implement, say JsTemplate should just create grab all the JS template tags, evaluate them and create a larger template. Which will end up being jQuery Template (temptest) or prototype template. We could have some predefined variables like dataItem and stuff, similar to variables in http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee335716.aspx. We should be good. We just use JavaScript’s eval() to evaluate the JS.

Feel free to suggest improvements or ask for clarifications on this. After reading the article on MSDN, i thought we could use native JS eval() to extract more from templates, without creating much of a new laguage.

A while ago i noticed MIT had their subject lectures made available for download free at http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm. I started out on Natural language processing. A kid learns words, sounds, actions – so a computer must. I am going to refer the application that will analise, solve and find best answer(s) as Inventor (say code name) for now.

Word meanings must be known and core Dependant word must be associated with software meaning.

Wikipedia is big information source. It contains information about human knowledge. What if we can translate the text into Computer understandable data and use it to find solutions to current problems. I think it can solve at least 10 major problems on our planet. Say for example there are articles on wikipedia saying that hydrogen is in abundance in earth core and another article that says how to get inside earth core using say CoreDriller. When asked for alternative fuel source, the solver should be able to grab both the articles and tell user to use CoreDriller to get hydrogen and use it as alternative fuel source. Capture solar energy or reduce pollution. Invent less pollutant transport vehicle, find cures for diseases.

News summary of today

1. Scott Gu has info on how to look at the source code for .NET Framework.
2. Live has 4 gb of sliverlight streaming FREE
3. PLinq – paralell linq to be used on multiprocessor machines

I found a web site that generates cool Ajax activity indicator images http://www.ajaxload.info/; and http://www.napyfab.com/ajax-indicators/ is worth taking a look too.

The Jubilee Hills police station in Hyderabad had an eight-year-old inspector. The boy got to interrogate a petty offender, asking him what his offence was. He told the offender that instead of committing thefts, he could earn a living by working hard, before adding that offenders would be sent to jail.

read more | digg story

I have read an article that spoke about spltting a string for given Delimiter and TextQualifier at codeproject by Larry Steinle. Larry had an example of Delimiter being FULL-STOP and Text Qualifier being DOUBLE-QUOTE.

If you are unsure of what i am talking, conside this. For example, say we have some text test string “example.”.cool!, we would like to split the text whenever we see the FULL-STOP – which is something the normal string.Split() does anyway. But we should be able to have DOUBLE-QUOTES as Text Qualifiers, so any text thats enclosed between two DOUBLE-QUOTES should be treated as text and we should not split that part of text if it contains a FULL-STOP.

Input : test string "example.".cool!
Delimiter : .
Text Qualifier : "

Our result after split should be

1. test string “example.”
2. cool!

Looks like Larry intended to have a generic method that will take given demiliter & textQualifier do the split. Larry wrote a function that does the work. I thought regular expression might be alternative, so i came up with some code and posted a comment with code. I am suprised how many number of lines i needed to do this (Just 3 maximum – oh yeah we can go crazy and make it single line too). I have attached a sample project too (for your reference). I started out simple with the issue mentioned (Spliting for a delimiter and text qualifier). I was pretty sure that Regular expression is better option (they are easier to implement – less code and time required and are pretty good performance wise, but yeah normal codeing can beat regular expression sometimes with couple of % – usually between 1%-5%, but they take days to write and optmise). Firstly i googled for an existing code which has 100% match for what i wanted to try. Then i had trouble finding exactly what i wanted, so i moved to almost what i want. I know i have used parse CSV files using RE ( Delimiter and ‘,’ and Qualifier is ‘”‘). I just replaced the comma with DOT (slash dot – as dot is regular expression syntax so i had to escape it). Bingo, its all done.

Regex re = new Regex(@"\.(?=(?:[^""]*\"[^""]*"")*(?![^""]*""))", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase| RegexOptions.Compiled); string[] arr = re.Split(@"test string ""example."".cool!"); Larry request for a generic method that can support any delimiter and textQualifier. I placed {0} where ever i saw ‘\.’ and {1} where ever i saw “, thats it. It was all done:

string reString = string.Format(@"{0}(?=(?:[^{1}]*{1}[^{1}]*{1})*(?![^{1}]*{1}))", Regex.Escape(delimiter), Regex.Escape(textQualifier));
Regex re = new Regex(reString, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase | RegexOptions.Compiled | RegexOptions.Multiline);
re.Split(inputString);

I have attached the source code for anyone else who wants to do it. This is what the source code does

I saw this game on digg, it was nice. Its basically to park a car it its own colored parking spot. But it had a problem that it was shaking. I did a refresh at first, but problem seem to persist. So, I clicked the car regardless (in level 4), it worked. In level six, i had to do an undo and redo. The below is the image of level 7

Do you have what it takes to create a great Google Desktop Gadget? Have you been waiting for some motivation to prove it? Well, good news — the Google Desktop Gadget Contest is here to spur you into brilliant action.

Key Dates

Contest Ends – July 31, 2006 (all submissions must be received by this date)
Winners Announced – August 21, 2006 (will be posted to the Google Desktop Blog)

The best gadgets will be determined based on:

1. Popularity
2. Visual appeal
3. Use of new features such as:
   1. UI Script API (transparency, animation, etc.)
   2. Sharing/collaboration through the Google Talk API (interactive games, shared lists, etc.)
   3. Personalization engine (contextual information, etc.)
4. Creativity

Background

Have anyone heard of PrePrime? Prime number is a number that is divisible by 1 and itself (it has 2 divisiors). PrePrime has 4 divisiors. For example, the 1st preprime is 6 (1, 2, 3 & 6). The numbers 6, 8, 11, 14 … are a sequence of PrePrimes.

The Problem

Find the nth preprime. Sounds simple, but there is a catch. The number n, can be upto 1 Million (1,000,000). So you are going to loop almost MaxInteger, then find if the number is pre prime. TopCoder wants code to respond back in 2 seconds. I broke 1 million into 100 parts. I pre-calculated every 10,000th PrePrime and struck the results in an array ino the code again. So if when i get a query to calculate 43,000th PrePrime. I first pick the 40,000th prime number and start working from there till i reach 43,000. Yeah, its precalculating 1/10,000th of the results. Unless we have a multi processor computer. I am not sure how to do it within 2 seconds. Anyway here is my code below…

using System;
using System.Text;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;

public class PreprimeNumbers {
  //public List arr = new List();
/*{ 6,
222599,
460015,
703553,
951149 };*/
  public int[] arr = { 6, 41037, 85003, 130163, 175867, 222595, 269506, 316527, 364369, 411989, 460011, 508658, 557129, 606063, 654554, 703546, 752777, 802391, 851923, 901577, 951143, 1000543, 1050514, 1100566, 1150843, 1201429, 1251479, 1301977, 1352177, 1403067, 1453467, 1504507, 1554933, 1605621, 1656418, 1707686, 1758349, 1809493, 1860778, 1912201, 1963817, 2015207, 2066453, 2117989, 2169451, 2220565, 2272654, 2323769, 2374973, 2426881, 2478478, 2530498, 2582417, 2634307, 2686165, 2738161, 2790154, 2843041, 2894739, 2946639, 2998839, 3050557, 3102997, 3155605, 3208541, 3261109, 3313397, 3365095, 3418171, 3470639, 3522473, 3574502, 3627578, 3680114, 3733219, 3785423, 3838238, 3890966, 3944026, 3996329, 4049561, 4102397, 4154783, 4207979, 4260811, 4313255, 4365757, 4419037, 4472635, 4525643, 4578583, 4631906, 4685107, 4738661, 4791471, 4844693, 4898343, 4951795, 5005241, 5058386, 5111443 };
    public int nthNumber(int n) {
        int N=6;
    int i = 1;
    if (n > 10000)
    {
      i = n / 10000;
      N = arr[i];
      i = i * 10000;
    }

for (; i <= n; i++)
    {
      while(!IsPrePrime(N++));
      //if (i % 10000 == 0)
      //    Console.Write("{0}, ", N-1);
    }
        return N-1;
    }

private bool IsPrePrime(int n)
  {
    int l = (int)Math.Sqrt(n);
    int c = 0;
    for (int i = 2; i <= l; i++)
    {
      if (n % i == 0)
      {
        c++;
        if (c > 2)
          return false;
      }
    }
    c += c + 2;
    if (l * l == n)
      c--;
    return (c == 4);
  }
  //1 000 000
  //0 043 765
  //  500 000
}