Valyria Tear 0.6.0 released

I have to admit that we are a bit slow on reporting the news on FOSS gaming projects with we actually host ourselves via the freegamedev.net forums. Valyria Tear is sadly no exception, and their new 0.6.0 release has been out a few days already. Sorry to all whom this may concern.

For those not in the loop, Valyria Tear is based on the engine of Hero of Allacrost and aims to be an all FOSS jRPG. To give you a better idea of the game-play, here is a (slightly older) cool video of it done by some Linux enthusiasts:



(Thanks also to Rootgamer who reminded me of this news).

If you like the new release, give them some praise on our forums!

How to edit a picture in Picasa Web Albums or Google+ Photos

This article is about how to edit pictures in Picasa web albums, and how to use Picasa-destop to edit pictures in your Google+ Photos.

Picasa-web-albums vs Google+ Photos

Picasa-web-albums is a on-line photo storage and management tool, now owned by Google.   It is the on-line version of Picasa, a desktop-tool.   (Learn more about PWA and Picasa here.).

Google would ideally  like everyone to use Google+ Photos.

But there are many people who store pictures in albums that are not associated with their personal Google+ accounts:  these may be for businesses, schools, clubs, etc.

So it is likely PWA will continue to exist for a good while yet.   And I am sure that Google appreciate this:  they have made a number of changes to Picasa-web-albums to make it work better both with Google+ and without it.

Options for editing pictures that are are uploaded to Google

• If you have a Google+ account, then there are two ways of editing photos that you have loaded to Google (it doesn't matter whether you loaded them using Picasa-web or Google+Photos).  
  
  Both of these options are described below.   Using the Google+ editor (option 1) doesn't need any software installed on your PC.   But it's very slow to load, offers you less control, and is currently missing some key features - and it only works if you are using Chrome as your web-browser, not Firefox or Internet Explorer.

• If you don't have a Google+ account, then Google / Blogger only provides only one way to edit photos that you have loaded to it (apart from downloading the photo, editing it on your PC and re-uploading it - which changes the URL you need to use to link to the photo).   This is Option 2 below.

Option 1: Using Google + edit a picture in Picasa-web-albums

Log in to Picasa-web-albums, using your Google+ account.  
(See here for what do to if you are automatically re-directed from PWA to Google + Photos)


Navigate to the photo that you want to edit.  
(Make sure you're looking just at that photo, not at the album it is in - this can be confusing in cases when the photo is also the album cover.)

Choose Edit in Google+ from the Actions drop-down menu.

This opens a new window or tab.

If you are not signed in with your Google + account, you will be invited to join.

If necessary, sign-up for Google+, or sign in with the correct account, and start again.

Now, you will be looking at the photo in the Google+ Photos picture view.   From here you can do simple edits:

• Crop the photo
• Tag people
• Rotate the photo

as well as using the other Google+ Photos features (share, slideshow, delete, zoom)

To do more changes, choose Edit (yes, you need to choose it a 2nd time) from the top menu.

If you are not using Google Chrome, then you will get a message saying that the Google+ photo editor only works with Chrome, and giving you a link to download it.    If necessary, switch to Chrome and start again.

Wait while the photo editing tools are loaded  (this does take a while, perhaps even a minute or two).

Once loading is finished, the current Google + Photo editor functions are available from the right-hand bar, like this:

At the moment these are:

• Tune (brightness, contrast, saturation, shadows, warmth)
• Selective Adjustment (lets you specific areas for other options to be applied to)
• Details (sharpness and structure)
• Crop and Rotate

• Black and white
• Centre focus (adjust brightness and blur around the centre)
• Drama
• Frames
• Tilt-shift
• Vintage
• Retrolux.

When you  are happy with your photo, click the Finished Editing tick box at the bottom of the right-hand bar, and the changes will be saved (this may take a few moments).

You are left in the open Google+ Photos tab or window, not returned to Picasa-web-albums.   When you go back to Picasa-web-albums and refresh the page (F5), the changes that you made in Google+ photos will be shown.

Option 2:   How to use Picasa-desktop edit a picture in Picasa-web-albums

This option only works if you have Picasa desktop software installed on your computer.

Log in to Picasa-web-albums, using your Google account.

Navigate to the photo that you want to edit.   (Make sure you're looking just at that photo, not at the album it is in - this can be confusing in cases when the photo is also the album cover.)

Choose Edit in Picasa from the Actions drop-down menu.

A pop-up window will tell you that your web browser wants to open another program (ie Picasa-desktop) to do the editing.

(The exact text is something like:   "External Protocol Request:  [your web browser] needs to launch an external application to handle picasa: links.   The link requested is ... The following application will be launched if you accept this request   c:\Program Files\Google\Picasa\Picasa3.exe ... If you did not initiate this request, it may represent an attempted attack on your system.   Unless you took an explicit action to initiate this request, you should press Do Nothing.")

Choose Launch Application.

Picasa will load on your computer, and you will be asked to confirm that you do want to edit the selected picture.   Choose Edit Image.

A copy of the picture that you want to edit is opened in the desktop-Picasa editing tools window.

From here you have access to all Picasa's standard photo editing tools (including the text tool for adding watermarks).

The photo you are working in is a copy taken from your Picasa-web-albums, it is not the same as the copy of the picture which may already be on your computer.   It is stored in a directory of your Picasa-installation called "Online Edits", not in your main My Pictures directory.   So if you choose a function like "Back to Library" you are taken to the Online Edits folder inside Picasa-desktop.

From here you can use all of Picasa-desktop's editing features, including straightening, red-eye reduction, text-editing, re-setting the neutral colour.    The only exception is the Edit in Creative Kit option:  this is still one of the options in Picasa-desktop, but if you use it, it takes a long time to load and then eventually says "Error connecting to Creative Kit... error 500" - and explains that Creative Kit has now been discontinued.

When you are finished editing, to put the edited photo back into the same Picasa-web-album that it came from, with the same file name and URL:

• Make sure that you are logged in from Picasa-desktop to the same Google account that you were using initially.  
  (Picasa-desktop remembers your sign-in details from the last time you used it - if it's different from what you need, just choose sign-out from the top-right corner, and then sign in to the correct account when asked.)    
  
• EITHER:

• Choose Share on Google+    (if you are using a Google + account)
• In the sharing-details window that opens, change the Album-name from Online Edits to  the album that the photo came from originally and choose Upload
  
  OR
• Return to the Online Edits folder / library
• Save the changes using the Save icon
• Choose Enable Synch from the Sharing drop down.
• Wait for the changed photo to upload.
  
  (I think Google have some work to do here - you can only control synching for the whole album, not for individual photos.   I expect this to be improved in the future.)

Job Done:  your Picasa-desktop-edited photo appears back in your online Picasa-web-albums with the changes that you just made, and any existing links to it (eg from your blog posts) will show the changed version of the picture.   And you can put the edited picture into your blog posts or other websites in the usual way.

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Related Articles

Introducing Picasa and Picasa-web-albums:   an overview

Stop automatic redirection to Google+ Photos

How to put a picture into a blog-post

Tools for applying copyright protection to your blog

how to backup and restore database in mysql

MySQL is one of the most famous opensource database. To transfer the database from one system to another you need to take the backup of the database from the source system and restore it on the target machine.  In this post i am going to explain how to backup and restore a database on MySQL database.
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First you need to install the MySQL GUI tool called the MySQL Query browser for make this process easier. You can download it from here.

Steps for backup a database.

Step 1:
           Login on MySQL Query browser.

Step 2:
           Click the Tools option on the menu bar and choose MySQL Administrator.

Step 3:

         Select the Backup option from the MySQL Administrator window. 

  

Step 4 :
        Click the 'New Project" button at the bottom of that window and select the database / databases you want to backup and add them into the backup content.

Step 5:

         Click the "Execute Backup Now" button at the bottom of that window and save the backup file in any location of your computer.

Steps for restore a database.

Step 1:
          Follow steps 1 & 2 given above.

Step 2:
          Select the restore option.

Step 3:

       Click the "Open Backup File" button at the bottom of the window and choose the backup file. If the file is not shown the choose the all file type.

Step 4 :

           Finally click the "Start Restore" button. After the restore refresh the database you can see that the database restored successfully. 

Watch Video Tutorial of this Topic

how to save data using hibernate

In this post i explain how to insert data into MySQL database using Hibernate with the help of NetBeans IDE.

First you need to create a database and a table in the MySQL database. While creating the table keep in mind that, the table must contain a primary key field. I use the following query for create the table.

 create table test_table (id int not null primary key auto_increment,name varchar(50), email varchar(50));  

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Now you need to follow the steps given bellow.

Step  1 :
             Open up  the NetBeans IDE.
Step  2 :
             Go to the services and expand the database.

Step 3:

           Now right click MySQL server and choose connect. 

Step 4:

          Now you need to enter your MySQL username and password and choose the database to which you want to insert data. Right click the database and choose connect. 

Step 5:

          Create a new Web Application and choose the hibernate framework and choose the database connection.

Step 6:

         Right click the project name  from the other option, choose Hibernate and from the hibernate folder choose the hibernate reverse engineering wizard. 

Step 7:

Click next and choose the table / tables and click the add button and finally click finish. 

Now you got your hibernate reverse engineering xml file. 

Step 8:

Right click the project, choose other and from hibernate folder select the "Hibernate mapping files and POJOs" from database.

You need to provide a package name and click finish. Now you got your hibernate mapping xml file and the POJO class file as shown bellow. 

Step 9 :
Create a form in your index.jsp as shown bellow.

  <form action="TestServlet">  
  Name :<input type="text" name="name"/>  
  Email :<input type="text" name="email" />  
  <input type="submit" value="SAVE" />       
  </form>  

Step 10:
Create a new servlet and add the following code segment in processRequest method as shown bellow.

    String name,email;  
    name = request.getParameter("name");  
    email = request.getParameter("email");  
    SessionFactory sf = new Configuration().configure().buildSessionFactory();  
    Session s = sf.openSession();  
    Transaction tr = s.beginTransaction();  
    TestTable t = new TestTable(name, email);  
    s.save(t);  
    tr.commit();  
    s.close();  

Now run the index.jsp file and check data in your database table.

Watch Video Tutorial of this Topic

AUD/USD 1st October 2013 Monthly Report

We can now see the completion of the break and extend pattern in the Quarterly cycles, from the 2nd Quarter down into the 3rd quarterly lows @ .8874.....  

my view is that the AUD should try and move back up towards the 2013 yearly lows, which aligns with the 2014 50% level:- around .9457. This will probably take 3-6 months for it to happen. If that's the case, then this level is seen as a major resistance zone in 2014. (AUD Report 3rd August 2013)

AUD Primary & Monthly cycles

We can see this exactly happen.... the completion of the break and extend pattern (#1 & #2), and now the rotation up into the Yearly lows and resistance, even though it happened in less than 2-months.

My view is that the AUD will drop down and follow the Primary cycle break & Extend pattern into the 2014 Yearly lows.

How quickly that happens will depend on when the FED decides to ease back on stimulus.

if it continues into the end of this year, then the 2014 Yearly 50% level is the resistance level for a move down.

If it happens later in this Quarter, then the 2014 Yearly lows will drop lower, and the AUD will continue down.