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• Learning to create beautiful /next-generation GUI

  - by ShaChris23

  I really want to create a stunning-looking GUI desktop application that looks like, for example: Mac OS X interface Picasa desktop client on windows IPhone apps Office 2007 I've mostly been programming GUI using Qt/Swing/WinForm and I'm tired of creating so plain looking GUI, lol. So I was thinking about diving into stuff like: jQuery WPF/C# iPhone SDK Silverlight Adobe Air/Flex Just to get some ideas on how to create really cool looking UI. Does that sound like a good list? Any developers here that could share what platform they use to create very cool looking desktop app? On a sidenote, I really wonder what developers at Apple / Microsoft use to develop their own cool-looking software. EDIT A lot of responses talk about the importance of usability over "cool-looking".. I totally agree that usability and simplicity are the most important aspects of user interface design. I've been doing GUI development for a while now ( 3 years), so that I understand. But using cool-looking UI also improves user experience + it could make big difference on whether or not your software sells. I mean, otherwise why would Microsoft/Apple try to make their OS UI look "cooler" everytime there's a new version? Why would websites like pragprog.com, or versionsapp.com. make their websites look like that? Basically you kill 2 birds with one stone: stunnning-looking UI + super usability (because it looks simple and intuitive). That is what I'm striving for. And as far as I know, I cannot achieve that using Qt/Winform. Most of the books I have read just show you how to make average-looking (read: 1990's) UI. I want to learn how to create cool-looking UI. And the only place I see cool-looking UIs these days are the technology I list above. I'm not enamored with any technology; but I just want to know how things are done in other technology to see if I could apply them to the technology I'm using, or see if I could use those technology in my line of work. An example: if I were to pick between this UI and this UI, I probably would pick the latter, if just based on looks alone. Functionally, they are just the same UI; they both allow you to keep track of your time. They both contain buttons and textboxes, etc. But the fact that they look different, also differentiate them in terms of attractiveness. So in all, I think the "ice on the cake" is very important. I would say it's the thing you strive for after you are certain you have a totally intuitive, usable UI.

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• ExecutorService - scaling

  - by Stanciu Alexandru-Marian

  I am trying to write a program in Java using ExecutorService and it's function invokeAll. My question is: does the invokeAll functions solve the tasks simultaneously? I mean, if i have two processors, there will be two workers in the same time? Because a can't make it to scale correct. It takes the same time to complete the problem if i give newFixedThreadPool(2) or 1. List<Future<PartialSolution>> list = new ArrayList<Future<PartialSolution>>(); Collection<Callable<PartialSolution>> tasks = new ArrayList<Callable<PartialSolution>>(); for(PartialSolution ps : wp) { tasks.add(new Map(ps, keyWords)); } list = executor.invokeAll(tasks); Map is a class that implements Callable and wp is a vector of Partial Solutions, a class that holds some informations in different times. Why doesn't it scale? What could be the problem? Thank you, Alex

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• Problem with type coercion and string concatenation in JavaScript in Greasemonkey script on Firefox

  - by Yi Jiang

  I'm creating a GreaseMonkey script to improve the user interface of the 10k tools Stack Overflow uses. I have encountered an unreproducible and frankly bizarre problem that has confounded me and the others in the JavaScript room on SO Chat. We have yet to find the cause after several lengthy debugging sessions. The problematic script can be found here. Source - Install The problem occurs at line 85, the line after the 'vodoo' comment: return (t + ' (' + +(+f.offensive + +f.spam) + ')'); It might look a little weird, but the + in front of the two variables and the inner bracket is for type coercion, the inner middle + is for addition, and the other ones are for concatenation. Nothing special, but observant reader might note that type coercion on the inner bracket is unnecessary, since both are already type coerced to numbers, and type coercing result is useless when they get concatenated into a string anyway. Not so! Removing the + breaks the script, causing f.offensive and f.spam to be concatenated instead of added together. Adding further console.log only makes things more confusing: console.log(f.offensive + f.spam); // 50 console.log('' + (+f.offensive + +f.spam)); // 5, but returning this yields 50 somehow console.log('' + (+f.offensive + +f.spam) + ''); // 50 Source: http://chat.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/203261#203261 The problem is that this is unreproducible - running scripts like console.log('a' + (+'3' + +'1') + 'b'); in the Firebug console yields the correct result, as does (function(){ return 'a' + (+'3' + +'1') + 'b'; })(); Even pulling out large chunks of the code and running them in the console does not reproduce this bug: $('.post-menu a[id^=flag-post-]').each(function(){ var f = {offensive: '4', spam: '1'}; if(f){ $(this).text(function(i, t){ // Vodoo - please do not remove the '+' in front of the inner bracket return (t + ' (' + +(+f.offensive + +f.spam) + ')'); }); } }); Tim Stone in the chatroom has reproduction instruction for those who are below 10k. This bug only appears in Firefox - Chrome does not appear to exhibit this problem, leading me to believe that this may be a problem with either Firefox's JavaScript engine, or the Greasemonkey add-on. Am I right? I can be found in the JavaScript room if you want more detail and/or want to discuss this.

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• Google App Engine - Caching generated HTML

  - by Alexander

  I have written a Google App Engine application that programatically generates a bunch of HTML code that is really the same output for each user who logs into my system, and I know that this is going to be in-efficient when the code goes into production. So, I am trying to figure out the best way to cache the generated pages. The most probable option is to generate the pages and write them into the database, and then check the time of the database put operation for a given page against the time that the code was last updated. Then, if the code is newer than the last put to the database (for a particular HTML request), new HTML will be generated and served, and cached to the database. If the code is older than the last put to the database, then I will just get the HTML direct from the database and serve it (therefore avoiding all the CPU wastage of generating the HTML). I am not only looking to minimize load times, but to minimize CPU usage. However, one issue that I am having is that I can't figure out how to programatically check when the version of code uploaded to the app engine was updated. I am open to any suggestions on this approach, or other approaches for caching generated html. Note that while memcache could help in this situation, I believe that it is not the final solution since I really only need to re-generate html when the code is updated (as opposed to every time the memcache expires). Kind Regards, and thank you in advance for any suggestions you may be able to offer. -Alex

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• SQLite3 table not accepting INSERT INTO statements. The table is created, and so is the database, but nothing is passed into it

  - by user1460029

  <?php try { //open the database $db = new PDO('sqlite:music.db'); $db->exec("DELETE from Music;"); $db->exec("INSERT INTO Music(Title, Author, ReleaseDate) VALUES ('Whatd I Say', 'Ray Charles', '1956');" . "INSERT INTO Music(Title, Author, ReleaseDate) VALUES ('Smells Like Teen Spirit.', 'Nirvana', '1991');" . "INSERT INTO Music(Title, Author, ReleaseDate) VALUES ('Hey Jude', 'The Beatles', '1968');" . "INSERT INTO Music(Title, Author, ReleaseDate) VALUES ('Johnny B. Goode', 'Chuck Berry', '1958');" . "INSERT INTO Music(Title, Author, ReleaseDate) VALUES ('Good Vibrations', 'The Beach Boys', '1966');" . "INSERT INTO Music(Title, Author, ReleaseDate) VALUES ('Respect', 'Aretha Franklin', '1967');" . "INSERT INTO Music(Title, Author, ReleaseDate) VALUES ('Whats Going On', 'Marvin Gaye', '1971');" . "INSERT INTO Music(Title, Author, ReleaseDate) VALUES ('Imagine', 'John Lennon', '1971');" . "INSERT INTO Music(Title, Author, ReleaseDate) VALUES ('(I Cant Get No) Satisfaction', 'Rolling Stones', '1965');" . "INSERT INTO Music(Title, Author, ReleaseDate) VALUES ('Like A Rolling Stone', 'Bob Dylan', '1965');"); //now output the data to a simple html table... //example of specifier --> WHERE First=\'Josh\'; <-- print "<table border=1>"; print "<tr><td>Title</td><td>Author</td><td>Y.O.P.</td></tr>"; $result = $db->query('SELECT * FROM Music '); foreach($result as $row) { print "<td>".$row['Title']."</td>"; print "<td>".$row['Author']."</td>"; print "<td>".$row['ReleaseDate']."</td></tr>"; } print "</table>"; $db = NULL; } catch(PDOException $e) { print 'Exception : '.$e->getMessage(); } ?> I am not sure why nothing is being inserted into the table. The file 'music.db' exists in the right path. For the record, I can only use SQlite3, no SQL allowed. PHP is allowed, so is SQLite3.

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• sorting names in a linked list

  - by sil3nt

  Hi there, I'm trying to sort names into alphabetical order inside a linked list but am getting a run time error. what have I done wrong here? #include <iostream> #include <string> using namespace std; struct node{ string name; node *next; }; node *A; void addnode(node *&listpointer,string newname){ node *temp; temp = new node; if (listpointer == NULL){ temp->name = newname; temp->next = listpointer; listpointer = temp; }else{ node *add; add = new node; while (true){ if(listpointer->name > newname){ add->name = newname; add->next = listpointer->next; break; } listpointer = listpointer->next; } } } int main(){ A = NULL; string name1 = "bob"; string name2 = "tod"; string name3 = "thomas"; string name4 = "kate"; string name5 = "alex"; string name6 = "jimmy"; addnode(A,name1); addnode(A,name2); addnode(A,name3); addnode(A,name4); addnode(A,name5); addnode(A,name6); while(true){ if(A == NULL){break;} cout<< "name is: " << A->name << endl; A = A->next; } return 0; }

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• tipfy for Google App Engine: Is it stable? Can auth/session components of tipfy be used with webapp?

  - by cv12

  I am building a web application on Google App Engine that requires users to register with the application and subsequently authenticate with it and maintain sessions. I don't want to force users to have Google accounts. Also, the target audience for the application is the average non-geek, so I'm not very keen on using OpenID or OAuth. I need something simple like: User registers with an e-mail and password, and then can log back in with those credentials. I understand that this approach does not provide the security benefits of Google or OpenID authentication, but I am prepared to trade foolproof security for end-user convenience and hassle-free experience. I explored Django, but decided that consecutive deprecations from appengine-helper to app-engine-patch to django-nonrel may signal that path may be a bit risky in the long-term. I'd like to use a code base that is likely to be maintained consistently. I also explored standalone session/auth packages like gaeutilities and suas. GAEUtilities looked a bit immature (e.g., the code wasn't pythonic in places, in my opinion) and SUAS did not give me a lot of comfort with the cookie-only sessions. I could be wrong with my assessment of these two, so I would appreciate input on those (or others that may serve my objective). Finally, I recently came across tipfy. It appears to be based on Werkzeug and Alex Martelli spoke highly of it here on stackoverflow. I have two primary questions related to tipfy: As a framework, is it as mature as webapp? Is it stable and likely to be maintained for some time? Since my primary interest is the auth/session components, can those components of the tipfy framework be used with webapp, independent of the broader tipfy framework? If yes, I would appreciate a few pointers to how I could go about doing that.

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• JavaScript function, which reads connections between objects

  - by Nikita Sumeiko

  I have a JavaScript literal: var members = { "mother": { "name" : "Mary", "age" : "48", "connection": { "brother" : "sun" } }, "father": { "name" : "Bill", "age" : "50" }, "brother": { "name" : "Alex", "age" : "28" } } Than I have a function, which should read connections from the literal above. It looks like this: function findRelations(members){ var wires = new Array(); var count = 0; for (n = 0; n < members.length; n++){ alert(members.length); // this alert is undefined if (members[n].connection){ for (i = 0; i < members[n].connection[0].length; i++){ var mw = new Array(); var destination = 0; for (m = 0; m < members.length; m ++){ if (members[m] == members[n].connection[0]){ destination = m; mw = [n, destination]; wires [count] = mw; count++; } } } } } return wires; } However, when I run this function, I get nothing. And the first alert, which is placed inside the function shows 'undefined' at all. findRelations(members); alert("Found " + wires.length + " connections"); I guess that's because of JavaScript literal. Could you suggest how to change a function or perhaps to change litteral to JSON array to get it work?! And at the end to get 'm' and 'n' values as numbers.

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• I need to speed up a function. Should I use cython, ctypes, or something else?

  - by Peter Stewart

  I'm having a lot of fun learning Python by writing a genetic programming type of application. I've had some great advice from Torsten Marek, Paul Hankin and Alex Martelli on this site. The program has 4 main functions: generate (randomly) an expression tree. evaluate the fitness of the tree crossbreed mutate As all of generate, crossbreed and mutate call 'evaluate the fitness'. it is the busiest function and is the primary bottleneck speedwise. As is the nature of genetic algorithms, it has to search an immense solution space so the faster the better. I want to speed up each of these functions. I'll start with the fitness evaluator. My question is what is the best way to do this. I've been looking into cython, ctypes and 'linking and embedding'. They are all new to me and quite beyond me at the moment but I look forward to learning one and eventually all of them. The 'fitness function' needs to compare the value of the expression tree to the value of the target expression. So it will consist of a postfix evaluator which will read the tree in a postfix order. I have all the code in python. I need advice on which I should learn and use now: cython, ctypes or linking and embedding. Thank you.

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• Why do I get empty request from the Jakarta Commons HttpClient?

  - by polyurethan

  I have a problem with the Jakarta Commons HttpClient. Before my self-written HttpServer gets the real request there is one request which is completely empty. That's the first problem. The second problem is, sometimes the request data ends after the third or fourth line of the http request: POST / HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: Jakarta Commons-HttpClient/3.1 Host: 127.0.0.1:4232 For debugging I am using the Axis TCPMonitor. There every things is fine but the empty request. How I process the stream: StringBuffer requestBuffer = new StringBuffer(); InputStreamReader is = new InputStreamReader(socket.getInputStream(), "UTF-8"); int byteIn = -1; do { byteIn = is.read(); if (byteIn > 0) { requestBuffer.append((char) byteIn); } } while (byteIn != -1 && is.ready()); String requestData = requestBuffer.toString(); How I send the request: client.getParams().setSoTimeout(30000); method = new PostMethod(url.getPath()); method.getParams().setContentCharset("utf-8"); method.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/xml; charset=utf-8"); method.addRequestHeader("Connection", "close"); method.setFollowRedirects(false); byte[] requestXml = getRequestXml(); method.setRequestEntity(new InputStreamRequestEntity(new ByteArrayInputStream(requestXml))); client.executeMethod(method); int statusCode = method.getStatusCode(); Have anyone of you an idea how to solve these problems? Alex

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• PostgreSQL: return select count(*) from old_ids;

  - by Alexander Farber

  Hello, please help me with 1 more PL/pgSQL question. I have a PHP-script run as daily cronjob and deleting old records from 1 main table and few further tables referencing its "id" column: create or replace function quincytrack_clean() returns integer as $BODY$ begin create temp table old_ids (id varchar(20)) on commit drop; insert into old_ids select id from quincytrack where age(QDATETIME) > interval '30 days'; delete from hide_id where id in (select id from old_ids); delete from related_mks where id in (select id from old_ids); delete from related_cl where id in (select id from old_ids); delete from related_comment where id in (select id from old_ids); delete from quincytrack where id in (select id from old_ids); return select count(*) from old_ids; end; $BODY$ language plpgsql; And here is how I call it from the PHP script: $sth = $pg->prepare('select quincytrack_clean()'); $sth->execute(); if ($row = $sth->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) printf("removed %u old rows\n", $row['count']); Why do I get the following error? SQLSTATE[42601]: Syntax error: 7 ERROR: syntax error at or near "select" at character 9 QUERY: SELECT select count(*) from old_ids CONTEXT: SQL statement in PL/PgSQL function "quincytrack_clean" near line 23 Thank you! Alex

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• finding common prefix of array of strings

  - by bumperbox

  I have an array like this $sports = array( 'Softball - Counties', 'Softball - Eastern', 'Softball - North Harbour', 'Softball - South', 'Softball - Western' ); and i would like to find the longest common part of the string so in this instance, it would be 'Softball - '; I am thinking that I would follow the this process $i = 1; // loop to the length of the first string while ($i < strlen($sports[0]) { // grab the left most part up to i in length $match = substr($sports[0], 0, $i); // loop through all the values in array, and compare if they match foreach ($sports as $sport) { if ($match != substr($sport, 0, $i) { // didn't match, return the part that did match return substr($sport, 0, $i-1); } } // foreach // increase string length $i++; } // while // if you got to here, then all of them must be identical Questions is there a built in function or much simpler way of doing this ? for my 5 line array that is probably fine, but if i were to do several thousand line arrays, there would be a lot of overhead, so i would have to be move calculated with my starting values of $i, eg $i = halfway of string, if it fails, then $i/2 until it works, then increment $i by 1 until we succeed. so that we are doing the least number of comparisons to get a result If there a formula/algorithm out already out there for this kind of problem ? thanks alex

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• xsl:for-each not supported in this context

  - by alexbf

  Hi! I have this XSLT document : <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:mstns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:msdata="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-msdata" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/> <xsl:template match="/MyDocRootElement"> <xs:schema id="DataSet" targetNamespace="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" attributeFormDefault="qualified" elementFormDefault="qualified" > <xs:element name="DataSet" msdata:IsDataSet="true"> <xs:complexType> <xs:choice maxOccurs="unbounded"> <xs:element name="Somename"> </xs:element> <xs:element name="OtherName"> </xs:element> <!-- FOR EACH NOT SUPPORTED? --> <xsl:for-each select="OtherElements/SubElement"> <xs:element name="OtherName"> </xs:element> </xsl:for-each> </xs:choice> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> </xs:schema> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> I have a validation error saying that the "for-each element is not supported in this context" I am guessing it has something to do with the xs namespace validation. Any ideas on how can I make this work? (Exclude validation?) Thanks Alex

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• How do I break down an NSTimeInterval into year, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds on iPhone?

  - by willc2

  I have a time interval that spans years and I want all the time components from year down to seconds. My first thought is to integer divide the time interval by seconds in a year, subtract that from a running total of seconds, divide that by seconds in a month, subtract that from the running total and so on. That just seems convoluted and I've read that whenever you are doing something that looks convoluted, there is probably a built-in method. Is there? I integrated Alex's 2nd method into my code. It's in a method called by a UIDatePicker in my interface. NSDate *now = [NSDate date]; NSDate *then = self.datePicker.date; NSTimeInterval howLong = [now timeIntervalSinceDate:then]; NSDate *date = [NSDate dateWithTimeIntervalSince1970:howLong]; NSString *dateStr = [date description]; const char *dateStrPtr = [dateStr UTF8String]; int year, month, day, hour, minute, sec; sscanf(dateStrPtr, "%d-%d-%d %d:%d:%d", &year, &month, &day, &hour, &minute, &sec); year -= 1970; NSLog(@"%d years\n%d months\n%d days\n%d hours\n%d minutes\n%d seconds", year, month, day, hour, minute, sec); When I set the date picker to a date 1 year and 1 day in the past, I get: 1 years 1 months 1 days 16 hours 0 minutes 20 seconds which is 1 month and 16 hours off. If I set the date picker to 1 day in the past, I am off by the same amount. Update: I have an app that calculates your age in years, given your birthday (set from a UIDatePicker), yet it was often off. This proves there was an inaccuracy, but I can't figure out where it comes from, can you?

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• How do I iterate through hierarchical data in a Sql Server 2005 stored proc?

  - by AlexChilcott

  Hi, I have a SqlServer2005 table "Group" similar to the following: Id (PK, int) Name (varchar(50)) ParentId (int) where ParentId refers to another Id in the Group table. This is used to model hierarchical groups such as: Group 1 (id = 1, parentid = null) +--Group 2 (id = 2, parentid = 1) +--Group 3 (id = 3, parentid = 1) +--Group 4 (id = 4, parentid = 3) Group 5 (id = 5, parentid = null) +--Group 6 (id = 6, parentid = 5) You get the picture I have another table, let's call it "Data" for the sake of simplification, which looks something like: Id (PK, int) Key (varchar) Value (varchar) GroupId (FK, int) Now, I am trying to write a stored proc which can get me the "Data" for a given group. For example, if I query for group 1, it returns me the Key-Value-Pairs from Data where groupId = 1. If I query for group 2, it returns the KVPs for groupId = 1, then unioned with those which have groupId = 2 (and duplicated keys are replaced). Ideally, the sproc would also fail gracefully if there is a cycle (ie if group 1's parent is group 2 and group 2's parent is group 1) Has anyone had experience in writing such a sproc, or know how this might be accomplished? Thanks guys, much appreciated, Alex

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• Memory usage of strings (or any other objects) in .Net

  - by ava

  I wrote this little test program: using System; namespace GCMemTest { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { System.GC.Collect(); System.Diagnostics.Process pmCurrentProcess = System.Diagnostics.Process.GetCurrentProcess(); long startBytes = pmCurrentProcess.PrivateMemorySize64; double kbStart = (double)(startBytes) / 1024.0; System.Console.WriteLine("Currently using " + kbStart + "KB."); { int size = 2000000; string[] strings = new string[size]; for(int i = 0; i < size; i++) { strings[i] = "blabla" + i; } } System.GC.Collect(); pmCurrentProcess = System.Diagnostics.Process.GetCurrentProcess(); long endBytes = pmCurrentProcess.PrivateMemorySize64; double kbEnd = (double)(endBytes) / 1024.0; System.Console.WriteLine("Currently using " + kbEnd + "KB."); System.Console.WriteLine("Leaked " + (kbEnd - kbStart) + "KB."); System.Console.ReadKey(); } } } The output in Release build is: Currently using 18800KB. Currently using 118664KB. Leaked 99864KB. I assume that the GC.collect call will remove the allocated strings since they go out of scope, but it appears it does not. I do not understand nor can I find an explanation for it. Maybe anyone here? Thanks, Alex

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• Folders and its files do get copied.. pls help me in given code..

  - by OM The Eternity

  I have a joomla folder, and i have a script which has to copy the complete joomla folder to another new folder..below is the code which copies only the files contain in the main folder but NOT the other directories existing in the joomla folder, I know that i have to plcae some check for dir_exist function and create it if do not exist.. also I want this code to perform a function to overrite the previously existing files and folders.. how can i accomplish thisss?????? <?php $source = '/var/www/html/pranav_test/'; $destination = '/var/www/html/parth/'; $sourceFiles = glob($source . '*'); foreach($sourceFiles as $file) { $baseFile = basename($file); if (file_exists($destination . $baseFile)) { $originalHash = md5_file($file); $destinationHash = md5_file($destination . $baseFile); if ($originalHash === $destinationHash) { continue; } } copy($file, $destination . $baseFile); } ?> Thanks to @alex who helped me to get the code... But I need more support pls help...

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• PasswordFiled char[] to String in Java connection MySql?

  - by user1819551

  This is a jFrame to connect to the database and this is in the button connect. My issue is in the passwordField NetBeans make me do a char[], but my .getConnection not let me insert the char[] ERROR: "no suitable method found for getConnection(String,String,char[])". So I will change to String right? So when I change and run the jFrame said access denied. when I start doing the System.out.println(l) " Give me the right answer" Like this: "Alex". But when I do the System.out.println(password) "Give me the Array spaces and not the value" Like this: jdbc:mysql://localhost/home inventory root [C@5be5ab68 <--- Array space . What I doing wrong? try { Class.forName("org.gjt.mm.mysql.Driver"); //Load the driver String host = "jdbc:mysql://"+tServerHost.getText()+"/"+tSchema.getText(); String uName = tUsername.getText(); char[] l = pPassword.getPassword(); System.out.println(l); String password= l.toString(); System.out.println(host+uName+l); con = DriverManager.getConnection(host, uName, password); System.out.println(host+uName+password); } catch (SQLException | ClassNotFoundException ex) { JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(this, ex.getMessage()); } }

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• Travelling MVP #1: Visit to SharePoint User Group Finland

  - by DigiMortal

  My first self organized trip this autumn was visit to SharePoint User Group Finland community evening. As active community leaders who make things like these possible they are worth mentioning and on spug.fi side there was Jussi Roine the one who invited me. Here is my short review about my trip to Helsinki. User group meeting As Helsinki is near Tallinn I went there using ship. It was easy to get from sea port to venue and I had also some minutes of time to visit academic book store. Community evening was held on the ground floor of one city center hotel and room was conveniently located near hotel bar and restaurant. Here is the meeting schedule: Welcome (Jussi Roine) OpenText application archiving and governance for SharePoint (Bernd Hennicke, OpenText) Using advanced C# features in SharePoint development (Alexey Sadomov, NED Consulting) Optimizing public-facing internet sites for SharePoint (Gunnar Peipman) After meeting, of course, local dudes doesn’t walk away but continue with some beers and discussion. Sessions After welcome words by Jussi there was session by Bernd Hennicke who spoke about OpenText. His session covered OpenText history and current moment. After this introduction he spoke about OpenText products for SharePoint and gave the audience good overview about where their SharePoint extensions fit in big picture. I usually don’t like those vendors sessions but this one was good. I mean vendor dudes were not aggressively selling something. They were way different – kind people who introduced their stuff and later answered questions. They acted like good guests. Second speaker was Alexey Sadomov who is working on SharePoint development projects. He introduced some ways how to get over some limitations of SharePoint. I don’t go here deeply with his session but it’s worth to mention that this session was strong one. It is not rear case when developers have to make nasty hacks to SharePoint. I mean really nasty hacks. Often these hacks are long blocks of code that uses terrible techniques to achieve the result. Alexey introduced some very much civilized ways about how to apply hacks. Alex Sadomov, SharePoint MVP, speaking about SharePoint coding tips and tricks on C# I spoke about how I optimized caching of Estonian Microsoft community portal that runs on SharePoint Server and that uses publishing infrastructure. I made no actual demos on SharePoint because I wanted to focus on optimizing process and share some experiences about how to get caches optimized and how to measure caches. Networking After official part there was time to talk and discuss with people. Finns are cool – they have beers and they are glad. It was not big community event but people were like one good family. Developers there work often for big companies and it was very interesting to me to hear about their experiences with SharePoint. One thing was a little bit surprising for me – SharePoint guys in Finland are talking actively also about Office 365 and online SharePoint. It doesn’t happen often here in Estonia. I had to leave a little bit 21:00 to get to my ship back to Tallinn. I am sure spug.fi dudes continued nice evening and they had at least same good time as I did. Do I want to go back to Finland and meet these guys again? Yes, sure, let’s do it again! :)

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• Postfix log.... spam attempt?

  - by luri

  I have some weird entries in my mail.log. What I'd like to ask is if postfix is avoiding correctly (according with the main.cf attached below) what seems to be relay attempts, presumably for spamming, or if I can enhance it's security somehow. Feb 2 11:53:25 MYSERVER postfix/smtpd[9094]: connect from catv-80-99-46-143.catv.broadband.hu[80.99.46.143] Feb 2 11:53:25 MYSERVER postfix/smtpd[9094]: warning: non-SMTP command from catv-80-99-46-143.catv.broadband.hu[80.99.46.143]: GET / HTTP/1.1 Feb 2 11:53:25 MYSERVER postfix/smtpd[9094]: disconnect from catv-80-99-46-143.catv.broadband.hu[80.99.46.143] Feb 2 11:56:45 MYSERVER postfix/anvil[9097]: statistics: max connection rate 1/60s for (smtp:80.99.46.143) at Feb 2 11:53:25 Feb 2 11:56:45 MYSERVER postfix/anvil[9097]: statistics: max connection count 1 for (smtp:80.99.46.143) at Feb 2 11:53:25 Feb 2 11:56:45 MYSERVER postfix/anvil[9097]: statistics: max cache size 1 at Feb 2 11:53:25 Feb 2 12:09:19 MYSERVER postfix/smtpd[9302]: connect from vs148181.vserver.de[62.75.148.181] Feb 2 12:09:19 MYSERVER postfix/smtpd[9302]: warning: non-SMTP command from vs148181.vserver.de[62.75.148.181]: GET / HTTP/1.1 Feb 2 12:09:19 MYSERVER postfix/smtpd[9302]: disconnect from vs148181.vserver.de[62.75.148.181] Feb 2 12:12:39 MYSERVER postfix/anvil[9304]: statistics: max connection rate 1/60s for (smtp:62.75.148.181) at Feb 2 12:09:19 Feb 2 12:12:39 MYSERVER postfix/anvil[9304]: statistics: max connection count 1 for (smtp:62.75.148.181) at Feb 2 12:09:19 Feb 2 12:12:39 MYSERVER postfix/anvil[9304]: statistics: max cache size 1 at Feb 2 12:09:19 Feb 2 14:17:02 MYSERVER postfix/smtpd[10847]: connect from unknown[202.46.129.123] Feb 2 14:17:02 MYSERVER postfix/smtpd[10847]: warning: non-SMTP command from unknown[202.46.129.123]: GET / HTTP/1.1 Feb 2 14:17:02 MYSERVER postfix/smtpd[10847]: disconnect from unknown[202.46.129.123] Feb 2 14:20:22 MYSERVER postfix/anvil[10853]: statistics: max connection rate 1/60s for (smtp:202.46.129.123) at Feb 2 14:17:02 Feb 2 14:20:22 MYSERVER postfix/anvil[10853]: statistics: max connection count 1 for (smtp:202.46.129.123) at Feb 2 14:17:02 Feb 2 14:20:22 MYSERVER postfix/anvil[10853]: statistics: max cache size 1 at Feb 2 14:17:02 Feb 2 20:57:33 MYSERVER postfix/smtpd[18452]: warning: 95.110.224.230: hostname host230-224-110-95.serverdedicati.aruba.it verification failed: Name or service not known Feb 2 20:57:33 MYSERVER postfix/smtpd[18452]: connect from unknown[95.110.224.230] Feb 2 20:57:33 MYSERVER postfix/smtpd[18452]: lost connection after CONNECT from unknown[95.110.224.230] Feb 2 20:57:33 MYSERVER postfix/smtpd[18452]: disconnect from unknown[95.110.224.230] Feb 2 21:00:53 MYSERVER postfix/anvil[18455]: statistics: max connection rate 1/60s for (smtp:95.110.224.230) at Feb 2 20:57:33 Feb 2 21:00:53 MYSERVER postfix/anvil[18455]: statistics: max connection count 1 for (smtp:95.110.224.230) at Feb 2 20:57:33 Feb 2 21:00:53 MYSERVER postfix/anvil[18455]: statistics: max cache size 1 at Feb 2 20:57:33 Feb 2 21:13:44 MYSERVER pop3d: Connection, ip=[::ffff:219.94.190.222] Feb 2 21:13:44 MYSERVER pop3d: LOGIN FAILED, user=admin, ip=[::ffff:219.94.190.222] Feb 2 21:13:50 MYSERVER pop3d: LOGIN FAILED, user=test, ip=[::ffff:219.94.190.222] Feb 2 21:13:56 MYSERVER pop3d: LOGIN FAILED, user=danny, ip=[::ffff:219.94.190.222] Feb 2 21:14:01 MYSERVER pop3d: LOGIN FAILED, user=sharon, ip=[::ffff:219.94.190.222] Feb 2 21:14:07 MYSERVER pop3d: LOGIN FAILED, user=aron, ip=[::ffff:219.94.190.222] Feb 2 21:14:12 MYSERVER pop3d: LOGIN FAILED, user=alex, ip=[::ffff:219.94.190.222] Feb 2 21:14:18 MYSERVER pop3d: LOGIN FAILED, user=brett, ip=[::ffff:219.94.190.222] Feb 2 21:14:24 MYSERVER pop3d: LOGIN FAILED, user=mike, ip=[::ffff:219.94.190.222] Feb 2 21:14:29 MYSERVER pop3d: LOGIN FAILED, user=alan, ip=[::ffff:219.94.190.222] Feb 2 21:14:35 MYSERVER pop3d: LOGIN FAILED, user=info, ip=[::ffff:219.94.190.222] Feb 2 21:14:41 MYSERVER pop3d: LOGIN FAILED, user=shop, ip=[::ffff:219.94.190.222] Feb 3 06:49:29 MYSERVER postfix/smtpd[25834]: warning: 71.6.142.196: hostname db4142196.aspadmin.net verification failed: Name or service not known Feb 3 06:49:29 MYSERVER postfix/smtpd[25834]: connect from unknown[71.6.142.196] Feb 3 06:49:29 MYSERVER postfix/smtpd[25834]: lost connection after CONNECT from unknown[71.6.142.196] Feb 3 06:49:29 MYSERVER postfix/smtpd[25834]: disconnect from unknown[71.6.142.196] Feb 3 06:52:49 MYSERVER postfix/anvil[25837]: statistics: max connection rate 1/60s for (smtp:71.6.142.196) at Feb 3 06:49:29 Feb 3 06:52:49 MYSERVER postfix/anvil[25837]: statistics: max connection count 1 for (smtp:71.6.142.196) at Feb 3 06:49:29 Feb 3 06:52:49 MYSERVER postfix/anvil[25837]: statistics: max cache size 1 at Feb 3 06:49:29 I have Postfix 2.7.1-1 running on Ubuntu 10.10. This is my (modified por privacy) main.cf: smtpd_banner = $myhostname ESMTP $mail_name (Ubuntu) biff = no append_dot_mydomain = no readme_directory = no smtpd_tls_cert_file = /etc/ssl/certs/smtpd.crt smtpd_tls_key_file = /etc/ssl/private/smtpd.key myhostname = mymailserver.org alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases alias_database = hash:/etc/aliases myorigin = /etc/mailname mydestination = mymailserver.org, MYSERVER, localhost relayhost = mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8, 192.168.1.0/24 mailbox_size_limit = 0 recipient_delimiter = + inet_interfaces = all inet_protocols = all home_mailbox = Maildir/ smtpd_recipient_restrictions = permit_sasl_authenticated,permit_mynetworks,reject_unauth_destination mailbox_command = smtpd_sasl_local_domain = smtpd_sasl_auth_enable = yes smtpd_sasl_security_options = noanonymous broken_sasl_auth_clients = yes smtpd_tls_security_level = may smtpd_tls_auth_only = no smtp_tls_note_starttls_offer = yes smtpd_tls_CAfile = /etc/ssl/certs/cacert.pem smtpd_tls_loglevel = 1 smtpd_tls_received_header = yes smtpd_tls_session_cache_timeout = 3600s tls_random_source = dev:/dev/urandom smtp_tls_security_level = may

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• Drinking Our Own Champagne: Fusion Accounting Hub at Oracle

  - by Di Seghposs

  A guest post by Corey West, Senior Vice President, Oracle's Corporate Controller and Chief Accounting Officer There's no better story to tell than one about Oracle using its own products with blowout success. Here's how this one goes. As you know, Oracle has increased its share of the software market through a number of high-profile acquisitions. Legally combining companies is a very complicated process -- it can take months to complete, especially for the acquisitions with offices in several countries, each with its own unique laws and regulations. It's a mission critical and time sensitive process to roll an acquired company's legacy systems (running vital operations, such as accounts receivable and general ledger (GL)) into the existing systems at Oracle. To date, we've run our primary financial ledgers in E-Business Suite R12 -- and we've successfully met the requirements of the business and closed the books on time every single quarter. But there's always room for improvement and that comes in the form of Fusion Applications. We are now live on Fusion Accounting Hub (FAH), which is the first critical step in moving to a full Fusion Financials instance. We started with FAH so that we could design a global chart of accounts. Eventually, every transaction in every country will originate from this global chart of accounts -- it becomes the structure for managing our business more uniformly. In conjunction, we're using Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management (DRM) to centralize and automate governance of our global chart of accounts and related hierarchies, which will help us lower our costs and greatly reduce risk. Each month, we have to consolidate data from our primary general ledgers. We have been able to simplify this process considerably using FAH. We can now submit our primary ledgers running in E-Business Suite (EBS) R12 directly to FAH, eliminating the need for more than 90 redundant consolidation ledgers. Also we can submit incrementally, so if we need to book an adjustment in a primary ledger after close, we can do so without re-opening it and re-submitting. As a result, we have earlier visibility to period-end actuals during the close. A goal of this implementation, and one that we successfully achieved, is that we are able to use FAH globally with no customization. This means we have the ability to fully deploy ledger sets at the consolidation level, plus we can use standard functionality for currency translation and mass allocations. We're able to use account monitoring and drill down functionality from the consolidation level all the way through to EBS primary ledgers and sub-ledgers, which allows someone to click through a transaction appearing at the consolidation level clear through to its original source, a significant productivity enhancement when doing research. We also see a significant improvement in reporting using Essbase cube and Hyperion Smart View. Specifically, "the addition of an Essbase cube on top of the GL gives us tremendous versatility to automate and speed our elimination process," says Claire Sebti, Senior Director of Corporate Accounting at Oracle. A highlight of this story is that FAH is running in a co-existence environment. Our plan is to move to Fusion Financials in steps, starting with FAH. Next, our Oracle Financial Services Software subsidiary will move to a full Fusion Financials instance. Then we'll replace our EBS instance with Fusion Financials. This approach allows us to plan in steps, learn as we go, and not overwhelm our teams. It also reduces the risk that comes with moving the entire instance at once. Maria Smith, Vice President of Global Controller Operations, is confident about how they've positioned themselves to uptake more Fusion functionality and is eager to "continue to drive additional efficiency and cost savings." In this story, the happy customers are Oracle controllers, financial analysts, accounting specialists, and our management team that get earlier access to more flexible reporting. "Fusion Accounting Hub simplifies our processes and gives us more transparency into account activity," raves Alex SanJuan, Senior Director, Record to Report Strategic Process Owner. Overall, the team has been very impressed with the usability and functionality of FAH and are pleased with the quantifiable improvements. Claire Sebti states, "Our WD5 close activities have been reduced by at least four hours of system processing time, just for the consolidation group." Fusion Accounting Hub is an inspiring beginning to our Fusion Financials implementation story. There's no doubt it's going to be an international bestseller! Corey West, Senior Vice President Oracle's Corporate Controller and Chief Accounting Officer

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• Mastering snow and Java development at jDays in Gothenburg

  - by JavaCecilia

  Last weekend, I took the train from Stockholm to Gothenburg to attend and present at the new Java developer conference jDays. It was professionally arranged in the Swedish exhibition hall close to the amusement park Liseberg and we got a great deal out of the top-level presenters and hallway discussions. Understanding and Improving Your Java Process Our main purpose was to spread information on JVM and our monitoring tools for Java processes, so I held a crash course in the most important terms and concepts if you want to affect the performance of your Java process. From the beginning - the JVM specification to interpretation of heap usage graphs. For correct analysis, you also need to understand something about process memory - you need space for the Java heap (-Xms for initial size and -Xmx for max heap size), but the process memory also contain the thread stacks (to a size of -Xss), JVM internal data structures used for keeping track of Java objects on the heap, method compilation/optimization, native libraries, etc. If you get long pause times, make sure to monitor your application, see the allocation rate and frequency of pause times.My colleague Klara Ward then held a presentation on the Java Mission Control product, the profiling and diagnostics tools suite for HotSpot, coming soon. The room was packed and very appreciated, Klara demonstrated four different scenarios, e.g. how to diagnose and fix latencies due to lock contention for logging.My German colleague, OpenJDK ambassador Dalibor Topic travelled to Sweden to do the second keynote on "Make the Future Java". He let us in on the coming features and roadmaps of Java, now delivering major versions on a two-year schedule (Java 7 2011, Java 8 2013, etc). Also letting us in on where to download early versions of 8, to report problems early on. Software Development in teams Being a scout leader, I'm drilled in different team building and workshop techniques, creating strong groups - of course, I had to attend Henrik Berglund's session on building successful teams. He spoke about the importance of clear goals, autonomy and agreed processes. Thomas Sundberg ended the conference by doing live remote pair programming with Alex in Rumania and a concrete tips for people wanting to try it out (for local collaboration, remember to wash and change clothes). Memory Master Keynote The conference keynote was delivered by the Swedish memory master Mattias Ribbing, showing off by remembering the order of a deck of cards he'd seen once. He made it interactive by forcing the audience to learn a memory mastering technique of remembering ten ordered things by heart, asking us to shout out the order backwards and we made it! I desperately need this - bought the book, will get back on the subject. Continuous Delivery The most impressive presenter was Axel Fontaine on Continuous Delivery. Very well prepared slides with key images of his message and moved about the stage like a rock star. The topic is of course highly interesting, how to create an infrastructure enabling immediate feedback to developers and ability to release your product several times per day. Tomek Kaczanowski delivered a funny and useful presentation on good and bad tests, providing comic relief with poorly written tests and the useful rules of thumb how to rewrite them. To conclude, we had a great time and hope to see you at jDays next year :)

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• Apple Airport Express, Extreme and Time Capsules, BT Home Hub, Wireless Extenders confusion

  - by Jamie Hartnoll

  I post quite frequently in Stack Overflow, but use Superuser less frequently. Mainly as I don't change hardware often and rarely have software issues! I live in a small stone cottage, and have an office in a separate building across a yard. I have a BT Homehub which is located in the cottage and a series of Ethernet cables running across the yard to the office. This is fine for my wired stuff. My main office computers are PCs running Windows 7 Ultimate, and one on Win7 Home, all working fine. I also have an old laptop on Win XP which works fine wirelessly in the house for those evenings in front of the TV catching up on a bit of work. I also have an iPhone and an iPad. Recently, I have been trying to get WiFi in the office so I can use Adobe Shadow (or whatever it now is!) to improve mobile web development efficiency using my iPhone and iPad, so I bought this: http://www.ebuyer.com/393462-zyxel-wre2205-500mbps-powerline-wireless-n300-range-extender-wre2205-gb0101f Thinking that would be lovely just plugged into the socket by the door in the office, extending the perimeter of the WiFi from my Homehub. I can't get it to work properly! If I plug a laptop into its ethernet port I can get it to connect to the Homehub and give me a kinda of wired, wireless extender. If, however, I plug the ethernet port into my home hub, it then seems to extend the network, but only my iOs devices work, and all my wired stuff stops working, and seems to create an infinite loop where windows connects to my homehob, and then rather to the internet, it then connects back to the extender thing. Anyway... in the meantime, I took a fatal trip to the Apple Store, where I purchased an Airport Express... solely for the purpose of hooking my iOs devices up as wireless music players in the house. I knew it had WiFi, but didn't want to use that part as an extender, I didn't think it would work on a Homehub anyway. It doesn't work on a Homehub! I now have a new wireless network in the house, which, when anything connects to it cannot connect to the Internet, so it works ONLY as a wireless music player. I then borrowed some Powerline Adaptors from someone and realised that this whole thing was getting totally out of control! It seems all the technology is out there but it's so complicated to get the right series of devices. To further add to the confusion, I wouldn't mind a network hard drive. I bought one that broke and lost everything, so now we're on to looking at the Apple Time Capsules. So my question is... IF... I buy an Apple Time Capsule, can I: Hook that up to my Homehub, leaving the homehub connected to the Internet so my Hub phones still work, then disable wireless on the homehub Link up my Airport Express to the Time Capsule PROPERLY so it will connect to the Internet Do the above with an Apple TV box should I buy one in future Use the Time Capsule as a network hard drive to store video and music that can be viewed/listened to via my iOS devices/Apple TV/Aiport Express anywhere even with my main PC off (this currently stores all this data) Hope that the IOS devices like the WiFi from the TimeCapsule better than the Homehub and work without extension, or buy another Airport Express to get WiFI in the office. Or... should I buy an Airport Extreme and use a USB hard drive for the network drive?

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• Week in Geek: LastPass Rescues Xmarks Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to breathe new life into an aging Windows Mobile 6.x device, use filters in Photoshop, backup and move VirtualBox machines, use the BitDefender Rescue CD to clean an infected PC, and had fun setting up a pirates theme on our computers. Photo by _nash. Weekly Feature Do you love using the Faenza icon set on your Ubuntu system but feel that there are a few much needed icons missing (or you desire a different version of a particular icon)? Then you may want to take a look at the Faenza Variants icon pack. The icons are available in the following sizes: 16px, 22px, 32px, 48px and scalable sizes. Photo by Asian Angel. Faenza Variants Random Geek Links Another week with extra link goodness to help keep you on top of the news. Photo by Asian Angel. LastPass acquires Xmarks, premium service announced Xmarks announced that it has been acquired by LastPass, a cross-platform password management service. This also means that Xmarks is now in transition from a “free” to a “freemium” business model. WikiLeaks reappears on European Net domains WikiLeaks has re-emerged on a Swiss Internet domain followed by domains in Germany, Finland, and the Netherlands, sidestepping a move that had in effect taken the controversial site off the Internet. Iran: Yes, Stuxnet hurt our nuclear program The Stuxnet worm got some big play from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who acknowledged that the malware dinged his nuclear program. More Windows Rogues than Just AV – Fake Defragmenter Check Disk Don’t think for a second that rogues are limited to scareware, because as so-called products such as “System Defragmenter”, “Scan Disk” “Check Disk” prove, they’re not. Internet Explorer’s Protected Mode can be bypassed Researchers from Verizon Business have now described a way of bypassing Protected Mode in IE 7 and 8 in order to gain access to user accounts. Can you really see who viewed your Facebook profile? Rogue application spreads virally Once again, a rogue application is spreading virally between Facebook users pretending to offer you a way of seeing who has viewed your profile. More holes in Palm’s WebOS Researchers Orlando Barrera and Daniel Herrera, who both work for security firm SecTheory, have discovered a gaping security hole in Palm’s WebOS smartphone operating system. Next-gen banking Trojans hit APAC With the proliferation of banking Trojans, Web and smartphone users of online banking services have to be on constant alert to avoid falling prey to fraud schemes, warned Etay Maor, project manager for RSA Fraud Action. AVG update cripples 64-bit computers A signature update automatically deployed by the AVG virus scanner Thursday has crippled numerous computers. Article includes link to forums to fix computers affected after a restart. Congress moves to outlaw ‘mystery charges’ for Web shoppers Legislation that makes it illegal for Web merchants and so-called post-transaction marketers to charge credit cards without the card owners’ say-so came closer to becoming law this week. Ballmer Set to “Look Into” Windows Home Server Drive Extender Fiasco Tuesday’s announcement from Microsoft regarding the removal of Drive Extender from Windows Home Server has sent shock waves across the web. Google tweaks search recipe to ding scam artists Google has changed its search algorithm to penalize sites deemed to provide an “extremely poor user experience” following a New York Times story on a merchant who justified abusive behavior towards customers as a search-engine optimization tactic. Geek Video of the Week Watch as our two friends debate back and forth about the early adoption of new technology through multiple time periods (Stone Age to the far future). Will our reluctant friend finally succumb to the temptation? Photo by CollegeHumor. Early Adopters Through History Random TinyHacker Links Fix Issues in Windows 7 Using Reliability Monitor Learn how to analyze Windows 7 errors and then fix them using the built-in reliability monitor. Learn About IE Tab Groups Tab groups is a useful feature in IE 8. Here’s a detailed guide to what it is all about. Google’s Book Helps You Learn About Browsers and Web A cool new online book by the Google Chrome team on browsers and the web. TrustPort Internet Security 2011 – Good Security from a Less Known Provider TrustPort is not exactly a well-known provider of security solutions. At least not in the consumer space. This review tests in detail their latest offering. How the World is Using Cell phones An infographic showing the shocking demographics of cell phone use. Super User Questions See the great answers to these questions from Super User. I am unable to access my C drive. It says it is unable to display current owner. List of Windows special directories/shortcuts like ‘%TEMP%’ Is using multiple passes for wiping a disk really necessary? How can I view two files side by side in Notepad++ Is there any tool that automatically puts screenshots to my Dropbox? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Look through our hottest articles from this past week at How-To Geek. How to Create a Software RAID Array in Windows 7 9 Alternatives for Windows Home Server’s Drive Extender Why Doesn’t Disk Cleanup Delete Everything from the Temp Folder? Ask the Readers: How Much Do You Customize Your Operating System? How to Upload Really Large Files to SkyDrive, Dropbox, or Email One Year Ago on How-To Geek Enjoy reading through these awesome articles from one year ago. How To Upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 Home Premium Edition How To Fix No Aero Transparency in Windows 7 Troubleshoot Startup Problems with Startup Repair Tool in Windows 7 & Vista Rename the Guest Account in Windows 7 for Enhanced Security Disable Error Reporting in XP, Vista, and Windows 7 The Geek Note That wraps things up here for this week. Regardless of the weather wherever you may be, we hope that you have an opportunity to get outside and have some fun! Remember to keep sending those great tips in to us at [email protected]. Photo by Tony the Misfit. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Get the Complete Android Guide eBook for Only 99 Cents [Update: Expired] Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 7: Design and Typography How to Choose What to Back Up on Your Linux Home Server How To Harmonize Your Dual-Boot Setup for Windows and Ubuntu Hang in There Scrat! – Ice Age Wallpaper How Do You Know When You’ve Passed Geek and Headed to Nerd? On The Tip – A Lamborghini Theme for Chrome and Iron What if Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner were Human? [Video] Peaceful Winter Cabin Wallpaper Store Tabs for Later Viewing in Opera with Tab Vault

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• I Hereby Resolve… (T-SQL Tuesday #14)

  - by smisner

  It’s time for another T-SQL Tuesday, hosted this month by Jen McCown (blog|twitter), on the topic of resolutions. Specifically, “what techie resolutions have you been pondering, and why?” I like that word – pondering – because I ponder a lot. And while there are many things that I do already because of my job, there are many more things that I ponder about doing…if only I had the time. Then I ponder about making time, but then it’s back to work! In 2010, I was moderately more successful in making time for things that I ponder about than I had been in years past, and I hope to continue that trend in 2011. If Jen hadn’t settled on this topic, I could keep my ponderings to myself and no one would ever know the outcome, but she’s egged me on (and everyone else that chooses to participate)! So here goes… For me, having resolve to do something means that I wouldn’t be doing that something as part of my ordinary routine. It takes extra effort to make time for it. It’s not something that I do once and check off a list, but something that I need to commit to over a period of time. So with that in mind, I hereby resolve… To Learn Something New… One of the things I love about my job is that I get to do a lot of things outside of my ordinary routine. It’s a veritable smorgasbord of opportunity! So what more could I possibly add to that list of things to do? Well, the more I learn, the more I realize I have so much more to learn. It would be much easier to remain in ignorant bliss, but I was born to learn. Constantly. (And apparently to teach, too– my father will tell you that as a small child, I had the neighborhood kids gathered together to play school – in the summer. I’m sure they loved that – but they did it!) These are some of things that I want to dedicate some time to learning this year: Spatial data. I have a good understanding of how maps in Reporting Services works, and I can cobble together a simple T-SQL spatial query, but I know I’m only scratching the surface here. Rob Farley (blog|twitter) posted interesting examples of combining maps and PivotViewer, and I think there’s so many more creative possibilities. I’ve always felt that pictures (including charts and maps) really help people get their minds wrapped around data better, and because a lot of data has a geographic aspect to it, I believe developing some expertise here will be beneficial to my work. PivotViewer. Not only is PivotViewer combined with maps a useful way to visualize data, but it’s an interesting way to work with data. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out this interactive demonstration using Netflx OData feed. According to Rob Farley, learning how to work with PivotViewer isn’t trivial. Just the type of challenge I like! Security. You’ve heard of the accidental DBA? Well, I am the accidental security person – is there a word for that role? My eyes used to glaze over when having to study about security, or  when reading anything about it. Then I had a problem long ago that no one could figure out – not even the vendor’s tech support – until I rolled up my sleeves and painstakingly worked through the myriad of potential problems to resolve a very thorny security issue. I learned a lot in the process, and have been able to share what I’ve learned with a lot of people. But I’m not convinced their eyes weren’t glazing over, too. I don’t take it personally – it’s just a very dry topic! So in addition to deepening my understanding about security, I want to find a way to make the subject as it relates to SQL Server and business intelligence more accessible and less boring. Well, there’s actually a lot more that I could put on this list, and a lot more things I have plans to do this coming year, but I run the risk of overcommitting myself. And then I wouldn’t have time… To Have Fun! My name is Stacia and I’m a workaholic. When I love what I do, it’s difficult to separate out the work time from the fun time. But there are some things that I’ve been meaning to do that aren’t related to business intelligence for which I really need to develop some resolve. And they are techie resolutions, too, in a roundabout sort of way! Photography. When my husband and I went on an extended camping trip in 2009 to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, I had a nice little digital camera that took decent pictures. But then I saw the gorgeous cameras that other tourists were toting around and decided I needed one too. So I bought a Nikon D90 and have started to learn to use it, but I’m definitely still in the beginning stages. I traveled so much in 2010 and worked on two book projects that I didn’t have a lot of free time to devote to it. I was very inspired by Kimberly Tripp’s (blog|twitter) and Paul Randal’s (blog|twitter) photo-adventure in Alaska, though, and plan to spend some dedicated time with my camera this year. (And hopefully before I move to Alaska – nothing set in stone yet, but we hope to move to a remote location – with Internet access – later this year!) Astronomy. I have this cool telescope, but it suffers the same fate as my camera. I have been gone too much and busy with other things that I haven’t had time to work with it. I’ll figure out how it works, and then so much time passes by that I forget how to use it. I have this crazy idea that I can actually put the camera and the telescope together for astrophotography, but I think I need to start simple by learning how to use each component individually. As long as I’m living in Las Vegas, I know I’ll have clear skies for nighttime viewing, but when we move to Alaska, we’ll be living in a rain forest. I have no idea what my opportunities will be like there – except I know that when the sky is clear, it will be far more amazing than anything I can see in Vegas – even out in the desert - because I’ll be so far away from city light pollution. I’ve been contemplating putting together a blog on these topics as I learn. As many of my fellow bloggers in the SQL Server community know, sometimes the best way to learn something is to sit down and write about it. I’m just stumped by coming up with a clever name for the new blog, which I was thinking about inaugurating with my move to Alaska. Except that I don’t know when that will be exactly, so we’ll just have to wait and see which comes first!

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