Springboard Pillow

Friday, June 12, 2009

Favourites From Salami Tsunami

Yes, it's true, Dusty Scott, aka Pork Tornado, aka Salami Tsunami, is the greatest blogger in the world...

http://salamitsunami.com/archives/123 - Just Cuts It Off At The Base
http://salamitsunami.com/archives/93 - Peachtree Flight Centre Website Support
http://salamitsunami.com/archives/209 - TurboBitch 2001
http://salamitsunami.com/archives/77 - I Hate Comcast
http://salamitsunami.com/archives/198 - Choad Rage

Swine Flu Is a Pandemic

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1904062,00.html

Swearwords

If you want to block swearwords on your site, here's some resources. Things to think about are your intended audience, the seriousness of your site and how strict you want to be...

Power Save, Bread And Back To The Future II

Lifehacker and Gizmodo to the rescue, again...

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Good Links That Are Good - Google Wave And More

Some links that are definately worth checking out...

Saturday, June 06, 2009

Acorn Gamez - Reliving The Wonder

While getting a bit hacked off with a PC yesterday, I went looking for some videos from years gone by. I found some videos by a guy who really should be linked: http://www.youtube.com/user/peetvanpeebles

I really have to say thank you to Peet Van Peebles here - these videos are so inspiring! I just want to fire up the old Risc PC and get playing again :)

Thursday, June 04, 2009

Caps Lock Is Crap

...so do this instead: http://lifehacker.com/5277383/use-caps-lock-for-hand+friendly-text-navigation

He he he.

Cute

http://ffffound.com/image/5d2dcf9b291f28a682a9e716662106f97754d275

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Literal Music Video

Just been sent a link for literal music videos on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj-x9ygQEGA

Very funny.

My Word Of Today: sesquipedalian

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sesquipedalian

Twittering

Ok, some more twitter links - just not really sure what I'm getting up to now!

http://tweetfeed.com/ - Produces feeds from twitter content
http://twitterfeed.com/ - Integrates feeds into yours
http://twitter.com/fakejowhiley - Chris Moyles pretending to be Jo Whiley!

Monday, June 01, 2009

Microsoft's Own Firefox Attack

A bit scary: http://www.geek.com/articles/news/microsoft-net-update-installs-firefox-add-on-without-permission-2009061/

In short, the February update to Windows installs the .NET Framework into Firefox (if you have it) which allows web pages to install software onto your machine with a single click - this means they could install security hacks onto your computer without you knowing, very easily. Either follow the instructions on the linked sites, or open your firefox Add-ons page (found under Tools on the menu bar) and disable the .NET Framework 1.0 addon.

LifeHacker's Best Of The Last Week

Dilbert Links...

A huge collection of Dilbert animations...

http://www.babelgum.com/html/clip.php?clipId=3014797&utm_campaign=cat_comedy&utm_medium=cpc_socialmedia&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=Dilbertocean&utm_term=

Remember These?

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Google Wave - Developer Preview

At the latest Google IO conference Google announced their new Wave application, currently hosted on a sandboxed Google Apps for the (very) priveleged 4000 devs at IO. See the best Dev Conv video since the iPod launched here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ&eurl=http://wave.google.com/&feature=player_embedded

And, a bunch more links - the places I've been reading/watching -up on Wave...

I'm completely blown away by the Developer's Preview video on Youtube already - not even half way in - and I can imagine people connecting, editing, reviewing and mashing up conversations in all forms - web, mobile, tv, everywhere! It's so easy to picture someone picking up the Wave service from a blog page, news article page or (what will used-to-have-been) SMS and just deciding that because they can leave text, photos, videos (live and recorded), maps, snippets of anything etc, that they just begin considering it "the way I communicate with anyone who isn't just in front of me right now." Even if they are, it's easier to share photos or any media with those around you, without needing anything more than a wireless connection (forget bluetooth or even peer-to-peer wifi, etc) simply because adding people to your Wave gives them all the content you've got - along with your messages to them (both open and private!)

Friday, May 29, 2009

BBC: 10 Things You Need To Know - Losing Weight

Really interesting program from the other night about losing weight and how some of the things we're led to believe are wrong, some are slightly off centre and, more to the point, how to do it right with a reasonable amount of will power:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00ksh7c/10_Things_You_Need_to_Know_About_Losing_Weight/

Dilbert, Users And The Search Results Halo Effect...

Dilbert on...

http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2009/05/26/dilbert-on-user-experience/

User's prefer search results with the Gooogle Logo, whether Google results or not...

http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2009/05/28/impressive-halo-effect-users-prefer-search-results-with-the-google-logo-even-if-theyre-not-google-results/

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Latest Gizmodo Amazing And Fun...

Gizmodo:

LifeHacker:

Tweeted:

http://www.windowtabs.com/ - Tab all your windows
http://blogs.msdn.com/officeliveguy/archive/2009/05/06/multimap-add-in-for-outlook.aspx - Download here: http://explore.multimap.com/Toolbox/toolsSpecific_outlookaddin.aspx

Misc:

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

LifeHacker's Latest...

Mmmmm....

And some awesome wallpapers for wide screens...

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/12/10/50-most-amazing-dual-screen-desktop-wallpapers/

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Taking Ownership? What Is That Exactly?

Friday, May 22, 2009

When Would You Use GUIDs As Primary Keys?

Here's a question which I'm sure comes up in the odd interview or developer water cooler debate:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/897083/when-would-you-use-guids-as-primary-keys

There's many answers, but the quick win is: "When using a de-centralised database."

Thursday, May 21, 2009

One Post To Bind Them All: Security, Antivirus And Firewalls

Thought I would create a single post for keeping a log of all security 'best-of' links, (hopefully) updating and bringing it to the top when necessary...

First, lists:

Security: http://lifehacker.com/tag/security/ http://gizmodo.com/tag/security/
Anti-virus: http://lifehacker.com/tag/antivirus/ http://gizmodo.com/tag/antivirus/
Firewall: http://lifehacker.com/tag/firewall/ http://gizmodo.com/tag/firewall/
Malware: http://lifehacker.com/tag/malware/ http://gizmodo.com/tag/malware/

Next, articles:

Top 5 anti-virus: http://lifehacker.com/395046/five-best-antivirus-applications
Top 5 anti-malware: http://lifehacker.com/5227896/five-best-malware-removal-tools
Panda-virus always updated: http://lifehacker.com/5234347/panda-cloud-antivirus-is-a-lightweight-always+updated-virus-killer
How to remove troublesome security software: http://lifehacker.com/5233268/appremover-removes-stubborn-security-applications

Blog entries and expert advice articles:

Simon Edwards security expert and journalist: http://simonedwards.blogspot.com/

Finally, direct downloads:

PeerGuardian dodgy IP blocker: http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/
Spybot Search & Destory anti-spyware: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html
McAfee virus stinger for directed, hot-spot viruses: http://vil.nai.com/VIL/stinger/

Commercial anti-virus applications, most with free, online utilities:

Sophos: http://www.sophos.com/
Kaskersky: http://www.kaspersky.co.uk/ Online scanner: http://www.kaspersky.co.uk/virusscanner

If you have other links/advice, please leave comments...

LifeHacker, Stuff You Didn't Know And Links

The latest from LifeHacker - VLC changes you probably didn't know about and how to stay safe from Google:

And the updated front end for VLC:

http://www.kantaris.org/?page_id=17

Some real thought provoking paranoia about Google up there.

And to round off, a note for email marketers, by an email marketer:

http://minethatdata.blogspot.com/2009/05/open-letter-to-e-mail-marketers.html

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Scared? RTFM! Be Informed And Don't Kill!

People should be more informed. That might be easy to say in an information age when there is too much information (or "info"; go figure) to cope with (see the existence of Twitter as proof of information curbing) sensibly. Reading articles is, believe it or not, the better way to stay informed simply because glib and media hungry headlines are the quick start for selling papers and page hits.

If you don't believe me, check out Cracked's latest: http://www.cracked.com/blog/dont-listen-to-jenny-mccarthy

I completely agree with the article. If the media were to treat their content with respect they would title appropriately - and don't tell me that a good title is hard to generate from any story. If CNN and FOX can broadcast the thinly veiled rubbish they headline as even news-worthy (see just about any Hate By Numbers on Cracked.com for evidence.

Explorer Improvements

Monday, May 18, 2009

Useability Of Secure Passwords - What You Need To Know

http://www.baekdal.com/articles/Usability/password-security-usability/

Interesting article about the time it takes to hack a password and how to make one which should, hacker's luck aside, last for a long, long time.

Lifehacker And Some Links...

Just thought I'd add some downloads and sillies today...

And an extra I found while looking for a replacement for the Alt+Tab task switcher:

http://www.ntwind.com/

Web.Config

Using different fragments of config files in your web.config can be done using file="" ...

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/appsettings_fileattribute.aspx

Friday, May 15, 2009

Argh! Tech Support and all things ISP...

Oh, the horror of tech support and what it looks like from the inside of an ISP...

http://www.pcworld.com/article/164801/Response_to_10_things_we_hate_about_ISPs_and_cable_and_phone_companies.html?tk=rss_news

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

London To Brighton Bike Ride For British Heart Foundation

As the 58 mile bike ride from Clapham Common to Brighton Pier on the 21st of June draws ever nearer, again, I would like to remind everyone that if you're not taking part you can still participate by sponsoring me...

http://www.justgiving.com/matthewwebster

I really appreciate all sponsorship and though I am not taking special requests I do promise to do my best and get there as fast as I possibly can.

This year I'll essentially be racing my brother, whose only mode of transport is his bike, so for me, whose typical mode of transport is the train, this is a challenge! I don't know how he'd fare in the dojo, though.

If you do want to take part, please visit BHF's website where, for the first year ever, you can sign up online:

http://www.bhf.org.uk/get_involved/take_part_in_our_events/event_finder/view_event.aspx?ps=1000427

Get Rid Of Spam! Temporary Inbox Heaven!

So, with the demise of Temporary Inbox I went searching for some new site which offer completely dynamically assigned email addresses. These are basically mail servers which accept any email sent to their list of domains, store them for a given period, not always keeping attachments, and then delete them. This means that any address is always valid, for example bubble@mailinator2.com or eriguiegb@mailinator.net are both valid emails. Also, checking their inboxes is as simple as going to the host site and entering the email address you want to check.

I found a massive list by simply entering: http://www.google.co.uk/search?rlz=1C1CHMB_en-GBGB316GB316&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=temporary+email

Of course!

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

T-SQL "WITH NOLOCK"

Ignoring the locks SQL places on tables during transactions can be useful, but be careful:

LifeHacker Daily And Recycle Bin On Task Bar

Ok, so I was reading today's LifeHacker articles and here's a thought which never occured to me before: (Windows 7 has) A recycle bin icon on the taskbar for dropping things straight to it without being able to see the desktop:

http://wigginscurse.blogspot.com/2007/05/recycle-bin-in-your-taskbar.html

Now, if you're like me and put things in the bin by hitting delete, this won't impress you too much. However, there are a lot of people out there, mostly ex-Apple and GUI-obsessed users, who "drop to delete". This is for them. And those who can't be bothered to use the keyboard(?)

I'm also adding a right-nav link to Wiggins' Hacks & Tricks tag page:

http://wigginscurse.blogspot.com/search/label/Hacks/Tricks

Now the dailies...

Monday, May 11, 2009

chrome-ui://

Google's Chrome browser has a lot of hidden stuff. Some things I've found are:

chrome-ui://extensions/ - Opens the installed extensions viewer
chrome-ui://newtab/ - Shows the quickbrowse display for new, blank tabs
chrome-ui://downloads/ - Shows the downloads window
about:internets - Shows the pipes screensaver inside the google browser (XP only)

And here's some other easter eggs:

http://lifehacker.com/371083/top-10-software-easter-eggs

And to discuss chrome in the google forums:

http://groups.google.com/group/chromium-discuss

Web Design Prototyping

Found this from twitter, allowing you to prototype website design:

Thursday, May 07, 2009

Ballpoint Pen Art

Ran across this on StumbleUpon.com and just had to post it because this artist really has talent:

http://www.crookedbrains.net/2008/09/ballpoint-pen.html

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Brüno

Saw the preview showing of Brüno last night, Kingston Odeon, and can definately say that if you didn't like Borat you'll hate Brüno!

Started well, got good and ended disturbingly :) The **** helicopter is not to be believed, especially when it then says, "Brüno". After that, the most memorable quote has to be, "Have a good life" and hardest to watch is either the whipping scene at the swingers party or the gay sex in the cage fighting cage - especially when the flying chair narrowly misses both their heads!

All in all, very funny movie that is an ideal follow up to Brüno, just finer tuned :)

Some fun for you:

Nasty Future Food.

http://gizmodo.com/5241016/53-foods-so-disgusting-you-may-not-want-to-eat-again-for-a-week?skyline=true&s=i

Nice. I Like You.

http://www.booooooom.com/2008/12/01/project-5-submissions-part-7/

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Paging In T-SQL (SQL 2005)

Needing some paging ability for pre-XSLt operations (to keep it all database-side and avoid the hard work in C#) I found this neat little post which helped me create some very compact and efficient paging T-SQL:

http://blogs.x2line.com/al/archive/2005/11/18/1323.aspx

LifeHacker and Best Utilities

Latest from LifeHacker, preceded by some awesome utilities links:

And now the awesome recent:

And my latest tools downloads:

http://www.voidtools.com/ - Everything
http://www.binaryfortress.com/displayfusion/ - Alternative to MultiMon
http://lifehacker.com/software/texter/lifehacker-code-texter-windows-238306.php - Text Substitution everywhere
http://www.revouninstaller.com/ - Uninstall
http://www.ccleaner.com/ - System Cleaner
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx - Windows Process Explorer
http://sourceforge.net/projects/addtorun/ - Add shortcuts to Win+Run command
Failed Print Job cancel: http://lifehacker.com/5500684/

Monday, May 04, 2009

Beginning Security In Detail

So, deciding that I really should enter the security world proper, here's a bunch of reading materials and resources worth, er, reading. First, web services...

Google search yielding good results: http://www.google.co.uk/search?rlz=1C1GGLS_en-GBGB299GB309&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=easy+web+service+security+.net

Articles I've lined up for absorption:

Extending background knowledge:

Friday, May 01, 2009

Alternate Row Colouring In XSLt

So, trying to get rows coloured alternately in an HTML table is easy in .NET, just a styling option, but in XSLt it's a little harder. Check out this post for an easy solution:

http://www.biglist.com/lists/xsl-list/archives/200202/msg00720.html

Ctrl+Left Shift Vs. Ctrl+Right Shift = Chrome Justifying

I've been battling with Google Chrome for a while because it keeps messing about with my text entry on web forms. The text justification just goes wrong after I do a certain key combination and until today it completely baffled me.

Finally solved it: Ctrl + left Shift = Left justify. Ctrl + right Shift = Right justify.

I don't really understand this even existing as an option, but I also seem to remember reading about it, thinking it was a good idea and turning it on. Now I can't remember how to turn it off, but as soon as I find out I'll post it here! Grrr.

Posting Code On Blogger/BlogSpot.com

I've been trying to post code to my blog for ages. Sometimes I suck it and just hand craft all the little symbols which need manipulation, but today I was trying to post a shedload of XSLt and there ain't no way I'm going through that by hand!

So, a quick google about and here is a couple of really good links:

Having said that, LiveWriter is pretty good at posting code and is my preferred weapon of choice.

[EDIT] Ah yes, the problem with LiveWriter is that it won't install on Windows Server 2003, as won't the other Live applications.

Date Formatting In XSLt

I wanted a date to be changed, essentially a string containing a date time. See my previous post for some good XSLt links, but here's my solution:

<xsl:call-template name="FormatDate">
   <xsl:with-param name="DateTimeParam" select="@InvoiceDate"/>
</xsl:call-template>

   <xsl:template name="FormatDate">
       <!-- expecting datetime example: 2009-04-20T00:00:00 -->
       <xsl:param name="DateTimeParam" />

      
       <!-- reformat date param to be easier to use -->
       <xsl:variable name="DateTime">
           <xsl:value-of select="substring($DateTimeParam,1,10)"/>
       </xsl:variable>
      
       <!-- new date format January 20, 2007 -->
       <xsl:variable name="year">
           <xsl:value-of select="substring-before($DateTime,'-')" />
       </xsl:variable>
       <xsl:variable name="mo-temp">
           <xsl:value-of select="substring-after($DateTime,'-')" />
       </xsl:variable>
       <xsl:variable name="mo">
           <xsl:value-of select="substring-before($mo-temp,'-')" />
       </xsl:variable>
       <xsl:variable name="day">
           <xsl:value-of select="substring-after($mo-temp,'-')" />
       </xsl:variable>

       <xsl:if test="(string-length($day) &lt; 2)">
           <xsl:value-of select="0"/>
       </xsl:if>
       <xsl:value-of select="$day"/>
       <xsl:value-of select="' '"/>
       <xsl:choose>
           <xsl:when test="$mo = '1' or $mo = '01'">Jan</xsl:when>
           <xsl:when test="$mo = '2' or $mo = '02'">Feb</xsl:when>
           <xsl:when test="$mo = '3' or $mo = '03'">Mar</xsl:when>
           <xsl:when test="$mo = '4' or $mo = '04'">Apr</xsl:when>
           <xsl:when test="$mo = '5' or $mo = '05'">May</xsl:when>
           <xsl:when test="$mo = '6' or $mo = '06'">Jun</xsl:when>
           <xsl:when test="$mo = '7' or $mo = '07'">Jul</xsl:when>
           <xsl:when test="$mo = '8' or $mo = '08'">Aug</xsl:when>
           <xsl:when test="$mo = '9' or $mo = '09'">Sep</xsl:when>
           <xsl:when test="$mo = '10'">Oct</xsl:when>
           <xsl:when test="$mo = '11'">Nov</xsl:when>
           <xsl:when test="$mo = '12'">Dec</xsl:when>
       </xsl:choose>
       <xsl:value-of select="' '"/>
       <xsl:value-of select="$year"/>
   </xsl:template>

How To Count Elements In XSLt

In looking to count the number of instances of an XML element I was looking about for a piece of XSLT. Every example I came across had the xsl 'number' element within the 'for-each' element, which meant that the XSLT had to parse the element I was counting first. I didn't want to have a 'for-each' involved at all, but eventually I was in luck, and it's much easier that using a 'number' element:

<xsl:value-of select="count(elementname)" />

I was directed to this solution by experts-exchange: http://www.experts-exchange.com/Web/Web_Languages/XML/Q_21294193.html

However, if you do want to perform counting operations, this is an excellent starting point: http://www.w3schools.com/Xsl/el_number.asp

And for more general XSLt references:

http://www.developer.com/xml/article.php/3383961 - Good for traversing XML
http://www.15seconds.com/issue/031105.htm - Paging
http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl/rev2/dates.html - Check this whole site for XSLt goodness
http://projects.ischool.washington.edu/tabrooks/545/ContentManagement/PassingParameters.htm - Passing parameters to XSLt
http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath - As always, the standard comes from W3C.org
http://geekswithblogs.net/workdog/archive/2007/02/08/105858.aspx - Lots of date formatting

I highly recommend D. Pawson's site as it is basically a massive list of examples and explanations for just about everything anyone would ever want to do in XSLt.

Also, of course, the http://www.developer.com/xml/article.php/3383961 article will tell you everything you need to know about traversing XML - especially useful if you are writing code which needs to build, navigate or parse XML.

Latest Links For Today... Awesomeness Abounds!

LifeHacker this friday... first the serious stuff:

New paradigm in anti-virus/spyware: http://lifehacker.com/5234347/panda-cloud-antivirus-is-a-lightweight-constantly-updated-virus-killer
Personally, I love Sophos, but here's: http://lifehacker.com/395046/five-best-antivirus-applications
Tools to kill dead processes (ie: get rid if it freezes): http://lifehacker.com/5232692/kill-frozen-windows-apps-easily
Easiest process killer: http://haxattack.com/2009/04/29/tip-easy-kill-apps-that-freeze/
Stop Windows from shutting down: http://lifehacker.com/5234722/how-to-stop-windows-from-shutting-down
Free data recovery tools: http://lifehacker.com/5233339/best-free-data-recovery-tool
The whole data recovery schebang: http://lifehacker.com/tag/data-recovery/

And the fun LifeHacker stuff:

Neat tool for font management: http://lifehacker.com/5231061/windows-fonts-explorer-displays-and-manages-your-windows-fonts and a browser-based font comparer: http://lifehacker.com/5234482/flipping-typical-compares-and-previews-installed-fonts-from-your-browser and other font tools and downloads: http://lifehacker.com/5182958/killer-typography-tools-and-free-font-downloads
Lots from LifeHacker: swine flu mashup, fb desktop and others: http://lifehacker.com/5233165/remains-of-the-day-more-swine-flu-mashups-edition
Automated source versioning control: http://lifehacker.com/5232049/flashbake-automates-version-control-for-nerdy-writers
Google Trends: http://lifehacker.com/5232556/get-public-data-graphs-from-google-searches
Wyzo browser powers up downloaders: http://lifehacker.com/5234536/wyzo-web-browser-is-a-downloaders-dream

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Instant Messaging Tools

Wow, I seriously underestimated the number of instant messaging applications out there. I've been using MSN Messenger for a long time (hasn't everyone?) and now I work on Windows Std Server 2003 I can't - the two are incompatible, as is iTunes/WS2k3. So, I went looking for a replacement which might run on WinSrv2k3, and a quick google of "instant messenger comparison" brought me to this neat link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_messaging_clients

Having said that, of course, there are plenty of tools, APIs etc out there to let you build your own instant messaging application - including an MSN Messenger app!...

Code and API's for developing with Microsoft's MSN Messenger service, found via:http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGLS_en-GBGB299GB309&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=c%23+msn ...

A number of these utilise the DotMSN API:

http://www.xihsolutions.net/dotmsn/ - An actual MSN Messenger API wrapped up for C# specifically

Also, dubiously, there is this, which I am just not sure about yet, perhaps it's a goldmine, perhaps a landmine: http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-hack-msn-web-cam/

Word Of The Day: Magnanimous

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/magnanimous

mag⋅nan⋅i⋅mous [mag-nan-uh-muhs]

–adjective

1. generous in forgiving an insult or injury; free from petty resentfulness or vindictiveness: to be magnanimous toward one's enemies.

2. high-minded; noble: a just and magnanimous ruler.

3. proceeding from or revealing generosity or nobility of mind, character, etc.: a magnanimous gesture of forgiveness.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Reading Code As A Learning Tool

Scott Hanselman has been posting code snippets for a while on:

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheWeeklySourceCode41SearchingCodeSharingCodeAndReadingCodeAndComments.aspx

I think this is a pretty good way to get used to other styles, understanding and developing an inate ability to become flexible when required to produce code interfacing with other systems.

Also, as Scott points out, is the Google Code Search, where you can highlight code placed on your own site to the Google search engine: http://www.google.com/codesearch

Someone's Gonna Get It, Links, LifeHacker And Gizmodo

Oops: http://gizmodo.com/5231972/best-buy-sells-customer-a-large-brick-in-place-of-a-macbook-pro-literally

Today's Gizmodo favourites:

LifeHacker favourites:

Word Of The Day: Erudite

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/erudite

er⋅u⋅dite [er-yoo-dahyt, er-oo-]

–adjective

characterized by great knowledge; learned or scholarly: an erudite professor; an erudite commentary

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Splitting Strings in T-SQL

[EDIT] A very good collection of solutions:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/314824/t-sql-opposite-to-string-concatenation-how-to-split-string-into-multiple-recor

From an ex-colleague (with some alteration):

Create Procedure ReturnStringAsTable

(

@REQUEST VARCHAR(500),

@dividingChr VARCHAR(1) = ','

)

BEGIN

DECLARE @CURRENT_TABLE VARCHAR(200);

DECLARE @INDEX_TO INT;

DECLARE @INDEX_FROM INT;

DEClARE @DATASETINDEX TABLE(ID INT IDENTITY(1,1),[NAME] VARCHAR(200))

SET @INDEX_FROM=0;

SET @INDEX_TO= CHARINDEX(@dividingChr,@REQUEST,@INDEX_FROM);

SET @INDEX_TO= CASE WHEN @INDEX_TO <=0 THEN LEN(@REQUEST)+1 ELSE @INDEX_TO end;

WHILE @INDEX_FROM <>

BEGIN

SET @CURRENT_TABLE=RTRIM(LTRIM(SUBSTRING(@REQUEST,@INDEX_FROM,@INDEX_TO-@INDEX_FROM)))

IF LEN(@CURRENT_TABLE)>2

BEGIN

INSERT INTO @DATASETINDEX([NAME]) VALUES(@CURRENT_TABLE);

EXEC ('SELECT * FROM ' + @CURRENT_TABLE)

END

SET @INDEX_FROM = @INDEX_TO+1

SET @INDEX_TO= CHARINDEX(',',@REQUEST,@INDEX_FROM);

SET @INDEX_TO = CASE WHEN @INDEX_TO > @INDEX_FROM THEN @INDEX_TO ELSE LEN(@REQUEST)+1 END;

END

INSERT INTO @DATASETINDEX([NAME]) VALUES('INDEX_TABLE');

SELECT * FROM @DATASETINDEX

END

Slightly cleaned up version of code found at: http://codebetter.com/blogs/raymond.lewallen/archive/2005/10/26/133774.aspx

CREATE FUNCTION Split(

@IDValues as varchar(500),

@Delimeter as varchar(1)

)

RETURNS @tValues TABLE(IDAux INT)

BEGIN

DECLARE @I AS INT, @Aux AS INT

SET @I = 1

SET @Aux = 1

WHILE @I <= LEN(@IDValues)

BEGIN

IF SUBSTRING(@IDValues,@I,1)= @Delimeter

BEGIN

INSERT INTO @tValues (IDAux) VALUES (CAST(SUBSTRING(@IDValues,@Aux,(@I-@Aux))AS INT))

SET @Aux = @i + 1

END

SET @i = @i + 1

END

RETURN

END

--examples with differents delimeters

select * from Split('1058,1059,1060,1062,',',')

select * from Split('1058|1059|1060|1062|','|')

select * from Split('1058;1059;1060;1062;',';')

Capoeira

Swine Flu, Terabyte Holographic Discs And More...

Gizmodo and LifeHacker...

http://gizmodo.com/tag/swine-flu/ - Swine Flu on gizmodo
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=p&msa=0&msid=106484775090296685271.0004681a37b713f6b5950&source=embed&ll=51.261915,-2.724609&spn=22.291199,39.550781&z=5 - Swine Flu google map
http://gizmodo.com/5229869/microsoft-presents-us-with-their-vision-of-the-future - Microsoft thinks this is the future
http://lifehacker.com/5229402/windows-7-will-include-windows-xp-mode?skyline=true&s=i - Win XP under Win 7, erm, ok.
http://lifehacker.com/5230223/firefox-3010-released-fixes-major-stability-issue - Firefox security fix
http://lifehacker.com/tag/updates/ - Security updates , including google chrome
http://lifehacker.com/5230098/smart-installer-pack-automatically-installs-your-favorite-software-to-a-new-pc - Neat installer app
http://lifehacker.com/5229659/specialfoldersview-displays-hidden-windows-folder-locations - Windows add-on
http://lifehacker.com/5229647/find-great-wallpaper-using-google-image-searchs-new-features - Find cool wallpapers!

Monday, April 27, 2009

Windows Mobile Video Blogging

I want to be able to stream video direct from my Windows Mobile HTC camera, but until I find (or build) a mobile app to let me do that, I'll have to make do with the ideas in this cool little post:

http://www.brighthub.com/mobile/windows-mobile-platform/articles/29486.aspx

Or the video equivelent of twitter:

http://12seconds.tv/

And an update, it is possible, but only with Nokia and iPhone:

http://www.flixwagon.com/

Better update:

Just discovered service Qik which provides live video streaming apps for a hell of a lot of mobile phones so I signed up, installed and am up and running! A revolution in blogging!

Check out the mobile links for the sites I found!

Nooooo.....

Latest LifeHacker And Gizmodo Links: Anti-Malware, Tetris Buildings And Geekiness

LifeHacker:

Gizmodo: