Posted by Mark on May 18, 2011
This following tip is for working with data in Sql Server via either Query Analyzer or Sql Management Studio. It might work for other database platforms, depending on the tool that you use to run ad hoc queries. For those that are still interested, read on!
Developers – how many times have you selected some number of rows from a database to get a list of row IDs that you need to act on, only to have them presented in a column, rather than a nice comma separated list that would plug easily into a sql statement? You know the drill – select the column in the results, copy the IDs up to the query panel, and then do the comma-delete-end dance, building a comma delimited list yourself. This is fine when there’s 10 or 20 rows, but what about 100s? Sure, you can write a select statement that builds individual sql statements for each row that you need to act on, but there’s a better way…
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Posted by Mark on November 26, 2010
Today I spent a stupid amount of time working on something that should have been incredibly simple. I’m working on a project that’s using Entity Framework 4 for its data access, and everything seems to be an uphill battle. I’m getting better with it, but today’s fun led me to post this Facebook status update: » Read more…
Posted by Mark on July 15, 2010
Last night I had some “fun” with a little iPhone application that I’m writing. It has a UITableView that I fill with custom UITableViewCells. My custom cells are just a sub-class of UITableViewCell, and are built in code rather than Interface Builder. In this case, I was making an asynchronous call to a server and then updating the display of a cell once the server returned. Unfortunately, my cell wasn’t updating on the screen.
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Posted by Mark on July 9, 2010
Here’s a quick note about an annoyance I have with Windows 7. When you are working in Visual Studio (2008 at least) and you have the magical little ASP.NET Development Server running, it now shows in your alt-tab list. It’s an app that you almost never need to switch to, yet it’s there. In the way. Taunting you. For one of my biggest projects, I often get three of them (an administration site, a web service and a small utility site). I’m also not crazy about how Windows 7 will sort of “blank out” all the windows of the apps that aren’t the highlighted one in the alt-tab list. When you cycle through the list quickly, they pop in and out rapidly and I find it very distracting.
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Posted by Mark on July 7, 2010
One issue that just randomly cropped up on my Windows development machine was that I could no longer connect to some Sql Servers via Sql Server Management Studio. The error I got was “Cannot Generate SSPI Context”. I did a bunch of research on this and found that this typically has to do with TCP/IP and Kerberos authentication issues. I followed the advice in many of the articles that I found, but nothing worked.
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Posted by Mark on July 6, 2010
The prelude: I’ve had an iPhone since the 3G. I love the iPhone. I’m not crazy about the rules for applications in the app store and I do wish it was a bit more customizable than it is, but as a whole package I love it. I also hate AT&T with a white-hot burning passion. Long story short, last month (pre iPhone 4) I decided to try out the new HTC Evo 4G – mostly prompted by the new AT&T packages for tethering. Plus, I’m a geek and I love to play with new toys. I’d never really played with Android, so I felt it was my duty to see what it was all about. » Read more…
Posted by Mark on July 6, 2010
I’m building a website for Wildly Natural One and it’s going to include, among other things, an online store. While I initially leaned towards a Zen Cart installation, the various client desires (most notably a way to purchase without creating an account) pointed me towards the wp e-Commerce plugin for WordPress itself.
Overall, I’ve been pretty happy with it so far – having the admin tool built directly into the WordPress admin (and not having to skin Zen Cart as well as WordPress) has been nice. I did manage to run into a non-trivial issue – at some point all my single product links broke. Instead of the product page, WordPress would serve up a 404. Ugly. I searched all over the internet and found all kids of people with the same problem, but none of their solutions worked. I decided to delve into the code and here’s what I found: » Read more…