Posted on in Programming
Database transactions are really no mystery. For the uninitiated, the idea is that we want to make changes to the database inside of a transaction that can be committed or thrown away. Why is this a good thing? Without transactions, changes to the database have to be manually undone if …
Posted on in Software
This was written about a fictional character, Aunt Sally, who wants to organize information regarding her stuffed animal collection into a database.
Aunt Sally sure has a lot of things in mind for her stuffed animal spreadsheet. The first task she needs to accomplish is sorting the data to her …
Posted on in Software
In Microsoft Excel, functions and formulas work closely together. Formulas are simply mathematical operations that may or may not include the contents of cells in the spreadsheet. Functions are very similar in that they are pre-defined formulas which take their input from the parameters passed in to them. Like formulas …
Posted on in Programming
ProBlogger Darren Rowse recently posted a question about putting dates on blog posts. A lot of folks were interested in the idea of removing dates from older blog posts, but don't know where to start. This is a useful PHP excercise, so I decided to implement it on my personal …
Posted on in Software
This is about my fictional Aunt Sally who wonders if she can use Microsoft Excel to organize and track her large collection of stuff animals.
Microsoft Excel would be a great way for Sally to track her stuffed animal collection. With over 800 stuffed animals, finding information about a particular …
Posted on in Networking
By default, service set identifiers (SSIDs) configured on a Cisco integrated services router are not broadcast. This means that if you want to configure a client to use the wireless network, you'll have to manually enter the SSID in the client configuration. This isn't a bad thing, but it is …
Posted on in Software
This has probably been one of the most requested features for Google Docs: the ability to upload PDFs.
This is really the only feature that has been missing for my Great Google Docs Conversion of 2008. The addition of this new feature means that I can clear out even more …
Posted on in Software
If you've been following the Firefox 3 news, you are no doubt aware that today (June 17, 2008) is the official release date for Firefox 3. Unfortunately, when Mozilla made the download available at 1 PM Eastern, the flood of traffic made the Mozilla servers virtually unreachable.
The initial rush …
Posted on in Networking
Laurence F. Sheldon, Jr. just gave a great cable tag definition on the NANOG mailing list.
The tags should have a short (two or three word) description, the authority for the patch (person's name or position, order number, or trouble ticket number) and where the [other]{.underline} end of the …
Posted on in uncategorized
After a recent trip, I've misplaced the wall charger for my Motorola Q. It's likely that the silly thing is just in a bag somewhere in the house, but my wife thinks it may be at her office. None of that really matters — the silly thing is missing!
Although I …
Posted on in System Administration
My pager went off Saturday morning with the following alert: "/dev/hda6 is read-only!"
I can't remember the last time I received this alert. The filesystem in question is the home of this web site, as well as a few others. Being read-only isn't a major problem since most of …
Posted on in Software
As previously mentioned, automatic software updates was one of the most exciting improvements included in the previous release of Camino. As expected, Camino was kind enough to pop up and tell me a new version was available — Camino 1.6.1.
This minor update is mainly aimed at stability. Several …
Posted on in Software
Ladies and gentlemen, say "Hello" to a brand new Camino! Camino 1.6 has been released with some slick new features.
One that I'm really looking forward to is automatic software updates. Until now, Camino only checked for an update on startup. Considering how infrequently I have to restart my …
Posted on in Software
I've been having problems with Google Chat (in Gmail) this afternoon. I decided that logging out of Gmail and restarting Firefox might be a helpful exercise. When I returned to Gmail, I noticed that something was wrong: everything was right.
For some odd reason, I seem to have been zapped …
Posted on in Software
The good folks at Mozilla keep plugging away at Firefox 3. Now Firefox 3 Beta 5 is ready for download.
The two big ticket items for Firefox 3 Beta 5 are improved OS integration (Windows, OS X, and Linux) and increased Javascript performance. If you are one of those people …
