Year: 2007

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I’m a mac girl

Mac girlOh yes, I’ve got a MacBook Pro and am immensely proud of it as well. As a new mac user I was (and still am) noticing constant ‘attention to detail’ bits that make using a computer ‘fun’ again. Ok, so that sounds really cheese but it’s true! Little things like when it’s too dark the keyboard lights up (ok, I might have got a wee bit over excitable at that one than I should have) or how nice most installations are comparatively to Windows. The initial drawback is having to experience the humbling effect it has when you can’t figure out what should be the simplest tasks, the ones that you laugh at your mom for when she gets completely lost, I am now my mom (to mom: sorry for the reference).

So after the first 2 hours playing with Photo Booth I finally was ready to put the intriguing effects away and get some programs on so I could actually use it for development. I had / decided to go in search of a few different programs than normal to suit the mac environment.

Adium - An excellent IM client for MacFirstly, of course, was an instant messaging system. I ended up installing Adium and seems to be working out just fine so far. It has most of the features you’d expect in a typical IM client and it also allows for multiple email addresses to be bundled and controlled at once.

I also really needed a remote desktop client to access our Windows servers at work and found and would highly recommend one named CoRD. So far I’ve found this program to be excellent, allows for connections to be saved and easily connected to, multiple connections at once and generally well provide a well organised system for managing remote access to our Windows servers.

I do quite a bit of .net development so it led to a bit of a problem in that you can’t get a version of visual studio for Mac (yet). A solution I’ve found and I’m sure many of you are familiar with already is Parallels - An excellent VM allowing you to use Windows programs on your MacParallels. A virtual machine that allows me to set up Windows and run the programs which I otherwise couldn’t have running off the Mac. I’ve read though a lot of the documentation and can’t seem to find if you are supposed to download all of the windows updates and install anti-virus as if it was a completely separate machine so if someone has some advice on this it would be much appreciated. At any rate I have decided to take the safest route for now and get all the updates and install Clamwin on the VM, a free anti-virus for Windows.

I still have to sort a few other programs that I’m going to need but I’m rolling along nicely now
Does anyone know of a good Mac program that works well with Exchange? Mail just isn’t cutting it and prefers to spaz out then keep a constant and accurate connection with my new emails…I blame exchange (I love my Mac, it can do no wrong)

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“I’m not hungry when I listen to techno”
– Flash on the Beach 2007

I love flash conferences, the ones I’ve been to have always had such an excellent selection of speakers and the general atmosphere is so lively and friendly (ok, so maybe not so lively first thing after a disco-styley party, but still).

The speakers I had the pleasure of seeing were:
Erik Natzke
Joshua Davis
Robert Hodgin
Brendan Dawes
Craig Swann
Carlos Ulloa
Hoss Gifford
Aral Balkan
Branden Hall
Grant Skinner
Keith Peters
Tink
Jared Tarbell
Ted Patrick
André Michelle

…and a little bit of Mario Klingemann at the 20 minute / 3 speaker session that they arranged last minute.

If you want to see what each speaker had to say, visit Dan’s blog cause I just snuck a peek over his shoulder to see him writing nice little details about each session we saw, so I’ll won’t go much into that and actually get some sleep while he does all the extra bits! Woohoo!!

But from creating insanely beautiful globes of light moving to audio created straight from numbers and code you couldn’t have been disappointed or uninspired.

My favourite quote from all of the FOTB’s sessions would have to be André’s answer to overrunning into lunch time and when being asked to wrap it up replied with “I’m not hungy when I listen to techno”. Queue well deserved applause. 😀

Already looking forward to the next flash conference, and hopefully inbetween now and then I’ve actually sat myself down and put some of what I’ve learned into practice.

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Import CSV to SQL Server Database

Quick steps to importing a csv to a sql server database. There are a couple first steps incase you have an existing database that you should make a backup copy of first or you can skip right to step number 3 which highlights the import itself.

1. Creating a backup of existing table

The code to take a table and back it up in case you do something wrong!

SELECT *
INTO tbl_mytable20070110
FROM tbl_mytable

TRUNCATE TABLE tbl_mytable;

That will take all of your existing table data and put it in a safe backup file. The truncate function then erases all of your tbl_mytable data, ready for the new data to be entered.

2. Conforming the CSV to date compliancy

Ensure the dates of your csv are in yyyy-mm-dd format to avoid any global date format issues.

3. Import the CSV data to the SQL database

  • Open SQL server and right click on the database table section.
  • Choose All Tasks > Import Data > Next
  • Choose Text from the drop down as the import file type and then browse to the location of your CSV file.

    • Click for larger example of choosing text

  • Ensure delimited option is chose and that ‘first row has column names is ticked. Hit next

    • Click for larger example of choosing file format

  • Choose Comma delimited and hit next.
  • For the destination source, make sure Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server is chosen. I used the SQL server authentication. Choose the Database you wish to import the data too and hit next.

    • Click for larger example of choosing destination

  • In the source tables and views window, select destination and choose the tbl_mytable that you will be importing the data to.
  • Click transform (the … button)
  • Ensure that all of the Source items correctly match the Destination. Change as necessary.

    • Click for larger example of column mapping

  • Un-tick Enable identity insert and hit OK.
  • Choose run immediately if not already chosen and hit next and then finish.

Now this is the way that some CSV imports will work, you may have to adjust if you do not use column names in your excel/CSV document for example.

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Growing from seeds : Part two…

Seeds in warm water overnight to encourage germination If you’ve read part one of “Growing from seeds” I’m sure you’ve been left cliff-hanging wondering what has happened to the seeds since their overnight warm water bath! Ok, so maybe not quite cliff-hanging but here’s the end to the seed planting opening scene nonetheless.

The sweetpeas and the lupins experienced a nice warm water bath over night to encourage germination, so in the morning I positioned myself in the usual ‘rainy-day, dry porch’ spot and started putting the seeds into the propagator. Sweet pea seeds in the propagator before covering with a layer of compost I’ve been using general purpose compost, which indications on the bag it is ideal for baskets, cuttings and seeds. I’ve recorded which colour sweetpea seeds were put which cells as I’m curious to see if it impacts which colour they ultimately grow as. I had yellow, brown and black seeds. Hopefully we’ll see soon!

Both of the propagators are now taking up the spare room’s windowsill and they all have different germination expectancy dates, with the soonest being 10 days (sweet peas) so hopefully in 10 days times I’ll be seeing some green work its way out from the compost.

I found a good reference guide here as well: (For sweetpeas)

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Growing from seeds

Ok, this is my first attempt at growing from seeds. I’ve read up on germination and stratification and all sorts of general tips on growing from seeds… so I should be fine right? Dragged Dan out again earlier today to buy the seeds (it’s a rainy day and I was garden-eager but couldn’t do anything outside today, damn rain), so we went in search of Haskin’s near Ferndown. It’s a nice garden centre, quite big (not as big as Cadbury’s near Bristol) and has a good variety of plants, bulbs, seeds and garden tools. After being very tempted to just spend the extra money and buy the already grown plants we wandered over to the seed section. Firstly, are seed sections always terribly un-organised? Why don’t they just put them in sections, Annuals in one, Perrenials in another and then maybe alphabetically? Oh well…

So we rumaged through the different seeds, seeing which ones we could plant now and give me sprouts before I got bored and dumped them in the bin. We came home with four different seed packets and the ‘Mega value budget propagation 3-pack’, oh yes, no expense spared here! The seed packages consist of Canterbury Bells - Part of the Campanula mix of seedsCampanula (a mix of blue and white rockery plants), Achillea ‘Summer Berries’ hybrid, perennial sweet pea and some lupin ‘gallery mix’ seeds. I found myself a nice dry bit of ground under the porch to sit on and set about putting the compost in the propagator and then planting the Campanula and the Achillea seeds, the other two flower seeds have to be soaked in warm water overnight before being sowed apparently. I’m now thinking, yet again, that someone should really create some sort of microwavable plant. Put your seeds in and 30 seconds later, whala, big thick plant with gorgeous flowers… would be nice for someone as impatient as me…

Seeds from Campanula Rockery Mix and Achillea Summer Berries Hybrid at Day 1

Here are the seeds as they are now. Sitting happily in the windowsill, in a propagator (I took the plastic lid off for the picture) to keep the moisture in. I expect I’ll be happier with the Campanula mix as it takes 14-28 days to germinate while the Achillea can take 1-3 months. I’ll be checking them everyday to make sure the compost is moist but not wet, using a spray bottle to keep from drowning them and in turn causing them to mold.