Usability: Open New Windows for PDF and other Non-Web Documents

From Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox:

Summary: When using PC-native file formats such as PDF or spreadsheets, users feel like they're interacting with a PC application. Because users are no longer browsing a website, they shouldn't be given a browser UI.

Via Gadgetopia

codefetch{

Bad logo, good code search site: codefetch{

Essentially a search engine for code that is included as samples in programming books. Via Larkware

SQL: Splitting a Text Value Into a Table

...And here is the SplitText function modified to use the NumberTable function:

--Splits a delimited text into individual items
--From http://www.sommarskog.se/arrays-in-sql.html#tblnum-unlimited
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.SplitText(
  @List  ntext,
  @Del nchar(1) = N','
)
RETURNS @T TABLE (Item nvarchar(4000)) 
AS
BEGIN
  DECLARE @slices TABLE (slice nvarchar(4000) NOT NULL)
  DECLARE @slice nvarchar(4000), @Textpos int, @maxlen int, @stoppos int, @maxnum int
  
  SELECT @Textpos = 1, @maxlen = 4000 - 2, @maxnum = DATALENGTH(@List) / 2
  WHILE DATALENGTH(@List) / 2 - (@Textpos - 1) >= @maxlen
  BEGIN
     SELECT @slice = SUBSTRING(@List, @Textpos, @maxlen)
     SELECT @stoppos = @maxlen - CHARINDEX(@Del, REVERSE(@slice))
     INSERT @slices (slice) VALUES (@Del + LEFT(@slice, @stoppos) + @Del)
     SELECT @Textpos = @Textpos - 1 + @stoppos + 2   -- On the other side of the delimiter.
  END
  INSERT @slices (slice) VALUES (@Del + SUBSTRING(@List, @Textpos, @maxlen) + @Del)
  
  INSERT @T (Item)
  SELECT x.Item
  FROM (
    SELECT Item = LTRIM(RTRIM(SUBSTRING(s.slice, N.Number + 1, 
      CHARINDEX(@Del, s.slice, N.Number + 1) - N.Number - 1)))
    FROM dbo.NumberTable(1, @maxnum) N
      INNER JOIN @slices s ON N.Number <= LEN(s.slice) - 1
        AND SUBSTRING(s.slice, N.Number, 1) = @Del
  ) AS x
  
  RETURN
END

SQL: Fast String Split Function Using Sequence Table

Erland Somarskog has some excellent articles on a few interesting SQL topics. One is titled Arrays and Lists in SQL Server, in which he covers various ways of parsing delimited strings into tables. The following is a minor modification of one of the functions he describes; I changed it from an inline function to a table function to allow setting the max value for my NumberTable function. This also allows me to create the @WrappedList parameter which simplifies the logic some:

--Fast Split function using a sequence table (provided by the UDF dbo.NumberTable)
--Created 08/29/05 by Oskar Austegard from Erland Sommarskog's code at
--http://www.sommarskog.se/arrays-in-sql.html#tblnum-core
CREATE FUNCTION Split (
  @List varchar(7998), --The delimited list
  @Del char(1) = ',' --The delimiter
) 
RETURNS @T TABLE (Item varchar(7998)) 
AS
BEGIN
  DECLARE @WrappedList varchar(8000), @MaxItems int
  SELECT @WrappedList = @Del + @List + @Del, @MaxItems = LEN(@List)

  INSERT INTO @T (Item)
  SELECT SUBSTRING(@WrappedList, Number + 1, CHARINDEX(@Del, @WrappedList, Number + 1) - Number - 1)
  FROM dbo.NumberTable(1, @MaxItems) n
  WHERE n.Number <= LEN(@WrappedList) - 1
    AND SUBSTRING(@WrappedList, n.Number, 1) = @Del

  RETURN
END

SQL: Efficient Sequential Number Table Function

Starting with the Microsoft article from Dr. Tom's Workshop: Generating Sequence Numbers, I modified the code to fit our SQL standards, gave it (what I think is) a more logical name and added a @Min parameter. Figuring out how to properly increment the values when the table didn't start at 1 and handling values near the limits of int was a bit tricky...

--Creates a table of sequential numbers, useful for all sorts of things
--Created 08/26/05 by Oskar Austegard from article at 
--http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnsqlpro03/html/sp03k1.asp
--Limits: @Min and @Max must be between -2147483647 and 2147483647, including.
--If @Max <= @Min, only a single record with @Min is created
ALTER FUNCTION dbo.NumberTable (@Min int, @Max int) 
RETURNS @T TABLE (Number int NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY)
AS
BEGIN
  -- Seed the table with the min value
  INSERT @T VALUES (@Min)
  --Loop until all the rows are created, inserting ever more records for each iteration (1, 2, 4, etc)
  WHILE @@ROWCOUNT > 0
  INSERT @T 
  --Get the next values by adding the current max - start value + 1 to each existing number
  --need to calculate increment value first to avoid arithmetic overflow near limits of int
  SELECT t.Number + (x.MaxNumber - @Min + 1)
  FROM @T t
    CROSS JOIN (SELECT MaxNumber = MAX(Number) FROM @T) x --Current max
  WHERE
    --Do not exceed the Max - shift the increment to the right side to take advantage of index
    t.Number <= @Max - (x.MaxNumber - @Min + 1)
  RETURN
END

PromptSQL - IntelliSense add in for MS SQL tools

PromptSQL Online Demonstrations

If this works as advertised, it'd be easily worth the 25 bucks.

More on Ethanol

The Case for Ethanol by Anna Halpern-Lande.

"...in the next 10 years, ethanol feedstock will move from harvested corns and sugars to the vast amounts of cellulosic waste that currently are landfilled or burned. Cellulosic material -- such as rice straw and hulls, wheat straw, forestry waste, and corn stover -- are all currently problematic for farmers and foresters. However, these materials can be transformed using enzymatic processes into sugars and ligin. The sugars can be processed into ethanol, biodiesel, or other specialty chemicals, and the ligin can be used as a clean fuel source, potentially allowing the ethanol facility to use zero net energy in its operations.

"Using cellulosic waste will be critical if ethanol markets are to mature. The recently passed energy bill creates a nationally mandated threshold to 7.5 billion gallons, which would result in 5% of gasoline displaced by ethanol. If, as some estimate, our capacity to produce corn-based ethanol will max out at around 10 billion gallons, we simply will not have enough corn. Corn stover -- the stalk and leaves from corn -- along would add 7 to 12 billion gallons of ethanol capacity."

So the optimistic estimate is for corn-based ethanol (including stover) to reduce our gasoline consumption by 15%. That doesn't sound like a whole hell of a lot, but I guess it's a step in the right direction. Hopefully, as the industry matures, the tax subsidies will diminish. Yeah, right. Not as long as Iowa is one of the first primaries/caucuses...

GData: An Online MD5 Hash Database

A very good reason to not use a single common word for your password; they are that much more succeptible to a dictionary attack: GData: An Online MD5 Hash Database contains over 12 million words/phrases and their MD5 hash sequences.

For example, e338bc584bd1c7f87b8a5bf70a3cf80e was easily "cracked" as buddy in just 0.0036 seconds, and 9095eae491e5c0c17a2ef89477393ec4 just as easily looked up as puppy. On the other hand, de7b21110b84f3b84bc47b09b6d9475f, or the hash of buddy puppy, was not "cracked".

I'm not sure if this effort deserves a 35f5b296537c9229765834b5d2f37b34 or a 3021e68df9a7200135725c6331369a22.

ReShaper 2 (build 205) is out

I'd rather not program in Visual Studio without ReSharper, but version 2 has so far been a pain in the ass. The bug-queue is now up to over 9000 (I think it started in the upper 6000s before the release of build 200) - I don't know how JetBrains manages to slog through the bug-reports AND get any of the bugs fixed.

Build 205

• Bugfixes
• New refactorings: Make method non-static, Safe delete

Note: Uninstall any of the previous builds prior to installing Build 205.

Get it here

ASP.NET Podcast Show #11 - Intro to Ajax and the Ajax Library for .NET

To read/listen to at some point: ASP.NET Podcast Show #11 - Intro to Ajax and the Ajax Library for .NET

PadLeft and PadRight SQL Functions

--Left-pads a string with a specified character to achieve a desired length
--Created 08/15/05 by Oskar Austegard
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.PadLeft(
 @String varchar(100), --Input string to be padded
 @Length int,          --Length of final string
 @PadChar char(1)      --Padding character
)
RETURNS varchar(100)
AS
BEGIN
 WHILE LEN(@String + 'z') <= @Length
  SET @String = @PadChar + @String
 RETURN @String
END

GO

--Right-pads a string with a specified character to achieve a desired length
--Created 08/15/05 by Oskar Austegard
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.PadRight(
 @String varchar(100), --Input string to be padded
 @Length int,          --Length of final string
 @PadChar char(1)      --Padding character
)
RETURNS varchar(100)
AS
BEGIN
 WHILE LEN(@String + 'z') <= @Length
  SET @String = @String + @PadChar
 RETURN @String
END

World's Largest Solar Array to use Stirling Engine

We could use more of these: World's Largest Solar Array to use Stirling Engine

Uh-oh

New Scientist News - Climate warning as Siberia melts:

"An area stretching for a million square kilometres across the permafrost of western Siberia is turning into a mass of shallow lakes as the ground melts, according to Russian researchers just back from the region.

The sudden melting of a bog the size of France and Germany combined could unleash billions of tonnes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere."

IBM's SoulPad

An IBM project called SoulPad looks interesting - it is the natural extension of emulators and virtual machines that lets a user suspend his (or her) current desktop session (or "soul", as IBM's researchers dubbed it) while working, store the "soul" on some portable device, then restore the "soul" on a different pc, which can have a completely different hardware setup, OS, etc.

• Article: Pocket-sized computer 'soul' developed (NewScientist.com)
• Website: http://www.research.ibm.com/WearableComputing/SoulPad/soulpad.html
• Video: SoulPadVideo.wmv (14 MB)

HTML Table Filter ala Excel

WoutL has a nice little Javascript feature demonstrated at The Code Project: HTML Table Filter ala Excel

Now what would be even nicer would be to turn this script into a firefox extension that would allow a user to filter any table on any web-page...

Also (without looking at the code) it seems you should be able to apply something similar to this to sort tables on the client?

More on hybrid/electric cars

From the GREEN CAR JOURNAL ONLINE:

Paul MacCready Speaks Out ...on efficiencies, energy, and why we need electric cars

Send free SMS at Vazu

Might need this at some point: Send free SMS at Vazu