ArchiveJuly 2004

The Rule of Four

Just borrowed The Rule of Four from the library. I’m hooked.
I’m told it is similar, but better, to The Da Vinci code which I loved.
Michele started reading it aswell, and because we are both hooked we had to go and buy a copy. We spent the afternoon together reading it in a cafe.

STREXTRACT()

I’m almost too embarassed to mention this… I found a VFP function STREXTRACT() for extracting text from a string. Yep, I have the following code all over the place: nStart = AT(‘Starting text’, cString) nEnd = AT(‘End text’, cString) cSubString = SUBSTR(cString, nStart, nEnd – nStart) which can now be replaced with: cSubString = STREXTRACT(cString...

Moving back end rules to the middle tier

Traditionally I have been putting a lot of the admin business logic (eg auditing, recent changes logs) in the back end, but I’m wondering if I should be moving it to the middle tier.   Let me give you a simple example. In SQL I log the last change to a record in a field using an update trigger that checks SUSER_SNAME(). Previously (read client-server projects) this was fine. But...

Too much doing not enough finishing

The usual problem – why can’t people finish projects?   At work we do so much great stuff: clever design, efficient development, reasonable testing, but then we drop the ball when it comes to managing the client. A client rang me to say they were disappointed with one of the projects we did recently – it was all going fantastically until the final release. It wasn’t...

Steve Vai concert

Steve Vai played Sydney last night. Awesome show. This is the third time I’ve seen him in Sydney. Billy was on bass, Tony MacAlpine on guitars/keyboards, Dave on guitars and Jeremy on drums. Tight band. Nice show. Come back anytime Steve.

The Power of Balance

During my holidays I had a chance to read a few books. Some were on time management (eg Brian Tracy books) and others were on Alexander Technique (I’ve been taking lessons to help with my back problems – yep those long hours in front of a monitor take their toll if you don’t look after your posture).   Anyway, the interesting thing is that time management books focus on...

OzFox 2004

OzFox 2004 preparation   I’ve been doing some more organising for OzFox this last week after returning from holidays. Things are coming along nicely. Now that the admin stuff is mostly sorted I am starting to organise the fun stuff eg the Sydney tourist attractions for our overseas visitors, conference dinners, bonus talks etc. I am really looking forward to this conference. It is also...

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