Output Stream of Consciousness

This is pretty simple to accomplish, though how exactly to do it can be hard to find. Quite simply, you add OUTPUT to your parameter lists, on both your procedure definition and your actual call, like so: Defining: CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.TestValue… more »

We had one big hiccup moving from IIS 6.0 to the 7.0 version. In the Web.Config, IIS 7.0 no longer likes to have an httpHandlers section. We had: <system.web>   <httpHandlers>    <remove verb="*" path="*.asmx"/… more »

For a fan of biology, as well as of puzzle games in general, this is one of the most amazing things I have seen in a long time. Now, we already have things like Folding@Home, which is a distributed project that attempts to find low-energy conformation… more »

Imagine this scenario: you have downloaded a particular project that has source code, and it's almost exactly what you want, but it's missing a few things, and it's not under version control (for example, the projects on SourceForge) So, you go off and… more »

I took a half-day holiday to go to the Calgary Zoo with my wife, my baby and some friends. At the gate, when I presented our three membership cards, I and I alone was hit with my card 'coming up with an error'. Apparently, when the zoo switched its sy… more »

If you go throw a function into Oracle, and it's wrong, e.g. CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION Banana IS -- Oops, no return! BEGIN RETURN SUBSTUR('Banana',2,5); -- Oops, misspelled! END; You will get no warnings about this in most tools until it come… more »

If you are trying to get a time into a DateTime from a string, it's relatively easy: DateTime dt = DateTime.Parse(inputText,CultureInfo.CurrentCulture, DateTimeStyles.NoCurrentDateDefault); The NoCurrentDateDefault is pretty important. Otherwise… more »

I wish I had an original cite for this bit of Javascript that my wife found posted in a Fark forum, but it's fantastic fun, so I'm posting about it regardless. To operate it, you copy the entire paragraph below, navigate to a web page (Fark works pret… more »

If you're considering using uniqueidentifiers on your tables, particularly as primary keys, then you might want to upgrade your SQL Server or just check your SQL carefully if you're still running SQL Server 2000. In particular, doing a COUNT(field) on… more »

I have been using Rossen Assenov's pseudo-generics in Delphi for quite a while now to great effect. (See here for downloads) In an effort to more properly ".NET-ify" things, I have been converting Delphi unit names into namespace-scoped unit names. Fo… more »

XSL or Extensible Stylesheet Language can be a bit mind-bending. I have essentially come up to speed on it in a week to use it in the generation of migration scripts. It is essentially a big list of rules, calls and writing commands for matching XML. It… more »

My software turned ten today. I had mentioned that my software would turn ten this year to a coworker of mine, and he watched the date listed in the header of my oldest source code file like a hawk, or an egret, and sent out our traditional birthday c… more »

It's been a while since I've run a forum. I used to run a gardening forum, a couple of hosts ago. I ran the forum under the fairly popular phpBB forum software. It was pretty easy to install, but some of the features made it hard to maintain. A dearth… more »

I'm making a card game - a physical one, not a computer one, so I decided to give myself both a learning experience and a tool to help print out the cards by pulling down Turbo Delphi for .NET at home and try to program the entire thing with the .NET-onl… more »

I was helping a co-worker puzzle out an algorithm or two today, and he got me to go back through the steps I took to come up with an appropriate algorithm. It's a skill I have that comes from the combination of experience and a little bit of ability, an… more »