Coin Shrinker!

Today's totally rad technology is the amazing coin shrinker. That's right, a machine that can actually shrink a quarter down to the size of a dime.

How do they do it? Simple, they just pass about 1 million amps of electrical current through the coin. To put things in perspective, that is enough power to run a large city. The whole process takes approximately 25 millionths of a second. The coin only shrinks in diameter. It gets thicker, so the actual weight of the coin doesn't change. If this thing were a Master Card commercial it would run something like this:

Coin: 25¢
Electricity Bill: $1,000,000*
Ruining a perfectly good quarter just to impress your physicist friends while you hang out in you mom's basement: priceless

* I'm sure its not that high, but anything lower would lessen the comedic effect.

The salivating coolness factor on this is way up there. I don't even know why. My theory is that is a guy thing. Try asking your wife if you can install one in your basement. You should refrain from using phrases like "high-velocity metal forming", and "bullet-proof blast case".
I'm pretty sure the WAF on this is extremely low.

I'm sure that there are millions of industrial uses for this kind of technology. I even believe that we can end world hunger. Follow me here.

You can cook food with electricity. When I was in college I had a physics professor who showed us how to cook a hotdog with nothing more than a 12volt outlet and two pieces of wire. The shrinking process uses electricity and makes things thicker. Therefore we should be able to go from a couple of pieces of steakums to a 1 in. thick steak(medium well) in 25 millionths of a second. Talk about fast food.

Corrolation: There is something to be said about throwing massive amounts of effort to accomplish a goal in a relatively small amount of time. However, the end product isn't necessarily any better because of it.

StarTeam Productivity Hints

If you've spent 5 minutes in a room with me, you know that I'm almost fanatical about keyboard shortcuts. Don't get me wrong, I love the mouse. I need it to play UT. However, when it comes to just about everything else, I always feel more productive the less I use the mouse. Micheal Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers and part-time productivity guru, once blogged:

"I have never met anyone really productive who relied on the mouse. It’s just too inefficient. ...few people take the time to really learn the standard operating system shortcuts (Mac or Windows). If you haven’t learned these already, I would urge you to do so. Over time, you will see a major boost in your productivity."

So today I was asked indirectly about how I use StarTeam. I was able to mention a shortcut or two, but there just aren't that many. StarTeam is a great system, but the UI is grotesque and not very customizable. And yet I can get 99% of what I need done accomplished without the mouse. Here is a list of shortcuts that really increase my productivity in StarTeam:

NAVIGATION
Ctrl+F6 - cycle through open projects
Ctrl+Shift+F6 - reverse cycle through open projects
Alt+W, num - Takes you to the project by its number in the Window menu
Tab - cycle through open panes
Shift+Tab - reverse cycle through panes
Ctrl+Tab - cycle through tabs in current pane
Ctrl+Shift+Tab - reverse cycle through tabs in current pane

FILES
Alt + i, i - Add files
Ctrl+g - Check out files
Ctrl+i - Check in files
Ctrl+l - Lock File

When you check in or add a file, StarTeam requires that you fill in a comment on the Check In dialog. I often just use a space. Pressing the Enter key doesn't close the dialog. It acts like a word processor and sends you to the next line. To combat this, I use the following combination of keystrokes. I don't even think about them anymore. Its all muscle memory now.

Ctrl+i, [space], Shift+Tab, Shift+Tab, [space]

One of my biggest problems with the StarTeam UI is that there is a button on the toolbar with no matching menu item or available shortcut. Of course, I'm talking about the "All Descendants" button. It's the only thing I haven't figured out how to do without the mouse. This has disturbed me to the point of insanity. There. I am insane now.

If you know how to accomplish this, please let me know.

Lasik @ Home!

Are you tired of wearing those glasses? Do you think that Lasik surgery is way out of your price range? Well let me introduce you to the Scal-Pal. That's right, for the measely price of $99.95, you too can reap the benefits of expensice Lasik surgery in the privacy and comfort of your home.

The Complete LASIK@Home Kit (patent pending) includes everything you need to complete the procedure.

• Scal-Pal™ Hand-Operated Combination Femtosecond/Excimer Laser - A real laser!
• Mild sedative (diazepam 4mg) - I'd pay the $99.95 for the sedative alone.
• No-Blink™ brand Eye Drops - Don't Blink!!! More on that later.
• Detailed Instructions and QuickStart Guide - Just four easy steps.
• Protective Post-Op Sleep Mask - You're going to need a lot of sleep after this.
  

From what I can tell, these guys are serious. However, you won't find me shooting a laser into my own eye. What if I had an itch? As you can see in the below instructions, which are in cartoon form, even blinking can be disastrous. I like how every page has a footnote that reads "*This statement has not been evaluated by the FDA."



The instructions also show the added benefits of diy Lasik. Apparently, the laser shoots past your eye and into your brain. As it etches information into your gray matter, you will be granted enhanced archery, piloting, romantic and artistic skills.

I think my biggest question is, what do you do with the laser after you're done with your self-surgery. I'll bet you can cut stuff with it. That would be cool. Do you have any ideas?

Correlation: When you are trying to implement a process change without the proper support, DON'T BLINK!!!

*This post has not been evaluated by the FDA.

Little known Sql String functions

We are all familiar with SQL string functions like LEFT and SUBSTRING. Here are some of the lesser known Sql string functions:

PATINDEX lets you search a string for the first instance that matches a given pattern. The pattern must begin and end with % signs. So the following code selects all the last names in the table that contain the pattern 'ack'.

SELECT LastName FROM tblPersonnel
WHERE PATINDEX('%ack%', LastName) > 0

STUFF inserts a string into another string. It can delete a specified number of characters from the start position before inserting the string. Here is some code that starts at the second letter in the string, deletes the next two characters and then inserts the phrase 'ack'.

SELECT STUFF(LastName, 2, 2, 'ack') FROM tblPersonnel

SOUNDEX and DIFFERENCE can by used to compare how much two strings sound alike. SOUNDEX takes a string and returns a four-character that can be used by DIFFERENCE to determine if two strings sound alike. Here's and example:

SELECT SOUNDEX('Barnett') --> B653
SELECT LastName FROM tblPersonnel
WHERE DIFFERENCE('Barnett', LastName) < 4

Notice that I didn't have to use the SOUNDEX function in the difference parameters.


Here are two where I can't think of a reason to use:
REPLICATE returns a string that is composed by repeating a string for a set number of iterations. Heres a sample:

SELECT REPLICATE('A', 5) --> 'AAAAA'

REVERSE produces a mirrored image of the string. So if you want to return all the names in the table spelled backwards, you could use:

SELECT REVERSE(LastName) FROM tblPersonnel

Like I said, I can't think of any real world examples where those last two would be useful, but they are cool anyway. If you can come up with an example, let me know.

I pwn'd it!

I stumbled across a highly addictive brain teaser from Cambrian House titled PWNIT. It is aimed at coders and technologists and was a lot of fun. It took me about 4 hours, but I got through it all on my own. Oh, and with a little help from the Great Google. I didn't ask the Great Google for the solution, I just looked up reference materials, like the Hebrew alphabet.

When you complete all the puzzles you get to download this graphic to prove that you solved it. Yay me!

I have to give Cambrian House some credit, this is a pretty cool attention grabbing device. I even like their business plan. I guess a bunch of programmer types got sick of their jobs and decided to start their own software company. But wait, they didn't have any idea what software to create. So here is their scheme. They solicit cool and innovative ideas from you, the web audience. You provide them with a great idea and they will make it happen. And if by some chance your idea actually makes some money, they will give you some of the profits. This is brilliant. I think Microsoft should adopt this model as well. I have some great ideas for them and they owe me a refund for all the zeros that they have sold me anyway.

Rounding in .NET

I was having an issue on at work, where I needed to determine how tall to make a Farpoint Spread row to display some text. I would calculate the size of some text to be entered into a table cell. Then I would take the length of the text, based on the font and divide it by the width of the cell and voila, I should have the number of lines that need to be displayed. However, I was having a problem with some of my tests. About half of the time, I ended up missing a line.

As I looked closer I noticed that all of the variables in my calculation were integers. A ha! .Net was rounding stuff for me, using its default Banker's Rounding system.

If you are unfamiliar with Banker's Rounding, or aren't a banker, then this way of rounding may seem insane to you. Let me explain. In Banker's Rounding everything works just like in regular rounding, except when dealing with halves. So anything less than .5 will always round down and anything greater than .5 will always round up. But when we have exactly .5 then we round to the closest even number. You are probably used to .5 always rounding up. This is a little known, yet extremely important behavior and I hope to have saved you some heartache. Lets see some Bankers Rounding in action:

1.49 ==> 1
1.50 ==> 2
2.50 ==> 2
2.51 ==> 3

Back to my issue. I needed a way to always round up, no matter what the decimal. Enter the Math.Ceiling function. The Math.Ceiling function returns the next whole number greater than the decimal that you started with. Here it is in action:

System.Math.Ceiling(1.0) ==> 1
System.Math.Ceiling(1.3) ==> 2

Alternatively, if you want to always round down, you could use the Math.Floor function. It returns the next lowest whole number from the starting decimal.

System.Math.Floor(2.0) ==> 2
System.Math.Floor(1.9) ==> 1

Internet Explorer's Progress Bar doesn't stop when the page is finished loading.

I have an asp.net page that is loaded with Farpoint controls and I use Anthem to make callbacks everytime something is changed in any of the cells. So every once and while, I experience an issue where a callback starts up the progress bar. Really, this isn't a problem. The problem is that the progress bar continues to progress slowly, even after the page is complete and ready to use. This gives the users that the page is still doing something and they should wait, a long time, before they start making more edits.

A quick look in google reveiled that the Internet Explorer progress bar was apparently developed by a group of snails, who are not only slow but also of subpar intelligence. At least that's what the community thinks. Google also reveiled this support document. Even Farpoint recognizes this problem and you can read about it here. Here's the gist. When you dynamically insert behaviors in your page, the progress bar gets dazed and confused. If you use the Farpoint spread, you know that this happens a lot. We can set the progress bar back on the right track by writing something to the status bar. I'm guessing that this resets the whole footer in IE.

I am now reseting the status bar on the window.load event and everytime I handle a callback in Anthem. It seems to have corrected my issue.

Reign in the track wheel in IE

I work on a lot of ASPX pages and IE is currently the default browser for the enterprise. I'm sure that you have workied with IE before too. Here's a little quirk that has been especially troublesome for my team and I lately.

Have you ever clicked on a dropdown box, made a selection and then moved the mouse out of the dropdown box and started to scroll the page with your mouse's track wheel? Then you know that in IE the page doesn't scroll, the items in the dropdown do. This can be a real headache since everytime the dropdown list item changes it fires off an event. And God help you if that event is tied to an AJAX callback.

Luckily, there is a way around this. A buddy of mine on the team found this article to explain everything. You just have to handle the 'onmousewheel' event. See the sample:

<select name="mylist" onmousewheel="return(false);">

Note: You don't have to worry about this in FireFox

Cellular Squirrel!

I have received several positive comments about the Badonkadonk post, so I thought I might make a segment out of it. From here on out, every Friday, I will try to bring you yet another demonstration of technology run amuck. And to keep it relevant, I'll draw a correlation of some sort. I have yet to come up with a good name. Maybe my loyal readers will offer some suggestions (this is a blatent attemp to get you to comment on this post). Now onto the good stuff.

Before we get to the finished product, let's take a look at the underlying technology which is really cool. Stefan Marti at the MIT Media Lab has developed an intermediary conversation agent for use with your cellphone. Basically it acts like a call screener. When you get an incoming call the agent picks up the line and interrogates the caller. If the caller is on a whitelist and they don't seem too agitated, then the agent will alert you that you have a call that you want to take. It's like having your own personal secretary. I've always wanted one of those.

Now, let's get creepy. As with all good projects, if you get too intense you run the risk of going insane. Case in point, Apocalypse Now. I think the designers walked right up to the line and boldly crossed it without looking back. Let's listen into the designers as they deal with how to package their new technology.

[Designer One]: We've created a cool technology that will forever change the way we use our cell phones!
[Designer Two]: Brilliant!
[Designer One]: Look I'm getting a call right now. Hello?... Hi Timmy... You did what?... I thought I told you never to play with the beakers... but... alright, I'll clean it up when I get there. <click> Looks like we're going to need another Timmy!
[Designer Two]: Brilliant!
[Designer One]: I know, lets take our new technology and stuff it into an animitronic plush toy fashioned in the image of a cute, cuddly squirrel. Except we'll give the squirrel red, beady eyes and make it shake uncontrollably while we say scary things to Timmy through it.
[Designer Two]: Brilliant!
[Designer One]: HAHAHAHAHA... (Maniacal laughter lasting well into the night.)

And so was born the Cellular Squirrel. Take a look at the pictures, it actually has blood red, beady eyes. There is also a plan for a bunny version.

Todays Correlation: As developers we often take a cool technology and wrap it in a cute and cuddly UI. Maybe I'll give my next UI beady eyes.

Music and Productivity

Last night our team got together in a war room type setup where we all converged into one room with our laptops to help solve some of our outstanding issues with our current project. One of the guys used his laptop for a jukebox so we would have some background noise. It was a pretty eclectic collection and I enjoyed all of the selections, especially Queensrÿche's Silent Lucidity. Queensrÿche Rules!!! And as much as I like the Beastie Boys, I couldn't help feel more relaxed and focused during songs like Silent Lucidity. So it got me thinking about music's affect on my mood, concentration and productivity.

Can music actually make you more productive or help your concentration? In his article, "Does listening to music improve productivity", Michael Setton shows that it does. He sites a study that showed people who listened to music while they worked actually increased productivity by 10%. Listening to music with an upbeat rhythm can reduce stress hormone levels by as much as 41%. Apparently even cows produce more milk when listening to the right music.

In the spirit of Listibles, I have compiled my top 5 Artist/Albums for increasing my concentration and productivity while I work. They are all What are yours?

Chroma Key - Dead Air For Radios
OSI - OSI
Tool - Aenima
Pink FLoyd - The Delicate Sound of Thunder (I know its a double cd)
Porcupine Tree - Stupid Dream