A Plea for Plain English – Tony Davis’s “A Plea for Plain English” rings home with me. Far too much writing is full of heavy, pompous words used purely to make the author feel smarter. Joseph Conrad – one of the greatest writers of the English language – was not a native speaker. Yet he wrote with a simplicity, grace, and style that is still unequaled. While we all can’t be Joseph Conrad, we can all strive to write in clear, concise, readable prose. Technical writing doesn’t need to be dry, writing effective prose can be just as much an art form as creating a brilliant short story, novel, painting, photograph, or song.

I’ve been getting a lot more interested in mathematics. Not just how they related to computers, but also how mathematics relate to design. Design, art, and aesthetics are partially governed by universal principles. There are ratios that are more visually pleasing simply because we find them in nature. Being aware of these ratios helps us create effective designs that draw in the reader and hold them to the content.

B-movies. I watch a lot of old slasher, exploitation, b-movies.

Flash, iPad, Standards – Jeffrey Zeldman talks about why the total lack of Flash on the iPad is a good thing: it provides an incredibly compelling, public, reason for designers and developers to abandon proprietary formats like Flash and Silverlight and focus on open standards. Some people would argue that a lack of Flash would kill the device but on the flip side what can you do in Flash that people need to do that you can’t do with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS? Combine that with the in browser relational data storage that HTML5 provides and there is no reason to use a proprietary graphics engine apart from vector graphics bullshittery/professional masturbation.

SQL Server

• Suggested Max Memory Settings for SQL Server 2005/2008 – Windows Live – Ever wonder how to set up the max memory settings for SQL Server? On our production instances we use fixed settings, but I'm going to revisit those settings now that I'm armed with this information.
• How Normal(ized) Should You Be? – At what point is normalization too much normalization? Buck has an answer, in a way.
• The Rambling DBA: Jonathan Kehayias : The benefits of attending PASS realized! – And this is why PASS is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
• Throw Your MONEY Away – The MONEY data type can cause all kinds of weirdness in the database. Maybe it's time to reconsider what we're using to store cash.

Development

• Visual Studio Color Theme Generator – This is amazing.
• How We Use Kanban Board. The Real Example. – There are a lot of articles out there about using Kanban boards. This is a real world example. I love seeing people put agile practices to work AND reporting about how well they're working for them.
• It’s Okay To Write Unit Tests – Unit testing is important, we all claim to know it, but why do so few people write unit tests? Justin Etheredge looks at why people aren't writing unit tests and how we can help ourselves.

Stuff & Things

• An illustrated guide to seven ways to kill an idea – Hilariously true and wonderful art to boot.
• oh how i love an elk – say what now?
• A Softer World: 496 – The holidays are such a strange time. And by strange I mean very confusing.
• A Softer World: 499 – Happiness is made out of candy.
• LEARN SOMETHING EVERY DAY – Now you can learn something everyday accompanied by a cute illustration.
• Zombie Designers « Trent Walton – Some great, humorous, design tips in here. Funny thing is, they apply to just about any profession.
• Insight: UI that looked sexy in Photoshop almost always looks overdesigned – Keep it simple, kids. I try to do UI design (what little I do anymore) on nothing but a whiteboard, post-its, or with only shades of grey in HTML. No fancy Photoshop for this guy.
• The Looming Collapse of FedEx – Dematerialization 2 | Quiet Babylon – Strange thoughts musing on the future of commerce, transportation, and mail.
• Mac Buyer’s Guide: Know When to Buy Your Mac, iPod or iPhone – Apple is pretty steady, statistically speaking, on how frequently they rev their hardware.
• Hecq Vs Exillion – Spheres Of Fury on Vimeo – Not 100% sure what's going on here, but I love it.
• cyoa – A visual examination of the Choose Your Own Adventure books. It's notable 1) because seriously who the hell would do this? and 2) the illustrations are amazing.

Also, November 1st marks the beginning of National Novel Writing Month. So, if you’ve had a story inside you waiting to get out, wait no further!

SQL Server

• Find the complete call tree for a stored procedure – Linchi Shea shares a perl script that will attempt to determine the full call stack of a single stored procedure.
• SQL Server gets an ANSI compliant unique index … sort of – Using filtered indexes, it is now possible to get SQL Server to behave as if it supported ANSI compliant unique indexes.
• Cloud-based database thoughts before #SQLPass – Brent Ozar offers his thoughts on Amazon's new MySQL Cloud offering: Amazon RDS. I have to say, this looks like it's very tempting to play around with – stand up a linux compute node, put Ruby on Rails on it, use the MySQL RDS for the back end. Boom! Instant production environment.
• Easy monitoring of high-severity errors: create Agent alerts – Set up SQL Agent alerts to notify you when horrible horrible things happen to your database. You can even use this to catch for problems and then run jobs to diagnose or fix the problem.

Development

• git-svn, SvnBridge and TFS Source Control – Javier Lozano shows how you can work on your favorite codeplex project and still use git for your SCM.
• 55+ Extremely Useful Online Generators for Designers – I love avoiding work, especially when it comes to creating artwork. Generators play a huge role in getting these things done and can cut hours out of a design task.
• Maruku – Maruku is an improved version of Markdown, combine it with the Plain Text Wiki for TextMate and you have some cool stuff.
• Plain Text Wiki ← Mark Reid – A new plain text wiki for TextMate that offers syntax highlighting.
• NHibernate parameter sizes controversy: history of the issue – While I do, on occasion, advocate the use of ORMs, this is why I caution people about them. Thanks to Grant Fritchey for stirring up this hornet’s nest.

Stuff & Things

• How Stanley Kubrick’s Editing Conveys a Horrifying Supernatural Vision in The Shining / AdamPolselli.com – Kubrick's editing is so important in The Shining. Adam Polselli analyzes a set of shots in The Shining and talks about how they make the movie. The Shining has been one of my favorite movies since the very first time I saw it. Kubrick's is completely on top of his game here, and I love how Polselli breaks it down perfectly.
• 11 Scariest Horror Movies of All Time – Page 1 – The Daily Beast – I love horror films, I love Scorsese's films. I'm intrigued to see the movies in this list.
• Travel Tips for Non-Frequent Flyers – Travel can be incredibly stressful, take a look at Brent Ozar's travel tips to make your life easier.
• How to Give Yourself to Whatever the Moment Brings, and Forget Stress – The only times when I feel incredibly stressed are the times when I try to plan too much of my life.
• Living on $500,000 a Year | The American Scholar – F. Scott Fitzgerald's income comes out to $500,000 in modern money. He kept meticulous personal records of his expenses and income. The entire story is pretty fascinating.
• On (the undying topic of) copying ~ Authentic Boredom – Good designers copy, great designers steal. I stole that quote. Cameron Moll stole it.
• The DumbLittleMan Guide to Comma Use – The comma can be a tricky little critter. I see a lot of authors misuse it; their writing suffers as a result. Learning to use the comma properly might not spice up your writing, but it will prevent it from seeming choppy and unwieldy.
• Portion Size, Then Vs. Now – DivineCaroline – Terrifying
• «Architectural Fantasies», 1925-1933 – 202 design studies in architecture.
• Garage Collections: This is not a manifesto — towards an anarcho-design practice – You thought design was all about being pretty, right? Think again. Design is a way to change the world around you and, like anything else, can be used for good or evil. Just ask the author of this manifesto.
• The Unbearable Lightness of Things – Dematerialization 1 | Quiet Babylon – When does a possession stop being a possession and start being a thing? Given the presence of a backup, is the destruction of an object really a loss?
• Fossil Reactors – Fission reactions were going on under the surface of the earth thousands of years ago. Interestingly, the reactions were self-contained by the earth and the nasty byproducts have long since vanished through natural processes.
• Film Posters – a set on Flickr – Mmmmmm vintage movie posters

Optimizing Queries That Access Correlated datetime Columns DATE_CORRELATION_OPTIMIZATION is some good stuff. If you have an InvoiceDate column that happens to be close to the OrderDate column in a related table, and this setting is on, the compiler will generate what could be a much better optimization plan.

Difference between an index and a primary key Denny Cherry does a great job of explaining this one. I frequently misuse primary key and clustered index as the same in conversation (yes, I do have A LOT of conversations about databases, even outside of work). I need to be better about that. This reminds me why.

Development

Vertical Centering in CSS This question comes up every once in a while. I always forget how to do it. Hopefully this will help someone else get their vertical centering sorted out.

The Unspoken Truth About Managing Geeks I’m not a manager but I play one on TV. There some good info in here. Especially if you only play a manager on TV.

Using Accessibility Modifiers on Auto Properties Auto properties rule. Justin Etheredge demonstrates how to keep that level of awesome rolling forward.

Stuff & Things

Simplified Virtual PC Creation with Differencing Disks I don’t know what to say. The idea is so damn simple I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. Thanks to Jonathan Kehayias for this article. This is going to save me so much time and trouble.

20 Tips for Writing for the Web

Flowing Data | Data Visualization and Statistics It’s a blog that’s devoted to different ways of presenting information. Gotta love that. Flat tabular display of data is good, but there’s often a better way. A much better way.

Make Fried Pie in Five Minutes and Kickstart Your Day Fried. Pie.

Monkey on a motorcycle

Think about the different areas of your life Love the quote.

What’s a give camp? Basically, to paraphrase the about page, a give camp is an opportunity for developers to give back to the local community by contributing time and effort to create custom software for non-profits.

How can you help?

• Volunteer your time
• Let a charity know
• Sponsor the event with food or software licenses or plain old piles of cash

Why am I plugging this?

1. It’s a cool idea
2. I designed and built the database
3. I plan on being there

What are you waiting for? Head on over to Columbus Give Camp and volunteer!

SQL Server

Really Search Cache for Execution Plans Jason Strate revists his code that finds the last plan that was used for a procedure.

Reasons for NOT using Varchar(MAX) Pat Wright brings back the argument of why you should or shouldn’t use varchar(max). You can clearly tell from the title how he feels. I’m quoted in this one, so you probably know how I feel. Read it. Learn it. Love it. SQL! (Yes, I know I said ‘field’ instead of ‘column’. Bite me.)

Development

Fighting technical deb with the wall of pain Technical debt is an insidious foe. Technical debt is that extra effort you need for future development because you made a quick and dirty design choice at some point in the past. This crap is poison.

Coding like it’s 1999 Cameron Moll put together a great overview of why he’s moved back to using the HTML 4.01 DOCTYPE. Just don’t use tables, okay folks?

Poor man’s guide to database optimization – by the Marquis de Sade Ever wonder if your code is being really crappy and executing N+1 selects for everything in a collection? WONDER NO MORE! With Ayende’s newest bit of code wizardry you can have a configurable wait time between each query executed. All of a sudden, you too will be dropped into your DBA’s nightmares as you realize that some programmer’s horrible, horrible code is slowly destroying the database!

Stuff & Things

Calvinball Projects Calvinball is the greatest game ever. Running a project like it’s a game of Calvinball has to be fun, right?

Feng Shui On Steroids: Design Your Space to Achieve Your Goals Jonathan Mead writes about how to use your environment to influence your ability to meet your goals. This looks like a great way to go about hacking my workspace and make it easier to get myself into a working mindset.

Lifehacker Pack 2009: Our List of Essential Free Windows Downloads Free software. Good stuff in here. Get it.

Links (6/4/2009) Steve PIetrek’s list o’ links from earlier this week has some gems in it, especially for software developers.

How to Lose Weight by Eating More Everything in here is true. “Diets” suck. They don’t work forever. There are good ideas in here on how to change the way you eat to be healthier.

The first pillar – A Coherent Design Louis Davidson has started to go in depth into his pillars of database design. Louis clearly explains what a coherent database design is and why it’s important.

sp_indexinfo – enhanced index information procedure Tibor Karaszi has put together a custom stored procedure to provide additional information about tables and indexes, including missing indexes on a table.

Start / Stop SQL Server, SSIS, SSAS, SSRS and SQL Server Agent at once with a batch file Jorg Klein has posted a batch file to stop/start SQL Server and associated services on command. When I develop at home, I using a black MacBook and run Windows in a VM. While memory isn’t at a premium, CPU cycles sometimes are. I’m sure this will come in very handy for speeding up the boot time of my virtual machine.

Seek or Scan? Gail provides some insight as to why you might be seeing an index scan instead of an index seek and why you should be using covering indexes.

Free eBook from RedGate : Dissecting SQL Server Execution Plans (Grant Fritchey) Jonathan Kehayais provides a link to an amazing book by Grant Fritchey. Grant dives into how to read execution plans. I’ve read one chapter and I’m looking forward to reading the rest.

Development

NH Prof New Feature: The Query Cache NHibernate fans, it is time to rejoice! NHProf has a new feature (still in dev) that lets you view the queries being sent to the database.

10 jQuery scripts to improve your site’s interface Designer Daily has published links to 10 sweet jQuery plugins for improving your UI. I’m a huge fan of jQuery – I get access to a massive library of cross-browser plugins and functionality that I would otherwise have to develop myself and I get access to an amazing library of base functions that let me rapidly build a functioning website.

General

Networking – Part 2 Andy Warren talks a bit about how he feels regarding networking. When I first started thinking about networking more, I felt a bit dirty – like I would have to go push myself like some kind of used car salesman (no offense to any used car salespeople reading this blog, I’m sure you’re great people, you just have a reputation). After talking to co-workers and friends, I realized it’s not about selling your brand but expanding your horizons. Glad to see that someone else agrees with me.

Setting Up a Killer Demo Buck Woody gives 12 great techniques to make your presentations and demos even better. I have three presentations coming up in the next three months, so I’ll be referring to this post a great deal as I prepare.

Back story: we are using jQuery’s superfish drop down menus (a jQuery based implement of suckerfish/son of suckerfish) for site navigation. Everything works great in Firefox 2/3 and Safari. I’m going to assume that IE6 looks great as well since suckerfish is known to work well in IE6.

IE7 is a different story.

There is a large image directly beneath the navigation menu. Unfortunately for me, in IE7 the menu was being rendered beneath the image, despite having a z-index of 1001.

After some careful (and careless) digging and googling, I came across a solution.

To summarize, IE7 will not render the menu with the appropriate z-index unless that z-index is present on the top level :hover style. To clarify:


/*** ESSENTIAL STYLES ***/
.sf-menu, .sf-menu * {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
list-style: none;
}
.sf-menu {
line-height: 1.0;
}
.sf-menu ul {
position: absolute;
top: -999em;
}
.sf-menu li:hover {
z-index: 100; /* This is the important style directive, without it IE7 chokes */
}
.sf-menu * li:hover {
visibility: inherit; /* fixes IE7 'sticky bug' */
font-weight: bold;
}


IE7 Suckerfish Hover CSS