SQL in the City

Last Friday, I attended "SQL in the City," a free SQL training workshop held in Los Angeles, California. Unlike other free workshops or conferences that mostly about sales marketing, this workshop had a lot of useful technical sessions presented by well known gurus in SQL community. Just few days before the event, I changed my mind. I thought that I will not go since two hours driving to Los Angeles was an inconvenience.

At the event, the speaker asked us about whether we were developers, DBA, or both. I thought I was a developer; that is what I have done my whole career. Actually, I was both when I working for a small company: Developer and DBA. There were many DBA sessions I attended more than Developer sessions since they are my interesting issues.

On the way home, I was so happy that I did not skip this great event. I appreciated Red Gate provided me and others a chance to learn new things and refresh our knowledge.

America the Beautiful

Lyrics by Katherine Lee Bates
music composed by Samuel A. Ward

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!

America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassion'd stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness.

America! America!
God mend thine ev'ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.

O beautiful for heroes prov'd
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life.

America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness,
And ev'ry gain divine.

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears.

America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.



A Little Bit of History....
The lyrics to this beautiful song were written by Katharine Lee Bates (1859-1929), a professor of English literature at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, after an inspiring trip to the top of Pikes Peak, Colorado in 1893. Her poem, America the Beautiful first appeared in print in The Congregationalist, a weekly journal, on July 4, 1895. Ms. Bates revised the lyrics in 1904 and again in 1913. In addition to those changes in the words, it is notable that the poem was not always sung to the tune presented on this website ("Materna," composed by Samuel A. Ward in 1882, nearly a decade before the poem was written). In fact, for two years after it was written it was sung to just about any popular or folk tune that would fit with the lyrics, with "Auld Lang Syne" being the most notable of those. The words were not published together with "Materna" until 1910, and even after that time, the tune to be used was challenged to some degree. For example, in 1926 the National Federation of Music Clubs held a contest to put the poem to new, reportedly "less somber," music, but no other entry was determined to be more acceptable. Before her death in 1929, Ms. Bates never indicated publicly which music she liked best, but it now appears likely that America the Beautiful will forever be associated with "Materna."

Linux turned 20 on Aug. 25

The first Linux distro I played around was Red Hat Linux 5.2 in 1999.

After that, I backed to Windows for both professional development and personal desktop application usage. Before that I developed a FoxBase+ application on SCO/Unix in 1990 for a year. I tried again with another distro in 2002, I guessed. Still not a right time, back to Windows. Today, I'm using Ubuntu Linux on daily basic. I'm still using Microsoft Windows for software development (ASP 3.0, ASP.NET, C#, Microsoft SQL 2008, IIS 7, TFS) at work. Anything else, Linux. Android development: Linux. Web develop using PHP, Python, MySQL: Linux. Desktop word processing: Linux. Web browsing: Linux. Listen to music on computer: Linux.

Microsoft SQL Server

When someone mentioned about Microsoft SQL Server, we thought about money. How much to pay?  Actually Microsoft offers two free versions: Microsoft SQL 2008 R2 Express Edition and Microsoft SQL Compact Edition (CE) 4.0. Developers can use Microsoft SQL 2008R2 Express Edition or Microsoft SQL CE 4.0 for prototype, development, and testing.

Microsoft SQL CE 4.0 is an embedded SQL server database engine. It can use to build standalone and occasionally connected applications for mobile devices, desktops, and Web clients. The maximum database size is 4GB per file.

Microsoft SQL 2008 R2 Express is a free edition of SQL Server ideal for developing and powering desktop, web and small server applications. It can support up to 10GB, 1 CPU and 1GB RAM.

Other paid Microsoft SQL 2008 R2 editions such as Standard, Enterprise, or Data Center support up to 524PB, more than 1 CPU and 64GB RAM, and much more features.

Reference:
Compare Microsoft SQL Server Editions
VS 2010 SP1 and SQL CE - ScottGu's Blog
Everything SQL Server Compact

How to Take a Screenshot

Microsoft Windows
For any Windows version:

1. Press  (Print Screen) key to capture a screenshot of the entire desktop and places it in the clipboard. To capture only the active window, press both   and keys. 
2. Press V to paste the screenshot into other application like Paint or GIMP or Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer. 

Another option for Windows Vista and Windows 7 user: Use Snipping Tool to capture screen shots . It a free utility included in Windows Vista and Windows 7

Ubuntu Linux
Press to take a screenshot and save

iOS
Pressing and holding the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button. The screen will flash and the picture will be stored in PNG format in the "Camera Roll" on the iPhone or in "Saved Photos" on the iPod touch. The screenshot feature is only available with iOS 2.0 and later.

Mac OS X
On Mac OS X, a user can take a screenshot of an entire screen by pressing ⌘ Cmd+⇧ Shift+3, or of a chosen area of the screen by ⌘ Cmd+⇧ Shift+4. This screenshot is saved to the user's desktop, with one PNG file per attached monitor.

How to hide your circle in Google+

1. Click Profile button on the menu on top
2. Click Edit Profile button in blue background on top right
3. Move the mouse to the Circle area on bottom left and click to edit

4. Check off the button to show your circle

5. Click Done Edit button on top menu.

Google+

A week ago, Google introduced a new social product called Google+ (Google Plus). From what I read on the web since June 28, it sounded good. Someone said it maybe better than Facebook. Every technology sites I visited talked about Google+. It made me curious.

I did not social much but I love to learn a new thing. I love a new technology. I would like to experience Google Plus by myself. Yesterday, I posted on Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook to ask for the Google+ invitation. Today, I got one.

At first, I like it. It's looking good. At the start, you select the people you know into some pre-define circles: family, friend, acquaintance, following,... I made some extra circles for each group of friend. I thought Google+ is better than Facebook in one thing: the privacy. It seems to me the default settings of Google+ are private. In Facebook, the default settings are public, everyone. To maintain your privacy, you need to change you Facebook setting to private, friend only.

Now, I wonder can Google Plus beat Facebook? Anyone need a Google+ invitation?