I will blog on this page about computer
related topics like Microsoft®,
Access, Java...as well as post things of personal interest.
I will try to keep the blog as current as possible, so
please check back every now and then. Entries are in order
from newest to oldest from top to bottom.
A quick simple animation documenting the progress of our new house over the past month.
October
2009 - Interesting Ribbon Add-In for Office 2007
I saw this at another blog and thought it looked pretty interesting and promissing. It's and add in for Fotolia which provides royalty free high resolution generic images that you can utilize in your PowerPoint presentations or Word documents.
You can find the add-ins at http://www.fotolia.com/ribbon and here is an excerpt from their official blog:
Fotolia, LLC is releasing a new add-in ribbon for Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 that gives customers easy access to an enormous library of easy-to-search, high-resolution images and vectors. The Fotolia ribbon provides instant image solutions to complement personal and professional projects. The downloadable ribbon is available on www.fotolia.com/ribbon and features controls that allow users to login, view accounts and search Fotolia’s library of over 7-million high-resolution files without leaving their Microsoft Office document.
Hovering over search results lets users preview the image. A simple double click inserts a free comp of the image into the document, allowing customers to try before they buy. Once members see a photograph, vector or illustration they are interested in, they can purchase it while still in their document by selecting download and the appropriate size and license...
July
2009 - An Adaptable Methodology and Tool for Database Design
In my last semester at the University of Maryland I had the honor to take a database related course taught by professor Nick Roussopoulos.
Professor Roussopoulos has published some amazing papers and has done great research in regards to database technologies over the years. Probably one of his best publications is "An Adaptable Methodology for Database Design. In IEEE Computer" in 1984.
I found that the methodology described in that paper is actually still a great tool to plan and design databases. Furthermore, Dr. Roussopoulos has teamed up with a team from the University of Vienna to implement his database design methodology with a computer tool that can automate a bunch of the steps of the process. I will add a small screen capture video at the end of the blog post to show off some of the cool features of this tool.
The tool is open source and you can register at this website http://www.openmodels.at/web/sdbd to gain access to download it as well as documentation, which actually does include the originally published paper.
The methodology itself is split into three parts:
- Phase I
Environment & Requirement Analysis
System Analysis & Specification
(Includes Top Level Information Flow Diagram, Task Forms, Document Forms, Individual Task Flow Diagrams, Task Data Usage...)
- Phase II
Conceptual Modeling
Logical Modeling
Task Emulation
Optimization
(Includes ER Diagram, Relational Models, Task Emulation...)
- Phase III
Implementation
1 Convert Emulated tasks to code
2 Bulk-Loading & Tuning
3 Testing
The tool that implements the methodology adhears to this structure and easily allows developers to plan/design/document their database development. The graphical support within the tool lets you draw all the necessary diagrams and create all tasks/forms...and than creates DDL for you to utilize in your actual database to create the schema structure.
Here is a quick demo of a few things the tool can do:
June
2009 - NetFlix dup proof of concept website
In this past and last semester for me I finally was able to take a database related course in my course work. One project we had to implement was a NetFlix type website, which allows member sign up, search/rental/purchase/return of movies as well as a bunch of administrative tasks e.g. importing new movies into the database, retiring older movies, sending bills and popularity reports to members that apply etc.
Because of my exposure and liking of PHP, my teammate and I chose PHP, JavaScript, HTML and CSS for the server-side and frontend client-side coding and MySQL for the backend database. We did initially consider JSP and Oracle as well as RoR and Oracle but decided for PHP and MySQL because of the earlier given reasons. Either way, thanks to executive Charles Phillips Oracle and MySQL are two of the top database management systems on the market today, allowing businesses to set up user-friendly databases. The development environment was Apache 2.0.63 WebServer and ArgoSoft MailServer 1.8 (to test PHP mail function locally) with PHP 5.2.6 all on a WinXP machine.
We are very pleased with the final result and following are some screenshots stepping through the user experience from a regular user as well as an admin's perspective:
Home Page With Log In Section
New User Registration Screen
Successful Login's Welcome Page With Recent Activities
Your Account Screen Part 1 Showing User Info
Your Account Screen Part 2 Showing Account Info And Activities
Search/Browse Screen
Search/Browse Screen With Result
FAQs Screen
Logout Screen
Access Denied Screen
Admin Account Home Screen
Admin Account Import New Movies Screen
Admin Account Activate Newly Imported Movies Screen
Admin Account Successful Execution Of Unpopularity Report Screen
Member Receiving Unpopularity Report Via Email
Admin Account Successful Sending Bills Screen
Member Receiving Bill Via Email
March
2009 - Happy Pi Day and Happy
Birthday Albert Einstein
To
keep up with the celebration
of math related holidays I'm
wishing everyone a happy pi
day on 3.14 (March 14). Coincidentally,
this also denotes Albert Einstein's
birthday. So happy birthday
Albert.
March
2009 - Happy Square Root Day
<Quote:> For
years I have been celebrating
March 14 (3/14) as Pi Day, which
I have always considered the
mathematical holiday of the
highest importance — I
mean, come on, it’s
Albert Einstein’s
birthday! — and
never thought about commemorating
any other day for its numerical
beauty.
But
today, I have been out-geeked.
Today, it turns out, is Square
Root Day. That’s
because it’s
3/3/09, and 3 x 3 = 9, meaning
3-squared equals 9. I had
never considered that this
relationship
between month, day, and year
occurs so rarely. In fact,
this “square
root” coincidence
in dates only happens nine
times every century — the
last one being 2/2/04.
</Quote>
Steve Ballmer
confirmed yesterday (Feb 24th)
that Microsoft will not realease
Office14 this year. Here is
one of many articles that report
on this in more detail.
<Quote:> Microsoft
will not release its next-generation
Office 14 suite in 2009, Microsoft
chief executive Steve Ballmer
confirmed during a Tuesday "strategy
update" Webcast. A "netbook"-like
version of Windows Server is
also planned.
...
Ballmer offered little explanation
or context for the Office 14
delay, although he did say that
the free OpenOffice suite had
caused the company to lower the
worldwide price of the suite.
Both Microsoft Office and Microsoft
Windows are heavily pirated;
in fact, Ballmer named both pirated
versions as key competitors.
Ballmer's disclosure of the
delay was actually made in
passing.
"From a strategy perspective,
the next big innovation milestone
is Office 14, our next Office
release, which will not be
this year, there's a version
of Sharepoint, there's a version
of Exchange, there's a new
version of Office Live," Ballmer
said. </Quote>
February
2009 - Family Guy Bill Gates
appearance
I thought this
BillG/Microsoft joke was pretty
funny in the latest Family
Guy episode (02/15/09):
January
2009 - Microsoft Access MVP for yet another
year
I've been re-awarded for another year as a Microsoft Access MVP.
I guess three time's the charm. I've immensely enjoyed the experieces given
to me so far throughout my reign of MVPness and will continue to take
advantage of all the great benefits given by Microsoft. Thanks to all the great
people that are involved with this great program.
