Jayme Davis' WebLog

Haven't blogged in awhile... here I go

jayme_davis@dell.com — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 04:15:00 GMT

Ok, I know I haven't blogged in a long time... maybe it's time I start again? <insert poll here>

Lots of things have been going on - been incredibly busy at work and haven't had time to do @#$%.

I recently had the pleasure of contributing to James Avery's latest book Visual Studio Hacks. He has worked incredibly hard on this book and I know it will turn out well.

... on another note... I really wonder how many people want SO BADLY to contribute to The Daily WTF but are scared of who may read their blog? ... I'm sure it's not just me.

Jayme

All the Myers-Briggs talk!

jayme_davis@dell.com — Fri, 12 Sep 2003 17:39:00 GMT

Myers-Briggs is an incredibly accurate test (atleast for me). My company paid for a Myers-Briggs company to actually bring their people here and do the full test (8 hours) - I'm an ENTP. :)

Very close to an ENTJ, except I don't write anything down or have any organization! I will make a 'to do' list, but not follow it!

The test everyone is posting about here is accurate, and a LOT cheaper than what we had to pay!!

Jayme

Georgy for Governor!

jayme_davis@dell.com — Thu, 11 Sep 2003 16:29:00 GMT

I'm curious what everyone's opinion is of Georgy, the 26 year old software engineer running for Governor of California. I'm impressed that she takes a firm stand on political issues, but I'm even MORE impressed at the Classic thong you can purchase at her online store!

Best Political Blog, Candidate Division: Georgy for Governor Blog

Ahem. I know you're thinking that this award has something to do with candidate Georgy Russell selling thong underwear on her site. You can give me more credit than than, right? Right? Anyhow, the 26-year-old software engineer deserves kudos for doing something the other candidates haven't: getting personal with a well-written Weblog. She explains her differences with Arianna Huffington, lists her schedule of events and media appearances (surprisingly plentiful), and raised the money she needed to get on the ballot online. OK, the BBC interview with Russell called her a "young thing," but her blog showed she even has some media criticism chops. "The recall coverage in California has given the press unseen opportunities to cover politics," she wrote. "...What we end up with is something for almost everyone in the land of recall entertainment, but not much in the way of the nitty-gritty in terms of candidates' political plans."

Jayme

C# .... Games.... ?

jayme_davis@dell.com — Thu, 11 Sep 2003 01:36:00 GMT

I just saw a post on GameDev titled Who is using C# to write games?. I was thinking to myself... here we go again; we're asking C/C++ developers to shoot down C# as a gaming technology. MUCH to my surprise, it was quite the opposite! Seems a lot of people that posted here really love using C# and find it quick, easy, and powerful... from my experience at GameDev, that's pretty impressive. I honestly think C# will see it's day in the gaming world. One user, Pseudo, posted a few small graphics projects he has written in C#... check it out!

Jayme

Grant me the serenity.... SQL crosstabs

jayme_davis@dell.com — Fri, 05 Sep 2003 15:11:00 GMT

Ever noticed what a pain building crosstabs in SQL can be?... sure, you can buy 3rd party products to do it for you (even some that are only $39), but what if you want to do it yourself? MS Access has the TRANSFORM function that makes life easy.... why not SQL? There are some great articles on various sites with methods to use (such as this), but you'd think SQL would have a built in function... (don't let us down Yukon).

Jayme

Randy Ridge Website.... finally

jayme_davis@dell.com — Mon, 25 Aug 2003 03:42:00 GMT

Randy Ridge finally put up a website with some sort of navigation... I know it was hard for him to get away from the Notepad Framework, but he came around... (RSS). If you don't know what Tao is, you should go check it out... oh yeah, and don't forget to leave a donation.

Jayme

Windows 95 4.47 mb?

jayme_davis@dell.com — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 19:22:00 GMT

There's a cool article over at MSBetas about a group of folks who got Windows 95 down to 4.47mb. Not exactly sure why anyone would do this, but an interesting read! There's also a link here to download Yukon beta 1.

Jayme

Delegates

jayme_davis@dell.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 02:35:00 GMT

Ever tried to make a delegate that accepts a void* parameter? Since it's type-safe, you'd want/need to support multiple datatypes and ranks (if there's arrays involved) so you end up have to do Foo1, Foo2, Foo3 because you can't overload a delegate based on just parameter types, you actually have to explicitly change the method's name. Any methods that accept the delegate, you have to provide an overload for each of the additional delegates... multiply that by a delegate that accepts 2 or 3 void* params.. you get the picture.

Jayme

Orilogic - Data Layer Codes Generator

jayme_davis@dell.com — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 03:31:00 GMT

Looks like Orilogic released Code Generator 2.0 today. The new additions allow you to return data as a DataReader or a DataSet and dynamically bind data layers using .NET Metadata and Reflection using DBBase. To download the tool, you have to go through a quick register process... there is an online demo available here.

Jayme

SDL.NET New Forum

jayme_davis@dell.com — Mon, 07 Jul 2003 06:43:00 GMT

I'm thinking of downloading SDL.NET and trying to get it play nicely with the Tao library. Randy Ridge, one of the CsGL developers, has done an incredible job with the library, and I actually believe the SDL.NET project at one time (before merges, etc...) was part of CsGL... so surely it can't be too hard...

Jayme

ParseNameString

jayme_davis@dell.com — Tue, 17 Jun 2003 18:40:00 GMT

Well, I'm pretty sure someone is going to tell me I didn't have to do this complicated way, but.. too late! :) I looked around the internet for a SQL parsing function that would parse to proper capitilization, but no luck. I'm lazy, so I decided too write it...

All the name fields in a SQL database I'm working with are all ucase. I wrote this SQL function to parse out proper capitilization for spaces, hyphens, apostrophes, etc... For instance, "MCDONALDS" would parse to "McDonalds"... the only problem is names like "de la Jose" or "von Mirkin" would parse out as "De La Jose" and "Von Mirkin". Even though this problem exist, it's a lot better than it was.

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[ParseNameString] (@text VARCHAR(50))
RETURNS VARCHAR(50)

BEGIN
DECLARE @n INT
SET @n = 1

DECLARE @newstring VARCHAR(50)
SET @newstring = ''

SET @text = UPPER(LEFT(@text, 1)) + LOWER(RIGHT(@text, LEN(@text) - 1))

-- start string building loop
WHILE (@n < LEN(@text) + 1)
BEGIN
  IF(SUBSTRING(@text, @n, 1) = 'M')
  BEGIN
   -- McXXXXX
   IF(SUBSTRING(@text, @n + 1, 1) = 'c')
   BEGIN

    SET @newstring = @newstring + 'Mc' + UPPER(SUBSTRING(@text, @n + 2, 1))
    SET @n = @n + 3
   END
   -- name MacXXXXX
   IF(SUBSTRING(@text, @n + 1, 1) = 'a')
   BEGIN
    IF(SUBSTRING(@text, @n + 2, 1) = 'c')
    BEGIN
     SET @newstring = @newstring + 'Mac' + UPPER(SUBSTRING(@text, @n + 3, 1))
     SET @n = @n + 4
    END
   END
  END
  -- apost. in the name (exmple: O'Sullivan)
  IF (SUBSTRING(@text, @n, 1) = '''')
  BEGIN
   SET @newstring = @newstring + SUBSTRING(@text, @n, 1) + UPPER(SUBSTRING(@text, @n + 1, 1))
   SET @n = @n + 1
  END
   ELSE
  -- space in the last name
  IF(SUBSTRING(@text, @n, 1) = ' ')
  BEGIN
   SET @newstring = @newstring + SUBSTRING(@text, @n, 1) + UPPER(SUBSTRING(@text, @n + 1, 1))
   SET @n = @n + 1
  END
   ELSE
  -- hyphen in the last name
  IF(SUBSTRING(@text, @n, 1) = '-')
  BEGIN
   SET @newstring = @newstring + SUBSTRING(@text, @n, 1) + UPPER(SUBSTRING(@text, @n + 1, 1))
   SET @n = @n + 1
  END
   ELSE
  BEGIN
   SET @newstring = @newstring + SUBSTRING(@text, @n, 1)
  END

SET @n = @n + 1
END

-- return the newly built string
RETURN @newstring

END

SQL Compare tools

jayme_davis@dell.com — Fri, 13 Jun 2003 15:53:00 GMT

Dealing with 10+ databases, terabytes of data, and enormous DTS packages on a daily basis, I couldn't live without a SQL database comparison tool. I was reading an article about Red Gate software's SQL tools suite which includes SQL Compare (database structures/schemas), SQL Data Compare (content/data), and DTS Compare (dts packages, logins, jobs, and version info). I've used AdeptSQL for a long time now, but it just doesn't cut it for everything...

Jayme

Teradata

jayme_davis@dell.com — Fri, 06 Jun 2003 04:59:00 GMT

I'm curious if any of the 3 people reading this blog have ever used teradata with .NET... or for that matter, used teradata for warehouse solutions. With Oracle, SQL DCE, Teradata, and the others available today, what *really* performs the best? (stable, fast, etc..)

Jayme

Masters of Doom

jayme_davis@dell.com — Thu, 29 May 2003 21:39:00 GMT

Looks like James blogged about Masters of Doom before I could get to it! :)

I just finished this book last night and was very impressed. Kushner did an incredible job learning the characters and telling their story. The book starts with Carmack and Romero's first day on a computer, and goes all the way until Doom III and Monkeystone Productions. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in game development, games, or how two guys created an empire in the gaming industry.

Jayme

.NET Game Engine

jayme_davis@dell.com — Sat, 24 May 2003 01:08:00 GMT

Over at bunnz.com, Markus Wob, Alois Zoitl, and Stefan Ortner are working on a game engine called Purple#. There's a few screenshots posted, and lots of cool info... check it out.

(pulled from bunnz.com)

Features
Scripting PlugIns: (JScript.Net, VB.Net, C#.Net)
Scripting Console
Automatic configuration management by using the Purple Serializer
Shader Driven 3d engine with following PlugIns: DirectX9, Cg, (Cg)Fx
Virtual Vertex and Index Buffers
Ex- and importer: Exporter for Maya, Q3 Levels, MD3, ATI Normalmapper, ...
Sound: fMod