Thomas Johansen's Blog

My first tattoo

Aylar — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 07:09:00 GMT

Today I finally got my first tattoo -- I've been wanting one for a long, long time and now just seemed like the perfect time, so I went for it... I am very happy that I did!

The pain was noticeable, but absolutely worth it. My reasoning for getting it on the lower left arm is that it will be easily spotted there, but at the same time, I can hide it in e.g. a business situation or otherwise.

Copied from my main blog

Looking for contract work

Aylar — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 02:52:00 GMT

It's that time of year again; I've currently got way too much leisure time, so I'm actively seeking contract work - both design and development work. Well, if you or anyone you know is on the look out for a designer/developer for contract work, head over to my contact page

New blog

Aylar — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 16:23:00 GMT

Ok guys, I am considering letting this blog die and move all of my blogging over to my new site, so if you want to read about XHTML, CSS and graphic design, subscribe to my feed right away! ;-)

(I might keep this blog going for posting about .NET related topics, but most likely I will move that over to the new blog as well)

Flickr... is amazing!

Aylar — Sun, 01 May 2005 10:34:00 GMT

Wow, I just decided to try out Flickr and I am blown away by how awesome it is! The interface is so damn easy to use. Another great example of how a UI should be created ;)

If you feel like checking out my photos, you can find them here (also feel free to add me to your contact list if you use Flickr :)

Mono on OSX

Aylar — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 03:31:00 GMT

Just installed the OSX build of Mono; it was a breeze! No problems at all!
Been mocking around with Cocoa# for a few hours, creating some simple applications -- .NET 1.x is suddenly fun again. Everything seems to be working great.

Already started thinking about some cool ideas for some Mono/Cocoa# apps :-)

My reasoning for getting a PowerMac

Aylar — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 07:41:00 GMT

Need I say more? ;-)

Brought to you by MacMerc.com

My Power Mac rocks!

Aylar — Sun, 13 Mar 2005 05:15:00 GMT

Got my Dual 2.5GHz Power Mac a few days ago -- so far I'm loving it! OS X is light-years ahead of Windows XP. Everything is so darn slick! Apple are still following the good UNIX tradition of having small specialized applications that usually only have one main task (and does that task _very_ well), instead of the other "standard" of BloatWare(tm).

Well enough praising and bashing; I'm posting this entry from Ranchero MarsEdit. It's a sweet little cutie and it looks and behaves very much like Apple Mail (which also kicks serious ass ;) My feeds have been moved over to NetNewsWire 2.0 beta (also from Ranchero -- any Ranchero execs out there that feel like giving me free licenses to these two awesome apps? :)

I'll keep everyone posted on how much my Mac 0wns j00!

Wicked little web app

Aylar — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 15:09:00 GMT

While going through my blogroll I came across this awesome little bitmap font maker web app – it’s so darn cute! :)

Bye, bye Sage -- Hello Onfolio!

Aylar — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 12:20:00 GMT

Rob Fuller commented my post about Sage and recommended that I’d give Onfolio a try — I have, and damn, it is smokin’! I’ve only used it for a couple of hours, but I can already heartily recommend it.

SQL 'SELECT CASE' problem

Aylar — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 02:34:00 GMT

Darren came to me today requesting some help with an SQL problem had run into; he was trying to return some conditional data using a ‘SELECT CASE’ in his query, but he kept being served NULL values for all the rows that did not match his ‘WHEN’ statements. He tried to check if the returned value from the CASE was a NULL in a WHERE clause:

select
    case
        when shipcountry = 'norway' and @year1 = datepart(yy, orderdate) then employeeid
        when shipcountry = 'brazil' and @year2 = datepart(yy, shippeddate) then employeeid
    end
from orders
where 1 is not null

That didn’t work because what he was checking was whether the column value was NULL or not and not the value of the actual value returned from the CASE. That’s when I suggested the following example to Darren:

select employeeid
from orders
where orderid in (
                  select
                      case
                          when shipcountry = 'norway' and @year1 = datepart(yy, orderdate) then orderid
                          when shipcountry = 'brazil' and @year2 = datepart(yy, shippeddate) then orderid
                      end
                 )

This works perfectly and does exactly what he wanted — you have got to love the power of nested queries ;)

NOTE: the actual sample queries have been modified for the Northwind database for your testing pleasure.