The Way of .Net – A Parody Song for Southwest Fox
A couple of weeks ago Tuvia Vinitsky shot me a copy of a parody song he wrote and wanted to perform at the Southwest Fox conference. “Hey,” I thought, “we used to do a lot of parody songs back in high...
View ArticleSouthwest Fox 2012 is History, but 2013 Announced
Another Southwest Fox is in the bag, and let me tell you this conference is still going strong. We saw a lot of hands go up when they asked how many people were new this year, which was outstanding....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Augmented Reality using Appcelerator Titanium Starter
Or, “How to write apps that turn your smartphone into a Terminator-style heads up display” If you aren’t familiar with Augmented Reality, it’s the fancy phrase for adding meta-information to the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
I am a Friend of Red Gate
I do a fair bit of public speaking. Perhaps not as much as some people, but more than others. I really enjoy it though I’m not going to lie to you, it’s a lot of work and isn’t what puts food on the...
View ArticleGood Riddance 2013
I haven’t blogged in a while. In fact I haven’t done much of anything that can be considered creative or original for quite a while which is kind of a problem when you write code for a living! I’ve...
View ArticleTesting the “Duplicated Shuffle” Odds in SQL Server
I recently became aware of the (kinda mind-blowing) fact that the odds are essentially zero that the order of the deck of cards you just shuffled has ever occurred before in the history of Earth (we’ll...
View ArticleSBT Flashback
I got a call yesterday from another tech support guy who was at a place that was having trouble with their custom-written application. He had figured out that it was a problem with a FoxPro table, but...
View ArticleStealing Home…Depot (f/k/a Don’t Be a Target!)
First it was Target and now it’s Home Depot, Dairy Queen, Neiman Marcus, Michael’s and so many others. How does this keep happening?! In this presentation we update the original with new information...
View ArticleDon’t Be a Target!
For the last few months we’ve watched with fascination the developing story of the data breach at Target, Neiman Marcus, Michael’s and others. In this session we’ll take a look at how the thieves...
View ArticleHow to Hack a Database
Do you ever hear about a database hack and think “Wow, whoever pulled this off must be some super-smart hacker type with access to advanced technology and supercomputers?” Well in reality nothing could...
View ArticleString.Format for Visual FoxPro
[Originally Published in FoxRockX, September 2010] If you haven’t used C#’s String.Format() method, it’s a real treat. There’s nothing natively like it in VFP, but we can certainly roll our own...
View ArticleNew (Old) Phone Number
What a way to start the new year. I managed to break not one but TWO Samsung Galaxy phones over the weekend. The glass on my S5 was becoming unglued so I bought a replacement kit on Amazon and tried...
View ArticleClik here to view.
OneNote to Rule Them All
I’m putting together this session for the SWFox Conference in September, and the more I get into it the more excited I am. You may know OneNote is a pretty convenient place to keep information. But...
View ArticleWindows Update and the 0x8024401F Error
I’ve just spent quite a bit of team sifting and winnowing through the internet trying to get to the bottom of a Windows Update error that I’ve been getting for the last few weeks. StackOverflow.com, my...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Stuff of Nightmares
Last night I finished (as much as one can ever say anything is “finished”) my Southwest Fox 2016 Whitepapers. Southwest Fox is unique in that speakers must also write whitepapers to accompany their...
View ArticleThe Stuff of Nightmares, Part 2
Things are looking very grim, and I appear to have lost over 40 hours of work due to a perfect storm (as described in Part 1). I feel physically ill. When I log back in I see a notification on my...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Southwest Fox 2017 Recap
Southwest Fox 2017 is in the books. Here are my thoughts: Smaller, younger crowd When I walked into the keynote on Thursday night it was clear that this was a smaller crowd than years past. We were...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Using OneDrive to Sync Development Machines
[tl;dr : Don’t do it!] I have a laptop at work that I do most of my development work on, but I don’t take it with me everywhere. Sometimes I’ll find myself at home next to my older PC and wanting to do...
View ArticleEric’s Completely Unironic Best Practices for Password Management
Based on Real World Examples I’ve Seen. Seriously. Write your passwords on post-its and leave them on your monitor.Share your passwords with everyone on your commute. Then if you forget you can ask...
View ArticleQuick Utility to Compare DBF Schemas
I recently revisited a project that I had dropped about 6 months ago. The client sent me an updated batch of data to work with, and I remembered the first thing I needed to do was massage the new data...
View Article
