If one of my two readers is wondering why this sporadic blog was down for the last week and a half – you can blame it on my unending need to tinker and insatiable need for more power. Read more…
| Name: | RegexBuddy |
| Version Reviewed: | 3.4.1 |
| Operating System: | Windows XP, Vista, 7 |
| Price: | 39.95 single user license. |
| Site: | http://www.regexbuddy.com/ |
| Good: | Decodes regular expressions. Contextual assist allows building expressions without knowing any syntax. Supplies access to help forums directly through a tab. Allows debugging of expressions. Provides a library of pre-made expressions for all types of data. |
| Bad: | No free trial. |
No More Loosing Your MindRegular expressions. The term should fill you with both a magical wonder of one of the most powerful languages in all of code-dom, and an overpowering frost-fingered fear of one of the most complex languages on Earth. Next to a Hopi Code Talker, a Wizened Old Unix Guru that can spout regex like it was his first languages is one of the most rare (and probably well-paid) individuals in the world. For us developers that need to use them once in a while, though, winding our way through the syntax is time-consuming and confusing and sometimes doesn’t end well.
I’ve seen several tools over the years to help with the regex syntax, but about a year ago, a friend of mine turned me on to RegexBuddy. Three seconds later, I owned a license. Read more…
Wait, what???? This is a techie blog, not a foodie rag, so what in the name of the bleeding edge is a post of the gastronomical persuasion doing here??? Look – even über-geeks can’t live on just pizza and soda (for more than a few weeks). Seeing as how we usually don’t have much time to spend making food, I’ve got a list of a few quick dishes I can make that last me a few meals, saving me time and keeping me fueled for those long hours toiling over a hot keyboard. I’ve been asked by a friend to share one, and so I figured I’d bump my post average be a good friend and write it up for her here. Don’t worry – I’m not going to do this often. Take a little advise, though, and remember that the most successful geeks do not stay attached to the keyboard and mouse 24/7. They have other hobbies too. Read more…
Paging Oracle developers…This will be a quick post, as the problem is small. I will add, though, that setting up paging with database queries can be a major pain in the ass. Setting up the consumer – usually jQuery, ExtJS, DWR, or some other AJAX client, is hard enough, but then you have to translate the client’s version of “start-limit” to the persistance-side’s language. Sometimes it’s a simple start/limit pair, sometimes it’s a start/page pair, and then there’s Oracle, which decided to punt on the whole thing. Read more…
This is a simple trick that will save you from having to restart your pc at inopportune times. The setup – you are working along, minding your own business, writing your [insert invaluable document name] Word document, when out of the blue Windows Explorer freezes up. You know the symptoms – you can’t click on anything on the desktop… you drag a window around and it leaves “trails”, which everyone will automatically cover the entire desktop in (because it’s fun!). A few seconds later, you realize that you can’t get to your Word document as well, and you hadn’t saved it. “That’s [x] hours of work!” you silently scream to yourself as you contemplate the glowing frozen tableau in front of you, dread slowing sinking down into the pit of your stomach. Now what the hell do you do?
The answer is to try this trick. It can’t hurt, and it just might recover your computer enough to save your document and restart. It actually might allow you to keep working normally, but when I’m doing something important, I usually ere on the side of caution – the side where you save anything and restart just to make sure. Read more…
