Hi, back from a blogging hiatus.

So, I just got back from seeing the latest bond flick Quantum of Solace.

I must say, I’m a bit underwhelmed.  It is somewhat directionless despite a few nods to Bond flicks of old. The most obvious is the agent drenched in oil nodding to goldfinger which seems a bit hacked here.  Its used a diversion from the real bad guy’s plot instead of as a reinforcement of the bad guys identity.

The action isn’t as clean as in casino royale whose initial ballet like action scene included Bond following a villains parkour gymnastics thru a construction zone.  Instead we start with a chase scene that demolishes the Aston Martin never to be seen again. Credit tho that he does most of his own stunts.

Then he is fooled and fooled again into killing all the useful people.  Indeed, there seems only one moment of cleverness where he eludes the guards by leaving the building by walking on the outside wall while his would be captors take the standard inside wall route.  Actually, when he takes pics of the ringleaders leaving is fairly clever too. So, yes indeed two clever spots.

But really the worst part of it is that he has only one expression in the whole flick - that of single minded determinism.  Craig would be good to view all the bond flicks and note the playful flickering expressions on Connery and sometimes Moore and their complete absence on Brosnan and Dalton. Seriously, this guy is an actor.

There is other annoyances. No gadgets to speak of. Only one bedding and not even the bond girl of the flick(Olga Kurylenko) - probably the only bond girl not to have gotten a sample.  Lastly, the henchman is utterly weak and useless. Many of the screens are stolen right out of the Bourne Supremacy flicks.

So, its not nearly as good as Casion Royale but hey, if your a fan of the franchise then you probably should see it.

This site allows super easy searching thru apis for many of the major programming languagues.

http://www.gotapi.com/html

I’ve been looking at hdtvs and found these three sites pretty useful for basic research:

1. http://www.hdguru.com/
2. http://reviews.cnet.com/televisions/
3. http://www.hemagazine.com/taxonomy/term/10

Just in case it comes out useful for someone else.

An interesting product builder by Tom Haschenburger that can be customized for any type product.  He is trying to make a go at it so if you have a product that needs to be sold in a highly customizeable manner, shoot him an email.

http://customproductbuilder.com

I had an annoying sticking menu problem in ie7 with son of suckerfish. I made a fix by replaceing:

#nav li:hover ul, #nav li.sfhover ul {
left: auto;
}

with

/*hack for ie7 to not have menus stick*/
html>/**/body #nav li:hover ul{
left: auto;
}

#nav li.sfhover ul {
left: auto;
}

Hopefully, this helps someone.

Tho most critical to a sql statement in a particular database is its query plan, another useful nugget of info is how long it actually takes to run the query from studio. You can get studio to give you this info by adding the following line above the query.

SET STATISTICS TIME ON

SELECT this, that FROM here INNER JOIN there on here.id = there.hereid

When you execute a statement with this line above, you get more info in the messages tab that will look like the following:

SQL Server parse and compile time:
CPU time = 0 ms, elapsed time = 1 ms.

SQL Server Execution Times:
CPU time = 0 ms, elapsed time = 1 ms.

(1 row(s) affected)

SQL Server Execution Times:
CPU time = 16 ms, elapsed time = 18 ms.

More info http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190287.aspx.

Anybody know how to set it as the default whenever using Studio?

Sometimes developers exist in a happy state of ignorance as to what is going on with their databases. Certainly, I can’t explain everything on this blog but I’ve found this statement to be useful on MS sql.

exec sp_spaceused [your table name]

This statement returns disk info about a particular table - recordcount, physical disk space taken by data and space reserved for this table’s data. It also returns similar info on indexes so that you can get an idea of how much resources they take. Its somewhat interesting to see the differences in how a simple index vs. clustered index use resources(well, if you are slightly bored).

McCarthyism of the 50’s is alive and well in this country. Shortsighted politicians. Modern marketing techniques. The abuse of media as a bully stick and policy management tool.

This movie is about TV newsman Edward R. Murrow who nearly singlehandedly stood up to McCarthy and contributed greatly to his downfall.

Its a good reminder movie of the things that have happened in this country. Its short and sweet. Worth watching by people who are somewhat politically aware or at least curious.

The view of the Israel and Iraq conflicts has been pretty one sided but the view of the other side is pretty poorly understood. This movie attempts to relieve some of that dichotomy and its pretty interesting for it.

Basically, its 20 hours surrounding the lives of two friends who volunteer for a suicide mission that gets botched. Certainly a riveting subject. Some insight into the people who surround these fairly believable people. The mother. The potential love interest. The people who convince those without hope that the best option is a kamikaze mission. All of them make for a very watchable movie.

I do hesitate. The movie kind of skims over the hopelessness that would drive one to such an act - but I don’t think it does it on purpose.  I kind of wanted the movie to explain that to me better - which was the draw for watching it in the first place.

Either way, a well filmed and excellently acted movie on a very complicated subject.  Worth watching.

This is a small utility that solves a problem I’ve had for years. I can’t believe I never thought of this.

How many times a day do I go drilling down umpteen levels of folders. Literally hundreds. Sometimes, I totally forget where I was going or what I was doing and then go do something totally different - leaving a task totally unfinished.

So, this utility adds on to windows explorer. You double click anywhere in windows explorer and you get a list of folders that you manage. Then click on the folder and it immediately opens. No drilling, no fuss no muss.

Free for home use.  Cheap for office. See it here. http://www.codesector.com/directfolders.php