bits and bytes

Perfect Gift for Mom

terrah — Thu, 10 May 2012 03:57:42 +0000

Mothers’ Day is fast approaching – I hope you have a lovely gift picked out already!

If you are getting mom something techie like a new laptop or windows phone, or finally friending her on Facebook, this might be the perfect little addon.

Mique from Thirty Handmade Days has come up with this printable ‘Guide to Technology’ that you can slip into mom’s card this weekend.

It covers the basics of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram in mom-friendly language. Now Mom can pin, post and tweet with confidence!

Ultimate Mom's Guide to Technology

So head over there and download a copy! You’re so thoughtful! (Don’t forget a card to put it in!)

Combined RSS feeds in Outlook 2010

terrah — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:59:35 +0000

I received a comment from a reader the other day, asking:

What is “the simplest way I can be warned whenever a fresh article has been made?”

- Nidia

It actually came at a pretty good time, because this is something that had been bugging me for awhile too – I have a number of blogs that I like to read, but really don’t have time to browse all of them on a daily basis and see if there is anything new. Plus, sometimes a site will cover a range of topics, and I might not be interested in every post. Some blogs post daily (or twice daily!) and sometimes bloggers take 6 months off since their last post

So what is the best way to be alerted whenever there is new content available?

If the sites post updates to Twitter or Facebook, you can always subscribe to their feeds there, though some people prefer to keep their Facebook just for friends. Other sites might offer to email you when they have a new post – but who like giving out their email address? I find that the best solution is with RSS.

Outlook to the Rescue!

RSS

Really Simple Syndication: an XML-based standard and format used to distribute recent news and other frequently updated content appearing on a Web site.

In other words, a way to subscribe anonymously to a website and recive their new posts in a stripped-down, simple format.

More about RSS

I’ve been playing around with this for a little while, and I think I’ve finally come up with a solution that I like.

I use Outlook to manage all my different email addresses (yes, I actually have 5 or 6, all for different purposes), and my different calendars and tasks, so I am in Outlook at least a handful of times a day. This makes it a perfect place to find out about new content from my favourite sites.

If you’ve ever toyed around with RSS feeds, you probably are getting a lightbulb here that says they must be involved. If you add an RSS subscription to Outlook, it will generate a folder for you for each site, and let you know when there are new articles. To really use this effectivly though, I suggest modifying your subscriptions to show up by category. Most likely, you like sites with certain types of content, maybe a handful of groups. Wouldn’t it be more useful to see what is new and available based on the type of post?

My Solution

First, take a moment to think about how you want things to show up in Outlook. For me, I keep a list of my inboxes in my ‘Favourites’ sidebar, and I wanted my feeds – grouped by category – to appear just underneath. I came up with a handful of categories that the sites I visit tend to fall in to: Recipes, Crafts, Tech, Home Decor, etc.

The first thing to do is to scroll down to your ‘Outlook Data File’ section in the left sidebar (should appear below your various email accounts), find the RSS Feeds section, and add these folders. This will be the home for all the new posts that are published. I added each of these folders to my Favourites section so they would appear at the top – but you don’t have to do this.

Next, start visiting your favourite sites. Look for an RSS icon somewhere on the site where you can access the site’s RSS feed. In Internet Explorer, the browser may detect the available feeds for you and light up an RSS icon in the top right of your tool bar. Click the icon, and you will navigate to a page displaying the rss feed (the url include words like ‘/feeds/’ or ‘rss’ or ‘feedburner’). As an example, here is a link to this blog’s main rss feed.

Copy the feed url, and return to Outlook. Right-click on the ‘Rss Feeds’ section, and select ‘Add a new RSS Feed’.

Next, paste the copied feed URL and press OK. Here is where we get fancy: press the ‘Advanced…’ button to bring up the advanced settings dialog, and find the Delivery Location section. Here you can see that the default settings are to create a new folder for the posts from each feed you add. Instead, you can redirect the incoming posts to the custom folders we just created. Multiple feeds will be filtered in to your different folders, regardless of which site they are coming from. Cool!

Once youve added all your feeds, select one of the folders you created and see the posts come rolling in! You can now preview all the newest articles from your favourite sties without having to leave Outlook. Find something good? Use the ‘View Article’ button at the bottom for a direct link back to the site to leave your comments or to view the full article formatted as it was intended.

Can’t Choose a Category?

Sometimes a site offers posts on multiple topics – take this site for example! If you subscribe to the main feed, you will see every article regardless of its category. Check to see if the site offers category-specifc feeds (that is, a different feed for each post category). You can find a list of specific feeds available for bits ‘n bytes blog on the right-hand sidebar.

Are you a wordpress blogger? Check out this article from Maria Langer on how to generate category or tag-specific rss links!

Halloween Candy-Bar Cookies

terrah — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:01:41 +0000

Every time I walk past the big bowl of leftover Halloween chocolates near my front door I am tempted to eat one. I have an internal battle with myself, though it always goes the say way: “mmmm Snickers… or Twix… but I already feel so sick from eating them all… but they are so good… but… how am I eating this already?”.

Last night I was avoiding the tiny bars, calling out to me, when I had a great idea: chocolate bars are like chocolate chips – why not put them in cookies? So I did, and they turned out great!

These cookies are delicious and easier to get rid of than mini chocolate bars. You can make a ton of them and send them to work with your husband, put them out at a party, or send them to soccer practice with your kids – then everyone else will gobble up your leftover Halloween candy for you. Perfect.

You can use any cookie recipe that has chocolate chips in it to make Halloween cookies, but here is the recipe that I used:

Halloween Candy-Bar Cookies!

Recipe at my Recipe Box
Yield: 3 dozen

Ingredients

¾ Cup unsalted butter
1 Cup granulated sugar
½ Cup light brown sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 Tablespoons half and half
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
½ Teaspoon salt
2 ¼ Cups All-Purpose Flour
¾ Cup uncooked oats
2 Cups candy bars, chopped, (around 15 fun-size bars)

Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cream butter and sugars in mixer bowl. Add egg, egg yolk and cream, and mix to combine. Sift together dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking soda) and add to the sugars, mixing until dough is a uniform consistency.

Chop candy bars in to small pieces (about the size of large chocolate chips). Add candy bar pieces and oats to the mixture, and mix by hand to combine.

Chill dough in the freezer for a few minutes to make sure it is cold. Using a 1 tbsp measure, drop dough onto cookie sheet. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes and transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Enjoy!

Happy Halloween!

terrah — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 20:53:52 +0000

Halloween is almost here!

Last night we spent the evening enjoying a delicious homemade pizza and carving our Halloween pumpkins. We picked them up at the supermarket, along with additional bags of candy, as I had previously broken down and opened some of the chocolates early. My husband generally favours a spooky Halloween pumpkin face, the traditionalist that he is, while I tend to lean towards stencil-type scenes.

I was lacking inspiration this year, but found some in this Pinterest post. I used masking tape to tape off the sections that were going to remain uncut, which worked really well. I think I might keep that idea for next year, as masking tape is a lot easier to adjust than pen marks.

Here are the results!

Also, the procrastintor that I am, I decided today would be a good day to figure out a halloween costume. I pulled out the box-of-costumes-past from the closet and found myself some devil horns and red gloves. Those are going to have to do for me this year.

I have spent significantly more time on a costume for our dog Bowser. Halloween has become “more for the kids” as we approach 30, and since we don’t have any kids, our dog is victim to my need to celebrate the holiday. He tolerates it, but I have a feeling that has more to do with the attention and extra treats.

This year, Bowser is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle!

Looks like we are all ready for the trick-or-treaters!

Happy Halloween!

Blank Slate Lasagna

terrah — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 04:24:29 +0000

I love it when we try out a new recipe, sit down to eat, and think, “This dish is missing… something.“

Somethings that would complete this dish:

Slices of Eggplant
Shredded Chicken
Pan-fried Zuchinni
Shredded Spinach
Sundried Tomatoes
Sliced Mushrooms
Ground Pork
Shrimp or Crabmeat

What that means to me is that this dish has potential – I can make it into a bunch of different dishes based on what I pick that ‘something’ to be. This type of recipe is great to have on hand because you can usually make it with leftover meat, or with whichever vegetables are kicking around your fridge.

I found this great recipe online for Creamy Artichoke Lasagna. It is similar to a traditional lasagna, except there artichokes instead of meat, and it uses an alfredo sauce instead of the traditional red sauce to go with the ricotta cheese. Honestly I would easily classify it as more of a ‘Baked Pasta Dish’ than a true Lasagna, but hey, I didn’t name the recipe.

So check it out, and let me know what you think:

Creamy Artichoke Lasagna

Serves: 6-8
Start-To-Finish: 2hrs

Ingredients

3 Cups water
¼ Cup Lemon juice
15 fresh baby artichokes
9 dried lasagna noodles
3 tbsp. olive oil
½ Cup Pine nuts
4 Cloves garlic, minced
15 Ounces ricotta cheese
1 Cup finely shredded Parmesan cheese
1 Cup fresh basil, snipped
1 egg
¾ tsp. salt
1 Cup vegetable or chicken broth
¼ Cup All-Purpose Flour
2 Cups half-and-half, or light cream
1 Cup shredded mozzarella cheese

*Make it lighter: Use safflower oil, egg beaters, skim milk and soy mozzarella instead!

Method
In a large bowl, combine the water and lemon juice; set aside. Cut off the base of each artichoke. Snap off outer leaves until you reach leaves that are yellow at the bottom. Cut off the top third of artichokes; quarter artichokes. Immediately place artichokes in water mixture to keep them from browning. Drain artichokes.

Since it is winter I used canned artichokes instead. Just rinse them and press out any excess liquid on a paper towel-lined plate before hand. Fresh artichokes would add a nice bit of texture to the dish.

Cook noodles according to package directions; drain. Rinse with cold water; drain again.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large saucepan, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil over medium heat. Add artichokes, pine nuts, and half of the garlic. Cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until artichokes are tender, stirring frequently. Transfer to the large bowl. Stir in ricotta cheese, 1/2 cup of the Parmesan cheese, 1/2 cup of the basil, the egg, and salt.

For sauce: In a small bowl or glass measure, combine broth and flour. In the large saucepan, heat the remaining 1 tablespoon oil over medium heat. Add the remaining garlic; cook and stir until garlic is tender but not brown. Stir in flour mixture and half-and-half. Cook and stir until mixture is thickened and bubbly. Remove from heat. Stir in the remaining 1/2 cup basil.

To assemble, spread about 1 cup of the sauce over the bottom of an ungreased 3-quart shallow baking dish. Layer three of the cooked noodles in the dish. Spread with one-third of the artichoke mixture and one-third of the remaining sauce. Sprinkle with mozzarella and parmesan. Repeat layering noodles, artichoke mixture, sauce, and cheese two more times.

Bake, uncovered, for 35 to 40 minutes until edges are bubbly and top is lightly browned. Let stand for 15 minutes before serving. Makes 12 servings.

Yum! It was pretty good on its own, about four stars. With a little help, I think it could make it to five.

Bon Appitite!

The New And Improved Facebook

terrah — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 07:59:55 +0000

The New Timeline!
Control How you Share
Control What you See

The main thing that Google+ had going for it was a unique way to manage your ‘groups’ (or ‘circles’, they called them) of friends. The idea is so simple, yet totally opens up the amount of information we are willing, (and want,) to share. By organizing your friends in to groups – a group for close friends, a group for acquaintances, a group for your book club, church group or sports team – you can choose to share certain information with some friends, and not with others.

It is such a compelling idea that some people, (myself included,) made our way over to Google+ to try it out. Fortunately for those of us who were dreading migrating our whole online life from Facebook to Google, Facebook has changed their model to give us the same kind of freedom.

On Thursday’s f8 conference, Mark Zuckerberg announced the new Facebook profile called ‘Timeline’ which will be rolling out next week. I took a look at the developer preview of ‘Timeline’, and the first thing that came to mind was that while this is an amazing way to share information with SOME of my friends, how to I hide this information from others? Here is a quick peek at the developer preview for you, so that you can see what I’m talking about.

The New Timeline!

If you were looking for evidence that you spend entirely to much time online, here it is. Some people may be repulsed by the idea that they have shared this much of their life online, and others will rejoice in this fact. I am of the opinion that as long as you only share things that you don’t care if people know, then share, share away. I just want to make sure that I can control who gets to see it – well them and ‘big brother facebook’ anyways.

One thing that does make me ponder a little is that with this new timeline, you can jump from posts from today to posts from 10 years ago, with the click of a button. Before timeline, you could count on the fact that no one is going to hit ‘Show Earlier Posts’ enough times to go back more than a year, so the silly things you posted back in Highschool/College/January would never be seen again. I will tell you, one of the first things I did when I got my hands on the developer preview of Timeline was to delete a WHOOOLE lot of older posts. As if my family needs more material to make fun of me for.

Once that was under control, I really started to like Timeline. It is beautifully put together, with large images, creative views, and wonderful ajax-loaded content. There are a few things that I really like:

Types for Updates - Updates now have more character: you can use special types of updates to post that you started a new job, graduated from school, bought a house, traveled, or even broke a bone. These updates are noted as being more important than your run of the mill status updates, and get special post formats like this one, for when I went on a trip to Italy:

The Cover Image - I think it is great that they gave users the ability to display a Cover Image as well as a profile picture. Parents will no longer have to sacrifice their profile picture to post a picture of their kids! It is a great way for people to express themselves, and it can be changed every day if you want.

Map View - This is probably my favourite new feature. Hitting the map button on your profile will display your timeline on a map – any posts or pictures that have a location associated with them will appear on the map at that location:

I’m not a huge fan of “Checking In” – I really don’t think my 100 closest friends need to know that I’m at Macys. But I do like my vacation photos to have locations (but not until I get back home… why not just invite people to come rob my house, right Mom?) especially with this neat new way to view them.

You can zoom in and see the posts, check ins and pictures by clicking on one of the pink locations, choose locations by date, or just scroll through them randomly. I haven’t traveled that much, but I imagine some people would have some very interesting maps!

Adding Locations:

So how do you associate a location with a photo? It is actually very easy – just like how you can tag another person in your photo, you can use the “Add Location” button and type in the location’s name. By default, it will start searching nearby, but you can change that by finding the spot that says “Searching places near…” and pressing Change. You can mark a location as a City, Restaurant, Park, Airport – you name it!

Now that you’ve seen all the details of your life that are available to see on the new Timeline, you might be thinking it is time to up your privacy settings.

If you have been on Facebook for more than a few years, chances are there are people on your list of ‘friends’ with whom you are no longer that friendly. You fall out of touch, or maybe you were never that good of friends to begin with. For whatever reason, it seems a little harsh to hit that ‘unfriend’ button, so you carry on receiving each others unwanted updates.

Now with Timeline, you may feel that giving someone like this access to your life’s “scrapbook” invades a little too much on your privacy. Luckily, with a little configuration here and there, you can change how much access to grant to each person.

Control How You Share

In order to give you more flexible control over which people you share your information with, facebook has made their friend ‘Lists’ features more predominant. You can control exactly which people see what information by organizing your contacts in to groups, and giving specific permissions to each group.

Friend Lists

You may have already noticed a “Lists” section to the left of your newsfeed with list of friends generated for you. Hit the “MORE” button to view all the friend lists you currently have.

There are a few types of lists here.

Everyone will have the following three lists: “Close Friends” list, the “Acquaintances” list, and the “Restricted” list. Contacts will only end up on these lists by you manually putting them there.

Next there are some “Smart Lists” generated for you, based on information you have listed in your profile. Smart lists are updated automatically – for example, if you put in your profile that you went to XYZ University, Facebook will generate a list for you called XYZ University. All of your contacts who also said they went there will be on this list, and the list will change as people update their profiles. You can tell if a list is a smart list by the lightning bolt beside the name:

Lists that you create yourself will show up here as well. You can create lists for groups of friends with common interests, in order to share information with only the relevant people (more on this below).

For now, the first thing to do is go through your contact list and add some of them to one of the “Close Friends” list, the “Acquaintances” list, and the “Restricted” list.

Add people to your ‘Close Friends’ list with whom you would like to share the most, and see the most of their updates in your newsfeed.
Add people to your ‘Acquaintances’ list whom you would like to share less with, and see less of their updates in your newsfeed.
Add people to your ‘Restricted’ list whom you don’t really want to share anything personal, and you don’t want them to show up in your newsfeed.
If someone doesn’t fit any of these requirements, just leave them out of all of the groups.

Facebook will use these groups to determine which information to show in your news feed. Posts from people in your ‘Close Friends’ group will be considered more important to you, and will appear closer to the top. Posts from people in your ‘Acquaintances’ group will be considered less important, and will appear farther down your newsfeed.

Protect your Profile

Your profile can potentially have a lot of personal information on it – which is fine for some of your contacts to see, but not necessarily all of them. Luckily, you can now configure exactly which information is available for which people.

Enter the ‘Edit Profile’ area, and note the small dropdowns at the end of each line. You can use this dropdown to set who can see the information on this line.

‘Public’ means anyone on Facebook can see this information while visiting your profile.
‘Friends’ means everyone on your friend’s list (except those on the restricted list) can see this information.
‘Friends except Acquaintances’ means everyone on your list except those on the Acquaintances and Restricted lists can see this information.
‘Only Me’ means, well, only you can see it.
You can also choose one of the groups you have created, such as “Book Group” or “Baseball team”

If you want to be a little more specific about who sees this information, select the ‘Custom ‘ Setting. This will bring up a dialog box where you can allow multiple networks, people or groups, and exclude multiple people or groups

Consider how You Share

Sometimes, you might want to post information that may only be relevant to a small group of your friends. You may even decide not to share it, because you don’t want to bother everyone else with this information that is not relevant to them.

Lists are Private:

The lists you create are only for you to see. Adding someone to a list does not mean that they can see the list, or see who else is on it, or even know it exists. It does not show up anywhere for them to see.

In the same way, you will have no idea which lists your friends have put you on – unless all of a sudden you can only see public posts and public information from someone… try not to let it break your facebook-heart.

Now, by defining additional friend lists for contacts with common interests, you can share all the information you want, with exactly the people you want to share it with.

You can also create your own lists by hitting the ‘Create List’ button, under Lists -> “MORE”. Here you can give the list a name and manually select the people on this list.

It can be useful to create lists for groups of friends with common interests – for example your baseball team, running group, or church group. These lists, as well as the smart lists that are generated for you, will make it easier to share information with only the relevant people .

The next time you go to post something, take a look for the new button beside the “Post” button. If you click it, it will drop down to give you the option of who you want to share with.

You can select from the main lists – Public (which will be visible to everyone – your friends, people who aren’t your friends, and people on your restricted list), Friends, Friends except Acquaintances, or Close Friends lists. Lists that you have created and use often will also appear here, as in “Baseball Team” above.

Facebook Remembers:

Currently, Facebook will remember the last setting you used when posting an update. The next time you go to post something, it will use this setting automatically – so make sure to check what it is set to before you hit post!

If you want to be even more specific, or if you want to share with multiple groups, choose the “Custom” option, and you will get a popup dialog where you can choose to include specific networks, groups and people, and to restrict specific groups and people.

Default Settings

You also should take a minute to set your Default privacy setting. This setting will be used for times when you post something where there is no place to set the privacy on an individual-post level. For example, when you are using a Facebook for mobile app, or posting from an external site like Twitter:

You can set your default privacy setting under the Privacy Settings section. I use the setting of Friends, except Restricted list. Look for the following icons to manage your Default setting:

While you are here, you may want to check out the minor privacy tweaks available in the sections after these icons, such as “How you Connect”, and “Limit the Audience for Past Posts”.

What If I Make a Mistake?

You can always change your mind about the level of privacy for one of your posts. If you set the wrong privacy level by mistake, or if you just change your mind, locate the post on your profile, and click the privacy icon, next to the date. You can choose a new privacy level for any post, at any time.

Yours or Mine?

Posts you make to your own profile, (by updating your status,) will inherit your privacy settings – but the same is not true for posts you leave elsewhere. If you post something on someone else’s profile, THEIR default privacy setting will be used. For example, take a look at this post I left on my husband’s wall when I found out Ben Flajnik was chosen as the next Bachelor:

Even though this is something that I posted, it isn’t even visible to all of my friends. Since it is on his profile, it is visible according to his default setting – Kevin’s friends of friends. You might want to save your sensitive information for a private message, incase the person you are posting to has a public profile. Luckily, I’m happy to have everyone know about Ben!

A little bit about Subscriptions

Are subscriptions the end of Twitter? Probably not.

If you are a frequent tweeter, you might be interested to know that facebook has introduced a public “Subscribers” feature. If you enable this feature, people don’t have to be your “friend” in order to see your public posts and public profile information. Subscribing to someone’s public posts works the same as with twitter, but lacking the keywords and tagging.

Subscribers fall in the same privacy pool as people on your Restricted list – they can only see your public posts, and can only view the information you mark Public on your profile.

You can enable subscriptions by hitting the “Allow Subscribers” button under “Subscriptions” below. You will be prompted with a dialog to fine tune your subscription privacy settings.

Alternatively, find the “How you Connect” section under Privacy Settings. Editing your “How you Connect” settings will bring up this dialog. Notice at the very top, you can edit your subscriber settings in the Subscribers Tab. Click this link to continue on.

Here you can turn on the setting to allow subscribers.

Update: Sharing your Photos

Thanks to reader Maria for asking a question about photo permissions. You now have a lot more control over how you share your photos on Facebook. Previously your options were to share photos with ‘Friends’ or ‘Friends of Friends’, but now you can share an album with any number of friends lists, or even make it public.

Your Albums - When you create an album, you get to select a privacy setting for the whole album. This makes it easy to share photos from a trip or event with just the people who attended. All photos in the album will inherit the privacy setting from the album itself – you cannot set a different privacy level for each photo. By default, Facebook will use the privacy setting from the last post that you posted, for your album. To change this setting, find the ‘Share Album With’ section on the Upload Photos dialog, and choose a new setting:

Changing the privacy setting on an existing album is just as easy. Locate the album in list of albums (Photos -> Albums -> See All) and note the privacy drop down beside the album name. Alternatively, you could edit the album information and change the permissions there.

Single Pictures - When you post a single picture to your wall, you can set a different privacy level for each photo same way you would set it if you were posting text or a link (just use the button next to the ‘Post’ button).

Even though all these photos belong to your “Wall Photos” album, they do not need to have the same privacy level. Once a photo is posted, you can always go back and change the setting by viewing the photo, and selecting another option from the privacy dropdown.

And don’t forget: a photo you post on someone else’s profile will inherit THEIR privacy settings!

Now that your privacy settings are beefed up, lets take a look at how to limit incoming information – posts from your friends, your subscriptions, and your fan pages.

Control What You See

News Feeds

If you have been creating groups as you went along with this article, you will now have a bunch of friends lists and you might have noticed that those lists appear to the left hand side of your main newsfeed. There may be times when you want to see what is new with just one of your lists of friends, instead of your main Newsfeed. Just click on one of those lists, and your main newsfeed will be filtered to only show posts from people on that list. You can even bookmark your favorite of these lists, and they will always appear near the top, under “Favorites”.

Fine tune Friend’s Updates:

You want to hear about what is new with your friends, but not every update is interesting to you. With friend lists you can now decide exactly which types of activity you want to see from each person. This feature has been around for awhile, but it is now much easier to configure, right down to the individual person.

This can also be configured for each group, so you might want to start with that. Select a friend list, and then hit the Manage List button at the top right hand corner, and select ‘Choose Update Types…’ .

Here you can choose, (by checking and unchecking,) which types of updates you want to receive from people in this group.

Next, you can fine tune these settings on a per-person level. You can change these settings almost everywhere that the person’s name appears as a link – on a post, in your friends list, or on your profile. Just hover over their name, and adjust the check marks in the same way you did for the group.

You can also make these changes by finding the Subscribed button on their profile, and hovering over it to bring out the drop down list

Fan Pages

You have considerably less choice when it comes to the visibility of fan page page posts. By choosing to mark them as Top Stories in your newsfeed, you will see more of them. Otherwise, you can select to Hide all their posts. Those are the only options you have for Fan Pages.

Whew! Thats it! I hope you feel more informed about the new privacy features on Facebook. If there is something you are curious about that I haven’t covered, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll try to cover it for you!

A SQL Tip: String Concatenate

terrah — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 06:08:12 +0000

SQL Server has a lot of useful built-in aggregate functions, but for some reason there is nothing built-in (that I know of,) to concatenate strings. This drives me batty. I have this problem over and over again, and have been looking for an elegant solution for a while now. The problem is always the same:

I have data like this:

Table: Cars




Make
Model

Toyota
Camry

Ford
Focus

Toyota
Corolla

Toyota
Prius

Jeep
Cherokee

Ford
Explorer

and I want to get the results, for example, with all the models for Toyota, like this:

Make

Models

Toyota

Camry, Corolla, Prius

It seems like it should be easy – it seems like it should be as simple as Grouping By the Car’s Make column. I’ve seen solutions where you Create and Drop tables, and even methods where you would create and parse xml from your results. It just seems like there should be an easier way.

Well there is.

Finally I have stumbled upon it, and I wanted to share in case anyone else runs in to this problem as much as I do:

declare @result varchar(50);

select @result = coalesce(@result + ‘, ‘, ”) + [COLUMNNAME]

from [Table]

In our car example above, this becomes

declare @models varchar(50);

select @models = coalesce(@models + ‘, ‘, ”) + MODEL

from CARS

WHERE MAKE = ‘Toyota’;

Tah-Dah!

Spice Up Your Starch

terrah — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 05:31:12 +0000

So it is 5 o’clock and you are staring in to the fridge asking yourself the same question you always ask at this time: “Rice or Potato?”. Why is it that dinner time starch is always an afterthought? For years I would plan out which meats and veggies I was going to make, and then 5 minutes before I started making dinner I debate whether I should pull out the rice cooker. Honestly, there are only so many varieties and ways to prepare either of those choices, and I’ve exhausted them. Chances are, if you cook dinner for your household, and you’ve done so for more than year, you’re probably in the same boat.

The problem with having rice or a potato is that both are empty carbs. They will both fill you up, but neither gives you a significant amount of fiber or protein. If you check out the nutritional information for white rice, you will see that it only has a measly 1g fiber per serving. A potato isn’t much better, with 3g of fiber if you manage to eat the skin.

Recently I’ve retired the rice maker and started looking into grains. It turns out there is a whole world of grains and seeds out there, each with a different taste and texture. Grains are also really good for you. Check out this comparison for a 1 cup serving of the following:

Starch	Long-Grain Rice	Potato	Quinoa	Garbanzo Beans	Wheat Berries	Bulgar	Lentils
Calories	205	128	160	286	302	151	230
Carbs	45g	29g	28g	54g	58g	34g	40g
Fiber	1g	3g	6.5g	11g	8g	8g	16g
Sugar	0g	2g	0g	0g	0g		4g
Protein	4g	3g	6g	12g	12g	5.6g	18g
Source of	Folate	Vit C	Iron, Potassium	Manganese, Vit B6, Folate		Iron, Vit B3, Folate	Folate, Iron

Imagine that! With a more exciting side-dish that provides over 10g of protein, it is easy (and healthy) to reduce the amount of meat that you eat. Plus, the extra fiber helps lower cholesterol.

Now.. what to make?

Quinoa:

You have no doubt heard all sorts of wonderful things about Quinoa, which is actually a seed – not a grain. It has recently become mainstream and is being hailed as a ‘superfood’ for its high protein content and low calories. Quinoa is also high in fiber and low in fat.

Quinoa has a delightfully chewy texture, and the cooked seeds have an opaque yellowish colour (depending on the variety you buy). It reminds me a little bit of a chewy couscous. It has a more distinct texture than taste, and generally picks up the taste of whatever you cook it with. Plus, quinoa is naturally Gluten Free.

Try this Recipe for Greek Quinoa and Avacado Salad – it’s delicious!

Garbanzo Beans:

Most beans (black beans, kidney beans, etc) contain upwards of 10g of dietary fiber per 1 cup serving. Garbanzo beans, or chickpeas, just happen to be my favourite bean – they go great tossed in to a salad, made in to humus or falafel patties, or sauteed with vegetables. You can cook them from raw form, or buy them canned (just open and rinse).

Try this easy to make version of the classic middle eastern dish, Falafel Melts.

Bulgar:

Bulgar has a nutty flavour, and a light fluffy appearance. It goes great in a salad, and sometimes I sprinkle the uncooked kernels in granola bars or bread to give it a little extra roughage. When it is cooked it puffs up and looks similar to small, fluffy, whole-grain bread crumbs.

Try this side-dish recipe, Bulgar with Red Peppers and Spinach. This recipe also uses garbanzo beans!

Wheat Berries:

Wheat Berries are more commonly used in Middle-Eastern dishes such as this Wheat Berry Tabbouleh dish. The kernels are very chewy and require a long simmer to soften, but they can be made in advance and re-heated at dinner time. Since they are on the tougher side, they will not break down or get mushy when you re-heat them. They are very hardy and will fill you up!

Wheat Berries can be pretty hard to track down in the grocery store, so make sure you check the bulk aisle!

Lentils:

There are a few different types of lentils, though I’ve only had the green/brown ones. Green Lentils look like split peas when they are raw, and take a little while to boil.

The one time that I made lentils on their own, they turned out mushy and bland. I have enjoyed them mixed in to a pasta salad though, so I still have hope for these nutritious seeds. Do you have a recipe to share? I’d love to hear it!

Who’s Training Who?

terrah — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 22:50:18 +0000

We have had our dog Bowser for 3 days now, and already he has me questioning myself. He is a handsome 2½ year old Golden Retriever / Lab mix that we are adopting from the K9 Rescue & Rehab shelter in Kirkland. He is the gentlest dog I have ever met, and the only one whose mouth I have ever taken a ball and not feared for my life.

I am, self-proclaimed, NOT a ‘dog person’. I am still adapting to having the extra responsibility, vacuuming daily, and improving my dog-drool avoiding tactics. Amongst all the chaos, however, I have learned something about myself – I am maybe the least consistent person ever to have lived.

When Bowser first arrived at our house, the lady who works at K9R&R told us that since the dog is now in a new environment, you have to immediately set the rules. For example, he couldn’t wait to get inside and was lunging at the doorway, but she took the 5 minutes to get him to sit first, and enter after her. She said that people get a new dog and want to give it treats and hug it first, and don’t get around to training it until a few weeks later – but if you do that then the dog will get confused about what it is an isn’t allowed to do. “The most important thing,” she said, “is to be consistent.”

In my opinion, “being consistent” is the single most difficult requirement of having a dog.

It made me realize just how inconsistent I am on a daily basis. The rules and routines in my life change based on my mood, which if you know me, you know is different from one minute to the next. Somehow my friends and family have managed to avoid reprimand by dipping and dodging my ever-changing standards, but this pooch is not so lucky. It looks like I’m the one who will have to change.

My mind is a buzz of rules right now. Currently, we only exit through the back patio door so that he knows that if he has to go out, that’s where to go. I never feed Bowser anything off my plate at the table – in fact he isn’t even allowed within a couple of feet of the table when people are sitting there. Whenever I come in through a door, he first has to sit, I’ll wipe off his feet with a cloth, then stay while I go in first and then invite him inside. The list goes on. Not only does HE have to remember these things, but I have to remember every step, in the right order, every time.
From what I understand about dogs, they don’t mind rules. They just want to know exactly what those rules are so they can follow them and get a treat. A piece of chicken jerky and a ‘Good Dog’ is much more rewarding for them than a delicious drink from the toilet.

Enforcing these rules with words that make sense is also difficult. You can a teach a dog to “Stay”, and he will sit and wait for you to return. But if you are cooking in the kitchen and you don’t want your dog to loiter, you can’t tell him to “Stay Out” of the kitchen, because it is confusing. “Stay” means don’t go anywhere, and “Out” is like go outside. You have to think of exactly what it is you want him to do, and exactly which circumstances it applies to. Is he EVER allowed in the kitchen? What is the visual cue for him to know that the time for him to stay away has started and ended? What are the words that refer exactly to this situation so he knows which rule to follow? I bet that most of the ‘trouble-maker’ dogs are just extremely confused.

One of the hardest trials for me is being calm and strong in the face of rebellion. It sounds funny, but you sometimes have to fight off embarrassment in public places when they are being difficult or distracted. I was taking Bowser for a walk today and when we got to the mailbox, I asked him to sit (so I could get the mail). We had a little face-off as he busied himself, sniffing around a plant. If I had given up, he would have thought that “Sit” means to “Sit, or Sniff Plants instead”. Next time I asked him, he would do the same thing, and think that he was doing what I want him to. Unfortunately for me there were little kids and neighbours about who had to listen to me trying to get him to sit for 2 or 3 minutes (though it felt like forever).

Sometimes when Bowser follows through exactly how he is supposed to and I reward him with a ‘Good Dog!’ and a pat on the head, in my mind I am actually congratulating myself. ‘Good Terrah! Way to stick in there! Way to get it right!’. The relief that I too remembered the steps to this little dance we are doing, stayed firm, and got the expected result makes me wonder if I’m training him, or he’s training me.

Afterall, he’s the one who gets the treat for doing it right.

For Thought:

While being consistent with rules is important, it is just as important to be a little inconsistent with your feeding, walking, and being-home schedule. Read more about that here.

Why I Bing (and Decide)

terrah — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 22:47:40 +0000

I was a loyal Googler for many years. When it came out, I loved it, cherished it, and promised never to stray. (And honestly, as an upgrade from Webcrawler, it was like night and day ). For close to 10 years I kept that promise, telling everyone who would listen about how great Google was and how they should use it too. Then one day a friend of mine introduced me to Bing. “No way” I thought, “It could never be as good as Google”. Unfortunately for Google, he was my boyfriend so I had to smile and tell him I would try it out. In an attempt to win his heart I even set my home computer’s default search engine to Bing, so when he used my computer he would think I used it all the time. My work computer, however, stayed loyally to google search.

So on from there I went, Googling by day, and Binging by night until I realized that I was using Bing at work. I would type my question in to Google, scan the initial results, then head over to Bing to find what I really wanted. I laughed to myself, shook my head, and changed my default search engine – and I’ve never looked back.

The “Decision Engine”

With time, our requirements for a ‘good’ search engine have changed. A search engine is no longer about giving you a list of relevant page results, but now needs to give you the relevant information. There is a very big difference here. I don’t want to hunt around through even the top 2 or 3 sites to find what I’m looking for. I want my search engine to do the leg work and show me the information that I want to know. Get in, get the info, get back to what I was doing. This is why I love Bing – it actually takes the relevant information out of the search results and shows it to me, so I don’t have to load a second page to get what I want.

While Google and Bing compete for market share, they really aren’t building the same product. Google is indeed a Search Engine – it searches for the best pages for you, and gives you a list of those pages. In my opinion, this isn’t what Bing does. Bing reads those pages for you, and gives you the information you want.

John Battelle says it best:

“I actually don’t think Microsoft is trying to out-Google Google with Bing. I think it’s trying to build a different kind of search application, one that … helps people make decisions in a new way. … this totally breaks the AdWords model that has driven search so far. To me, that is a very big step in a new direction, and one that Google cannot afford to make.”

My thoughts exactly.

Google Plays Catchup

You may have noticed that, since their 2010 redesign, Google is looking more and more like Bing. They have adapted the Bing sidebar, and updated their image search to be more like Bing, and bloggers are screaming for the general public to notice.

But enough of all that, because I know that you are thinking I am bias and that you can find proof of anything on the internet if you look hard enough. So what I want to do, is show you. I want to introduce you Bing and all of its features that you never knew about. I want to show you a side-by-side comparison of why I think you should Bing instead of Google. I want you to see that Bing gives you more information instead of page results, with less clicks, in a cleaner, prettier, and just plain better way – So how about an example?

Show me the City

Whenever we travel, we want to know everything about where we are going before we even get on the plane. We want to know what the weather will be like, what events are going on, and where the best hotels are. You probably throw the name of the city in your search engine, and hit 3 or 4 different sites to find all the information. Why not let Bing do the work? With Bing Places, you get all the information without leaving the page. Google has Places too, so check out the side-by-side comparison:

(Links: Bing | Google )

To get to Places, type the place (“Seattle WA”) into the search engine, then hit the places tab (Bing) or places sidebar icon (Google).

Bing creates a small presentation for you on the city, giving you get clear information on a silver platter – the weather forecast, upcoming events, popular hotels and attractions. With Google, you get some generic pictures, some related searches and a bunch of links. Google makes you do the legwork.

Attractions and Events

Bing’s Places overview is only the beginning. When you want specific information, Bing can present that to you too. If you click on one of the events listed, you can actually browse and choose your tickets without even leaving Bing. Click on ‘All Attractions’ or ‘All Events’, and you will get a sortable, filterable and again, beautiful list of attractions or events. You can narrow your results by which part of the city they are in or the type of event, and read the Trip Advisor reviews that are right at your fingertips. Click any event for more information – not links – about that event.

Finding attractions on Google is possible, but requires considerably more legwork. To find the Les Miserables show above, we can change our google search to say “Seattle WA Shows” and scroll down to the 5th Ave theater (because, though we’ve never been to Seattle, we just so happen to know that’s the place to look), then we click on the obscure right hand side link that says “Place page” – NOT the main “5th Ave Theater” title – a we end up here, on the google page about the 5th Ave Theater. Whew! Now, if we actually want to buy tickets we have to click on the show, and then get re-directed to the show website, where there is a ‘Buy Tickets’ button, and that will redirect us to Ticket Master. It’s as easy as that! All we needed was to already know what was showing and where it was playing!

Put me on a Plane

Seattle looks like a great place to visit so far! Well I guess you are going to need a plane ticket to get here – don’t worry, Bing’s got you covered. Bing can show you rates from different providers – all on one page of course – and even tell you when is the right time to buy. Let’s say you’re flying from Toronto to Seattle. Head over to the Bing Flights page, pop in your origin and when you are thinking of traveling, and let Bing present you with flight information.

Here, you can filter the flights by things like price, duration, and airline. My favourite feature of Bing Flights is that, using a history of price information, Bing will tell you if prices are expected to rise, fall, or stay the same. Check it out! Click the ‘Flight Information’ link above, and check out the “Price Predictor” section.

Bing has a similar page for Hotels, where you can compare rates from different providers, and filter based on rating, amenities, and neighbourhood.

Does Google do this? Not that I’ve seen. However, if you search “flights from YTO to SEA” you can see a static list of flight numbers from major airlines, and of course, a huge list of links. Other than that, I’m sure Google could pass you a link to Orbitz.

The Comparison:

Shows me an overview of the city: Bing’s got it, Google falls short.
Lets me find something to do, and grab tickets quickly: Bing’s got it, Google can give you a link to tickets if you find out whats showing (and where) by yourself
Get me there: Bing’s got flights and hotels, Google’s got links.

And that is only the Places & Travel sections! Have you seen the Finance & Stocks section? Tv & Entertainment section? How about the Recipes section?

Are you convinced yet? If not, I just want to share with you a couple more of my favourite parts of Bing:

It’s the Little Things…

Landmark Driving

This point may be lost on men, but women know that we drive by landmarks. If you ask me how to get to the gas station from my house, I’d tell you “go out my driveway and turn right at the mailbox, then left at the T in the road. Drive past the park and down the hill till you get to the main drag and turn right. The Shell is right after the Library.” Notice that there is not a single street name in that sentence.

Women drivers (and I’m sure, some men,) are more comfortable when we have something other than a street name to go by, and Bing gives that to us. If I ask Bing for directions from St. Chateau Michelle Winery to Redmond WA, here is what I get:

Links: Bing | Google

Notice Bing’s direction #2: There is a Chevron on the Corner. Bing gives me street directions, but also landmark directions to use in case that is more helpful to me. And it is – personally, I can spot a Chevron more easily than a street sign that says “85th St.”.

A More Beautiful Web

Everything about Bing is prettier than Google. It has a cleaner, less cluttered look, and shows you a beautiful image every morning when you open your browser:

Links: Bing | Google

Google has added the ability for you to personally set the background of the google page, but I’d rather have Bing show me a different, beautiful and interesting image every morning – and maybe even learn something from the image hotspots.

Bing with your Friends

And last but not least, since you could never, ever, (ever.) get enough Facebook, why not bring your Facebook friends along with you while you search, so they can suggest things you might like?

Turns out, my friends like Bing:

What do you think? Are you a Googler? Or do you Bing? I want your opinion!

Make	Model
Toyota	Camry
Ford	Focus
Toyota	Corolla
Toyota	Prius
Jeep	Cherokee
Ford	Explorer