Facepalm – Do Not Rehash

Facepalm – Do Not Rehash!

Too many companies these days have a social media person on staff. This social media person is often a person who has been in some form of Journalism or Marketing and fell into the positions of Social Media Manager. This is not a blog entry to bash the social media person, but to open the eyes of the companies who are hiring these people. Companies should be feeding their Social Media Managers their experiences. Social Media Managers should be seeking the experiences from their surroundings.

Facepalm Definition:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facepalm Continue reading Facepalm – Do Not Rehash

All The Small Things

All the small things are often forgotten. In software development we are taught to take a large problem and break it down to its smallest component. Often as software developer we can make a daunting task less complicated by following the smallest component rule. This is the same in life. Did you know life can be broken down to its smallest component? Continue reading All The Small Things

jQuery Image Gallery

I was asked to create a simple jQuery routine that could replace a current flash control. The challenge was not actually the jQuery portion but creating the HTML dynamically. The current code create a XML file that was passed to a flash object. Once the HTML was dynamically created, the jQuery was pretty easy.

Here is a sample of what I created:

<html>
    <!--
        Author:  Andrew Pallant
        Date:    July 2013

        Image Gallery jQuery Code - Created for a client to replace a flash solution.
        Code has been dumbed down for sample purposes.  Actually HTML code is more dynamic, but the jQuery code is the same no mater what.
    -->
    <head>
        	<script type="text/javascript">
            jQuery(document).ready(function () {
                // Initialize Controls
                jQuery("[id^=imgBig]").hide();

                // Set Mouse Over Events
                jQuery("[id^=thumb]").mouseover(function () { jQuery(this).fadeTo(0, 0.6); });
                jQuery("[id^=thumb]").mouseout(function () { jQuery(this).fadeTo(0, 1); });

                // Set Thumb Indexed Values
                for (var x = 0; x < 7; x++) {
                    jQuery("#thumb" + x).attr('indexedVal', x);
                }

                // Thumb Click Events
                jQuery("[id^=thumb]").click(function () {
                    jQuery("[id^=imgBig]").hide();

                    jQuery("#imgBig" + jQuery(this).attr('indexedVal')).fadeIn("Slow");
                });

                // Set Initial Image
                jQuery("#imgBig0").show();
            });
        </script>
    </head>

    <body>
        <div class="imgGallery">
	        <div class="BigImageContainer">
		        <img id='imgBig0' src='image1.jpg' />
		        <img id='imgBig1' src='image2.jpg' />
		        <img id='imgBig2' src='image3.jpg' />
		        <img id='imgBig3' src='image4.jpg' />
	        </div>
	        <div class="thumbCtrl">
		        <ul>
		            <li class="thumb">
			            <a href="#" onclick="return false;"><img id='thumb0' src='image1.jpg' /></a>
		            </li>
		            <li class="thumb">
			            <a href="#" onclick="return false;"><img id='thumb1' src='image2.jpg' /></a>
		            </li>
		            <li class="thumb">
			            <a href="#" onclick="return false;"><img id='thumb2' src='image3.jpg' /></a>
		            </li>
		            <li class="thumb">
			            <a href="#" onclick="return false;"><img id='thumb3' src='image4.jpg' /></a>
		            </li>
		        </ul>
	        </div>
        </div>

    </body>

</html>
photo gallery
Sample Image of the Gallery of what it could look like: currently being used on www.SoftwareCity.ca and www.pc-canada.com

Image of Finished Product

How to use SQL to Extract a Number from a String

Recently I had a need to extract the number from a string in the database.  The string would be something like ‘Monitor 16″‘ or “16 inch Monitor”.   I would need to get the size for various reasons including fees and reports, but no real good way of doing it.  I have come up with the following Scalar SQL Function to do this very job.

Continue reading How to use SQL to Extract a Number from a String