I've been following a site called Shady Characters, created by Keith Houston. In his own words, "Shady Characters is all about the stories behind different marks of punctuation". Recently, Keith went into some detail about the history of Emoji, which I encourage you to check out. The brief history of emoji is far more interesting … Continue reading A history of Emoji
Category: Technology
Flipboard and the case of usability that doesn’t care about you
I'm a regular user of Flipboard, the app that tells me what's happening in the world that isn't Twitter. I have a carefully curated list of interests. One of the things I do with my lovely spouse is share links using Flipboard. In the user interface on my iPhone (I don't use it elsewhere), there … Continue reading Flipboard and the case of usability that doesn’t care about you
10 Centuries Locker
This is interesting. An anonymous message-sharing system for messages under 100MB, including full Unicode support. Hopefully the spammers won't abuse it like they did with my site ncane.com. Created by Jason Irwin, who writes: The content can be text of any reasonable length and the password can be of any reasonable length and include multiple … Continue reading 10 Centuries Locker
A little bit of SQL Server for you
This post is not long enough to be a fully-fleshed out post on my technical blog, so I'm putting it here. Understanding Optimizer Timeout and how Complex queries can be Affected in SQL Server by Joseph Pilov is a worthy read if you're at all interested in how query plans are built.
Wither social media?
[Last edited 5 December 2018.] A few weeks ago I started limiting my time on Twitter significantly, although I reactivated my account a couple of weeks later and it was like I never left. One network I feel more strongly about is Facebook, a company I describe as evil without a hint of irony. I … Continue reading Wither social media?
Beta software and ghost updates
Apple is about to release iOS 12, probably in two weeks when they have their annual phone (and watch) refresh on 12 September 2018. I've been a registered Apple developer for a long time, paying my $99 every year, and waiting for the second or third beta to put on my phone. It's true, I … Continue reading Beta software and ghost updates
Repair search in Outlook 2016 for Mac
Recently I reinstalled macOS, and discovered that the search feature was not working properly in Outlook 2016 for Mac. Using these instructions from Victor Sachs on this page, I was able to get it to work after Spotlight reindexed everything: sudo mdutil -i off / sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight* sudo rm -rf /.metadata_never_index restart the computer … Continue reading Repair search in Outlook 2016 for Mac
Blockchain and you
By now you will have heard about ICOs and blockchain, and these buzzwords are making you wish you'd invested early in Bitcoin. I'm here to remind you that this post was written specifically to attract traffic through the use of the word "blockchain", with a few more words thrown in, like Bitcoin and Ethereum. If … Continue reading Blockchain and you
Office 2016: You’re connected to too many services
Recently I started seeing the above annoying error message every time I opened up Outlook 2016 on my MacBook, but only after being prompted for my passwords for every single email account I had. This is tedious with two connected accounts. I have five. A quick search led me to a thread on Microsoft Answers, with … Continue reading Office 2016: You’re connected to too many services
Air gaps and secure networks
I am a person with many interests. In one conversation, I'll introduce myself as a new filmmaker. In another, I'm a seasoned theatre actor. Sometimes I give talks on Microsoft's data platform products, SQL Server and Azure SQL Database. There's another strong field of interest I have, which I don't speak much about, and that's information … Continue reading Air gaps and secure networks