T-SQL Tuesday #99 – Work-Life Balance

This month T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Aaron Bertrand (blog | twitter). For this month's T-SQL Tuesday, we are given two options. The first option is to write about something that we are passionate about outside of SQL and tech community. The second option is to write about T-SQL bad habit. Mr. Bertrand has a long list of them. For this entry, I choose to write about activities that I do outside SQL or tech community #sqlibrium.

Good Bye Google Reader, Hello Microsoft Outlook

I’ve been using Google Reader to display RSS feeds from different sources (blogs, news sites, etc.). It certainly has done its job well. Recently, Google has decided to discontinue Google Reader and it will go offline on 1st July 2013.

Truth be told, there are many alternatives out there that I can use to substitute Google Reader. But for now, I am going to use Microsoft Outlook. It makes sense for me since I already have Microsoft Outlook installed on my computer as part of the Microsoft Office Suite and I have been using Microsoft Outlook on daily basis for a while now. In addition, the RSS feed would appear just like a typical Outlook e-mail message (a format in which I have already familiar with).

To add RSS feed to Microsoft Outlook is pretty straight forward. On the left folder navigation, there should be “RSS Feeds” folder. Right click on that folder and select “Add a New RSS Feed”. Then after that you can enter the link to the RSS subscription that you have. Once done, it would create a new folder and Microsoft Outlook would drop any new feed from that RSS subscription to that new folder. Each RSS subscription would have a different folder.

If you have several RSS subscriptions that you want to import from Google Reader to Microsoft Outlook, you should be able to do that by exporting the data from your Google Reader account by going to Google Takeout. You can just export and download your Google Reader account (in the form of a zip file). Inside that zip file, there should be “Subscriptions.xml” file. Extract that file. Then, in Microsoft Outlook, right click on “RSS Feeds” folder, and select “Import an OPML file”. When given the chance, select the XML file that you have extracted. Microsoft Outlook should be able to read the XML file and list the subscriptions that you have in Google Readers. It would also allow you to select which RSS subscription that you want to add in Microsoft Outlook.

I must admit that Microsoft Outlook lacks the features that Google Reader have. For one, in Google Reader, when you enter it, you can see the new RSS feeds from all your subscription in one page (Google Reader was able to aggregate the RSS feeds). In addition, you can organize your RSS subscriptions very easily in Google Reader. These features just don’t seems to be there in Microsoft Outlook (at least as far as I am aware of).

Google Reader is in the “cloud”. So as long as you have access to a compatible browser and the Internet, you can access your RSS subscriptions easily. With Microsoft Outlook, currently you will be limited to your local computer, where you have Microsoft Outlook installed and the RSS subscription(s) setup. Unless, if you are using Microsoft Exchange hosted e-mail. In that case, you might be able to see your RSS subscription(s) from web mail as well. Just be aware that the RSS feeds might be counted against your Exchange mailbox size quota.

Microsoft Outlook as RSS reader certainly has its limitations compared to Google Reader. However, for now, it satisfies my need as a simple and easy to use RSS reader (at least until I find a better one).

Additional Notes:

Alternatively, instead of Microsoft Outlook, you can also use Windows Live Mail (you might also need to have Windows Live Account), which is part of the Windows Essentials and its free.

Contact Form

As part of the process of redesigning this blog, I’ve decided to add a contact form page to this blog. Contact form would allow lovely readers, such as yourself, to communicate (or contact) me directly. It would certainly allow me to “listen” to your comments, critics and feedbacks.

Obviously I can share my e-mail address on this blog. However, that would potentially expose my e-mail address to spammers, which I prefer to avoid. Contact form would address this problem. There are several online applications that would allow you to easily create online forms and integrate those forms to your blog. After doing a little bit of research, I chose to use Wufoo (@Wufoo). Wufoo is part of SurveyMonkey, which is an established company that provide easy to use online survey. There are several factors that lead me to Wufoo:

1. It’s free … well sort of. Wufoo has Gratis plan, which is free of charge. However, there are some limitations, such as we only get 100 entries/month and we can only build 3 online forms. At this point, I can live with those limitation. For more information on Wufoo’s plans, click here.
2. Ease of use. It is very easy and intuitive to create the online form (in my case, the contact form). I think the GUI of their form builder tool is well-designed. I can drag and drop the fields that I want to have in the form. I can also easily define the field properties, such as whether or not the field is a required field, the maximum number of characters that can fit in that column, etc.
3. Easy implementation to the blog. Once the form has been created, there is a theme designer in Wufoo that allows us to modify the form look and feel to match our blog theme (font, color, etc.).                  Once the form has been created, Wufoo would generate the script(s) that we can use in our blog. I am using blogger as my blog engine. To implement the contact form, I would create a new page, and copy and paste the Javascript version of the Embed Form Code.
4. Report and notification options. With Wufoo, we can easily set up e-mail notification whenever someone submitted an entry to the form. We can even set up alert to our mobile phone whenever someone submitted an entry. In addition, the entries are also being recorded in their database. So we can also login to Wufoo and generate a report that would list all the entry.
5. More than just a contact form. Currently I am just using Wufoo for contact form. However, I can certainly see more usage possibilities on this blog, such as online poll form, survey form, etc.

Overall I am pretty happy with Wufoo so far. The only issue that I might have is the form loading time might be a tad slower than I expected. For those who is looking to implement any kind of online form (either contact form, registration form, survey, etc.), I would recommend to give Wufoo a try.

Site New Look

I've been looking for a blogger template that have a wide content area for quite some time, since occasionally I would post some sample codes in my blog posts. A wider content area would make it easier to read sample codes. However, for some reason I could not find one that I like.

So I've decided to create a new template for this site. For the past two weekends, I've been developing this new blogger template. I must admit that I am not much of a designer.

For most part, I have kept the design pretty simple. As you might have noticed, there are not many images in the template. I also made the content area a little bit wider than the normal blogger templates. But not too wide. The site should still be good for people who are using 1024x768 screen resolution. A wider content area also allowed me to make the font on this site a little bit bigger. So that it is easier to read the content in this blog.

Well, hopefully you like the site new look. Please feel free to leave any feedback or suggestion in regards to the site new look. You can also utilize the new Contact form to get in touch with me.

Patching a Punctured Aerobed

Aerobed is a great invention. It is one of those "great to have" gizmo in the closet. If you have family members/guests coming over for the night, all you need to do is to take the Aerobed out from the closet, plug it into the power outlet, flick a switch ...lo and behold in less than 5 minutes you have an extra bed. It is not as comfortable as a spring bed (although some people might argue that), but it is definitely much more comfortable than sleeping on a sleeping bag, or a couch (in some cases).

Air Leak

One of the worse things that can happen to an Aerobed is a puncture hole. Even the smallest hole can render the Aerobed useless. This actually happened to my Aerobed. Every time I inflate the Aerobed, within a few hours it would sagged so badly that I can not use it comfortably.

Fixing the Leak

Normally, Aerobed comes with a repair kit. But it seemed that I have misplaced mine. So I ended up using:

• Kwik Tek Vinyl Repair Kit (the kit contains a tube of glue like substance and several vinyl patches)
• Eclectic Shoe Goo Clear

As for patching the small hole that was on the Aerobed, I follow the following steps:

• Clean the area around the small hole on the Aerobed
• Apply generous amount of the glue from the Kwik Tek Vinyl Repair Kit to one of the vinyl patch. Then cover the small hole with the vinyl patch.
• Put some weight on the patch and let it sit for about 24 hours. I used the weight of several books. (Notes: After 24 hours, I tried to inflate the Aerobed, however, I still notice some air leak around the edges of the vinyl patch).
• So, I applied generous amount of Eclectic Shoe Goo around the edges of the vinyl patch, and let it sit for another 24 hours.

After I allow the Eclectic Shoe Goo to dry, I inflated the Aerobed and use it for several days. I must say that so far things are looking good. I did not notice any air leak coming from the area of the hole. Also for those several days, the Aerobed stayed inflated and firm.

Some Notes:

• I must say, if the hole on the Aerobed is really small, I think we can fix the Aerobed by just applying a generous portion of Shoe Goo.
• The glue from the Kwik Tek Vinyl Repair Kit and the Shoe Goo have a strong odor, so you might want to use them in well ventilated room.