Categories
Tips & How To's

How To: Exclude Words Like “An, A, The” From Alphabetized MySQL ORDER

When ordering lists of names or titles it’s sometimes desirable to exclude articles or other words from the order clause (eg. you want “The Burning Hell” to show up before “Great Lake Swimmers” in a list ordered by name). Early on in my career I must have assumed it was not possible and never bothered to look into again because I don’t recall ever ordering a list like this.
Anyways. Here’s how you do it:

SELECT name FROM artists ORDER BY TRIM( LEADING "a " FROM TRIM( LEADING "an " FROM TRIM( LEADING "the " FROM LOWER( name ) ) ) )

[thanks metafilter]<

Categories
Tips & How To's

How To: Cold Brew Coffee

Now that summer has finally reached The True North (strong and free), I decided to finally attempt cold brewing some iced coffee. Turns out it’s one of the easiest operations I’ve ever attempted in the kitchen. Basic recipies is as follow:

– 1cup coarse ground coffee
– 4.5cups water
– combine, leave in fridge for around 12hours
– filter
– drink

I brewed it in my french press carafe overnight – with a saran wrap lid to keep out any potentially nasty fridge smells. In the morning I used the french press as usual. Unfortunately, this left the coffee more gritty than when using a french press with hot coffee, the cold water must keep the smallest grinds in suspension more readily. Next time I’ll either forgo the french press altogether and directly filter the coffee through a regular filter, or possible dual filter it (the later seems less messy).

[ Original Recipe From Internet Food Association via Lifehacker]

Categories
Tips & How To's

Quickfire Productivity Tip: Bookmarks

Don’t use them!

At the very least, don’t bookmark distracting sites. After a recent hard drive failure, I found myself without a bookmarks backup. I’ve discovered that just the act of starting to type the url of some productivity sucking site is enough to make me think twice.

Categories
Culture

Old Age

9:23:13 AM Ryan Neudorf: i feel old, my cousin-in-law mentioned “snow patrol” on her twitter and I immediatey thought “skiing in june?”
9:24:26 AMMichael: yikes.
9:24:58 AM Ryan Neudorf: then i goggled and my next reaction was “people like this crap?”
9:25:12 AM Ryan Neudorf: then i sat down in my rocking chair and whittled a whistle
9:25:13 AM Michael: you goggled! at your age?
9:25:26 AM Michael: there we go. take easy there old timer
9:25:36 AM Ryan Neudorf: i’m blogging this

Categories
Review Websites

Quickfire Review: AppFigures.com

As mentioned a few posts ago, Apple’s iTunes sales reporting tools are a joke.

In walks AppFigures.com. This site provides exactly the type of data I would expect Apple to provide. It automagically grabs your iTunes sales reports every day, then uses the data to generate Google analytics style charts and graphs.  Before using this site I only had a vague idea of how many apps I’d sold.

If you’re an iPhone developer I highly recommend you drop everything and start using this app.

(Thanks to Josh for the comment recommendation)