Author Archives: Dale Nunns

About Dale Nunns

I live in Cape Town, South Africa with my awesome wife and cute cat Domino. I'm a software developer, hardware hacker, some time cook, wannabe writer, chief bottle washer and tamer of dust bunnies.

Reading SQLite databases in Windows

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sqlite2009-proI recently had to get some data out of a .db file from an Adobe Air application, a few quick searches on Google turned up that the file is, as I suspected, a SQLite database. (Way to go Adobe!)

A few searches later and I had found this neat little application called SQLite2009 Pro its a free download and works pretty well. It allows you to view the database structure and import/export data as well as run SQL queries against it. It also comes with a ODBC driver but I haven’t gotten that to work, but admittedly I haven’t read any of the docs yet.

For those of you wondering, the file I was reading is the database file for the SARS (South African Revenue Service) E@syFile software.

Open Source/Free Utils and Applications

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I thought I would list a bunch of Open Source / Free utils and applications that I use almost every day. I’m excluding the obvious ones like Linux (in my case Ubuntu).

The list below is what I use in my day to day job, normally on my laptop running Windows Vista, the order really doesn’t matter its just as I thought about them. Everything listed below is available for Windows and most are also available for Linux and other OS’s. I’m a programmer, web developer and computer geek so I’m sure the list of software below reflects that, but no matter what you do there is probably at least one application that might be handy.

If you have a favourite please add a comment and share it with us. Continue reading →

Posting on the go

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This post is being posted via my new cellphone a nokia N78 and Wordmobi.

Obviously typing is not the easiest and the predictive text is stupid on this phone, but if you can read this then it was a success.

Posted by Wordmobi

I’m still alive

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I know I haven’t been updating this site much, but Wedding plans, Dance Lessons (for the wedding), Tennis and Work have been getting in the way. But I’m going to blow the dust out and clean out the cobwebs and try resurect the site over the next few days…

I’ve missed writing to all my loyal fans (fan?) Hi Mom 🙂

Anyone have any experience with CSLA.net

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Anyone have any experience using CSLA.Net ? I’ve seen it being used in the past but more as a Data Access Layer, which is not exactly what it was designed for.

I’m working on a project that would basically envolve creating a bunch of “Business Objects” that do all the heavy lifting that can easily be bound to an user interface. These business objects are not going to be using SQL based data though but rather be talking to an ERP system via a COM/Webservice interface in an xml format.

I want something that allows me to creat an object that I can then define how it should be loaded, saved etc. I would also ideally like to be able to put in validation rules on the properties of the object.

If you have any ideas of frameworks other than CSLA let me know too. Ideally it must support WPF and if at all possible Silverlight.

Fun with barcodes.

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This started after a twitter discussion with a friend about how to find the country/region for products if you only have a stock code, description and the EAN barcode of the items. This got me thinking, what exactly is in a EAN code and could that maybe help?

A quick search on Wikipedia (my favourite source of weird info) I found this info about EAN barcodes. I was sortof right, the EAN barcode contains the code for the region the barcode was registered in, which while not perfect is better than nothing. The first 3 digits of a barcode gives you the GS1 member organisation which you can then lookup on this list (at wikipedia of course). My Twitter friend (Thanks @_enzo) pointed me to this list of GS1 members which is much more detailed than the Wikipedia one.

This won’t work for everything, a bottle of Italian wine bottled in Italy for Woolworths South Africa carries a barcode that was registered in SA by Woolworths. But my Labello lip balm (the manly one…) has a barcode starting with 400 which is Germany, and the can of coke has one starting with 544 which is Belgium/Luxemborg.

You can also lookup the item on UPCDatabase by typing in the barcode which gives info on where the code was registered and what the item is and by who it was registered. If you’re feeling adventurous you can download the entire UPC database from them too.

It’s not perfect but it might turn out to be useful.

She said “YES”!!!!

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theringI don’t often mention my girlfriend, its more out of respect to her and her privacy but today I’m making an exception.

On Valentines day I asked the love of my life, Claire to marry me. For some it was a huge surprise, for others it was expected and others were just happy I had finally done it.

My proposal didn’t go as planned, but then again life never does go according to plan… but in the end at about 11:30pm on the 14th February 2009 I asked the question on my knees in my PJ’s, and she said YES 🙂

I didn’t realise though that its sortof expected that you know when and where the wedding is going to be… have the guest list already worked out along with the theme of the wedding, catering, DJ’s and all that stuff. So for the moment the plans are something along the lines of… It’s going to be in the Cape Town area, sometime towards the end of the year, in warm weather and the bride will be wearing some or other shade of white and the “theme” will be… “Wedding” or something like that.

The rest of the stuff we’ll work out as time goes by…

PS: You can contact me for details of where to send early wedding gifts (big screen TV’s, cars, houses or cash gifts).

Zimbabwe and Friday the 13th

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We had a good laugh about this one in the office.

Zimbabwe’s parliament passed a constitutional bill today to allow a coalition government of President Robert Mugabe and opposition rivals, being set up under a deal to end political and economic crisis.

Opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai agreed last week to join a unity government with Mugabe’s Zanu-PF after months of wrangling over ministerial posts had stalled a power-sharing deal signed last year.

The vote?yesterday was the first concrete step by the two parties to meet a deadline set by leaders from the Southern Africa Development Community for a unity government to be in place by February 13th….

From this article

You have to admit that who ever decided to do this on Friday the 13th has a bit of a sense of humor ;-P Only better date might of been April 1st, although who knows that might end up being South Africa’s election date.

Sprite Optimization

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To the web developers out there… I was reading this article about Sprite Optimization which is basically about creating a big image with all the graphical bits of your interface on it and then using css to clip and display only the relevant pieces.

In theory (and jundging by what I read.. in practice too) this makes your site load faster. I know that WordPress does this in places in thier admin interface.

Although reading the article, they do point out that for somethings doing it this way massively complicates matters.

I think I would split things up a bit, have one file for icons and perhaps another for borders and UI elements and maybe another for buttons or something like that.

Apple’s ad for the Red Ipod

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I’m not sure if you got an email too from Apple about the Red iPod and how its the perfect gift for Valentines day, I’ve included the letter that they sent with the add in this post below. (If I’m not allowed to post it please let me know.) It’s an awesome piece of writing, had me laughing every second.

Although I do think I would have to give my girlfriend alot more than a red iPod to get her to allow me to replace the sofa and sell her car…

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