Another reason to look before you forward...

This morning a friend of mine forwarded me an e-mail stating that as of February, cell phones would be open to telemarketers, and that to protect myself, I should put my cell numbers on the national do not call list. While I was there, I clicked on their FAQ link to verify if this was the case - lo and behold, it is not. So, I quickly went to the two sites that I usually go to when people e-mail me things that sound too good to be true - Snopes.com and ubanlegends.about.com and low and behold, I discovered that each had an article on this one.

Unfortunately, I have learned the hard way to look before I forward.

Wi-Fi Enabled LCD Frame

Thanks to my friend Heshy , I discovered this new Wi-Fi LCD Frame. It can read Flickr RSS feeds and it can also display e-mailed photos. Although it costs $250, it, IMHO is a much better deal than the Ceiva Photo Frames, which require you to pay an annual subscription fee.

One of these days, I will convince my wife and siblings/siblings-in-law to buy this for my parents, in-laws and/or grandparents. All of us could e-mail new pictures to the phone and they would always have a fresh set.

Printing Photos

Sorry for the long delay of not posting, but I just got back from spending a weeks' vacation with No Internet Access! While it was one less distraction for my vacation, It definitely meant a lot of e-mail to sift through and catch-up on.

While on vacation, I followed my own advice and managed to squeeze some more pictures onto my digital camera. After informing my wife that I had nearly 300 photos of our vacation, she went on her usual diatribe of how we never print any of our digital pictures.

When I bought my camera phone last year, I got a 100 free prints with Ritz Camera, which I have yet to use (and hope that they haven't expired). But beyond that I would love to print many more photos on a regular basis.

While I do have a decent photo printer at home, I usually only print the ocassional snapshots to give to my parents or in-laws. I also maintain accounts at 4 different photo services:
Snapfish, Kodak Gallery, ImageStation, and Shutterfly. While I do upload all of my photos to at least one of these sites, and while I often use them to print greeting cards, photo mugs (especially popular with the in-laws) and my annual mother's day photo books - selectively choosing one or the other based on the current deal at hand.

But now I want to actually start buying prints from these guys and I wonder which one to choose, of course, the quality and pricing matter, but there are other variables as well: For example shipping vs. local pickup (Kodak charges $1.50 to pick up at my CVS less than 1 mile away, while Snapfish will deliver to Walgreen's for free, but there is none within close proximity to my home). To add to this mix is Costco (which is run on Snapfish's platform, but at the same time won't let me share my account?).

I think that this one will require a spreadsheet, or at least some trial and error.

Quick Digital Photo Tip - Fixes, Photo Sizes and Aspect Ratios.

When I first got my digital camera I talked a lot about the Beauty of Mega-Pixels and how more is better. However, as I prepare for upcoming Hanukkah celebrations and pictures, I wanted to share another little digital tip that I have picked up. Typically, with a good ol' film camera, when you go to develop a standard roll of film, you get a set 4"x6" photos. This 'standard' photo size was carried over to the digital age, and you can easily find 4"x6" photo paper, as well as order such sized prints from photo sites like Snapfish, Shutterfly, and Kodak Gallery. Of course the beauty of digital photos is that we only need to print the 'Keepers' (and we can also blow them up and/or put them on a mug, apron, deck of cards, etc.) and we can either discard the others or preserve them in slide shows and on websites for years to come.

What this means is that people tend to take photos indiscriminately with digital cameras. So to all of those who will find a new digital camera under the tree, menora, or whatever else your family sticks their gifts under, here are some quick tips:

• The more pixels you have in your pictures the more space they take up. In theory, a 6 Mega-Pixel image will take up about twice as much space as 3 MP one. While the 6MP one will give you much greater detail, the 3MP will give you an excellent photo at 4x6 or 5x7 - and even a good photo at 8x10 if you don't edit it much. If you reduce your camera's MP mode for most shots, you will be able to take a lot more pictures. One thing that I have done (incorrectly) in the past, is shoot at the higher resolution until I get short on space. The problem with this is that when you want to take a detailed closeup at the end, you may not have enough space. It's better to pace yourself throughout.
  
  
• A 4x6 photo has an aspect ratio (the ration of width to height) of 1.5 (i.e. it is 50% wider than it is tall), but most digital camera modes have an aspect ratio of 1.33. This means that when you print a digital picture on a 4"x6" print, the picture will need to be cropped. Bear this in mind when taking shots so that you leave a little bit of space between people or items you want in your picture so that they are not flush against the top or bottom of your picture.
  
  
• Some cameras (I know that my camera as well as other sony models) have a great feature that combines the first two tips - A 1.5 aspect ratio mode that shoots at reduced megapixel size. (Sony calls this 3:2 mode. On my camera its 4.5 MP, which gets me about 10-15% more pictures on a 512 MB card).
  
  
• From the professional photographer to the snapshooter. Everyone knows that for every good photo you take there are plenty more that just don't come out right. Fortunately for you, in today's digital age, it is easier than ever to correct a lot of those mistakes in an otherwise good shot (like that great picture of the kids that would otherwise be ruined by little Jane's red eyes). To edit photos, I use Picasa from Google. It has a great set of simple to use tools for editing, organizing and sharing photos and it works well with most of the popular photo sharing services around the globe. One of my favorite features of Picasa is that it keeps your original photo intact and only stores information about edits you make. This way, if you screw up editing, it can easily get you back to the original.
  
  

Happy Holidays to one and all, and may all your pictures be good ones.

Yonah's SQL Tip #5 - Naming Conventions

While there are millions of websites, magazine articles and even books that offer ways to improve your SQL code and make it more efficient, there are far fewer that provide insight on how to make your code more readable. One practice that was taught to me by a colleague several years ago, that I try to practice whever I go is the idea of the column name prefix. Essentially here is how it works - When I create a table, I prefix the field names with a 2-4 character mnemonic of the table name. For all fields that are specific to that table I use the same prefix. When I use fields from a different table (say, as foreign keys) I easily know which fields are local and which belong to other tables. Morover, when I write a query, the field names match exactly.

For example, let's say I have a products table that has a SKU, Size, and Color fields and an Orders table that has an Order ID, but also needs the sku information and QTY. Using this convention, my product table will have these fields:

PROD_SKU,PROD_SIZE,PROD_COLOR


and my Orders table will have these fields:

ORD_ID, PROD_SKU, ORD_QTY


Because the quantity and the ID in the orders table belong to that table, they start with the ORD prefix. But because the PROD_SKU is borrowed from the Products table, the PROD prefix, indicates clearly that this is the SKU from the Products table.