Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Photo of the day


Green Heron having breakfast on an overcast morning
270mm - 1/200s - F/6.3 - ISO 200

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Photo of the day


12mm - 1/800s - F/8 - ISO 100
The Carlyle on Ocean Drive

Monday, October 29, 2007

Photo of the day


360mm - 1/100s - F/5.6 - ISO 320
Green Heron

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Photo of the day


Limpkin at Green Cay Wetlands
400mm - 1/200s - F/6.3 - ISO 400

Friday, October 26, 2007

VFP Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Tamar Granor

I just heard that Tamar Granor was awarded the VFP Lifetime Achievement Award at the Southwest Fox 2007 Conference this past week.

I am very pleased about this, and want to congratulate her as I cannot think of anyone more deserving. Tamar has been a constant advocate for Visual FoxPro, helping users for a very long time. She has been editor of FoxPro Advisor Magazine for years, a conference speaker countless times, and one of the very few continuous Microsoft MVPs receiving the award every year since the program's inception in 1993.

My only regret is that I could not make it to the conference this time to give her congrats in person. Way to go Tamar!

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Photo of the day


Pitts Special - Miami Airshow - April 2007

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Photo of the day


Villa Vizcaya, by the swimming pool

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Photo of the day


Miami Dade County Fireboat 1

Monday, October 22, 2007

Todd on VFP and SQL Server scripts

Todd McKenna has a good blog post titled Use .sql Files with SQLEXEC for Better Script Management showing how to decouple your middleware code from your database in your data access layer. Namely he shows an example on going from this:

SQLEXEC(lnConnHand,'SELECT * FROM Customer')

to this:

SQLEXEC(lnConnHand,FILETOSTR("c:\sqlserver2005\script1.sql"))

This is a very good idea, similar to using the ExecScript() function in VFP but applying it to SQL Server and getting the queries from script files. Of course, you could use Stored Procedures which are precompiled and optimized in SQL Server but Todd's idea makes for simple decoupling and portability. What you have to watch for (as is also with ExecScript) is security. If you read script files from disk, anybody could change them and supply malicious scripts. One possible answer is to read them from Memo fields instead, where you have a little more security control (but not much unless you encrypt them). In short, they do not replace Stored Procedures for security and speed, but they are very flexible and very handy.

Photo of the day


Clown on Bayside Marketplace - Downtown Miami

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Photo of the day


Dragon Boat Races

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Photo of the day


Dragon Boat Races - Miami

Friday, October 19, 2007

Photo of the day


1956 Buick shot at a car show in Miami a couple of weeks ago.



Ray Guselli, a PS expert liked it and gave me his interpretation of this photo. I think he did a wonderful job:

What do you think?

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Photo of the day


1956 Buick

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Photo of the day


1956 Mercury Montclair

Monday, October 15, 2007

Photo of the day


This on is the last of the train series.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Photo of the day


California Silverstreak - fast luxury train of the 1960s

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Photo of the day


More of my favorite locomotive.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Photo of the day


My favorite loco!

Visual FoxPro SP2 released!

Microsoft released Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Visual FoxPro 9.0 yesterday night and it is now available for download!

Milind Lele, Program Manager wrote a short note on the Visual FoxPro page. Thanks Milind for your team's hard work!

Here's a list of fixed bugs. XSOURCE for this release will be coming out soon.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Photo of the day


Gold Coast Railroad Museum - Miami

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Photo of the day


Gold Coast Railroad Museum - Miami

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Photo of the day


Old caboose

Monday, October 08, 2007

Photo of the day


Old locomotive (built 1922)

Sunday, October 07, 2007

Photo of the day


Old steam locomotive (built 1922) at the Gold Coast Railroad Museum - Miami

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Photo of the day


Train galley

Friday, October 05, 2007

Photo of the day


Presidential stateroom - Ferdinand Magellan Railcar - Gold Coast Railroad Museum - Miami

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Sputnik-1: 50 years ago today

On October 4, 1957, Sputnik-1 was the first satellite to be launched from Earth into geocentric orbit.

"The satellite travelled at 29,000 kilometers (18,000 mi) per hour and emitted radio signals which were monitored by amateur radio operators throughout the world. The signals continued for 22 days until the transmitter batteries ran out on October 26, 1957. Sputnik 1 burned as it fell from orbit upon reentering Earth's atmosphere, after traveling about 60 million km (37 million miles) in orbit."
It was an enormous technological leap and a turning point in the Cold War as it scared the US leaders and population and energized the US Space Program into the real beginning of the space race.

Kudos to the engineers that made this technological feat possible. Regardless of politics and ideology, it was a worthwhile human endeavor.

Photo of the day


Presidential dining room in the Ferdinand Magellan Presidential Railcar - Gold Coast Railroad Museum - Miami

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Photo of the day


The Ferdinand Magellan Presidential Railcar, used by Presidents, Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower. It is on permanent display at Miami's Gold Coast Railroad Museum.

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Photo of the day


Army hospital train at the Gold Coast Railroad Museum - Miami

I'm an MVP again!

Microsoft awarded me with the MVP award for the 8th consecutive year. This is an honor and an incentive to try to help the community even harder. The award is given for helping with Visual FoxPro issues, in my case in Forums in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Let me also congratulate the other MVPs that have received the award for this 2007-2008 cycle.

Monday, October 01, 2007

Photo of the day


Orchid Garden at Villa Vizcaya