SQLite

I would like to make mention of a database system called SQLite. It is not a database as you would know it. Instead of running as a server which you connect to using adapters and whatnot, SQLite is a DLL which your application uses to directly manipulate a database file. Bindings exist for almost every popular language (I am using Ruby). Setting up the environment did take longer than it should have because of the outdated tutorial I was following (oops), but if I was to set it up again the process would take only a few short minutes.

Dawsons Convention

I am a big fan of conventions, as long as they are justified. The one thing I have been confronted with lately and it is very annoying is the idea that we should do something a certain way simply because we have been doing it that way for a while now. I am a firm believer of reasoning and have been trying to get my work colleagues to follow suite. After all, if you’re going to do something it helps to have a justification for doing it.

In the light of my fight for reasoning I would like to share a convention of mine for naming copies of files. The scenario goes something like this…

I am working on an application which has some configuration files. These files are cached in the operating environment based on its name, so to test changes in the configuration file we need to change the name temporarily to something which has not been used in the last few hours. The convention I use is “[OriginalName]_[hour][minute][second]_[increment].ext” where [OriginalName] is the original file name, and the rest you can figure out. It is very generic and has a few applications. With the addition of date values it can be used for backup purposes. Even if you create a few versions in one minute, you can increment the last value and everything will carry on happily.

I call this Dawsons Convention. This convention is not necessarily just this implimentation, but is the general idea of using local file names.

Recover Deleted Files

For many years file recovery has been a pain in the butt. The scenario goes something like this … One of your parents or siblings has accidentally deleted an important file which contains important data. Worse yet they dont even know where it was supposed to be saved. So off you go searching for some file recovery software, only to find that they all demand that you pay a premium for a version which will recover files larger than 16kb or so.

Now for many years I have been using a product called CCleaner (Crap Cleaner). It is a really nice piece of software, even though I dont use Microsoft Windows anymore (the only platform which it is available for). Well today was the first time I used a new piece of software made by the same company as CCleaner, called Recuva. It is a free utility to recover deleted files and is very easy to use. It saved me today!

• http://www.recuva.com
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuva

Introduction

My original introduction sucked, so I deleted it. This is much more interesting hey?