geek: October 2006 Archives

It's funny how everyone has their own idea of when year zero was. You probably know about Unix epoch time. That's a year zero in my book. I found two more year zeroes today: one was hand crafted in some code I inspected and started 1st Jan 1996. The other was the SQL Server 2000 datetime column type. That turns out to be 1st January 1753 (when the Gregorian calendar that we use now was adopted). I'm not sure how you're supposed to represent dates before 1753 in SQL Server 2000 other than as strings, and anyone who knows any better, I'd be glad to hear from.

I was pointed in the direction of this text editor a few years back and have loved it since. It really is a Programmers Editor and provides all the functionality I need for writing Perl, HTML and JavaScript along with some neat built-in tools such as S/FTP, ability to create projects, code folding and such like. It's more powerful than the standard text editor but not as constraining as a full blown IDE. As a Windows/Linux crossover developer (I like my Windows desktop) this is the right tool for the job.

It has support for several languages, and adding / editing the tag lists is a matter of editing a plain text file, so you could add anything you like in there.

Reasonably priced, reliable and useful.

Just thought I'd mention SQLYog here because it's a fantastic MySQL interface. It gives you lots of handy features and automates many common tasks. Personally, I find it more robust and useful than the ubitquitous phpMyAdmin and far more useable than the only comparable tool for SQL Server that I know of, Enterprise Manager.

It comes with a freeware version and licences for the payware versions are not that pricey at all. If you use MySQL to any degree, you should give SQLYog a try. You'll probably like it.