Computing an initial bearing

This MySQL Stored Function computes the initial bearing — the compass heading to follow — when moving from one point to another on the surface of the earth.  Here’s a web site describing this. http://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong.html

Using words like John McPhee

One of my favorite writers is John McPhee of Princeton, NJ. He’s written for The New Yorker since my memory of him began, and published many books with the Macmillan publishing company.  He’s the good reason I preach from a manuscript rather than extemporaneously: if a phrase is worth listening to, it’s worth constructing well. There are bad … Read more

Filling in missing data with sequences of cardinal integers

When you’re extracting summaries of information from a database, sometimes rows are missing.  For example, if you are keeping track of number of customers by day, you might use a query like this: View the code on Gist. You might get a result set like this: 2014-03-07 122 2014-03-08 355 2014-03-10 234 2014-03-11 119 Notice … Read more

Seven Steps to Getting your Organization Online

If you’re a local chapter of a larger organization, ask for help. Your larger organization may have some excellent services to offer. First: the perfect is the enemy of the good. Do something. Learn from it. Try something else. For the first year or two your online presence will have almost no traffic, so making … Read more

RiseVision’s calendar Events gadget updated to handle two weeks.

This article is obsolete. There’s a new article about the Rise Calendar Widget here. RiseVision makes a sweet little open source Events gadget. It displays the contents of your favorite public Google Calendar in a scrolling or tabbed window on your digital sign presentation. Here’s the documentation for that Events gadget. This won’t make a … Read more

New life from old computer

Do you have a 2005-onward vintage computer from which you need to squeeze a few more years of life? Here’s what you do. Use crucial.com‘s memory upgrade adviser to figure out what RAM you can buy for it, and order that memory. (If you use their adviser software and the memory you order doesn’t work, you … Read more