Jon Todd » Uncategorized

Windows 7 Party

Jon Todd — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:31:04 +0000

I don’t really know how to say this but Windows 7 is kind of a big deal. So much so that it’s probably worth throwing a party, you know, like tupperware. In case you don’t know how to throw a party, Microsoft will tell you, take a look at this gem.

Old School CS at MIT

Jon Todd — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:53:21 +0000

These days there’s a video to learn just about anything you want online and while there’s certainly a ton of crap out there it’s nice to see that Yale and MIT are putting up there courses on the web for free.

This beauty was recorded at MIT in 1986!

MySQL Foreign Key Lookup

Jon Todd — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:11:34 +0000

If you’ve ever found yourself trying to determine which tables have a foreign key to a given table in MySQL the following query should do the trick.

Variables:

MY_SCHEMA – name of schema the referenced table is in
MY_TABLE – name of the table being referenced by foreign keys

Query:

SELECT
TABLE_SCHEMA,
TABLE_NAME,
COLUMN_NAME,
REFERENCED_COLUMN_NAME
FROM
information_schema.KEY_COLUMN_USAGE
WHERE
REFERENCED_TABLE_SCHEMA = 'MY_SCHEMA'  AND
REFERENCED_TABLE_NAME = 'MY_TABLE';

Settling in San Francisco

Jon Todd — Mon, 12 May 2008 06:36:07 +0000

So I’ve officially moved to San Francisco and started working at the [new job](http://www.structuralwealth.com). I’m living in the in a place called Marina Cove which will be home for at least the next few months while I get my bearings and a better idea of where I’d like to be long term. The marina area is nice, right by the bay, beach, presidio and a few other parks but the general crowd might a bit too fratboy for me. On the plus side I live right next to the area’s Safeway grocery store so not having a car hasn’t been a big issue and eating well is easy. Also the 30x express bus stop is two blocks away and gets me to work in under 15 min.

More to come about SF

Dub’s Heavy Rotation 1 – ‘New Magnetic Wonder’

Jon Todd — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 02:50:30 +0000

Music is a very large part of my life and my typical work day. I’ve been thinking for some time now how to share what I listen to with you. I’ve thought about podcasting but figured it’d be hard to keep that commitment up, plus I’d want to play tons of copy-written material. I’ve thought about doing album reviews but there are so many people far more eloquent who do a better job. Instead, for now, I’m going to simply post songs/albums/artists that are in my [heavy rotation play list](http://www.jontodd.com/2008/04/17/how-to-create-a-dub-style-heavy-rotation-smart-playlist-in-itunes/). I’m doing this to hopefully start some dialog and learn about great new music from you.

So for the first installment I bring you [Apples in stereo's](http://www.applesinstereo.com/) latest album New Magnetic Wonder. My favorite 4 song on the album in order of awesomeness:

Same Old Drag
Energy
Sunndal Song
7 Stars

Visit their website to give the songs a listen.

Computer Science, Liberal Arts or Tech School?

Jon Todd — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:19:52 +0000

This question was raised on [slashdot](http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/15/1747257&from=rss) today:

I’m a high school senior who is trying to pick a college to attend. I’ve been accepted by two comparably selective schools. One is a highly regarded tech school, and the other is a highly regarded liberal arts institution. I prefer the liberal arts college, but the computer science program is small, graduating about a dozen students a year. The course load is heavily theory based; programming languages are taught in later years. How much would the tech school vs. non tech school matter? Are CS majors from non-tech school considered inferior? What would an HR department think? What would you think if you were hiring?

There is a good series of [responses](http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/15/1747257&from=rss) on slashdot about this topic and its very interesting to hear what people have to say from big universities as I’ve gone the liberal arts route.