This is how to get the version number of your app at run time. I find this helpful in to use in the “about” section of my apps. The version number is read from your apps info.plist file.

NSString *version = [[[NSBundle mainBundle] infoDictionary] objectForKey:@"CFBundleVersion"];

Over the past few years, Tom’s shoes have become well known, hip and trendy. Everyone knows that if you buy a pair of their shoes, they donate a pair of shoes to children in need. I love the philosophy, but HATE their shoes. Personally, I think they look ugly and clunky, but to each their own. Don’t worry, I’m not a hater, my wife has several pairs.

A few weeks ago, I saw a tweet from Timothy Ferriss about products with a purpose, and I followed the link. I don’t remember the article that I was linked to, but I managed to end up on 141Eyewear.com.

141 Eyewear is a company that helps children in need, who have eye problems. When you buy a pair of frames, they give a pair of glasses (including the eye exam and corrective lenses) to children in need, one for one, as their name implies. As someone who wears depends on eye glasses, and know how important is is to have the proper prescription, plus, who doesn’t like helping out kids in need? It’s a win win situation.

I had been thinking about getting a new pair of glasses for the last few months, but I’m very picky about my frames. I was instantly excited when I saw the awesome frames that 141 Eyewear produces. I saw the “Davis” frames, and knew that I had to have a pair.

I combed through the 141 website but couldn’t find a place to purchase a pair, so I used their contact form to ask them where I could buy a pair. I also hit them up on their twitter accout. Kyle Yamaguchi, one of the founds of 141 Eyewear instantly got back to me and told me that their eye wear was only being sold in Portland Oregon until summer time 2010. I was bummed to hear this, but it just so happened that a week earlier I had bought plane tickets to visit Portland with my wife.

When we landed in Portland, I sent a tweet telling people I was in Portland, and asked advise on what to check out. To my surprise, Kyle Yamaguchi was one of the first people to give me some suggestions. He also gave me the address of a store that carries 141 Eyewear.

We wandered around Portland for a few days, and eventually made it to the Pearl District, and “The Eye Studio“, a hip looking shop that carried lots of designer frames.

We were instantly greeted by the friendly staff at The Eye Studio, and shown the 141 Eyewear collection. I was in luck, they had one pair of “Davis” frames in stock. I tried them on and was instantly pleased with them.  The photos online didn’t do it justice, the finish on the “noir” version of the Davis frames is matte black and sleek. I had to have them.

While my wife, Amy, was trying on some frames, Shu-Chu Wu, also a founder of 141 Eyewear, came out of the back room and greeted us. She was super nice and showed us some photos of an eye clinic that 141 had put on. The kids looked amped in their new glasses.

After a bit of hangout, I bought the frames, and we were on our way. I didn’t get my prescription filled, so the frames are still empty. I figured I’d wait until I got home to Southern California.

I don’t publicly endorse many products, but I fully back 141 Eyewear and I hope you do to. They made great products that look great, and are helping kids at the same time. After having contact with both of the founders of the company, and seeing the work they have already done, I can tell that their motives are good and their intentions pure.

I’ll be posting a pic of myself wearing my 141 Eyewear once I get the lenses put into the frames next week.

Working in SQL Server 2008 I received this confusing error when editing the structure of a table:

“Saving changes is not permitted. The changes that you have made require the following tables to be dropped and re-created. You have either made changes to a table that can’t be re-created or enabled the option Prevent saving changes that require the table to be re-created.”

I tried many things but I kept getting this error. After some trouble shooting I found the following information:

This error happens because “Saving Changes is not permitted” when using SQL Server 2008 Management Studio to modify the structure of a table especially when SQL Server needs to drop and recreate a table to save the structural changes. It is always advised to make a structural change for a table using TSQL. However, it is a convenient option for database developers to use SQL Server Management Studio make such changes  as the  Prevent Saving Changes That Require Table Re-creation option is enabled by default in SQL Server 2008 Management Studio.

I can understand why this feature would be helpful to have but to have it enabled by default is just silly.

I found that you can disable this feature by:

1. Open the Tools menu then click on Options
2. Open the “Designers” tree
3. Click on “Table and Database Designers”
4. Uncheck “Prevent saving changes that require table-creation”
5. Press “Ok”

Once I disabled the “Prevent saving changes that require the table re-creation” option,  I was ahead and save the changes I needed to make.

Firefox 3 is awesome we all know that, but there are some things that that would just be nice to have. One of those things would be the ability to control what appears for the auto suggest when you type in the URL bar.

Most of the time FireFox does a very good job of figuring out what you want to do, but when it goes bad, it goes really bad and gets annoying fast.

The other day I accidentally typed in “google.com/a”, and from that moment time on, everytime I wanted to go to “google.com”, it would auto complete to “google.com/a”, and i would end up going there. Very annoying.

I searched the Firefox menus but couldn’t find anything to help. I didn’t want to wipe out all of the auto complete entries, I find most of them helpful. I did some research and realized that you can remove these entries manually, but you have to do it in an unconventional way.

How remove those unwanted auto suggest entries

1. The list appears as you type something.
2. Select an entry by pointing you mouse at the item in the list, it will highlight.
3. Press Shift + Delete from your keyboard to delete the entry.

That’s all! You can remove entries from the address bar.  This trick works on any Firefox auto complete list, including text fields and other dropdown suggestions.

This also works on windows, mac and linux machines

Today I was trying to edit the value in a table cell through the query browser in Microsoft SQL Server Management Itudio and I kept getting the following error:

Data has changed since the Results pane was last retrieved. Do you want to save your changes now?
(Optimistic Concurrency Control Error)
Click Yes to commit your changes to database anyway.
Click No to discard your change and retrieve the current data for this row.
Click Cancel to continue editing.

I would click “Yes”, and get another error:

No row was updated.
The data in row X was not committed.
Error Source: Microsoft.VisualStudio.DataTools.
Error Message: The row value(s) updated or deleted either do not make the row unique or they alter multiple rows(N rows).
Correct the errors and retry or press ESC to cancel the change(s).

I was killing myself trying to figure out what was wrong. I was the only person working on the database, so the data wasnt being changed behind my back.

After an hour on goolge I came across a Microsoft tech article for MS SQL 2005, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925719

It stated the issue could occure from one of the following conditions:

• The table contains one or more columns of the text or ntext data type.
• The value of one of these columns contains the following characters:
• Percent sign (%)
• Underscore (_)
• Left bracket ([)
• The table does not contain a primary key.

I double checked the table I was working on and realized it didnt have a primary key. It must have gotten dropped in the data migration from MS SQL 2000 to MS SQL 2008. A simple right click, set primary key and my problem was fixed.

Verify the primary keys! It’s a simple fix to a head breaker of a problem. I hope someone finds this and it fixes their issue.

I saw this comic online and needed to share t because this is what my life has begun to look like. This masterpiece is from StatusThis.com, a new web comic site. Please check them out and show them some love. I hope they continue to hit the nail on the head with other comics like this one.

I have entered into a relationship with a new piece of high tech equipment, Drobo. Drobo is a self proclaimed “Data Robot”. In technical terms its a ASD (Attached storage device) running a custom version of RAID 5. When coupled with a DroboShare, it becomes a NAS (network attached storage) device.

In non tech terms, its an external harddrive that is expandable (up to 16 terabytes!) and can keep your data secure. The droboshare allows your computers to connect to it over your home network.

In the past I have blogged about how I love backups and how having good backups have saved my ass. The Drobo is the next evolution in my backup strategy.

I have recently moved away from my Windows Vista desktop and started to use my new Mac Book Pro as my main computer system. I eventually want to retire all the desktops on my network and run only laptops. I wanted to find a solution that was robust, expandable and allowed all of y computers to share a pool of data. After doing some research on popular NAS setups, I decided to go with Drobo.

One of the things that I liked about Drobo was how mindlessly easy it is to add more hard drives to the system. It’s so easy that I shot a video of myself adding a terabyte of storage in less then 30 seconds.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Right now I’m just testing the Drobo / DroboShare out. Once I get acquainted with it I’m sure there will be more blog posts.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Things I was right about:

• Apple will announce a tablet device
• new version of the iPhone OS, 3.2.2
• iPad will run on the iPhone OS
• iPad will run iPhone applications
• The iPad will have a 10 inch screen (9.7 inches is close enough)
• 16, 32, 64 gig versions
• Verizon will not be involved

Things I was wrong about:

• There will be a new iPhone
• The new iPhone will have a new camera. The iPad doesnt have any cameras!

I really suggest that you read this book. I’ve been leveraging social media for years but this book has recharged me and changed the way that I think about several things. It’s a great read.

Order Crush It from Amazon.com for $10!