As I already documented earlier, Teddy’s christening had a cloud over it because the Father at our church would not allow Augusto to be the Godfather. He did allow Augusto to attend the Christening, and we took some photos of the big event. Solange was really excited for the event and bought Teddy a special outfit just for the occasion.
I have developed some new technologies for the web site which enables a dynamic slide show to be displayed through some simple SQL calls. The one thing that I have learned about importing CSV files is that it is far from easy. While trying to solve these problems, I did a lot of queries and again there was little to no solutions on the web. So in addition, to my last article, here are two more common problems and solutions when importing CSV files using Microsoft Excel.
Problem One
Excel Extra Commas in the CSV file
This problem was driving me nuts. Excel puts random commas in a CSV file. Guess what happens when you have extra commas in a Comma Separated Values File? It crashes and does not import. Google search shows that the common fix is to review the file for extra commas and edit them out manually. Since my database is now fairly big, this was not an option. There were literally thousands of extra commas that had to be edited out.
What’s the solution? Don’t use Excel. I started using Open Office and it does not have the same bug. In fact, I am going to start using Open Office as much as possible to see how difficult is the learning curve. Note: Excel has another bug, where it does not put the double quotes around certain text fields.
Problem Two
Be Careful with Character Sets
My database is stored in Latin_Swedish. This is very important to me, because I use foreign characters in my database and in my blogs. Characters such as é,ç, and ê. In order for this to work correctly, you have to be very consistent when importing your CSV’s or none of your foreign characters will be displayed in the database correctly. Instead of the foreign character, it will be stored with a ?.
The solution is simple. When importing the file, make sure you choose the proper character encoding. PHPMyAdmin defaults to UTF8, and then in my case, was the source of losing all my precious international characters.
I hope these two tips helps someone out there.
I really love ToonDoo. It seems to be a great outlet for my creative energy. I decided to make a political cartoon and go on record that I am an Obama supporter. To be honest, he is the only one of the candidates that does not insult my intelligence. So I decided to make fun of all the politicians, and then I threw a dark horse into the race for presidency. LOL.
I might as well make it official. My favorite restaurant in the whole world is Terzetto. Here are the reason’s that I love Terzetto. They have a huge menu. I go often, and often like to try out different things. Each time I try something new, it turns out just as good as many of my old time favorites. They are very accommodating. Any change to a dish, and they will make it special order. Solange when she was pregnant, would invent special dishes while we drove there. Then she would describe it and they would cook it. It is simply fantastic.
When we returned to Rio, several of our friends were in town (Art Martinez, Scott Kay, Brian Wilcox, and Thomas Shang). So we threw a great dinner party. Art is quite the photo buff so he took a bunch of photos of the event, and now I’ve made a slide show of it. I’ve also added a new technology so that the photos pull out of the database and include all the people in the photo. Enjoy.
I agree, it’s an awesome restaurant!
I have always wanted to find a program to make cartoons, and now I found a great one – ToonDoo. ToonDoo really makes it easy to import objects, characters and text into your cartoon. It’s done with the latest in Web 2.0 technologies enabling ToonDoo to run in any browser.
The story below actually happened to me. Move your mouse over the cartoon to see the rest.
I met this guy in Brazil (name withheld for privacy reasons) and his Portuguese was poor. The problem was that he thought his Portuguese was better than every one else’s. It was beyond annoying the strange situations because his perceptions were so different than reality. He was constantly correcting my Portuguese, which was no problem. But he was always wrong. I guess I was being pacifist, but I never said anything. Just let it slide. But then one day in a taxi with a bunch of friends, he corrected my Portuguese one too many times (wrongly again), and I just exploded. I have not spoken to him since.
For whatever reason, I made this the subject of my first cartoon at ToonDoo. I hope to make many more cartoons in the future on a wide variety of subjects.
Ele é burro mesmo. When I tell the story, people think that I am making it up. He was so adamant when the girls said No the first time. The reality is that I had to ask several more times, and each time they said No. Of course, if he speaks so damn well, why doesn’t he just say something himself?
Here are some other gems.
I remember getting into a protracted argument because a receptionist was filling out a form for me. And she asked my last name. I said (in portuguese), CHENG. And then this guy says No No. CHANG. We are with a lot of guys, and he will not relent. Every time I say, CHENG, he says No, and repeats CHANG. The reality is that he did not know how to say the difference between E and A.
After I blew up at him in the taxi, I told the taxi driver to stop on the right side (lado direito), and unbelievable as it sounds. he corrects me again. No (lado direita). I asked the taxi driver who said it correct, and he confirmed me, but I still to this day think that he believes he was right.
But it is all so strange. Speaking a foreign is humbling because you know you will never speak as well as a native speaker. Who cares whether you can speak better than some other American, when there is a whole country that can speak better than you.
Hey Rob, good one! But knowing the character involved in this story, I’d change your line in the third panel to “Vocês acham que ele é burro?” Sem dúvida!
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog. 🙂 Cheers! Sandra. R.