Life Beyond Tech

Weekend Links

April 22, 2012November 8, 2022 Andrew Comeau

I’d planned to spend the weekend writing up a new programming article for the site but it got a little hi-jacked by another project I was working on. On Friday, I needed to figure out how to generate ZIP files from a website and just couldn’t put it down for the weekend. The situation is…

Learning PHP

April 8, 2012November 8, 2022 Andrew Comeau

One of the projects I started late last year was learning some non-Microsoft technologies, one being PHP; a scripting language that is used behind websites in order to provide more dynamic features than ordinary HTML is capable of. PHP has been in use since 1995 and is one of the most widely available web technologies. …

Bringing things up to date …

April 6, 2012November 8, 2022 Andrew Comeau

Every so often, I remember that I have a blog attached to the site and I make new promises to myself to keep it up to date but it doesn’t seem to happen that often. 2011 was a busy year for me which was one reason I didn’t update the blog much. It’s easier to…

Careers, Microsoft Access, Programming

March already?

March 16, 2011November 8, 2022 Andrew Comeau

I thought about taking the blog down when I realized how long it had been since I posted here but instead, I decided to say goodbye to Facebook for awhile and devote those misspent energies to something a little more productive. I started a new full-time job in January, which is another reason I’ve been…

Switching between Access 2010 windows

November 17, 2010November 8, 2022 Andrew Comeau

A visitor to the site asked about using ALT-TAB to switch between open Access windows. This refers to the “Windows in Taskbar” feature which was available in Access prior to Access 2007. You could set Access to display a button for every open Access window on the Windows Task Bar and use the standard ALT-TAB…

Microsoft Access

Sorting it all out …

April 28, 2010April 8, 2025 Andrew Comeau

I wrote awhile back about how I used Microsoft Outlook to keep track of things I’m working on and store reminders for project ideas that would be great to work on someday. I’m still getting the hang of it but I’m a little closer. The Outlook calendar is a great tool. I hadn’t used it much…

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Personal

Living in Outlook

February 9, 2010November 8, 2022 Andrew Comeau

In my last post, I included the outline for the series on Access VBA that I’m writing. Of course, an outline is just that – a rough summary of what the finished project should look like. It can’t be carved in stone. So while I’m working on the chapters for decision loops, I realize that I don’t have…

A few thoughts at 3 a.m.

February 6, 2010April 8, 2025 Andrew Comeau

I’m plowing my way through writing the next chapter of the Microsoft Access for Beginners series and have the insomnia to show for it. This chapter, an introduction to Visual Basic for Applications, is one I’ve been wanting to do for awhile and should have done a long time ago but always found a way to…

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Personal

Design Abstractions

May 21, 2008March 29, 2024 Andrew Comeau

A few years ago, Joel Spolsky wrote a wonderful article for his site called The Law of Leaky Abstractions, the general idea of which was that while new design technologies such as programming tools that let you build data interfaces by clicking and dragging controls might make things easier for the average professional, they will never replace a solid understanding of the technologies they are built on top of. This is because the tools that do so much work behind the scenes never offer the fine control that the lower level tools will. They also provide an illusion of power that makes it easy to avoid learning the real substance. The article provided some good examples and now I have one of my own to share.