For Geeks Only: How to Upload and Download SQL Database Tables from/to Excel

I finally found out how to import SQL database tables from Excel spreadsheets and vice-versa--how to export SQL tables to Excel spreadsheets. This has made dealing with the database at my website SO much easier for a non-SQL nerd...

• Create a new SQL database table from an Excel spreadsheet in nine steps.
• Export a SQL database table to an Excel spreadsheet in nine steps.
  

Roomba love

MrBinkynator's first Roomba had serious behavioral problems (10-second video of Roomba psychosis) and had to go back to iRobot corp for re-education or mine-sweeping duty or something, but he just love love loves his new Roomba. Yes, in some ways it's just a glorified carpet sweeper with an anemic, battery-operated vacuum cleaner in its tail, but as a friend and fellow Roomba enthusiast put it, "Say what you will, but my floors have never been cleaner since I got my Roomba." When the vacuum does the vacuuming by itself, the vacuuming gets done a lot more often.

While the deluxe 1.5 horsepower Kenmore sleeps peacefully in the broom closet, Roomba regularly makes the rounds of the entire apartment. (Yes, the big vaccum does a better job, but I never seem to find the time or inclination to haul it out and push it around.)

With the Roomba, you push one button, run around the place making straight the way of the robot, picking up obstacles and flicking cords out of the way, then just go have a latte or something. When you get home the whole place is vacuumed and all that's left to do is to empty the Roomba's dust collector and clean the filter (which takes about a minute), then plug it in for a recharge. Psycho Roomba, a top-of-the-line-model, would actually navigate back to his recharging station on his own, which was pretty cool, but after a while the entertainment aspect of having a housecleaning robot wears off (though it takes longer than you'd think--they're pretty cool) and it's just another member of the family to ignore.

So now I've got Roomba, and the Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Shower Cleaner (which is fantastic! Never scrub the tub or shower curtain again! The only downside is that the refills are expensive, but so is my time...), I'm thinking about the Scooba floor-washing robot, but my kitchen floor is so small that it hardly seems worth it--except I could definitely go a long time without ever scrubbing the floor again...

Ira Glass talks about storytelling

Here's a five minute video of Ira Glass talking about how he does such a great job of telling great stories on his weekly radio show, This American Life.

I especially like the bit at the end about how there has to be "a moment of reflection" at some point in the story.

By the way, the Open Culture website at which the interview appears is worth a look--lots of links to worthwhile places to visit on the web.

Polyvore.com and games for girls

At polyvore.com, you can click and drag photos of clothing and accessories onto a digital canvas to create collages of beautiful, fashionable stuff. 

MrBinkynator visited Polyvore after reading Alexandra Jacobs' article in the 3-29-10 New Yorker and was reminded of his stint in the videogame business, where gamer boys with six-figure incomes who still couldn't get dates (or weren't even looking) occasionally tried to dream up electronic entertainments for girls. Tetris (puzzles) and The Sims (communities, designing homes and neighborhoods) were popular, as were pony games for girls. (What is it about girls and horses? MyBinkynator suspects there's a clue in prepubescent girls drawing galloping ponies at about the same time that prepubescent boys are drawing pictures of shooting guns.)

MrBinkynator remembers a trip to LA to visit the din and colored lights of the Electronic Entertainment Expo and finding that the only demo station that wasn't mobbed by enthusiastic gamer boys featured a game about rescuing lost ponies.

MrBinkynator also remembers a girl he knew in college who despite her penury spent everything she had on an ever-growing collection of shoes, another fixation apparently comprehensible only to women.All this by way of saying that MrBinkynator thinks that the techies at polyvore.com have answered the question that stumped his game designer co-workers. What women want for electronic entertainment--some of them, many of them, anyway--is a place to create and share beautiful collections of pretty, expensive things, where a head shot is picture of the face of a beatiful woman, and not a puff of pink mist.

Sharingan contact lenses

Mr Binkynator is wearing his fabulous new Sharingan contact lenses as he writes this. You don't want to mess with me right now.