One-stroke Handwriting for Upper Letters

Here is a proposal of one-stroke handwriting of upper letters in English, for machine reading. There was existing one-stroke handwriting for lower letters, but not for upper letters. The red spot is the starting point. The direction of the stroke indeed is the part of the design for in-time reorganization by the machine. This proposal also considered the possible confusion with the lower letters as well as numbers.



This proposal is made by this blogger.

How to Speed up Slow Computer

This article is for lay people to speed up the computer. You can do all of these steps or any of them. Start from easiest and most effective. If restart of computer required, don’t do it until all steps you selected have finished.

1. Killing some unnecessary running processes to speed up immediately. 3 minutes. However, if you do any of following step 7, Limit how many programs run at startup, please skip this because it is a duplicated effort. Start Task Manager, click tab Applications. End all tasks you are currently not in use. Then click tab Processes. Any processes from Acrobat, Ebay, Google are unnecessary; end these processes.

2. Run Windows Performance troubleshooter. 3 minute. Click the Start button, and then click Control Panel. In the search box, type troubleshooter, and then click Troubleshooting. Under System and Security, click Check for performance issues.

3. Turn off visual effects. 3 minutes. Open Performance Information and Tools by clicking the Start button, and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type Performance Information and Tools, and then, in the list of results, click Performance Information and Tools. Click Adjust visual effects.  If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation. Click the Visual Effects tab, click Adjust for best performance, and then click OK. (For a less drastic option, select Let Windows choose what’s best for my computer.)

4. Set virtual memory page size. 3 minutes. Click the Start button, and then click Control Panel. Click advanced system settings in Control panel. In Advanced tab, in Performance pace, click Settings. In Performance Options window, click Advanced tab, in Virtual memory pane, click Changing. If number of Recommended is equal or larger than Currently allocated, do nothing. Else, unclick Automatically manage paging file size for all drivers, click Custom size. Put number of Recommended at Initial box, and double of that at Maximum box. Click Set then Ok, then Apply then Ok, then Ok again.

5. Enable Superfetch service. 3 minutes. May need to restart your computer. Run services.msc > double-click on the Superfetch service > set Startup type to enabled then Start the service.

6. Turn off indexing service. 30 minutes. In Windows Explorer, select drives one by one, Right click the mouse, select Properties. In pop-up window, in General Tab, at bottom unselect Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties.

7. Limit how many programs run at startup. 30 minutes. Need to restart your computer. Run msconfig, in System Configuration, click tab Startup. Only Antivirus service like Avira Free Antivirus, Battery Management, Energy Management, Power Management, Synaptics Pointing Device Drive are necessary. Anything from Adobe, APSDeamon, Egis, Fax, Google, HomeGroup, IP Helper, Java, Manufacturer software like Acre Dell HP IBM Lenovo, Microsoft Security Client, mwlDeamon, Network Access Protection Agent, Offline Files, OOTag, ooVoo, Parental Controls, QuickTime, RealPlayer, Smart Card, SuiteTray, Tablet PC Input Service, Trillian, Winamp, Windows Media are unnecessary.

8. Uninstall unnecessary software. This may also help to remove hidden spyware. Say, 30 minutes. Need to restart your computer. Uninstall following software Symantec (Install other antivirus software instead), all kind of browser’s toolbar, Your PC manufacturers pack new computers with programs you didn't order and might not want.

9. Disable all add-ons in all browsers. 30 minutes including googling.

10. Remove all cookies. 30 minutes including googling.

11. Clean up old files. Say, 2 hours. Open Windows Explorer, right click any hard driver, in General tab, click Disk Cleanup. It would take 2 hours for system to scan. After that, select all files to be cleaned up.

12. Defragment hard disk. Say, 3 hours. Open Windows Explorer, right click any hard driver, click tab Tools, click Defragmentation. Then start to defragment.

13. Check for viruses and spyware. Say, 6 hours. If you have not already installed the antivirus software, install then. The best free software are Windows Security Essential and Avira.

14. Clean up computer. Say, 10 hours. Need to restart your computer. Open Windows Explorer, right click any hard driver, click tab Tools, in Error-checking pane, click Checking now. In new small window, click all options and start it. You may need to restart computer to enable it.

15. Dedicate an old USB flash memory (between 250MB to 32GB, larger is better) for Readyboost, 3 minutes. Insert USD, in AutoPlay select Speed up my system – using Windows Readyboost. Use it all times.

Table Name and Column Name as Parameters in MS Access

No, you can’t use table name and column name as parameters in MS Access, unfortunately.

Here is a solution: Use a uniformed names and structures in your automations, and copy your table into a temp table with a uniformed name. After process, you copy back and overwrite the temp table to its original table name. Reasonable labour work load.

Error Massage: “Operation must use an updateable query"

In MS Access, sometimes this error massage with error number 2950 may be a problem. It might be permission issue (see http://www.mikesdotnetting.com/Article/74/Solving-the-Operation-Must-Use-An-Updateable-Query-error), or an update from issue from joined table. For later, try following method to see if it does work:

UPDATE table SET field = 3
WHERE keyfield IN(SELECT keyfield FROM query)
;

It also can be caused by calculation within the UPDATE query. In this case, the best possible solution is to calculate before save into a temp table, then to join that temp table to get the calculated result.

Add Sequence Number to an Existing Table in MS Access

Add series number to an existing table can be done by following method:

SELECT t.myDate, (
    SELECT Count(*)
    FROM myTable AS s
    WHERE t.myDate <= s.myDate) as myRank
FROM myTable AS t

However, if it does not work for you, try following option:

Alter Table Temp_SequenceChange Add Column SequenceNo AutoIncrement;

Cope With Deleted Records Recovery Issue in MS Access

MS Access does not have functionality to recover or UNDO or UNDELETE deleted records. It is easy to lose data when you mistakenly forget put () between AND and OR in WHERE clauses. There are several options to cope with it, for instance creates trail tables or backup whole database regularly. Here is another option which might be easier, better and more practicable:

1. Centralize all DELETE queries into one for better management purpose with unique query name. Since MS Access does not allow table and column name as parameters, this DELETE query will be hard coded every time when you try to delete any record.

2. Never run this query directly.

3. Put this DELETE as part of a Macro.

4. Within the Macro, before the DELETE query, put some backup queries for the table you are working with or all related key tables. The simplest way to code backup query is:

SELECT *
INTO BackupTable1
FROM WorkingTable
;

Thus, you only backup table before the deletion and can be recovered once you find the fatal mistake. You can only backup one copy only since the table name in Macro cannot be changed. Another stupidity of Microsoft.

Q&A: SQL Server

Checklist for Analyzing Slow-Running Queries?
# Use SQL Server Profiler to help identify the slow query or queries. For more information. Use the sys.dm_exec_query_stats and sys.dm_exec_requests dynamic management views to find similar queries that collectively consume a large number of resources.
# How do I analyze the performance of a slow-running query? After you have identified the slow-running query or queries, you can further analyze query performance by producing a Showplan, which can be a text, XML, or graphical representation of the query execution plan that the query optimizer generates. (You can produce a Showplan using Transact-SQL SET options, SQL Server Management Studio, or SQL Server Profiler.)
# Are suitable indexes available? Would adding one or more indexes improve query performance?
# Are there any data or index hot spots? Consider using disk striping. Disk striping can be implemented by using RAID (redundant array of independent disks) level 0, where data is distributed across multiple disk drives.
# Is the query optimizer provided with the best opportunity to optimize a complex query?
# If you have a large volume of data, do you need to partition it? Data manageability is the main benefit of partitioning, but if your tables and indexes on them are partitioned similarly, partitioning can also improve query performance. For more information, see Understanding Partitioning and Tuning the Physical Database Design.