Category Archives: Tutorials

Instructional articles

Parse Visio SVG drawings with Snap.svg

Posted on October 25, 2015 by Dan

This tutorial shows how to: Load and work with SVG files using the Snap.svg JavaScript library. Parse SVG drawings exported from Visio 2013 to read data and interact with the shapes. To help with this I have exported a simple … Continue reading →

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Opening CSV files in Excel

Posted on August 23, 2014 by Dan

CSV (Comma Separated Values) is a useful file format for tabular data that I often use. But every time I want to load a CSV file into Excel it does not seem to recognize the files. Usually it just loads … Continue reading →

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Method for normalizing a relation to BCNF based on functional dependencies

Posted on October 20, 2013 by Dan

In the previous post I showed the method I use to determine the candidate keys and highest normal form of a relation. Now let’s break these large relations into smaller ones to make sure we achieve Boyce-Codd Normal Form (BCNF)! … Continue reading →

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Method for determining candidate keys and highest normal form of a relation based on functional dependencies

Posted on October 19, 2013 by Dan

For my advanced database systems course I needed to learn how to take a given relation and functional dependencies, tell the highest normal form and then normalize it up to BCNF. It’s actually not that hard, but there are a … Continue reading →

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Getting right click menus to work in 64-bit Windows Explorer

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Dan

Shells extensions are components that extend the functionality of Windows. The most common type is contextual menus that appear when you right click on items in Windows Explorer. For example, an archive utility can add itself to the menu to … Continue reading →

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How to enable (or improve) two finger scrolling on your Windows laptop

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Dan

This is a small guide on to how to get two finger scrolling and other multi touch gestures on your Windows laptop. Even if your laptop is already capable of scrolling using two fingers, this guide can still be worth … Continue reading →

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