Blog

Sketchaday portrait

claire danes

Wow. This is about a 75 minute drawing. It took me probably about three hours. My computer kept crashing!

One of my favorite things to do is download new photoshop brushes. I won’t say the brush, but I suspect it was what was crashing my computer. Too bad, because it is quite a beautiful set of brushes. Perhaps I should try the paid version.

Anyway, for whatever reason I was determined to get through and this is the result. I finished it off with a standard photoshop chalk, which pretty much accomplishes the same thing.

This experience makes me think creative types shouldn’t be struggling with their technology or media. It is there to assist. You DO have take time to master it. But, from there it is best if it works FOR you. At some point, if you’re struggling too much with it, it is working AGAINST you. It’s hard to define exactly when that is though. For me, this morning, I wasn’t going to reach that point in time. I was determined to finish! Not always the case though.

Here it is. I’m glad I finished. I hope you like it.

SQL INSERT INTO SELECT Statement

With SQL, you can copy information from one table into another.

The INSERT INTO SELECT statement copies data from one table and inserts it into an existing table.

The SQL INSERT INTO SELECT Statement

The INSERT INTO SELECT statement selects data from one table and inserts it into an existing table. Any existing rows in the target table are unaffected.

SQL INSERT INTO SELECT Syntax

We can copy all columns from one table to another, existing table:

INSERT INTO table2
SELECT * FROM table1;

Or we can copy only the columns we want to into another, existing table:

INSERT INTO table2
(column_name(s))
SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table1;

 

Data Adapter (move records from one system to another)

This function “receives” an ADODB.Recordset and converts it to a datatable.

Imports System.Data.OleDb
Public Function RecordSetToDataTable(ByVal objRS As ADODB.Recordset) As DataTable
Dim objDA As New OleDbDataAdapter()
Dim objDT As New DataTable()
objDA.Fill(objDT, objRS)
Return objDT
End Function

SQL Update one table based on another table

Here is one of the most useful SQL commands I know. The example below is a table, Sales_Import, that has incorrect AccountNumber data. So, somebody took the time to put the correct AccountNumber data into a table along with each record’s LeadID.

It is important to note that if the Sales_Import record is NOT in the RetrieveAccountNumber table based on the LeadID, the Sales_Import record has the AccountNumber field populated with null! So, be careful.

UPDATE Sales_Import B
SET AccountNumber =
(SELECT TRIM(AcctNo)
FROM RetrieveAccountNumber A
WHERE B.LeadID=A.LeadID)
WHERE B.State = ‘Michigan’

Dig deeper if you are so inspired.