If you are a fan of all things science and especially if you are a fan of the author Carl Sagan, I would recommend you pick up “The Varieties of Scientific Experience” by Carl Sagan (published 2006). The book is a compilation of his lectures given while in Scotland in 1985 , where he was invited to give the famous Gifford Lectures. In it he expands upon his views of divinity in the natural world.

If have never read any of Carl Sagan’s works, I would recommend my favorite so far, “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark” (it blew my socks completely off when I read it for the first time).

Just a quick post on some of the music I have been listening to recently:

• Beck - “The Information“: so brilliant, probably Beck’s best album yet, plus it doesn’t hurt that it was engineered by Nigel Godrich of Radiohead fame.
• Ferraby Lionheart - “Before We’re Dead (New Orleans Song)”: One of only two songs I have heard from him; it is so easy to get lost in the New Orleans style jazz in this song. click here to listen

It has been my honor to have another article published on 4GuysFromRolla.com. Entitled “An Overview of Cryptographic Systems and Encrypting Database Data” and is the first of a two three part series.

The first part (published today) gives an overview of what exactly is encryption, what are its properties, how can it be used, and what facilities SQL Server 2005 offers to help one create a cryptosystem.

In part two, we go over SQL Server 2005’s key hierarchy, and T-SQL functions and statements that can be used with symmetric keys to encrypt/decrypt data.

Part three, will introduce asymmetric encryption in SQL Server 2005, and how one can retrieve and send ecrypted data to/from an ASP .NET v2.0 web page.
Hope you enjoy them!

Update 2/28/2007: The final and third part of this article series has been posted entitled, “Using Asymmetric Encryption and Digital Signatures in a SQL Server 2005 Database“.

Update 2/21/2007: The second part of the three part series has been been posted entitled, “Using Symmetric Encryption in a SQL Server 2005 Database“.

Jiang told me about this one and thought I would share it. It’s called Meebo and with it you can IM on all the popular instant messaging services though an AJAX-ladan web page!

Finally got a Wii after wanting one for a while, and is it worth every stinking penny. Bian, Jiang and I, went half and half on one and he purchased Zelda: The Twilight Princess (which is fantastic).  The last gaming console I bought was the Turbo Graphix 16/Turbo Express! So, I’ve been away from the console gaming thing for a while, and I forgot how great it can be. Wish me luck catching those virtual fish in Zelda…

Firebug has to be one of the best Firefox add-ons for web developer’s I’ve seen in a very long time. See HTTP headers, edit CSS on-the-fly, see network activity (i.e. see what is taking the most time to download), debug Javascript, editHTML, and on and on. Check it out for yourself by following the link above.

Microsoft’s AJAX Framework, formaly code-named “Atlas” has now come out of Beta status and is now available in version 1.0. Now known as ASP .NET AJAX; it can be downloaded here, and there are some good tutorial videos on the ASP .Net site as well.

OpenID provides a way in which you can log into multiple site, without having to create a seperate account on each one. It uses a decentralized achitectual model, and you can even setup your own OpenID server or even use your own domain name as part of your login.

Pretty neat stuff. I hope this catches on with a lot of existing and new sites. Check out this video for a preview on how it works.

Three words: “I want one!” Oh yeah, I want this too.