Migrating SQL Server 2012 to Amazon RDS

I just want to quickly reiterate what this comment suggested for how to quickly and easily migrate a SQL 2012 database to AWS. Of course I had tried to use the built-in Export wizard in Management Studio, however 2012 conveniently leaves out options for exporting constraints and the like, and restoring from a disk backup isn’t possible with Amazon RDS. But this little tool from CodePlex is exactly what I’ve been looking for. It migrated the entire database in a couple of minutes, scripting all the SQL and bcp commands, then executing without a hitch. Note: it’s built for SQL Azure migrations, but you can just enter your Amazon RDS endpoint in the server box, and it still works.

Star Wars: Crowdsourced

This is awesome.

From the video description:

The Story:

In 2009, thousands of Internet users were asked to remake “Star Wars: A New Hope” into a fan film, 15 seconds at a time. Contributors were allowed to recreate scenes from Star Wars however they wanted. Within just a few months SWU grew into a wild success. The creativity that poured into the project was unimaginable.

SWU has been featured in documentaries, news features and conferences around the world for its unique appeal. In 2010 we won a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Creative Achievement In Interactive Media.

We can’t thank everyone enough for making this such a special project.

http://StarWarsUncut.com

Google’s new security

If you used Gmail today, you might have noticed this message:



This is pretty awesome. They have a video describing the service:

Google 2-step verification

Let me Google that for you

For when you want to help in a condescending way.

Merry nostalgic Christmas!

I was just watching a BetaMaXmas – an 80s TV with remote and TV Guide, filled with holiday specials and commercials – and I realized something. I want Drakkar Noir for Christmas. I’m bringing it back. Oh, gotta go – Designing Women is on. Suzanne Sugarbaker just got a pig for Christmas.

Cuil (pronounced ‘cool’)

Some ex-Googlers have started a new search engine that seems promising. It’s hard to beat the big G, but I’m all for alternatives – a little more diversity in the search engine market can only be a good thing, especially when it seems the big only get bigger and tend to gobble each other up.

Cuil – The World’s Biggest Search Engine
Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

Though oddly, searching for ‘cuil’ in Cuil returns no results relevant to the site itself:

– as opposed to the Google results. Kinda weird. Their servers also seem to be hiccupping a bit right now.