Month: June 2004

Ignant

This is the title of a Screamin’ Jay Hawkins song on Black Music for White People (it’s the one with Heart Attack and Vine used in the jeans ad). I was standing talking to someone and another person (the one from the club whom we fell out with over capsizing our daughter) pushed in and started talking about something over the top of me. I left the ignorant bastard to it: you can tell from the way his kids behave that he has no manners and all this did was prove it. He loiks to play the country bumpkin, being from Somerset, but I think it’s just ignant and shit. Rosie says that we shouldn’t let him define what we do, and she’s right, but I nearly lost it with him.

To be fair it’s not his fault I’m in such a foul mood. Things have been getting me down and I’ve been having trouble sleeping, plus some old petty addictions (chocolate is the most benign) have been bugging me. An addiction is like a wave breaking, you don’t have to swim in it but it can feel very good. I need to think some more about how to deal with it.

Brain Software

I’ve been using some software called the Brain (http://www.thebrain.com/default.htm?thoughtid=49). It sits on the side of the screen and allows you to organise the relationships between thoughts, dragging documents and folders and breaking the windows hierachy. The only problem I have had is that I used to use the Enterprise Edition of Mind Manager(http://www.mindjet.com/) it would let me plan documents as mind maps, exporting maps to HTML or word documents. The brain has horizontal relationships across hierachies and is better at focusing on the thing you are thinking about and I prefer its interface, but all it has is a utility to turn a selected Brain document into an XML document.

XML to HTML

You guessed it: I’m writing a utility to change this exported XML into something I can usefully paste into a word document.

It is work related in that I have put a lot of the notes into it and need an easy way to get them out with the structure preserved. Of course, once I have done this I could write my own system, which as long as I don’t sell it might mean I could use it. Thing is, I could write this but I don’t want to steal their IP. They have a good product and deserve success. I think it more honest to give them the HTML dump as a thank you.

GOALS!

Reading a book with this title. The chapters end with lists of things to think of. The most scary is saying the words I am responsible, and not allowing yourself to pretend to be a victim. Very hard but very worthwhile. Will post more later.

Quoting from this site:

It’s wrong to wish on space hardware

Esther’s true purpose amongst us is revealed later in the interview, where she boasts that “I’ve never met a government that could pick winners” and advises regulators to get right out of town. Of course you don’t need to be a genius to see that government makes a lousy businessman, which is why governments don’t even try to anymore. But government can fund technology projects that are both hugely useful (TGV) and aesthetically beautiful (Concorde). Japan, Germany and now the People’s Republic of China have proved that judiciously directed public investment provides a welcome alternative to the bulimic US model of private investment: huge splurges followed by copious vomiting. And only a churl would point out that of the last three technology upturns in Esther’s old launch pad of Silicon Valley, two (the 1980s and the current modest revival) have been stoked by government defense spending, and the one in between was the result of exploiting a publically funded defense project: the Internet.

This may be some use to you. Most of this stuff has been in SQL Server for a long time because they came late to the party and built to ANSI 92.

Left, Right and Full joins

This is the industry standard syntax which is now supported by Oracle (just in case you ever wondered)

select dname, ename
from emp
right outer join dept
on emp.deptno = dept.deptno
order by dname, ename

See <http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/04/23/fulljoin.html> and http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/server.920/a96540/statements_103a.htm#2107297.  Ansi can outer join more tables (so it says).

You can also do inner joins, which are your straightforward join. I think the left and right say which table is outer joined to in the statement, as in left in this case would be emp. A full outer join outer joins in both directions, meaning you no longer have to union left and right together.

If someone wants to rustle up an example of outer joining to two tables go right ahead.

Some other useful things from ANSI 92 in 9i are replacing DECODE with CASE, NULLIF and COALESCE

CASE:

SELECT cust_last_name
, CASE credit_limit
WHEN 100 THEN ‘Low’
WHEN 5000 THEN ‘High’
ELSE ‘Medium’ END
FROM customers;
(see http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/server.920/a96540/expressions5a.htm#1033394)

COALESCE

COALESCE (expr1, expr2)

is equivalent to:
CASE WHEN expr1 IS NOT NULL THEN expr1 ELSE expr2 END
Similarly,
COALESCE (expr1, expr2, …, exprn), for >=3
is equivalent to:
CASE WHEN expr1 IS NOT NULL THEN expr1 
   ELSE COALESCE (expr2, …, exprn) END

NULLIF:

NULLIF compares expr1 and expr2. If they are equal, then the function returns null. If they are not equal, then the function returns expr1. You cannot specify the literal NULL for expr1.
The NULLIF function is logically equivalent to the following CASE expression:
CASE WHEN expr1 = expr 2 THEN NULL ELSE expr1 END

(see http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/server.920/a96540/functions85a.htm#1001199)

Christ, I dunno

One of those things. Loads going on but not space to sit back and think about it. The printing press of life continues to weave some kind of bloody narrative. Bones and guts and living. Things falling apart, not satisfactory. Pushing like crazy and the door opens on another door.

Spent last week at the Canoe Camping Club meet at Mordiford (Hereford, about 10 miles out) paddling up and down the river Wye. Did some training and 2*assesment. The main thing that happened was me realising what Buddha meant when he talked about things being unsatisfactory, even if you have a good life, there is always dukkha, which is translated as being unsatisfactory. Just think about it, you get settled with your book or cup of tea or whatever and even if nothing happens either the thing you are enjoying ends or you need to attend to some biological thing.

Unsatisfactory doesn’t cut it, really, its a very deep malaise. If you can’t live in the moment and treat everything that happens as empty, and not having any particular form that forces you to act, even in some minor way, you’re fucked.

Getting on top of my new job. There’s a lot to do and I’m worried about having the authority to make things happen, but what can I do other than push and try to make sure people start talking and understanding each other’s point of view?

Reading a great book called The Leader’s Digest by Jim Clemmer, which gives a lot on how to help people to grow, I say help because people will do nothing if you try and make them. It’s all in short digestible lumps. The only problem is that it runs together.

Had a good BBS last Sunday. One of the speakers was talking about the wellness industry (food supplements and so on) vs. the sickness industry (keep your chronic conditions while we charge you for treating the symptoms). Apparently most modern vegetables only contain about 10% of the goodness they used to. When I can find it I will post the URL’s he gave here for others to read.

Time for sleep. Very tired but didn’t want to go to bed because it only involves waking up again, Dukkha, what can I say? If I could only stop time and rest properly. Time is an illusion brought on by things moving about, but how can you stop them when the processes appear to be outside of you. Think about it. If there is no barrier between subject and object then what is moving? (getting a bit Zen there, I need to go to my bed)

Will post a longer report about the Rivers Access Rally in Chester when it’s happened on Sunday.

Have fun