Excellent resource on Cancer

BBC NEWS | Health | Cancer: The facts

One in three of us will be diagnosed with cancer during our life.

Open Government and Local body data

Open Data Catalogue

Opengovt.org.nz is an open, independent catalogue of Government and Local Body datasets

Looking to download the latest list of Primary Schools? Want to find out the average market rents for Dunedin suburbs and use these in a report? Are you interested in the boundaries of your suburb? If the answer is yes then you may find some of this information hard to come by. Even though this information should be easy to obtain it is sometimes hard to find who to talk to, where to look and worse hidden behind pay-walls and restrictive license agreements. The Open Data Catalogue is an attempt to classify where this information resides, who ‘owns’ it, what license it is distributed under and if it is free or not.

Including SPATIAL datasets

marriage advice for IT peeps

CIO > Why (some) IT people's marriages are from hell

With the right type of communication, and by taking small, proactive measures to demonstrate that they're thinking about their spouses, IT leaders can have happier, more satisfying marriages, says a psychoanalyst turned life coach.

Elegant solution for juggling windows

WinSplit Revolution: "WinSplit Revolution is a small utility which allows you to easily organize your open windows by tiling, resizing and positioning them to make the best use of your desktop real estate."

WinSplit Revolution is freeware. Some Rights Reserved.

What’s your favorite “programmer” cartoon?

What’s your favorite “programmer” cartoon?

Usability Testing

Usability Testing With 5 Users

The ultimate user experience is improved much more by three tests with 5 users than by a single test with 15 users

New to computing? Have a friend/parent wanting to become digital? - try this!

Digital Literacy Curriculum Original Version XP/Office 2003

Digital Literacy Curriculum II Vista/Office 2007

Cut 8 wires and see what happens

Bruce Perens - A Cyber-Attack on an American City

The city of Morgan Hill and parts of three counties lost 911 service, cellular mobile telephone communications, land-line telephone, DSL internet and private networks, central station fire and burglar alarms, ATMs, credit card terminals, and monitoring of critical utilities. In addition, resources that should not have failed, like the local hospital's internal computer network, proved to be dependent on external resources, leaving the hospital with a "paper system" for the day.

The rest of the article is very interesting.

Oracle debug - output a CRLF delimited block of text

v_crlf CHAR(2):=CHR(13) || CHR(10);

v_RemainingText:=v_Orig_Text || v_crlf ;
WHILE length(v_RemainingText) > 1 LOOP
    v_crpos:=instr(v_RemainingText,v_crlf);
    v_ThisText:=substr(v_RemainingText,1,v_crpos-1);
    dbms_output.put_line(v_ThisText);
    v_RemainingText:=substr( v_RemainingText
                           , v_crpos+2
                           , length(v_RemainingText)-(v_crpos+1)
                           );
END LOOP;

VPC Images for testing IE6, 7, 8

Download details: IE App Compat VHD:

Nice Free Icons

Free Icons: Function Icon Set, 128 Completely Free Icons

I Speak Geek

Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - FizzBin - The Technical Support Secret Handshake:

Fun with Foreign Keys

SELECT object_name(SR.rkeyid) AS Master
     , RC.name                AS Master_Column
     , object_name(SR.fkeyid) AS Child
     , FC.name                AS Child_Column
     , object_name(SR.constid)AS FK_Name

FROM       sysreferences SR
INNER JOIN sys.columns   RC ON RC.Object_ID = SR.rkeyid AND RC.Column_ID = SR.rkey1
INNER JOIN sys.columns   FC ON FC.Object_ID = SR.fkeyid AND FC.Column_ID = SR.fkey1
ORDER BY object_name(SR.rkeyid)
       , object_name(SR.fkeyid)

I Am Employed

Web developer at iSoft

You know you want to

I don't come in different colours or sizes, but I am great value for money.
This year you could have your very own MrDee working at your place. (as long as your place is in Auckland)
As of tomorrow I am officially on the Job market.
So drop me a line I would love to chat.

What was XTRA thinking

Yesterday I posted an article about the Google streetview technology.
I saw it last year and took a virtual tour of Brooklyn NY. Brilliant.
I never dreamed that NZ would be in the first 10 countries to get this. Well done Google.

So when XTRA, the number one ISP in NZ (by volume) looked for a partner to offload their e-mail capability they selected Yahoo.
I assume this 'partnership' was because of the care and concern Yahoo has for our country.
just look at the stunning level of detail in the auckland Yahoo map

Pitiful.

Yahoo mail is hostile, the data is stored off shore and XTRA is still crashing more often then a drunk university student in Palmerston north.

Can anyone recommend an ISP that is affordable and still works for their money?

Walk on by...

Map here

I will wave at you from my desk :D

A support headache cured.

Computerworld > Microsoft discontinues Windows... 3.x

As of November 1, 2008 Microsoft has stopped issuing licences for Windows 3.x, which debuted in May 1990.

Published! (sort of)

Ask Phoebe : Grab a street map - you'll need it - 06 Nov 2008 - NZ Herald:

I have tried, to no avail, to discover the scale and extent of the roadworks on the Te Atatu interchange. A sign warned that the work would take from October 2008 to February 2009, but what exactly is being done? Is there a website that will explain this to me? Andrew Dixon, Te Atatu.

Try, Doh!, Whatever

Jeff Atwood : VB.NET adds the "ain't" keyword

Microsoft is also reported to be experimenting with "AsIf", "Maybe", and "Totally". In addition, "Catch" will likely be replaced with "Doh!", and "Finally" will be replaced with "Whatever".

MeDee: Code project Author

CodeProject: Database Deadlocks for Dummies.

Trying to explain a database / transaction deadlock to a non-technical person can be a challenge.

The concept however is something we have dealt with since pre-school.

Imagine a simple colouring exercise of the globe. Unless you are artistically gifted, blue and green are all that is needed to complete the picture. Being a state funded school, there is only one green and one blue crayon.

Get married or you're fired

NZ Herald Blog:

Employees at a major state-owned company in Iran have been told to marry by September or face being fired.

works for me.

Protecting your software investment

Computerworld :
Protecting your software investment

Chris Auld and Mark Johnson share tips for ensuring that you’re not left holding a can of dated spaghetti code"

excellent article.

Disable SQL Auto Recovery

If you Google a feature of a product and the first 50 hits are from people asking how to disable it, you know you have found a turkey.
This 'feature' has caused my sanity to leak at an alarming rate as I wait for slow connections to do... what exactly (I do not know)


Michael Zilberstein SQL Server Blog : Saving Auto Recovery Information

Go to Registry and change to 0 (zero) value of the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Shell\General\AutoRecover\AutoRecover Enabled

a JOIN without a NULL by any other name.. is different

• If you only come here for the pretty pictures or a laugh, this is not the post you are looking for.

• If you are a uber-geek feel free to leave a comment explaining in small words why I am a mental midget for not knowing this. (quoting appropriate reference works if desired)

• If you are a pragmatist join with me in the enjoyment of discovering a work-around for a problem.

In the following example I was expecting query 2 & 3 to return the same result.
it does not.
A LEFT JOIN with an AND clause looking for NULL is not the same as
a LEFT JOIN with a WHERE clause looking for NULL.


-- SQL Code follows
CREATE TABLE #Dude
( TheID INTEGER
, TheName VARCHAR(20)
)

CREATE TABLE #Jobs
( TheID INTEGER
, TheJob VARCHAR(20)
)

-- Dummy Data
INSERT INTO #Dude VALUES (1, 'Fred')
INSERT INTO #Dude VALUES (2, 'Freddy')
INSERT INTO #Dude VALUES (3, 'Fredrick')

INSERT INTO #Jobs VALUES (1, 'Boss')
INSERT INTO #Jobs VALUES (4, 'Slave')

-- 3 records returned - 1 with a match
SELECT D.TheID, D.TheName, J.TheID, J.TheJob
FROM #Dude D
LEFT JOIN #Jobs J On J.TheID = D.TheID

-- 3 records returned - even thought 1 has a match is is shown as having none - oops
SELECT D.TheID, D.TheName, J.TheID, J.TheJob
FROM #Dude D
LEFT JOIN #Jobs J On J.TheID = D.TheID AND J.TheID IS NULL

-- 2 records returned - only rows that do not match
SELECT D.TheID, D.TheName, J.TheID, J.TheJob
FROM #Dude D
LEFT JOIN #Jobs J On J.TheID = D.TheID
WHERE J.TheID IS NULL

-- Tidy Up
DROP TABLE #Dude
DROP TABLE #Jobs