jinnantonnixx

I saw him in the free open-air concert he did in Dublin in 1994. Great concert and so pleased to have seen him live.

I found an old thread on the 'Council of Europe' scare-o-grams from a few years back. http://www.edugeek.net/forums/behind-red-door/76298-email-recieved-about-proposed-complete-wireless-ban.html To echo an earlier comment, it is The Telegraph and as such cannot be cited for anything other than entertainment purposes. Of course, the kids are carrying around wifi devices all the time - their phones. This is important - we mustn’t forget our physics here. The inverse square law means that somebody sitting in a wifi hotspot for a full year will receive the same radiation dose as that from a 20 minute phone call (with the phone held near the head). I find it curious thinking to concentrate on a device at a greater distance than devices constantly carried near the body. Follow the money. See who gains to profit, through consultancy or woo-devices, from investigation into fresh fears over demonstrably safe equipment.

Stuff I used to do: * Hill walking: I catalogued the WW2 crashed aircraft on the Brecon Beacons * Used to play guitar in a couple of bands. We were highly unsuccessful, and didn't tour Europe or America. Several times. * Photography: Used to do loads of B&W developing and printing. This was immensely enjoyable, but digital killed it off. * Semi pro photography: Weddings and portraits, stuff like that. Weddings were a world of stress, so I stopped doing them. * Welding: used to make weird things just for fun. I made a bike once - not just assembled it, but made one. It was 11 feet long, and not the most practical of things. Still do: * Reading. Not too keen on fiction, but love science and maths topics. * Mountain biking: Try to get out on the weekends on the big old Kona. * Guitar: Still trying to write that amazing song. Hasn't happened yet. * Kayaking. Don't do much of this any more, but still got a SOT sea kayak. These are good fun in the surf. * Photography. Just bought a lovely little Fuji X100S and doing a lot more photography. * I've recently bought a unicycle, but it's much harder than it looks. Haven't really made much progress with this. * Snowboarding. I've fallen down mountains in California, Nevada, France, Switzerland and Austria

The incomparable Richard Feynman. If politicians had 1/10 the intelligence and 1/20 the sense of this man, the world would be A-OK.

Q. Do you know what would be weirder than coincidences like that? A. No coincidences! No coincidence? Statistics and the outrageously unlikely - physics-math - 18 March 2014 - New Scientist

I don't want to trivialise your obviously real and profound experience, but this reminds of a subject brought up in classic lectures of Richard Feynman's "The Meaning of It All". "The Meaning of it All" is a series of three classic lectures by Richard Feynman. Absolute classics. They explore, in a non-technical style, the relationship between science and society and our everyday experiences. I prefer the audiobook version, as the text is a transcript of his speeches and as such it doesn't translate to print very well, but if you have any interest in how science affects us, they are a must read/listen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Meaning_of_It_All#Synopsis

Well, we've all experienced it. I was dead during the middle ages and around the time that the pyramids were being built. It wasn't too bad.

Fixed it! Ah. A Gary Larson fan.

Scientific American Magazine April 05, 1884 (!!!) So, if you define sound as the perception of molecular vibrations, the tree doesn't make a sound as there's nobody there to perceive the vibrations as sound. However, other definitions say that sound is hearable noise, whether heard or not. In the end, it's a question that just plays with definitions.

There are quite a few discussions on the 'are we living in a simulation?' argument. Nick Bostrom's paper is perhaps the most popular. Are You Living in a Simulation? He outlines the simulation argument in this Youtube video. I read (or rather tried to read) The Physics of Immortality by Frank Tipler, which focusses on the Omega Point. It's one of the few books I gave up on. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/frank-j-tipler/the-physics-of-immortality/

Look at yourself in the mirror - it's impossible to see your own eyes move. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccadic_masking Then try it with a webcam or phone and the delay will allow you to see your eyes move. It's a strange effect. But wait. There's more. This whole article is good, but scroll down to '#4. Your Brain is Half-Blind' for the invisible gorilla. http://www.cracked.com/article_18704_5-mind-blowing-ways-your-memory-plays-tricks-you.html

Well, I've gone and done it. Thanks to @kennysarmy my wallet is lighter. I've bought a Fuji X100S from the Fuji refurbish shop. It was a refurb, but it's as new and the shutter count is very low. I had an extra £50 off with a voucher. Second-hand ones are going on ebay for more than I paid, so I'm a happy camper. Anyway, an X100S? Fixed lens? Yep. I used to own a Yashica T4 which was my point-n-shoot pocket camera, which had a fixed Zeiss 35mm. This Fuji is optically equivalent, but with f2.0. Some of my best B&W prints were done using my Yashica, so I know that focal length. First impressions are excellent. I'm impressed with the film simulations, Fuji have done a lot of work here so don't overlook it. Fuji has a card up the sleeve: if you shoot RAW, you can 'process' the RAW in-camera later using the film simulations at a later time. Handy if you don't want to commit to a 'film' for a situation. Film Simulation Modes Compared — Fuji vs. Fuji The OVF is a revelation for daytime use. However, the parallax focusing threw me for a while, but this website explains it better than the manual (which isn't very good) http://vopoku.com/fujifilm-ovf-focusing/

I used to like Radio 4 but can't find anything of interest whatsoever these days. Same goes for Radio 2. I used to drive a lot back in the '90s doing service calls, and enjoyed Radio 2 back then. Steve Wright was fresh, the Fat Harry White segment was so funny as to be a road-safety issue, and grunge was in. Halcyon salads all day. Sigh....

Happy birthday! 14 at last.

Hmmmm. Capita could have passed the application name in the connection string so that the particular application can be identified. But it seems that they use 'STA' for SIMS and the default '.Net SqlClient Data Provider' for everything else. At least you know it's a task running on the server, and if you keep an eye on what happens when, the timing might help you zero in to the problem. A MacGyver solution could be to set up different Windows logins/users for different apps. These logins/users can be traced more easily.

Can you add 'tt.hostname' to the last query? This will show the machine from which the command was run. ..... tt.sessionloginname, tt.HostName from......

See if this is helpful. It will look through the last log file (which is defined by sys.traces) and look for tell-tale signals of the recovery model changing. It will only work with recent events as the log files are cycled, but try it anyway. SQL Server usually has a lightweight default trace running all the time. It's a kind of 'black box', recording major events. Several log files are kept, and these are cycled in turn. First, run this: exec Sp_readerrorlog 0, 1, "recovery", "option" This will show when the recovery model changed, and the SPID which changed it. Note the SPID and the time of the event that is of interest to you. Very well, but all we have is the SPID, not the user or process. Not much help so far. Next step is to get some useful data from the default trace table. Edit: Because of the stupid way that 'MENTION' quotes are used, even in code blocks(!), I have had to insert a space after every '@' character. Remove the space after the '@' character if you want to try this code. declare @ logfile varchar(max) set @ logfile=(select path from sys.traces) -- get the current log file path print @ logfile select ('spid'+cast(tt.spid as varchar)), tt.ntusername, tt.DatabaseName, tt.ApplicationName, tt.starttime, tt.sessionloginname from fn_trace_gettable(@ logfile,null) tt where tt.EventClass=164 and tt.EventSubClass=1 and tt.DatabaseName <> 'tempdb' This lists the SPID and other data of the processes that altered database objects (this includes its recovery model). Take the SPID and the time from the first result, match the SPID and the time in the second result, and voila, we have fairly good proof of who or what is changing the recovery model. @Cache if you suspect SOLUS is monkeying with your recovery model, this might help.

I've added a policy to check the log file size in use. I'm less concerned with the physical file size, but I want to know when the space in use by the log file goes over a threshold. I used the 'Log File' facet and the '@UsedSpace' field for the condition. With the policy scheduled to run every hour, this looks quite useful.

Hi Vik, There are a lot of example policies on the system already. Import them with Management>Policy Management>Policies>Right-click Browse to c:\program files(x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Policies\DatabaseEngine\1033 (you version and country code might be different) Import whatever you think looks interesting (or import them all, you can always delete them later). I don't remember seeing a disk-space-low policy. Edit: ------ To see what information is available to you when you create your conditions, expand the Management>Policy Management>Facets and examine the fields available inside a facet that looks interesting.

I'm going to use the policy management to set up alerts for log file sizes. As any policy violation generates the same error number (34052), I'm going to have to create a separate alert with a filter for some key words. It shouldn't be a problem, though.

Here's a way to get warnings when the recovery model changes. Using "SQL Policy Management" policies it's possible to check the recovery model of the SIMS database(s) and raise an alert if the databases are not in compliance. *** Again, the usual caveats - if you have doubts about any of the procedure, do not proceed. First, take a look at the principles behind SQL policy management, described in this excellent website. Identify SQL Server Databases Not in Full Recovery Model That covers setting up the polices, but we need to do more to create the alerts that will tell us when a problem crops up. Read this to understand the principles of alerts. Configuring Alerts for SQL Server Policy Based Management A tip of the hat to that excellent website for such clear and informative articles. Those two links should be enough to set up a compliance policy and an alert, but just in case, here's my recipe for creating a policy and an alert to tell me when the recovery model gets flipped to the wrong settings. Apologies in advance if it's incomplete or erroneous, but hopefully it's of some use. In SQL Server Management... Expand the SQL server Expand: Management>Policy Management>Policies Right-click Policies > New Policy Name: Describe the policy (e.g. Check Recovery Model) Check condition: Select New Condition Name: Name the condition (e.g. Check Recovery Model) Select the correct Facet (in this case: Database Maintenance) Add a new expression (e.g. @RecoveryModel = Simple) (or Full, if you use the full model) Against targets (choose New condition) Name: Name the condition (e.g. Select the SIMS database) Facet: Choose 'Database' Add a new expression: (e.g. @Name='SIMS', or whatever your db is called. Don't forget the quotes around the name.) OK to save the policy Test the policy with [The New Policy] > Right Click > Evaluate If your database is set to the correct model, you should see a 'green' result, otherwise you'll see an error. Change the policy's 'evaluation mode' to 'On schedule' Create a new schedule. Once an hour should be OK. Right-click the policy and choose 'Enable'. Check that the little red mark is not showing against the policy icon. Now set up the Alert system, so we know about a fault when it occurs. SQL Server Agent>Alerts>New Alert Name the new alert 'Database Recovery Model Policy Violation' Enter 34052 in the Error Number field. This error number is a system number that is logged when a policy violation occurs. Under the Response page, choose 'Notify Operators' and choose the appopriate notification method (e.g. Email) Under the Options page, check the tickbox for "include error text in email"/net send or whatever In the additional notifications, type something informative about the recovery model being wrong; this text will be sent in the alert. If you don't have an email operator, create a new 'Database Mail' account (Management > Database Mail) and a new operator to use this email account (SQL Server Agent > Operators) Full instructions here. http://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/1100/setting-up-database-mail-for-sql-2005/ ---- Well, everything’s in place, but to test that this is going to work, change the recovery mode (not near a backup period!) and see if the alert does its job. ----- Post back if this goes well, or not, or if the instructions need amendments. It was a bit rushed, so probably needs refinements.

You can't compress a JPEG any further using file compression. You can re-encode it at a different quality setting, but that's not the same thing. So.... why not compress the DMS documents as a matter of course? Documents on the DMS are encrypted and decrypted by the SIMS clients before being sent over the network to the DMS. This means that the document never travels to/from the client in an un-encrypted form. The first 8 bytes of SIMS-encrypted document are the the same (they all use the same encryption method). Encryption gives you high-entropy data, which is effectively as bad as random noise as far as the compression algorithm is concerned. The upshot is that file-system level compression is unlikely to give you any benefits at all, even if JPEGs were not in the equation. I fear this is a procedural/person issue rather than a technical matter. You'd be wise not to interfere with the files stored on the DMS. The filenames are stored in a kind of poor-man's B-tree structure, taking the first two characters of the filename as its parent directory. A crucial point to remember is that the only thing linking the document to the pupil record is a row in the 'attachment_name' for that pupil in the DM table. The 'attachment_name' row contains the file path and name for the encrypted file. If the filename gets changed or corrupted, there is no way of matching the file back to the pupil. In short, don't get creative with the DMS.

December 14?

I've skimmed through the text, and at first I thought it was one of those computer-generated papers on a certain topic (like the ones that occasionally make it past the reviewers and are actually published). But there's the occasional burst of lucidity, which makes me think that it was written by somebody with thoughts, but it doesn't make any sense at all.

Yes, you can. But you should ask for the Ubuntu Satanic Edition to be installed: Ubuntu Satanic Edition - Wallpapers