jinnantonnixx

Nothing wrong with an old camera. My Canon 20D is still going strong, even though it's ancient. Even though it has 'only' 8 megapixels, unless I'm printing at A2, I will always be throwing away some pixels. The 20D has the tough, magnesium metal body (as opposed to the plastic bodies we see even today), quick wake-up and the 5 fps shooting rate is still fairly useful if you feel the need. I've got an L lens and a nice Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 which, although old, still holds its own. Ooo-er. I checked its second hand value, and Wex were selling a good 20D for under £70 delivered. This is fantastic value. Coupled with a cheap (but good) 50mm and you have a nice SLR you won't be worried about taking anywhere. That said, I'm still considering a downsize shift to the Fuji X range. Cogitation and procrastination will be my wallet's friend.

Did you consider the mirror-less Canon EOSs? I must say I like the look of the Fuji.

Well, my imagination may be a little more restrained than others. I can't see how you can conclude that a failure to see signs (whatever they might be) is an indication that there is no other life in universe. This has fallen into the proving-a-negative fallacy you mentioned earlier. Let's take the Earth as a specific example. Our weak radio transmissions have been our only beacon, and these haven't been going for long. A reciprocal observer at a distance of over 200 light years, looking for the same signs must therefore conclude that there is no life in our solar system, even though there has been life on Earth for millions of years. We must also consider that much of the universe can never be observed (not to be confused with Olbers' Paradox). Furthermore, billions of years from now, the universe will have expanded so much that galaxies that are now visible will become invisible forever. They will have slipped beyond the light horizon, and their light will never, every reach us, no matter how long we wait. The only visible galaxies will be 'local' galaxies. To an observer in this period, the universe will appear to be static, even though in reality it is still expanding.

Here is one of the best introductions to relativity, and why time's passage is observed differently depending on your frame of reference. It also shows how the famous E=mc2 equation is derived. http://youtu.be/GL04RizDT_M

From a biological point of view, maybe. But (admittedly using a sample size of 1) things change rapidly once a species evolves to use tools, language and is able to build on previous generations achievements.

The Earth is a fairly young planet (on the cosmological scale), but a more important consideration is that it has been subject to mass-extinction cataclysms during its history. Life as we know it has emerged within the last few instants and is clinging on until the next devastating event. It's possible that a planet conducive to life has emerged elsewhere in the universe and has had a far quieter history; perhaps this has allowed life to evolve to an unimaginable degree of sophistication. I echo your point about communication with other life, if it exists. My view is that we are utterly isolated by the laws of physics and the mind boggling distances that separate life-supporting candidate planets. If life exists elsewhere, the distances involved mean that we have no way to exchange information.

Mines? We could only dream of mines. We only had a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a mine to us.

Developing your own B+W film is dead easy and quite cheap. You don't need a darkroom, just a changing bag, tank and chemicals. I know @LosOjos does this as I sold him some of my old stuff! I had best results from a very old-tech recipe. Iflord HP5 (400 speed) in Agfa Rodinal at 50:1. Lovely negs that were smooth and easy to print. Personally, I've given that up as I can't be bothered with the hassle, but it is an enjoyable pass-time. P.S. I still have some old printing stuff up the loft. A Meopta Axomat enlarger, some accessories, a 10x8 easel. They're full of dust, but if anybody wants them, PM me.

Coal mines? Luxury.

I've got an old Canon DSLR with some nice lenses (including L lenses). I've also got a little Sony NEX. The NEX gets far more use, as the Canon + battery grip + lenses is so huge. The NEX is easy to carry and takes nice photos. I've even bought an adapter for the Sony so I can use cheap M42 lenses, just as an experiment. http://www.edugeek.net/forums/general-chat/110680-dslr-help-9.html#post1263331 I shelled out £920 for the Canon body many years ago, and it's still going strong, despite being utterly outclassed (on paper) by every newer model. But I won't be upgrading as I don't need to. I'd certainly consider buying a good second-hand DSLR. There can be real bargains to be had here, especially from serial upgraders.

Hacked French network exposed its own passwords during TV interview | Ars Technica

Spotted this Carol Kaye interview on Youtube. Fascinating stuff. She was part of the LA 'Wrecking Crew' crack session musicians, and played on some 10,000 recording sessions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Kaye#Electric_bass_credits http://youtu.be/q4JWqK6r6N4

Google releases ARC Welder, a Chrome (browser) extension to run Android apps. "App Runtime for Chrome" takes a big step toward making Android a universal binary. Google’s ARC Beta runs Android apps on Chrome OS, Windows, Mac, and Linux | Ars Technica

The Chromebook Flip looks good, too. Asus's new Chromebook Flip is a tiny, touchscreen, convertible Chromebook | The Verge

Got a problem pasting SQL code that involves the '@' character. It always converts to MENTION tags, making the code unusable as pasted. example set @logFile = left @logFile,len @logFile) - charindex('_',reverse @logFile))) + '.trc' print @logfile in the above example, the left brackets before the @ character have disappeared. with the parsing and smilies disabled... set @logFile = left @logFile,len @logFile) - charindex('_',reverse @logFile))) + '.trc' print @logfile The left-brackets have disappeared and the MENTIONS seem determined to stay. I can't get rid of them. It's a bit of a mess, to be honest. Poor 'log' user will be rushing over to see what's going on. Mentions should be totally disabled within code blocks.

Any idea what happened at the times of these changes?

There is an excellent free book available as a PDF which covers everything about SQL backups. It's a very comprehensive book, and well worth a read if you have the time. Even if you don't make use of the information, you'll understand your SQL system a whole lot more. Hats off to Red Gate, they make nice products and give away lots of free stuff. Redgate book store - SQL Server Backup and Restore

It's perfectly fine to do this. Been doing it for years. - File server, SQL server and Document servers are on different machines.

I like my dream world. It's great. Everything is designed well. The passport controls are fairly strict, mind you.

@caffrey - I made a mistake over my caution when changing the recovery model: I've checked, and apparently changing the recovery model is OK while the database is in use. I must have been thinking of something else. Never mind, though, that's good news. That said, you'd still be wise to make the change out of hours.

The SIMS software client uses transient connections to the database. That is, the connection is made when needed, then dropped, even if the user is logged in and looking at a page of data. So it's tricky to be absolutely sure that nobody's in. SIMS could have designed the system so a logged-in flag is set on login, and released on log out. But they didn't, so we have to improvise. This script will give you a snapshot of the connections to SIMS at any one time. use master; select upper (sysprocesses.loginame) [sIMS User], sysprocesses.hostname [Machine], sysprocesses.dbid, -- sysdatabases.dbid, sysdatabases.name [Database] from sysprocesses join sysdatabases on sysprocesses.dbid = sysdatabases.dbid where sysdatabases.name like 'sims%' --change this to your database name order by sysdatabases.name -- works for multihosting systems

Fixed the link. Normally SIMS databases are set up for SIMPLE recovery mode. Odd to see it accidentally set to FULL.

When you've done that, you'll need to wait for your next backup to run. This will truncate the logs, so running running the script in post #4 should give you a much smaller value for the "space used". The physical file size will remain unchanged. Give it a few more days to make sure that the log space in use isn't increasing. If so, you've got a stable system. Small fluctuations are fine, but you shouldn't see an upward trend. Now you can resize the physical log file. You'll need to give yourself some breathing room (as the log file will increase dramatically when you do a SIMS upgrade, for instance), so let's say your baseline log file in-use size is 400Meg. Setting the physical log file to something like 2 Gigs will give you plenty of room. Don't cut your cloth tight and rely on auto-grow - that's not a management strategy. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190757%28v=sql.110%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

Aha. The plot thins. You're doing SIMPLE backups, but your recovery model is set to FULL. You'll need to change your recovery model to SIMPLE. You must be 100% totally and absolutely sure that nobody is using SIMS when you do this. If you get your database stuck in single-user mode - and you're not the single user - well, it can be a real work-out for the bowels. Here's how you do it. The easiest way is found under the "Using SQL Server Management Studio" bit. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-GB/library/ms189272.aspx

OK. So you do a daily full backup of the SIMS database. You don't back-up the log file separately. If you need to restore the database, you just restore a particular day's database and don't restore log file backups afterwards - is that correct? Can you run this SQL script and see what recovery model is set for your SIMS database? SELECT name AS [Database Name], recovery_model_desc AS [Recovery Model] FROM sys.databases