Note: The following posts were imported from my previous blogs.

Time wasting  #
Wednesday, 06 Aug 2003 03:30PM
More mySQL lameness.

You cannot:

IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT T_ID FROM Test WHERE T_NAME = 'Monkey')

You cannot send multiple SQL statements via ODBC like this:

UPDATE Something SET SomethingElse = 'Blah';
UPDATE SomethingMore SET SomethingMoreElse = 'Monkey'

And if you use NOT in a where clause make sure you use brackets else it does something different to SQL Server:

SELECT * FROM Monkey INNER JOIN Person ON Person.MonkeyID = Monkey.MonkeyID WHERE Monkey.Type = 'Ape' AND Monkey.Color = 'Grape' AND NOT (Person.PersonID = Monkey.PersonID)

That didn't make any sense did it?

Oh well. Getting there with the CD database conversion. Finished the import code (yay) so it's useable now. Noticing little things here and there and fixing them. Only some admin stuff to go (delete / some edit code) and working out what the hell I'm going to do about adding images.

Suppose I should add all that functionality I've been promising for the Walken website first though.


The time just flies by.

Saw Identity last night. A better than average thriller, well told (directed / edited) and mostly well acted. There was only one real jump-out-of-your-seat moment (ripped straight out of Final Destination) but it kept me confused for most of the show which I generally enjoy.

Spent yesterday cleaning and burning CDs (of the band for the band). We've got to solidify the drum tracks for the 8 songs we're going to bash out in the studio in a couple of weekends.

Tax time again. Looks like I have all the info I need. Time to check out e-tax again I think.


I was reading William Gibson's rant about fax machines and other old technology the other day and it got me thinking about my life with technology...

(swirly stuff obscures the view... into memory land)

I've never lived without technology, but the early days it was simple. We had colour TV ever since I remember, but we had an old black and white TV that was bigger than our colour. I played with Lego, Transformers and toy cars. Some of that Lego had flashing lights. The toy cars were sometimes remote and broke easily.

The first "computer games" I played with was the Donkey Kong handheld and Dr. Dental.

Later, I played "Castle" on Dad's PC (XT) at work. I remember dad trying to impress me showing me a giant torso sized computer chip then showing me a 50 cent sized chip and saying everything on the torso-chip can now fit into the 50-cent sized chip. It made me hungry. I later drew on his whiteboard with a permanent pen.

We got a VCR. An old black TEAC. It still works. It's more than 20 years old. We used to be able to watch what our neighbours were watching on their VCR just by tuning in.

For my 12th birthday I got a C64 with a disc drive. My friends had tape-drive C64s. One of my friends got a C128. All the games were too fast to play. I tried programming BASIC. At school I wrote rude things and 20 GOTO 10. A few friends had Ataris. One had a BBC.

When we moved to Melbourne we got an XT. It had 20Mb hard drive and 640k memory. I played Captain Comic, Alley Cat, Space Quest, Police Quest, Heros Quest (later Quest For Glory), Test Drive 3.

At school we had Apple IIe. I played with BASIC some more, mainly to hack Pitfall. We played with those little Turtle things. Again, boring.

In Melbourne, dad had a Mac at work. A really old tiny Mac. It had Shufflepuck cafe. I thought it was OK but compared to the C64 it sucked. I don't remember even thinking about the mouse. The idea of throwing a new input device at me now gets me thinking, but back then I guess it was irrelevant.

Then dad won a 386 from work. 40Mb hard drive. 2Mb of RAM. Test Drive 3 ran faster. We had Windows 3.0. Everything crashed. A lot.

Then we bought a 486/66. I played Doom. Wolfenstine. Duke Nukem. The VGA Quests. Syndicate. I played with DOS batch files.

I played with my first modem, a 14.4k and messed around downloading MODs from BBSs. It was ultimately very boring and expensive.

Then with a new Pentium 100 (2Gb drive, 128Mb RAM) we got a 33.6k modem. With Uni I got free internet access. I discovered MP3. I messed around with unix and Ingres at uni. I played Strike Commander.

At uni I learned mainly C++, a bit of Java, a bit of Visual Basic 4, COBOL, prolog. None of which I do now (ok, mainly VB6).

With the new computer I started playing with music. Multitracking didn't really work, but cut and past did. Cool Edit 96 and a tape recorder. Good old Soundblaster Pro. I played Quake, Grand Theft Auto.

Then uni finished and I got a job. I bought a Celeron 466. I started multitracking music. I played Half Life. I got cable internet. I got a scanner. The scanner blew up two days after it's warranty.

The first thing I bought with the money from my new job was a recording cassette walkman that spent most of it's time recording Pre_Shrunk gigs and my demos.

Not long after I bought a CD writer (SCSII) that lasted me right up until last year. I friend came back from the US and sold me a Minidisc recorder. I still have it. It's fantastic.

My new computer is used for music and video only. It hasn't seen a game installed on it yet.

Why am I telling you this?

I never once in my whole life owned a fax machine.

The fax machine seems like such stupid technology to me. Every time I send a fax I get angry, it's such a waste of time. Why not scan and send an email? The quality is better. It's insane technology. Why do we still have fax machines?


Photos  #
Wednesday, 06 Aug 2003 02:05PM
Subject URL: Photos

I now have a photoblog. I didn't like putting photos here. It felt weird. Don't ask me why. So now I put there here!...

http://photoblog.realkosh.com/.

Will be linked on the left soon.