today I read a nice article about a wounder full toy, http://www.sonos.com/ It is kinda useless in our apartment but i see a lot of potential for this little thing if you got a house.

Like one for the patio, one for the bedroom and one for the living room. And all can managed over a central remote and are connected to any NAS.

The problem is only a system like this including NAS cost easily 2k. But it's a nice idea.

sofar my xbox does the job just fine, if I ever use it for music cause is a waste of energy to keep the pc running...

after I looked at my wallet this morning I decided to take the offered deal on a tamrom 90mm F2.8 macro lens and waiting that it get's shipped to davis so I can play with it. Sadly I wont have it before the memorial day weekend is over, but I gonna play with it afterwards.

the power of pgsql.

I hate writing database dependend code. It's a nightmare to change it when you need to move to another database system. My current situation is that I need to update millions of values in a table because we changed our data model.

So I was thinking writing a script in java or python, but this was to much work and would cost me 1 - 2 days. Instead I wrote a small plsql script which does what i want.

declare

cursor SAMP_CUR IS select "sample_id","class" from samples;
v_sample_id integer;
v_class varchar(256);

begin
open samp_cur;

loop
fetch samp_cur into v_sample_id,v_class;
exit when samp_cur%notfound;

update RESULT_LINK set "class" = v_class where "sample_id" = v_sample_id;
end loop;

close samp_cur;

end;

it took maybe 10 - 15 minutes and does what I want.

Sadly I hade to write some insane applications in plsql on my database to synchronize it over webservices with another database which Is a pain in the ass to move to a new system. I'm honestly thinking about making test with 3 database systems in future to find a new dbms.

H2
postgressql
mysql
cloudscape

H2 and cloudscape have the insane adavantage that they are based on java and I can develop java based code in the database to enhance it.

so long time no post so a short update what's going on. Basically live is like always busy with work and going to move from my loved oracle database (ok love/hate relation ship) to a postgresql in the next couple of month. So starting to read up on postgresql issues.

my plans for summer are

- camping in joshua tree
- going to germany to get a visa
- riding my bike more often
- maybe stopping in england for the 26th birthday of an old friend
- finally scraping enough money together to get this damn macro lens

more comes later...