AND TO_NUMBER(TO_CHAR(appt_start_dt + 9/24, 'YYYYMMDDHH24MISS')) <= TO_NUMBER(TO_CHAR((TO_DATE(:b1, 'DD/MM/YYYY HH24:MI:SS')), 'YYYYMMDDHH24MISS'))` Please can a clever Oracle person explain, in English, the precise semantics of this WHERE clause snippet in the comments below. I realise this construct and variants thereof have probably been discussed ad infinitum on Oracle WTF but I just don’t get it. I don’t know whether this SQL was written by a human being or a third party ETL tool but it doesn’t matter. Currently, all ETL tools are written by humans in any case. ...

This year’s Carling Cup Final between Aston Villa and Manchester United will take place at Wembley on Sunday 28th February 2010.Curiously, this date marks the exact 34th anniversary, to the very day, of Manchester City’s last trophy. After United defeated Millwall 3-0 in the 2004 FA Cup Final, all the United players changed into shirts numbered ‘36’ in a tribute to the young player, Jimmy Davis, who had recently died in a car accident. ...

‘When we go to Old Trafford, we will take that banner down. This is the last year it will be displayed because we will win.’ Roberto Mancini - 6 January 2010

‘This football club will be without doubt the biggest and best in the world. People don’t like to hear it but I’ll make no excuses for saying it, and I will never stop saying it because I truly believe it with the resources and capabilities that we have - and when, not if, we’re at Wembley having beaten Man United yet again !’ Gary Cook - Mad Hatter Saloon, New York, 22 January 2010. ...

Some of the varied and bizarre keyword searches leading visitors to this site merely confirm this blog is the ramblings of a confused madman. Here is a selection from the start of the year ‘dyslexic blog’ - curiously spelled correctly. ‘crucifixion blog’ - listen United are in debt and suffering a dip in form but don’t do anything hasty now. ‘why linux will never’ - come on, you simply can’t leave me dangling like that. ‘breasts chessington’ - hoping your mates didn’t publish that photo of you, on the log flume, flashing your assets. ‘brightside software enterprises friendorfoe’ - stealth marketing finally starts to pay off. ‘famous captive animals’ - Skippy (the bush kangaroo) and Lassie. ‘handsworth exoctic escort’ - there’s absolutely nothing exotic about Handsworth, trust me. ‘hoax messages on friends reunited’ - the ghost of the cruel, heartless Janet Oldsgate strikes again. ‘how can i get back my lost virginity’ - please send an international money order for £250 to PO Box 729. ’life has dealt me with a cruel card’ - don’t tell me, hang on. Was it the ‘8 of Diamonds’ ? ‘my car keeps cutting out and the bonnet is steaming’ - stop blogging immediately and call The AA. ‘pubsubhubbub is a lot easier than it sounds’ - easy for you to say. ’the balls of allah explosive underpants’ - priceless. What a superlative name for a blog/album/house/dog ! ‘what do you think is the most important decision in our life’ - Will these underpants last another day ? ‘fucking overlapping partitions when im installing linux’ - language, Timothy. Nice assumption that the swear word would be included in relevant posts

Sometimes your faith in humanity is restored. The DEC Haiti appeal has raised over £25 million just from the news coverage alone. This exceeds the £20 million raised by last year’s Children in Need campaign which (while still a worthy cause) is mercilessly peddled and trailed by the BBC for two long weeks. Don’t forget to mark your donation as ‘Gift Aid’ which allows DEC to reclaim 28p for every pound given.

‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” — Steve Jobs So very true. Via a comment on an interesting blog post comparing Tumblr to Posterous. Ironically, this short post would have been better suited to a one liner, throwaway post correctly labelled and nicely formatted as a quotation on a service like, well Posterous or err, Tumblr but I am trying to consolidate all my efforts into this blog. ...

‘This country is shit. The food is shit, the government is shit, the weather is shit, the transport system is shit, education is shit, life is shit, death is shit, I am shit’. As this country grinds to a halt yet again after a light dusting of snow, a timely and apt quote from Arthur Smith whose autobiography ‘My Name is Daphne Fairfax’ I can highly recommend.

Last year, I visited a customer in Swindon. When I arrived at the office, I noticed some water dripping from the underside at the front of my car. I didn’t have time to investigate or get my hands dirty so I subconsciously hoped it was just condensation from the air conditioning unit and tried to forget all about it. After work, I managed to navigate Swindon’s world famous roundabout of roundabouts and finally locate my hotel. When I parked, I noticed the temperature gauge was reading high - very high. Sure enough, I got out of the car to see steam pouring out of the bonnet and was greeted by the familiar smell of anti-freeze. ...

That was the year that was. Statistics for 2009 with the comparative numbers for 2008 in brackets. Summary 29,901 visits (43,732) 39,545 page views (63,095) 1.32 pages per visit (1.44) Average time on site - 48 seconds (54 secs) 91.2% new visits (90.6%) Search Engines Google - 22,627 (32,830) Yahoo - 381 (704) Bing - 168 (N/A) AOL - 128 (229) Ask - 115 (195) Referrers identi.ca - 575 (229) avc.com - 222 (348) Disqus post linked by Fred Wilson google.com - 216 (primarily Reader) oracle-base.com - 169 (225) disqus.com - 101 Platform Windows - 81.4% (85.7%) Macintosh - 11.9% (10.3%) Linux - 5.1% (3.26%) iPhone - 0.6% (0.2%) iPod - 0.2% Symbian, Android, PS3 - < 1% Browsers IE - 42.5% (56.5%) Firefox - 41.4% (33.6%) Safari - 7.2% (6.2%) Chrome - 5.4% (N/A) Opera - 1.6% (1.3%) Content Blog - 3,990 Review of Virgin Media V+ box - 4,666 (June 2007) Virgin Media V+ upgrade - 1,871 (March 2007) High Definition TV on Virgin Media V+ - 1,378 (December 2007) intelligent automatic follow/block script for Twitter - 1,303 (April 2008) pictures of a Virgin Media V+ box - 1,273 (June 2007) 25 reasons you should use Disqus - 1,270 (April 2008) how I ditched iTunes and started living with Foobar 2000 - 810 (October 2009) Beware of Dixons Tax Free shopping - 791 (October 2005) Posterous leveraging Tumblr themes - 729 (September 2009) Posts 79 (94)